Unitarianism Defended A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool (part 7 of 8)

Preface

In preparing this Lecture for the press, after an examination in its printed form of that to which it is a Reply, I do not find that the Trinitarian argument has been strengthened by additional evidence, or by a more logical statement, so as to require any modification of my impressions of its weight and character.

Mr. Bates has in his Appendix drawn out some of his scriptural evidence, and I can only require any one to examine it, in order not only to estimate its cogency in reference to this particular question, but also to obtain a very accurate idea of the peculiar genius of Trinitarian interpretation. I shall select two passages as perfectly descriptive of the manner in which the believer in a verbal and logical revelation draws doctrinal conclusions from the mere words of scripture.

Here is one of the Trinitarian Scriptural proofs of Three Persons in the Unity of the Godhead.

“2 Thess. iii. 5. ‘The LORD direct your hearts into the love of GOD, and into the patient waiting for CHRIST.’

“In these passages the Three Persons are distinguished. The LORD to whom the prayer is in both instances directed; GOD, even our Father; and our Lord Jesus CHRIST. That the LORD thus distinguished from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and addressed in prayer, is the HOLY GHOST, is evident from the analogy of Scripture, which teaches that sanctification, for which the Apostle prays, is the peculiar work of the Holy Ghost.”—Mr. Bates’ Appendix, p. 590.

Now, using the same description of logic, we have only to quote a passage in which sanctification is ascribed not to the Holy Ghost, but to GOD our FATHER, in order to overthrow the whole of this verbal and mournful trifling with the sublime and vast purport of revelation.

“Holy FATHER, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.... Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”—John xvii. 11, 17.

The second descriptive specimen I select, of the genius of Trinitarian interpretation, is the following alleged scriptural proof of the separate Deity and Personality of the Holy Spirit.

“Rev. i. 4. ‘JOHN to the seven Churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne.’”

The seven Spirits, we are told, is a symbolical designation of the One Spirit. Nothing however can be more clear, even on the verbal principle, than that the seven Spirits are the seven Messengers, Angels, or Ministers, which, partaking themselves of God’s Spirit, were His instruments of communication with the seven Churches of Asia enumerated by the Author of the Apocalypse, and which are represented as being before his throne, deriving their own inspiration from Him.—“The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven Churches.”—Rev. i. 20.

On this, the last opportunity, perhaps, which I may have, of saying any thing in connexion with these Lectures, I cannot but express my own regret, and point it out to public notice, that we have been necessitated by circumstances, not to prepare merely and deliver as pulpit addresses, but to print and fix in a permanent form, dissertations upon most important and agitated questions, within a period of time altogether insufficient to do any justice, I will not say to the subjects, but even to our own ideas of the subjects. The accidental advantage, in this respect, obtained by the Lecturers on the Trinitarian Theology, with ample time and undivided strength to bring out a single Lecture on a single topic, ought to be included as an element of judgment, if the real value of the contrasted views is to be estimated by any, by the results of the present controversy. For myself, it is with great pain that I think of so much written, in the most sacred cause, almost extempore. That this necessity has occasioned any defects except such as have been an injury to our own views of Truth, by failing to bring out its full strength, I am not aware. I am not aware that, in any respect, we have, through haste, overstated our case. I am aware, for my own part, that it might have been much strengthened by additional force of evidence, and clearness of statement. I may be allowed to state, that in the course of three months I have been obliged to write and print to the extent of an octavo volume of nearly four hundred pages. It is impossible that such an exposition of our views should not be crowded with imperfections, and indefinitely feebler than it might be. May we ask that this consideration will be taken into the account by all those who are now forming an opinion of the merits of the Trinitarian and Unitarian Theology, from this discussion of it. May we ask those who, in the love of the Truth, and in confidence in the God of Truth that no Truth can injure them, wish the real evidence to be presented to their minds, to read the original sources, the New and the Old Scriptures, afresh, without fear, without an unfair and biassing horror of what they have been cradled to dread as heresy, without the intellectual infidelity of studying a revelation from God with the previous interpretations of men, colouring all their associations with the very words of the document, and preventing their ever receiving a pure impression from the original evidence unmixed with the whispers and suggestions of some self-authorized Interpreter who is in terror lest they should miss the essentials of the revealed religion, and derive from it some ideas that would destroy.

Liverpool, April 1839.

---------------------

LECTURE IX.

THE COMFORTER, EVEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH, WHO DWELLETH IN US, AND TEACHETH ALL THINGS.

By REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.

“IF YE LOVE ME, KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS: AND I WILL PRAY THE FATHER, AND HE SHALL GIVE YOU ANOTHER COMFORTER, THAT HE MAY ABIDE WITH YOU FOR EVER; EVEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH; WHOM THE WORLD CANNOT RECEIVE, BECAUSE IT SEETH HIM NOT, NEITHER KNOWETH HIM: BUT YE KNOW HIM, FOR HE DWELLETH WITH YOU, AND SHALL BE IN YOU. I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU COMFORTLESS; I WILL COME TO YOU.”—John xiv. 15-18

It is very remarkable that whenever the doctrine of the Trinity is discussed, the debate is almost always exclusively occupied by the single question of the deity of the Christ, and if that can be established, the controversy is considered at an end. Controversialists glide from the doctrine of the deity of the Son to the separate deity of the Holy Spirit, in a way which plainly shows that one inroad being effected on the personal unity of God, and the principle once loosened, another division of it is conceded upon much easier terms, without fear, without caution, without reverence. Why indeed should men scruple to admit three persons into the unity of the Godhead after having got over the first great difficulty of admitting two? A third person adds nothing to the difficulty of a second person, and if we cannot maintain unbroken the principle of one God, in our own sense of oneness, then the extent to which the principle is violated, whether by three persons, or any other number, is really a matter of a very minor importance. Having admitted that there may be two persons in the godhead, it would be very absurd to take an objection against there being three; for the analogy of unity, in the only sense we are acquainted with it, the unity of a human being, having once failed us, we must never plead it again. The principle that admits two minds in the being of one God will equally admit any number whatever, provided Scripture accords to them the dignity, and our struggle and reluctance will be felt most strongly on the first of these invasions of our own idea of unity, and will yield more and more readily at each successive one.

This is the only explanation I can conceive, and a very natural one it is, of the weak and unguarded state in which Trinitarians have left the separate personality and deity of the Holy Ghost. I do not wonder at their preference for that word, Ghost, in this connection. It materializes the word Spirit, puts the true idea out of immediate sight, and is so far a preparation for introducing the conception of a third person, which never would naturally have arisen from the use of the more intelligible expression “the Holy Spirit,” “the Spirit of God.” I apprehend that all minds, though long familiarized with the idea of a plurality of persons in the godhead, would be greatly shocked, if that plurality was conceived to be either more or less than the mystic number three. A multitude of deities, discharging different offices, but partaking of the one Essence of the godhead, would be thought a completely Heathen conception—and a reduction of the present orthodox idea, so as to represent only two persons in the one God, would strike a Christian mind as scarcely less pagan. Yet upon Trinitarian principles this is evidently a mere prejudice of Custom. There is no more reason, so far as our understanding is concerned, for there being three persons in the godhead than for there being only two, and whether there be one, two, three, or a countless number, is a question to which our Reason ought to be entirely indifferent, having no a priori opinion or principle of its own upon the subject: and submitting to the letter of the Revelation with equal readiness, whether it distributes the Essence of the Deity among a Trinity, or among any other plurality of minds. Now I would ask Trinitarians whether they have schooled themselves into submission to this principle—whether they would receive four persons in the Godhead as readily as they receive three, provided the same mode of inferential interpretation which now establishes the Trinity, succeeded in showing that a further distribution of the essence of the godhead was required, in order to make our Theology consistent with the exact wording of the Scriptures. I apprehend that most minds amongst us would revolt at the idea of four persons in one God, contemplated as a mere possibility. Yet surely in a Trinitarian this would be very unreasonable. As a Scripture doctrine he might reasonably discard it as unfounded—but as a possibility, as a subject on which, previous to Revelation, he ought to have no prejudice whatever, he must on his own principles have no objection to the plurality of divine persons extending to any number, and be as prompt, to submit his faith to five as to three, provided five can be shown to be the proper inference from the words of Scripture. A consistent Trinitarian must feel no a priori objection to any number of divine persons united together. Having conceded that on this subject his Reason is no guide, and his Nature no analogy, there is but one question he has a right to ask,—“Is it so written?”

And even if it should be granted that Scripture reveals three divine persons and reveals no more, yet upon his own principles, a consistent Trinitarian should be cautious in asserting that there are no more. Scripture nowhere asserts that there are only three persons in the godhead—and surely it is being wise above what is written, for a Trinitarian to confine God’s essence within the limits in which He has been pleased to reveal Himself, and to make the communications He has opened upon us the measures of the infinite possibilities of His being. A Trinitarian reverently and with becoming modesty stating his own doctrine, and not presuming to know more of God than is revealed, ought to content himself with saying—that Scripture discloses three divine minds in one Deity, but that whether there are any more than three, Scripture does not declare, and he would hold it arrogant to assert. If the Unitarian is wise contrary to what is written in confining the unity of God to one person; the Trinitarian is wise above what is written in confining it to three persons, and with less excuse, for that one is neither more nor less than one is at least a natural supposition—but after having admitted that one may be three, there is nothing but precipitancy and dogmatism in determining that it can be only three. A consistent and scripturally modest Trinitarian should simply state, that God his Father, God his Redeemer, and God his Sanctifier, contained all the revelation that was required for the salvation of his soul—but as to whether there might not be other divine persons in the plurality of the godhead, he held it to be a high mystery, which he did not presume to speak upon—that only these were revealed, and therefore he knew no more, but yet he did not dare to assert that his necessities, the requirements of a being so feeble, comprised and exhausted the whole capabilities and personalities of the godhead. But Trinitarians are not so modest. They charge the Unitarian with presumption for limiting the divine essence to one Person—and then they proceed themselves, with no warrant from Scripture, and none they assert from Reason, to limit it to Three.

If two not three had been the favourite mythological number, if a Duality and not a Trinity had been the Platonic conception, then, I am satisfied, that the Christian world, though it might have witnessed the deification of the Christ, would never have heard of the separate deity of the Holy Spirit. And this assertion is amply borne out by the historical fact, that the deification of the Spirit followed afterwards as a consequence from the deification of the Son, and that the earliest form of the charge made against the Platonizing Christians by stricter believers in the unity of the Deity, states the whole extent of their heresy to be that of introducing a second God,—nothing as yet being said about third.

It is well known to all in whom duty has so far prevailed over distaste, as to make them turn in sorrow the heavy pages of Ecclesiastical History, that there was no discussion respecting the divinity of the third person in the Trinity until nearly the end of the fourth century. Nothing can surpass the cool and easy confidence which sets aside this undeniable fact by boldly asserting that up to this time the doctrine was never disputed—and that the absence of evidence in support of this doctrine only arises from the absence of doubt, that nobody stated what nobody denied. What, the separate deity and personality of the Holy Ghost never doubted, and yet not one prayer addressed to Him in Scripture, not one ascription of praise, not one doxology in which his name is introduced, so that when the Church desired to associate the third person in the honours of Christian worship it could find no Scripture formula, and had to make one for the occasion;—not one debate for nearly four hundred years upon the deity of the Holy Ghost, although the deity of the Second Person, to whom the Third Person even after his deification was held to be subordinate, was constantly debated, and yet the doctrine never doubted nor denied! Now if the doctrine was never doubted or denied, since the doctrine of the deity of the Son was most certainly both doubted and denied, why is it that the Holy Spirit does not appear as the Second person in the Trinity instead of the Third—why is it that the Council of Nice previous to this time, when the doctrine began to be doubted and denied, asserts the deity of the Father, and the deity of the Son, but does not assert the deity of the Holy Ghost—and why is it that the earliest charge against the philosophizing Christians was that of introducing a second God, if there was already a second divine person acknowledged, and therefore the true charge should have been that of introducing a third? It is remarkable that the same very learned writer, the late Professor Burton, who is the great Trinitarian authority upon these subjects, after having resolved the absence of controversy into the possible absence of doubt as to the deity of the holy Ghost, records the very first instance in which the Holy Spirit is introduced into a doxology of the Church as taking place in the fourth century. He quotes Philostorgius the Arian historian, who declares, “that Flavianus of Antioch, having assembled a number of monks, was the first to shout out, Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the holy Spirit; for before his time some had said, Glory to the Father, through the Son in the holy Spirit, which was the expression in most general use; and others, Glory to the Father, in the Son and holy Spirit.”[524] Gibbon relates this matter thus. He is speaking of a temporary triumph of the Arians over the Athanasians, and of the means employed by the Athanasian laity to manifest their unwilling acceptance of the Arian Bishops. “The Catholics,” says the historian, “might prove to the world, that they were not involved in the guilt and heresy of their ecclesiastical governor, by publicly testifying their dissent, or by totally separating themselves from his communion. The first of these methods was invented at Antioch, and practised with such success, that it was soon diffused over the Christian world. The doxology, or sacred hymn, which celebrates the glory of the Trinity, is susceptible of very nice, but material inflections; and the substance of an orthodox or heretical creed, may be expressed by the difference of a disjunctive or a copulative particle. Alternate responses, and a more regular psalmody were introduced into the public Service by Flavianus and Diodorus, two devout and active laymen, who were attached to the Nicene faith. Under their conduct, a swarm of monks issued from the adjacent desert, bands of well-disciplined singers were stationed in the cathedral of Antioch, the Glory to the Father, AND the Son, AND the Holy Ghost, was triumphantly chaunted by a full chorus of voices: and the Catholics insulted, by the purity of their doctrine, the Arian prelate, who had usurped the throne of the venerable Eustathius.” Out of such disorders in the Church, from the rebellious device of laymen to insult an heretical Bishop, sprung the doxology of our present creeds.

It is very instructive to look a little closely into some of the passages from the early Fathers which are brought by Trinitarians as evidence of the recognition of their doctrines by the primitive Church. There is unquestionably much vague language that will readily coalesce with the conceptions of a modern orthodox believer; but as soon as you examine with any strictness, you find that though they use language very loosely, nothing could be further from their modes of thinking than modern orthodoxy. For instance, we find the Son and the Holy Spirit mentioned as objects of a Christian’s reverence—but it is very remarkable how many of these cases occur when the writers are defending themselves against a charge of Atheism, as if they were desirous when repelling such charge to show how many sources of veneration their religion disclosed. The early Christians who believed in only one God were called Atheists by the Heathens. To believe in only one God was in their estimation the next thing to believing in none at all. Those who believed in many gods were likely enough to call the Christians Atheists, just as in the present day lecturers in Christ Church call Unitarianism a God denying Heresy.[525] In vindicating themselves against this dangerous calumny the early Christians were naturally led to extend rather than to diminish their objects of worship, and accordingly in a passage quoted by Professor Burton, from the earliest Father on whom dependence can be placed, we find not only the Son and the Spirit, but interposed between the Son and the Spirit, the angels of Heaven, associated together in their reverence. Hence the passage is quoted by Roman Catholics in support of the worship of Angels. And if it is good for the one purpose, it is equally good for the other; nay, if it is any proof of the separate deity of the Holy Spirit, it is equally proof of the deity of the angels who are mentioned before him. The passage is from Justin Martyr whom Professor Burton places A. D. 150. “Hence it is that we are called Atheists: and we confess that we are Atheists with respect to such reputed gods as these: but not with respect to the true God, the Father of justice, temperance, and every other virtue, with whom is no mixture of evil. But Him, and the Son who came from Him and gave us this instruction, and the host of the other good angels which attend upon and resemble them, and the prophetic Spirit we worship and adore, paying them a reasonable and true honour, and not refusing to deliver to any one else, who wishes to be taught, what we ourselves have learnt.”[526] There is another passage from Justin Martyr, also given by Burton as evidence of the early recognition of the Trinity, but which is manifestly nothing more than the natural anxiety of the writer when meeting a charge that perilled his life, the charge of Atheism, to show the full extent of his sentiments of reverence. “That we are not Atheists,” says Justin Martyr, “who would not acknowledge, when we worship the Creator of this Universe, and Jesus Christ who was our instructor in these things, knowing him to be the Son of this true God, and assigning to him the Second place. And I shall prove presently, that we honour the prophetic Spirit in the third rank, and that we are reasonable in so doing.”[527] Now let it be recollected that these two passages, extending as far as possible the objects of a Christian’s reverence, occur in Justin Martyr’s Apology for Christianity against its Gentile oppressors, in which he complains that the Christians were treated as Atheists, and unjustly punished for not worshipping the gods. I shall only quote one other passage exhibiting the modes of thinking respecting the Holy Spirit among the early Fathers. It is from Origen, A. D. 240, perhaps the most eminent of them all, and shows clearly, notwithstanding the frequent vagueness and obscurity of their writings, how far they were removed from modern Trinitarianism, and that their forms of thought were derived from Platonism much more than from Christianity, or more strictly from Platonism engrafted on Christianity. He is speaking of the Son, and commenting on those words at the beginning of St. John’s Gospel—“all things were made by him.”

“If it is true,” says Origen, “that all things were made by him, we must inquire whether the Holy Ghost was made by him: for as it seems to me, if a person says that the Holy Ghost was made, and if he grants that all things were made by the Logos, he must necessarily admit that the Holy Ghost was also made by the Logos, the latter preceding him in order of time. But if a person does not choose to say that the Holy Ghost was made by Christ, it follows that he must call him unproduced, if he thinks that this passage in the gospel is true. But there may be a third opinion, beside that of admitting that the Holy Ghost was made by the Logos, and that of supposing him to be uncreated, namely, the notion of there being no substantial individual existence of the Holy Ghost distinct from the Father and the Son. We, however, being persuaded that there are three hypostases (persons), the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and believing that nothing is unproduced beside the Father, adopt this as the more pious and the true opinion, that all things being made by the Logos, the Holy Ghost is more honourable than all of them, and more so in rank than all the things which were made by the Father through Christ. And perhaps this is the reason why he is not called the very Son of God, there being only one who by nature and origin is Son, viz. the only begotten, who seems to have been necessary to the Holy Ghost, and to have assisted in forming his hypostasis, not only that he might exist, but also that he might have wisdom, and reason, and righteousness, and whatever else we suppose him to have, according to his participation in those qualities which we have before mentioned as attributed to Christ.” “Such,” says Burton, “is this extraordinary, and I must add unfortunate passage of Origen, which I have quoted at length, and have endeavoured to translate with the utmost fairness. If the reader should decide from it that Origen did not believe in the eternity of the Holy Ghost, he will think that the enemies of Origen were not without grounds when they questioned his orthodoxy. It is not my intention entirely to exculpate him. He is at least guilty of indiscretion in entering upon such perilous grounds and in speculating so deeply upon points which after all must elude the grasp of human ideas and phraseology.” Professor Burton calls this passage “unfortunate,” for no reason that we can see, except that it discloses too plainly Origen’s ignorance of Modern Trinitarianism, and shows too clearly in what sense we are to understand the Platonic language of the Fathers.

There are two modes of proof by which Trinitarians undertake to establish the separate existence of the Holy Spirit as a third person in the godhead. The first mode is by inferences from such passages of scripture as seem to attribute the titles and offices of deity to the Holy Spirit. The second method of proof is by independent considerations of Theology which profess to demonstrate the necessity of a third person in the godhead in order to compleat the work of man’s salvation.

Trinitarians say, that Scripture both calls the Holy Spirit God, and assigns to Him a work which none but God could accomplish. Now in both these respects we have not a shadow of difference with the Trinitarians. We believe as firmly and we hope as fervently as they do, that the Holy Spirit is God, and that the Holy Spirit has connections with our souls which none but our God could hold. We have no controversy with the Trinitarians, when they assert the Deity, and Personality, and Operations of the Holy Spirit. It is a mere piece of controversial dexterity to put these points prominently forward as the true grounds of our difference—and, whether designedly or not, an unfair impression is produced against us, by such a mode of statement, as if we were deniers of the deity and agency of the spirit of God—if indeed any meaning could be found in such a denial, supposing we were extravagant enough to make it. To deny the deity of the Spirit of God, would be a proposition as absolutely without meaning as to deny the humanity of the spirit of man. We were told by the Lecturer in Christ Church to whom this subject was committed, that it was of no avail for Unitarians to advance passages in which the Holy Spirit signified not God himself, but his power and influence exerted upon man, for that these occasional meanings of the expression were fully conceded; and that what we have to do, is to disprove the Trinitarian interpretation of other passages which attribute to the Holy Spirit, deity, personality, and operation. Now the Trinitarians must allow us the privilege of taking our faith from ourselves, not from them, and in carving out for us this employment, the Lecturer at Christ Church would set us to the task of disproving our own convictions, of overthrowing our own interpretations, of answering and opposing ourselves. There is only one point of difference between the Trinitarians and ourselves upon this subject, and that is the only point to which their arguments never have a reference. They maintain and we maintain that the Holy Spirit is God. They concede and we concede that the expression “Holy Spirit” in scripture frequently signifies that portion of God’s spirit which is given to man naturally or supernaturally. They maintain however that the Holy Spirit is, not the one God, but a third person in the godhead—and here we separate from them, maintaining that the Scripture evidence for such a distribution of the Godhead among several persons is totally imaginary, and that the theological reasons for such a distribution betray the most arbitrary and unworthy limitations assigned by man to the infinite and spiritual nature of God. Now will it be believed that when Trinitarian controversialists treat this subject they uniformly put forward those views of it which we do not deny, as if we denied them, and they as uniformly pass over the only point of difference between us, and avoid all close grappling with it, laboriously proving that the holy Spirit is God, which of course we believe, and then taking for granted that he is a third person in a Trinity, leaving the argument at the very point where argument ought to have commenced? Will it be believed that the Lecturer at Christ Church exhausted his strength and time in assiduously proving that the spirit of God was God, and that it had understanding, will, and power? Will it be believed that of nearly a three hours’ lecture, certainly not more than five minutes was devoted to the only point of difference between us—that the common parts of our faith were laboriously proved—if indeed such an identical proposition, as that the spirit of God is God, can be called faith—and the single controverted part left intact? I in my turn take the liberty of declaring that it is of no avail that Trinitarians adduce passages of scripture attesting the Deity, Personality, and Operations of the Holy Spirit, for that this is conceded, if an identical proposition can be conceded,—and that what they have to do is to prove that the spirit of God is not the one God, but a third person in the godhead—and if the Lecturer had devoted his three hours to this, the only point in controversy, he might have greatly aided, or greatly injured his cause, and have afforded an opportunity for testing the mutual strength of our views in a way which is now not possible. Disappointed of finding the controversy conducted with any closeness by the Lecturer in Christ Church on the only point by us denied, namely a deity of the Holy Spirit, personally separate from the deity of our one God, I turn to a published sermon of Dr. Tattershall’s, in the hope of finding some discussion of our true difference from an associated authority. But here unfortunately again precisely the same principle is pursued of proving what is not denied, and of passing most slightly over the only point of difference. In a sermon consisting of thirty-four pages just three are devoted to the matter in controversy,[528] and these I grieve to say occupied with reasonings so verbal and unsatisfactory, that one is amazed that a manly and reverential mind could offer or could accept them as the solid and substantial proofs of a doctrine that affects to such an extent the being and nature of God. I think it not unbecoming here to declare, that with respect to the two modes of proof adopted by Trinitarians to establish the separate deity of the Holy Spirit, the Scriptural proof, and the Theological proof, I have long and laboriously sought in their own writers, for some distinct controversial statement of the scriptural and theological adjustments of this subject; I have examined their scholars and critics for the verbal part of the argument, and their divines for the theological part of it, and nowhere can I find anything definite or tangible to grapple with or oppose. It is at least my conviction that never was so serious a doctrine as that of a third person in the godhead admitted upon evidence so small, and I cannot conceal my strengthened impression, that it has glided into most minds as an easy consequence from the deity of Christ. Again we avow our belief that the Holy Spirit is God, but we declare that we cannot find any scriptural evidence that he is a separate God (personally) from God our Father, or any theological evidence that He performs a work within our souls, which work may not be performed by God our Father. If Trinitarians wish to establish their own doctrine, it is to these two points that they ought to confine themselves.

Abandoned then to our own methods of discussing this subject by opponents who assert a doctrine that we deny, and prove only those portions of it that we admit, I shall endeavour to ascertain, first, the Scriptural meaning of the expression, “the Holy Spirit” or “Spirit of God.”

I shall examine the more difficult passages which are usually appealed to in this controversy.

I shall examine what Trinitarians call “the work of the Spirit,” in order to ascertain whether it requires a third person in the godhead, or whether God our Father is not sufficient for it.

And I shall close with some statement of our own views of the connections of the spirit of God with the spirit of man.

The expression “Holy Spirit” when used in scripture will I think always be found to designate not God as he is in Himself, whom no man knoweth, but God in communication with the spirit of man. Whether the Deity holds intercourse with his creatures naturally or supernaturally, the name applied to Him in scripture, with respect to those felt or manifested connections, is that of the Holy Spirit. And there is most holy and beautiful reason for this peculiar usage. God is a spirit; and he is therefore only spiritually discerned. Through our spirits He speaks to us. In our spirits He abides with us. Eye hath not seen him; ear hath not heard him—but through that portion of his spirit which He has given us, we know Him, and are His. It is not God without us, but God within us that we know and feel. Externally we know Him not; personally we conceive him not; as He is, in his own essence and perfections we cannot think of Him—but He has put His own spirit within us, and that, in proportion as we have it and cherish it, reveals Him unto us—He has lighted up from Himself a candle of the Lord in our spiritual being, and if by communion with Him we keep oil in our lamps, and our lamps trimmed and burning, His spirit which bloweth where it listeth, listeth to blow upon us and to feed our flame. And how shall the spirit of man prepare itself for fresh communications from the spirit of God? Only by removing from his own spirit whatever is at variance with the spirit of God—by cleansing the temple, that the holy one may be able to come to us and manifest himself to a nature that has reverently sought to put away all deadening impurity, and to brighten the spiritual image in which it was made—by courting the voices of the soul—by listening amid the tumults of the world to hear God speaking in our conscience—by cherishing through obedience, and inviting through prayer the intimations, that by His spirit, from which ours are derived, He gives us of His will. The spirit of God originally made the spirit of Man: the spirit of God retains its connections with the spirit of Man so long as man does not by unholiness and alien sympathies drive out that holy Spirit: and in measures more abundantly as we prepare ourselves to receive of His, does He hold communion with us through affections and affinities fitted to apprehend Him; and He transforms the will that obeys Him from glory to glory as by the spirit of the Lord. I apprehend that the preparation which was made by God for the reception of the gospel and spirit of Jesus Christ, shows the preparation which all men must make who would qualify themselves for fresh communications from the Holy Spirit of our Father. The baptism of repentance prepared the way for the baptism of the holy spirit and of fire. The heart had to be cleansed before the spirit of God could descend upon it, and hold communication with it. And ever must there be a Baptist Ministry breaking the dread repose of sin, awakening the dead heart, and creating the consciousness of want, before the Christ of God can breathe in his gentle breath upon our souls, saying unto us, “receive ye the holy spirit.” The holy spirit of God reveals itself to the spirit of man in proportion as we remove unholiness from us. What use of language then can be more affectingly elevating and solemn than that which designates God, when in communication with man, as the Holy Spirit? A spirit, he is spiritually discerned: and holy, only those that are holy have affinities with Him.

Such then is the primary signification of the expression Holy Spirit when used in the Scriptures—the Holy Spirit of God naturally or supernaturally in communication with the spirit of man, and in fuller communication in proportion as man by holiness seeks it and prepares himself for it. From this however there is derived a secondary signification, and so natural and easy is the derivative meaning, that it is a strong confirmation of its primary. That portion of his spirit which God communicates to man, may be regarded as separated from Him. It has entered into man and become his. It is a gift, an inspiration from our God. Man has become the possessor of it, but still God is the origin of it, and therefore though imparted to us it may still be spoken of as God’s holy spirit. There are therefore in Scripture two significations of the Holy Spirit—the primary one—God in communication with man—and the secondary one—that portion of his spirit which God has communicated, naturally or supernaturally, and which has become ours. We have received the Holy Spirit, when we have spiritually received what only God can communicate. These two comprise, I believe, all the meanings of the expression, Holy Spirit, first, God communicating to man, and secondly that portion of His spirit, which, by communication, man’s spirit has received.

I shall give some instances of each of these applications of the phrase.

There can be no difficulty in all those cases in which the holy Spirit signifies God himself in spiritual communication with man.—“And when they bring you into the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers; take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you, in that same hour, what ye ought to say.”—Luke xii. 11, 12. Now in the parallel passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel we have the expression, the Holy Ghost, explained to mean the spirit of God our Father. “But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak. For it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.”—Matt. x. 19, 20. “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men spake, as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” “As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them—so they being sent forth by the Holy Spirit departed unto Seleucia.”—Acts xiii. 2, 4.

The expression the “Spirit of God” is sometimes used with the same signification, only with this difference, that “the Spirit of God” frequently signifies the essence and being of God as He is in Himself, whilst the expression “the Holy Spirit” is I believe never employed except to designate our heavenly Father when in living communication with the spirits of his children. “What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man [or no one] but the spirit of God.”—1 Cor. ii. 11. Here if the spirit of man means man, the spirit of God must mean God, and how in opposition to language so precise and definite, a separate personality could be introduced into the godhead, called the spirit of God, it is difficult to imagine. “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”—Ps. cxxxix. “By his spirit he has garnished the heavens: his hand has formed the crooked serpent (the galaxy).”—Job, xxvi. 13.

I shall now adduce some of the more remarkable cases in which the various expressions, “spirit,” “holy spirit,” and “spirit of God,” are used to designate that portion of God’s spirit which naturally or supernaturally has entered into man, and become ours, but which in reference to Him from whom it was derived, and with whom it retains blessed connections, is called the spirit of God. God being a Spirit, and man being a spirit, whatever man knows or feels of God, may, not figuratively, but with the strictest truth, be called the Holy Spirit within him. “If ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.”—Luke, xi. 13. Now that the Holy Spirit signifies here not a third person in the godhead, but our heavenly Father’s gifts and inspirations to the soul, is clearly shown by the parallel passage in St. Matthew’s gospel—“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him.”—Matt. vii. 11. “But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit: for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”—1 Cor. ii. 9, 10. Now here the spirit is used first in its primary sense of God in communication with man, and immediately after in its secondary sense of that portion of His spirit communicated to man, for it is just in proportion as it partakes of His spirit that the spirit of man searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. God enlightens and man receives—but the light which has entered into man, since it came from God, may well continue to be called the Spirit of God. “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God;—but the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But we have the mind of Christ.”—1 Cor. ii. 12-16. Here the Apostle distinctly declares that our portion of the spirit of God is “the mind of Christ.” In proportion as we have that we know Him, the only true God, whom to know is life eternal. “Likewise the spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.”—Rom. viii. 26. Now nothing can be more marvellous in all the marvels of scripture interpretation, than that this spirit within us which vents itself in groanings that cannot be uttered should ever have been referred to a third personality in the godhead. How beautiful is this passage when truly and spiritually considered! We know not what to pray for as we ought; our spiritual apprehension is feeble and dim; and our vague yearnings after the heavenly and the perfect are not distinct enough to present clearly-defined objects to our pursuit and love; yet we have a holy impulse within us, a divine tendency leading us towards God; God has given us this Spirit, and partaking of His nature it sighs after the perfection to which it is akin; it knows not fully its heavenly origin and end, but still true to the divine instinct it yearns after Him and tends towards Him; it sighs for a glory and a happiness which it cannot distinctly conceive or express, but God who gave it understands the prayer, and hears this intercession of His own spirit—that divine impulse planted by Himself which now supplicates Him to make bright its dim longings and to help it forwards unto that glory towards which the divinity within it tends—and He who searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of that spirit which He himself put there, and that it maketh intercession with Him, for all holy ones,[529] that He would fulfil the promise of the heavenly impulse that sighs for good.[530] How has Trinitarianism destroyed the spiritual power of the Scriptures, by taking all this beautiful and holy meaning out of the individual heart, and for the sighings which cannot be uttered after the immortal and the good, which God, who inspired them, comprehends and blesses, substituting a third Person in the godhead who intercedes for us to another Person, with groanings that cannot be uttered!

I believe that these two significations of the expression, “Holy Spirit,” so closely connected as scarcely to be two, will explain all the cases of its scriptural occurrence; first, God Himself in communication with the Soul, and secondly, that portion of His spirit which He has communicated to man, and which as being His, derived from Him, and a portion of the true knowledge of His Mind, is called His Holy Spirit.

I shall now examine the Scriptural evidence which is chiefly relied upon in this controversy, as proving, not the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit, for here we agree, but a personality and deity distinct from those of God our Father.

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”—Matt. xxviii. 19; or, into the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the word, “name,” by an idiom of the Hebrew language, being redundant.

To baptize into a person was a form of expression signifying the reception of the religious ideas associated with that person. Thus the Jews were said to be baptized into Moses, because they received the religious ideas associated with the institutions of that Prophet: and on the other hand, the Samaritans were said to be baptized into Mount Gerizim, because they received the religious ideas associated with the belief that there, and not at Jerusalem, was the appointed place of the Temple. The formula then of baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, signified nothing more than the acceptance of the religious ideas associated with God in this new manifestation of Himself, revealed through the Christ, and accompanied by the operations of His Spirit, witnessing, both internally and externally, to the new light that had come into the world, the promised reign of the spirit of God. These were the words which most readily were associated with, and suggested those religious ideas which were looked upon as constituting the characteristic faith of one who was willing to enter into the gospel kingdom of Heaven, that is, to adopt the Christian idea of God and of Religion. The Father, the Christ, the Spirit of God in us giving us some communion with that Father, by uniting us through spiritual sympathies with that Christ—is not this of the very soul of Christianity? God manifested in Jesus, and our souls accepting the revelation, because the spirit of our Father within us draws us towards him who had the same spirit without measure—is not this to express in a few words all the characteristic and peculiar ideas of Christianity, and therefore most fit to be used as suggesting summarily to matured converts the new faith into which they were baptized? The same set of ideas might have been as fully expressed by the shorter form of being baptized “into Christ,” for this would imply the possession and acceptance of all the religious ideas associated with his person and ministry—and accordingly we find that in every recorded case of baptism or allusion to baptism in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles, the expression simply and briefly is to “baptize into Christ,” and never once is there an allusion to the form of baptism into the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Now this demonstrates two things: first that the Apostles did not look upon these words as a form prescribed by Christ: and secondly, that they did not regard them as a confession of faith in a tri-personal God, else would they never have neglected all mention of the first and third persons, and simply baptized into Christ, that is, into the religion of the Christ. There is a remarkable confirmation of this view, if indeed it can be supposed to want confirmation, in the language of Paul to some disciples at Ephesus, who had not received the witnessing power and presence of the Holy Spirit. They declare that they had not so much as heard whether there was any Holy Spirit. To what, then, says the Apostle were you baptized; not into whom, observe, but into what were you baptized,—that is, was not the manifestation and participation of God’s Spirit one of the religious ideas and expectations of your faith as converts. And they answer that they had only been baptized into the baptism of John, who had promised the Holy Spirit, but had no power to confer it. And then Paul baptized them into Jesus, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now can any one read this passage and believe that the Holy Ghost implies the third person in a Trinity: was it not simply a portion of God’s spirit received by the first believers as an attestation to the religion of the Christ?

Nothing can be more arbitrary than to assert that baptism implies the personality and deity of that into which a person is baptized. The Apostle Paul says that Christians were baptized into the death of Christ. Rom. vi. 3. Is the death of Christ therefore a person and a God? Is it not simply one of the religious ideas which their faith embraced?

The personality and deity of the Holy Spirit we indeed do not deny; but the methods by which Trinitarians attempt the proof of this self-evident proposition, are, like all proofs of identical propositions, unsatisfactory to an extreme. The Lecturer in Christ Church, when meeting the objection, that baptism into Christ was no proof of his deity, because we have also the expression, “baptism into Moses,” dropped out of sight the true bearing of the objection against the deity of Jesus, and argued that the expression, baptism into Moses, was so far a proof of the personality of the Holy Spirit, because Moses was a person. Was the death of Christ, a person? Was Mount Gerizim, a person? We do not deny the personality of the Holy Spirit—though this is no way of proving it. We do deny that the deity of Christ is implied in baptism into his name, and the force of the expression, baptism into Moses, in this bearing of it, was either not seen or was put aside.

The argument, that because three words follow one another, without any expressed distinction, they must all refer to subjects of the same nature, co-equal and co-extensive, and this, too, as the strongest, indeed the only direct evidence of a Trinity in the Godhead, is really one of those arguments for a doctrine of revelation, which a mind with any reverence knows not how properly to discuss. I am glad to be able to say, that Dr. Tattershall pronounces this to be only a presumptive proof of the separate personality of the Holy Spirit, that is, in fact, no proof at all, but merely such a hint as might lead to the presumption that there may be additional evidence, and which, therefore, in the absence of such additional evidence, amounts to nothing. If any one, however, advances such an argument, we have only to ask first, is any one really content to rest such a doctrine on such a proof, and call this Revelation? and secondly, to advance in our turn, other passages of Scripture, where this principle of interpretation cannot be maintained. If the concurrence of the words, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, necessarily implies that each of these refers to a person who is God, and that when taken together they make up the entire nature of God—then, I ask, what is the necessary inference from such expressions as these,—“I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things?”—1 Tim. v. 21. Now if the argument is conclusive that infers in the one case the deity of Jesus, it must be equally conclusive, when it infers, in the other, the deity of the elect angels. The Trinitarian answer will be,—“We know that the angels are not God, and in accordance with this knowledge, we interpret the passage:” and equally do we answer, that when such a passage is given us as proof of the deity of the Lord Jesus, we know that he was a man, and in accordance with this knowledge do we interpret the passage. Other instances might be given of similar modes of expression:—“And all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel,” 1 Sam. xii. 18; and more strikingly still, Rev. iii. 12, where the name of a place is associated as a religious idea, with the names of God and Christ. “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of Heaven from my God, and [I will write upon him] my new name.”

There is only one other passage in which these three expressions occur together; and it must have a precisely similar explanation: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” Now here the expression “communion of the Holy Spirit,” fixes the meaning of the passage. The word communion signifies “participation,” “a having in common.” Thus St. Paul speaks of “the communion of the sufferings of Christ,” Philipp. iii. 10. In this sense, then, it can have no reference to a person, and must signify simply a participation of that spiritual presence, comfort, and power of God, which was the promise and the witness of the religion of the Christ. In explaining such passages, we have again and again to recal ourselves to the belief, that we are actually considering the strongest Scriptural assertions of the doctrine of a Trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead. The first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians closes thus: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.” Who thinks of inferring the equality of Paul with Jesus? And yet, if such a mode of reasoning is allowable, from the close of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, it is impossible to give any reason for its not being equally conclusive when applied to the close of the first Epistle of the Corinthians. But such verbal reasonings are in every way unworthy of the solemn character of revelation, nor can the mind long dwell upon them without feeling how painfully they interfere with the sentiment of Reverence, and what a lowering it is of Christ and Christianity to place them in such lights.

The portion of Scripture, however, which is mainly relied upon to prove the distinct deity and personality of the Holy Spirit, is that most solemn and faithful promise of Christ to his disciples, in which the Spirit of Truth is described as a Comforter which the Father would send in his name, and who, when he came, would testify of Jesus, and bring to their remembrance all things that he had said unto them, but which they had not understood. Now let us connect this promise of a Comforter previous to his death, with a similar promise after the resurrection, and then endeavour to ascertain the meaning. In the first chapter of the Book of Acts, at the eighth verse, it is written, “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” Now we shall find that the Holy Spirit which came upon them was the Spirit of Truth, a truer knowledge of Christ, a portion of the Spirit of God, a sympathy with and an understanding of the Mind of the Father of Jesus, which they did not possess before;—in the one case comforting them for the loss of their friend and their master, by giving them a participation of his and of his Father’s Spirit,—in the other case, qualifying them spiritually to be witnesses unto him, to be his Apostles and Preachers, an office for which their previous misconceptions of the true character of the Christ, their alienation from the true Spirit of God, as manifested in Jesus, had totally disqualified them. Why it was that Jesus must “go away,” in order that the Spirit of Truth might come unto them, in order that the Spirit of the world should be separated from their ideas of the Christ, and the Spirit of God take its place, we shall fully see. Previous to the death of Jesus, the views of the Apostles respecting their Messiah were Jewish and worldly—after the Resurrection and Ascension they became Christian and Spiritual. How was it that Jesus must personally leave them, in order that the Spirit of Truth might come unto them? “It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”

The Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of the Christ, introduced a necessary change into the conceptions of the Apostles; these drove out of their Messianic idea the spirit of the World, and introduced into it the spirit of God. They could not retain their Jewish ideas of the reign of the Messiah, in connexion with the crucified Jesus. If they held by their Jewish faith on this matter, they must abandon Jesus. If they held by Jesus, they must abandon their Jewish ideas, and remodel their faith. But God takes care that they shall hold by Jesus: and this is His mode of spiritualizing their conceptions of Christ and of Christianity. God lifts him from the dead and places him in Heaven. The Christ returns to earth to show that God was with him; and he ascends into Heaven, to repel the imagination which otherwise might possibly arise, nay, which actually had arisen, that even yet he might raise his standard on the earth, and realize the gigantic illusion of the Jew. By this means, the Apostles were placed in this position:—they must retain their faith in Jesus, for how could they battle against God, or hold out against such evidence as the Christ rising from the tomb, and the Christ passing into the skies;—and yet if they are to regard Jesus as their Messiah, they must modify all their Jewish views, and conceive of the Christ anew. And accordingly this was the plan and process of their conversion, of their introduction to the true Christianity, of their baptism into the Spirit of God. Since Jesus was thus evidently the Christ, and yet could not be adapted to their Jewish views, of course all their Jewish views must yield, and adapt themselves to him. His life and destinies were the fixed facts, with which their conceptions of the Christ must now be harmonized. You now see how when the Spirit of Truth came upon them, it testified of Jesus, it took of his and showed it unto them, it threw illumination upon words and deeds of his, which, when contemplated from the Jewish point of view, caught not the sympathies of their souls, and like invisible writing, waited for the heat and light of Truth to fall upon them, and bring out the meaning. His Death struck down a principal part of their errors: and his Exaltation forced upon them a new idea of his kingdom. Never again could they confound the Messiah with a temporal prince. Whatever Christianity might be, henceforth it must be connected with the immortality of Heaven. Christianity could not be separated from the Christ, and the Christ was with God; and they remembered his prayer and promise, that they were to be with him where he was.

All this would necessarily be suggested to them from their identifying the Christ with the risen Jesus. Nothing more would be necessary to unfold this train of spiritual thought. It was the first fulfilment of that profound prophecy, “When the Comforter is come, even the Spirit of Truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me, and shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” And this Spirit of Truth did lead them into all truth—it gave them no new revelation, but it called to their remembrance, and taught them to understand a revelation which Jesus had before offered to them in vain—and so, in the words of his own promise, it glorified him, for it “took of his, and showed it unto them.” The Apostles were now in a position to look upon the Christ from a right point of view, and to receive the Spirit of Truth and God. The scales of illusion dropped from their eyes, and they began to see Jesus as he was. From the hour that circumstances constrained them to draw their Christianity from the life and destinies of the Christ, their minds began to open, and the Spirit of Truth to teach them all things, and to call to their remembrance whatsoever Jesus had said unto them, no longer dimly understood, but irradiated with moral light, because seen in right connexions, and explained by the interpretation of events. Who can retain his fancies in opposition to direct experience? and experience was now enlightening the Apostles. How could they go on dreaming of an Earthly Prince, when their Christ was in the skies? From that hour their souls began to be transfigured, and they walked in the light of the other world, and the Christ to whom they looked became their leader to Immortality. How could they go on in their unspiritual imaginations, when the Captain of their Salvation stood constantly before their eyes, a crucified man, and a risen immortal? From that hour they became soldiers of the Cross, and their only victories were over themselves, and the powers of evil; and the only battle-cry of the Son of Man, when idol after idol fell prostrate before the Truth, and their Master in the skies, in the successes of his faith, led on the movements of humanity, and, wherever his spirit struck root, banded a new force against the enemies of man, and mustered fresh hosts for conquest. How could they go on in their national arrogance, and in their sectarian intolerance, when they were obliged to draw their moral notions of Christianity from the life of Christ, and that spoke such different lessons? From that hour their anti-social temper began to soften, their exclusiveness to bend and give way, their deep-cut lines of national distinctness to disappear in the fully developed features of our common humanity. In the light of his Spirit, what could they be but children of God, and brethren of mankind? They had to harmonize his Kingdom with his Character, and that led them into all truth. They had to read the glory of God in the face of Christ; and the light that beamed there was grace and truth. They had to take their Christianity from the Master’s life, and that kept them right. Its lesson was of the one fold, and the one shepherd—of the one God and Father of all, and of one type of the connexions between humanity and Heaven—one Mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus. And so at last, when fitted for it by the teaching of events, the Spirit of Truth, at once their Comforter and their Teacher, descended upon them, and then they became “witnesses unto him.” They read his life anew, and reported it to the world, and the world read it too, and has ever since been studying that exhaustless revelation. They saw in it more and more of the Saviour’s spirit and purposes, and after the illumination had come upon them, the providence of God so disposed the external events that affected the infant Church, that they went forth bearing the light that lighted them unto all the world. Persecution scattered them from land to land, and they went carrying with them their priceless treasure. They were hunted from city to city, but all the faster flew the Gospel. The stake received them, and it became as a new cross of Christ, and the blood of his martyrs witnessed unto him. Are we speaking of the same men who in Gethsemane’s garden forsook their Lord and fled—who in the Temple Court denied him to his face—who, when he was led to the Cross, abandoned him in terror, and when he died there, laid their heads in the dust, because their poor ambition was fallen to the earth? Are they the same men, who in the Gospels are narrow-minded, ambitious, and false—that in the Acts of the Apostles come forth bold, resolute, spiritual witnesses for Jesus, and dauntless martyrs to his truth? We can scarcely believe that we are reading of the same men, when we turn from the page of the Evangelists to the record of their deeds, after the Death and the Ascension of the Christ annihilated their errors, and the Spirit of Truth and of God had fallen upon them. Contrast the prayer,—“Lord grant us to sit on thy right hand and on thy left in thy kingdom,” or, “Lord wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”—with this, “Lord, thou art God, which hast made Heaven and Earth, and the Sea, and all that in them is; who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the Earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done: And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word; by stretching forth thine hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus!” How came this difference? What passed over them and turned them into new men? The Spirit of Truth had come unto them, that great Comforter, the Spirit of understanding and of God: they saw it all, and they were worldly and weak no more, but strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might? And this Comforter never again left them; the truth broke upon them and became their stay for ever,—it was the Spirit of God dwelling in them, and abiding for ever, his imperishable light in the soul, once given never to be withdrawn. It was just the difference between Spiritual light and Spiritual darkness, in their effects upon character. It was just the difference between the spirit that is of the world, and the spirit that is of God. It was just the difference between our nature when it is right and when it is wrong with God; when it is stumbling in darkness, the dupe of illusions, and when it is furnished with everlasting principles, and walking in the light of life. In the Gospels they are men palsied by the feebleness of error—in the Acts of the Apostles they are men omnipotent in the power of Truth. Is this change in their characters capable of being accounted for? Yes, if you grant the facts of Christ’s history,—but not otherwise. How otherwise you are to get across the chasm between the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, I know not. Take those facts as causes, and the bridge is easy. What a step is it from the fishermen of Galilee to the Apostles of Christ—from the ignorance of Jewish peasants, to the Communicators of the mightiest impulse that Society has ever felt, the agents of the mightiest influence that ever Providence has put forth upon the soul of man,—the creators of new institutions, new forms of character, new civil relationships;—before whose preaching religions and empires fell,—at whose word Liberty first started into life, not as a spirit of opposition, but as the gentle child of brotherhood and love,—and who are still in the monuments they have left behind them, the heralds of human progress and the revolutionizers of the world! Who will deny that the spirit of God was here? Not we: we are ready to maintain it against the world. Who denies that the spirit of God still accompanies his Gospel? Not we: we believe it in the depths of our hearts. How wonderful the impulse, these men gave, and still give to the heart of the world! What difficulties had they to conquer! their own characters, and violent prepossessions—and they conquered these. The curse of the Priest, the arm of the Ruler, the scoff of the People—and they conquered these. The attractions of Heathenism; the licentiousness of its morality; the gracefulness of its idolatry; its religion for the senses; its philosophy for the sceptic; its indifference to speculative truth; its equal regard for all gods, and all forms of worship that would only be content to dwell together in peace,—and they conquered these. Think of this wonderful History, and say whether you can explain it except as the New Testament explains it. What would account for the fortunes of the Apostles, if Christianity was not from God? The world of Causes and Effects is but a game of Chance, if such things can be, and their origin an accidental imagination, their foundation a falsehood or a dream. Who will account for such men being enlightened against their own wills, and forced into the front ranks of humanity contrary to their own desires—if the history is not true? But rob not the History of its true power—take not the spirit of life out of the gospel—by telling us of a third person in the Trinity whom Jesus sent to supplant the free minds of the Apostles. No, it was the free spirit of God acting upon the free spirit of men that opened their eyes to see the things that were hidden from them before; and they walked forth in the light of these wondrous events, and looked now upon their Christ as those from whose spiritual sight the bandage of the world had been taken away. The Comforter, which is the Spirit of TRUTH, came unto them, and taught them all things, and rectifying their former misconceptions took of the things of Christ, and showed it unto them. He spoke not of himself. He added nothing to the revelation already made by Jesus:—the divine characters were already impressed on the life and destinies of the Christ—and the Spirit of Truth guided them to it, and brought out the full meaning of the already finished revelation. Still does the world want light to read that revelation. Still does many an interpreter come to the reading of it with a Jewish veil upon his heart. But there is new light still to break forth out of God’s word. Although it would almost seem as if another day of Pentecost would be needed to drive out the spirit of the world, the spirit of system and of man, by the mightier Spirit of God—and to guide our exclusive tempers, our sectarian and narrow hearts into the religion of reality—of the merciful and perfect Christ, full of grace and truth.

It is impossible to display with any minuteness the confusion that is introduced into the Scriptures by the supposition that the Holy Spirit is a third infinite Mind associated with the Father and the Son. In one passage it is said, “If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you;” in another passage it is said, “If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come unto you.” Are we to understand then different things by “the Spirit of God” and “the finger of God,”—or do they not both plainly signify the power and presence of the One God who wrought in Christ:—“the Father who dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.”

In one passage it is said, “Wait for the promise of the Father—ye shall be baptized with the holy spirit not many days hence.” In another passage of the same writer it is said, “Tarry ye in the city, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Are we to understand by the Holy Spirit anything different from ‘power from on high:’ or rather are we not to understand by both the fulfilment of the promise of the Father by His own power and presence?

In one passage it is said, “We are his witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Spirit, which God hath given to them that obey Him.” In another passage it is said, “The works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me.” Is it not evident then that the works which the Apostles did, were the works of God, His spirit working by them, witnessing to the truth of their testimony?

If the Holy Spirit is a distinct Person from God the Father, then the third Person, and not the first person in the Trinity, nor the second person, must on the Trinitarian view be regarded as the Father of Jesus, for it is written, “the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” And yet the Trinitarian hypothesis is, that it was neither the third person, nor the first, but the second person in the godhead, that took humanity into union with his deity. But there is no end of these painful inconsistencies. So again Jesus is said to be raised from the dead by God, and again to be “quickened by the Spirit:” but surely the Trinitarian hypothesis would require that the divine nature of the Christ, the second person in the Trinity, should raise up the human Jesus, with which it had been united. Who will harmonize these things for us? Who can without pain, nay, without asking pardon of God for the irreverence, contemplate His spiritual nature in such representations?

It is said of the Holy Spirit, that He would not speak of himself. Can He then be a distinct God in the unity of the godhead, and not speak of Himself? Is this the reason that Scripture contains no proof of his separate existence? Is it not evident that the Spirit of Truth, added nothing to the revelation that was in Christ, but brought it out, illuminated, by an after influence on the minds of the Apostles, what he said and did?

It is said in Scripture that no one knows the Son but the Father—and that no one knows the Father but the Son:—but if the Holy Spirit is a third person in the godhead, equal in every respect, this must be an erroneous statement.

The last scriptural proof I shall give that the Holy Spirit is not a third infinite Person in the godhead is the very decisive one that Scripture offers not a single ascription of praise or glory to Him, and contains not a single doxology in which He is included. Could this be so if he was really and distinctively God? Scripture contains ascriptions of praise to Christ, and even to the Angels; it connects together the names of God and Christ, in innumerable cases where it makes no mention of the Holy Spirit.—John v. 17. xiv. 21. “Father!—this is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Now if Trinitarianism is true, the Father, and even with the addition of Jesus Christ whom He has sent, does not constitute the only true God.

“Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”—1 John i. 3.

“Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.”—2 John i. 3.

“He that abideth in the doctrine of the Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.”—2 John i. 9.

“For whoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.”—Luke ix. 26. 1 Tim. v. 21.

“He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.”—Rev. iii. 5.

“And every creature which is in Heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.”—Rev. v, 13.

Now if it be a fact that there is not one scriptural ascription of glory to the Holy Ghost, how is it that the Church of England can so confidently say, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: as it was so in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.” The beginning that is here spoken of must have begun after all the books of the New Testament were written. We have already traced in ecclesiastical history the beginning of that doxology, in the latter part of the fourth century—and a beginning in its attendant circumstances not very reputable, nor such as should be countenanced by those who preach submission to Church Authorities.

The learned and profound Lardner, modest as learned, remarks upon the assumption contained in this doxology of the prayer book, “as it was in the beginning.” “Doubtless this is said by many very frequently, and with great devotion. But can it be said truly? Does not that deserve consideration? Is there any such doxology in the New Testament? If not, how can it be said, to have been in the beginning? Are not the books of the New Testament the most ancient, and the most authentic Christian writings in all the world? It matters not much to inquire, when this doxology was first used, or how long it has been in use, if it is not in the New Testament. And whether it is there or not may be known by those who are pleased to read it with care: as all may, in Protestant countries, where the Bible lies open, to be seen and read by all men.” (Postscript I. to “A Letter on the Logos.”)

Weak and almost incredibly insufficient as is the scriptural evidence for a third Person in the godhead, the theological evidence is still weaker and more arbitrary; and betrays most fully those inadequate conceptions of the divine nature which form the supports of all the popular creeds and churches. You are aware of the Trinitarian argument for the necessity of a second person in the godhead; for these orthodox theologians presume to reason upon abstract principles about the nature of God to an extent that the Unitarians whom they condemn for this very practice never have approached to and which indeed we hold to be arbitrary and presuming to the last degree. We are gravely told by divines who profess the utmost humility and a horror of all speculation, that if God was one Being in the sense that we are one, He would have no resources in his own Nature enabling Him to forgive Sin; and that if there were not at least two persons in the godhead, the one to make atonement and the other to receive it, our Father in Heaven would be placed in these circumstances,—either He must forgive, and since his Law had been broken without the infliction of an adequate penalty, exhibit his Character without TRUTH; or He must refuse to forgive, and retaining his Truth, exhibit his Character without MERCY. Now when a human reasoner lays down these preliminaries as necessary parts of the constitution of the divine mind, I am amazed that he has ever after the conscience to charge other men with rash speculations on the subjects of Theology, or with reasoning upon abstract principles about the things of God. Atonement is made for every sin: in that the Trinitarian is right. The sinner bears upon a burdened soul the weight of the cross, and faints in sorrow. Through a crucifixion and an agony does every erring heart return to God. The penalty is paid in bitter shame and tears, in the consciousness of degradation and of eternal loss, in the deep humiliation of a spirit that has quenched within it the divine flame, and treated with no respect the image of God in which it was made. Can such a being sin and escape without atonement—can a spiritual creature darken the angel and cherish the animal, and yet pay no penalty, start at last with no horror, and throb with no remorseful agony? No—the sinner must die in his sins, if he is to escape the piercings of his better nature, the open eye of his conscience fixed in awful steadiness of gaze upon the terrors of his state. Who that has ever felt a throb of penitence, who that has ever known the prostration of a soul awakened to a sense of sin, the deep misery of the purer spirit looking sorrowfully on the debasements of our being, as Christ looked upon Peter, who that has ever felt these things will deny that sin, every sin, has its atonement, and instead of questioning the vicarious sacrifice as too dreadful, will not rather put it away from him only as too easy, too unreal, too remote from the sense of individual agony and burden, to meet and satisfy the inward and untransferable reality? We blame not the Trinitarians for speaking of the atonement required by sin. We blame them for not treating that subject with sufficient strictness, with sufficient severity, with sufficient energy of application to individual consciences. How much more awakening it is to tell a man of the atonement that he pays within, of the cross that is laid upon his humiliated heart, than to tell him of a metaphysical necessity in God’s nature that required the death of an infinite being, the blood of God, for this awful expression is used and defended at Christ Church,[531] to make satisfaction for the offence of a finite creature. This is the arbitrary assumption of Trinitarianism that requires most to be exposed, that the sin of a finite being is an infinite quantity, and that his penitence cannot atone for it, for his penitence is not infinite. Now the men who assert this strange thing, should at least be cautious how they charge Unitarians with arbitrary reasonings and speculations. Can Reason exhibit, or does Scripture any where say, that the sin of finite man is infinite in the sight of God, and yet unless this most extravagant of all propositions can be established the whole Trinitarian Theology falls to the ground, for then the only atonement for sin will be the crucifixion of the erring and repenting spirit, and none more dreadful can be given or conceived. I am perfectly aware that cautious and refined controversialists would not assert the infinite character of man’s sinfulness, and that they would explain away the doctrine of the Atonement; but the Lecturers at Christ Church are not cautious controversialists, they have no notion of such refinements, and they do assert it without abatement. If God’s unity, says one of them,[532] was like man’s unity, He could not forgive, yet preserve His holiness. And therefore I suppose, since man has no tri-personal resources in his unity, that he can forgive only because his holiness is of an imperfect kind, and as his holiness becomes more strict he will less readily forgive, so that when he becomes quite perfect he will be quite implacable. But perhaps the Trinitarian resource in this difficulty, is that man too forgives, yet keeps his truth and holiness, in consideration of the atonement offered for all sin. The immoral plea that man is not the Lawgiver, cannot be offered by those whose difficulty is one respecting holiness. A holy mind is as much bound by the laws of holiness, as if it was itself the Lawgiver.

I have introduced here this arbitrary, metaphysical, and unscriptural speculation, employed by the Trinitarians to establish, a priori, the necessity of a second person in the godhead, only to prepare you for a similar mode of reasoning which is applied to prove the necessity for a third person in the godhead. There are works, they say, carried on in the soul of man, that require a Third Person, another infinite Mind in the godhead. Solemnly we say that this is making too free with the infinite nature of God. What are those works, or what works can be conceived, to which God our Father is not adequate? Is it not very like irreverence for a human being to say,—my salvation cannot be carried on by one infinite and perfect Spirit, but requires three infinite and perfect Spirits? Ought not such conclusions of Reason as these to be very distinctly supported by Revelation before they are advanced with any boldness, and other men called no Christians, and treated accordingly, for no other iniquity than that of humbly refusing to speak so confidently of God’s nature, and to put these limitations upon Him without proof? But even supposing that the orthodox reasonings about the nature of sin were correct, and the inability of one perfect mind to forgive his creatures, and rescue a sinner from his sins, established, what necessities remain that require the existence of a third infinite Mind—what operations within the human soul are to be carried on, for which God the Father and God the Son are not sufficient? I know nothing more wonderful than that the Christian world should at this day admit the existence of a third person in the godhead, without ever raising the question, or having the doubt suggested to them, is not God our Father sufficient for these things? I intreat you to discard from your minds the Trinitarian assertion that we deny the operations attributed by them to the Holy Spirit—we do not deny them—the connexions of the Spirit of God with the spirit of man we hold as the most solemn, intimate and blessed truth, the very soul of worship, of hope, and of spiritual life—take away this, and religion has neither power nor meaning—but we do deny that the Spirit of our Father is insufficient to maintain every spiritual connexion with the souls of his children; we bring the secret griefs, penitence, and aspirations of our being to Him who heard the prayers and strengthened the soul of Christ;—and when light descends upon us, so that we almost hear the encouragements of His voice, and see the beckonings of His hand, we know that it is the Spirit of our Father who sends the blessing from above, and gives to them that ask.

We entreat Trinitarians to address themselves to this particular point, and to explain to us the moral or metaphysical necessities that require a third person in the godhead, and render two perfect and infinite Minds inadequate to the work of Man’s Salvation. They are very explicit and full in their statement of reasons exhibiting the incompetency of one infinite spirit to save a sinner, and necessitating the introduction of a second—we ask them to be equally explicit in explaining to us the inadequacy of two BEINGS, each of them possessed of the full perfections of godhead, to rescue, teach, comfort, and bless, that not naturally unkindred spirit of man, which Scripture tells us is ‘the candle of the Lord,’ and ‘the inspiration of the Almighty.’ It will not serve the Trinitarian theologians to refuse us this explanation on the grounds that they take the doctrine as it is revealed, and inquire no further—for they do enter into very copious explanations of the theological necessity for a second person in the godhead, and they very confidently state it as a fact in divine metaphysics, that if the resources of God could not have supplied two infinite minds, no sin could ever have found a pardon—and if after this readiness of explanation respecting the second person they refuse us all explanation respecting the third, the conclusion will certainly be suggested, that they offer no explanations only because they have none to offer. Conceding for a moment the fundamental principles of Trinitarian theology, that the Father of our spirits could not receive the penitence of His children and shed His blessing upon their returning hearts, until forgiveness was rendered possible by a co-equal and co-eternal God meeting the demands of a Righteousness that, if dwelling in only one perfect Mind, could not pardon;—what is there I ask after the sacrifice of Christ had removed the difficulty, and opened the communication between God and his children, and left the divine spirit free to love, and operate upon, the justified,—what is there remaining to restrict the workings of the Omnipotent and Omnipresent Spirit of God our Father—to render him incompetent for our sanctification, in addition to the previous incompetency for our redemption, which Trinitarians are so far from scrupling to assign to Him that they make it a first principle of their theology, and attempt to prove it by Reason.

Our One God they tell us, in the human sense of oneness, would be a helpless Being: on their very first sin, his children would be plucked out of His hands, and find him a God unable to save. Or, if He could forgive the repentance of His creatures, it would imply a Morality so lax, that He would be a God not worth serving.[533] To such dizzy heights of Theology do Trinitarians who abjure Reason in religion carry their reasonings upon the nature of God, and look into the dread profound, and speak confidently, as if they understood it all. Again I say, let us grant them all this, and still the question remains that never has been answered, after the sacrifice of Christ has set at liberty the Spirit of our Father to come freely into loving, regenerating, and sanctifying contact with the spirits of his children, what necessity is there for a third person in the godhead to bless and save our souls, or what works are to be carried on within us, which God the Father and God the Son are not competent to perform? Has not the spirit of our Father access to His children, who are brought nigh to Him through Christ; and if so, what is the office and what the need of a third infinite Mind? We acknowledge with all our soul’s devotion that every thing good in man comes, yes, and comes immediately, from the Spirit of our God; but is not our Father with us, and is His Spirit straitened that he cannot save? On this matter we abide with the Apostles who say:—“Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” We are told that the Holy Spirit uses ‘the word,’ as its instrument, in the work of spiritual regeneration. If so, the Holy Spirit must be God our Father, for the Apostle goes on to say:—“Of his own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” “Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.”[534] Now here, whilst no mention whatever is made of the Holy Spirit as a separate agent, the peculiar offices of the Comforter are ascribed to the spirit of our Father, and, what to Christians is equivalent, the spirit of Christ, for who hath seen him, hath seen all that man can see of the moral perfections and spirit of our God. And not with Apostles only, but with Christ himself, do we abide in the blessed faith of our Father being our Comforter. “Holy Father, keep, through thine one name, those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world I kept them through thy name:—I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” Here Christ prays to God the FATHER to sanctify the spirits of the disciples, when he should be no more with them to instruct and keep them. Now Sanctification is assigned by Trinitarians to the Holy Spirit as his peculiar office. What then can be more clear than that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of our Father in communication with his children, and that this was the Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth, a portion of the true spirit of God, which the Christ prayed his Father to communicate to his darkened disciples,—to take away the Jewish veil from their hearts, and to guide them into the blessed light of the pure gospel!

The Apostles pray to the Father to be a GUIDE[535] and COMFORTER[536]: Jesus Christ prays to the Father to be a Sanctifier and Enlightener; these are the works, and the only works, ascribed by Trinitarians to the Holy Spirit. No reason has been offered in the present Controversy for the necessity of a third person in the Godhead to be the agent of these operations; nowhere in orthodox theology have I been able to find a reason: I respectfully invite the attention of our opponents to this neglected point. Let them not mistake our demand. We do not deny that the works of the Holy Spirit can be done by God alone: but we ask for a reason why God our Father is not sufficient for these things. Until this question is satisfactorily answered, it must be evident that the Trinitarian Theology is entirely arbitrary.

It is not a little remarkable that Bishop Sherlock, in attempting to prove that the Holy Spirit performs the work of the Gospel within the mind, by the very texts that he himself adduces identifies this Holy Spirit with the Spirit of God our Father; “No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me, draw him.” “No man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.” “He that is of God, heareth God’s word.”[537]

There was only one of the operations ascribed to the Holy Spirit by the Lecturer in Christ Church, to which I could not give my assent. We were told that the Holy Spirit interpreted the Scriptures to all true believers. I believe that some portion of the Spirit of God is in every man who loves the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. I believe that every one who does His will, knows of the doctrine whether it is of God. Morally and spiritually, I do believe that the Spirit of God is still a witness to the truth of Christ. The Spirit of the Father was in Christ, and to those who love him and keep his commandments the Father still cometh, and maketh His abode with them. And so far we know that we are of the truth, because we love and are partakers of the Spirit that dwelt in Jesus. But if any man presumes to extend this sympathy with the Spirit of the Christ from moral to controverted truth, and to pretend that he is not only spiritually but intellectually instructed, so that he has not only a living faith, but a true creed, we abandon him to his conviction, satisfied that however sincere, it is unscriptural and a delusion. How can men persuade themselves that it is humble, that it is Christian, that it is in the spirit of a modest self-knowledge, to pretend to this intellectual infallibility, that God not only inspires the holiness of their wills, but protects their judgment from all error? When we ask those who tell us that only their creeds can save, what infallible interpreter preserves them from all doctrinal error, they do not scruple to proclaim that the Spirit of God is their instructer in the controverted tenets of theology.[538] Now we only ask how this can be made clear either to other men, or to themselves? Have they alone sincere convictions on these subjects? Have they alone sought the truth with the toils and prayers of earnest and humble minds? Have they alone emptied themselves of all prejudice, and desired only the pure light from God? Have they alone put worldly considerations from their hearts, and left all things that they might follow Christ? What evidence is there in their position, or in their sacrifices, that only the Spirit of God can be their guide, for that they are manifestly self-devoted to the cause of truth? Are they the meek adherents to persecuted principle, so that against the outward storm nothing short of the inward witness of the Spirit can be their omnipotent supports? Do they alone give evidence by the scorn and insult which they cheerfully bear for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s, that they must be taught of God, for that no men could endure this social persecution unless God was with them? Ah, my friends, does it become the followers of popular opinions to turn to the persecuted, and say, we who float upon the world’s favour, we who have no sacrifices to bear for conscience’ sake, we to whom godliness is a present income (πορον) of all that men most love—we give evidence of being supported through all this peace and popularity by the Holy Spirit—but you, whom we persecute and scorn, you whom we lecture and libel, you who have to bear upon your inmost hearts the coarse friction of intolerance and of rude fanaticism, you, though you have to endure all this, give no evidence that your convictions of Christ and your faith in God are dear unto you,—you are voluntary sufferers, and the distresses of your position, which we shall aggravate in every way we can, are no proof that you stand the rude peltings of the pitiless storm, only because you dare not abandon conviction, or turn away from what you believe to be the light of God within you? I ask can any thing surpass the unmitigated Popery of all this, except its unmitigated cruelty and injustice? How is it that the Minister of a state religion, the preacher of popular creeds, whose lightest words raise echoes of assent—who gets the support and sympathy of crouds on far easier terms than others get bare toleration and existence, can so remove from him all self-knowledge and mercy, as to have the heart to tell the man whom he persecutes, we who have every thing to gain from our religion and nothing to lose, give evidence of being supported through all this ease and triumph by the Spirit of God, but you, who in this world have every thing to lose by your religion, and nothing to gain, give no evidence of having the Spirit of Truth, and are lovers of your own selves more than of Conscience and of God?[539] We suspect them not, God forbid we should, of being immorally tempted and biassed, and with a true sincerity we declare that we have no sympathy whatever with the ungenerous vulgarity of such a charge,—but at the same time, they ought to be aware, and if they were truly generous in their turn they would be aware, that all the outward marks by which men may judge of the sincerity of convictions, and the strength of inward reliances, and allegiance to God, are upon us, not upon them.

The other offices assigned to the Holy Spirit besides that of being an infallible interpreter to the orthodox, were the following:—to bring our souls into sympathy and union with the Spirit of Jesus—to draw us by spiritual affinities unto the Christ; to sanctify our nature through communion with the holy One, cleansing the temple of the spiritual God; to govern our moral being, and supply the diviner impulses that lift us to imperishable things, and teach us to love and to pray aright; and to give us through the spiritual witness within ourselves, a pledge and earnest of the loving purpose of God, and of the glory that remaineth.—Must we indeed renounce these connexions of our spirits with the Spirit of our God, unless mechanically settling the distribution of offices, we receive these influences through the departmental arrangements of the Trinitarian Theology? Will God our Father not come to us and make His abode with us, if we are unfortunate enough to find no evidence in Scripture for a third infinite Mind associated with him, and carry up to Him the unbroken sum of our love, our faith, our worship, and our prayers? Will He reject us only because we pour out our all before Him, and knowing Him to be all-sufficient, feel our derived spirits to be at every moment within the shelter of His parental presence?—And yet, if the Trinitarians were right, if only a believer in a tri-personal God could hold these spiritual connexions with the source of all good, the fountain head of all holiness and hope, if these were the only conditions on which our souls could feel life from above—then should we become the most grateful, the most devoted, the most submissive of their disciples—we would entreat them to show us the way of knowledge, that we might ascend unto the hill of the Lord, and stand in His holy place,—and to lift up for us, in mercy, the everlasting doors of our darkened hearts, that the King of Glory might come in;—and we would flee from our Unitarianism as we should from Atheism, for it would be Atheism if it closed our access to the Spirit of God.

But, though not fond of speaking personally of religious experiences, we do declare, and we do know, that the spirit of man may hold communion with the Spirit of our Father. Every impulse after holiness is the Spirit of God. Every “sighing that cannot be uttered” after the pure, the perfect, and the good, is the Spirit of God. Every devotion of our souls to things unseen and eternal, when solicited by things seen and temporal, is of the Spirit of God. Every dictate of Duty is the spirit of God. Every answer to the prayer of a pure heart is the spirit of God. Every movement of disinterested love is the spirit of God. Every self-sacrifice for the sake of justice or of mercy is made in the strength of the Spirit of God. Every inward hope in this world’s darkness, and undying trust amid this world’s deaths, is an inspiration from Him who is a very present help in the time of trouble, a spiritual intimation from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. The spirit that conforms itself to the will of God, that removes from it whatever is alien to His nature, that puts away the defiling breath of the passions, that seeks Him by prayer, by efforts of duty, by struggles of penitence, by resistance to all sin, by self-purification and constant converse with His image in the Christ, that spirit mirrors more and more of the glory of God, feels more and more His power and peace within the soul, and receives of His fulness, and grows in His likeness, throughout eternity.

If there are any to whom all this appears visionary, and who charge the religious mind with mysticism,—we are ready to bear our share of that charge; for thus far we confess ourselves to be Mystics. Yet, so far are we from holding it to be Mysticism, that we are confident that nothing which sense perceives, or thought takes in, is so real, so enduring, so full of life, as this spiritual and imperishable connexion of the soul of man with the Spirit of God. This connexion, whatever may have been the inspiration of peculiar times, we now regard as part of the established providence and operations of our Father’s Spirit. He gives of His Spirit, to all who observe the conditions on which He has promised to pour out His Spirit upon them. No pure mind ever sought Him in vain. No erring heart ever turned to Him in penitence, and found no peace. Whenever our holier nature awakes to earnest action, God enters into the soul. Whenever prayer purifies our desires, and rectifies our estimates, and places great realities in spiritual lights, God is present with us. Every effort to sink our imperfections, and to feel purely, places us within the affinities of His Holy Spirit. There is no miracle in this. God reveals himself to the spirit that assimilates itself to Him, and seeks Him by growing like to Him. There are no limits to those spiritual communications. He that asketh receiveth; he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it is opened. This is of God’s grace; not now of miracle, but of nature. We are His children, and in proportion as we love Him purely, and follow after Him, He reveals Himself to us. Revealing himself through our spirit, He abides with us for ever. Imaged within us in juster proportions, as we reject impurity, and impose the harmony of His will upon all our desires, He guides us into all truth, and causes us to feel within, the blessed intimations of His sympathizing Spirit. Correcting our false estimates, and fixing our trusts upon His own great realities, He comforts us amid the shadows of Time and Death, whilst we repose upon a world that cannot be moved, and rely upon the faithfulness of God.

Jesus Christ is our most perfect image of the Spiritual Father. He developes within us the ideas that are akin to God. He brings us through sympathy with himself within the affinities of the Holy Spirit, for God was with him. By the baptism of ever fresh penitence, and still fresher purity, he prepares us for the higher baptism of the Holy Spirit, and of fire. We grow in light as we grow in purity. If we keep holy the Temple of the Spirit it abides with us, and, doing His will, we know of the doctrine whether it be of God. The soul that quenches not the Spirit, that suffers no intimation from God to pass unheeded, that looks upon the face of Christ, and reads in characters of blended grace and truth the mind of the Father, is continually born again, and again, into new and still newer light, for the kingdom of heaven is a reaching forth unto things that are before; and he that is in Christ Jesus has within him a spring of life, and is ever a New Creature. And he is ever nearest to God who through purity and prayer has disposed his own spirit to receive light from the Holy Spirit of God, and waits and watches for fresh communications from His unexhausted Christ.

Were another great Teacher to appear amongst us, were another Christ to come to us, and apart from the narrow technicalities of system, to unfold sublime and quickening views of the moral and spiritual world, where might we expect to find the kindred minds, that would most instantly recognize the voice of the Divinity, and upon whose ready sympathies the heavenly words would fall like sparks upon the fuel? Perhaps those who best understood what it is “to be born again” might not be of the number of the learned, the instructed, the Masters in Israel. It is certain that they would not be found among the adherents of unchanging systems—the Pharisees of the faith, who think that they already possess the absolute Truth imprisoned in creeds—and expect no new light to break forth upon their souls. The wind bloweth where it listeth—nevertheless its course is not uncontrolled—it has laws though we know them not—and where would the Spirit of God list to blow, if it was now breathing from the lips of some inspired man,—into what hearts would it find its way, and fan the latent affinities into the flame of spiritual life? Might it not again pass by the College of the learned, and the Temple of the Priest, and descend in living fire upon the poor man’s soul? All that we can do is to look out for light—to expect it—to keep near through prayer and inward communion to Him who is its Fountain—to have the inward sentiments pure, the place of the Spirit unsoiled, that if light should come into the world, it may not reject us as unworthy, finding no mirror for itself in our stained souls—and above all, never to be possessed with that infatuation of confidence, that blindness of sufficiency, that self-idolatry of the creature, which looks for no regeneration to descend upon it—and ignorant of its poverty, its error, and its want, asks with the young Ruler, “what lack I yet,” or with Nicodemus, “How can a man be born again?” We may be born again, and again, if we will only lay ourselves out for it. The light will come if it is looked for. It will not open the closed eye that seeks no more illumination, but it will fall upon every expecting spirit. The only essential condition of being born again, is that the sincere heart, listening to God within, and reading the mind of His Spirit in Christ his image, remove from itself every moral disqualification, and lie in wait for light and truth. Wherever they are found, and whatever be their creed, the Spirit of God “listeth” to blow upon such minds.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture IX.

Footnote 524:

See Forrest on the origin and progress of the Trinitarian Theology, p. 40.

Footnote 525:

See the Rev. F. Ould’s dedication of his Lecture.

Footnote 526:

Burton, Theol. Works, vol. ii. 2nd part, p. 16.

Footnote 527:

Burton, p. 21.

Footnote 528:

“The deity and personality of the Holy Spirit,” pp. 20-23.

Footnote 529:

“And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because it maketh intercession for the Saints, according to the will of God.”—Rom. viii. 27.

Footnote 530:

“It is said that God has promised his Spirit to those who ask for it. But the gift of the SPIRIT, that unction of which St. John speaks (probably in allusion to the anointment of the Hebrew priests, the interpreters of the Old Law), was not intended as a check but as a GUIDE to the rational mind of man. ‘He will guide you into all the truth,’ namely of the simple Gospel. The Divine Spirit of TRUTH has been promised to sincere Christians, to guide them into all that concerns their moral safety. The two SPIRITS—the Spirit (i. e. the mind, so we may call it without irreverence) of God, and the spirit of man, though infinitely apart from each other in their nature, are clearly represented by St. Paul as analogous (I might say akin) to each other. Nor could it be otherwise, since the one is the fountain-head of reason, the other a derived stream. ‘Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us (with sighs not expressed in words);’ i. e. the divine impulse after holiness which is in us, makes us sigh for what we cannot express: but God, who gives us that Spirit, knows what it is we wish for.”—Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy, by the Rev. J. B. White.

Footnote 531:

See the Rev. Mr. Buddicom’s Lecture.

Footnote 532:

The Rev. H. M‘Neile.

Footnote 533:

The Rev. H. M‘Neile’s Lecture.

Footnote 534:

2 Thess. ii. 16.

Footnote 535:

1 Thes. iii. 11.

Footnote 536:

2 Thes. ii. 16.

Footnote 537:

Sacred Classics. Sermons on the Holy Spirit, p. 161. I have lately read this volume carefully, in the hope of finding some definite statement of argument for the Trinitarian Theology on this subject, but in vain.

Footnote 538:

See the Rev. J. E. Bates’ Lecture, and the Preface to the Rev. Fielding Ould’s.

Footnote 539:

See the Lecture of the Rev. D. James, and indeed the whole tone and spirit of the Trinitarian Course. Mr. James declared that we denied the personality of the Holy Spirit, only because we had never felt his operations.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE X.

CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH; THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY.

BY REV. HENRY GILES.

“LET EVERY MAN BE FULLY PERSUADED IN HIS OWN MIND.”— Rom. xiv. 5.

The essential spirit of the religious revolution which in the 16th century shook Europe and its thrones, was resistance to ecclesiastical authority. When Luther burned the Pope’s bull, in Wirtemberg, in one act pregnant with meaning and with consequences, he broke the spell which had chained the minds of men for a thousand years, and spread its fascination over the whole space of Christendom. That single act was a virtual denial that any church, however high in pretension, however venerable in institutions, however universal in dominion, however mighty in power, had a right to enslave his intellect or to silence his conscience. The English martyr, when ready to be offered up, boasted to his fellow-sufferer that they would that day kindle such a flame in England as should never be put out; but the blaze of a piece of parchment in the hand of the German reformer, was a light far more significant and impressive—a light at which thousands started from their slumbers, and although it has often since flickered and been clouded, it does yet, and ever will, point the way to mental and religious freedom. Luther and the other reformers, objected to the church of Rome, the usurpation of unjust authority, and the establishment of a false standard in faith and practice: they objected to her that she claimed a dominion over the souls of men which God alone can hold; and they object that she set aside the supremacy of Christ by encumbering his gospel with her own traditions. Not alone for alleged errors in doctrine, but for this error in the very root and foundation of her constitution, they separated from her communion, and protested against her jurisdiction. They declared the Bible to be the only ground of a Christian’s faith—the only guide of his religious convictions, and they claimed for themselves the right of private judgment and of individual interpretation. We make the same declaration and assert the same claim, and we neither restrict nor nullify it by creed, catechism or confession, by tests or articles, by pains or penalties. Modern Protestant churches, like the reformers, speak proudly of religious liberty, but like the reformers also, it is a liberty they are very unwilling to share—a liberty for themselves and not for others: without claiming infallibility in name, they assume it in reality; and without giving, as Rome does, the promise of unerring guidance, they aim at an authority as despotic, and would wrest a submission as slavish.

The energetic maxim of Chillingworth, “The Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,” is ever and ever repeated even by those who are pledged to find in it the Athanasian creed and the thirty-nine articles, and by others who are compelled to extract out of it the Westminster confession and the longer catechism. With a zeal that never grows fatigued, it is translated in every tongue and circulated in every nation; nay, the lisping child must have it to the very letter, and a fierce war-cry is opened should a school, by selections or omissions, leave the youthful mind without an opportunity to study the patriarchal genealogies, the prophesies of Daniel, or the apocalypse of Saint John. The wide circulation of the Bible we regard as a great social blessing; but when it is sometimes asked, whether its indiscriminate reading is suited to all ages and classes, the very question is taken as an evidence of popery or infidelity in the proposer. To doubt the perspicuity of God’s word, it is said, is to doubt the wisdom of God’s providence. The first object of man in speaking to man, is to be understood; how much more in God addressing his creatures, and on the most momentous concerns! The Bible, it is asserted, is so plain that the child may understand it, that he who runs may read, and that way-faring men, though fools, shall not err therein. If this be true, it is in itself the death-blow of creeds, for then they are both unnecessary and absurd—unnecessary, because the statements can be as clearly, can be as easily found in the Bible as in the creed; absurd, because it is monstrous folly to attempt making that more distinct which is manifest enough already. The Bible being, on the orthodox theory of plenary inspiration, literally the word of God, there is even a degree of impiety in the presumption of pretending to give a summary of its meaning in human fabrications, whether from Trent or Augsburgh, from the palace of the Lateran or the hall of Westminster.

That simplicity is a characteristic of the Bible, at least in its main tendency, I cordially admit; it is the especial quality of the gospel. I could desire no better test by which to try the value of creeds. If the evangelists John or Matthew were again to appear on earth, bringing with them their first simplicity, ignorant of the wrangling disputes, of the vain scholasticism which have disturbed this world and the church since they were taken to their rest—if the Athanasian document were put into their hands, there is nothing in their gospels which enables me to think they could understand it; if moreover they were told that the whole of it could be deduced from their writings, I speak in all earnest solemnity when I say, that at such an assertion I can conceive of them as no otherwise than utterly bewildered and surprized. Take our Lord’s sayings and discourses as reported by his evangelists, and contrast them with the creed we are discussing. With what undisguised simplicity is God ever spoken of, always presented in some intimate relation to our duty or his own providence—as an object of worship, of trust, or of love! Pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him. Touch me not for I have not yet ascended to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Such is the clear and touching phraseology in which Christ always speaks of God, and thus gives, not a scholastic dissertation, but a revelation to human affections. And in the same spirit of simplicity is his own nature also manifested; he who in all things was meek and lowly in heart, who went about doing good, and came to seek and save the lost. Astonishing mysteries indeed has Athanasian theology made out of these plain statements, having found in them a trinity in unity, and a unity in trinity; the Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate; the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible; the Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal, and so on; and though each is distinctively asserted to be uncreated, incomprehensible, and eternal, we are to believe on pain of eternal damnation, that they are not three eternals, but one eternal—not three uncreated, but one uncreated—not three incomprehensibles, but one incomprehensible. Surely of all incomprehensibles this theological jumble is the most incomprehensible. If to defy contradiction by the very sublime of absurdity be a safeguard from refutation, the Athanasian creed must stand eternally unconfuted. Plausible falsehood, however ingenious, may be stripped of its sophistries, but there is a certain degree of wild fabrication which may challenge all the efforts of philosophers and logicians, yet remain as firm as before in the bulwarks of its impenetrable nonsense. It may be truly said that these are things on which we cannot reason; most certainly they are, for they subvert at once all possible principles of reason and of truth. But the climax of these astounding marvels is, that we are assured that if we do not hold this Catholic faith, “without doubt we shall perish everlastingly.” And this precious document, this compilation of monkish mysteries and scholastic jargon, is set forth as the accurate definition of the Christian faith—the test of saving belief or of damnable heresy; this production of crazy or crafty churchmen, this concentration of hoary absurdities, of bewildered metaphysics, and of savage bigotries, presumes to utter the judgment of God, and to launch the thunder of the skies. Beginning with the pride of infallibility, it closes consistently with a sentence of perdition; and for this there is pleaded the language of the gospel—language evidently misinterpreted, as any language must be which would identify the spirit of Christ with the spirit of Athanasius. So on the ground of two false assumptions, those who pride themselves in this Athanasian orthodoxy are privileged to denounce with a safe and quiet conscience perdition on their heretical brethren. First, it is assumed that when the gospel says, “He that believeth not,” it must mean, he that believeth not the three creeds; and, secondly, it is assumed that when the gospel says, “He that believeth not shall be condemned,” the condemnation implied is everlasting destruction. This is in the genuine spirit of Church and Creed Christianity, fencing in a little and a barren paradise with the brambles and the briars of theological definitions, making holiness and virtue dependent on ecclesiastical syllogisms, and shutting out all from heaven who may be compelled to disagree with the doctors of Nice, or the compilers of our English liturgy, who hold the faith of Milton and Locke, but cannot be convinced by Bull, Waterland, or Sherlocke. Creeds pronounce perdition, and Churches hold up Creeds; and ministers come forth to magnify the glory of these Churches and to maintain the verity of these Creeds; but men of meek tempers and tolerant hearts seem half ashamed of their work, and in the effort to soften dogmatical ferocity, make a vain effort at compromise between their consistency and their charity. It is all fruitless: the dark and damning malediction is written on these Creeds with a pen of adamant; the preacher’s feelings are of no avail, and he is commanded by his system to proclaim them aloud and afar—to hold them as warrants of eternal death to all who gainsay or deny them. At the best, orthodox charity, after all admissions, can only embrace different shades of Trinitarians; Unitarians must still remain outside the pale of hope; if therefore condemned we must be, it is of but small importance in what form or on what theory. To those who are to enter the regions of the lost for ever, questions on essences and persons, with many other most grave disquisitions, can signify but little; nor can much consolation be derived from the reflection, that but a hair’s breadth from the Unitarian heresy, theology by evasions and distinction might have given us a refuge in the doctrine of Sabellianism. We are, however, most gravely told that he who receives not the Athanasian Creed, cannot be saved—a Creed at which reason, as it was well said, stands aghast, and Faith itself is half confounded; a Creed, of which it was better said, that it is alike contrary to common sense, to common arithmetic, and to common charity.

Were the exposure of the Athanasian formulary the design of this Lecture, I should feel that I had undertaken a very needless and a very presumptuous task, needless, because in this age there are few that attach any importance to it; presumptuous, because, if minds are not affected by its self-confutation, I have not the vanity to pretend to any arguments which could shake their convictions. But one can scarcely suppress a feeling of sorrow and surprise at seeing this document dragged out for defence in the nineteenth century; this mixture of monkish metaphysics and scholastic bigotry, a production which multitudes of the orthodox themselves conspire to repudiate, and of which many of the best and highest minds in the Church of England have been most heartily ashamed—of which they desire to be well rid. Were the defence of such a creed to be taken as a true sign of the times, there would be cause indeed for pain to think that we had been rolled back again into the dark ages; but it is not so; such things are rather marks that show us how far the advancing tide has moved beyond them. In the course of the present Lecture I desire it to be distinctly understood, that I oppose creeds in their very principle: it is not alone such as I think false, but though I believed them true, I would yet oppose their use. My opposition is directed against the spirit of creeds, and if my own opinions were attempted to be forced in that form, my opposition would be the same. I am in this place to maintain a principle, the principle of intellectual, moral, and Christian freedom, and because creeds, as I think, are at variance with this, I denounce them. I intend nothing against individual professors. If I should give them offence, I have no wrong motive with which to charge myself, and must attribute it to the necessity of plain speaking on a subject by no means agreeable; but whether pleasant or not, I have a duty to perform, and I must as far as my power goes, endeavour to do it honestly and faithfully.

The title of this Lecture is, that creeds are the foes of heavenly faith, and the allies of worldly policy. It is my object to show that this accusation is not lightly or unjustly advanced; and in making good this two-fold charge, the greatest perplexity which attends it, is the multifarious and abundant evidence whereby it can be established.

I. I proceed first to prove them the foes of heavenly faith.

Creeds disqualify the mind for the pursuit of truth. This is my first assertion, and I shall establish its correctness in several particulars. Creeds generate mental apathy and mental dependence, and this is fatal in the very outset. To a spirit of inquiry there is needed an impulsive intellectual activity, and to this activity there is needed a desire for the thing to be attained, and a sense of its importance. There is no labour without motive, and if in religious belief, the creed has defined before-hand all that is necessary for my salvation, I have no necessity to take any more trouble in the matter. If I am to rest on authority at last, it is just as well for me to be satisfied with it at first—if after toilsome inquiry, at the peril of my soul’s eternal peace, the dogmas of the creed are those to which my conclusions must return, I had better be at once content—if I must believe as the Church believes, if I must believe as the Creed says I should believe, if I must believe as the priest declares my hope of heaven requires, if after criticism and research, long and patient, I must arrive at but one exposition of the Bible, it is but wisdom to spare myself from such a pressure of useless labour. But indolence in this case is not merely allowable, it is, in fact, the safest. If to doubt be danger, and if to disbelieve be sin, then the curiosity which stimulates examination may lead me into ruin, whilst implicit submission, that receives all and questions nothing, is a condition of peaceful security. The incitements to mental labour are analogous to those to any other sort of labour; it is that one shall be the richer and the better for it, and that what he acquires he may justly possess. But, if by independent inquiry I may become morally poorer and spiritually worse, if I shall have no right to my own thoughts, and must be despoiled of my convictions, or punished for them, when I have worked them out with the struggle of every faculty, it is exceeding folly to risk the misery and irritation of being torn between my opinion and my creed, conscience forcing me to acquiesce, and reason compelling me to doubt. This view is no supposition; it is fact. Submission to Creeds and Churches, is the true cause of that wide spread moral torpor in every country where Creeds and Churches have dominion. There is nothing so rare as intelligent, independent religious conviction; and how can it be otherwise, when each leans upon his priest, and the priest gives him ready-made opinions, as they were formed a thousand years ago. There is a general and profound ignorance of the sources of opinion, the history of opinion, of the philosophy of opinion, and of the Bible, both in its letter and in its spirit. Speak to multitudes of religion, in any broad or liberal sense, and it seems to them as if it were an unknown tongue. To have any chance of attention, you must use terms which Creeds have sanctified, you must address them in traditionary phrases, which have the sectarian or sacerdotal currency. This never could have been had religion been recommended as a subject of individual and independent study, leaving the mind free, both in its pursuit and its conclusion. That I have stated nothing but what fact justifies, I may appeal to any one who has considered the religious condition of this country, or of Europe generally, and considered it in every rank of society. I speak not of the Spaniard, who has not yet rid himself from the palsy of the Inquisition, who can go from the prostration of the confessional to scenes of the wildest crime; I speak not of the Italian, that compound of profaneness and credulity, of sin and devotion, who can bow before an image, and with the same hand cross himself, by which a minute before he plunged his stiletto in his fellow-creature’s heart. I speak not of our own peasantry, who Sunday after Sunday, walk statedly to church or chapel, and know little more than that they went there and came back again; I speak not of the fashionable wealthy, who, on this point, are commonly as ignorant as the boor, and choose religion as they choose every thing else, as it happens to be the mode; I pass these by, because it may be said, that pleasure and gaiety leave them no time for study; but I will refer to multitudes who are esteemed devout and serious Christians, whose minds passively receive the mould of their teachers, and to whom religion never presents itself as a system of various thought and of independent examination. Now, this ignorant apathy has bad effects, which are not merely negative; and at the risk of anticipating, I will allude in a few words to one or two of them: it gives stability to every error and corruption, and holds to them with an obstinacy, against which wisdom has no power; it is the very soil in which priestcraft grows darkest and foulest; and the hierarchy in any age or country has never risen to its full stature of lordliness, until the people have lain lowest in torpid submission. And, in addition to this, there is no uncharitableness so inveterate, there is no bigotry so intolerant, as that which this species of character matures, for as it is unable to comprehend an opposite opinion, it is equally inadequate and unwilling to weigh the arguments in its favour, or to estimate the evidence on which it is maintained. Having no conception of independence itself, independence in another appears presumption, if not something worse, and never having imagined that other opinions could possibly be true except its own, to hold any different could only be explained by supposing a want of honesty or a want of grace.

I might dwell upon the fear by which Creeds paralyse the faculties of weak or sensitive natures, by which they deprive them of all power for calm and deliberate examination, by the fear of being excluded from their Church, by the fear of being discarded by their friends, by the fear of being cast into hell, above all these, by the fear of losing the favour of God, and the friendship of Jesus, and with right and true minds, this is the greatest of all fears. In the midst of so many terrors, it is too much to expect that our weak humanity could be calm,—that it could look with unmoved heart at the appalling indications of so many and dire threatenings, it is like examining a man on the terms of his faith, while the officials of persecution are arranging the faggots or putting screws in the rack. From this topic, disagreeable in any shape, I pass on, and assert, that Creeds are enemies to truth, because, by preconception and prejudice, they disqualify the mind to seek or apprehend it. This is my second, and in this section, my last position.

The statement of the Church of England respecting the three Creeds, is this: that they “ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.”[540] The Catholic doctrine, with equal decision, asserts that the Infallibility of the Romish Church may also be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture. Suppose then a Church of England Christian with the Bible before him; he has been previously indoctrinated in the three Creeds, and these ideas pre-occupying his mind will so far influence his interpretation. Suppose a Roman Catholic in a like position; he has ever present to his mind the Infallibility of his Church, and her decisions must be the limits of his conclusions. Intellectually or morally, no position can be conceived worse than this for the pursuit or discovery of truth. The mind is biassed from the first; its calmness and its candour are subverted, and it is no longer a judge, but a partizan; it is not to decide on evidence, but, (to use a legal term) to act on the instruction of its brief. That Creeds have the tendency to distort and fetter the intellectual workings of the mind, we know from the fact, too palpable to need proof, that Theologians have always been the most obstinate in resisting the discoveries of science, and ever the last to yield. Astronomy, in its glimmerings of scientific truth, was once Church heresy. A Father of the Church, as it is well known, had denounced that man as infidel and profane who should dare to assert that the earth moved round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. On the other side of this controversy, we have been told that the arts and sciences have their compendiums as well as religion. It was a most unfortunate analogy; for how would it have been now with art and science, had Astronomy been made a Creed at the Council of Nice, and a confession on Chemistry been compiled by the Westminster divines. Galileo was pronounced a heretic; and the early Chemists laboured under strong suspicion of witchcraft. Had we been bound in Astronomy as we are in Theology, Joshua should be our authority, decisive and irrevocable, and the calculations of Newton and Laplace should be placed in the index expurgatorius of Ecclesiastical dogmatism. Even Luther himself, the author of the greatest of moral revolutions since Christianity, smiled at the idea that the earth should move round the sun, and said, “that according to Holy Scripture, Joshua commanded the earth to stand still, and not the sun.”[541] Had not the progressive energy of human intellect been stronger, in what a position should we yet have been as to the true principles of the construction and motion of the universe? Geology as yet is a scientific heresy; and, to avoid the stigma, orthodox Geologists have been driven into all modes of eccentric explanation, some to disjoin the first verse of Genesis from all that follows, and others to the supposition that a day may mean a thousand years, or if the speculator needs it, ten thousand or a million. The intellectual immorality thus occasioned, it is not possible to estimate; for it is a coarse view of sin to place it altogether in the misdirection of the passions: certainly, the sins which ever afflicted mankind most, were the moral perversions of the intellect. And this may be at once conceived if we have read the history of the Church, and are able to take a calm and impartial review of its cabals and controversies. I will not mention here the loss of kindly affections, the loss of charity, the loss of peace; I merely allude to the immense intellectual waste which has been occasioned by men setting out on their inquiries with a foregone conclusion. I shall say nothing on the tomes, enough to make a library as great as that the Turkish soldier burned, which have been written to defend the Trinity—I take an example to Protestants more grateful—I mean, transubstantiation. What was it that for centuries perpetuated a false and absurd philosophy in Europe? What was it that made Aristotle the supreme ruler of the Christian Church—not Aristotle, as he was, the philosoper, but as Churchmen used him, a verbal quibbler—was it not for the purpose of constructing syllogisms with orthodox exactness, and by theories on essences, species, forms, and so forth, to make it evident that under the appearance of bread and wine, the very God who created the heavens and the earth, and the very man Christ Jesus who died on Calvary, were virtually present? Go into any great library, and on this subject alone you may find volumes of which the very names are too many for memory. Yet, in these there is abundance of talent, of subtlety, and of acuteness—all in the travail to sustain a theory. No one can deny, no one will, who knows how equally the Creator scatters his gifts, that minds of the very highest order were amongst the schoolmen; yet all these magnificent powers were expended to sustain one or two absurd positions, enslaving their own intellect, and by their authority and their influence, enslaving the intellect of Christendom; and, from the reformation to this hour, there have been the same waste and perversion of thought. Just consider what tortuous logic, what wire-drawing ingenuity have been exercised to defend guilt by imputation, and righteousness by imputation—absurdities as great morally, as transubstantiation is intellectually. This is the work of Creeds.

Dissenters are sometimes taunted with want of scholarship. The taunt may have foundation in fact; perhaps it has, but on what are we to place the blame? Dissenters, we presume, have a measure of intellect on the average of other men, and are gifted with as many mental faculties as those who subscribe the articles of our National Church. God does not distribute his blessings on the ground of subscription, however Universities may. The gifts of mind are equal and bountiful like the beneficence of creation. The same full hand that showers sunlight over hill and valley, that opens fountains in the rocks, and sows the wilderness with flowers, without reference to Sect or Church, impregnates all understandings with the elements of thought, and all fancies with the germs of beauty. The Dissenter, as the Churchman, hath eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections. If then this fair portion of our Maker’s mercy be equally given, whence are we to trace the want of its proper cultivation? If the orthodox close the Universities against us by Creeds, draw fast the iron bolt by an iron theology, take away the key of knowledge, and repulse those that with all their hearts would enter, place before us tests which, if stupid enough, we might subscribe without understanding, and if dishonest enough we might subscribe without believing, but, candidly confessing we neither understand them nor believe them, therefore refuse to sign them,—where then is the magnanimity or the generosity which throws in our teeth, though it were true, that we have not the science of Cambridge, or the classicality of Oxford. Yet, despite of all restrictions, Dissent has had a goodly number of noble and cultured minds—minds able and honest, which, in the hour of need, even the Church herself was not ashamed to acknowledge, or ashamed to use.

Creeds act as mighty temptations,—as the very Satans of theology;—and they are not temptations to the covetous and ambitious only, but also to the weak and good. When sects and Creeds are the standards of preferment, those with whom preferment is the great object, are made to add the sin of sanctimonious hypocrisy to that of Ecclesiastical covetousness and Ecclesiastical ambition. But there are others good in their own hearts, yet not mighty enough to be martyrs, whom Creeds keep in a whole life of agony. There are those who entered a religious community, believing its opinions most enthusiastically, who, by the further progress of intellect or judgment, may be brought to doubt or deny them. They are then driven to a desperate alternative, either to belie their conscience, or to do violence to their hearts. Take the case of many of the curates and incumbents of the Church of England. Suppose, that on receiving orders they assented to all the bishop or the Church prescribed, but that after years of thinking they were compelled to disbelieve the Athanasian Creed. They are then periodically reading, with the most serious tones, and from the most solemn place, a statement of doctrine which they conceive in their souls to be hideous and false, reading it as the conviction of their own judgments, and as that which ought to be the saving faith of all men. If the conscience is not utterly hacknied, if the religious sensibilities are not torn out from the heart, this must be continually as the torture of the rack. Like all human faculties, conscience has a limit; beyond a certain point it can endure no more, and so when bigoted exaction has stretched it to the last, it must revolt or expire. The alternative in the end is, moral apathy or theological rebellion—a quiescent hypocrisy, or an open opposition. But few can brave the contest, and they have no refuge except a tacit and unwilling submission. Honest men, it may be said, when they ceased to believe the doctrines they solemnly affirmed, would renounce them with a denial as public as their profession. It is easy to say this, but, even for honest men, it is sometimes hard to do it. In the clerical order especially there are numbers, whose position has been attained by long study and weary toil—whose very means of life—not to speak of their station and their friendships—hang upon adherence to the Creed of their Church. What are these men to do? To dig they are not able, and to beg they are ashamed. Yet I can easily conceive that many could abandon rank and friendship, and count them light, in comparison with their faith, to conscience, that they could take a cell in the wilderness for their dwelling, quench their thirst at the running stream, and seek their food on the briar and the bramble, sooner than be false to their convictions, and do dishonour to the integrity of their souls. But it may be, that others with themselves are to suffer,—those whose lives are bound up in their lives,—those to whom they are the only earthly support and refuge, the wife, the child, the aged father, or the widowed mother,—whom to cast on the friendless world, were worse than a thousand martyrdoms. Think, then, of the poor curate of the Church of England, or the humble incumbent, who has grown long into life, with claims most pressing multiplying around him—one who once out of his pulpit knows not where to turn for the bread which his children crave—and we cannot judge harshly or uncharitably, if the power of his affections is too strong for the stern demands of duty. I know there have been those who could commit father, and mother, and wife, and children, to that good Provider who feedeth the raven and sheltereth the nest of the sparrow; who could speak the truth and take the consequences;—I trust there are those yet in the world who could do the same; but in this or any other age, martyrs must be few, and the spirit of martyrdom rare. We blame not too severely those who have not the highest courage of religious heroism, but we may condemn with honest indignation those institutions that by fencing their position with Creeds and Articles, compel them to be hypocrites. I do not apply these assertions to members or ministers of the Church of England, or other Churches, individually, but any one who has studied the history of religion, or watched the tendency of institutions, knows that in the English Establishment, in the Romish, in all establishments that have been narrowly restrictive, the hypocrisy of ambition, or the hypocrisy of fear, has been deeply and abundantly nourished.

The Church does not deny a small amount of liberty—no Church can,—it will therefore allow you to read the Bible, if you desire it, but you must find nothing therein but what the Church proposes. In the study of the Sacred text, you must have always before your eyes the three Creeds and the thirty-nine Articles; find what these prescribe, and it is all the better for your peace and comfort; miss them, and you are open to social and spiritual condemnation. Churches which dictate creeds, use words without meaning, when they say, that you may read the Bible, for they tell you also, at the commencement, what you ought to find in the Bible. I shall give an illustration here of my meaning, by an extract from one of the Oxford Tract writers:—I know well that some object to these writers, but so far as I have been able to study the subject—and I have read, attentively or casually, the whole of what are called the Oxford Tracts,—I think their statements and their doctrines are entirely in the spirit of their system, and in most exact consistency with their asseverations and their Creed. There is no medium; we require an infallible tribunal, or we must have a free judgment; but the authorities of the English Establishment will give us neither; for with that we must encounter the twofold endurance of an erring Church and an enslaved understanding. I think, therefore, the Oxford doctors in most perfect consistency with their profession; and thus believing, I quote the following passage, illustrative of these writers, and of the spirit of Ecclesiastical authority in general. It is a portion of a dialogue between a minister and his parishioner. Not to spoil the dramatic effect of it, I shall give you a little more than absolutely belongs to my subject. Thus speaks the Parishioner to the Pastor:—“My good mother, said he, not long before her death, said to me very earnestly, My dear Richard, observe my words: never dare to trifle with God Almighty. By this I understood her to mean, that in all religious actions we ought to be very awful, and seek nothing but what is right and true. And I knew she had always disapproved of people’s saying, as they commonly do, that it little matters what a man’s religion is, if he is but sincere, and that one opinion, or one place of worship, is as good as another. To say, or think, or act so, she used to call ‘trifling with God’s truth;’ and do you not think so, (addressing himself to me,) that she was right?

“Indeed I do, said I.

“And, he said, I was very much confirmed in these opinions by constantly reading a very wise, and as I may say to you, a precious book, which a gentleman gave me some years ago, whom I met by chance as I was going to see my father, in the infirmary. It is called, ‘A Selection from Bishop Wilson’s Works,’ and there are many places which show what his opinions were on this subject, and I suppose, Sir, there can be no doubt, that Bishop Wilson was a man of extraordinary wisdom and piety. Then, after a slight remark from his interlocutor, he observes, And what Bishop Wilson says is this, or to this effect, that to reject the government of bishops is to reject the ordinance of God. Having mentioned some controversy he had with a Dissenter, he observes, it seemed to me (and I told the man so,) like going round and round in a wheel, to say, that if he is God’s minister, he preaches what is good, and if he preaches what is good, he is God’s minister; for still the question would be, what is right or good? And some would say one thing, and some another; and some would say, there is nothing good or right in itself, but only as it seems most expedient to every person for the time being. So, for my own satisfaction, and hoping for God’s blessing on my future endeavours, I resolved to search the matter out for myself, as well as I could. My plan was this: First to see what was said on the subject in the Church Prayer Book, and then to compare this with the Scriptures. If, after all, I could not satisfy myself, I should have taken the liberty of consulting you, Sir, &c. Yours, replied this Rev. instructor to his prudent catechuman, was a good plan.”

This passage contains the whole spirit of Creeds and Churches. Take the Prayer Book with you, keep the fear of the bishop before your eyes, and walk reverently in the way of the Articles. Then read the Scriptures if you will, but read them to show that all this is Holy Writ.

Creeds are, further, at enmity with truth, because they resist its development, and embarrass its progression. The world could never have advanced beyond a fixed point, had it been governed by Churchmen, in the true Church spirit. For what is it that Creed-makers so insanely attempt? They attempt what is alike inconsistent with the glory of truth and the nature of man. Truth is infinite, like its author, and they would confine it within the limits of the Nicene and Athanasian formularies. Truth is eternal and progressive, but Creeds would swear us to the worst barbarisms of the worst ages. Truth is discovered and carried onward by the independent working of free and various minds, but Creeds would reduce all to an apathetic uniformity; and had not truth been greater than Creeds, all that has been done for religion and science, would now be in eternal silence. Creeds not only thus retard the progress of Truth, by the sanction of authority, by the influence of prejudice, by the tenacity of habit; but give errors all but immortality. Creeds are foes to whatever is most heavenly in our nature; to conscience, in its rectitude, and to charity in its gentleness; to conscience by an utter perversion of the moral sense, making that to be guilt which is not guilt, and giving merit to that which deserves none, making it righteous to believe one proposition, and sinful to doubt another, thus creating a factitious vice, and as often denying the evidence of real virtue; to charity, also, Creeds, I have said, are foes, and such they are by bitter exclusiveness, by wrong terms of communion and brotherhood, by dissension, by enmities and contentions, and by hatred in all its most odious shapes.

Creeds have failed in all the objects for which it is pretended they were made, and they have infinitely multiplied the evils against which it is pretended they are the guards. They are needful, it is said, for the preservation of the Faith, and instead of preserving the Faith, they have provoked the wildest unbelief; they are required, it is argued, as bonds of unity, and instead of this they have bred divisions and heresies without number; they are means, some will go so far as to say, of maintaining Christian peace, and instead of this they have rioted in wars and persecutions the most inhuman and the most sanguinary. The history of religion shows that unbelief is never so prevalent as when the Creed is most rigid. The countries and the times in which Theological ingenuity left least scope for the free play of intellect, have always been the country and times, when, under the outward guise of a uniform faith, there has been the most absolute contempt for the popular religion, as well as for Christianity in general. For the proof of this need I refer to the French Church, and the withering scepticism which it nurtured; the Spanish Church; the Italian Church; and to sustain the same principle we might likewise accumulate heaps of evidence from the Protestant Churches. As to heresies, the case is still more clear. One heresy may have called forth a Creed, but one Creed has produced a thousand heresies; and Creed-makers, when they imagined their work complete, to their sorrow have found it was but merely commenced. The history of heresies would be at once humiliating and instructive. In all varieties we have them on every point in religion, and on all that has connection with it; on the nature of God. Men not satisfied with a simple trust, must speculate on the Divine Being—must ascertain whether he was essentially one, or numerically divided; Churchmen must define, and after much labour we have such a document as the Athanasian Creed, and such a doctrine as the Athanasian Trinity. On the nature of Christ, we have the same subtleizing process; we are tossed between Arius and Athanasius, and having got clear of these, we are again to be bandied between Nestorius and Eutychus, and to determine whether Christ’s godhead and manhood were so united as to make one nature, or so divided as to constitute two natures; whether his divinity was not instead of a human soul, or in what relation his human soul stood to his divinity; whether he had one will or two wills; whether his death was a substitution or not; whether it was for the elect only, or for the whole race of man universally. On the Church; what its constitution, what its extent, what its authority; is it fallible or infallible; and if infallible, where does that infallibility rest; in the Pope, in a Council, in both together; in a congregation, or in every individual Christian? On the Sacraments; are there two or seven; what is their nature and efficacy; does baptism cleanse from original sin, or does it not; is it necessary to salvation or not? Roman Catholics affirm both, and so do the Oxford Tract writers. Is it to be consequent on personal belief or not; is it to be administered to infants, or to persons of mature years, and to be by immersion or by sprinkling? Again, we have a whole crowd of divisions and heresies on the Lord’s Supper; are the elements actually changed into the substance of Christ, or is Christ merely present along with them, or is he spiritually, but not personally, present; is it a rite mystically effective, or is it merely commemorative? All these questions have been sources of endless division of opinion; even at the present hour, the Oxford divines teach a doctrine concerning the Eucharist, which it requires marvellous perspicacity to distinguish from transubstantiation, while the Calvinistic evangelicals maintain views which might content the very lowest sacramentarian. But why speak of Creeds and Articles as means of religious unity, when the Church of England herself affords us the means of giving such assertion a flat denial? Within her pale, she has had men of all and opposite opinions—Arminian and Calvinist, Unitarian and Tritheist—every possible hue that orthodoxy could assume. Paley smiles at the idea, as one of most grotesque absurdity, that men should be thought to believe the articles they sign; they are, according to his morality, mere articles of peace, intended to exclude no one but Papists and Anabaptists. If this be true, a man might, as an able writer on non-conformity says, take a benefice with a good conscience from the Grand Turk. Nay, not to speak of believing the Articles, we have heard it asserted, in connection with the Universities, that the youthful subscribers are not supposed to understand them, or in some cases even to have read them. The Church of England is perhaps wise in not pushing matters too far, for in her former efforts to force uniformity, she lost the best of her sons by thousands; an event that she has cause to regret to the latest hour of her existence, and for which America should bless her for ever. The distinction between essentials and non-essentials, is one of the most quibbling of Theological vanities. Every one knows that each sect has its essentials and non-essentials, according to the compass of its Creed, some many and some few: with the Roman Catholic, Transubstantiation is as essential as the Trinity; he condemns the orthodox Protestant to perdition for not holding one as well as the other, whilst both combine to pass sentence on the unfortunate Unitarian who can receive neither. Again, I assert the distinction is petty and quibbling, for who is to fix it, where is it to stop; who is to decide it, and what are to be grounds of the decision? All things are important to us, as they bear relation to our conscience or our convictions; one man eateth only herbs, another eateth all things; one man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike: let every man be persuaded in his own mind; that is the Apostle’s view of the subject, and that is the true, the safe, the charitable one. Protestantism has not lessened or softened the number or the inveteracy of religious divisions infinitely more perplexed than Romanism in her views of religious authority, she has given importance to doctrines which the Church under that system scarcely noticed: such as grace, predestination, and other similar disputed theories: thus the sting of controversy has been added to topics that were before sufficiently repulsive in their dry and technical abstruseness. But it is pitiful, it is humiliating, not merely to our common Christianity, but to our common human nature, to see the arrogant assumption with which puny men decree what their brothers are to believe, now and in all future times, tying down the mind that should be free as heaven, as it is as progressive as it is eternal: putting themselves on the throne of God, and dealing judgment where he deals mercy. The minuteness of theological definition has surpassed all other efforts of human ingenuity, but it has not alone deadened the freedom of intellect, but also injured its honesty. On the Trinity, more especially, heresy has ever been treading closely on orthodoxy, “until, after revolving round the theological circle,” as Gibbon says, “we are surprised to find that the Sabellian ends where the Ebionite had began.” Each theological speculator has his own Trinity, his own exposition of the Athanasian mystery, until amidst the whirl of dogmatical contradictions, the mind grows giddy, and knows not where to rest. The Church of England, as I have observed before, has all systems between the extremes of Sherlock’s Tritheism and South’s Sabellianism: between the three infinite minds of the one, and the three somewhats of the other. The ancient Christians afforded full occasion for the caustic description which Gibbon gives of their disputes, and the modern Christians have not grown wiser, or learned better. “The Greek word” he says, “which was chosen to represent this mysterious resemblance, bears so close an affinity to the orthodox symbol, that the profane of every age derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoisians. As it frequently happens that sounds and characters which approach nearest each other, accidentally represent the most opposite ideas, the observation would be itself ridiculous, if it were possible to mark any sensible difference between the doctrine of the Semiarians, as they were improperly styled, and that of the Catholics themselves. The Bishop of Poictiers, who in his Phrygian exile, very wisely aimed at a coalition of parties, endeavours to prove, that by a pious and faithful interpretation, the Homoousian may be reduced to a consubstantial sense. Yet he confesses that the word has a dark and suspicious aspect; and, as if darkness were congenial to theological disputes, “the Semiarians who advanced to the doors of the Church, assailed them with the most unrelenting fury.” If it be said, that the Creeds are not the creators of divisions, but that divisions are the creators of Creeds, I admit that they act and react on each other. If they create not the differences which they make, they give them all their bitterness. If it be said, that independently of Creeds, there would still be endless variety of private opinions, I grant it; I go further, and say, it were most desirable there should be such divisions. It is Creeds that infuriate religion, and turns dissent into dissension. A man who felt he could form his opinion in freedom, and hold it in peace, would never persecute another; would never hate another; would never pretend authority over another; he would give the liberty he used. It is the authority which Creeds pretend, that constitute one of their greatest evils. The ancient Church then had Creeds in plenty, but no unity; the Reformed Churches are in the same position. If it be asserted they have agreement in essentials, I refer to what I have already said on this point; but if it be maintained that their difference is only in name, then, I say, the matter becomes worse, and plainly shows that Creeds, out of small disputes, can cause gigantic evils. Nothing could be more bitter than the Sacramentarian Controversy amongst the Reformers; nothing could be more vile than the language with which they assailed each other; nothing more furious than the invectives with which they pelted one another. Each would fix on his opponent what he did not believe himself; and yet there occasionally peeps out a glimmer, that they had some sense of their inconsistency. “It is of great importance,” says Calvin, in writing to Melancthon, ”that the least suspicion of the divisions that are among ourselves pass not to future ages; for it is ridiculous beyond all things that can be imagined, that after we have broken off from the whole world, we should so little agree among ourselves since the beginning of the Reformation.” The charity of Calvin was not equal to his discretion, as we may see by this extract.

“Honour, glory, and riches,” says he to the Marquis de Poët, “shall be the reward of your pains; but, above all, do not fail to rid the country of those zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus, the Spaniard.”

In the same spirit is the language of Austin, who was Calvin’s master, not only in his doctrine, but also in his zeal. “O, you Arian heretic,” he says, “the thief knew him when he hung upon the cross; the Jews feared him when he rose from the dead; and you treat him with contempt, now he is reigning in heaven. Take care, beloved, of the Arian pestilence!” (Quoted from Robinson’s Ecclesiastical Researches, pp. 348, and 181.)

Division and heresy are, in truth, innumerable, and the ideas of stemming them by Creeds, is to imitate the peasant standing on the river’s bank, and waiting until it should have all flowed by. “One doctor of the Lutheran Church,” says Robert Robinson, of Cambridge, “hath given a comment on heresy and schism, and hath inserted no less than six hundred and thirty-two sorts of heretics, heresiarchs, and schismatics, diversified as the birds of heaven, and agreeing only in one single point, the crime of not staying in what is called the Church.”

I have now shown that Creeds did not promote unity in the ancient Church; that they did not promote it in the Roman Church; that they did not promote it in the Reformed Church; that in the present day they do not promote it in any of the Protestant Churches; not to allude again to our own Establishment; to many in the Scotch Church, they are a dead letter; they are entirely so in the French and German Churches; and in the Genevese Church, the very school where blackest Calvinism was fabricated, the arena where the stern persecutor burned Servetus, Calvin’s spirit is extinct, and his creed repealed. I have shown, then, that they never produced unity, and I believe the most intrepid Ecclesiastic will not affirm they have been favourable to Christian peace. Turn to the page of history; look abroad over the face of the world, and you have lamentable evidence of the charge. Creeds have broken the peace of Christendom, and given unwonted fury to all its strifes; Controversies have arisen without number, and have been maintained with fanatic zeal, fury, and detestation. What shame should the opposite conduct of Philosophers flash in the face of theologians,—men, who in quietness pursued their own studies, and left their results for the progressive amelioration of their species—whilst the janglings of Churchmen, wringing through every age, have been empty of all things but their enmity. Why is it, that we in this hour are not more profitably engaged,—why is it, that we are not rather seeking out the woes that crush down humanity, and joining forces to remove them,—why is it with so much of what is positive to be done, so much of wretchedness to relieve, so much sin to remove, so many solemn claims on all sides of us, that when we think of it, we feel as if this were the veriest trifling; why are we thus in strife, when we might be in union; why are we compelled to say hard things, and to repel them? It is all to be charged to Creeds, which with the spirit of Cain, has risen the hand of brother against brother, and caused contention and an evil heart, where there ought to be charity and peace. It is all vain, it is not human nature, no matter how strongly disclaimed, to think, that polemical contention can be perfectly free from the wrong passions, and it is better not to pretend to meekness, when the opposite is frequently but too evident. The days of physical strife in religion, it is to be hoped, are gone; but upon the head of Creeds there is a blood-stain, a blood guiltiness, which the whole ocean could not wash out. Religion was made the watch-word for war; the cross was raised as the symbol of destruction, and the gathering of nations were around it, to carry ruin as a flood, ay, into those very scenes, where it once bore the dying form of him, who said, “I came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” War, in its simplest utterance, is a word of horror; but religious war leaves nothing darker to be imagined. In worldly enmities, when the contest is deadliest, there are touches of human compunction; in the most sanguinary strife, the voice of mercy is sometimes heard, and the hand of help is given; fiercest opponents will occasionally be generous—the oppressed, in the hour of triumph, can be magnanimous to the tyrant in his fall, but place men against each other with different religious sentiments, unsheath the sword of the orthodox against the heretic, the heart becomes steel, the bosom becomes ruthless, and the man is lost in the fiend. Demand you evidence of this? It is written in gore over the whole face of earth; call up the shades of the thousands that sunk in the valleys and the mountains of Judea, of those in the solitudes of the Alps, that fell under the sword of Romish and merciless extermination; of those with whose life-blood the fierce Spaniard dyed the soil of South America; of those who were laid low in the glens of Scotland by Episcopalian fury,—you would have army of witnesses which no man could number, the accusers of those who for different faith became the slayers of their brethren. Creeds are naturally allied to the spirit of persecution, for they establish the principle, and act on it, that belief may be a sin, and this is the very life of the persecuting spirit; it was this that built the Inquisition, which for so many ages spread its ruthless tempest in the Christianity of Europe; it was this that called forth the rack, and kindled every fire in which a heretic was ever sacrificed to the demon-god of bigotry: it was this created a Dominic. Protestants are fond of calling the Roman Catholic Church a persecuting Church, but that Church can retort the accusation. Every Church is in truth a persecuting Church which acts in the spirit of a Creed. The Reformers maintained the right of the civil magistrate to punish heretics. This, if it needed proof, is triumphantly made out by Bossuet. “There is no need here,” he says, “of explaining on that question, whether or no Christian princes have a right to use the sword against their subjects, enemies to sound doctrine and the Church, the Protestants being agreed with us in this point. Luther and Calvin have written books to make good the right and duty of the magistrate in this point. Calvin reduced it to practice, but against Severus and Valentine Gentili. Melancthon approved of this procedure by a letter he wrote him on the subject.” John Knox maintained the same doctrine, and even quoted the extermination of the Canaanites as a case which would justify like treatment of heretics. Nay, in the present day, one of the Oxford theologians asserts, “that we ought to anticipate the evils of error in the person of the heresiarch,” because he contends that it is better he should endure pain, than that his error should be propagated, and bring ruin on his infatuated but less guilty followers. This is the true inquisitorial religion. A man who holds sentiments like these is a persecutor in his heart, and it is only by accident that he is not a persecutor with his hand. A man who could send forth that expression, in other days might have been grand inquisitor or a familiar of the Holy Office, and would have dragged his victims to the stake, or gloated over their tortures on the rack. A heresiarch, he maintains, is unworthy of compassion; and in correspondence with this are some passages of Irenæus, quoted with approbation in the Tracts for the Times: “What prospect, then, of peace have we,” says this reverend and truculent Ecclesiastic, “who are foes to the brethren? What sacrifice do they think they celebrate, when they become rivals to the Priesthood? When gathered together beyond the pale of the Church, do they think that Christ is still in the midst of them? Though men like these were killed in the profession of their faith, not even by their blood would these spots be washed out. The offence of discord is a weighty offence, it includes no expiation, and is absolved by no suffering.” “They cannot remain with God,” he says, “who will not remain with one heart in God’s Church. Though they be cast to the flame, to the fire to be burnt, or lay down their lives by being a prey to wild beasts, they will gain not the crown of faith, but the penalty of perfidy; their end, not the glorious consummation of religious excellence, but the death-blow of despair. Such men may attain unto death, but can never attain unto the crown.” Creeds have sharpened the sword of persecution, though the civil arm was used, and if it now be idle in the sheath, it is more owing to the tolerance of civil governments, than to any change in the spirit of Churchmen. If Rome had her Inquisition, England had her Star Chamber; if Rome had her Dominic, England had her Laud. I wish not, however, to pass unmitigated censure: I am willing and glad to acknowledge that the Church of England has had many men who were the lights of their age, but they had minds which were not cast in the Athanasian mould. It is not Churches only that persecute, but also sects; not great Churches, but little ones equally; thus did the Genevese, whilst the spirit of Calvin ruled in it; thus did the Dutch Churches, while the Dort-decrees had power, and even Socinus himself persecuted Francis David: a Creed, however simple, can be made an instrument of unjust power, as well as the most complex one. The persecuting spirit is not extinct, but changed; it is now a social and a moral persecution. Long experience has shown that physical torture is useless, and if the principle remained, the power is gone. But never can we sum up the whole amount of evil which Creeds inflicted on the world, until we can count the sighs that have died unheard in the dungeon; until we know all the bitterness of heart which waits on hopeless captivity; until we count the pangs of torture which gave slow consuming death; until we can follow the course of merciless wars, unsoftened by a touch of pity; until we know all the friends that have been made enemies, and the griefs which have in many cases made life a martyrdom; until, in fact, we have all laid bare before us which that day alone will reveal, which reveals all the hidden works of darkness.

II. I have so far shown that Creeds are the enemies of truth, and disqualifying the mind to seek truth aright, by resisting and embarrassing its free development, by ensnaring conscience and destroying charity; I have shown their failure in their proposed objects, and their instrumentality in producing all the evils they pretend to avert, and I proceed in the remaining observations, to establish the second charge. It is one, however, which does not need much elaborate argumentation. It will be easy to discover their tendency, if we consider who are commonly the framers of Creeds, in what periods they are formed, and in what temper they are usually imposed. They are framed by Ecclesiastics, and for the main purpose of supporting Ecclesiastical supremacy. If we take a few names connected with Creed-making, or with furnishing the materials out of which Creeds are made, we can easily see the spirit in which they are conceived, and of which they are the expression. We have then an Athanasius, an intriguing and ambitious Ecclesiastic, not only the fomenter of spiritual strife in the Church, but by political intermedling, the fomenter of civil strife in the Empire: a Cyril, the opponent of Nestorius, and the hater of Origen; the composer of mighty tomes of divinity, which with much the same kind since, were equally massive, and equally oblivious; a popular preacher at first, and afterwards a most orthodox patriarch; at once the persecutor of the philosophic Pagans, and the heretical Christians: a Tertullian, that exulted in the prospective damnation of heretics, with a zeal that almost rivals some modern Calvinistic writers: a Dominic, that has left the memory of a sanguinary monk, and the name of a saint; who has been often commemorated in the flames of many an auto-de-fe, and has had a durable monument to his glory in the dark piles of the inquisition: a Calvin, the stern Theological tyrant of Geneva, and the slayer of Servetus: a Knox, who pleaded for the extermination of the heretical after the manner of the Canaanites: a Cranmer, who caused so many, both of Catholics and Protestants, to be led to the stake by laws which changed with the fickleness of a tyrant’s will, who at last himself blenched before the fate that had been so often prepared for others: a Laud, the pillar of a star-chamber, and the downfall of a throne. Such are some of the men concerned in the formation of Creeds—men of stern natures, of haughty minds, and of boundless spiritual ambition. And as to the periods in which Creeds are commonly made, we know they are in times of religious strife, when different parties are labouring for the ascendancy, when no pains are spared to gain it, when no acts however shameful or dishonest are thought too bad to use, if they assist to humble an opponent, or secure a victory; when passion is heated and malignant, and the judgment totally unfit for impartiality. The history of Councils and Theological cabal is the shame of Christianity. Yet, formularies thus fabricated are to be made the everlasting standards of truth, and men are to be punished here and hereafter because they do not receive as Divine Truth these shapeless abortions of Churchmen’s folly. And the temper in which they are imposed is quite in conformity with that in which they are conceived—oppressive, exclusive, unjust. With what a vindictive and grasping spirit have not the Clergy of the English Church laid hold on all they could monopolize of privilege and power; with what resistance to the last they have endeavoured to shut out Dissenters from all the rights of Christians and of citizens. To this hour, had it been in the power of Ecclesiastics, the Test and Corporation Acts had never been repealed, or the Catholic disabilities removed. That which is their power gives sufficient evidence how they would act if they had exclusive possession of more. I mean the Universities, which they keep closed against Dissenters with such an obstinate and gothic bigotry. Nor does the injustice end here: there is a silent, social injustice, which Dissenters suffer; every one feels it, though it is not easily defined. The Churchman, on the strength of signing a Creed which he does not always believe, assumes to be of a higher religious caste than the Dissenter. It is not sufficient that Dissenters contribute from their worldly good to support a system which has no alliance with their conscience, but they must still further undergo the humiliation of being regarded as spiritual and social inferiors. Creeds are the allies of worldly policy, and ever have been since Christianity had the misfortune to become a state religion, for they are the main ties of that unnatural union of Christ’s religion to human governments—a union injurious to both, making the government unjust and partial, and religion selfish and secular. They are worldly in their objects, and they are worldly in their instruments and means. They are made the stepping stones to wealth, rank, and power; for if the Establishment did not give wealth, rank, and power, numbers of expectants would be moderate enough as to the Articles and Creeds. It would seem anomalous if universal history did not make it evident, that a body of men in all ages, pledged to denounce covetousness and earthly passions, pledged to preach humility after the example of a crucified master, pledged to curb by heavenly motives the abuse of power, should be of all men themselves the most insatiate in their desires after gain, the most haughty in their elevation to station, the severest and the most grinding in the exercise of prerogative, the least willing to mitigate it, and the most determined not to share it. In every period of the Church, the worldliness of Ecclesiastics, their ambition, and their love of lucre, have been proverbial, the scandal of Christians, and the scorn of unbelievers. The covetousness of the Priest, has, in all periods, been outstripped by his pride alone; and under every change in society, the Priesthood have taken care to secure themselves so that their lines should fall in the most pleasant places. The struggle is a worldly one from beginning to end, it is all of the world and the things of the world; if the prize were not of earth, we should hear far less noise amongst the combatants. The struggle is a worldly one, the policy is a worldly one, the means and ends are worldly. For are there any means so evil, that Creeds, if there is a purpose to be gained, will not tempt to, or assist with force, if there be the power to use it; with fraud, if there is a necessity that demands it? Creeds and doctrines have been maintained by frauds the most barefaced, by every artifice and by every falsehood. But Creeds are indirectly the cause of dire immorality; of immorality the worst in its kind, and the most evil in its effects: they corrupt motive in its very source, they weaken that sense of inward sincerity necessary to all that is true and noble in human character, they punish honesty, and they bribe to hypocrisy. How many minds have been robbed of their truthfulness, how many consciences have been despoiled of their integrity, how many hearts sacrificed their purity on the altar of interest and expediency, it would be a long and dark catalogue to enumerate. And it is truly painful to think, that this result is prepared for in the brightest and the best period of life. What must be the effect on a young man who, at the very threshold of his College studies, must profess to believe dogmas that he has scarcely read, that he has never examined; how much worse if he has examined and disbelieves them: if he be honest, he is excluded; the fear of his family starts before him; if he spares them, he ruins his soul; if he speaks the truth, he wrecks, perhaps, all his worldly fortunes beyond redemption. When he sees then the most solemn interests made mere matters of form, religious declarations the tests of honours and of office, the confessions of grave Ecclesiastics but a pompous and solemn hypocrisy, the zeal for worldly gain killing the ardour of religion, the zeal for religion itself only a means to get wealth and power; when, I say, he beholds all this, he can have no other feeling than that of unmitigated contempt for the hollow show of orthodoxy; he must observe that it is only an instrument, a mere make believe, theatrical acting; and the chances are many, that, disgusted with the whole affair, he transfers his disgust to religion in general, and makes shipwreck both of faith and virtue. Creeds are the support of Priestly intolerance; these are the statutes of the Priest. He does not, it is true, require you to believe them, but he requires you to say you believe them; say but that and your peace is made. These are his statutes on which he condemns, or on which he acquits; by which he tries your allegiance to sacerdotal authority, and by which, if he can, he will enforce it. Creeds are instruments of worldly and of spiritual despotism. The relation of the Priesthood to the civil power, is changeful and capricious; one time its slave, another time its tyrant. Cunning Kings have always had the sagacity to see that the safest course was to flatter and enrich the Priesthood, giving them the shield of the temporal power, and receiving in return the support of the whole spiritual armoury either from heaven or hell; and both, thus agreed and united, have been enabled to enslave the people with a most hopeless bondage. Let the Prince but heap good things on the Church, hate her enemies, curse her opponents, patronise her friends, the Church gratefully in return submits to him with most obsequious obedience. But reverse the case, and suppose the Prince not only ventures to do without the Priests, but attempts to curtail some of their good things, then no epithet is too strong to mark his iniquity; he is then profane, heretical, infidel: and if the superstition of the people give them the power, they compel him to bend before spiritual prowess, and from being their master, reduce him to their slave. The spirit of a Creed-enforcing Clergy is also seen in this fact, that they dislike the civil power more and more as that power becomes liberal and enlightened; they oppose it, and abuse it in exact proportion as it deserves to be admired and praised: if there be but a symptom that their monopoly is likely to be broken, and that others are about to share blessings which they had so long kept to themselves as to think only their own, immediately the Monarch must be prepared to meet the fierceness of their enmity. It is a combat to which many a Monarch has been unequal, and to which many a one has fallen a victim. Tyranny on their side, and slavery on that of others, is the congenial element in which most established Priesthoods move, breathe, and have their being; the men themselves are the victims of their circumstances, circumstances which the influence of Creeds have made; for Creeds are the parents of Priestcraft, and Priestcraft is identical with religious despotism.

Creeds are the allies of worldly policy; Creeds are the creatures of the Church, and the Church is the creature of the state. A national Church with Creeds for its tests, and legal support and legal penalties, can be nothing else. And the English Establishment is peculiarly in this condition; are not her Bishops appointed by the government? Are we not all aware that every Prelate is virtually the selected of the minister for the time being? Are we not aware that her canons and constitution, her catechisms and articles, her rubrics and her ceremonies, are enforced and established by acts of parliament? Are we not especially aware that her wealthy revenues are derived from compulsory exaction, and that payment is wrenched from Dissenters by the strong arm of the law?—Whence, but from this source, can the Clergy claim their wealth? By what other power could they enforce it? Every one, who is not a simpleton, knows that the vast possessions in which the Church rejoices, are not free will offerings, and that they have stronger security in the Courts of Exchequer and Chancery, than in the consciences of those who pay them. They were at first endowments to the Church of Rome; it is by act of parliament that they enrich those who maintain the Thirty-nine Articles, instead of praying for souls in Purgatory. The Monarch, in this country, is acknowledged the supreme head of the Church on earth; and though that Monarch may be a girl of eighteen, a boy of eleven, an infant, or an idiot, it is exclusion from the established ministry to deny it, and was once high treason. To be persuaded of this fact, we have only to recollect that the law of the land deposed the Romish Priesthood, and that the Act of Uniformity excluded from the service of the altar two thousand non-conforming Ministers. “The second Canon excommunicates every one who shall endeavour to limit or extenuate the King’s authority in Ecclesiastical cases, as it is settled by the laws of the kingdom; and declares he shall not be restored until he has recanted such impious errors.” “The thirty-seventh Canon obliges all persons, to their utmost, to keep and observe all and every one of the statutes and laws made for restoring to the crown the ancient jurisdiction it had over the Ecclesiastical state.” “The twelfth of King James’s Canons declares, that whoever shall affirm that it is lawful for the order either of Ministers or Laics, to make canons, decrees, or constitutions, in Ecclesiastical matters, without the King’s authority, and submits himself to be governed by them, is, ipso facto, excommunicated, and is not to be absolved before he has publicly repented and renounced these Anabaptistical errors.” Queen Anne, in an angry letter to the Archbishop, made the convocation aware that “she was resolved to maintain her supremacy as a fundamental part of the constitution of the Church of England.” “Archbishop Bancroft, when at the head of all the Clergy of England, delivered articles to King James for increasing the Ecclesiastical courts, and for annexing all Ecclesiastical as well as Civil power to the Crown. This may be seen at large in Lord Coke’s third institute.” On such grounds as these, men claim authority to impose Creeds on their fellow-citizens, to proclaim themselves the commissioned messengers of heaven, to assert religious supremacy and to arrogate a divine right; to bind and loose, to condemn and to forgive. I heard a person lately well remark, that if you gave him the incomes of the Clergy, he would give you the social status of those from whom they were taken, and vice versa. At ordination, they solemnly affirm that they are moved by the Holy Ghost; but if the extreme stipend were two or three hundred a year, this inspiration would seldom be found to fall on the son of a Duke, or the brother of an Earl.

But, whatever be the abuses which Creeds occasion, or whatever be the evils they inflict, it may still be said the Church has authority to decree them; and what she has authority to decree, she has authority to enforce. To one of the strongest arguments on this point lately renewed, and more strenuously urged than it had ever been before, I shall here devote a few general observations.

The claim to dictate and enforce Creeds by the Clergy of our Establishment, is founded on another claim which, by a party of divines, is recently asserted with a zeal not inferior to that of the Romish Priesthood; I allude to the doctrine of Apostolic succession. It is pretended that the national Clergy by deriving a mission from the immediate disciples of Christ, have authority, by a mystical communication of divine energy transmitted to them from age to age, an authority to decide what is, and what is not, the true faith. On this ground the high Churchmen consistently deny to all other Ministers the power to teach or to preach, and with one fell stroke, cut off the whole of the Dissenters from the spiritual body of Christ. On this ground we may ask several questions which must receive very unsatisfactory, or very contradictory answers. First—where, in the gospel history, is it proposed, as an essential qualification of a religious teacher, that he shall have an uninterrupted succession from the Apostles? Paul, in his letters to Timothy and Titus, enumerates many qualities which should distinguish the Christian Minister; but Apostolical succession is not once mentioned amongst the number. In the early age of Christianity, we have abundant evidence, both from Evangelical and Ecclesiastical history, that many preached the gospel who had no such authority as Churchmen call Ordination or Holy orders. Secondly—is it possible that the Apostles could have any successors? The Apostles had powers to which no Priest in his highest pride, will dare to lay claim; the Apostles healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead; they proved their mission by miracles, and this gave a peculiarity to their office which, it will be admitted, was not transferable. Besides, between the office of an Apostle and that of a Bishop, there is no identity, and few analogies. An Apostle was a missionary, a Bishop is a temporal and spiritual peer: there is no more resemblance of one to the other, than of his grace of Canterbury amidst the sumptuous luxury of his palace, to a Moravian preacher in the snows of Lapland; than of the Bishop of Exeter declaiming politics in the senate, to Felix Neff proclaiming Christ amidst the Alps. An Apostle was a poor man, a Bishop is a rich one; an Apostle was a pilgrim and wanderer, a Bishop is a mitred prince; an Apostle was the object of contumely and scorn to a world which was not worthy of him, a Bishop is the praised and the applauded by a world of which he is worthy; an Apostle was the servant of the humble and the lowly, a Bishop is the companion of the exalted and the great; an Apostle was the object of state persecution, a Bishop is the favourite of state patronage: by what paradoxical mistake, therefore, one office came to be derived from the other, it is a puzzle to conjecture. Thirdly—by what sort of evidence is the succession to be proved; what are the conditions which render it true and genuine? By what signs am I to know that the Ecclesiastical concatenation is one whole unbroken chain, without a single heretical flaw? By what signs am I to know that the sacerdotal mystery is rightly given, that there is no spuriousness, no falsehood, and no forgery? Is every peasant, who hears a sermon from his Parson, to be in possession of that historic lore, which shall enable him to determine, by erudite tracing of age to age, that orthodox hands have been laid on orthodox heads, and that he to whom he commits the salvation of his soul has all the conditions of a true priesthood? Fourthly—Whence does the Church of England derive her succession?—That she derives it from the Church of Rome, all authentic ecclesiastical history confirms. The establishment of the English Church can be clearly traced no further than the mission of Austin the Romish Monk; and it is well known, indeed, there is no attempt at denial, that all which have since been called papal errors, were then proclaimed and adopted. The preacher came with the pope’s sanction, the English received the pope’s religion, and acknowledged the pope’s authority. It is vain beyond all vanities to argue for succession in the English Establishment, and assert its independence on the Church of Rome. Its origin is from a Roman Missionary; it admits the validity of Roman ordination; its liturgies and rituals are but garbled or abridged translations from Roman formularies. Whence then is the independence? If unbroken succession be the absolute condition of ecclesiastical authority, then the English establishment must either admit the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, or acknowledge itself guilty of rebellion, and confess that it is wanting in one of the prime essentials of a Christian Church. But our Establishment accuses the Romish system of all manner of errors and of evils, of idolatry, of tyranny, of persecution, of doing dishonour to the supremacy of God, and of undermining the merits of Christ,—of being an awful and fatal apostacy: surely then the purity of that descent may well be doubted, which comes from so corrupt a source. The Church of Rome is called by all our declamatory divines the “mother of harlots,”—if that of England be one of her daughters, it is a hard task for a controversialist to defend the legitimacy of her birth or the purity of her character. Moreover, that is a queer kind of unbroken succession, which could in a few years reflect so many hues of doctrine, which turned from reign to reign like the weathercock before the wind, as royal caprice determined, from the bigoted half popery of the Eighth Henry to the whole Protestantism of the Sixth Edward; from the violent Catholic Mary, to the equally violent reformed Elizabeth; from a Cranmer to a Gardiner, and from a Gardiner to a Laud. It is not, therefore, grateful or graceful in our Establishment to heap odium on her mother, her from whom she must date her existence, to whom she traces her clergy, and from whom she has received her creed.

III. In disputing against creeds, and churches which are the creatures of creeds, I do not deny that religion most genuine and pure, may exist in many forms—and may be as fervent amongst the adherents of Establishments as amongst the most zealous of dissenting churches. Religion, I consider, a necessity of the human heart; it may grovel in the dust or aspire to the skies—it may appeal to our fears or to our hopes—it may create hideous images or rejoice in beautiful picturings; it may decorate the altar with flowers, or bathe it in blood; but still it belongs to us, is of us, and that of which we cannot, if we would, divest ourselves. While man has within his soul admiration of greatness and power, unsatisfied desires and perishing pleasures; while he has many griefs and many tears; while there are those living whom he loves, and those departed whom he mourns; while his existence is thus bound to the past and to the future; while he has speculations that seek but find no limit, musings on his own and universal destiny,—he must have religion to destroy these, and you destroy religion, but you also destroy humanity. If the strongest excitements and the deepest contrasts could fill and satisfy the human soul, our age and country supply them; whatever would fix us to the material and the present we have in all possible varieties, both in their glory and their grossness. If the spirit is to be seen anxious with poverty we have but a few steps to walk from rejoicing splendour to pining misery. Civilization is amongst us with all its luxuries and with all its woes. Thousands toil for daily bread, and thousands more languish for daily pleasures. Yet nobler things have we than these. Our science, our philosophy, and our literature, are rich beyond expression. Our mechanism is akin to magic, and our industry is like the regularity of nature; the stir of many interests is abroad, and the struggle of many principles. The power of fresh life is in the social heart, and the courage of free speech upon the lips. The tide of thought and liberty moves onward with majestic swell, and no one can say “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be staid.” Whatever there be in wealth, in power, in glory, in ambition, that desires triumphant sway and secures all it desires; whatever there be in speculation of boundless enterprize or capacity of gigantic achievement, our times may boast, yet they remove not the need of religion, but the religion which the heart demands is not what creeds or churches can give either to a nation or an individual.

Creeds are the allies of establishments, and establishments are the friends of the world. Their whole history and tendency are evidence of this. But, far be it from me to say that this has no qualification. All old institutions more or less knit themselves into popular veneration, the religious as well as others. We cannot look back upon the church of our country, even in its Romish form, without some of the reverence with which our nature compels us to gaze on fallen greatness; and now that the mitre is worn by other heads, and the crosier passed into other hands, now that its good deeds reveal themselves in the calm of the past, we can regard its evil ones more in sorrow than in anger. Zealots, who would eternalize the darkest creeds that superstition ever shaped, who would build up the throne of proudest priesthood, declaim against Popery in the most popish spirit: but while national feelings have any power, while a single venerable structure stands upon our soil in which we hear the voices of our ancestors, and from which a thousand years look down upon us, the Roman church, with all its errors, is linked by sacred memories to our history. It laid the foundation of our civilized existence; it grew with our growth and it strengthened with our strength. When our country was yet divided amongst barbarian kings, the monk of Rome lifted up the cross of Christ, and the heart of the savage was subdued to the Prince of Peace. It accompanied our national independence, it trained our fathers’ spirits when living, and now they are dead it shelters their bones. Through all historic changes, and through most sanguinary struggles, it preserved alive the spirit of our common Christianity.

Within it arose many of our greatest men; it nurtured many of our purest and holiest characters; it reared the altar at which an Anselm ministered and before which an Alfred prayed. But wealth commonly brings worldliness, and as it is with laymen, so is it with ecclesiastics. The church was fed and fostered by Saxon piety, and when the conquest gave the island new masters it suffered nothing by the change. The progress of aggrandizement went forward with a quicker pace and a more grasping hand. Spiritual authority allied itself more firmly to temporal majesty; celestial vocation would have feudal titles; the coil would be transformed to the coronet; the humble robe to the princely purple; the voice of humility swelled into absolute command, monks took their places above barons, and the primate sat only below the throne.

But under that pomp and ostentation, we say not that all was hollow—that there was not much of genuine piety far beyond the reach of history. In the cells of these gorgeous abbeys there were many who did in reality leave the world and its wickedness behind them. There were some who wept and prayed in no feigned prostration, who worshipped, it may be with superstition, but still with sensibility and an upright conscience. In that stream of melody which pealed at solemn midnight through many a dome that now lies mouldering, there were some hallelujahs which reached the throne of God and mingled with the hymn of angels. The pavements over which we tread in many a secluded ruin may have been worn by kneeling martyrs that now sleep in peace beneath them: within these massive buildings so grey and time-wrecked, how often might be found at the evening hour, when the dim religious light melted through the painted windows, and the vesper song softened through the lofty vaults, scattered worshippers who were feeding their immortal life: how frequently within those temples may the serf in faith and prayer have forgotten his bonds, and only remembered that he was the brother of Jesus, and the son of God. And amongst that priesthood so often stigmatized unjustly by indiscriminate bigotry, many were worthy of their office; they were the poor man’s friends when poverty was hopeless; they were his brethren when to the worldly powers poverty was slavery; they were his supporters and consolers when he had many to oppress and few to cheer him; they were with him in joy and sorrow, in sickness and death, when his joy and sorrow, his sickness and death, were to the mass of his worldly superiors, a matter of contemptible indifference. In the times to which I refer, the Church was a most excellent antagonist against political assumption, a barrier against despotism, a shield for the people against the crown; but now it is an ally of the crown only when the crown is against the people: in either, the Crown and the Church struggle may have been only for supremacy, but whatever were their respective motives, the people were the gainers; the clergy might make them slaves for another world, but they saved them from being slaves in this. The power of the priest could curb the ambition of the ruler; and, in the ruler himself, the will of the monarch was held in check by the conscience of the devotee. Ecclesiastical institutions were then not wholly ineffective, but now the religious and social interests of man are better secured than by any struggle between the superstitious fears of the Prince, and the spiritual threatenings of the Priest. From these social changes, Church Establishments outliving the slaveries which they meliorated, become inflictors of slavery in return, and hang as millstones and dead weights on every effort for freedom and advancement. But if we are to have authority on conscience at all in the form of institutions, I would rather it should be absolute and unchangeable, uniform, solemn, and imposing; and if there is to be submission, I prefer it should be to that which is believed to be stedfast and infallible; for then, if we had not the freedom of thought, we might at least have the peace of piety; if we had not the independence of men, we might hope for the meekness of children.

We cannot say that the English Church in its Protestant state has lost all claims to traditional veneration. We may, however, safely assert, that in becoming protestant, it has not become less earthly, and that if transformed in anything, it is not from the Spirit of the world. We see very clearly, that it is not in any way distinguished for free or progressive amendment; and among the Reformed of European churches it is most the creature of the world, most the lover of the world, most dependent on the world, both in its origin and its continuance.

On the continent it commenced with the ecclesiastical powers; in ours it commenced with the civil; and the church in this country adopted the new doctrine rather as a matter of command than as a matter of conscience. Whatever have been the theological vibrations of the Establishment, or whatever its theological inconsistencies, we deny not that it has had within it right noble spirits, and that it has them still, and while we condemn such systems, we do not so much condemn, as lament the fine natures which they have misdirected. Numbers we are aware are now in its ranks, which are the ornaments of life and to whom the world is in many ways indebted; and if it were not so, there are those gone by who would fully dignify her. Amongst her members we recognise many of the great lights both of our nation and our nature; a Jeremy Taylor of rich eloquence and rare sweetness of spirit; a Barrow with a mind as lofty as it was simple and an oratory as prodigal in thought as it was massive in logic; a Chillingworth, the prince of reasoners, who never allowed his polemics to ruffle his meekness, to warp his candour, or to deaden his charity; a Berkeley, whose genius was only inferior to his sanctity, and whose subtle philosophy never disturbed the simplicity of his truly child-like nature; a Bedel, who was humble and generous when it was the fashion to oppress, who though the bishop of a foreign faith in the midst of a people whom his nation had aggrieved, made his way to their hearts, and was the object of their blessings; and in our own day there has been the good and sainted Heber, who combined piety with humanity, and who adorned practical virtue with all the beauty of the poet and the Christian.

Names like these might throw a lustre over any system; it is only to be regretted that any system has not been more fruitful in their production. In any system, we cannot expect that such men should be abundant, but observation compels us to confess that the Church has taken more pride in the reputation of her heroes, than in resembling them. If we are to judge results by her possessions and opportunities compared with her moral or spiritual achievements, her works of worldliness far surpass her works of godliness. Her earthly means have been unbounded, but where are her heavenly trophies? She has nothing in comparison to her opportunities to produce in justification of her moral and national stewardship. Wealth she has had even to fulness. Her lines have fallen in pleasant places; hers have been the green pastures and hers the still waters; the tenth of the nation’s produce has been reserved for her altars. Political power has likewise been hers. Her mitred ministers are amongst the state’s chief senators. Whether it be seemly or not, that preachers of the crucified should sit in courts of proud and worldly legislation, we here forbear to discuss; but once there, the spirit of the crucified, and of the citizen sanctified by that spirit, might have been nobly manifested; even there, Ministers of Christ might have done a glorious work. Men whose lives had been disciplined by severe and various study; men of chastened passions and solemn meditation; men who had gone through the humanizing duties of pastoral gradation from the village pulpit to the episcopal throne, might be thought a happy counterpoise to the hoary worldliness or youthful rashness of mere temporal Peers; they would rebuke, we might suppose, the assumptions of aristocracy, and be as the voice of God for the rights of the poor. Men who proclaimed that gospel which is full of mercy and compassion, would resist oppression to the last, and denounce sanguinary laws with the whole force of their authority; men who were followers of peace would arrest the blood-hand of war, and quell with all gentle suasion the horrid spirit of destruction; men appointed to be teachers of the ignorant, and lights to the blind, would be the friends of universal instruction; men who were the Priests of that God before whom all are equal, the Apostles of that Jesus who lived and died for all, would be ever the friends of liberty and brotherhood. But, I may ask, when have the Bishops, as a body, not been against the people, and with the wealthy and the noble? When have they been the first to come forward to denounce long existing, tolerated, but oppressive, abuses? When have they raised their voice, as Ministers of God, against Ministers of the Crown, to avert the horrid curse of war? When have they given their influence for a free and generous education, which should be full and boundless as the heart of charity? When, rather, have they not thrown their most inveterate opposition against it? When is it that a single effort of national liberty or religious has met their cordial support? To the moment of despair they stood against the Catholic and the Dissenter, to the last hour they will also resist the Jew. The defender of the wronged, the pleader for the weak, the opponent of sanctified prejudices, the enthusiast for human reforms, the advocate for peace, the apostle of general education, have never in their most hopeless hour raised their eyes towards the bench of Bishops with any expectations of support.

With wealth, with influence, with law, and with scholarship, the Church has done, and is doing no great spiritual work for her country, or for mankind, proportioned to her means. She makes a show of upholding her Creeds, but to many, even of her own members, they are but empty sounds or convenient mockeries. When we look for any permanent impression on the popular mind, we have yet to ask concerning the Church, what has she done? Has she Christianized any great tracts of Heathenism? The English Establishment, as a Church, has exhibited no missionary zeal, and can show no missionary triumphs. Individuals and bodies that belong to her communion, have undoubtedly been active in the great movements that distinguish modern times, but the impulse has been from outside the Church, and not from within it—from the zeal of the Sectaries, and not from the Creeds or Constitution of the Church. On the contrary, of those who never owned the Establishment, you might find proofs of Missionary zeal from Indus to the Pole, and from Andes to the Alps. But has she protestantized our own empire? Consult the writings of Doctor Baines, or those of Doctor Wiseman; nay, let the lamentations of Reformation Society itself, ever wailing over the increase of Popery, give the answer; look through the villages and the glens of England, where Roman Catholic Chapels are starting up as from the earth, and you will find the answer fully justified. Ask it in the cities and the mountains of Ireland, the shout of millions will proclaim what Established Protestantism has done with all her Creeds and Clergy after centuries of existence, and a countless expenditure. Three hundred years have nearly expired since the reformed standard has been planted on that soil, and after all the spoliation and persecution to which the country has been subjected, after all the blood and sorrow that have been expended in the work of compulsory proselytism, Popery has grown stronger, and Protestantism is expiring. The people pay with repugnance a priesthood in whom they have not faith, but no power can force them to the worship in which they have no heart, and they prefer to be taxed rather than be taught. They are repelled further and further from that system which commenced in a blunder, and has been continued by rapacity, which reverses the precepts of Christ, using the sword where he commands it to be sheathed—which reverses the course of the olden Israelites finding a land of milk and honey, but leaving it a wilderness, having the pillar of fire always before, and the pillar of cloud ever behind; the one kept in flame by hatred and strife, and the other continually dark with maledictions and tears. But admitting the difficulties of proselytism, examine the moral state of those over whom the Church has had undivided control—those with whom there has been least of foreign interference, and I may appeal to her most strenuous defenders, whether she has not allowed thousands of human souls to grow up around her for whom she provided no shelter, whose hearts and wants she made no effort to reach: they lived without her teaching, they mourned without her solace, they sickened without her prayer, and until she received the fees for their burial, she was ignorant of their existence. Yet, after all, by many she has been called “The poor man’s Church.” It is true that for some years past, and especially at present, there has been a species of excitement and activity in the church: but so far as these have moral life in them, so far as they concern the spiritual interests of the people, whence did they originate? Where were they before John Wesley and Whitfield raised their soul-piercing cries, and awoke the sense of immortality that was dormant in the minds of besotted multitudes? Did the church join with these men, or rather did it not persecute, calumniate, expel them—say and do all manner of evil against them? What at the present hour is the activity of the church? Much, it may be, is sincere and conscientious, but greatly more an emulation with dissenters in which the pregnant elements are jealousy and fear. Much, it may be, of disinterested action for the souls of men, but more it is to be feared for the order and the church. Great excitement there is in the Establishment, but little of calm and healthy action—a mighty stir of polemics that make few converts, and of societies that beat the air. The church has neither union within, nor peace without. Her hand is against all, and the hands of all are against her. She holds forth creeds as the symbols of unity, and yet within her own courts are all sorts of divisions, a chaos of voices that make her the very Babel of theology; here is one preaching the grace of Palagius, and there another that of Augustine; one arguing for the hell of Calvin, and another all but teaching the purgatory of the pope: one a Boanerges for the Bible, and another an apostle for tradition; with one, Rome is the mother of abominations, and with another she is the mistress of churches. Amidst the din, then, of polemics, politics, and theological contradictions, of inward confusion and outward strifes, how are we to catch the voice of moral power and of gospel truth? The truth must be told, there is no grand or concentrative energy of any sort in the church; neither faith nor freedom, neither bold speculation nor a mighty spiritual zeal; there is no room even for a gigantic fanaticism or a picturesque superstition; upon the whole the strife is of this world, and for it; a strife for wealth or place, in which the spiritual is swallowed in the earthly. With all her riches and honours; with all her show of dignities and pride of prelacy, she is yet poor in enlightened esteem, poorer still in general affection; without authority to sway the superstitious or liberality to attach the thinking, she has neither the submission of faith nor the approbation of reason. She has, considering her position and means, fulfilled no great Christian or Protestant mission; is she then in a humbler sphere, the friend of general education? Passing over the Universities, which with a heavy hand she has bolted against dissenters, is she favourable to the instruction of the youthful poor? No: except in connection with her ecclesiastical supremacy. Until recently she had no zeal whatever in the matter: but other parties becoming active, under the broad gaze of public observation, both her fears and her interest were awakened. Whilst others were toiling, she for very shame could not sit wholly idle, and she therefore adopted education, so far as it was an instrument to counteract her rivals or to preserve her authority. But to the last and to the death, she is the sworn enemy to any system of popular instruction which is comprehensive, liberal, and unsectarian. In this great country, where, thanks to law and not to creeds, each man may hold and speak his own opinion, she meets with defiance and resistance every movement towards a large and equal distribution of knowledge, for lack of which the people are literally perishing. In a country like this where sects are so many and so various, and where each has an equal claim on the blessings of civilized institutions, with a bigotry equalled only by its injustice, she would usurp the monopoly of national instruction. This is in the true spirit of creeds, and however repugnant to Christian equity is fully consistent with worldly policy.

When the church of England seceded from that of Rome, if she cut off some theological errors, she showed no such disposition respecting her earthly riches. It cannot be doubted that in the Reformed Establishment, a greed of lucre remained as deep as was ever in the Romish, less ideal in its form, and more selfish in its spirit. In our times men absorb the interests of their church in the interests of themselves, in olden times men lost themselves in the glory of their church; in that was centered every thing, even passion itself, as one great and mighty sentiment. From this it was arose the solemn structure of universal empire; from this sprung forth the vision of a glory that was to fill the universe. It was this called up a power before which monarchs bowed, which armed itself with the terrors of hell and crowned itself with the stars of heaven. It was this which gave genius the sublimity of religious inspiration, and which has left for a colder age the forms of beauty to which faith gave life; it was this which could speak to the world as to single audience with an eloquence that must live while language has existence. It may be called fanaticism and ambition, but it is a fanaticism and an ambition that had something unworldly to dignify them. The reformed church had preserved the creeds of the ancient one, but not its creativeness; it has not given conscience freedom, but it has stripped faith of poetry. Even the ceremonies and forms which it has preserved are without energy and inspiration—the mere mimicries of superstition unfraught with a single breath of its enthusiasm. Writings of no common eloquence have eulogized the cathedral service; it deserves all that can be said of it, and so do the temples themselves; no one can hear the one when it receives right expression without solemn emotion, and no one can behold the antique majesty of the other, but in silent veneration. The poetry of these things is beautiful, but what is the reality? A sad contrast—in general, a cold and heartless utterance of the service, unoccupied pews, a few listless hearers, feeble choirs, that seem rather to sing the requiem than the triumph of the church, ostentation without grandeur, and formality without grace. Here, as in every other department, we find the dominant spirit of worldliness. Though this service depends for much of its impression on ritual beauty, yet the higher clergy continually encroach on the revenues and means of sustaining it. “When we see,” says Dr. Wiseman, “the cathedral service shrunk into the choir originally designed for the private daily worship of God’s special ministers, or when we find the entire congregation scattered over a small portion of the repaired chancel, while the rest of the edifice is a majestic ruin, as I but lately witnessed, assuredly one must be more prone to weep than to exult at the change which has taken place, since these stately fabricks were erected.” I would not have the world hurled back into Popery; but if we are to have Romish creeds, rather than have them in repulsive nakedness, give them to us covered and adorned with the grace of Romish ceremonies; if we are to resign our liberty, give us at least grandeur and pageantry to amuse our slavery.

But creeds exist otherwise than in formal expression. A creed is the standard of a church, it may be the spirit of a sect. And from the antagonistic aspect which each sect bears to another, and the centralized organization which it has within itself, this spirit may have a fierce and powerful operation. The Church-creed is defined; the Sect-creed is vague, and may depend for interpretation on narrow and bitter prejudice: the Church-creed may possibly lie dormant, but there is no escape from the wakeful vigilance of a religious surveillance. What some sects do by enlarged and rigid co-operation, others effect by compact and separate unions. The smallness of the assemblies, or the gradations of dependency, puts one individual within the immediate ken of another, and thus, if by chance a free thought should be born, there is little hope that it shall live. Take methodism as an illustration; so gigantic and yet so minute: with its band-meetings, its class-meetings, its district assemblies, and its general conference—leaving not a spot where a heretic could hide himself. In such a system there is neither room nor a name for liberty, from the preacher who is under the brow of his conference to the member who lives in the eye of his class-leader. It is not that such a system creates a terror of expression, from the first it initiates a slavish intellect—and tends to all the vices of rancour, bigotry, hypocrisy, and subserviency, to which such an intellect is allied.

It may be said that my own community in being also a sect, is open to similar accusations. I do not say that a dictation of belief is essential to a sect, but it may possibly attach to it with all the despotism of the most formal creed. If a creed in spirit or expression be necessary to the constitution of a sect, those then are no sect with whom I would desire to hold communion. If all in my own belief or any other, which is great, good, pure, and eternal, inspired by the mind of God and blessed to the heart of man; if all which disseminates virtue; which justifies Providence, which emancipates and glorifies society, goes onward with undeviating pace, if the Kingdom of Jehovah extends, and the throne of Christ is reared, and the temple of righteousness is beautified, then, forgetting ourselves and forgetting our sect, we should rejoice with an honest and generous exultation. We trust the day will come, when the spirit and the life of Christ, and not the formularies of men, will be the standards of true religion; when we shall have unity instead of divisions, when we shall have charity instead of creeds, when heretic and orthodox shall be lost in the common name of Christian.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture X.

Footnote 540:

Art. 8.

Footnote 541:

Michelet, vol. ii. pp. 124, 125.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE XI.

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

“WOE UNTO THEM THAT SAY, ... LET THE COUNSEL OF THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL DRAW NIGH AND COME, THAT WE MAY KNOW IT; WOE UNTO THEM THAT CALL EVIL GOOD, AND GOOD EVIL; THAT PUT DARKNESS FOR LIGHT, AND LIGHT FOR DARKNESS; THAT PUT BITTER FOR SWEET, AND SWEET FOR BITTER.”—Isaiah v. 18-20.

The Divine sentiments towards right and wrong every man naturally believes to be a reflexion of whatever is most pure and solemn in his own. We cannot be sincerely persuaded, that God looks with aversion on dispositions which we revere as good and noble; or that he regards with lax indifference the selfish and criminal passions which awaken our own disgust. We may well suppose, indeed, his scrutiny more searching, his estimate more severely true, his rebuking look more awful, than our self-examination and remorse can fitly represent; but we cannot doubt that our moral emotions, as far as they go, are in sympathy with his; that we know, by our own consciousness, the general direction of his approval and displeasure; and that, in proportion as our perceptions of Duty are rendered clear, our judgment more nearly approaches the precision of the Omniscient award. Our own conscience is the window of heaven through which we gaze on God: and, as its colours perpetually change, his aspect changes too; if they are bright and fair, he dwells as in the warm light of a rejoicing love; if they are dark and turbid, he hides himself in robes of cloud and storm. When you have lost your self-respect, you have never thought yourself an object of divine complacency. In moments fresh from sin, flushed with the shame of an insulted mind, when you have broken another resolve, or turned your back upon a noble toil, or succumbed to a mean passion, or lapsed into the sickness of self-indulgence, could you ever turn a clear and open face to God, nor think it terrible to meet his eye? Could you imagine yourself in congeniality with him, when you gave yourself up to the voluble sophistry of self-excuse, and the loose hurry of forgetfulness? Or did you not discern him rather in your own accusing heart, and meet him in the silent anguish of full confession, and find in the recognition of your alienation the first hope of return? To all unperverted minds, the verdict of conscience sounds with a preternatural voice; it is not the homely talk of their own poor judgment, but an oracle of the sanctuary. There is something of anticipation in our remorse, as well as of retrospect; and we feel that it is not the mere survey of a gloomy past with the slow lamp of our understanding, but a momentary piercing of the future with the vivid lightning of the skies. Our moral nature, left to itself, intuitively believes that guilt is an estrangement from God,—an unqualified opposition to his will,—a literal service of the enemy; that he abhors it, and will give it no rest till it is driven from his presence, that is, into annihilation: that no part of our mind belongs to him but the pure, and just, and disinterested affections which he fosters; the faithful will which he strengthens; the virtue, often damped, whose smoaking flax he will not quench, and the good resolves, ever frail, whose bruised reed he will not break: and that he has no relation but of displeasure, no contact but of resistance, with our selfishness and sin. In the simple faith of the conscience it is no figure of speech to say, that God “is angry with the wicked every day” and is “of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” So long as the natural religion of the heart is undisturbed, to sin is, in the plainest and most positive sense, to set up against Heaven, and frustrate its will.

Soon, however, the understanding disturbs the tranquillity of this belief, and constructs a rival creed. The primitive conception of God is acquired, I believe, without reasoning, and emerges from the affections; it is a transcript of our own emotions,—an investiture of them with external personality and infinite magnitude. But a secondary idea of Deity arises in the intellect, from its reasonings about causation. Curiosity is felt respecting the origin of things; and the order, beauty, and mechanism of external nature, are too conspicuous not to force upon the observation the conviction of a great architect of the universe, from whose designing reason its forces and its laws mysteriously sprung. Hence the intellectual conception of God the Creator, which comes into inevitable collision with the moral notion of God the holy watch of virtue. For if the system of creation is the production of his Omniscience; if he has constituted human nature as it is, and placed it in the scene whereon it acts; if the arrangements by which happiness is allotted, and character is formed, are the contrivance of his thought and the work of his hand, then the sufferings and the guilt of every being were objects of his original contemplation, and the productions of his own design. The deed of crime must, in this case, be as much an integral part of his Providence as the efforts and sacrifices of virtue; and the monsters of licentiousness and tyranny, whose images deform the scenery of history, are no less truly his appointed instruments than the martyr and the sage. And though we remain convinced that he does not make choice of evil in his government, for its own sake, but only for ultimate ends worthy of his perfections, still we can no longer see how he can truly hate that which he employs for the production of good. That which is his chosen instrument cannot be sincerely regarded as his everlasting enemy; and only figuratively can he be said to repudiate a power which he continually wields. There must be some sense in which it appears, in the eye of Omniscience, to be eligible; some point of view at which its horrors vanish; and where the moral distinctions, which we feel ourselves impelled to venerate, disappear from the regards of God.

Here, then, is a fearful contradiction between the religion of conscience and the religion of the understanding: the one pronouncing evil to be the antagonist, the other to be the agent, of the divine will. In every age has this difficulty laid a heavy weight upon the human heart; in every age has it pointed the sarcasm of the blasphemer; mingled an occasional sadness with the hopes of benevolence; and tinged the devotion of the thoughtful with a somewhat melancholy trust. The whole history of speculative religion is one prolonged effort of the human mind to destroy this contrariety; system after system has been born in the struggle to cast the oppression off; with what result, it will be my object at present to explain. The question which we have to consider is this: “How should a Christian think of the origin and existence of evil?” I propose to advert, first, to the speculative; secondly, to the scriptural; thirdly, to the moral relations of the subject; to inquire what relief we can obtain from philosophical schemes, from biblical doctrine, and from practical Christianity.

I. Notwithstanding the ingenuity of philosophers in varying the form and language of their systems, there can be but two solutions offered to the great problem respecting evil. The benevolence of the Creator may be vindicated, by denying that he is the author of evil; or, by pronouncing it his mere tool, unavoidably introduced for the production of greater good.

(1.) In Greece, the genius of whose people anticipated most of the great ideas which have since occupied the world, we find the first clear trace of the doctrine of two original causes, one good, the other evil, of the order and disorder of the universe.[542] Amid the almost universal pantheism, which gave the sanction of philosophy to a corrupting mythology, one or two great thinkers seized on the true conception of an intelligent, eternal, infinite Mind; not mixed up in indissoluble oneness with the universe, like the principle of life with an animal or vegetable organism, but wholly external to matter, capable of acting objectively upon it, of moulding it into form, of assigning to it laws, of disposing it into uniform arrangements, and subordinating it to the production of beauty, the reception of life and soul, and the ends of benevolence. With the absolute perfection, intellectual and moral, of the creative spirit, there was nothing to interfere; he called into existence only what is good,—light, life, happiness, wisdom, harmony, virtue. All else was to be ascribed to the imperfect materials from which the universe was constructed. Of these he was not supposed to be the author; no conception was entertained of creation out of nothing by the volition of the divine and solitary Spirit. Co-eternally with him, matter was thought to have existed, inert, and dark and formless,—the boundless and unworked quarry, whence the great Artist of earth and skies moulded the orbs of heaven, and furnished his mansions of space with magnificence and beauty. The materials thus provided to his hand, did not afford unlimited facilities for the execution of his good designs; they had the inherent and obstinate properties of all matter, of which skill might variously avail itself, but which Omnipotence could not utterly subdue. They for ever dragged down every being towards the passiveness and chaos of the primeval state, and established a universal gravitation towards nonentity. Hence a ceaseless tendency in all things to descend from the higher to the lower states of existence, and to slip from the divine into the inert: on the soul of man were forces impelling it into the grosser animal life; in the animal life, a propensity towards disease and death; and, in lifeless organisms, a law of corruption and return to atoms. In this unconquerable sluggishness of matter, and not in the intention of the Creator, was to be found the source of all evil, natural and moral. The supreme Spirit had called into being whatever is fair and blessed and pure; and that there is no more good, was due to the resistance which his materials offered to his will, and which had made his execution finite, while his desires were infinite.

In this system, all faults and imperfections are attributed to the opposition of a passive and evil principle, co-existent with the First Cause, and restraining him within certain limits in working out the problem of creation. The essential idea of the scheme is, that the actual frame of the universe is the result of a struggle between two conflicting energies, both primitive and eternal, to the one of which is to be referred all that is good, to the other whatever is evil. Make then a slight and superficial change in this scheme; throw aside its abstract and philosophical dress; personify this impracticable material principle which stands in the way of the Creator’s glorious designs: call it, instead of inert, obstinate; instead of the residence of death, the destroyer of life; instead of a weight on the Divinity, a force against him; in short, treat it, not as negative, but as positive; not as impervious to light, but as the power of darkness; not as a physical obstruction, but as in real antipathy to God: and by such assumption of personality, this hostile energy becomes an active principle of evil, a malignant and antagonist God, busy in frustrating the purposes of Providential goodness, and spreading ruin, disorder, and guilt over the fair regions of nature and the soul.

This doctrine of a good and evil spirit, engaged in perpetual conflict on the theatre of the universe, is then only the popular and mythical form of the philosophical speculations on matter and Deity which I have described. It is commonly known under the name of the Manichean heresy. It was from very early times the characteristic idea of the Persian theology; and thence, as I shall show, by admixture with Judaism, has given rise to the prevailing belief in a devil.

To this scheme, considered as a metaphysical theory of the divine perfections, and a solution of the perplexities respecting natural and moral evil, objections of insurmountable force will occur to every one. It preserves the infinite benevolence by sacrificing the omnipotence of God. It sets up a rival to his government, from whose malignity he can only imperfectly protect us; so that his Providence becomes precarious, and we feel ourselves the sport of a conflict the most awful, beset by pure, unmitigated, indestructible evils, which, however beaten off in the end, must win against us many a dreadful success. A believer in this doctrine may indeed presume, that a Being, omniscient and benign as God, would never have called a world into existence unless assured, by his foreknowledge, that he could prevailingly protect it from the powers which obstructed him, and render life to every creature on it a blessing on the whole. Under any other conditions, his goodness would have restrained him from the act of creation. Still the blessed Ruler sways his works under constant check; and all limitations on his power must be proportionate deductions from our peace. This theory, then, fails to afford us the desired relief. It does not reconcile the God of our conscience with the God of our understanding: it simply adheres to the former, and rejects the latter; assuring us that, as our secret hearts had said, the great Father hates evil as his enemy; not, as our logic had insinuated, wields it as his instrument.

(2.) We turn, then, to the second attempt to extricate our thoughts from this perplexity; which is found, in a consistent form, only in the system of philosophical necessity. This scheme assumes the absolute, unlimited monarchy of God; represents him as originally alone, and without either universe or materials for its construction; teaches that he willed all things into existence; conceiving the plan, speaking the word, beholding the birth, sustaining the order, decreeing the means, ordaining the end. The compass of his design is all-embracing; all causes and effects, all enjoyment and misery, all excellence and guilt, lie within its circuit; nor can “there be evil in a city,” or in a world, “and the Lord hath not done it.” We are assured, that in fact it is impossible to distribute to separate authors the blessing and the curse which appear to mingle in creation; for the same law which brings the one introduces the other; the tempest which blasts the field and flock purifies the air of pestilence; the necessities of the body are the incentives of labour and the stimulants of the mind; and industry and art, commerce and wealth, the whole structure even of society and civilization, rest on the ultimate basis of hunger. Nor is it possible to separate suffering, even in conception, from a scene in which great virtues are to be born, and the diviner forms of character to be trained. Evil is the resistance, by its conquest over which moral force can alone be measured and manifested; without which, conscience and fidelity would have no field of victory, benevolence no place for glorious toil, faith and wisdom no consciousness of power. In the sickly seductions of pleasure, are seen the health and simplicity of holiness; amid the temptations of selfishness, we discern and venerate the spirit of self-oblivious love; beneath the arm of tyranny, and amid examples of hypocrisy, we learn how calm the front of uprightness, and how noble the magnanimity of truth. Pain is never the whole of suffering; which spreads in moral influence beyond itself and its hour, and administers some of our noblest discipline. The anguish of one human being is usually the pity of many; even the guilt of one may be the forbearance, the warning, the affectionate and healing grief, of many. Scarcely can any ill be found that is not so linked with visible benefits, so entangled with arrangements in which we recognize indisputable blessings, that one only author can be assigned to all; if he has had foresight of any thing, he must have had foresight of all; if he has devised a part, he must have devised the whole. Even such free-will as the human mind possesses is a power of his own deliberate bestowal; and the whole extent of its disastrous mistakes, its deluded estimates, its degrading preferences, its faithless abuse of liberty, must be considered as ordained and introduced by him for some ultimate and transcendent good. At present, and for a long future yet, the sufferings are great which sin must entail upon all who come within its range; but even its saddest victim is yet a child of God, and must at last (benevolence requires no less) be enabled to pronounce his existence a boon. And hence we must believe the penalties of guilt to be remedial; subduing the stubborn soul, and leading it back to seek its peace in God; working out their own remission, because their victim’s restoration; till the wail of despair shall be softened into the sob of repentance, and this into the sigh of self-distrustful hope, falling into the silence of deep resolve; leading to the energy of a new fidelity, warmed by the refreshment of a returning love, and bursting at length into grateful chorus with the song of the redeemed.

The essential idea of this system evidently is, that evil is a result of God’s will, his temporary instrument for everlasting ends. This characteristic remaining, it is wholly unimportant whether he is regarded as producing it immediately or mediately; distributively or collectively; by detailed volitions of his own, or by the agency of a being commissioned to this department of his government. As the blessings, scattered by the activity of good minds of every order in the universe, are no less his, than if there were no creature but himself to shed them forth, so the woes, which any dependent spirits of evil may diffuse, belong as truly to his providence, as if they were the personal inflictions of his will. Hence the doctrine of wicked angels, and of a created Prince of darkness, is the very same with the system which I have just described; simply, its popular and mythological form, gathering up the abstract conception of evil into a person; but still representing it, in this living dress, as a creature intentionally formed by the Omniscient and predetermining God. I regard the belief in the existence of Satan, not as opposed to the prevailing Unitarian views of Providence, but, so far as it is consistently held, as in all essential particulars, identical with them. Its relation to the character of God is the same; and the sole difference between the two is in the question of personality; a question of great consequence, when the existence of a divine person, as the Holy Spirit, is suspended on the decision; but of small moment when, as in this case, a mere creature more or less is to be given to the invisible world. What does it matter to us whether there be any, or a myriad, of interposing agents between the ills that touch us and our God? Surely it is with the effects,—with the evils themselves,—that our practice and duty are concerned, and about their original cause that our faith is anxious; and, on both these points, the Necessarian and the Satanic schemes seem to be agreed. Both refer our thoughts back to a time when no evil existed, and say that none could have come into existence, had the creative activity of God never been exercised. Both make the same estimate of the actual sins and sorrows and temptations which are in contact with our life; and whichever view be adopted, these are neither increased nor diminished, their complexion is neither brightened nor darkened, their insidiousness and their treatment continue the same. They come out of the dark upon us; and no more concern us till they strike upon our experience, than a line of light affects us, till its end impinges on our eye. Hence I cannot feel much interest in the mere question respecting the existence of a Devil; and must be excused for treating it as only an insignificant part of a subject vast and terrible.

Does, then, this second system resolve our difficulties, and altogether harmonize the perfections of God? Alas! the success is no greater than before. Why this circuitous method of producing a happy universe? Evil is called into being, as an instrument of good, in this world; and then is annihilated, by the addition of more evil, in another. If it be the great object of Providence to get rid of suffering and sin, if his government be an educative discipline for purifying the guilt, illuminating the ignorance, and destroying the misery of souls, must we not ask, why then were these things created? If God’s providence be thus against them, why was it ever for them? And how are we to think of those agencies, as the work of his own hands, on which his whole administration is said to be aggressive? No answer can be given, except that the temporary operation of natural and moral evil was unavoidable,—the essential and only means of accomplishing results which all admit to be beneficent, especially the development and progress of mind, and the probationary discipline of character. It may be so; but, in this explanation, the benignity of God is again saved at the expense of his Omnipotence. If no other means were open to him than those which he has actually employed, his range of possibilities was mysteriously limited, his choice incomprehensibly narrowed; and he solved the problem of Creation under some restraining conditions. And no theory, which leaves this shadow of necessity lingering behind the throne of God, justifies its pretensions as the vindicator of his Power.

Scarcely does this system seem to be reconcileable with the Holiness of God. I confess myself unable to understand how a Being, who is held to be the prime cause of all the moral evil which the universe contains, can be regarded as morally perfect; or to imagine, if this be consistent with infinite purity, what phenomena would be inconsistent. It is not enough to say, that the evil is produced, by no means for its own sake, but for ultimate good. Often, at least, does a human being do wrong on no other pretext; and the very plea admits, that God subordinates moral distinctions to some other good, and esteems some foreign benefit worth purchasing by the deed of sin. Is it urged, that the foreknowledge and infallible certainty of the Divine mind justify this, and that it is only because man wants the requisite discernment, that he is forbidden in his blindness to do evil, that good may come? Then it would seem that moral distinctions are intended only for the ignorant; and are, to an immeasurable extent, delusions of intellectual infancy, designed to vanish, or undergo unimaginable transformations, as our mental vision is enlarged. And if this be so, none of our ideas of obligation are applicable to God, and he passes beyond the range of our moral apprehension, reverence, and love. No; the language of piety becomes unmeaning, and the sanctity of religion is in danger of utter ruin, unless the divine sentiments of right and wrong are perceived to be akin to our own, recognising the same immutable differences, and spontaneously observing the same laws. Not even can we admit that he has created, and could change, the relations of right and wrong; that his will is the source of obligation, and by a command could make into a binding duty that which in itself is sin. Moral excellence is no creature of mere power, which he has created; for he is, and ever was, excellent himself, rendered venerable by intrinsic and unoriginated perfections; by holy sentiments, whose outward action, indeed, must be dated from the beginning of created things, but whose consciousness has been from everlasting. I dare not think, that the Providence of God largely consists in doing that, which would be guilt in man.

From this scheme then, not less than from the former, we fail to obtain satisfaction. It does not reconcile the faith of the conscience with the faith of the understanding; but simply prefers the latter, to the injury of the former, compromising God’s abhorrence of evil; and, for the sake of maintaining his sovereignty, making it his instrument. In fine, philosophy must make confession of its ignorance, and talk no more so exceeding proudly. This question of ages is too much for all its subtlety. Let us pass on to the doctrinal search of Scripture. Does it either reveal any new view of our subject, or determine our choice to either of the schemes we have reviewed?

II. Trinitarian theologians maintain, that the Bible reveals to us the existence of a created spirit of evil, with a host of subordinate associates in guilt; who seduced our first parents, and so introduced both the spiritual depravity and the mortality of our race; who has since tormented the bodies of men with divers diseases, afflicted their minds with some species of insanity, and corrupted their conscience with every variety of horrible and guilty thought; and who especially assailed the person, and withstood the kingdom of Christ, knowing that the Messiah’s power would finally overthrow his own. In opposition to this statement, I submit, that in neither the Mosaic nor the Christian dispensation have we any revelation of the existence of such a being, or any doctrinal solution of the problem respecting the origin of evil. Let me not, however, be supposed to say, that no such beings as Satan, the fallen Angels, and demons, are named in Scripture. I do not pretend to fritter all these away into personifications and figures of speech. I have no doubt that some of the sacred authors believed in the real existence and agency of such beings; I have just as little doubt that others did not; and that the Hebrew conceptions on this subject underwent a regular development in the course of their history, no part of them having any origin in supernatural revelation, but the whole being either the result of natural speculation or a gift from foreign tribes. This will be thought very shocking by those who, maintaining the plenary inspiration of the Bible, cannot imagine that it contains any traces of the notions and sentiments of its various times; and cannot think of admitting even an incidental allusion that is not an infallible oracle. But until it can be shown, that a person inspired is unable to form an opinion of his own; that he has no ideas from education and position, no prepossessions in common with his age; that, from Moses to the John of Patmos, every scriptural author is an unerring authority, not merely in faith and morals, but in cosmogony and physics, in geology and astronomy, in natural history, physiology, metaphysics and medicine; we may venture to maintain, on the ground of historical evidence, that the belief in witchcraft and charms, in angels and devils with Chaldee names, in demoniacal possession and Satanic inflictions, may be no result of revelation, but one of the natural traces of time and locality with which the Scriptures abound. There prevails, however, great misapprehension respecting the ideas of the Scripture writers on these subjects; and especially, the conception of a Devil is thought to pervade the whole Bible in one unvarying form. With a view to rectify this mistake, I will briefly notice the chief passages of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures relating to this topic; adverting, in succession, to the history of the fall; to the growth of the belief both in Satan and exorcism; and to the temptation of Christ.

(1.) It is impossible to conceive of a greater outrage upon an author’s meaning, than is the common representation of the Fall, on the account of that event in the Book of Genesis. Not a trace, even of the faintest kind, does the original narrative contain of all that theologians tell us respecting the tempter, the curse, the recovery. The tempter was not an evil spirit, but a serpent, to whose natural and instinctive cunning, and not to any diabolical instigation, the seducing thought is attributed: for “The serpent,” it is said, “was more subtle than all the beasts of the field.”[543] The writer, indeed, had not apparently any idea of such a being as Satan; for, throughout his five books, there is not a word in allusion to such a personage; though he records, I believe, more temptations, more trials of faith and duty, which it is thought the office of the evil one to administer, than all the rest of the Scriptures together. It is nothing to the purpose to say that, without preternatural possession, it is absurd to suppose that the serpent could speak, and become an agent in the transaction at all; for, on any view of the passage, the author ascribes to the creature the power both of speech and of walking: and to imagine that the Devil would betray himself by assuming so improbable a vehicle, and making a dumb reptile talk, is surely little consonant with the character of so subtle a diplomatist. The record affirms that, by way of punishment, the serpent was reduced to the reptile state, and compelled to crawl instead of walk;[544] and an author, whose imagination had reconciled itself to this conception, would feel no additional improbability in supposing the same occasion to have condemned the animal to silence. This has always been the interpretation of those Hebrew writers, who have received the account as literal history. Josephus, a man of learning and a priest, states, that “all animals at that period partook of the gift of speech with man;” that “the serpent lived on familiar terms with Adam and his wife;” and “from a malicious intention of his own, persuaded the woman to taste of the tree of knowledge;” that, in consequence, “God deprived the creature of speech and of the use of his feet.”[545] If the account be considered as historical, this is its plain meaning; and the insertion in it of a powerful malignant spirit, is a mere fiction of later times.[546]

Nor is the usual description of the results of the Fall, a less extravagant perversion of Scripture. The necessities of toil to the man, the pangs of travail to the woman, and to both a consequent abbreviation of the term of life, are all the effects of which the original speaks, and to which Josephus refers.[547] St. Paul adds to these the introduction of mortality; but neither in his writings, nor in any more authoritative place than the invention of modern divines, do we find the least hint of any moral corruption entailed by the fall on the human constitution, or any penal woes prepared for our lapsed nature after death. Throughout the whole subsequent Scriptures, there are only three places in which the effects of the first transgression are mentioned:[548] all of these are in the epistles of Paul; two, out of the three, are mere passing allusions, not occupying a line; and in the remaining one, as well as in the others, natural death alone is said to have passed on the descendants of Adam; “not” (as Mr. Locke justly remarks) “either actual or imputed sin,” which, he says, “is evidently contrary to St. Paul’s design here.”[549] Between the guilt of men, and the fall of their progenitor, there did not exist the slightest connexion in the Apostle’s mind; they are never once mentioned together. When he draws his fearful pictures of the depravity of both Jews and Gentiles, he is wholly silent respecting the fall, describing all this corruption not as constitutional but as actual, not as the growth of a foul and incapable nature, but rather as the abuse and insult of one inherently noble.[550] And when again he speaks of the fall and its issues, he is silent about moral depravity, and dwells only on physical death. Never was there a writer more barbarously tortured, more ingeniously forced to speak in a spirit which he loved to withstand, than this glorious Apostle. Out of his own writings, by incredible perversion, his generous conceptions are condemned as heresies, and his favourite sentiments denounced as blasphemies.

“I will put enmity,” says the book of Genesis, “between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”[551] Considered as a description of the mutual hostility and injuries of the race of venomous reptiles and the human species,—man naturally attacking the head of the creature, and the animal, especially among the naked feet of oriental climes, finding nothing in man so vulnerable as the heel,—a more vivid sentence can scarcely be conceived. Considered as a prophecy of Christ, ingenuity could construct nothing more obscure. And, accordingly, it is never once appealed to, as a prediction, either by the Messiah himself, or by any of the New Testament writers; and before the Advent, it had certainly failed to produce the proper effect of prophecy, and had not aided in preparing the minds of the Hebrews for the event. It is indeed acknowledged by “a strenuous advocate for this application of the passage,” “that the expressions here used do not necessarily imply the sense thus attributed to them; and that there is no appearance of our first parents’ having understood them in this sense, or that God intended they should so understand them.”[552] If, then, this prophetic signification escaped the persons to whom the announcement was made, and the nation before whose eye it lay for ages, and the Christ himself of whom it spake, and the Evangelists and Apostles who proclaimed him to the world, our doubt of its reality can scarcely be deemed unwarrantable.

But it is, I believe, a misconception of the author, to treat this passage as a piece of history. Neither Moses, nor any other scriptural writer, professes to have been miraculously instructed in the events of the antediluvian world; and if they make no such pretension themselves, it is altogether gratuitous in us to make it for them. The slightest consideration must convince us, that all natural sources of information respecting so primitive a period must have ceased to exist, at least in any reliable form: and the earliest portions of the book of Genesis have every characteristic of that beautiful mythical composition, which is the first fruit of the literary activity of every simple-hearted nation, and which mingles together in one texture, tradition, fact, speculation, poetical conception, and moral truth. In this instance, the writer seems to have been oppressed by the feeling, that human peace and tranquillity were disturbed by the restless aspirings and inquisitive ambition of the mind. If man could but be content to take the good which God has spread within his easy reach, and not permit himself to pry into the possibilities of having more, his life might be spent as in a garden of the Lord, in the warmth of sunny days, and the light sleep of unhaunted nights. But he cannot repress his insatiable curiosity, his passion for the fruits of knowledge and dignity, of which Providence has given him the idea, but which have been set beyond his permitted reach; and this thirst of his nature he resolves at all hazards to indulge; this godlike aspiration, imprisoned in a frame to which it is unsuited, chafes against his quiet, and abbreviates his days. Hence proceed the struggle and the toil of life; the thistle and the thorn which he gathers from a soil that might have yielded only flowers; hence, children are we all of care and sorrow; hence, by the sweat of the hardy brow we must live, and soon fret down existence into dust; not however, without our victory after all; for we subjugate the earth, and reign thereon.

Observe too, that Adam rules the woman; and the woman has a heel upon the serpent:—the last seduced is placed the highest; and the first corrupter sinks into a reptile. Our temptations are beneath us; and having once detected them, we are to rule them ever after. Once let the knowledge of good and evil be tasted, and the primitive equality of things, which put man and beast upon a level, is destroyed; all beings fall into the ranks of a moral gradation; and though none that have free will may escape a fall, he that is last to yield shall be the first to reign.

(2.) Neither then in the original account, nor in the scanty subsequent notices of the transgression in Eden, is there any disclosure of a Satanic existence. Let us rapidly follow down the course of Hebrew literature, and search in it for the first and successive indications of this belief. I have stated that the books of Moses are destitute of all trace of such a conception; nor can any thing at all corresponding to the popular idea of the Devil, be found in any part of the Old Testament. The name itself never once occurs; and it would be a great mistake to identify the Satan of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the Devil of the Greek.[553] The Satan of the former has a very uncertain personality. The name rather denotes an office, which any agent of Providence might be appointed to fill, than a definite individual being. Any person, performing the function of an accuser, or who prepares matter for accusation, by seducing men into evil,—any one acting the part of an adversary to another,—is called Satan. Thus David is called Satan to the Philistines;[554] a certain captain named Rezon was Satan to Israel;[555] the angel of Jehovah was Satan to Balaam;[556] nay, even Paul uses this singular expression, “Hymeneus and Alexander, I have delivered to Satan” (for what purpose, do you suppose), “that they may be taught not to blaspheme.”[557] No doubt this idea, at first vague and indefinite, gradually became individualized; and that which had been an appellative, passed into a proper name, yet without ever wholly losing its generic character.[558] At the commencement of the book of Job occurs its most distinct and definite use. It is there applied, not to a fallen Spirit, not to a repudiated subject of the celestial state, but to an angel near the throne, to a recognized minister of the Supreme Power, who appears in the courts above among “the Sons of God.” He is represented as a general inspector and public prosecutor of the Divine government over man; going to and fro over the earth, by heavenly commission, to execute the probationary part of the great Ruler’s will, and administer to mankind the severities which test their faith. In the earlier Hebrew writings, this office is said to be filled by no subordinate instrument: it is Jehovah himself who is represented as trying his servants,—as the personal cause of their afflictions, and author of their temptations. I recently heard the following passage from the first book of Chronicles adduced in proof of the agency of Satan in seducing men from their allegiance to God. “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.”[559] Now it so happens, that this same event is recorded also in the much more ancient books of Samuel, where it is thus introduced: “And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and HE moved David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’”[560] What can more clearly mark the natural progress of opinion on this point? As the ideas of God became more elevated and refined, it was felt to be scarcely compatible with his perfections to seduce his children into violation of the duties he himself required: and the imagination at least, if not the understanding, was relieved by assigning that office, of hardening the heart and tempting the will, (which originally had been left with Jehovah himself,) to some interposing being, who might separate between God and guilt.

When we open the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, we perceive a complete change in this class of ideas. Even the latest written of the canonical books introduce us to several angelic beings, unknown to the earlier Scriptures,—as the Michael and Gabriel of Daniel. But in addition to these, we find in the Jewish Apocrypha, for the first time, the matured conception of the Prince of evil;[561] who is thenceforth represented in the scarcely consistent relations of creature and enemy of the Most High: and it is in this form that the notion presents itself to us in the New Testament writings. Now what is the inference from these facts? In the books of the ancient dispensation, this malignant Spirit does not yet appear: in the writings of the new dispensation, he is mentioned,—not as a novelty of revelation, but as long familiar to the mind of every reader. The origin then of the belief in his existence, must be sought between the close of the Hebrew inspiration and the opening of the Christian. And what had happened in this interval? The Jewish people had been in long and intimate relation with Persia: connected with it by political ties, and united by the sympathies of monotheism. The characteristic features of the Persian religion were,—its doctrine of a Spirit of Evil in perpetual enmity to the Supremely Good;—and its representation of a heavenly hierarchy, whose spirits were ranged in ranks of angels and archangels, and received their separate names. These ideas then naturally passed into the Jewish mind, with little change; except that the Evil Spirit was reduced to a somewhat lower station, in obedience to the stern Mosaic principle, of the absolute Monarchy of God.[562] And as these notions became perfectly engrafted on the national faith of Israel, the founders of Christianity were educated in them; and they were permitted to appear by incidental allusion, and in conformity with the general sentiments of the country and the age, in the pages of history and correspondence, which the evangelists and apostles have left. Nor can I perceive, either how it can be proved, or why it should be desired, that God would annihilate from the understanding of his inspired servants, all the harmless ideas, foreign to their mission, which constituted the common stock of thought at the time, and gave them points of necessary sympathy and intellectual contact with the spirit of their generation. How slight the sanction which they give to some, at least, of these mythological imaginations, may be estimated by a single fact. The whole theory respecting fallen angels rests upon two verses,[563] each in one of the most doubtful of the New Testament writings: indeed the texts can scarcely be regarded as constituting two independent authorities; for the latter is little else than a repetition of the former; occurring in a portion of the second epistle of Peter, which, strangely enough, contains, the sentiments and even the language of a large part of the epistle of Jude. When such evidence as this is brought forward, as conclusive and infallible, I would respectfully ask our opponents, whether they seriously believe, on the authority of the same epistle, that Michael the archangel disputed with the Devil about the body of Moses? and as this is nowhere else mentioned, whether an express and personal revelation of the fact was imparted to St. Jude? If so, consistency would require them to maintain, that this is one of the essential doctrines of the Gospel: for how much soever our natural and corrupt reason might be tempted to think the circumstance trivial, if true, it cannot really be otherwise than fundamental, if privately and explicitly revealed.[564]

From the foregoing remarks, the general principles, in conformity with which I would treat the question of demoniacal possessions, will be so evident, that it will be unnecessary to enter into any details. The precise relation to each other of the various orders of evil spirits in which the Jews believed, it is not possible to define. It is certain, however, that they made a distinction, which our common translation of the Scriptures has improperly obliterated, between demons and devils. The former were thought to be of only human rank, the souls of the wicked dead: and it was these only that were supposed to possess and afflict the bodies of the living. The latter were guilty angels, and had no agency assigned to them on earth, being kept in durance within the prisons of the unseen world. There was therefore the same difference between demons and devils, as with us between ghosts and fiends. Of the former, Beelzebub was considered as the chief; of the latter, Satan: and whether these beings were regarded as standing in any definite relation to each other, is uncertain; probably the Devil, as the Prince of darkness, was believed to be the ruler of all the powers of evil, whether human or angelic. Unlike his incarcerated compeers, Satan was permitted to be at large, and to practise his arts against mankind: all gentile kingdoms being absolutely his; and even the chosen people not protected wholly from his malignity, at least until the Messiah’s reign, which was to commence with his dethronement. It may be observed by any careful reader of the gospels, that the evils of which he was held to be the author, are not the same that are ascribed to Beelzebub and his demons. Satan, and he only, was the moral seducer: and the physical calamities proceeding from him were only natural and intelligible diseases, regular enough to fall under the cognizance of science. The demons had, on the contrary, no concern with the conscience; and occasioned only the irregular and apparently preternatural maladies, which science deserted and left to the tender mercies of superstition;—of which epilepsy and insanity are the most remarkable examples.

Of this system of notions the evangelists were doubtless possessed. But that they held them on the tenure of unerring inspiration can by no means be shown. On the contrary, the natural causes which produced them can be so clearly detected in the prevalent sentiments of their age and country, that not the slightest pretext remains for referring them to express revelation. So far from requiring a miracle to excite these conceptions, we must admit, that nothing less than a miracle could have excluded them, familiar as they had been to the national mind from the time of its intercourse with Persia. Had the founders of Christianity never received any extraordinary mission, they would have entertained the conception of demoniacal possession; and its hold upon their thoughts must therefore be regarded as the result of natural prepossession, not of supernatural communication. A notion whose human origin can be distinctly traced,—which was shared by uninspired persons, and existed in the authors of our religion in their uninspired years,—has no claim to be considered as a part of Christianity, and is as open to doubt and examination as any other opinion of antiquity. To affirm that, were it not true, God must have blotted it from the mind of his messengers, is not only to overbear evidence with assertion, but to decide dogmatically on the obligations of Deity, and, with infinite presumption, to dictate the fit measure of his gifts. Till it can be shown, that inspiration is co-extensive with omniscience, it must remain compatible with error.

The language of the Gospels then, respecting demoniacs, is not to be regarded as a condescending accommodation to popular prejudice; but as a genuine expression of the writers’ own state of mind. There is no reason to doubt that the prevalent ideas were shared by the apostles themselves. By these did they interpret the facts which they witnessed: through the colouring of these, their minds beheld the miracles of Christ, and their own: and at the suggestion of these arose the language in which they have recorded the ministry of their Lord. All this has not the smallest effect on the truth and soundness of their testimony. They no doubt reported faithfully that which they saw and heard; only they tell us something more, adding a few phrases, disclosing also what they thought. Like all witnesses of simple mind, especially when telling that which awakens their wonder and affection, they mix up their statements of phenomena with notions of causation; and present us with a composite register of sensible impressions and mental interpretations. It should be our business, as we read, to call up before us the scene described; to see for ourselves the things visible, and hear the things audible, of which the record speaks; and we shall find that this effort will usually make a perfect and easy separation between the real and the merely ideal, between the permanent fact and the temporary explanation. When, for example, it is said, that the demons in a man possessed spake to Christ, of what are we to think? for what voice are we to listen? where are the lips from which the utterance flows?—Certainly it was from the organs of the poor lunatic himself that the sound must have proceeded: and modern language would describe this fact by saying, that he spake; and in thus believing we accept the whole attestation of the historian.

(3.) The same principle must be applied to the temptation of Christ. No hint whatever is given, implying any visible appearance communing with Jesus; nor need we even suppose any audible voice addressing him.[565] The Evil Spirit, like God himself, was held to be invisible, and inappreciable by any human senses: and when words are attributed to him, they represent only the dialogue which he is supposed to hold with the silent and tempted heart. His whole guilty transactions indeed belonged, it was imagined, to the region of the mind; and his was a viewless and speechless wrestling with conscience on its throne. Whenever therefore the seductive assaults of Satan are recorded, the real fact described is this; that internal moral conflicts have been going on, and deluding thoughts have been passing, like the shadow of a dark Spirit, across the purer soul. And in such case, the first and the only thing of which our consciousness can be aware, is, the occurrence of these thoughts. To their antecedent source, our testimony cannot reach; and whether they are precipitated on us by some enemy from without, or are of spontaneous origin within our own minds, is a point accessible indeed to speculation, but beyond the contact of experience. Till they enter our nature, and so become a part of our personality, they are nothing and nowhere: and when they enter and we feel their torment, they are ours and no other being’s. No one ever sees, hears, or feels, the Devil; he perceives simply the intrusion of sinful ideas, and supposes them to be the result of diabolic power. He experiences the temptation in reality; and refers it to the tempter in idea. And were this not true of Christ, as of ourselves, it would be false to say, that he “was tempted in all points as we are.” The temptation of our Lord then, stripped of the dress which the historians have thrown around the central facts, was the natural struggle, by which he exchanged the imperfect, and local, and ambitious conceptions of the Messiah, which his cottage training in Nazareth had imparted,—for that pure, and self-sacrificing, and comprehensive interpretation of the office, which broke upon his solitude so awfully. That he learned, at Mary’s knees, to cherish the common hope of his nation, in the form under which it prevailed among the peasantry, appears as little doubtful, as that he caught the language of his native fields. Yet it is certain that this early vision passed away; and that when he himself was called to fill the appointed office, he acted out a conception quite opposite to the dreams imparted to his childhood. Once he had mused on the widening glory of Judæa; but he ended with announcing the prospect of its fall. Once he had exulted in the dignity and power of the coming messenger, who should break the oppression of his people, and set forth anew the triumph of their ancient Providence: he declared himself at length the meek prophet of penury, and woe and childhood. Once he had thought of what Jerusalem would be, when the temple should be the centre of the world’s homage, and multitudes of all nations should throng its pavement, and its incense should rise in the pride of freedom, and its hymn spring upward on the wing of happy melody: but ere his work of life was finished, he taught a lowlier yet sublimer expectation, not of the compression of the world into the Hebrew worship,—but of the diffusion of that worship to cover the world; and revealed that secret shrine in every human heart, where emotions, purer than incense, may burn for ever, and tones sweeter than music be for ever breathed. This revolution of sentiment, this conflict, by which new thoughts of inspiration expelled the old ones inherited from education and reputed prophecy, constituted the temptation in the wilderness; nor was it possible that ideas the most divine, should thus burst the shell of custom and tradition, without a convulsion truly terrible. It would be easy, were it not irrelevant, to show how this hidden colloquy between the national prepossessions and the personal intuitions of our Lord’s mind, would give rise to the separate scenes of which the temptation is said to have been composed. Possibly, however, the history, as it stands, is not the record of a single event, to which a fixed date can be assigned in his ministry: more probably, it gathers into one view a series of mental conflicts, distributed over his whole public life; the struggles between the accidental and the essential portions of his nature; between the national and the human: between an historical imagination trained amid the gorgeousness of prophecy, and a heavenly conscience dwelling with the simplicity of God; between the conventional and the spiritual; between, in short, the superinduced faith contracted from time and place, and the inborn faith of a soul divine and free.

In the preceding notices of Scripture, no sanction is given to the interpretations, if such there be, which resolve Satan into a personification, treat the temptation as a vision or an allegory, and identify the demoniac phraseology with the common language of pathological description. I believe, indeed, that, wherever the Devil and his agency are named, the only real fact denoted is, the occurrence to some one of a moral temptation: and that, wherever demons are said to have been cast out, the only historical event described is, the cure of some physical or mental disease. But it appears to me absurd to deny, that the writers meant more than this; to doubt that they held the popular theory of such facts, and blended it naturally with their record; that they were sincerely under the influence of the existing system of demonology, and referred the seductions of sin to the personal activity of the malignant Spirit. Nowhere, however, do they pretend to set forth these ideas as gifts of preternatural revelation, but simply take them up as part of the common media of thought belonging to the age, and use them as the incidental colouring to their narrative of facts. In different parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, as we have seen, very different, and even inconsistent notions respecting the origin of evil prevail: the conception of a powerful diabolic agent underwent a regular and natural development: and the system of pneumatology apparent in the Greek Scriptures is traceable to a foreign origin in an uninspired age. Hence we must conclude, that respecting the origin of evil, nothing doctrinal is specially revealed; that even in Palestine, the human mind has been left to grapple with this great problem by its own natural forces; and that we rise from the page of Scripture, as from the speculations of wisdom and genius, with the difficulty yet unsolved.

By no means, then, can we attain to any theoretical certainty, or logical consistency of belief, on this great topic. Revelation is silent, and philosophy perplexed; and the controversy between the Religion of Conscience and the Religion of the Understanding, is undecided still. Let the framers of systems say what they will, the thing is deeper than our minds, and what can we know? Nothing remains, but to abandon hopelessly the speculative point of view, and treat the matter as an object, not of knowledge, but of trust; to regard it as a question to be decided by its bearings on duty, rather than its materials for debate. Whenever the means of attaining to objective truth do not exist, we can but rest in those views of things which most entirely accord with our best nature. If we cannot tell what is true of God, we yet may judge what is fittest for ourselves; what state of mind, what modes of thought, prepare us best for the work of life; what mental representation of existence most nobly sustains those fundamental moral convictions, which it is the end of Christianity to fix in our implicit faith and constant practice. To this arbitration we must submit our present doubts respecting the source of evil; and, while waiting to reach the realities of reason denied us now, accept, as our best truth, the conceptions which are most just to our moral nature and relations.

III. Let us then, for final decision, consult the practical spirit of Christianity, and ascertain to what view of the origin of sin it awards the preference. Is it well, for the consciences and characters of men, to consider God,—either directly or through his dependant Satan,—either by his general laws, or by vitiating the constitution of our first parents,—as the primary source of moral evil? or, on the contrary, to regard it as, in no sense whatever, willed by the Supreme Mind, and absolutely inimical to his Providence? Are we most in harmony with the characteristic spirit of the gospel, when we call sin his instrument, or when we call it his enemy? For myself, I can never sit at the feet of Jesus, and yield up a reverential heart to his great lessons, without casting myself on the persuasion, that God and evil are everlasting foes; that never, and for no end, did he create it; that his will is utterly against it, nor ever touches it, but with annihilating force. Any other view appears to be injurious to the characteristic sentiments, and at variance with the distinguishing genius, of Christian morality.

(1.) Christianity is distinguished by the profound sentiment of individual responsibility which pervades it. All the arbitrary forms, and sacerdotal interpositions, and hereditary rights, through which other systems seek the divine favour, are disowned by it. It is a religion eminently personal; establishing the most intimate and solitary dealings between God and every human soul. It is a religion eminently natural; eradicating no indigenous affection of our mind, distorting no primitive moral sentiment; but simply consecrating the obligations proper to our nature, and taking up with a divine voice the whispers, scarce articulate before, of the conscience within us. In this deep harmony with our inmost consciousness of duty, resides the true power of our religion. It subdues and governs our hearts, as a wise conqueror rules the empire he has won; not by imposing a system of strange laws, but by arming with higher authority, and administering with more resolute precision, the laws already recognised and revered.

This sense of individual accountability,—notwithstanding the ingenuities of orthodox divines on the one hand, and necessarian philosophers on the other,—is impaired by all reference of the evil that is in us to any source beyond ourselves. To look for a remoter cause than our own guilty wills,—to contemplate it as a Providential instrument, whether we trace it to Adam, to Satan, or directly to God, bewilders the simple perceptions of conscience, and throws doubt on its distinct and solemn judgments. The injury may be different in character, according to the particular system we adopt: but any theory which provides the individual moral agent with participating causes of his guilt, offends and weakens some one of the feelings essential to the consciousness of responsibility.

There is no persuasion, for example, more indispensable to this state of mind, and, consequently, no impression which Christianity more profoundly leaves upon the heart, than that of the personal origin and personal identity of sin,—its individual, incommunicable character. Our own secret souls, and that divine gospel which confirms all their sincere decisions, alike declare that my sin cannot be your sin; that by no compact, even by no miracle, can any exchange of responsibilities, or transfer of moral qualities, be effected. What indeed is guilt in its very nature, but a violation of some venerated rule of action,—a contravention of our own sentiments of equity, truth, purity, or generosity? and what is the guilty mind, but a system or habit of desire, which successfully resists the control of reason and conscience? That mind which is the seat of the delinquent will,—which hears the remonstrances of right, and heeds them not,—is the sole proprietor of the sin, deriving it from none, imparting it to none: its dwelling is in his volition; and unless that can cease to be his, the criminality can admit of no alienation. He may have accomplices indeed: but they are so many additional agents, each with his separate amount of guilt, and not partners among whom his one act of free-will is distributed. The trains of thought and emotion, the adjustment of tastes and affections, are different in every soul: each has its own moral complexion; each, its separate moral relations; each, its distinct responsibility in the sight of God. In no sense is the gift or transfer of character more possible, than a barter of genius, or an interchange of sensation. God may call new life into existence, and determine what its consciousness shall be: he may annihilate life, and plunge its memory and experience into nothing: but to shift the feelings and aims which constitute the identity of one being into the personality of another, is no more possible, than to alter the properties of a circle, or to cancel departed time.

To trifle in any way with this plain and solemn principle, to invent forms of speech tending to conceal it, to apply to moral good and ill, language which assimilates them to physical objects and exchangeable property, implies frivolous and irreverent ideas of sin and excellence. The whole weight of this charge evidently falls on the scheme, which speaks of human guilt as an hereditary entail; a scheme which shocks and confounds our primary notion of right and wrong, and, by rendering them impersonal qualities, reduces them to empty names. No construction can be given to the system, which does not pass this insult on the conscience. In what sense do we share the guilt of our progenitor? His concession to temptation did not occur within our mind, or belong in any way to our history. And if, without participation in the act of wrong, we are to have its penalties,—crimes in the planet Saturn may be expected to shower curses on the earth; for why may not justice go astray in space, as reasonably as in time? If nothing more be meant, than that from our first parents we inherit a constitution liable to intellectual error and moral transgression;—still, it is evident, that, until this liability takes actual effect, no sin exists, but only its possibility; and when it takes effect, there is just so much guilt and no more, than might be committed by the individual’s will: so that where there is no volition, as in infancy, cruelty only could inflict punishment; and where there is pure volition, as in many a good passage of the foulest life, equity itself could not withhold approval.

In whatever way, then, you define this hypothesis, it directly denies the personal character and personal identity of sin, and thus enfeebles the most essential element comprehended in the sentiment of responsibility. The practical result will inevitably be, a system of false views and fictitious feelings, with respect both to our own characters, and to those of our fellow-men. That which can be vicariously incurred, or vicariously removed, cannot be guilt; cannot therefore, be sincerely felt as such; can awaken no true shame and self-reproach, and draw forth no burning tears when we meet the eye of God. It is a shocking mockery to call sorrow for an ancestor’s sin by the name of penitence, and to confound the perception (or, as it is termed, ‘application,’) of Christ’s holiness with the personal peace of conscience: the one can be nothing else than moral disapprobation, attended by the sense of personal injury; the other, moral approval, attended by the sense of personal benefit: and mean and confused must be the sentiments of duty in a mind which can mistake these for the private griefs of contrition, and the serenity of a self-forgetful will. Only counterfeit emotions, and self-judgments half sincere, can consistently arise from a faith which mystifies the primitive ideas of moral excellence, and destroys all distinct perception of its nature. It is always with danger that we turn away from the natural hand-writing of God upon the conscience: from heedless eyes the divine symbols fade away; unless, indeed, in some preternatural awakening of our sight, they blaze forth once again, to tell us that the kingdom of true greatness hath departed from us. Let each consider his own life as an indivisible unit of responsibility, no less complete, no less free, no less invested with solemn and solitary power, than if he dwelt, and always had dwelt, in the universe alone with God. There is confided to him, the sole rule of a vast and immortal world within; whose order can be preserved or violated, whose peace secured or sacrificed, by no foreign influence. We cannot, by ancestral or historical relations, renounce our own free-will, or escape one iota of its awful trusts. No faith which fails to keep this truth distinct and prominent, no faith which shuffles with the sinner’s moral identity, contains the requisites of a “doctrine according to godliness.” It must pervert, moreover, our estimates of others’ characters, no less than of our own. If guilt can be hereditary,—guilt meriting infinite and indiscriminate punishment,—it must be universal: and whether we see it or not, we must believe it to exist, with no appreciable variation of degree, in every human heart. Thus it becomes a prime duty to regard every thing in life, except its wretchedness, every thing in human nature, except its displays of foulness and of ruin, as a delusion and a cheat. We strongly protest against this miserable distrust of our best and truest perceptions. We maintain the intelligible and appreciable character of all moral qualities, in opposition to all schemes which make distinction between natural and theological excellence, and which propose imaginary standards of right, different from those that recommend themselves to a discerning conscience. Sin is no mysterious thing, no physical poison, no taint in the blood, which may lurk venomously within us, giving no symptom, and exciting no consciousness, of its presence. However insidious in its approaches, and subtle in its manifestations, vigilance only is needed to detect it: its stealthiness affords, indeed, a sound reason for circumspection; but not for superstitious horror at its possible existence, without discoverable trace, in ourselves or others. To look on the spectacle of vice, and not feel abhorrence, indicates a depraved state of sentiment:—to look on the spectacle of virtue, and believe it sin, to witness all the outward expressions of goodness and suspect interior corruption, to be invited by natural emotion to moral admiration, and, by theological stimulants, to galvanise the heart into loathing (or even “pity”) instead, implies a falsehood of conscience no less malignant. Let me not be told that, in thus speaking, we assign too high a value to mere external moralities, which are but treacherous indications of character, and may be the visible fruit of various and dubious motives. We never cease to teach, that no Epicurean respectabilities, no conformity with conventional rules of order, can satisfy the claims, or afford any of the peace of duty, unless they be the native growth of a perceptive, devout, and loving heart:—that it is not in the hand which executes, but in the soul which devises and aspires, in the secret will which makes sacrifice of self, in the conscience which grapples with temptations and overmasters fears, that true and immortal virtue dwells; since acts are evanescent, while the affections are eternal. But it is monstrous to infer from this superficial character of outward morality, that there is probably no substratum of genuine goodness. Nay, it is a mean and degrading scepticism which distrusts, without assignable cause, the reality of any of the symptoms of excellence; is tempted by theories of divinity to insinuate that they are an empty semblance; and plies its pious ingenuity to blacken the great human heart. He that is pledged to make out a case against mankind at large, must find of difficult attainment that charity that “hopeth all things and believeth all things.” How blunted must be the delicacy of moral perception, where the gradations of excellence are swept away into the dark abyss of universal depravity! and to effect this reduction of all minds to the same level, what vehement distortion, what wretched sophistries, what devotional scandal and romance, must become habitual! How much less place for delusion and insincerity is there, when we maintain a reverential faith in the natural moral sentiments, repress no generous admiration, disbelieve no genuine expression of disinterestedness and integrity, and instead of whining over guilt, dare to bless God with a manly voice, for all varieties of noble virtue!

Thus does the habit of tracing sin beyond the individual will to a progenitor, spread confusion over the moral perceptions, by mystifying the nature of guilt, and destroying that feeling of its personal character and identity which belongs to the Christian sentiment of responsibility.

By a different and directer method the same tendency operates, when we refer our temptations to the agency of the Devil, rather than to our descent from Adam. An invisible power, foreign to ourselves, is held chargeable, to an undefined extent, with the evil of our own wills; and the conscience can as ill bear the present distribution, as the past transmission of its guilt. It is said indeed, that man is not “less culpable, because Satan seduces him, and blinds his mind” since there is no power on earth or hell to compel him to transgress; that he is a willing captive, and no more to be excused than when a human accomplice entices him to crime, without (it is admitted) relieving him of any portion of his criminality.[566] But the cases are obviously not parallel. Man stands up before his fellow man, equal with equal; his weapons are fairly measured against his danger, by the great Arbiter himself; and therefore is he summoned to close with his temptations, and condemned as a traitor if he yields or flies. And should it ever be otherwise,—should the feeble-minded and inexperienced be misled by the cunning of the strong-headed and practised seducer, the instinctive justice of mankind mitigates its sentence, and commiserates the fall. With how much greater force, then, must this palliation be felt, when the Tempter is admitted to be “possessed of capacity and power immensely surpassing ours,”[567]—a “master-spirit” of majestic intellect, with whom we are as an infant in the giant’s grasp! With such a being, the broken energy, the purblind vigilance, of a fallen man, can hardly be expected to cope; at least they will be induced, in so plausible a case, to esteem themselves unfairly matched against so exalted a competitor. While it were earnestly to be desired that the wretched conscience should be allowed no evasion, and for awhile no alleviation, under the condemning sentence of its memory and its God,—this doctrine calls up, inevitably and reasonably, the feeling of a divided criminality, of which the weaker nature has the smaller share.

These tendencies, so far as they have been truly stated, must continue to act, so long as we trace the evil that is in us to any foreign agent. Hence it appears impossible to defend the doctrine of Philosophical Necessity,—which presents God to us as the author of sin and suffering,—from the same charge of invading the sense of personal responsibility. Not that we are for a moment to sanction the vulgar error which confounds this scheme, in its theoretical structure and practical effects, with the system of fatalism; or to imagine, that an abdication of all free-will, and a total indifference to moral distinctions, would be its proper and consistent results. Though, however, it leaves room for individual pursuit, and motive to individual perfection, one of its chief and most vaunted features undoubtedly is, the encouragement which it affords to the passive virtues: and it will be found, I greatly fear, that it is their passiveness, more than their virtuousness, which puts them under the protection of this doctrine. Doubtless, he who can look on all men as the instruments of heaven, and recognize in their mutual injuries and crimes the chosen methods of the Divine government, must learn submission to many a triumph of wrong, and consider anger against the profligate and oppressor as insubordination against God. He who is haunted by the immutability of things, and feels himself locked in with the universal mechanism, will chafe himself with no rash spirit of resistance, nor vainly thrust his hand against the fly-wheel of nature. He who believes that all things are right, that absolute evil does not exist, that whatever men may be, and whatever they may do, nothing could possibly be better, must needs discover that his own wishes are no criterion of good, and look with a contented eye over the whole surface of the past, as well as a serene trust on the prospect of the future. Nor can there be any self-exaggeration in a mind conscious of possessing but an infinitesimal fraction of the universal power,—and even that little wielded and directed by an uncontrollable sovereignty, that turns the hearts of men whithersoever it pleaseth. Complacency with every lot, resignation to all events, forbearance under injury, an equal tenderness for all men, and the lowliest attitude before God, are the unquestionable results of this religious philosophy. But all this is attained by a process which, I would submit, the moralist is bound to regard as illegitimate;—by an appeal to external mechanical necessity, rendering any thing but these states of mind intellectually improper; not by any considerations of duty, or any perception of their intrinsic obligation. The whole efficacy of the system is negative, not positive. It prostrates and destroys the turbulent elements of our nature, and its quietude is the residue left by their exhaustion: it crumbles beneath us the heights of passion, and deposits us upon a placid level beneath the infinite expanse. Its characteristic dispositions are reached by the sacrifice of the feelings which are distinctively moral:—the feelings, that is, of which right and wrong acts and propensities are the appropriate objects;—the feelings of approbation and aversion, which recognize merit and demerit, and impel to praise and blame. The Necessarian sees, neither in himself nor others, any good or ill desert to justify such feelings: he regards natural and moral qualities in the same light,—contemplating benevolence as a species of health, and selfishness as akin to disease: if he utters censure or applause, it is not from an impulse in himself, but for an effect upon their object. In his love to men moral distinctions have no place; for as their sins justify no alienation, their virtues give no claim to admiration: he loves them apart from the perceptions of conscience,—without veneration,—without praise,—by the mere force of the sympathies which take interest in sentient beings as capable of happiness and misery:—loves them, may we not say, because there is no cause for hate; resentment, impatience, disgust, being out of place towards creatures who are what they were meant to be, nothing remains but to include them in his complacency. Nor does the humility which this system inculcates, bear the true and Christian stamp. It is not the irrepressible aspiration after moral perfection, the pursuit of an image in the conscience infinitely beautiful and great, the devoted worship of the holy, good, and true, which draw forth tears of contrition for the past, and dwarf the attainments of the present, though reckoning their thousand victories; but it is rather a sense of physical and mental insignificance, which annihilates all worth except such as we may derive from sharing the regards of God: it is not a perception of want of merit in our character, but a consciousness of incapacity for it in our nature.

And who could fairly realize the fundamental idea of this scheme, without losing all confidence in his own moral convictions, and constantly distrusting his best feelings as delusions? For does he not believe, that whatever is brought to pass is absolutely right and best, and that any different view of it is an illusion incident to our human point of sight? The optimist casts his eye over the past, and can see no blot upon the retrospect: yet does it contain innumerable things,—woes and crimes the most deplorable,—which, ere they happened, were repugnant to his worthiest desires, and to be encountered by the most strenuous resistance of duty. Is he then to look at these objects, up to the last moment of the present, as utterly evil; and from the first moment of the past, as indisputably best? Is he to set up a two-faced sentiment, gazing with mutable and discriminative expression on things approaching, but with unvaried complacency on things departed? Is it possible, that actions and characters can change their complexion by mere migration in time? or was it altogether a mistake to think so ill of the iniquities which, having been summoned into existence, must always have appeared eligible in the view of God? These perplexities must perpetually arise to a mind which uses two standards of good; the moral, which approves the right; and the eventual, which reveres the past. The latter incessantly contradicts the former, and insinuates that it is a blind guide, aiming at that which the All-wise will refuses to achieve. And thus our theorist, in so far as he is true to his principles, would lapse into scepticism of his moral judgments; into a hesitating veneration for the oracles of duty; a suspicion that they may inculcate provisional superstitions, rather than eternal truths. It must be difficult to unite pious acquiescence in the guilt of others, with uncompromising resistance to our own.

In short, the contemplations presented by this doctrine do not appear to be favourable to active excellence: rising too far, and embracing too much, they quit the contact of this green earth, and lose sight of the interval between the quiet vales where virtue walks, and the giddy heights it may not tread. The soul, rendered conscious more of the immensity around it, than of the obligations upon it, lies still, without a passion, without a fear,—venturing an approach to the benignity more than to the energy of God. Perhaps it is the tendency of all systems which most amply spread forth the Divine Infinitude, to be less occupied with the conception of the Divine Holiness: perhaps the mind intensely occupied with the idea of one solitary Power, absorbing all subordinate agencies, and willing every change that renders space or time perceptible, has all its strongest impulses, both moral and sympathetic, suppressed in the abyss of mystery; and the distinction between different beings and different acts appears, in so vast a view, too trivial to be worthy of deep emotion and resolute volition. Certain it is, that the oriental religions which have encouraged this sublimity of devotion and self-annihilation in the Deity, have not been remarkable for the formation of a sound and vigorous type of moral character. Indeed we have seen that God himself, the supreme centre of reverence, no longer remains, under the Necessarian representation, a really holy object of thought. If we are to admit no possibility of resisting his will, and proclaiming him the Only Cause, to drown all other powers in his immensity, it becomes impossible to feel that he has any paramount regard to moral distinctions: he cannot share our feelings towards human guilt, for it is his work: he objects to no amount of vice, provided it issues in enjoyment: and not one libertine, or traitor, or murderer, could his purposes have spared. To reconcile us to this dreadful thought, we are reminded of his benevolence, which will bring all things to a glorious result. But how can we discern any sanctity in a benevolence so indiscriminating in its instruments? Must all our various apprehensions of God, the supremely good and supremely fair, shrink into this one, of ultimate-happiness Maker, by no means fastidious in his application of means, but secure of producing the end? Must the harmony of the Divine perfections lapse into this dull monotone? It can hardly be well for our conscience to worship a Being whom we could not imitate without guilt: or, if it be said, that we may imitate his ultimate aim, though not his intermediate methods,—what is this but to admit that our moral sympathies with him must be postponed to the end of time?

This system, then, like others which trace sin to causes beyond the individual will, does not appear to foster that deep reverence for moral distinctions, and sense of personal responsibility, which eminently characterize practical Christianity. It is favourable indeed to the passive virtues, which occupy their due place in the morality of the Gospel: but in producing them, appeals to considerations discouraging to the active spirit of moral resistance and moral aggression.

To all this, however, an objector might urge the following reply:—“Human conduct is not influenced by such considerations as you have supposed. It matters little what men may think about the origin of their guilt, if they make no mistake about its consequences: let them only be sure that it will be punished in the end, and they may please themselves with speculating about its beginning. Every one will fly an inevitable suffering, whether self-incurred or induced by foreign causes: and if he clearly sees the penal sentence, he will shun the sin, just as much when he imagines that others have involved him in it, as when he conceives that he alone has brought it on himself. In short, the will neither is nor can be determined by anything but the prospect of pleasure or pain; and so long as consequences of this kind depend on his decisions, a man will feel himself accountable. The sense of responsibility can never be weakened by any system which, like those just noticed, retain the doctrine of future retribution.”

This statement assumes that self-regarding motives, promises of happiness, and threats of misery, are the sole powers for operating on human character.

(2.) In reply, I submit as a second distinguishing feature of practical Christianity, that it makes no great, certainly no exclusive, appeal to the prudential feelings, as instruments of duty; treats them as morally incapable of so sacred a work; and relies, chiefly and characteristically, on affections of the heart, which no motives of reward and punishment can have the smallest tendency to excite.

The Gospel, indeed, like all things divine, is unsystematic and unbound by technical distinctions, and makes no metaphysical separation between the will and the affections. It is too profoundly adapted to our nature, not to address itself copiously to both. The doctrine of retribution being a solemn truth, appears with all its native force in the teachings of Christ, and arms many of his appeals with a persuasion just and terrible. But never was there a religion (containing these motives at all) so frugal in the use of them; so able, on fit occasions, to dispense with them: so rich in those inimitable touches of moral beauty, and tones that penetrate the conscience, and generous trust in the better sympathies, which distinguish a morality of the affections. In Christ himself, where is there a trace of the obedience of pious self-interest, computing its everlasting gains, and making out a case for compensation, by submitting to infinite wisdom? In his character, which is the impersonation of his religion, we surely have a perfect image of spontaneous goodness, unhaunted by the idea of personal enjoyment, and, like that of God, unbidden but by the intuitions of conscience, and the impulses of love. And what teacher less divine ever made such high and bold demands on our disinterestedness? To lend out our virtue upon interest,—to “love them only who love us” he pronounced to be the sinners’ morality; nor was the feeling of duty ever reached, but by those who could “do good, hoping for nothing again,” except that greatest of rewards to a true and faithful heart, to be “the children of the Highest” who “is kind unto the unthankful and the evil.” In the view of Jesus, all dealings between God and men were not of bargain, but of affection. We must surrender ourselves to him without terms; must be ashamed to doubt him who feeds the birds of the air, and, like the lily of the field, look up to him with a bright and loving eye; and he, for our much love, will pity and forgive us. In his own ministry, how much less did our Lord rely for disciples on the cogency of mere proof, and the inducements of hope and fear, than on the power of moral sympathy, by which every one that was of God naturally loved him and heard his words;[568] by which the good shepherd knew his sheep, and they listened to his voice, and followed him;[569] and without which no man could come unto him, for no spirit of the Father drew him.[570] No condition of discipleship did Christ impose, save that of “faith in him;” absolute trust in the spirit of his mind; a desire of self-abandonment to a love and fidelity like his, without tampering with expediency, or hesitancy in peril, or shrinking from death.

There is, then, a wide variance between the genius of Christianity, and that philosophy which teaches, that all men must be bought over to the side of goodness and of God, by a price suited to their particular form of selfishness and appetite for pleasure. Our religion is remarkable for the large confidence it reposes on the disinterested affections, and the vast proportion of the work of life it consigns to them. And in thus seeking to subordinate and tranquillize the prudential feelings, Christ manifested how well he knew what was in man. He recognized the truth, which all experience declares, that in these emotions is nothing great, nothing loveable, nothing powerful; that their energy is perpetually found incapable of withstanding the impetuosity of passion; and that all transcendant virtues, all that brings us to tremble or to kneel, all the enterprises and conflicts which dignify history, and have stamped any new feature on human life, have had their origin in the disinterested region of the mind; in affections, unconsciously entranced by some object sanctifying and divine. He knew, for it was his special mission to make all men feel, that it is the office of true religion to cleanse the sanctuary of the secret affections, and effect a regeneration of the heart. And this is a task which no direct nisus of the will can possibly accomplish, and to which, therefore, all offers of reward and punishment, operating only on the will, are quite inapplicable. The single function of volition is to act; over the executive part of our nature it is supreme; over the emotional it is powerless; and all the wrestlings of desire for self-cure and self-elevation, are like the struggles of a child to lift himself. He who is anxious to be a philanthropist, is admiring benevolence, instead of loving men; and whoever is labouring to warm his devotion, yearns after piety, not after God. The mind can by no spasmodic bound seize on a new height of emotion, or change the light in which objects appear before its view. Persuade the judgment, bribe the self-interests, terrify the expectations, as you will, you can neither dislodge a favourite, nor enthrone a stranger, in the heart. Show me a child that flings an affectionate arm around a parent, and lights up his eyes beneath her face, and I know that there have been no lectures there upon filial love; but that the mother, being loveable, has of necessity been loved; for to genial minds it is as impossible to withhold a pure affection, when its object is presented, as for the flower to sulk within the mould, and clasp itself tight within the bud, when the gentle force of spring invites its petals to curl out into the warm light. As you reverence all good affections of our nature, and desire to awaken them, never call them duties, though they be so; for so doing, you address yourself to the will; and by hard trying no attachment ever entered the heart. Never preach on their great desirableness and propriety; for so doing, you ask audience of the judgment; and by way of the understanding no glow of noble passion ever came. Never, above all, reckon up their balance of good and ill; for so doing, you exhort self-interest; and by that soiled way no true love will consent to pass. Nay, never talk of them, nor even gaze curiously at them; for if they be of any worth and delicacy, they will be instantly looked out of countenance and fly. Nothing worthy of human veneration will condescend to be embraced, but for its own sake: grasp it for its excellent results,—make but the faintest offer to use it as a tool, and it slips away at the very conception of such insult. The functions of a healthy body go on, not by knowledge of physiology, but by the instinctive vigour of nature; and you will no more brace the spiritual faculties to noble energy and true life, by study of the uses of every feeling, than you can train an athlete for the race, by lectures on every muscle of every limb. The mind is not voluntarily active in the acquisition of any great idea, any new inspiration of faith; but passive, fixed on the object which has dawned upon it, and filled it with fresh light.

If this be true, and if it be the object of practical Christianity, not only to direct our hands aright, but to inspire our hearts; then can its ends never be achieved by the mere force of reward and punishment; then no system can prove its sufficiency, by showing that it retains the doctrine of retribution, and must even be held convicted of moral incompetency, if it trusts the conscience mainly to the prudential feelings, without due provision for enlisting the co-operation of many a disinterested affection.

To this objection must any scheme be liable, which represents the Creator as having made choice of the instrumentality of evil. I freely admit, that no one urges the personal motives to duty with more closeness and force than the Necessarian. Maintaining, with the utmost strictness, the connexion of moral cause and effect, teaching the alliance of happiness with excellence, and of misery with vice, by a law inexorable as fate, he convinces us, that every concession to temptation, every relaxation of conscientious effort, is an addition of wretchedness to our future lot; that when the evil volition has once passed, no fortuity can provide evasion, nor any mercy give us shelter; that on the decisions of our will is suspended whatever can make our everlasting destination blessed. But his doctrine goes on to assure us, that it is only to ourselves that our sins create any clear increase of suffering; they are a part of the best possible system, designed for the general good; and shown, by their occurrence, to be clear benefits to the world. No love of our fellow-man, then, can be engaged in behalf of duty; let conscience say what it will, we hold no power, and incur no risk, of creating injury to others; and our sympathies with them cannot reasonably determine any moral choice. No love of God can tender help to our feeble virtue: for he is not “grieved in our sins;” and whether, in our conflicts, we succumb or conquer, the issue is well-pleasing in his sight. He appears to sustain a relation, not of concern, but of indifference, to our choice; and the idea of him, as spectator of the strife, inspires no courage, and brings no victory. If it be urged, that these considerations are of too high and abstract a kind to influence us in practice, and that to us our misconduct must always appear injurious to men, and offensive to God; what is this but to allow the unfitness of the doctrine to our minds, and to say, that it is harmless, in proportion as it remains unrealized? It is a poor plea for the value of a system to exclaim, “Never mind its threatened mischiefs, conscience is too strong for them.” The point at which the present argument rests is this, that in so far as the doctrine operates, it dismisses all but the prudential feelings from the service of duty.

Our conclusion is evident. The spirit of practical Christianity gives a double suffrage against the scheme which makes moral evil the instrument of God; and bids us regard it as his enemy. Revelation allies itself with the primitive religion of the conscience.

To the theoretic question, still urged by our wonder and solicitude, “But whence this foe?” it has been already said, that no answer can be given. All the ingenuities of logic and of language, leave it a mystery still: and it is better to stand within the darkness in the quietude of faith, than vainly to search for its margin in the restlessness of knowledge. Were we compelled, for relief of mind, to select some definite method of representing the case to our apprehensions, I know not any simpler or better conception than that of the ancient Platonists;—that the process of creation consisted, not in the origination of matter itself out of nothing, but in the production of form, order, beauty, organization, life, sentiency, out of matter,—in making it the residence of mind, the receptacle of experience, and the servitor of souls: that the Divine hand has manifested illimitable skill, and the Divine love infinite versatility, in the use and application of the original material; but that, as it is the negative opposite to his positive perfections, its unsusceptibility of life and spirit has occasioned the portion of evil which deforms the universe, and which, however varied and reduced, and, in the higher gradations of being, attenuated to the verge of extinction, cannot be utterly annihilated. From the large proportion of visible evil, natural and moral, that is traceable to disorganization and its related changes, this view is easily apprehended, and may indeed be detected, in many common forms of thought and speech. If it be not true, no better substitute for the truth is within our reach. It limits the power of God no more than the rival scheme: for were we to say, that he became the author of evil, as the unavoidable means of ulterior benefits, we should admit, that only on these terms was the contemplated good producible, even by him whom, in relation to all our measures of force, we justly call Omnipotent. It is impossible to escape, and therefore better to confront, the idea of a NECESSITY, restricting the conditions within which the Divine goodness operates;—a necessity, mysterious, but not dreadful; not great enough to be subversive of faith, nor trivial enough to be reasoned out of sight. I know not why our thoughts should not find a residence for this necessity, rather in the materials awaiting the Creative hand, than in any immaterial laws, under the mystic title of “the Nature of things,” or (in other words,) any dark Fate behind the throne. But in saying this, I only propose to state the problem in the most salutary form, and by no means to offer a solution: mere pretension to ideas, where truly we have none, only excludes us from the benefits (which are many) of our allotted portion of ignorance. I have no sympathy with the confident and dogmatic spirit, which exclaims, “Let the counsel of the Holy One draw nigh, that we may know it;” and would only protest against systems that “call evil good, and good evil,” that “put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”

Sin, then, in the sight of God and all good men, is to be esteemed an evil, absolutely and everlastingly. We may rally the whole power of our nature against it: for it destroys our personal security; it irremediably wounds our brother; and it puts us in dreary alienation from our Father and our Judge. We may let loose our aversion to all that offends the conscience, and without metaphysical hesitancy, visit it with uncompromising hate; for so doing, we are indignant with no instrument of Deity; nor do we fall into any sentiment at variance with his. We may yield, with entire self-precipitation, to the love of whatever things are pure and true and good; never fearing that our affections will become too exclusive for the enlightened children of the Highest. When we look into the darker chambers of our soul, and discern, asleep or awake, the powers of selfishness, malice, jealousy,—we see therein no nursery of discipline, where God presides to train us ultimately well; but the dreadful dwelling of our familiar fiend who wrestles in apostacy with God;—the palace of the penal furies that at once tempt and torture us, a place severed by a whole universe from Heaven;—the inner Hell of our immortal nature, so plenteous in solitary agonies, that the addition of outward flames populous with tormented beings would only refresh us with pity for their woes. The fever of desire, the fires of revenge, the gnawing of remorse, still busy in our immortality; the shame of resuscitated memories; the passionate yearning after strength with the prostrate consciousness of weakness; the strangeness and desolation of empty minds and heated appetites carried to the assemblage of the skies, and gazed on by the pitying eye of a Divine but alienated purity,—Oh! what flames can burn into tenderer seats of anguish than these? And so far from planning and willing the lapse of any into such guilt and suffering, the Great Ruler never ceases to resist to the last, all such delay of his benediction and frustration of his desire. He dwells absolutely apart from all creative contact with the evil which we are bound to abhor: he comes before us as a being unambiguously Holy; not in any ultimate and scarce intelligible way, but in our plain human sense. His name must be reserved as the exclusive receptacle of all the excellence and beauty, the majesty and tenderness, the purity and justice, of which our minds can gather together the ideas. It is no figure of speech, that there is joy in heaven over the sinner that repenteth: that part at least of heaven that dwells below and hides itself within our hearts, that portion of God that expresses itself through the sanctities of our nature, yields to our moral restoration not only a ready welcome, but a mysterious help. When fear has performed its proper and only function on a responsible being,—which is, not to create holiness, but to arrest guilt; when it has summoned us, like the prodigal, to ourselves again; when it has brought the mad career to halt, and left us weeping, humbled, prostrate in the dust, crying, “Lord, help us, we perish;”—then the Divine Spirit dawns on the gloom of our self-abasement, and refreshes us with the delicious light of a new and purer love: instead of the vain strivings of an enervated will, the restless beating of mere prudence against the iron bars of corrupt desire, the gates of the soul are burst silently open by some angel affection, and we are free! And shall we not, with most devout allegiance, follow our Divine Emancipator? The great work, which his holy energy is thus ready to carry on within us, he may be discerned conducting every where without us. On the theatre of the universe he is himself engaged to grapple eternally with Evil, and hurl it from the higher portion of his abode. And so, he waits, with his inspiring sympathy, to hail every victory of our free-will: and by all the filial love we bear him, by the generous fear of estrangement from his spirit, by the hope of growth in his similitude, we are summoned to enter the field of moral conflict,—to stir up the noble courage of our hearts, and in the Lord’s own might, do battle with the confederate fiends of guilt and woe. There is not elsewhere a combat so glorious, or a trophy so divine.

NOTES.

---------------------

A.

Origin of the Doctrine of Two Principles.

The prominent place which the doctrine of two principles occupies in the later theology of the Persians has procured for that people the reputation of being the first to apprehend it; and for Zoroaster the credit of assigning to it its due importance in the religious reformation which he accomplished. So much doubt, however, exists, respecting the age in which Zoroaster lived, the nature and extent of the change which he introduced, and even on the question whether he really taught the dualistic scheme at all, that he cannot justly deprive the Ionian philosophers of a claim to originality in their resort to it. If either before the Persian conquest of the Medes, or in the time of Darius Hystaspes, this doctrine had been entrusted to the Magi, as conservators of the national religion, it is difficult to account for the omission of so fundamental a tenet in the account which Herodotus gives of the Persian theology. The simple monotheism which the Father of History describes, as seeking the mountain top in sacrifice, and calling the whole circle of the heavens God,[571] can scarcely be the same with the elaborate system of dualism, attributed by Plutarch to Zoroaster and the Magi;[572] and the difference between the two accounts throws a doubt on the antiquity of the latter doctrine in the East. Yet, on the other hand, if we assign to it the most recent date of which the case admits, we must allow that it formed part of the popular belief in the fourth century before Christ; in which case, it must have existed, at least in its previous philosophical form, in the fifth. A doctrine, however, which had not yet assumed a mythological character, or drawn to itself any external ceremonial, might easily escape the notice of Herodotus. The Indian books, which contain the same tenet, are thought by Friedrich von Schlegel to have borrowed it from Persia;[573] and cannot therefore be adduced in separate proof of its high antiquity. On the whole, there appears to be no evidence of its propagation among any native Oriental people, before the brilliant period of art and philosophy in the Greek cities of Asia Minor.

Even if it should be chronologically incorrect to affirm, that Ionian speculation “anticipated” the oriental religions in their theological and philosophical ideas, there is no sufficient reason to deny its independence and originality. Though the Greek schools did not arise till an opening intercourse with Egypt and the interior of Asia afforded to their founders the opportunity of borrowing from foreign sources, it does not appear that they estimated this advantage highly enough to avail themselves of it. Only a truly indigenous philosophy could have left such distinct traces of a regular and progressive development, beginning with the poetical cosmogonies of a purely mythological æra, and growing, under the fostering care of successive teachers, into vast speculative systems, bearing a relation, continually more obscure and questionable, to the theology which gave them birth. Adverting to this natural process, Mr. Thirlwall says: “It can excite no surprise that in a period such as we are now reviewing, when thought and inquiry were stimulated in so many new directions, some active minds should have been attracted by the secrets of nature, and should have been led to grapple with some of the great questions which the contemplation of the visible universe suggests. There can therefore be no need of attempting to trace the impulse by which the Greeks were now carried toward such researches, to a foreign origin. But it is an opinion which has found many advocates, that they were indebted to their widening intercourse with other nations, particularly with Egypt, Phœnicia, and the interior of Asia, for several of the views and doctrines which were fundamental or prominent parts of their earlier philosophical systems. The result, however, of the maturest investigation, seems to show that there is no sufficient ground even for this conjecture.[574] On the other hand, it is clear that the first philosophers were not wholly independent of the earlier intellectual efforts of their own countrymen, and that, perhaps unconsciously, they derived the form, if not, in part at least, the substance of their speculations, from the old theogonies and cosmogonies.[575]

The successive evolutions of the Pantheistic principle, and its final renunciation by Anaxagoras, are thus succinctly described by Mr. Thirlwall: “Thales evolved his world out of a single simple substance, (water) to which he attributed the power of passing spontaneously through the various transformations necessary for the multiplicity of natural productions. But he does not seem to have attempted accurately to define the nature of these transformations. And so most of his successors, who set out from a similar hypothesis, contented themselves with some vague notions, or phrases, about the successive expansions or contractions of the original substance. But as the contemplation of animal life had led Anaximenes to adopt air as the basis of his system, a later philosopher, Diogenes of Apollonia, carried this analogy a step further, and regarded the universe as issuing from an intelligent principle, by which it was at once vivified and ordered—a rational, as well as sensitive soul—still without recognizing any distinction between matter and mind. Much earlier, however, Anaximander of Miletus, who flourished not long after Thales, and is generally considered as his immediate disciple, seems to have been struck by the difficulty of accounting for the changes which a simple substance must be supposed to undergo, in order to produce an infinite variety of beings. He found it easier, in conformity with some of the ancient cosmogonies, to conceive the primitive state of the universe as a vast chaos, for which he had no other name than the infinite,—containing all the elements out of which the world was to be constructed, by a process of separation and combination, which, however, he considered as the result of a motion, not impressed on it from without, but inherent in the mass. This hypothesis, which tended to give an entirely new direction to the speculations of the school, seems to have been treated with a neglect which it is difficult to explain, and which has raised a suspicion that some less celebrated names may have dropped out of the list of the Ionian philosophers. But a century after Anaximander, Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ revived his doctrine with some very fanciful additions, and one very important change. He combined the principle of Anaximander with that of his contemporary Diogenes, and acknowledged a supreme mind, distinct from the chaos to which it imparted motion, form, and order. The Pantheistic systems of the Ionian school were only independent of the popular creed, and did not exclude it. The language of Thales and Heraclitus, who declared that the universe was full of gods, left room for all the fictions of the received mythology, and might even add new fervour to the superstition of the vulgar. But the system of Anaxagoras seems to have been felt to be almost irreconcilable with the prevailing opinions, and hence, as we shall find, drew upon him hatred and persecution.”[576]

In confirmation of the opinions expressed towards the close of this Lecture, I cannot refrain from subjoining the following moral estimate of the doctrine of two principles: it is from F. von Schlegel’s Treatise, before alluded to, on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians. “Pantheism inevitably destroys the distinction between good and evil, however strenuously its advocates may contend in words against this reproach; the doctrine of emanation depresses the moral freedom of the will by the idea of an infinite degree of innate guilt, and the belief that every being is predestined to crime and misery; the system of two principles, and the warfare between good and evil, holds the middle place between these extremes: it becomes, itself, a powerful incentive to a similar contest, and a source of the purest morality.”[577]

B.

Hebrew Names for the Evil Spirit.

The mere fact, that no proper names for the Evil Spirit exist in the Hebrew language, except such as are of Apocryphal or Rabbinical creation, is in itself a sufficient proof of the late and unscriptural origin of the belief in his existence. A glance at an English concordance will make it evident, that the word “Devil,” in the singular number, does not occur in our authorized translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is found in the plural in Lev. xvii. 7, 2 Chron. xi. 15, Deut. xxxii. 17, Ps. cvi. 37; and in none of these instances can it for a moment be supposed that the original word, if used in the singular, would represent any idea corresponding to the popular notion of the Devil; indeed, when the Rabbinical writers needed a name for the expression of this idea, they had recourse to other terms than those which are found in the verses just cited. In the two latter passages, the Hebrew word is שׁדים, literally, mighty beings; it clearly denotes false gods, and probably designates them by the title applied to them by their votaries; for the name is evidently not contemptuous, and is indeed radically the same which was applied by the Israelites to Jehovah, and receives in our version the translation Almighty. In the two former passages, the word is שׂעירים, literally, goats, and evidently denotes the heathen deities, typified under the form of that animal; especially, we may suppose, the Egyptian Pan, worshipped in the Mendesian nome,[578] with rites the most abominable. In Isaiah xiii. 21, the common translation renders the same word satyrs.

Several names of evil spirits occur in the Talmudical writings: and among them are two which are appropriated to the Satanic chief, viz., סמאל, Samael; and אשמדי, Asmodæus. The latter is the term by which the evil spirit is designated in Tobit iii. 8: and it would be easy to show, by a multitude of passages, that the being to whom both these names were given corresponded to the “Devil” of modern theology, as far as correspondence can be affirmed to exist between any two creations of the imagination. Thus we are told, in words which also show the use of the word Satan as a generic rather than a proper name; “The wicked angel Samael is prince of all the Satans,” סמאל הרשע ראש כל השטנים הוא‎.[579] Again, Jehovah is represented as saying to him, under his title of Angel of Death (מלאך המות) “I have made thee Ruler of the world,” שעשיתי איתך קוזמוקרטור (κοσμοκράτορα).[580] The same supremacy is attributed to this being under his other name. Thus it is said, that when Solomon became too much elated by his prosperity, there was sent to him “Asmodæus, the Prince of evil spirits,” אשמדיי מלכא דשדים‎.[581] And with slight variation of phrase he is described as “the devil Asmodæus, the Prince of Spirits,” שידא אשמדון רבהון דרוחתא‎‎. [582] Buxtorf identifies Samael and Asmodæus, on the authority of R. Elias; he says, “Eundem esse Asmodæum, qui alio nomine Rabbinis dicitur Samael.”[583] And Bertholdt again identifies this being with the enemy of the Gospel described in 2 Cor. iv. 4, as ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου; and in John xiv. 30, as ὁ τοῦ κόσμου [τούτου] ἄρχων: after quoting these phrases, he says “Apud Targumistas et Rabbinos occurrit sub nomine סמאל Samael.”[584]

The idea then of which we are in search, is unquestionably of frequent occurrence among the Talmudists. In expressing it they have recourse to new names not found in the Canonical writings. Surely a strong presumption arises, that the Hebrew Scriptures did not furnish them with the means of designating the personage about whom they discoursed.

C.

The parallel Passages in the Epistles of Jude and 2 Peter.

For the sake of those readers of the English Scriptures who may not have noticed the remarkable similarity between the Epistle of Jude, and the second chapter of the second Epistle of Peter, I subjoin a comparison of the two. A reference to the Greek Testament will make it evident, that the parallelism is fairly exhibited in our common translation. My present purpose, at least, will be sufficiently answered by taking the citations thence.

2 Peter ii. Jude.

1 ... There shall be false teachers 4. For there are certain men crept among you, who privily shall bring in unawares, who were before of old in damnable heresies, even denying ordained to this condemnation, the Lord that bought them, and ungodly men, turning the grace of bring upon themselves swift our God into lasciviousness, and destruction. denying the only Lord God, and our 3. And through covetousness shall Lord Jesus Christ. they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

4. For if God spared not the angels 6. And the angels which kept not that sinned, but cast them down to their first estate, but left their hell, and delivered them into own habitation, he hath reserved in chains of darkness, to be reserved everlasting chains under darkness unto judgment: unto the judgment of the great day.

6. And turning the cities of Sodom 7. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned the cities about them in like them with an overthrow, making them manner, giving themselves over to an ensample unto those that after fornication, and going after should live ungodly: strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

10. But chiefly them that walk 8. Likewise also these filthy after the flesh in the lust of dreamers defile the flesh, despise uncleanness, and despise dominion, and speak evil of government. Presumptuous are they, dignities. self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.

11. Whereas angels, which are 9. Yet Michael the archangel, when greater in power and might, bring contending with the Devil he not railing accusation against them disputed about the body of Moses, before the Lord. durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

12. But these, as natural brute 10. But these speak evil of those beasts, made to be taken and things which they know not: but destroyed, speak evil of the things what they know naturally, as brute that they understand not; and shall beasts, in those things they utterly perish in their own corrupt themselves. corruption.

13 ... Spots they are and 12. These are spots in your feasts blemishes, sporting themselves with of charity, when they feast with their own deceivings while they you, feeding themselves without feast with you. fear.

17. These are wells without water, 12. Clouds they are without water, clouds that are carried with a carried about of winds;... tempest; to whom the mist of 13. ... Wandering stars, to whom is darkness is reserved for ever. reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

18. For when they speak great 16. These are murmurers, swelling words of vanity, they complainers, walking after their allure through the lusts of the own lusts; and their mouth speaketh flesh, through much wantonness, great swelling words, having men’s those that were clean escaped from persons in admiration because of them who live in error. advantage.

Very few readers, it is probable, will rise from the examination of this parallelism, without the persuasion, that the writings betraying it cannot be independent productions; and without amazement at the opinion of Lardner, that “the similitude of the subject might produce,” to such extent, “a resemblance of style. The design,” he continues, “of St. Peter and St. Jude was to condemn some loose and erroneous Christians, and to caution others against them. When speaking of the same sort of persons, their style and figures of speech would have a great agreement.”[585] Lardner appears to shrink from attributing to the inspired St. Jude (supposing him to be the later writer) either plagiarism or a needless repetition of instruction.[586] But why should his inspiration deter him from such an act? It rather affords, as Michaelis observes, a conclusive reason for ascribing it to him. “For the Holy Ghost,” this author suggests, “certainly knew, while he was dictating the Epistle to St. Jude, that an Epistle of St. Peter, of a like import, already existed. And if the Holy Ghost, notwithstanding this knowledge, still thought that an Epistle of St. Jude was not unnecessary, why shall we suppose that St. Jude himself would have been prevented from writing by the same knowledge?”[587] This argument of the learned German certainly renders it unnecessary to doubt, with the scrupulous Lardner, whether St. Jude would copy from a fellow-labourer’s letter: but then, it also renders it unnecessary to believe this: for with the perfect familiarity which the Holy Ghost possessed (“while dictating”) with the previous epistle of Peter, there was no occasion whatever for St. Jude to have the knowledge too. Indeed so completely might any degree of parallelism be explained in this way, that no conceivable phenomena of agreement would furnish the slightest proof that the one writer had seen the production of the other.

For some inscrutable reasons, however, all the ablest theologians seem to have declined this easy solution, by appeal to the memory of the Holy Ghost; and to have been convinced that some method, simply human, must be sought, to account for the accordance between these two epistles. Some have supposed, with Bishop Sherlock, that both authors drew their materials from a common source, the imagery and phraseology of which they freely used. But as Eichhorn has well observed, “Bare conjecture is an insufficient support for this supposition; in the absence of all trace of any document giving plausibility to the suggestion, by disclosing a source in common relation with the corresponding passages of the two epistles.”[588] If this explanation be untenable, nothing remains but to conclude that one of the writers copied from the other; and this, accordingly, has been the general opinion of theologians. This, however, is the only point on which critics are agreed: for when the question is proposed, whether St. Peter or St. Jude were the original writer, it is curious to observe the confidence with which each of the two answers may be returned, and the opposite views which may be taken of the considerations affecting the decision. In the absence of all external evidence, the intrinsic character of the two compositions must determine our reply: and the chief impression which results from a comparison of them is, that St. Jude has expressed his ideas with more succinctness and unity; St. Peter with more vagueness and amplification. Appealing to this circumstance, Dr. Hug says, “the critic cannot fail to perceive which was the original;” “it is evident that the passages of Peter are periphrases and amplifications;” “the originality of Jude is clear from the comparison of both authors, and especially from the language;” “Peter had, therefore, the Epistle of Jude before him, and in his own manner applied it to his purposes.”[589] Michaelis, however,—who rejects the Epistle of Jude, and says that, “judging by its contents,” we “have no inducement to believe it a sacred and divine work,”—ventures on the following confident statements: “No doubt can be made, that the second Epistle of St. Peter was, in respect to the Epistle of St. Jude, the original and not the copy:” “with respect to the date of this (Jude’s) Epistle, all that I am able to assert is, that it was written after the second Epistle of St. Peter;” “this appears from a comparison of the two, which are so similar to each other both in sentiments and in expressions, as no two epistles could well be, unless the author of the one had read the epistle of the other. It is evident therefore that St. Jude borrowed from St. Peter both expressions and arguments, to which he himself has made some few additions.”[590]

After reading these positive statements on either side, we are struck with the justice of the following remark of Eichhorn’s: referring to the differences between the two epistles in respect to their style, he says: “These phenomena admit of a twofold explanation. Peter might be regarded as the original and Jude as the copy; inasmuch as, in the process of revision, a writing may become more perfect in the expression and disposition of the ideas: the superfluities will naturally be retrenched, the march of the thoughts become quicker, the diction more choice; the copyist having the matter all before him, and being able to direct his attention exclusively to the form which it shall assume. But with just as much truth we might turn round and say,—Jude was the original, whom Peter illustrated, amplified, and paraphrased. In the process, the style lost its unity, its compactness, its clear outline: the paraphrast interrupted the succession of thoughts with several foreign ideas; and the exposition of the subject thus became more obscure, prolix, and disorderly. Who can decide between these two possibilities?”

This acute author does not, however, consider the problem of impossible solution. The suspense in which its difficulty holds us, continues, he observes, “only so long as we confine ourselves merely to a mutual comparison of the parallel passages. If we look at them in their relation to the whole of St. Peter’s second epistle, we find a reason for concluding that Jude is original, Peter the copyist. The author of the second chapter of Peter does not stand, as a writer, on his own ground: if he did, his mode of writing would be the same as in the first and third chapters, which, however, is not the case. It is clear that we cannot apply to Jude this test of originality, derived from consistency of style; for we possess no other composition of his, with which to compare his epistle. Yet there is a compactness and unity in his writing, from which its independent character may be inferred. Whoever is content to take up the thoughts of others, yet not without introducing something of his own, is easily drawn aside by accessory ideas; by which the definite outline of a composition is lost. This is by no means the case in the epistle of Jude.”[591]

It is generally admitted, then, that these two productions, as far as their topics coincide, constitute but one authority: and we shall follow, I think, the most judicious criticism, if we assign that authority, whatever it may be, to the epistle of Jude. Whence, then, did he derive his knowledge of such circumstances as those which are mentioned in the sixth and ninth verses, respecting “the angels which kept not their first estate,” and “Michael the archangel contending with the Devil” “about the body of Moses?” There are but three supposable sources; immediate personal inspiration; the Hebrew Scriptures; or some non-canonical and unauthoritative work.

The first of these suppositions I do not find to be maintained by any creditable theological writer; and it may be dismissed with the following remarks of Michaelis:—“The dispute between Michael and the Devil about the body of Moses, has by no means the appearance of a true history: and the author of our epistle has not even hinted that he knew it to be true by the aid of Divine inspiration, or that he distinguished it from other Jewish traditions. On the contrary, he has introduced it as part of a story, with which his readers were already acquainted: he does not appear to have had any other authority for it, than they themselves had: nor does the part which he has quoted at all imply, either that he himself doubted, or that he wished his readers should doubt, of the other parts of it.”[592]

The second supposition, that the writer makes no allusion, on these points of celestial history, to any thing beyond the Old Testament, is so universally regarded as untenable, that even Lardner’s great authority will hardly avail to procure it any further attention. In what part of the Hebrew Scriptures St. Jude obtained his information respecting the fallen angels, Lardner, while deploring a like omission on the part of his predecessors, has neglected to explain. And when, in order to connect the story of Michael and the Devil with Zach. iii. 1-3, he is obliged to construe “the body of Moses,” into the Israelitish people, it surely becomes evident that the consideration of this passage never fully engaged his incomparable judgment.[593] Happily, Lardner’s is a reputation of which there is no need to be economical: and even theological opponents cannot apply to him the description which, with some truth and more severity, they have given of Mr. Wakefield, as a “scholar, who was great among Unitarians, but not among scholars:”—

“Quem bis terque bonum cum risu miror; et idem Indignor, quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus?”

There remains, then, but the third supposition, that St. Jude derived these notices of the supernatural world from some apocryphal and traditional work. And we need the less scruple to admit this, as he himself intimates the fact, in the fourteenth verse, where he refers to the Book of Enoch. This work professes to be extant in the Æthiopic language; and the copies of it contain the passage cited by St. Jude: and whatever doubts may attach to Bishop Lawrance’s opinion, that we have it substantially as it was originally written shortly before the time of Christ, the citations from the “Book of Enoch,” by Syncellus, and the references to it by both Greek and Latin Fathers, are too numerous and ancient, to leave it questionable that such a work existed, and was in use not long after the Christian era, and probably before. Hug gives this account of it:—“The Book of Enoch, in fact, was full of Jewish, Theurgical, and Magical reveries, as indeed the character of the person, to whom this writing was ascribed, required it to be. According to Eupolemus, he is said to have been the inventor of Astrology, or rather a scholar of the Angels in this science, who initiated him into the mysteries of it; for he had at one time obtained a mission to the Angels, on which occasion he probably received their instruction. But it did not suffice, that he was acquainted with the course of the planets, the position of the Heavens, and their signification; but he likewise, as the Jews and other Easterns maintained, learned in addition from the heavenly natures, the art of prognostication, characters, offerings, purifications, lustrations, and other things of this description, which he imparted to mankind. According to these ideas, which were entertained of him far and wide among Jews, Arabians, and others, we can easily determine, to what sort of literature his writings must belong. The remains of it, which we find in the Church-Fathers also, do not deceive this expectation.”[594]

Though this is the only Apocryphal production to which St. Jude refers by name, Origen informs us, in a passage already cited, that the adventure between Michael and the Devil was taken from a work entitled Ἀνάληψις or Ἀνάβασις τοῦ Μωσέως. “From a comparison of the relation in this book with St. Jude’s quotation,” says Michaelis, “he was thoroughly persuaded, that it was the book from which St. Jude quoted. This he asserts without the least hesitation: and in consequence of this persuasion, he himself has quoted the Assumption of Moses, as a work of authority, in proof of the temptation of Adam and Eve by the Devil. But as he has quoted it merely for this purpose, he has given us only an imperfect account of what this book contained, relative to the dispute about the body of Moses. One circumstance, however, he has mentioned, which is not found in the epistle of St. Jude, namely, that Michael reproached the Devil with having possessed the serpent which seduced Eve. In what manner this circumstance is connected with the dispute about the body of Moses will appear from the following consideration. The Jews imagined the person of Moses was so holy, that God could find no reason for permitting him to die: and that nothing but the sin committed by Adam and Eve in paradise, which brought death into the world, was the cause why Moses did not live for ever. The same notions they entertained of some other very holy persons, for instance of Isai, who, they say, was delivered to the angel of death, merely on account of the sins of our first parents, though he himself did not deserve to die. Now in the dispute between Michael and the Devil about Moses, the Devil was the accuser, and demanded the death of Moses. Michael therefore replied to him, that he himself was the cause of that sin, which alone could occasion the death of Moses. How very little such notions as these agree, either with the Christian theology, or with Moses’ own writings, it is unnecessary for me to declare.”[595]

The direct testimony of Origen should be taken in connexion with the well-known fact, that this story of Michael and the Devil is one of the standing traditions of the Jewish people; the invention of a remote antiquity; and repeated ever since by a multitude of Rabbinical writers. A specimen of the legend may be found by the curious in the section of Michaelis, from which I have quoted the foregoing passage. With respect to the reception which we must give to such an alleged fact, the same author observes—“It lies without the circle of human experience; and therefore it cannot be attested by any man, unless he has either divine inspiration, or has intercourse with beings of a superior order. Consequently, whoever was the author of the apocryphal book, from which the quotation was made, his account cannot possibly command assent.”[596] This remark evidently applies, not only to the story of Michael, but to the tradition of the Fallen Angels; which, there is every reason to believe, must have been derived from a like apocryphal source; especially as we have the express assurance of Tertullian, that the Book of Enoch treated of the nature, offices, and fate of fallen Beings.[597]

This author, then, has unquestionably “made use of Jewish materials, which have no existence but in apocryphal books,”[598] and therefore no claim on our belief. “I know of no other method of vindicating the quotation,” says Michaelis, “than by supposing that St. Jude considered the whole story, not as a real fact, which either he himself believed, or which he required his readers to believe, but merely as an instructive fable, which served to illustrate the doctrine which he himself inculcated, that we ought not to speak evil of dignities.”[599] Hug resorts to an explanation of this kind; and conceives that St. Jude employs apocryphal weapons of persuasion, as best adapted to confound the Heretics whom he assailed.[600] It may be so: but if his illustrations and examples from the supernatural world be thus destitute of intrinsic authority and truth, and we must be heretics before we can feel their force, what becomes of the orthodox doctrine of fallen Angels?

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture XI.

Footnote 542:

See Note A.

Footnote 543:

Genesis iii. 1.

Footnote 544:

Genesis iii. 14, 15.

Footnote 545:

Jos. Ant. lib. i. c. 1.

Footnote 546:

The first trace of this fiction presents itself in the Apocryphal book of the Wisdom of Solomon, ii. 24; “Nevertheless, through envy of the Devil, came death into the world.” How difficult it appeared, even to the learned and imaginative Origen, to establish this interpretation on any sound scriptural authority, may be seen in the fact, that he can quote in its behalf nothing better than an unknown Jewish work in the Greek language, entitled Ἀνάληψις τοῦ Μωσέως. In Rufinus’s version of Origen’s “Principles,” occurs the following passage: “In Genesi serpens Evam seduxisse describitur; de quo in Ascensione Möysi, cujus libelli meminit in epistolâ suâ Apostolus Judas, Michaël archangelus cum Diabolo disputans de corpore Möysi, ait, a Diabolo inspiratum serpentem, causam exstitisse prævaricationis Adæ et Evæ.”—De Princip. lib. iii. c. 2. Though the learned Father does not hesitate to cite this book, for a theological purpose, he does not inform us of the grounds on which he was satisfied to invest it with divine authority.

Footnote 547:

Genesis iii. 16-19.

Footnote 548:

Rom. v. 12-20; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22; 1 Tim. ii. 14.

Footnote 549:

Paraphrase on Romans. Note on v. 12. See also Whitby in loc., to whom Mr. Locke refers.

Footnote 550:

See Rom. i. 16; ii. 29; and iii. 9-23.

Footnote 551:

Genesis iii. 15.

Footnote 552:

Dr. T. Sherlock’s Six Discourses on Prophecy, p. 80; as quoted in Mr. Wellbeloved’s excellent note on the passage.

Footnote 553:

See Note B.

Footnote 554:

1 Samuel xxix. 4.

Footnote 555:

1 Kings xi. 25.

Footnote 556:

Numb. xxii. 22.

Footnote 557:

1 Tim. i. 20.

Footnote 558:

‏שׁטן ‎(1.) adversarius; in antiquiori Hebraismo homo, ut in 1 Sam. xxix. 4; 2 Sam. xix. 23; 1 Reg. v. 4; xi. 14; xxiii. 25: in sequiori, post exilium Babylonicum, angelus malus sive diabolus, qui κατ’ ἐξοχὴν Satan vocatur, Ps. cix. 6; Zach. iii. 1, 2; 1 Chron. xxi. 1. (2.) circuitor, qui civium motus observat; secundum quosdam, Hiob. i. 6, 8; ii. 1.”—Joh. Simonis Lex. Hebr. in verb.

In Ps. cix. 6, and Zach. iii. 1, 2, there is, however, no reason to suppose that the word is used as a proper name. The former of the two passages is best rendered, “Let an accuser stand at his right hand:” and in explanation of the latter, Archbishop Newcome cites the following note from Dr. Blayney; “It appears to me most probable, that by Satan, or the Adversary, is here meant the adversaries of the Jewish nation in a body, or perhaps some leading person among them, Sanballat for instance, who strenuously opposed the rebuilding of the temple, and of course the restoration of the service of the sanctuary, and the reestablishment of Joshua in the exercise of his sacerdotal ministry.”—Newcome’s Minor Prophets, in loc.

Footnote 559:

1 Chron. xxi. 1.

Footnote 560:

2 Sam. xxiv. 1.

Footnote 561:

Wisd. ii. 24; Tobit iii. 8.

Footnote 562:

On entering the creed of the Jews, this doctrine underwent another change, of which many traces are to be found in all their subsequent writings, and which throws light on several passages of the New Testament. It is thus stated by Dr. D. F. Strauss: “When that Satan who appears in the Persian religion as a wicked being inimical to mankind, passed into the Jewish faith, his character was accommodated to the Hebrew peculiarity, which confined to the people of Israel all that is good and worthy of humanity; and he was regarded as at once the special enemy of their nation, and the Lord of their Gentile foes. The interests of the Jewish people becoming concentrated in the person of the Messiah, it was natural that the Satan should be conceived of as the personal opponent of the Messiah.” “Accordingly,” adds this writer, “in the New Testament the idea of Jesus as the Messiah everywhere involves that of Satan as the adversary of his person and work.”[b] We may well object to the unqualified generalization comprised in this last remark, and therefore to many of the author’s particular applications of it; and especially we must regard as unsuccessful his attempt to destroy the historical character of the narrative of our Lord’s temptation; but no judicious interpreter will wholly neglect the suggestion which the passage contains.

Footnote b:

Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet, § 55.

Footnote 563:

Jude 6; 2 Pet. ii. 4.

Footnote 564:

See Note C.

Footnote 565:

Mr. Stowell, in his Lecture on the Personality and Agency of Satan (pp. 703, 704), intimates that probably no visible form presented itself to Jesus: and though strongly, and as it appears to me reasonably, objecting to the interpretation which resolves the whole temptation into a vision, he supposes, with more latitude than consistency of explanation, that the Devil “showed” to our Lord all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,—not really and objectively,—but by means of “a glowing though scenical representation.” The Lecturer does not state whether he conceives the solicitations of Satan to have been conveyed by the method of real and organic talking: but if, in the peculiar style of this narrative, the Tempter can be described as “showing” things without the presence of any visible objects, he may be described as “saying” things without the presence of any audible sounds. English orthodoxy, in conformity with the gross and hard materialism which pervades it, seems to have encouraged the idea, that all preternatural communications, whether diabolic or divine, with the human mind, must be made by articulate noises or sensible images; that the action of spirit on spirit is inconceivable; and a revelation in silence and darkness a thing impossible. Adverting to this prejudice, the admirable Barclay says, “We must not think his” (Abraham’s) “faith was built upon his outward senses, but proceeded from the secret persuasion of God’s spirit in his heart;”—“by which many times faith is begotten and strengthened without any of these outward and visible helps; as we may observe in many passages of the Holy Scriptures, where it is only mentioned, ‘And God said,’ &c., ‘And the word of the Lord came’ unto such and such, ‘saying,’ &c. But if any one should pertinaciously affirm, that this did import an outward audible voice to the carnal ear, I would gladly know, what other argument such an one could bring, for this his affirmation, saving his own simple conjecture. It is said indeed, ‘The Spirit witnesseth with our spirit;’ but not to our outward ears, Rom. viii. 16. And seeing the Spirit of God is within us, and not without us only, it speaks to our spiritual, and not to our bodily ear. Therefore I see no reason, where it’s so often said in Scripture, ‘The Spirit said,’ ‘moved,’ ‘hindered,’ ‘called,’ such or such a one, to do or forbear such or such a thing, that any have to conclude, that this was not an inward voice to the ear of the soul, rather than an outward voice to the bodily ear. If any be otherwise minded, let them, if they can, produce their arguments, and we may further consider of them.”—Barclay’s Apology for the true Christian Divinity, Prop. II.

Footnote 566:

Mr. Stowell’s Lecture, p. 713.

Footnote 567:

Ibid. p. 695.

Footnote 568:

John viii. 42, 47.

Footnote 569:

John x. 14, 27.

Footnote 570:

John vi. 44.

Footnote 571:

Οἱ δὲ νομίζουσι Διὶ μὲν, ἐπὶ τὰ ὑψηλότατα τῶν οὐρέων ἀναβαίνοντες, θυσίας ἔρδειν, τὸν κύκλον πάντα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ Δία καλέοντες. i. 131.

Footnote 572:

De Iside et Osiride, § 46, 47.

Footnote 573:

See his Treatise, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier: an abstract of which, with a translation of the portions relating to the dualistic system, will be found in Dr. Prichard’s Analysis of the Egyptian Mythology, Book III.

Footnote 574:

We allude to Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie), who (i. p. 159-173) has weighed all the arguments which have been alleged in behalf of this opinion with an even hand.

Footnote 575:

Thirlwall’s History of Greece, Vol. II. pp. 130, 131.

Footnote 576:

Vol. II. pp. 134, 135.

Footnote 577:

Dr. Prichard’s Translation. Egyp. Myth. pp. 242, 243.

Footnote 578:

Bochart’s Hierozoicon. P. I. lib. ii. p. 640. seqq. Herod. II. 46.

Footnote 579:

Elleh Haddebarim rabba, fol. 302. 2. ap. D. L. Bertholdt’s Christologia Judæorum Jesu Apostolorumque ætate. § 36.

Footnote 580:

Vajikra rabba, fol. 151. col. 1. ap. Bertholdt. loc. cit.

Footnote 581:

Targum in Eccles. i. 12. ap. Joh. Buxtorf. Lex. Chald. Talm. & Rabb. in v. אשמדי.

Footnote 582:

Aruch ex Rabboth. ap. Lightfoot’s Hebr. and Talmud. Exercitations on Matt. xii. 24. See also on Luke xi. 15.

Footnote 583:

Lex. Chald. loc. cit.

Footnote 584:

Christologia, loc. cit.

Footnote 585:

Credibility of the Gospel History. Supplement, ch. xxi.

Footnote 586:

“It seems very unlikely that St. Jude should write so similar an epistle, if he had seen St. Peter’s. In that case, St. Jude would not have thought it needful for him to write at all. If he had formed a design of writing, and had met with an epistle of one of the apostles, very suitable to his own thoughts and intentions, I think he would have forborne to write.”—Cred. loc. cit.

Footnote 587:

Michaelis’ Introd. to the N. T. ch. xxix. sec. 2.

Footnote 588:

Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das neue Testament, viii. 3.

Footnote 589:

Dr. J. L. Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament: translated by Dr. Wait. Sec. 169, 170.

Footnote 590:

Marsh’s Michaelis, ch. xxviii. sec. 1; ch. xxix. sec. 2, 5.

Footnote 591:

Einleitung in d. N. T. viii. 3.

Footnote 592:

Marsh’s Michaelis, ch. xxix. sec. 4.

Footnote 593:

For a sufficient refutation of Lardner’s interpretation, see the last-cited section of Marsh’s Michaelis.

Footnote 594:

Hug’s Introduction, sec. 175.

Footnote 595:

Marsh’s Michaelis, ch. xxix. sec. 4.

Footnote 596:

Marsh’s Mich. loc. cit.

Footnote 597:

De habitu mulier. c. 3. De Idolat. c. 4. et 15. De cultu fœminar. c. 10, as cited by Hug, sec. 175.

Footnote 598:

Eichhorn’s Einl. viii. 4. § 296.

Footnote 599:

loc. cit. Michaelis adds a hint, which may perhaps be as appropriate in England as in Germany: “To the doctrine, which St. Jude inculcates by this quotation, that we ought not to speak evil of dignities, not even of the fallen angels, but that we should leave judgment to God, I have no objection. And I really think, that they transgress the bounds of propriety, who make it their business, either in the pulpit or in their writings, to represent the devil as an object of detestation; since, notwithstanding his fall, he is still a being of a superior order. This reminds me of a certain oriental sect, which Niebuhr met with in the neighbourhood of the river Zab, in Assyria, and which, for the same reason as that which I have just assigned, will not suffer any one to speak evil of the devil.”

Footnote 600:

loc. cit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE XII.

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF RETRIBUTION HEREAFTER.

BY REV. HENRY GILES.

“AND GOD SAID TO JONAH, DOEST THOU WELL TO BE ANGRY FOR THE GOURD? AND HE SAID, I DO WELL TO BE ANGRY, EVEN UNTO DEATH. THEN SAID THE LORD, THOU HAST PITY ON THE GOURD FOR WHICH THOU HAST NOT LABOURED, NEITHER MADEST IT GROW; WHICH CAME UP IN A NIGHT AND PERISHED IN A NIGHT. AND SHOULD NOT I SPARE NINEVEH, THAT GREAT CITY, WHEREIN ARE MORE THAN SIX SCORE THOUSAND PERSONS THAT CANNOT DISCERN BETWEEN THEIR RIGHT HAND AND THEIR LEFT?”—Jonah iv. 9, 10, 11.

Pain affects us, as it comes near to us. The war or famine, or any other calamity that afflicts a nation afar off, is but a vague report or a distant rumour; it may not pass unheard, but comparatively it is unfelt. It requires that grief shall touch and sting us in our selfishness; that we may know fully and truly what it inflicts on others. And it is thus that God at once rebukes and cures our insensibility, by bringing loss and sorrow home to our own souls: the withered gourd wrung tears from the surly and unamiable prophet: but the prospect of Nineveh with her mighty population in ashes had nothing with which to touch the fountains of his sorrows.

Admitting as I thus do that there is much of selfishness in our nature, yet persuaded that there is also much of sympathy and mercy in it, taking either the character of God, or that of man as a criterion, I have long regarded the belief of eternal punishment as one of those moral paradoxes which you cannot deny, and for which you cannot account. Most of human creatures, so far as they accord with their humanity, shrink from inflicting or beholding pain; and when they can inflict it wantonly, or behold it without compassion, we can pronounce on them no sentence of deeper reprobation than to call them inhuman. We tread not knowingly on the crawling worm; we hear not insensibly the inarticulate voice of the sick and dumb animal: and yet many of us who would not look unmoved on the last spasms of an expiring dog, can believe that God regards with ruthless sternness the eternal tortures of numberless eternal spirits. We cannot gaze without compassion on the tear in the infant’s speechless eye, and yet some of us can believe that God has created such beings to look up through all eternity from hopeless torture. We cannot think on the racks by which tyrant-man has tortured his brother-man—on the dungeons in which he has imprisoned him, and shut out from him the sun of heaven and the breath of nature, without a feeling of repugnance and a sentiment of indignation, and yet Christians can believe that God, whom they call “the good, the merciful,” has constructed for his creatures means of undying anguish and dungeons of boundless darkness, where the smile of hope never gleams, where the light of mercy never comes. We lament war, and yet, if orthodox, we believe that God maintains in his dominions regions of everlasting warfare; we lament the madness and abuse of passion, and yet, if orthodox, we must believe that God allows that madness and abuse to be eternalized in all their extreme malignity. We lament physical and mental suffering; except on the visitation of mercy none of us would desire to go through the lazar house, where despair and anguish lie low together, where the head is heavy and the pulse is fevered; or through those asylums which give refuge to humanity in its last calamity, and its worst; and yet, if orthodox, we can believe that God perpetuates throughout everlasting ages the worst evils of the body, the fiercest passions, and the most awful madness of the soul. And yet this great, this glorious universe is his—is his workmanship—it came not up in a night, it is not to perish in a night—the earth is long to be green, and the heavens are to be bright. Throughout the space that has no limit, throughout the time that has no end, the stars are to shine, and systems are to move onward in their unmeasured and their trackless glory. And yet, if orthodox, we must believe there is an endless hell whose smoke of torment must ascend for ever against their brightness. These, the works of God’s hands, are marred—the majesty of his power defeated—Paradise is made a wilderness, and hell is made populous. If we think of the world with any degree of realising truth, we shall feel this result to be most tremendous, and we shall wonder that God with infinite power should have created such a lovely universe to be defaced; that he should have peopled it with such capacities for good, to be exercised for ever only in the production of evil; that he should have given them immense and eternal capacities only to be immense and eternal capacities for misery. This, if true, is the greatest miracle and the greatest mystery unquestionably in the divine government.

This subject committed to my charge I feel to be truly solemn and awful. Next to the idea of a God, that of a future state is the most important. The character we ascribe to God operates on our own, or is created by it; and so our conceptions of the future life reacts on human conduct, and human sentiments. We may see this painfully in the mistakes and abuses with which harsh views of the future life have clouded the Christian church, and poisoned the heart of Christendom. These gloomy sentiments from many robbed religion of solace, and the breast of peace. I have seen beings maddened and convulsed by visions of Calvinism. I have heard them long for annihilation as a consummation most desirable—not in the remorse of sin, but in the tortures of superstition.—I have seen them look forward with pleasure to the church-yard turf under which they were to rest for ever from their troubles, and sleep in peace their “eternal sleep.” This sombre belief has at once desolated and darkened earth. Faith it has turned to a boundless fear; the dread of the future it makes the bitterness of the present, and is equally the parent of stern self-infliction, or of remorseless intolerance. It was this that in older days drove the ascetic to the desert; that made nature and the face of his fellow hateful to him; that filled his ferocious solitude with unearthly terrors; that trained, instead of a saint, a theological savage: it was this which aroused religious wars; which infused into these wars a spirit of fury; that demonised humanity; that made a most merciful nature a stranger to mercy: it was this which brought man in nearest resemblance to that vile and wicked being whom his worst and blackest passions had formed: it was this belief that tore out the heart of flesh and put in its place the heart of stone—a heart which no appeal could soften, and which no appeal could move. It was not until there was a hell without hope, that there was a heart without mercy. I believe it to be quite capable of proof, that no mere worldly wickedness has ever cursed mankind with so many sufferings as the belief of this doctrine; that has ever heaped on them so many cruelties, and made them agents of cruelties in return. Why have wars for religion ever been the worst? The reason is obvious: the soldiers of religion are not soldiers of flesh; the soldiers of religion enter into no earthly service; they enlist under the god of battles and of vengeance. It is against the hated, and the vile, and the accursed, and the lost, they carry destruction; they are but the executioners of the righteous decrees of God, and theirs are the championship of piety, and the chivalry of heaven. When the weak contend with the weak, mutual need begets mutual mercy: but when the natural ferocity of passion assumes the authority of God, and clothes itself with the armour of the skies, the gulf in which all charity is buried, is broad and unfathomable as that which is commonly placed between heaven and hell. This belief was one of the main causes of the most horrible religious persecutions. It was not until the generous and gentle sensibility of the religious nature was debased by coarse picturings of physical tortures and of endless miseries, that the sacerdotal arm became terrible as death, and the sacerdotal spirit was drenched in wrath as dire and unrelenting as that which they fashioned beyond the grave. Before priestly and popular imaginations God became an awful punisher. They created in heaven a throne of inexorable judgment, and from that throne the word of fate went forth which could but once be spoken, and cut off hope for ever. They freed themselves from human compunctions, and emulated the stern despotism which they preached or believed. Fear is the parent of cruelty—and in religion, as in character, the slavish spirit is ever the most unfeeling. The truth is, that whether in idea or in act, familiarity with torture stupifies the heart and indurates the senses. That frequent contemplation of pain destroys sympathy, and that pain, when once it can be carelessly seen, can be easily inflicted, are facts which observation has placed beyond the need of argument, and experience beyond the reach of contradiction.

In this Lecture I propose two objects:—First, to state my views on moral retribution, which in essentials I apprehend are those of Unitarians in general: Secondly, to examine the arguments which are advanced in favour of eternal torture, and to state my reasons for not believing them. I shall try to the utmost of my power to condense what I have to say, but I hope for your indulgence in return, if on a subject of such compass—on which so many volumes have been written—there should be some omissions. The end of this or any other lecture can never be to expound an important topic in all its completeness, so much as to suggest and excite inquiry concerning it.

I. I shall, in the first place, enter on the positive section of my lecture; and on this point, I am sorry to say that the frequent re-assertion of mistakes regarding our doctrines will put me to the painful necessity of much repetition.

1.—I commence with a few remarks on the nature of sin. One essential characteristic on which we have insisted—and we believe what we have asserted—is, that sin is a deep spiritual injury. The source of it is in the soul; it is the dark corruption of an evil heart. This I take to be one of the greatest and profoundest revelations of Christ, one which places him infinitely above all other moral teachers, and which makes Christianity the highest scheme of moral duty. False religions and false philosophies have been all at variance with this inward sense of duty. They have contrived numberless inventions as substitutes for it, or devised most ingenious means to nullify it. Priesthoods, with most imposing authority and mystical influence, have offered all sorts of spiritual panaceas to ease the wounded conscience. Ceremonies, with all graceful gesture and solemn import, have presented their beauty to the senses, and their spell to the fancies of superstition. Sacrifices without number—from the turtle-dove to the hecatomb; from the scape-goat driven to the desert, to the human being slaughtered to God; from the blood of life swelling round a thousand altars of vengeance, to the flowers and the fruits that were heaped upon the altars of mercy—all these have been tried to make religion for the senses, to make religion a flattery and delusion: but all were not sufficient; conscience is stronger than rituals, and to that conscience, to that spirit of God in the soul of man, Christ came; to that he was the Apostle and to that he preached. Christ went at once into the soul; he pierced the veil of sophistries and deceits by which men are ingenious to discover excuses to cover their selfishness and their wrong doings; he went to the seat of the evil, and struck at once to the root of bitterness. Others baptized with water, cleansing merely the outside, but he baptized with fire and the holy spirit, going to the innermost thoughts of the heart and the veins;—others preached on the keeping of feast-days and fast-days, but he taught of that God who is not the Lord of times or seasons, but the God of life in every hour—the God of the whole universe in every motion;—others called men to go to the temple, Christ called them to go into their closets and commune with their hearts;—others told them to wash their hands, Christ exhorted them rather to cleanse their spirits;—others told them to fear men who could kill the body, Christ warned them not to fear man who could only kill the body, but to fear God who could kill the soul as well as the body. He was truly the prophet of eternity—the preacher for eternity. He was truly the preacher of the invisible, and the herald of it—he needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man—he required no testimony, for he had the knowledge of humanity in his own nature deep and true, but guiltless—and he spake out of the fullness of his own full heart: it was therefore that he spake as never man spake: it was therefore that the common people heard him gladly—for his words had power to those thoughts and affections which are native to bosoms of all men; it was therefore that he spake with authority, and not as the scribes: for they discoursed on the traditions of the fathers, but he appealed to the inspirations of God—they spake of what had been written on tables of stones, but he spoke of what had been written on the fleshy tables of the heart. Others made sin to consist in resistance to the priest or to the king—but Christ showed it to be an alienation of the soul from God, the apostacy of the conscience from its own sense of duty. It is that which is within, he taught, that defiles the man; a man may wash his hands seven times a-day, but not once cleanse his heart; he may often wash his hands, and yet never in innocency. He showed that sepulchres might be beautified outside, and inside be only rottenness and corruption.—His apostles learned of him this most profound, most divine philosophy, and so they preached it to the world. To be carnally minded, says Paul, is death; to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Whatsoever, says the same apostle, a man soweth, that shall he also reap; he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the spirit reap everlasting life. Lust, (or evil desire,) saith Saint James, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. This is the gospel doctrine on the inwardness and spirituality of sin; and we preach no other gospel, and we teach no other doctrine. A solemn consequence attaches to our view which is also powerfully enforced in the New Testament scriptures, but which the vicarious scheme tends directly to subvert—I mean the personal nature of transgression. Sin we hold to be no transferable quality, and this was most lucidly proved here by one of my brother lecturers. With the sinner himself lies the guilt; with him who contracts it it must lie; it cannot be acquired by imputation, nor can it be punished by imputation. If one doctrine be more clearly taught in scripture than another, it is this, that the offender shall be answerable only for his own sins; and for these, as surely as there are a conscience, a future world, and a God, he must be answerable.—Every man, our Saviour declares, shall be judged according to his own works. Every one of us, the Apostle Paul asserts, shall give an account of himself to God. But no, saith orthodoxy, you must also be answerable for Adam, and upon your head must be a guilt that darkened the very dawn of creation; and so upon this principle guilt should descend from sire to son; the later we are in existence, the more tremendous should be this growing mountain of imputation, until the last man should sink under the burden of all the crime which had been from the first man to himself.—We are told that Unitarians make light of sin. But, I ask, what does orthodoxy make of justice? And I further ask, what does it make of scripture? If there were a judge on earth who decided as orthodoxy decides, he would be scouted as a monster: if there were a code of laws which contained such a standard, the common moral sense of mankind would reject it; nay, there is not a tribe of savages in the habitable world so blind to the idea of justice as not to repel the dogma of imputed and eternal punishment. And yet we are gravely told that God thus acts, and that the Bible thus teaches; we are constantly rebuked as wanting in faith and humility, because we can find no such principles in either providence or the Bible. The plain declaration of the prophet Ezekiel contains the spirit of both. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” As certainly as we have a moral sense, as surely as we can discern between right and wrong, we are compelled to acknowledge the one and utterly to repudiate the other. Give but the conscience justice, let common sense have but the slightest voice in the decision, and you might as easily attempt to gain a man’s assent to the broadest of contradictions, even to the admission that a part is equal to the whole, or that two and two are five, as to feel guilty for another man’s crime, to feel remorse for another man’s wrong-doing, to be penitent or humble for that in which we had no participation, or to confess the justice of punishment by a sentence which made him criminal before his existence. On the moral injuries of thus forcing men to contradict the first dictates of their nature, of destroying the personality of virtue on the one side by an imputed righteousness, and the personality of sin on the other by an imputed guilt, I intend not here to enlarge: but one evil I will just allude to; I mean the wrong it does to truth of sentiment. Feelings in their real existence which are most excellent and most beautiful, it distorts and falsifies. There are no virtues on earth that bring men nearer to heaven than humility and repentance. To be humble with a true humility is to be in the likeness of Christ; to be penitent with a true repentance is to be an object of rejoicing even to the angels of heaven: but when we hear it said that we are to be of lowly mind on account of inherited corruption, and penitent for imputed sin; when we try to force ourselves into emotions which are not native to the soul, unconsciously we undermine its simplicity and sincerity, and instead of virtues which must be of spontaneous growth, or not exist at all, we have sickly abortions of sentiment that are false, because unnatural; strained efforts that are at eternal war with experience; and high-sounding phrases that are as empty as echo and as cold as the frozen blast. Perversions like these are almost worse than vices, for vices, though they mar the life, may leave the moral judgment its integrity. Where there is true conviction there may be amendment, but when the inward sense is itself diseased, the case is all but hopeless. Whatever be the evil of sin, whatever be its punishment; whether the evil be infinite or limited, whether the punishment be eternal or temporal, let us at least beware of weakening that sentiment on which all morality is founded, the deep sense of personal responsibility. Unitarian views are often described as being unfavourable to spirituality; but if by spirituality I am to understand the inward life of man, the activity of his mental and moral energies, then I think these views eminently spiritual. The spirit of man is their great subject, and the spirit of God in the human, their great agency of salvation. Within the soul itself they place moral salvation or moral destruction, and within the soul itself they place the elements which constitute one or the other, the sense of guilt which makes its hell, the conscious holiness which makes its heaven. This inward power of conscience is the true distinction of spiritual life; and the righteous submission to it in our own hearts, we maintain, is the faith which justifies: a faith which is an indwelling vitality which consists not in forming propositions about God and Christ, and in enforcing them or submitting to them, but in making God and Christ realities in our secret thoughts; in confidence on the worth of goodness, in allegiance to duty, and in trust in the power and immortality of truth.

2. Next I affirm that sin is evil, and that sin is punishable; and our doctrines make not light of the evil, or disguise the awfulness of the punishment. Sin is evil: we deny not that; how could we? It is an eternal truth written on the heart and life of man, proved with unequivocal and gloomy evidence in the whole history of the world. Sin is evil to the individual; evil in the sufferings it prepares for him, and a still greater evil when it hardens him beyond suffering. Each one of us will judge this question for himself according to his degree of moral sensibility, and according to the circumstances of his moral history; but whatever be that sensibility, or whatever be that history, our moments of most profound anguish have ever been those in which we have felt the shameful consciousness of wrong thoughts or wrong actions. Not, it is true, when the evil passions or evil deeds held their tyrannical sway over us, but when the spell was gone, when the mind’s eye grew clear, and the hour of reflection came with sorrow, and the sad pale light spread over the hand-writing on the wall, from which conscience might shrink but could not fail to read. The worst, the most hardened, the most degraded of human creatures, those whom the world may think have bidden farewell to conscience, have moments in the dark silence of thought when the sword of remorse with all its poisoned tortures sinks into their wounded bosoms. And in such hours, it is not outward loss, or outward suffering, but inward agony that afflicts them most; it is not that they have sunk into the dregs of poverty; it is not that they have been reduced to dependence and exposed to insult; it is not that pride passes them with cold and withering scorn; it is not that pity and hope seem banished from their path; that all appear to frown upon them; that externally for them there is no longer peace on earth or light in heaven—it is, that the brightness and the freshness of their own hearts are gone; that sacred affections are a waste; that conscience, when not silenced into apathy, is enraged into an accuser; that their own respect is lost beyond recovery, and no delusion, however self-deceiving, can again restore it. The heart-consuming grief, the wrath and tribulation treasured up in a life of sin, the righteous judge of the earth alone can know. And these are all the more bitter if that life had ever been blessed with holier associations. There is a courage which can repel the scowl of others; there is a pride, a madness, if you will, which can despise their opinions, or feel independent of their esteem; there is a fortitude which can endure physical suffering to its last infliction; but there is nothing in time, in place, or in circumstance, which can fortify us against our own thoughts, against our own feelings, and especially the feelings of the divinity within us, that struggle to the last for empire over evil; that come ever and ever to tell us of what we had of good or might have had; that haunt us with reproach and sorrow when we have become traitors to our better nature. Not to speak of conscience with its stinging sense of violated conviction; not to speak of wasted time, ruined power, and a wreck of hopes; to say nothing of alienation from God, and the fear of a future world, I can conceive of memory dwelling on spots, which once were spots of light, becoming the tormentor of a fallen soul, the vindicator of duty and of God; I can conceive of one looking back from the bare desolateness of sin to a youth that once had been pure, full of joy and full of virtue, to homes that had been glad with every affection that sweetens life, to sabbaths that had repose for the stainless spirit, and prayer for unpolluted lips; gazing with breaking hearts and weeping eyes over a part marked with vice and misery, that had been a future glorious with promise; all this I can conceive in connection with even the felon in his cell, or with some wretch whose cough, like a knell of despair, awakens the midnight silence of the street, whose latest pang is spent in some hidden retreat of filth and sorrow, of sin and loathsomeness.

I need not say that sin is a great social evil. The fact is urged upon us with too painful a pressure, both from history and observation. Take the history of governments and nations; wars and bloodshed stain the record over its whole extent. And whence are these, but from the struggle and rivalry of selfish and sinful passions? From whence, says the apostle James, come wars and fightings among you; come they not hence, even of your lusts? From these we have had the oppression of strength against right. From these we have had the tyrannies and cruelties with which they surrounded their thrones of iron despotism; with which they made the glory of self the affliction of millions; with which so far as their power extended, they have been the scourges and the curses of mankind. From these we had the hatred one nation against another, men arrayed against each other to hew each other down, doing all iniquities, when interest or ambition called for them, enslaving one another, and selling one another, unmindful of all the claims of fraternity in the din of faction, and losing the sense of their common humanity in the difference of clime or the colour of the skin. Take the history of laws. I shall not allege those of the criminal code which until very recently made even Christian and enlightened countries vast arenas of legalised assassination: which spread a reign of terror over the face of empires, making the scaffold and the gibbet their principal symbols of civilization, and multiplying to enormous extent the very crimes, which, pretending to punish, they only publicly authorized and exemplified. I speak here more particularly of the spirit of partiality, injustice, selfishness, and rapacity in which much of legislation has been conceived and executed: classes of men turning the laws to their own purposes and leaving those unprotected who most required protection; commonly preying most on those who least could bear it. Except where the general sentiment of human right has been too strong for narrow passions, we may see in the long course of ages, principle sacrificed to personal interests, the good of masses betrayed or despised, the poor scorned, the ignorant neglected, the privileged orders hedged about with all sorts of protection, the classification of crime and criminals most unfairly adjusted, the distribution of penalties most unrighteously allotted; this I ascribe to selfish and evil passions. Once more, take the history of religion, and you have all the anger of faction made more stern with the rivalry of Creeds; the ambition of earthly dominion more aspiring by the addition of spiritual rule also; the powers of this world made more fearful by the powers of the world to come; both the visible and in visible existence subjected to priestly empire, and made tributary to priestly aggrandizement; the sword of the civil magistrate which had been sharp enough with one edge to deal the vengeance of man, receiving another edge from ecclesiastical authority, to vindicate the judgments of God. Thus we are compelled to read history, and thus in all its departments we are compelled to witness the dark traces which sin has left upon its pages. When we turn to the world around us, these evils are not the less glaring. Many sufferings, no doubt, are to be ascribed to our natural wants and weakness, but they scarcely deserve to be called evils, when we compare them with those which spring from moral derangements. Poverty is not so great an affliction as an all-devouring love for gain; sickness is not so great a misfortune as an insatiate desire for pleasure; and the ills of poverty and pain together, are not as fatal as the irritable wish for distinction which rules so widely in the world, with its fierce blood of turbulent passions. To these there are to be ascribed the worst social miseries that grieve the best hearts, and to remove or ameliorate which the finest spirits have ever directed their labours. To these we are to ascribe the covetousness which closes the hand of bounty, and shuts up the bowels of compassion; which becomes insensible both to justice and mercy; to these we are to ascribe all forms of sensuality, and all the abuses of passion; to these we are to ascribe all vices, material or malignant: and who, though he had the capacious mind of an archangel, can count the miseries which in all shapes spread contagion through society? Independently of those evils which no human eye can reach, those which present themselves on the very surface of observation are sufficiently extensive and fearful; intemperance, ignorance, grossness, hatred, strifes, with all their gloomy appendages; of unhappy homes; of loud and laughing and blushless infamy; of mad licentiousness, and late despair; of lost health, lost honesty, lost reason, which respectively close their career in the hospital, the prison, or the lunatic asylum.

3. As to evidence, then, for the existence of guilt, as to its extent and its evil, I think I can go as far as any Calvinist. I see the fact, and I have no wish to disguise it; it startles, but it does not subvert my faith. I grant sin to be evil—evil in the inward spirit—evil on the outward life—evil to the individual—evil to the species—evil in this world—evil in the next. In a certain sense, I am not prepared to deny that it leaves injurious consequences, which may be eternal; that the loss of innocence, that subversion of moral tastes, may implant habits which, for aught I know, shall be an everlasting injury to the soul, not utterly to destroy its happiness, or stop its progression, but to deprive it of advantages and advancement which a purer moral state would have given it. The evils of sin I hold to be terrible; the penalty of sin I hold to be inevitable—to be removed by no sacrifice, to be washed out by no expiation—to be escaped only in the criminals rising out of the corruption by experience and wisdom, to a purer moral state. The punishment of sin I believe to be not only inevitable, but also enduring, enduring in proportion to indulgence and malignity. Thoughts, I admit, which have wrought themselves into the very texture of the intellectual nature; feelings which have rooted themselves into the heart; habits that have grown into instinct, are not speedily to be destroyed. Moral punishment, in my idea, is identical with moral discipline, and moral discipline I consider to be such an arrangement of circumstances in the providence of God as shall lead us to self-correction; such a process of spiritual training as leave us the consciousness of our own liberty, but yet accomplish God’s wise ends by God’s boundless power. In building, then, the structure of our character, our Creator works not by miracle, but by experience, and this experience may be slow and painful. I believe most sincerely and profoundly in a future punishment; not vindictive, but corrective—for all wise punishment is, and must be, corrective. That the dispensations of God are not completed in this life, I think all the moral aspects of things here below make most manifest, and all analogies intimate, if Scripture had not expressly declared, that after death there is to be a more distinct exhibition of the divine government. That the results of character formed in the present life are to be carried into the future, and to influence it, I conceive our whole nature argues. Our existence, as spiritual beings, is properly connected and continuous; one state prognosticates another; and no two are absolutely distinct and separate. Our spiritual life consists of thought united to thought, and feeling to feeling, one operating on the other, or producing it, of a mysterious chain of consciousness, bound from link to link by successive memories, preserving unbroken the identity of our existence. Manhood is the growth of our youth, and immortality is the growth of our manhood; and the impressions of character pass from one stage to another, along the line of succession and sequence. There are no extremes, except to our outward observation. Looking at one stage of life, and then, after a long interval, seeing in the same person the apparently opposite characteristics, we take those things to be antagonists which are bound together by the inevitable connexion of cause and effect. The dreamer of youth becomes, perhaps, the misanthropist of age; the prodigal of youth, it may be, grows into the miser of age; the principle of action may in each case be the same—vanity or self-love; the passion is identical in principle, and changed only in form, from a change in circumstances. If we should meet an honest rustic in his peaceful fields, innocent and contented; if we should afterwards by accident behold him on a scaffold, it would be to us a seeming and terrible incongruity. But why? The two events are in our minds in naked contrast: could we, however, pierce the Spirit and trace the life of that unfortunate—watch it from the first intrusive evil thought successively dwelt on; from actions slightly wrong, unceasingly reiterated and darkening with every repetition, until the last deadly volition, and the last awful deed, we should have an analysis of sad consistency and of profound interest. There is something sublime in the reflection, that every human creature who treads the earth and breathes the air, has an inward history, a history unread by every eye but God’s; a history of solemn import, that has definite impression on the concerns of the universe, and is to live for ever in the annals of eternity.

In ordinary phraseology, we speak of our existence as if death made a chasm in it; but temporal and eternal are but distinctions of imagination; our eternal life commences, and our earthly is but the first stage, the infancy of that awful and endless existence. If I see in our nature that which can survive change, I see that also in it which can take materials of joy and sorrow along with it. The faculties that make our life here must be those which shall make that which is to come. Memory then will be there, which is but the resurrection of our by-gone experience; and whether for good or evil, it will call up the spirits of buried deeds, and as the life has been, will be an angel of heaven or a minister of hell;—imagination, which may have been the nurse of piety or the slave of passion,—intellect, which may have had the glow of the seraph or the malice of the demon: accordingly, then, as these powers have been properly directed or abused, every instinct of our moral nature tells us must be the joy of a righteous soul, or the agony of an evil heart. What treasure will the good man find he has laid up for his immortal life, when the past arises to him in the lustre of a new world: the consciousness of good thoughts and good actions, the peace of assimilation with God, and of union with the best of men: the immortal love of those with whom he had companioned in his earthly journey, the gratitude of many from whose eyes he had banished tears, and from whose bosoms he had plucked out despair; who has been true to the claims of his nature, and accomplished the work of a disciple of Christ, and a child of God, and a brother of man. On the other side, what are to be his feelings, who awakens in eternity with emotions of isolation and repulsion, condemned in his own conscience, who now discovers he has all to learn which can fit him for the society of noble spirits, whose expanded faculties flash shame and sorrow on his guilty soul, and show him that his whole course was folly: the sensualist, who stultified his reason and profaned his affections: the hypocrite, that toiled but for the outward, betrayed his convictions, and was a living and incarnate lie; before his fellows, a whited sepulchre; before his God, a corrupted mass of falsehood: the profane man, on whose lips prayer rarely dwelt, but to whom cursing and bitterness were familiar: the persecutor, who finds at last that he has hated or tormented others for a falsehood, or a sound: the man of wild ambition, who, despising the true glory which comes from God, and consists in doing right, spreads terror around him, in pursuing a phantom: the worldling, whose spirit was enslaved to those treasures for which he wasted life, and which he has left behind him in the dust. The sense of right and wrong is powerful and eternal; and when bad men resist it, it may be safely trusted to effect its own work, both of correction and of punishment.

II. I shall here review some of the arguments pleaded for the eternal misery of the wicked, and state briefly the grounds on which I reject it.

When we consider the mild and merciful spirit of the Gospel,—when we reflect on it as a revelation of divine love made manifest in the most perfect form of human love,—we are at first sight astonished that so tremendous an idea as that of an infinite and eternal hell could ever have been connected with it, or so wretched a one as a seclusive, and comparatively all but an unpeopled heaven. And truly this could have never been, had the doctrine of immortal life been apprehended in the full spirit of Christianity. But the fact of man’s immortality made manifest in the Gospel has not generally been so apprehended, it has had from the first to contend against darkening and perverting influences. Converts to the faith of Christ brought with them many of the prejudices and errors of their former training, and what in the early ages of the church was the result of ignorance, in later ones became sanctified into the testimony of faith. Those who came from heathen superstitions to the religion of Christ, brought with them minds filled with material images; their worship or their age left no means for any others; and their belief in a future existence of necessity became shaped by these associations. A sacrificial worship symbolized their gods of wrath, and what they had attributed to many, they were unable to dissociate from one; physical pains and pleasures comprehended their whole notion of retribution and reward, and these their Christianity made eternal. Their hell and their heaven were therefore fashioned from the rude conceptions of their previous superstitions, and from the symbolic language of the Gospel crudely understood. The everlasting hell which thence grew out of the mistakes of the vulgar, and the speculations of the learned, it was too much the interest of priests to maintain, not to receive the sanction of the church with an earnest and zealous promulgation. Connected with other doctrines, what immense power was thus placed in the hands of ecclesiastics! With what deep and gloomy awe it shrouded the character of the priest! Once in the place of his ministry, he stood there not as the simple teacher of his brethren, and his equals, not as the mere expounder of his master’s gospel, but as the commisioned delegate of heaven, authorized by God to denounce his everlasting wrath on the guilty, to wield the thunder of an eternal vengeance. We cannot estimate the power with which such a doctrine would invest the hierarchy, and we are not therefore surprised that it is the last which any orthodox priesthood would be willing to resign,—one of those prime doctrines, to deny which has ever been stamped as heresy, from Origen to Servetus. If even in these times, when protestantism and other causes have done so much to take away the reverence with which the ministry was once surrounded, highly-wrought pictures of endless misery give men not deemed to have any supernatural authority such influence over the minds of their hearers, such despotism over their feelings and their consciences, what must it have been when superstition bent down the votaries before the church in prostrate submission, when the servants of her altar were regarded as the direct messengers of God,—as those ordained to stand between hell and heaven, with the key of both; to announce glad tidings, or empty the vials of indignation; to distribute God’s grace, or to proclaim his malediction. Many causes have been assigned for the growth of ecclesiastical supremacy, but this doctrine I am persuaded was the greatest of all; the priestly throne, which raised its ambition to the stars, was girded around by the lightning and tempests of eternal terrors. The doctrine of eternal torments derives much strength from ecclesiastical interest; and it is further sustained by all the logic of theological subtlety. Many writers on divinity seem to find a strange and morbid pleasure in describing the tortures of the wicked, both in nature and duration, exhausting all analogies to illustrate the incomprehensible; and all modes of thought and expression to explain the infinite. On this doctrine the transition from Romanism to Protestantism has impressed no change. If the Reformation broke some bonds that enslaved the freedom of religion, it removed no cloud which obscured its heaven: the fierce teachings of Augustine were only made more complete and systematic by the still fiercer doctrines of Calvin; and the dark sketch of eternal reprobation drawn in its outlines by the Carthaginian monk, received its last touches from the Genevan master: what in the olden church was broached only in the cautious reasonings of the schools, has in Protestantism been made the staple materiel of theological declamation.

These doctrines have not only done much to obscure men’s minds as to the condition of the wicked in a future state, but also to mislead them in an equal degree on that of the righteous. This we observe in many of the popular notions of heaven. To millions, heaven seems to be for the soul what the grave is for the body—a place of mere repose. If something more than this, an elysium for indolence, a kind of region of complacent idealism, where the faithful and elect are to enjoy ecstacies and prayer, musings and melodies, which the coarse struggles of earth forbade, in which the cares of the world left no time to engage;—the clear skies and still waters of paradise, the golden harps, the incense, and the music of angels, to relieve from weariness, strife, and pain, toil-worn and time-worn spirits. Nor is such view of heaven ungrateful, tried as we are here with sin and tired as we are with labour; but this must not exhaust our thoughts of future bliss. Our highest happiness, even in heaven, must consist in highest action: no other happiness can exist for a moral and intellectual being than that which calls his faculties into energy, and supplies both with materials and objects on which to engage them. Our ideas in general of heaven are too much those of negation or contrast. We are here in sojourn, we think only of home there; we are here in conflict, we think only of peace there; we are here in labour, and there we only picture our rest; we forget that all these are worth nothing but as means to higher purposes, unsuitable as final conditions to creatures who bear within them the life that is henceforth to go on with that of the All-creative God.

I may just observe here, and it is pleasant to be able to do so, that the opinion against which this Lecture is directed, is an illustration of the fact that tenets die out practically before they are renounced theoretically. It is well known to all who hear recent orthodox preaching, or who read recent orthodox works on practical piety, how little compared with former times is the space now occupied in them by Satan and damnation. The imagination is not tortured as it once was, with all horrible and hideous representations of human suffering, which taste and devotion alike reject. Why, even in the Lecture of my reverend and respected opponent, though directly on the subject, all the repulsive features are lost in a most moderate and temporate exposition. Such errors let alone will gradually of themselves expire.

1. In support of the doctrine of eternal torments, it is in the first place pleaded that Scripture expressly declares it. This conclusion is founded principally on the words and phrases correspondent to our “ever,” “everlasting” “for ever and ever,” &c. That in numerous passages they imply duration without end or limit, we readily admit. It is needless to point them out. We are then told that this must be their invariable meaning, except some evident fragility in the object to which they are applied implies the contrary. To assert that they have the highest force when connected with future punishment, is to assume what is to be proved; for the nature of the object is the very question in dispute. If we can show that the words have not unvarying literal application, then the subject is at least open to discussion; but if it be asserted they must mean endless duration, because future punishment is in its nature endless, the point is dogmatically decided, and there is no further possibility of argument. If every phrase of Scripture is to be taken as a rigid definition, then we are to believe that Christ held himself in his own hands when he said, “this is my body.” Now the instances in the Bible, in all parts of it in which phrases disputed between us and our opponents indicated limited duration, and only that, are numerous beyond counting:[601]—sometimes, not longer than a man’s life, as when after certain conditions of compact, the slave is said to serve his master for ever. In other cases it is more extended, but still temporary; as when the land of Judea is called an everlasting possession; the law an everlasting covenant; the nation a people established for ever; the hierarchy an everlasting priesthood. As to the last, the writer to the Hebrews tells us, that “the priesthood being changed there is made a necessity of change also of the law; for there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness of it.”

Αιων (the principal word in the Greek original), Mr. Simpson in his Essay on the duration of future rewards and punishments (p. 17) asserts, occurs about a hundred times in the New Testament, in seventy of which at least it is clearly used for limited duration. In the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament it is even repeated, and several times it is repeated twice, and in two instances signifies no longer a period than the life of one man only. “It is,” says the same critic, “an observation of the utmost importance, that when αιων, or αιωνιος, are applied to the future punishment of the wicked, they are never joined to life, immortality, incorruptibility, but are always connected with fire, or with that punishment, pain, or second death, which is effected by means of fire. Now since fire, which consumes or decomposes other perishable bodies, is itself of a dissoluble or perishable nature, this intimates a limitation of the period of time.” The phrase, “everlasting fire,” is plainly a metaphor, a metaphor which the Jews would be at no loss to understand: the associations which they derived from the fire in the valley of Hinnom would render it sufficiently intelligible.

The phraseology was familiar in the Old Testament. Fire unquenchable, fire not to be quenched, is used in many places in which it cannot be literal. Thus Jeremiah (xvii. 27.) threatens the Jews, in the name of God, for their breach of the sabbath, “then will I kindle a fire in the gates (of Jerusalem,) and it shall devour the palaces thereof, and it shall not be quenched.” So Isaiah (xxxiv. 9, &c.), speaking of Idumea, “and the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day: the smoke thereof shall go up for ever.”—While on this part of the subject, I shall just allude to a remark made on Mr. Grundy’s view of the text in which it is said of the wicked that their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. After quoting a passage from Mr. Grundy’s Discourse, and making some comment on it, the lecturer went on to assert, “In a note moreover, we are informed that the foregoing criticism is founded on the assumption of the passage really referring to future punishment, which, however, the preacher affirms it does not. For, he adds, we have before shown, the worm has been long since dead, and for ages has the fire been quenched.” The impression which this use of Mr. Grundy’s language had a tendency to leave, is one wholly foreign to his meaning; for it would seem to imply that Mr. Grundy asserted the extension already of retributive penalty in the future life. The plain import is, that our Lord used a metaphor taken from perishable things, which have, in fact, perished—and thence it cannot be proved that he referred to an eternal state of suffering. The allusion, as is well known, is taken from the close of Isaiah, where, of the worshippers going to Jerusalem, it is said, they shall look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched. It is plain that here it means not eternity, and though applied by Christ to future punishment, it does not follow from the language that he means to imply unending punishment. Archbishop Newcome’s language is as strong as Mr. Grundy’s; for he also says, “in the valley of Hinnom, the worm died when its food failed—and the pile on which human sacrifices were burnt to Moloch was often extinguished.” To the writer of the lectures which have been referred to, we are all deeply indebted for an example set us in times and under circumstances of which we can but little now estimate the difficulty; we owe him the tribute of our respect for an honest and fearless advocacy of truth, of mental and religious freedom, at the expense of painful and personal sacrifices.

Thus, while none of these passages that I have referred to prove this doctrine, there are many scriptures at utter variance with it. God is again and again called the father that created us. We are taught that he is good, and that his tender mercies are over all his works. God is love. He will not always chide, we are told, neither will he keep his anger for ever; that he will not cast off for ever; that he hath not shut up his tender mercies in anger. Finally, almost in the close of the sacred volume, we are informed that there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, neither crying, neither shall they suffer any more pain; for the former things are passed away. Both these cannot be true. It is a moral contradiction to conceive a gracious and merciful God, creating beings with immortal life, and then rendering them eternally wretched: we have but one alternative, either we must renounce our faith in these declarations, or we renounce it in the benevolence of God. There are but two texts, one in Daniel, and the other in Matthew, in which there is any remarkable force. In these it is said that the wicked go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal, and on these two phrases the tremendous doctrine is built up. The duration of both are urged to be equal, and we are told, that if we deny eternal damnation, we deny eternal life. No such thing. Reason, feeling, nature, justice, moral sentiment, the belief of a perfect God, and the force of scriptural evidence, coincide with the one and are repugnant to the other. There is not a single proof which can be urged in favour of a future life, which is not an irrefutable argument against future perdition. If you deduce the ideas from the goodness of God, from his truth, from his wisdom, it is essentially subversive of this dark dogma. If you deduce the idea from the nature of man, it comes to the same purpose; if you conclude he is to live for ever, because of his infinite and progressive faculties of reason and of conscience, you must by the same argument infer that he is to live to a better end than to be cast eternally into hell. If he was worth creation, he is worth preserving; if he is worth preserving, he is worth being made good and happy. If a great multitude of immortals are to endure infinite pain, so far as they are concerned, the existence of a soul and the being of a God are infinite evils.

The spirit and the letter of Scripture is in favour of this glorious doctrine. Every Scripture which proves that God is good and not malignant is in favour of it; every Scripture which proves that God is a restorer and not a destroyer is in favour of it; every Scripture which proves that God has more the desire to pardon than to punish proves it. To this effect I might quote passages to greater extent than the whole of this lecture occupies; the selection must therefore be limited, not by the want of matter but by the want of space. “God is love: and he so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life: for God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”[602] “Jehovah is full of compassion, slow to anger and of great mercy. Jehovah is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. All thy works do praise thee, O Jehovah: and thy saints shall bless thee.” We are exhorted to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” “The goodness of God,” we are told, “endureth continually.” “The Lord God,” we are assured, “is merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.” “The Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you if ye turn to him.” “The Lord is merciful and gracious; slow to anger and plenteous in mercy: he hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities: for as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy towards them that fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us: Like as a father pitieth his children, so hath the Lord compassion on them that fear him: for he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” And from our earliest prayer to our dying hour, we are taught in the simplest and sublimest of all supplications to open our address to God thus; “Our Father who art in heaven.” We read evermore in Scripture that God’s is not an everlasting anger; as such passages as the following testify: “His anger endureth but for a moment.” “He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger for ever.” “Hath God forgotten to be gracious; hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?” “I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wrath: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.” Correspondent with the doctrine of these expressions, and with the spirit of the whole Gospel, is a passage that I quote from a book which Protestants in general declare not to be canonical. “Thou hast mercy upon all; for thou canst do all things, and winkest at the sins of men, because they should amend. For thou lovest all things that are, and abhorrest nothing which thou hast made: for never wouldst thou have made any thing if thou hadst hated it. And how could any thing have endured, if it had not been thy will; or been preserved, if not called by thee? But thou sparest thine, for they are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls. For thine incorruptible spirit is in all things; therefore chastenest thou them, by little and little, that offend, and warnest them by putting them in remembrance wherein they have offended, that leaving their wickedness, they may believe on thee, O Lord. For thy power is the beginning of righteousness; and because thou art the Lord of all, it maketh Thee to be gracious unto all. But thou, O God, art gracious and true: long suffering, and in mercy ordering all things: for if we sin, we are thine, knowing thy power; but we will not sin, knowing that we are accounted thine.”[603]

Once more, whatever theoretical view we may happen to hold on the redemption of man by Christ, the end and glory of that redemption requires as the only consistent consummation, the ultimate happiness and virtue of mankind. To this purport I shall adduce one passage of Scripture and quote a commentary. The passage is Rom. v. 12-21, and the commentary is by Dr. S. Smith. “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and thus death hath passed upon all men, inasmuch as all have sinned: (for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed, where there is no law:) nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgressions, who is a figure (a type) of him that was to come: (yet the free gift likewise is not so, as was the offence: for if through the offence of one, many have died, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. Neither is the gift so, as it was by one that sinned; for judgment was of one offence to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if, by the offence of one, death reigned by one, much more those who receive the abounding of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, even Jesus Christ:) so then as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; so likewise by the righteousness of one the free gift hath come upon all men to justification of life. For as by the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so likewise, by the obedience of one, many shall be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that sin might abound: but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ, our Lord.”

“In this passage all men are said to have been made mortal by the offence of Adam, and here the phrase ‘all men’ must necessarily be understood to signify every individual of the human race. Though the style of the apostle in this passage is remarkably intricate and perplexed, yet his meaning is clear, and scarcely to be misunderstood. He affirms that death entered into the world by Adam, and that in consequence of his offence, death passed upon all men, or all men became mortal. Thus many were made sinful or mortal by one. In this sense Adam was a type of Jesus Christ: for as all mankind became subject to great privation or suffering in consequence of the offence of one, namely Adam, so the greatest privileges and blessings are bestowed on all mankind in consequence of the obedience of one, namely, Jesus Christ. But it is only in this single circumstance that all suffer and all are benefited by one, that there is any analogy between them: for in every other respect there is the greatest possible difference between Adam and Christ. The act entailing such important consequences upon the whole human race, was, on the part of Adam, an act of transgression, on the part of Christ an act of obedience. And there is a still further disparity between them; for the calamities resulting from the act of transgression were the legal punishment of the offence; but the blessings accruing from the act of obedience were not such as could be claimed by law, but were the free, unpurchased unmerited gift of God. And the consequences of the act of transgression and the act of obedience may be placed in still more striking contrast: for the act of transgression was but one, and yet death, with all the calamities connected with it, passed upon the whole human race; while the act of obedience provides justification for many offences: nor is this all; for the blessings procured for all mankind by the obedience of Christ are unspeakably greater than the calamities brought upon them by the offence of Adam.”

“This is undoubtedly the argument of the Apostle. Notwithstanding all the obscurity and perplexity of his language, whoever reads the passage with attention, must perceive these were the ideas which were in his mind. And in the whole compass of Christian truth, there is no doctrine more important or more glorious than that which is thus disclosed. It is a direct and positive declaration, that the blessings, provided by the obedience of Christ, shall, in number of persons who partake them, be co-extensive with the calamities produced by the offence of Adam, and in their magnitude and value greatly exceed them. This is sufficient; this is decisive; these ideas were in the mind of the apostle; this is the doctrine which he plainly and indisputably teaches, and nothing more is necessary. For, even though it should be proved that he illustrates his doctrine by a fanciful allusion to what was itself only an allegory; that his reasoning is not in every respect complete, and even, that he did not himself fully comprehend all the glorious consequences of the sublime truth he disclosed, that truth would be neither the less important nor the less certain. The great fact itself, the fact which it was his object and his office to teach, and in which he could not be mistaken, was, that the blessings produced by the obedience of Christ shall be as extensive as the evils occasioned by the offence of Adam; that all who suffer from the one shall partake of the benefits of the other, while these benefits themselves shall infinitely exceed and overbalance the calamities entailed on mankind by the first transgression. The conclusion is inevitable, that the whole human race shall ultimately be restored to virtue and happiness. By one passage of Scripture then, at least, the doctrine which it is the object of this work to establish, is positively and expressly affirmed; and this is decisive.”[604]

To sustain this doctrine we hear analogy also pleaded. Pain, it is said, has no tendency to correct. This is not true. Pain often does correct—and many are led back to virtue by means of a sad experience. Pain physically and morally is the great instrument of warning. But though it were fully granted that pure pain were not a corrective agency, it may, in connection with other influences, bring healing to the soul. We never see it unmixed in this world, and we have no just ground to conclude it will be so in another. How often is it the means of drawing forth a mercy and a grace from others that softens the stony heart of the transgressor. How often, when the sinner is laid low—yea, and by the very effect of crimes, will a kind look or word, an instance of forbearance or forgiveness, work a regeneration on his nature. How often will the son who plagued his parents’ life, and whitened their hair with sorrow, when driven by misery to seek again the shelter of a home, be sweetened into meekness by a mother’s love, and be raised again to dignity by a father’s generosity. If pain then, by making us feel the goodness of others, will so frequently incite us to deserve it, are we to conceive that an experience, with clearer knowledge of God’s love, shall be entirely ineffectual? It is said, that men grow more hardened in sin the longer they continue in it. I allow it was a generous truth: and yet the thought of a moment—the visit of one pure memory, may suffice to change a life of crime. But our argument is, that men will not continue in sin; and it will not be asserted, that if reformation is at all possible, God will refuse the means, and make crime eternal. It is further stated that the wicked, by force of numbers and society with each other, grow increasingly worse: it is to be proved, which it is not and cannot, that in a future existence there is any such distribution either local or moral. This doctrine is not only unfounded in analogy, but contradicted by it—there must be either destruction or renovation: so it is in the natural world, and so it is in the moral. Nothing can sustain continued existence in a state of extreme disorganization; a certain amount of consistency and harmony is an essential condition of every being—without this, there must be dissolution and destruction. Sin being then confusion in the soul and in society, an eternal state of progressive sin is inconceivable. Pain, being in like manner disorganization in body or mind, an eternity of growing pain is equally inconceivable. Continued and extreme pain therefore must either destroy its subject or destroy itself; and then on this argument alone we perceive that eternal torture is a theological figment; a nonentity and impossibility.

The belief is further pressed upon us on grounds of moral influence. This is but an additional argument against it, for it either has no effect or a bad one. It has no effect, from its vagueness and its incomprehensibleness. It does not fasten on the moral feelings—it sinks dead by its own ponderousness. It has no effect from its inconsistency with human nature; there is no affinity between a finite being and boundless torture; and thence from the want of truth there is also a want of power. It has no effect, because there is an instinctive abhorrence in the heart against it; and there is an instinctive justice which repels it; the imagination reels before it—the mind retreats from it, and finds that it is too odious even to be looked at. That it has no effect may be seen to a vast extent: millions in all countries profess to believe it, and among these have been, and are, many of the most abandoned that ever brought shame upon their nature; and yet a faith in hell gave them no fear of vice. So far as it has influence it is of a bad kind; because it familiarizes the mind with coarse images; because it breathes into obedience a spirit of slavish fear; because it makes terror an instrument of religion; because it throws darkness on the ways of providence; because it undermines filial confidence in God, and puts a limit either to his power or his love. The doctrine of ultimate and universal salvation lowers the sanctions of righteousness. But what is the true motive to goodness, what is the spirit of it—that which unites us most to God? Love, not fear; not fear of hell; and in the sense of terror not even fear of God himself. Fear is mere submission to force, not the willing service of heart-felt appreciation; the crouching of a slave in outward show to the despot whom in his soul he thoroughly detests. Now as we cannot love by constraint, what ideas of God are most likely to move our affections, and consequently produce in us the true spirit of obedience? Evidently his benevolence, his purity, his disinterested goodness, his fatherly nature—to be drawn to him with the cords of our hearts, we see him in the clear light of his moral beauty. It is rather paradoxical that these doctrines on the power of fear, the righteousness of vindictive punishment, and the limits of moral reformation, should be propagated in our times, when all the practical tendencies of society are in contradiction. The influence of conviction and not of force, the influence of mind and not pain, is the growing spirit of the time, and a faith, which puts no bound to hope; for the love of man is a motive deepening ever in the great social heart. This is the blessing of our day,—it has enlightened education, and softened the rigour of instruction; it is mingling the gentleness of mercy with the austerity of punishment; it is working to restore the criminal and not to destroy, tempering discipline with wisdom, believing that corrective amelioration is most useful and most just; in the same believing spirit it is sending a vast spiritual agency into every realm of vice: while thus philosophy and philanthropy labour in the trust they shall leave men better than they found them, exploding the errors which had been the greatest curses to mankind, these are the very errors which theology sanctifies, which it is heresy to deny: whilst a moral and merciful civilization is exerted to exalt man, theology continues to deface the image of God; the one scattering beauty on mortality, and the other spreading darkness on eternity; the one removing pain, and the other preaching it.

The doctrine we oppose is further defended on the ground that sin is an infinite offence, that man is therefore an infinite offender; and that an infinite offender deserves unending punishment. The assertion, that man can be an infinite offender, is wholly inconsistent with the views which the orthodox themselves present of man. To be a transgressor in any degree, implies the possession of a noble nature, much less to be an infinite transgressor; but with the miserable and contemptible creature which Calvinism describes as man, it is impossible to associate any idea that is either noble or infinite, for good or for evil. We may assume another mode of reasoning. The obedience of the law is righteousness, the transgression of the law is sin. These are correspondent definitions. By every rule, therefore, of logical deduction, if a single act of sin is an infinite evil, a single act of obedience is an infinite good; and on the same grounds of justice by which one man is doomed to an everlasting hell, the other merits an eternal heaven.

But to speak of man at all as an infinite offender, is to set common sense at defiance. Whence can be the infinitude of his offence? Not in its origin, not in its effects, not in its duration: not in its origin, for it is produced in limited faculties; not in its effects, for the errors of a created nature, counteracted by an uncreated omnipotence, can never be infinite, can never be irremediable; not in its duration, for the life of one man, the lives of all men to the end of human generations, are but a point in the universe and government of God. Sin is either a state of mind or a state of action; but whether as one or the other, it must of necessity be limited. Were the career of man extended to that of Methusalem, and his powers as capacious as his years were many; were the whole of that existence a succession of crime, uncheered by a solitary virtue; were the energy of the mightiest intellect devoted to contrive guilt, and the efforts of the most ingenious sinfulness given to its execution; were every creation of fancy a vision of impurity, every instinct an impulse to cruelty, every emotion a movement of malignity, yet even thus horrible, we could not with truth call man an infinite offender. Neither in desire nor in action can he be such. Not in desire, for there is no man that wishes, there never has been the man that wished, absolute, unmingled, endless evil; not in action, for there is no man, whatever the malignity of his intention, has unlimited power of execution. If sin is an infinite offence, then all sins are equal, for infinity has no degrees; if sinners are infinite transgressors, then criminals have no distinctions; transgression has no gradations, and the whole moral space is annihilated between him who stands on the very margin of heaven, and him who is already plunged into hell; the same impassable gulf which exists between their conditions, exists also between their characters.

Man is not an infinite offender, nor yet is he an incorrigible one. There is nothing in his nature or history which justifies the conclusion. There is no point of moral baseness so low that we can mark it as a hopeless condition. He is not immutable; and as change is possible, changes for the better may be looked for, as well as changes for the worse. Such changes have been; the painful experience of evil and wrong-doing, however slow and vacillating, always drives towards them; all observation, therefore, is in favour of our expectation. We look not on the deepest, the deadliest, and the worst instance of human depravity, as beyond correction, beyond improvement, beyond the power of Almighty God; we look upon no ignorance that may not be enlightened; upon no vice that may not be removed; upon no human countenance so scarred with the traces of depravity, as to leave nothing visible but the hand-writing of reprobation; God forbid that we should behold any human being with humanity’s capacities, destined, beyond amendment, to hopeless corruption and to incorrigible misery. I deny not the existence and the delusion of vice. I deny not the abuse of the noblest faculties, or the perversion of the best affections, but I do deny that the human soul is ever so wrecked or lost as to become utterly hopeless. The man of pleasure may turn from joy to joy, and collect nothing for his home but weariness and disgust; the man of ambition may sacrifice health and repose, honour and probity; the covetous man may, during a long life, drudge away days of labour, and toss through nights of care, to die in the possession of what he never enjoyed; the indolent and the prodigal may live as if there were no tomorrow; the vicious and profane may reel on, reckless of a future existence and a future judgment. We have all seen every human passion making havoc upon virtue; but we have also seen the passions, carrying with them their own sting and their own punishment, and in that sting and punishment, to a certain extent at least, they have contained their own amelioration and amendment. That human beings have been raised from their lowest debasement, that they have been emancipated from the worst of moral bondage, that they have been purified from the deepest of pollutions, we have many consolatory evidences. In every nation of earth that now enjoys the blessings of religion, of liberty, of arts, of moral and social refinement, we have proofs, that by gradual and progressive improvement, these human beings may be delivered from the very worst estate of ignorance, vice, destitution, and brutality. For what are the nations that we now glory to acknowledge, but instances the most undeniable, that man is not only an imperishable, but also an improvable creature? I have seen beings in their thoughtlessness, the victims of their own vanity, sink miserable and despairing into the terror which they had prepared for themselves: but must I say, that they shall never throughout eternity discover the littleness of the objects they desired, nor abstain from chasing the phantoms that misled them? I have seen men insanely and foolishly toil for all that makes life a trifle, at the loss of all that makes it a glory; I have read in history, and I can recal by memory, the experience of those who spent all they had of energy or misused all they had of goodness to obtain that which at last they felt their torture; I have seen the turbulent nature soften into peace, the thoughtless awakened into wisdom and action, the profane elevated into reverence, the impious bending to pray, the angry subdued into meekness, the proud converted to the wisdom of humility, the hard-hearted melted to the goodness of mercy.

Should it be said that this argument is too narrow, and appeals only to immediate feeling, let us then take a wider sphere, and try the principle by a larger test. Call to your attention the varieties of mankind, of their present and past condition, of their present and past circumstances. Many millions exist on the wide surface of the globe, among whom the elements of moral redemption have never had operation, on whose benighted souls a ray of Christian light has never dawned, hearts which have never felt the bliss of holy liberty, and bosoms that have never burned with heavenly fire. Take up a map of the world; cast your eye over its boundaries and divisions, from pole to pole, and from meridian to meridian; conceive the myriads of rational beings who swarm along that surface; reflect on the wonderful diversities in their conditions and their training; pass over the dreary frosts of one country, and the deadening heat of others; wherever you turn, humanity meets you under different forms, and in various circumstances—with habits more or less corrupted, with morals more or less pure, with religion more or less enlightened or absurd; let me then ask any enlightened thinker, any one who has studied human nature, whether all these are to be arranged under one general classification. Consider the tribes around the arctic, buried in darkness; pierce into the unexplored regions of Africa; go over the deserts of Arabia; walk among the tents of its predatory and pastoral populations; traverse Persia, India, Tartary, the islands that dimly gleam through the Southern Ocean, and wherever you go, mankind are in various moral positions, and consequently under various terms of moral probation. Shall then that all-seeing Creator, to whom every heart is open, place all these motley tribes under one system of judgment? It cannot be. Shall beings born in regions of darkness be condemned for want of light—beings who had never breathed but of impurity, for not being sanctified—beings bred amidst idols, for being idolatrous? Taking thus into view the populations of the earth, we have before us an infinity of moral conditions; and yet the differences are not greater between the extremes of them than those we might select in a single country or a single city; than those, in fact, which we know to exist. Respecting the terms of probation, a New Zealander is not at a greater distance from an Englishman, than some Englishmen are from others. When we think then how many are ignorant and suffering by the very necessity of destiny, and by the same fate vicious and depraved, if the passage of a breath end all hope of amendment, our faith must cease in divine justice, as well as divine wisdom, and our perplexity be turned to despair.

We look on man, not as a member of a sect, but as a child of God; and once more, we ask, if he is not an infinite offender, nor yet incorrigible, is he not worth the correction? If his purity and happiness be within the bounds of possibility, if his eternal misery by any degree of energy can be averted, are we to believe that a God who has infinite benevolence wills him to perish; are we to believe that a God who has infinite power will exert none of it to save the most glorious of his works from utter destruction? Can we suppose that God, omnipotent and most wise, would reverse eternally such capacities for goodness and happiness, and instead of training them to be instruments of boundless utility, would condemn them to be agents of eternal evil? Will not God rather choose to sow the field of everlasting life with seeds of holiness and bliss, than to scathe it to a ruin and a wilderness? I would not strip the future of its awe; no terror can be equal to the truth; it is the most solemn anticipation that can ever come upon the mind, and I maintain that nothing the most fearing imagination conceived in its wildest apprehensions ever equalled the reality: but, for God’s universe and for God’s creatures, there is always hope; in God’s power and wisdom there are limitless means, and at last there will be universal peace and universal emancipation. If creatures are not ultimately and universally happy, it must be either from the want of ability in God, or the want of inclination; and this difficulty pressing itself on the mind of a powerful and pious orthodox writer, he chose, in accounting for the loss of souls, to suppose that theologians had mistaken in their theories the nature of divine omnipotence; that love and power have distinct offices; but if he were to circumscribe either attribute in God, it would be power and not love. On the ground of an eternal perdition, such attribute as a moral omnipotence can truly be ascribed to God. The able writer to whom I have alluded has seen to the bottom of the difficulty, and believing as he does most sincerely in eternal suffering, believing also as he does with equal sincerity in the infinite love of God, he is compelled so far as the human will is concerned to circumscribe the sphere and action of divine omnipotence, or rather to deny it altogether. “The truth is,” he says, “that the only rational conclusion we can arrive at in the matter, is that in the nature of things no such attribute can exist. And until the cloud, which its supposed existence throws on every procedure of divine providence, is dissipated, we must either not think at all, or think amiss on that subject in comparison of which all other subjects are unimportant, namely the character of God: I know that many may, at first sight, be startled at the assertion, that the power of God can in any sense be limited. In this, as in various instances, they will object to the same truth as a distinct proposition, which they will freely assume and take for granted in all their reasonings. These very persons will speak of Providence as devising means and moving by gradual advancement to the accomplishment of an end. If asked, why not decree the end without the means? they answer, because it could not be attained, at least so well, without them. If then, the term could not, be at all admitted, (and how freely is this term applied to God in Scripture!) no such thing as unrestricted omnipotence exists. It is not that there is any limit in God. God forbid that I should dare to say so. It is, that power in its own nature is limited. It can act only on possibilities.... Even power itself is but a vague and unintelligible notion, unless displayed to us as triumphing over difficulties, and rising superior to obstacles. A sweeping omnipotence, which could by one sovereign act of will, decree that in the nature of things neither impediment nor resistance should exist, leaves no field even for power itself to act on. Omnipotence such as this, at least supplies no materials for man to comprehend or adore. No: we are constructed otherwise. Our faculties are so framed as to correspond with the truth and reality of things. The power that fills the soul with wonder and with praise is that which the Scripture of truth exhibits: that power in which God arises that his enemies may be scattered; that omnipotence by which he produces good out of evil, and subdues the most unyielding substances and stubborn elements into himself. But still more, as it respects the wisdom of God, is it necessary to dismiss the notion of an absolute omnipotence before the former attribute can shine forth in its true glory. For surely, according to our conceptions, it would be more wise to arrive at once, if that were possible, at all that means, and contrivances, and processes can accomplish, than to prefer elaborate and circuitous courses, merely for the sake of going round about to do what could be done as well in the twinkling of an eye. And yet in what does the divine wisdom as apprehensible by us consist? What are the views and discoveries which lead us, with the apostle, to exclaim, ‘Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God?’ Is it not in those very procedures which if unbounded power existed would be folly and not wisdom, that all the treasures of the infinite mind are manifested? in adapting means to ends, in pursuing the path of light amidst surrounding darkness, in harmonizing discordant principles, and bringing order out of confusion?”

After a few other remarks, the author proceeds to maintain his position by the testimony of Scripture.—“To quote Scripture,” he observes, “as fully as I might upon this subject, would be, in a measure, to transcribe the Bible. I shall content myself with producing three passages, which, though not of the directer kind, bear, I think, irresistibly on the point. The first is Ezek. xxxiii. 11. ‘As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye, from all your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?’ The second is Isa. v. 3, 4. ‘And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes.’ The last which I shall quote is Matt. xxiii. 37, 38. ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’” “Is this, then, I would ask any fair and candid person, who looks as if the All-gracious being who employs it, had any relief or remedy in reserve for those who wilfully reject the mercies he has freely offered them? Are these like the expressions of one who could bestow salvation in any other way, or any other terms? Do they not resemble rather the tender complaints and anxious warnings of a parent who had done all he could do, and proposed all that he had to propose, to rescue his child from ruin, and who must at last, with agonizing reluctance, give up that child, if he would still pursue those courses whose end is inevitable destruction? And if such be the characters in which God has been pleased to reveal himself; if such be the words which he has actually spoken, are we to be wise above what is written? Is it honouring God to say he uses a language to work upon our feelings, which language is in reality a misrepresentation of the truth; a misrepresentation, nevertheless, so ill contrived, that, after all, it does not deceive us? Or is it exalting his great name, to magnify the mere natural attribute of his power, above those moral attributes in which consist at once his essence and his glory? No. If it be indeed reverence to God, to dismiss him altogether from our minds, then all such considerations are set at rest for ever. But if it be our duty, not only to think of him, but to bear him in all our thoughts, then in all around us we see this truth inscribed, that there is a limit in power or a limit in love. In which shall we place it?—In power? Then we place it not in God, but in his lowest attribute.—In love? Then indeed we place the limit in God himself—‘God is love.’”[605]

The reasoning of this passage is most cogent, the dilemma is inevitable. If there be eternal sin and eternal perdition; if there be not ultimate and universal regeneration, limit there must be in love or in power: but holding as we do the doctrine of progressive discipline, we place limit in neither, and we glorify both. Strange it is, that while thus magnifying God in the highest of his attributes, in the harmony and perfection of his nature, while thus trusting him with the faith of children, notwithstanding many things in his providence mysterious and inexplicable, in despite of the sin and misery that surround us, filling the human mind and human destiny with painful and perplexing problems, we believe him to be all-powerful as he is all-good; yet in thus believing we are set down by Trinitarians as rebels against heaven, and blasphemers of our Creator. If reverence to God demand us to believe that the smoke of eternal torment from the depths of an unfathomable hell is an incense well pleasing in his sight, or an evil which he must endure but has no power to remove, then that is an honour we do not and we cannot give: that is not the God we worship; that is not the God we can love: and if to believe in God be to think him such as Calvin and others have pictured him, then at once take not only the name of Christians from us, but in addition stigmatize us with that of atheists.

III. To limit the power of God in order to justify his love, is the struggle of a humane and benignant nature against a dark and stern theology; but writers in orthodox divinity, whom it would be too tedious to catalogue, have not scrupled to go the whole length along the line of fearful consequences to which their system led them. They have not hesitated to plead for the eternity of hell’s torments the glory of God; strange idea indeed of the glory of God, to contemplate him as the author of everlasting pain and everlasting sin. We think that every attribute of God, in every manifestation, is directly against this doctrine. His omniscience is against it. He must have known from all eternity the destiny of the lost: and with this knowledge, on the orthodox theory, he made creatures with the direct foresight of their everlasting misery and everlasting destruction. His omnipotence is against it. I have shown by the long extract I have before quoted, that the profound and consistent theological reasoner who believes in eternal perdition cannot believe in a moral omnipotence. An all-powerful being must be either infinitely malignant or infinitely benevolent. If God were the one, he could find delight only in the suffering of his creatures; and he wills not to relieve them, because he does not will them to be happy. But this idea is utterly repugnant to the first principles of religion. If God be, as we believe he is, the other, he can have no motive to make his children, the work of his own hands, endlessly wretched; and having the power, he has also the will to redeem them. A progressive universe is, therefore, the only true solution to God’s providence, and God’s prescience. Divine justice, it is said, demands it. What, then, is divine justice? Is this divine justice identical with vengeance? Is it divine justice, to make the everlasting torture of a race—for the saved are but the gleanings—a sacrifice to boundless self-glorification? Is it divine justice to array all the force of infinite attributes against a limited, a weak, and erring creature? Is it divine justice to meet the offence of ephemeral mortality with the agony of deathless torture and of resistless wrath? If this be divine justice, we have reason to rejoice that it is not human justice. Such justice is but naked malignity; and this view of it is the more firmly established when we further consider that, by the orthodox theology, all is the result of a foregone conclusion, the last term of a dark progression, the execution of a cause uttered in the black womb of eternity, for which the wretches are prepared by the inheritance of a corrupt nature in a corrupt world, and lest all natural causes should be insufficient, by an exposure to the unseen snares of a Satan profound in cunning, mighty in malice, and, by himself and his agents, all but omnipotent and omnipresent. This argument from divine justice is urged so frequently and earnestly, that I shall here transcribe a few remarks from a writer who has treated the subject with equal force of logic and fervour of eloquence. “Justice and goodness,” he observes, “are the same. Justice requires no more punishment for sin than goodness: goodness requires the same as justice, but the manner in which benevolence manifests itself under the form of goodness and of justice is different, and, therefore, requires a different appellation. A person who forgives an offence upon repentance and reformation is good: this is one modification of goodness, which, by way of eminence, is often called goodness itself, or more strictly mercy: the person who visits an offence which is neither repented of, nor amended with a proper degree of pain, is also good: this is another modification of goodness to which the term justice is applied. Mercy and justice, therefore, do not differ from each other in their nature, since they equally arise from benevolence, and they differ in aspect only according to the moral condition of the being with regard to whom they are exemplified. This account of divine justice explains, in the most satisfactory manner, the principle on which Deity rewards and punishes mankind. Did men never violate the laws of rectitude, he would make them invariably and completely happy. But there is no person who is free from fault: the moral state of every individual is, in some respect or at some period, such as it ought not to be. Every bad disposition, and every improper habit, must be rectified before happiness can be enjoyed. It is necessary, therefore, that the moral governor of the world should vary his conduct according to the character of the person whom he has to treat; that he should visit the good with favour, and manifest his disapprobation of the wicked; for, if he were to make happiness compatible with sin, it could not be corrected. The effect of pain is to make us dislike and avoid that which causes it. It is for this reason pain is annexed to sin. Sin is an evil which it is necessary to remove; pain is employed as the instrument of its destruction; and that principle by which Deity has established this constitution of things, by which he so regulates events as invariably to secure the ultimate reward of goodness, and the punishment of wickedness, is distinguished by the term justice.... Were it necessary to add any thing more to show that divine justice is not inconsistent with the attribute of goodness, but a part of it, the consideration of the design of its inflictions would afford further evidence of this truth. Every violation of the law of God involves the transgressor, sooner or later, in suffering; and of this constitution of things, by which pain is inseparably connected with deviation from rectitude, the Supreme Being is the author. Why did he appoint it? Why did he so dispose the whole tendency of his moral government as to ensure this consequence? Why does he, who is a being of unerring wisdom and infinite benevolence, never suffer any offence which is unrepented of to escape punishment? Since his very nature is love, and since he created all his intelligent offspring in order to make them happy, it can be no gratification to him to involve them in suffering. Their groans can be no music to his ear. If he afflict them, it must be, not for his own gratification, but for their benefit.... Viewing then the attribute of justice, which has been supposed to require the endless misery of the greater part of the human race, as that very principle which is designed to prevent this terrible consequence, (a man) feels himself capable of relying with implicit confidence on the decisions of the judge, both with regard to himself and all mankind. He is satisfied that he will treat even the most criminal with perfect equity; that he will place them in circumstances the best adapted to their unhappy condition; that his discipline will ultimately accomplish its end, and extirpate sin and misery from the creation.”[606] If the doctrine of eternal torment be contradictory to God’s justice, much more is it to his wisdom: for surely it is not wise to create only to destroy;—to perpetuate endless moral conflict—not only to destroy and confuse, but to destroy and confuse the best and noblest of his works—to inflict undying anguish on capacities suited for undying happiness, to ruin every faculty and to blast every hope. Nor is the doctrine less opposed to his holiness than to his wisdom. Improved ideas on the philosophy of our spiritual nature, and on the real purport of moral retribution, with the penalties of sin, imply the continuance of sin. A material hell or a material heaven by the thinking portion of all sects is in general exploded. Sin carries with it and creates its own punishments: if sin then be eternal and progressive in its sufferings, it must also be eternal and progressive in its existence and its evils. Hell is not merely a region of unutterable horror, where wretches writhe in eternal torture, but also a region of boundless sin, of malignant wickedness, of hopeless corruption, of vilest affections, of basest passions. What shall we then say of an infinite holiness, enlightened by infinite wisdom, armed with infinite power, allowing this condition to exist? If the doctrine of eternal torment be true, no such attribute as divine mercy can have being: if this doctrine be true, a God of goodness is a fiction of imagination, the creation of a brain-sick enthusiasm, the dream of amiable but unfounded hopes. It is of no purpose to qualify in these things: there is no room in the same universe for a good God and an eternal hell: if this doctrine be true, the past is a wreck, and the future a curse. To such a condition of existence annihilation were a preferable alternative. It were better the brain should at once moulder with the thoughtless sod, than be tortured with the wilderings of everlasting contradictions; it were better the affections should perish with the last earthly sigh than throb through an eternity of agonized or selfish existence. On the orthodox supposition, either man must lose his identity and go to heaven without remembering whom he knew and loved in life, or he must lose his sympathy, become apostate to all his better feelings, and see without pain or pity many given over to despair with whom on earth he walked in dearest friendship. Instead of the big tear which would have burst from his eye in the years of mortality at the thought even of a partial separation; instead of the affectionate and instinctive anguish which would have torn his breast, as he saw the last vision in the sun, and the last flutter in the breeze of the sail which was wafting his friend to another clime; he must approve the sentence, nay, some maintain, he must see its execution with triumph, which may consign his nearest and dearest to endless damnation.—If the belief could be habitually and practically realized, that human souls were every minute over the wide earth dropping into hell, that amongst the sighs of death with which the world is filled, the greater number are the knells of infinite perdition, that the graves on which the mourners weep, which to us all, at one time or other, make earth a vale of tears, are so many monuments of irreparable wreck, the silent witnesses of God’s anger and man’s despair; if any one, I repeat, could constantly, and in very truth, believe that souls were thus quitting the present scene, souls with enlarged capacities, but enlarged for eternal sorrow, and ever smile again, he might wear the form of his species, but he should have the heart of a fiend. Faith in such a doctrine should kill at once the life of joy; every sound should be funereal, brightness or beauty there should be none. Each of us, like Job, should curse the day of his birth, but with a more terrible earnestness; the exclamation of Jeremiah would be in every mouth an appropriate utterance, “Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes were fountains of tears!” Is there the human being that could feel joy in the midst of an hospital, could laugh in a city of the plague, while death went from couch to couch, while mirth was banished from each hearth, and the grass of desolation growing in the streets? But how much more should all delight be banished from the soul, if in the Creator’s universe there be a dark and measureless region, filled with hideous abominations and unexpiring torments! If thus it be, let there, I repeat, be no look of happiness, let there be no voice of sweetness; let garment of praise be changed for the spirit of heaviness; let all heads be bent in grief, and all eyes dim with weeping, in lamentation for the sorrows of the universe. But be it not so—leave us at least a gleam of light from heaven.

“Cease every joy to glimmer o’er my mind, But leave, oh! leave, the light of hope behind.”

Oh no! God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, no glory in the pain or punishment of his creatures: it is the progress towards universal blessedness, and its final consummation, that truly shows forth the glory of God, and manifests the grandeur of his name and nature—more sweetly than the earth, more majestically than the heavens. It shows forth his justice: he punishes, terribly, it may be, but not cruelly or hopelessly; he punishes, but he amends; he chastises, but he purifies. It shows forth his wisdom: for universal holiness and universal happiness are the mightiest objects which infinite wisdom could select, the highest purposes in which infinite wisdom could be manifested: It shows forth his power, not in a blasting malediction, but in a creative and all-dispensing love; not in the thunder of destruction, but in the hand of a Father full of gifts and full of blessings:—subduing evil, distributing happiness, drawing out of apparent confusion order and harmony, more fair and beautiful than the worlds he has called out of darkness; “moving upon the face of many a stormy wave, and blending into calm what seemed only the chaos of contending elements.”

It is marvellous that we can think seriously on existence or on providence, that we can reflect on human nature or survey human life, without feeling the need as well as the truth of the doctrine of the full mercy of God, and of his universally benignant designs for all his children. True, creation is fair, and much of existence is happy; but still there are evils and miseries which ever perplex us for solution. If the view of God’s government which we receive, does not solve all the difficulties, at the very least it softens them; if there are inscrutable things in the providence of God which it cannot explain, there are atrocities ascribed by other systems to this character which it does not involve. We may mourn over the wrongs, sufferings, and sins, which exist with fatal abundance in our present state; we may wonder and think why they exist at all; but to what an extent of perplexity and pain are we driven, if we are to believe that all these evils are to be for ever, and to have no remedy. When I see those who bear want and sorrow through many and heavy years, I rejoice that there is at last a home and refuge for them in their father’s kingdom where they who were poor shall be made rich; where those who mourned shall be comforted: when I hear the sigh of pain, when I behold the power of death; when I know, as all must, in how many human dwellings grief sits lonely on the hearth, I am saved from a fearful and dangerous distrust by the belief, that in times to come, and in regions which we know not of, there is a balm for every grief and a remedy for every sin. None are unaware of the physical and the moral evils that hang over and around this existence; and both from the felt experience of our own hearts, and the recorded experience of many others, we can judge the infinite complexity of moral struggle, the subtleties of sin, and the miserable consequences of evil doings; and we cannot think that a good, a holy, a just, and merciful God can ordain such a state to be perpetual and eternal. We know, moreover, how many are in the thick darkness of barbarism, each having within a universe of infinite and improvable capacities; we know what millions are in the dens of indigence, of crime, and ignorance, for whom earth is barren and life a burthen: and in what thought are we to take comfort, in what sentiment are we to find hope, if we believe not there is a God who does not forget his orphan children in their worst estate; that as here they have received their evil things, there is a heaven where they have their good? And when we observe in this life so much of antagonist passions; so much war and strife; so much of bitter and hopeless alienation, our tired spirits wish for a retreat of peace; and with the Psalmist we long for the wings of a dove that we might flee away and be at rest; for a calm sky after a heated atmosphere; for a union of heart and charity which no mistakes could again divide. We have no need to fear that our high aspirations for the future shall make us proud or presumptuous; for we have all enough in our present lot to keep us humble. When we look within, we find a melancholy strife between our nobler and our higher existence, which we can never entirely overcome: when we cast our gaze over the face of the world, and the inequalities of life, and there in the strong-holds of sin and selfishness see so many causes of wickedness and pain, which the most believing and the most hoping can never hope entirely to overcome; when we regard our feeble powers and our short existence; our desires ever growing and wants ever deepening, and our passions ever craving; when we think of the knowledge we longed for, and could not have, the visions we dreamed of that never came, the good we resolved on and never did, the felicity we sought and never found, the wishes that were as empty as the echo in the desert, the ideas, the plans, the aspirations, and the purposes that vainly struggled for life, but found in our breasts their prison and their grave; we shall be in no danger of thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

Blessed and beautiful doctrine is this, of universal redemption and restoration, which pours such a radiance over our groping obscurity, which gives our troubled hearts such peace, which softens grief and glorifies affection, which corrects the perverse and dignifies the lowly, which nourishes whatever in our nature is great or god-like, renders religion transcendent and lovely, and opens before the rejoicing eye of faith the grandeur of a renovated and an emancipated universe.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture XII.

Footnote 601:

See Ex. xxi. 1-6. Eccles. i. 4. 1 Cor. viii. 13. Gen. xvii. 8, 13, 19. Numb. xxv. 13.

Footnote 602:

1 John iv. 16; John iii. 16, 17.

Footnote 603:

Ps. xcv. 8, 9, 10; Ps. xxxiv. 8; Ps. lii. 1; Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7; 2 Chron. xxx. 9; Ps. ciii. 8, &c.; Matt. vi. 9; Ps. xxx. 5; Ps. ciii. 9; Ps. lxxxvii. 7; Isa. lxvii. 16; Wisdom of Solomon, xi. 23-26.

Footnote 604:

Dr. Southwood Smith on the Divine Government.

Footnote 605:

Essays, &c., by the Rev. Henry Woodward: Essay xv. On the Nature of the Divine Omnipotence.

Footnote 606:

Illustrations of the Divine Government, by T. Southwood Smith.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE XIII.

CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST, AND WITHOUT RITUAL.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

“TO WHOM COMING, AS UNTO A LIVING STONE, DISALLOWED INDEED OF MEN, BUT CHOSEN OF GOD, AND PRECIOUS; YE ALSO, AS LIVELY STONES, ARE BUILT UP A SPIRITUAL HOUSE, A HOLY PRIESTHOOD, TO OFFER UP SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES, ACCEPTABLE TO GOD BY JESUS CHRIST.”—1 Peter ii. 4, 5.

The formation of human society, and the institution of priesthood, must be referred to the same causes and the same date. The earliest communities of the world appear to have had their origin and their cement, not in any gregarious instinct, nor in mere social affections, much less in any prudential regard to the advantages of co-operation, but in a binding religious sentiment, submitting to the same guidance, and expressing itself in the same worship. As no tie can be more strong, so is none more primitive, than this agreement respecting what is holy and divine. In simple and patriarchal ages indeed, when the feelings of veneration had not been set aside by analysis into a little corner of the character, but spread themselves over the whole of life, and mixed it up with daily wonder, this bond comprised all the forces that can suppress the selfish and disorganizing passions, and compact a multitude of men together. It was not, as at present, to have simply the same opinions (things of quite modern growth, the brood of scepticism); but to have the same Fathers, the same Tradition, the same Speech, the same Land, the same Foes, the same Priest, the same God. Nothing did man fear, or trust, or love, or desire, that did not belong, by some affinity, to his faith. Nor had he any book to keep the precious deposit for him; and if he had, he would never have thought of so frail a vehicle for so great a treasure. It was more natural to put it into structures hollowed in the fast mountain, or built of transplanted rocks which only a giant age could stir; and to tenant these with mighty hierarchies, who should guard their sanctity, and, by an undying memory, make their mysteries eternal. Hence, the first humanizer of men was their worship; the first leaders of nations, the sacerdotal caste; the first triumph of art, the colossal temple; the first effort to preserve an idea, produced a record of something sacred; and the first civilization was, as the last will be, the birth of religion.

The primitive aim of worship undoubtedly was, to act upon the sentiments of God; at first, by such natural and intelligible means, as produce favourable impressions on the mind of a fellow man;—by presents and persuasion, and whatever is expressive of grateful and reverential affections. Abel, the first shepherd, offered the produce of his flock; Cain, the first farmer, the fruits of his land; and while devotion was so simple in its modes, every one would be his own pontiff, and have his own altar. But soon, the parent would inevitably officiate for his family; the patriarch, for his tribe. With the natural forms dictated by present feelings, traditional methods would mingle their contributions from the past; postures and times, gestures and localities, once indifferent, would become consecrated by venerable habit; and so long as their origin was unforgotten, they would add to the significance, while they lessened the simplicity of worship. Custom, however, being the growth of time, tends to a tyrannous and bewildering complexity: forms, originally natural, then symbolical, end in being arbitrary; suggestive of nothing, except to the initiated; yet, if connected with religion, so sanctified by the association, that it appears sacrilege to desist from their employment; and when their meaning is lost, they assume their place, not among empty gesticulations, but among the mystical signs by which earth communes with heaven. The vivid picture-writing of the early worship, filled with living attitudes, and sketched in the freshest colours of emotion, explained itself to every eye, and was open to every hand. To this succeeded a piety, which expressed itself in symbolical figures, veiling it utterly from strangers, but intelligible and impressive still to the soul of national tradition. This, however, passed again into a language of arbitrary characters, in which the herd of men saw sacredness without meaning; and the use of which must be consigned to a class separated for its study. Hence the origin of the priest and his profession; the conservator of a worship no longer natural, but legendary and mystical; skilful enactor of rites that spake with silent gesticulation to the heavens; interpreter of the wants of men into the divine language of the gods. Not till the powers above had ceased to hold familiar converse with the earth, and in their distance had become deaf and dumb to the common tongue of men, did the mediating priest arise;—needed then to conduct the finger-speech of ceremony, whereby the desire of the creature took shape before the eye of the Creator.

Observe then the true idea of PRIEST and RITUAL. The Priest is the representative of men before God; commissioned on behalf of human nature to intercede with the divine. He bears a message upwards, from earth to heaven; his people being below, his influence above. He takes the fears of the weak, and the cries of the perishing, and sets them with availing supplication before him that is able to help. He takes the sins and remorse of the guilty, and leaves them with expiating tribute at the feet of the averted Deity. He guards the avenues that lead from the mortal to the immortal, and without his interposition the creature is cut off from his Creator. Without his mediation, no transaction between them can take place, and the spirit of a man must live as an outlaw from the world invisible and holy. There are means of propitiation which he alone has authority to employ; powers of persuasion conceded to no other; a mystic access to the springs of divine benignity, by outward rites which his manipulation must consecrate, or forms of speech which his lips must recommend. These ceremonies are the implements of his office, and the sources of his power; the magic by which he is thought to gain admission to the will above, and really wins rule over human counsels below. As they are supposed to change the relation of God to man, not by visible or natural operation, not (for example) by suggestion of new thoughts, and excitement of new dispositions in the worshipper, but by secret and mysterious agency, they are simply spells of a dignified order. Were we then to speak with severe exactitude, we should say, a Ritual is a system of consecrated charms; and the Priest, the great magician who dispenses them.

So long as any idea is retained, of mystically efficacious rites, consigned solely and authoritatively to certain hands, this definition cannot be escaped. The ceremonies may have rational instruction and natural worship appended to them; and these additional elements may give them a title to true respect. The order of men appointed to administer them, may have other offices and nobler duties to perform, rendering them, if faithful, worthy of a just and reverential attachment. But in so far as, by an exclusive and unnatural efficacy, they bring about a changed relation between God and man, the Ritual is an incantation, and the Priest is an enchanter.

To this sacerdotal devotion, there necessarily attach certain characteristic sentiments, both moral and religious, which give it a distinctive influence on human character, and adapt it to particular stages of civilization. It clearly severs the worshippers by one remove from God. He is a Being, external to them, distant from them, personally unapproachable by them; their thought must travel to reach the Almighty; they must look afar for the Most Holy; they dwell themselves within the finite, and must ask a foreign introduction to the Infinite. He is not with them as a private guide, but in the remoter watch-towers of creation, as the public inspector of their life; not present for perpetual communion, but to be visited in absence by stated messages of form and prayer. And that God dwells in this cold and royal separation, induces the feeling that man is too mean to touch him; that a consecrated intervention is required, in order to part Deity from the defiling contact of humanity. Why else am I restricted from unlimited personal access to my Creator, and driven to another in my transactions with him? And so, in this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in alliance, with the divine, and those views of it are favoured which make the opposition strong; its puny dimensions, its swift decadence, its poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its giant guilt, become familiar to the thought and lips; and life, cut off from sympathy with the godlike, falls towards the level of melancholy, or the sink of epicurism, or the abjectness of vicarious reliance on the priest. Worship, too, must have for its chief aim, to throw off the load of ill; to rid the mind of sin and shame, and the lot of hardship and sorrow; for principally to these disburthening offices do priests and rituals profess themselves adapted:—and who, indeed, could pour forth the privacy of love, and peace, and trust, through the cumbrousness of ceremonies, and the pompousness of a sacred officer? The piety of such a religion is thus a refuge for the weakness, not an outpouring of the strength of the soul: it takes away the incubus of darkness, without shedding the light of heaven; lifts off the nightmare horrors of earth and hell, without opening the vision of angels and of God. Nay, for the spiritual bonds which connect men with the Father above, it substitutes material ties, a genealogy of sacred fires, a succession of hallowed buildings, or of priests having consecration by pedigree or by manual transmission; so that qualities belonging to the soul alone, are likened to forces mechanical or chemical; sanctity becomes a physical property: divine acceptance comes by bodily catenation; regeneration is degraded into a species of electric shock, which one only method of experiment, and the links of but one conductor, can convey. And, in fine, a priestly system ever abjures all aim at any higher perfection; boasts of being immutable and unimprovable; encourages no ambition, breathes no desire. It holds the appointed methods of influencing heaven, on which none may presume to innovate; and its functions are ever the same, to employ and preserve the ancient forms and legendary spells committed to its trust. Hence all its veneration is antiquarian, not sympathetic or prospective; it turns its back upon the living, and looks straight into departed ages, bowing the head and bending the knee; as if all objects of love and devotion were there, not here; in history, not in life; as if its God were dead, or otherwise imprisoned in the Past, and had bequeathed to its keeping such relics as might yield a perpetual benediction. Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it possesses a sacerdotal character, involve a distant Deity, a mean humanity, a servile worship, a physical sanctity, and a retrospective reverence.

Let no one, however, imagine, that there is no other idea or administration of religion than this; that the priest is the only person among men, to whom it is given to stand between heaven and earth. Even the Hebrew Scriptures introduce us to another class of quite different order; to whom, indeed, those Scriptures owe their own truth and power, and perpetuity of beauty; I mean the PROPHETS; whom we shall very imperfectly understand, if we suppose them mere historians, for whom God had turned time round the other way, so that they spoke of things future as if past, and grew so dizzy in their use of tenses, as greatly to incommode learned grammarians; or if we treat their writings as scrap-books of Providence, with miscellaneous contributions from various parts of duration, sketches taken indifferently from any point of view within eternity, and put together at random and without mark, on adjacent pages, for theological memories to identify; first, a picture of an Assyrian battle, next, a holy family; now of the captives sitting by Euphrates, then, of Paul preaching to the Gentiles; here, a flight of devouring locusts, and there, the escape of the Christians from the destruction of Jerusalem; a portrait of Hezekiah, and a view of Calvary; a march through the desert, and John the Baptist by the Jordan; the day of Pentecost, and the French Revolution; Nebuchadnezzar and Mahomet; Caligula and the Pope,—following each other with picturesque neglect of every relation of time and place. No, the Prophet and his work always indeed belong to the future; but far otherwise than thus. Meanwhile, let us notice how, in Israel, as elsewhere, he takes his natural station above the priest. It was Moses the prophet who even made Aaron the priest. And who cares now for the sacerdotal books of the Old Testament, compared with the rest? Who, having the strains of David, would pore over Leviticus, or would weary himself with Chronicles, when he might catch the inspiration of Isaiah! It was no priest that wrote, “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt offering: the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[607] It was no pontifical spirit that exclaimed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting: your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me: I am weary to bear them.” “Wash you, make you clean.”[608] Whatever, in these venerable scriptures, awes us by its grandeur, and pierces us by its truth, comes of the prophets, not the priests; and from that part of their writings too, in which they are not concerned with historical prediction, but with some utterance deeper and greater. I do not deny them this gift of occasional intellectual foresight of events. And doubtless it was an honour, to be permitted to speak thus to a portion of the future, and of local occurrences unrevealed to seers less privileged. But it is a glory far higher, to speak that which belongs to all time, and finds its interpretation in every place; to penetrate to the everlasting realities of things; to disclose, not when this or that man will appear, but how and wherefore all men appear and quickly disappear; to make it felt, not in what nook of duration such an incident will happen, but from what all-embracing eternity the images of history emerge and are swallowed up. In this highest faculty, the Hebrew seers belong to a class, scattered over every nation and every period; which Providence keeps ever extant for human good, and especially to furnish an administration of religion quite anti-sacerdotal. This class we must proceed to characterize.

The Prophet is the representative of God before men, commissioned from the Divine nature to sanctify the human. He bears a message downwards, from heaven to earth; his inspirer being above, his influence below. He takes of the holiness of God, enters with it into the souls of men, and heals therewith the wounds, and purifies the taint, of sin. He is charged with the peace of God, and gives from it rest to the weariness, and solace to the griefs of men. Instead of carrying the foulness of life to be cleansed in Heaven, he brings the purity of Heaven to make life divine. Instead of interposing himself and his mediation between humanity and Deity, he destroys the whole distance between them; and only fulfils his mission, when he brings the finite mind and the infinite into immediate and thrilling contact, and leaves the creature consciously alone with the Creator. He is one to whom the primitive and everlasting relations between God and man have revealed themselves, stripped of every disguise, and bared of all that is conventional; who is possessed by their simplicity, mastered by their solemnity; who has found the secret of meeting the Holy Spirit within, rather than without; and knows, but cannot tell, how in the strife of genuine duty, or in moments of true meditation, the divine immensity and love have touched and filled his naked soul; and taught him by what fathomless Godhead he is folded round, and on what adamantine manhood he must take his stand. So far from separating others from the heavenly communion vouchsafed to himself, he necessarily believes that all may have the same godlike consciousness; burns to impart it to them; and by the vivid light of his own faith, speedily creates it in those who feel his influence; drawing out and freshening the faded colours of the divine image in their souls, till they too become visibly the seers and the sons of God. His instruments, like the objects of his mission, are human; not mysteries, and mummeries, and such arbitrary things, by which others may pretend to be talking with the skies; but the natural language which interprets itself at once to every genuine man, and goes direct to the living point of every heart. An earnest speech, a brave and holy life, truth of sympathy, severity of conscience, freshness and loftiness of faith,—these natural sanctities are his implements of power: and if heaven be pleased to add any other gifts, still are they weapons all,—not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom,—but forged in the inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows beneath the breath of God, framing things of etherial temper. Thus armed, he lays undoubting siege to the world’s conscience; tears down every outwork of pretence; forces its strongholds of delusion; humbles the vanities at its centre, and proclaims it the citadel of God. The true prophet of every age is no believer in the temple, but in the temple’s Deity; trusts, not rites and institutions, but the heart and soul that fill or ought to fill them; if they speak the truth, no one so reveres them; if a lie, they meet with no contempt like his. He sees no indestructible sanctuary but the mind itself, wherein the Divine Spirit ever loves to dwell; and whence it will be sure to go forth and build such outward temple as may suit the season of Providence. He is conscious that there is no devotion like that which comes spontaneously from the secret places of our humanity, no orisons so true as those which rise from the common platform of our life. He desires only to throw himself in faith on the natural piety of the heart. Give him but that; and he will find for man an everlasting worship, and raise for God a cathedral worthy of his infinitude.

It is evident that one thoroughly possessed with this spirit could never be, and could never make, a priest: nor frame a ritual for priests already made. He is destitute of the ideas, out of which alone these things can be created. His mission is in the opposite direction: he interprets and reveals God to men, instead of interceding for men with God. In this office sacerdotal rites have no function and no place. I do not say that he must necessarily disapprove and abjure them, or deny that he may directly sanction them. If he does however, it is not in his capacity of prophet, but in conformity with feelings which his proper office has left untouched. His tendency will be against ceremonialism: and on his age and position will depend the extent to which this tendency takes effect. Usually, he will construct nothing ritual, will destroy much, and leave behind great and growing ideas, destructive of much more. But ere we quit our general conception of a prophet, let us notice some characteristic sentiments, moral and religious, which naturally connect themselves with his faith; comparing them with those which belong to the sacerdotal influence.

In this faith, God is separated by nothing from his worshippers. He is not simply in contact with them, but truly in the interior of their nature: so that they may not only meet him in the outward providences of life, but bear his spirit with them, when they go to toil and conflict, and find it still, when they sit alone to think and pray. He is not the far observer, but the very present help, of the faithful will. No structure made with hands, nay, not even his own architecture of the heaven of heavens, contains and confines his presence: were there any dark recess whence these were hid, the blessed access would be without hindrance still; and the soul would discern him near as its own identity. No mean and ignoble conception can be entertained of a mind, which is thus the residence of Deity;—the shrine of the Infinite must have somewhat that is infinite itself. Thus, in this system, does our nature appear in alliance with the Divine, not in contrast with it; inspired with a portion of its holiness, and free to help forward the best issues of its Providence. Human life, blessed by this spirit, becomes a miniature of the work of the great Ruler: its responsibilities, its difficulties, its temptations, become dignified as the glorious theatre whereon we strive, by and with the good Spirit of God, for the mastery over evil. Worship, issuing from a nature and existence thus consecrated, is not the casting off of guilt and terror, but the glad unburthening of love, and trust, and aspiration, the simple speaking forth, as duty is the acting forth, of the divine within us; not the prostration of the slave, but the embrace of the child; not the plaint of the abject, but the anthem of the free. Is it not private, individual? And may it not by silence say what it will, and intimate the precise thing, and that only, which is at heart?—whence there grows insensibly that firm root of excellence, truth with one’s own self. The priestly fancy of an hereditary or lineal sacredness can have no place here. The soul and God stand directly related, mind with mind, spirit with spirit: from our moral fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy with which we guard it from insult or neglect, does the only sanctity arise; and herein there is none to help us, or give a vicarious consecration. And finally, the spirit of God’s true prophet is earnestly prospective; more filled with the conception of what the Creator will make his world, than of what he has already made it: detecting great capacities, it glows with great hopes; knowing that God lives, and will live, it turns from the past, venerable as that may be, and reverences rather the promise of the present, and the glories of the future. It esteems nothing unimproveable, is replete with vast desires; and amid the shadows and across the wilds of existence chases, not vainly, a bright image of perfection. The golden age, which priests with their tradition put into the past, the prophet, with his faith and truth, transfers into the future: and while the former pines and muses, the latter toils and prays. Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it partakes of the prophetic or anti-sacerdotal character, involve the ideas of an interior Deity, a noble humanity, a loving worship, an individual holiness, and a prospective veneration.

We have found, then, two opposite views of religion; that of the Priest with his Ritual; and that of the Prophet with his Faith. I propose to show that the Church of England, in its doctrine of sacraments, coincides with the former of these, and sanctions all its objectionable sentiments: and that Christianity, in every relation, even with respect to its reputed rites, coincides with the latter.

The general conformity of the Church of England with the ritual conception of religion, will not be denied by her own members. Their denial will be limited to one point: they will protest that her formulas of doctrine do not ascribe a charmed efficacy, or any operation upon God, to the two sacraments. To avoid verbal disputes, let us consider what we are to understand by a spell or charm. The name, I apprehend, denotes any material object or outward act, the possession or use of which is thought to confer safety or blessing, not by natural operation, but by occult virtues, inherent in it, or mystical effects appended to it. A mere commemorative sign, therefore, is not a charm, nor need there be any superstition in its employment: it simply stands for certain ideas and memories in our minds; re-excites and freshens them, not otherwise than speech audibly records them, except that it summons them before us by sight and touch, instead of sound. The effect, whatever it may be, is purely natural, by sequence of thought on thought, till the complexion of the mind is changed, and haply suffused with a noble glow. But in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things having efficacy at all; as desirable observances, under whose action we should put ourselves, in order to get up certain good dispositions in the heart. As soon as we see them acquiesced in, with this dutiful submission to a kind of spiritual operation, we may be sure they are already empty and dead. An expedient commemoration, deliberately maintained on utilitarian principles, for the sake of warming cold affections by artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this mechanical and sceptical age. It is quite true, that such influence is found to belong to rites of remembrance; but only so long as it is not privately looked into, or greedily contemplated by the staring eye of prudence, but simply and unconsciously received. No; commemorations must be the spontaneous fruit and outburst of a love already kindled in the soul, not the factitious contrivance for forcing it into existence. They are not the lighted match applied to the fuel on an altar cold: but the shapes in which the living flame aspires, or the fretted lights thrown by that central love on the dark temple-walls of this material life.

It is not pretended that the sacraments are mere commemorative rites. And nothing, I submit, remains, but that they should be pronounced charms. It is of little purpose to urge, in denial of this, that the Church insists upon the necessity of faith on the part of the recipient, without which no benefit, but rather peril, will accrue. This only limits the use of the charm to a certain class, and establishes a pre-requisite to its proper efficacy. It simply conjoins the outward form with a certain state of mind, and gives to each of these a participation in the effect. If the faith be insufficient without the ceremony, then some efficacy is due to the rite: and this, being neither the natural operation of the material elements, nor a simple suggestion of ideas and feelings to the mind, but mystical and preternatural, is no other than a charmed efficacy.

Nor will the statement, that the effect is not upon God, but upon man, bear examination. It is very true, that the ultimate benefit of these rites is a result reputed to fall upon the worshipper;—regeneration, in the case of baptism; participation in the atonement, in the case of the Lord’s Supper. But by what steps do these blessings descend? Not by those of visible or perceived causation; but through an express and extraordinary volition of God, induced by the ceremonial form, or taking occasion from it. The sacerdotal economy, therefore, is so arranged, that whenever the priest dispenses the water at the font, the Holy Spirit follows, as in instantaneous compliance with a suggestion: and whenever he spreads his hands over the elements at the communion, God immediately establishes a preternatural relation, not subsisting the moment before, between the substances on the table and the souls of the faithful communicants: so that every partaker receives, either directly or through supernatural increase of faith, some new share in the merits of the cross. Whatever subtleties of language then may be employed, it is evidently conceived that the first consequence of these forms takes place in heaven; and that on this depends whatever benediction they may bring: nor can a plain understanding frame any other idea of them than this; first, they act upwards, and suggest something to the mind of God; who then sends down an influence on the mind of the believer. From this conception no figures of speech, no ingenious analogies, can deliver us. Do you call the sacraments “pledges of grace?” A pledge means a promise: and how a voluntary act of ours, or the priest’s, can be a promise made to us by the Divine Being, it is not easy to understand. Do you call them “seals of God’s covenant,”—the instrument by which he engages to make over its blessings to the Christian, like the signature and completion of a deed conveying an estate? It still perplexes us to think of a service of our own as an assurance received by us from Heaven. And one would imagine that the Divine promise, once given, were enough, without this incessant binding by periodical legalities. If it be said, “the renewal of the obligation is needful for us, and not for him;” then call the rites at once and simply, our service of self-dedication, the solemn memorial of our vows. And in spite of all metaphors, the question recurs; does the covenant stand without these seals, or are they essential to give possession of the privileges conveyed? Are they, by means preternatural, procurers of salvation? Have they a mystical action towards this end? If so, we return to the same point; they have a charmed efficacy on the human soul.

In order to establish this, nothing more is requisite than a brief reference to the language of the Articles and Liturgical services of the Church respecting Baptism and the Communion.

Baptism is regarded, throughout the Book of Common Prayer, as the instrument of regeneration: not simply as its sign, of which the actual descent of the Holy Spirit is independent; but as itself and essentially the means or indispensable occasion of the washing away of sin. That this is regarded as a mystical and magical, not a natural and spiritual effect, is evident from the alleged fact of its occurrence in infants, to whom the rite can suggest nothing, and on whom, in the course of nature, it can leave no impression. Yet is it declared of the infant, after the use of the water, “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate,” &c.: at the commencement of the service its aim is said to be that God may “grant to this child that thing which by nature he cannot have,”—“would wash him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost,” that he may be “delivered from God’s wrath.” Nothing, indeed, is so striking in this office of the national church, as its audacious trifling with solemn names, denoting qualities of the soul and will; the ascription of spiritual and moral attributes, not only to the child in whom they can yet have no development, but even to material substances; the frivolity with which engagements with God are made by deputy, and without the consent or even existence of the engaging will. Water is said to possess sanctity, for “the mystical washing away of sin.” Infants, destitute of any idea of duty or obligation to be resisted or obeyed, are said to obtain “remission of their sins;”—to “renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world:” “steadfastly to believe” in the Apostles’ creed, and to be desirous of “baptism into this faith.” Belief, desire, resolve, are acts of some one’s mind: the language of this service attributes them to the personality of the infant (I renounce, I believe, I desire); yet there they cannot possibly exist. If they are to be understood as affirmed by the godfathers and godmothers of themselves, the case is not improved: for how can one person’s state of faith and conscience be made the condition of the regeneration of another? What intelligible meaning can be attached to these phrases of sanctity applied to an age not responsible? In what sense, and by what indication, are these children holier than others? And with what reason, if all this be Christianity, can we blame the Pope for sprinkling holy water on the horses? The service appears little better than a profane sacerdotal jugglery, by which material things are impregnated with divine virtues, moral and spiritual qualities of the mind are sported with, the holy spirit of God is turned into a physical mystery, and the solemnity of personal responsibility is insulted.

That a superstitious value is attributed to the details of the baptismal form, in the Church of England, appears from certain parts of the service for the private ministration of the rite. If a child has been baptized by any other lawful minister than the minister of the parish, strict inquiries are to be instituted by the latter respecting the correctness with which the ceremony has been performed: and should the prescribed rules have been neglected, the baptism is invalid, and must be repeated. Yet great solicitude is manifested, lest danger should be incurred by an unnecessary repetition of the sacrament: to guard against which, the minister is to give the following conditional invitation to the Holy Spirit; saying, in his address to the child, “If thou art not already baptized, I baptize thee,” &c. It is worthy of remark, that the Church mentions as one of the essentials of the service, the omission of which necessitates its repetition, the use of the formula, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” By this rule, every one of the apostolic baptisms recorded in Scripture must be pronounced invalid; and the Church of England, were it possible, would perform them again: for in no instance does it appear that the apostles employed either this or even any equivalent form of words.

That this sacrament is regarded as an indispensable channel of grace, and positively necessary to salvation, is clear from the provision of a short and private form, to be used in cases of extreme danger. The prayers, and faith, and obedience, and patient love, of parents and friends,—the dedication and heartfelt surrender of their child to God, the profound application of their anxieties and grief to their conscience and inward life,—all this, we are told, will be of no avail, without the water and the priest. Archbishop Laud says, “That Baptism is necessary to the salvation of infants (in the ordinary way of the church, without binding God to the use and means of that sacrament, to which he hath bound us) is expressed in St. John iii. ‘Except a man be born of water,’ &c. So, no baptism, no entrance; nor can infants creep in, any other ordinary way.”[609] Bishop Bramhall says, “Wilful neglect of baptism we acknowledge to be a damnable sin; and, without repentance and God’s extraordinary mercy, to exclude a man from all hope of salvation. But yet, if such a person, before his death, shall repent and deplore his neglect of the means of grace, from his heart, and desire with all his soul to be baptized, but is debarred from it invincibly, we do not, we dare not, pass sentence of condemnation upon him; not yet the Roman Catholics themselves. The question then is, whether the want of baptism, upon invincible necessity, do evermore infallibly exclude from heaven.”[610] Singular struggle here, between the merciless ritual of the priest, and the relenting spirit of the man!

The office of Communion contains even stronger marks of the same sacerdotal superstitions: and notwithstanding the Protestant horror entertained of the mass, approaches it so nearly, that no ingenuity can exhibit them in contrast. Near doctrines, however, like near neighbours, are known to quarrel most.

The idea of a physical sanctity, residing in solid and liquid substances, is encouraged by this service. The priest consecrates the elements, by laying his hand upon all the bread, and upon every flagon containing the wine about to be dispensed. If an additional quantity is required, this too must be consecrated before its distribution. And the sacredness thus imparted is represented as surviving the celebration of the Supper, and residing in the substances as a permanent quality: for in the disposal of the bread and wine that may remain at the close of the sacramental feast, a distinction is made between the consecrated and the unconsecrated portion of the elements; the former is not permitted to quit the altar, but is to be reverently consumed by the priest and the communicants; the latter is given to the curate. What the particular change may be, which the prayer and manipulation of the minister are thought to induce, it is by no means easy to determine; nor would the discovery, perhaps, reward our pains. It is certainly conceived, that they cease to be any longer mere bread and wine, and that with them thenceforth co-exist, really and substantially, the body and blood of Christ. Respecting this Real Presence with the elements, there is no dispute between the Romish and the English church; both unequivocally maintain it: and the only question is, respecting the Real Absence of the original and culinary bread and wine: the Roman Catholic believing that these substantially vanish, and are replaced by the body and blood of Christ; the English Protestant conceiving that they remain, but are united with the latter. The Lutheran, no less than the British Reformed church, has clung tenaciously to the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist. Luther himself declares, “I would rather retain with the Romanists, only the body and blood, than adopt, with the Swiss, the bread and wine, without the real body and blood of Christ.” The catechism of our church affirms, that “the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.” And this was not intended to be figuratively understood, of the spiritual use and appropriation to which the faith and piety of the receiver would mentally convert the elements: for although here the body of Christ is only said to be “taken” (making it the act of the communicant), yet one of the Articles speaks of it as “given” (making it the act of the officiating priest), and implying the real presence before participation. However anxious indeed the clergy of the “Evangelical” school may be to disguise the fact, it cannot be doubted that their church has always maintained a supernatural change in the elements themselves, as well as in the mind of the receiver. Cosin, Bishop of Durham, says, “We own the union between the body and blood of Christ, and the elements, whose use and office we hold to be changed from what it was before:” “we confess the necessity of a supernatural and heavenly change, and that the signs cannot become sacraments but by the infinite power of God.”[611]

In consistency with this preparatory change, a charmed efficacy is attributed to the subsequent participation in the elements. Even the body of the communicant is said to be under their influence: “Grant us to eat the flesh of thy dear Son, and drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean through his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood:” and the unworthy recipients are said “to provoke God to plague them with divers diseases and sundry kinds of death.” Lest the worshipper, by presenting himself in an unqualified state, should “do nothing else than increase his damnation,” the unquiet conscience is directed to resort to the priest, and receive the benefit of absolution before communicating. Can we deny to the Oxford divines the merit (whatever it may be) of consistency with the theology of their church, when they applaud and recommend, as they do, the administration of the eucharist to infants, and to persons dying and insensible? Indeed, it is difficult to discover, why infant Communion should be thought more irrational than infant Baptism. If, as I have endeavoured to show, the primary action of these ceremonies is conceived to be on God, not on the mind of their object, why should not the Divine blessing be induced upon the young and the unconscious, as well as on the mature and capable soul? And were any further evidence required, than I have hitherto adduced, to show on whom the Communion is conceived to operate in the first instance, it would surely be afforded by this clause in the Service; by not partaking, “Consider how great an injury ye do unto God!”

The only thing wanted to complete this sacerdotal system, is to obtain for a certain class of men the corporate possession, and exclusive administration, of these essential and holy mysteries. This our Church accomplishes by its doctrine of Apostolical Succession; claiming for its ministers a lineal official descent from the Apostles, which invests them, and them alone within this realm, with divine authority to pronounce absolution or excommunication, and to administer the Sacraments. They are thus the sole guardians of the channels of the Divine Spirit and its grace, and interpose themselves between a nation and its God. “Receive the Holy Ghost,” says the Service for Ordination of Priests, “for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.” “They only,” says the present Bishop of Exeter, “can claim to rule over the Lord’s household, whom he has himself placed over it; they only are able to minister the means of grace,—above all, to present the great commemorative sacrifice,—whom Christ has appointed, and whom he has in all generations appointed in unbroken succession from those, and through those, whom he first ordained. ‘Ambassadors from Christ’ must, by the very force of the term, receive credentials from Christ: ‘stewards of the mysteries of God’ must be entrusted with those mysteries by him. Remind your people, that in the Church only is the promise of forgiveness of sins; and though, to all who truly repent, and sincerely believe, Christ mercifully grants forgiveness; yet he has, in an especial manner, empowered his ministers to declare and pronounce to his people the absolution and remission of their sins: ‘whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.’ This was the awful authority given to his first ministers, and in them, and through them, to all their successors. This is the awful authority we have received, and that we must never be ashamed nor afraid to tell the people that we have received.

“Having shown to the people your commission, show to them how our own Church has framed its services in accordance with that commission. Show this to them not only in the Ordinal, but also in the Collects, in the Communion Service, in the Office of the Visitation of the Sick; show it, especially, in that which continually presents itself to their notice, but is commonly little regarded by them; show it in the very commencement of Morning and Evening Prayer, and make them understand the full blessedness of that service, in which the Church thus calls on them to join. Let them see that there the minister authoritatively pronounces God’s pardon and absolution to all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe Christ’s holy gospel; that he does this, even as the Apostles did, with the authority and by the appointment of our Lord himself, who, in commissioning his Apostles, gave this to be the never-failing assurance of his co-operation in their ministry, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world;’ a promise which, of its very nature, was not to be fulfilled to the persons of those whom he addressed, but to their office, to their successors therefore in that office, ‘even unto the end of the world.’ Lastly, remind and warn them of the awful sanction with which our Lord accompanied his mission, even of the second order of the ministers whom he appointed; ‘He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.’” That this high dignity may be clearly understood to belong in this country only to the Church of England, the Bishop proposes the question, “What, then, becomes of those who are not, or continue not, members of that (visible) Church?” and replies to it by saying, that though he “judges not them that are without,” yet “he who wilfully and in despite of due warning, or through recklessness and worldly-mindedness, sets at nought its ordinances, and despises its ministers, has no right to promise to himself any share in the grace which they are appointed to convey.”[612] “Why,” says one of the Oxford divines, who here undeniably speaks the genuine doctrine of his Church, “Why should we talk so much of an Establishment, and so little of an APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION? Why should we not seriously endeavour to impress our people with this plain truth, that by separating themselves from our communion, they separate themselves not only from a decent, orderly, useful society, but from THE ONLY CHURCH IN THIS REALM WHICH HAS A RIGHT TO BE QUITE SURE THAT SHE HAS THE LORD’S BODY TO GIVE TO HIS PEOPLE?”[613]

Of course this Divine authority has been received through the Church of Rome, so abominable in the eyes of all Evangelical clergymen; and through many an unworthy link in the unbroken chain. The Holy Spirit, it is acknowledged, has passed through many, on whom, apparently, it was not pleased to rest; and the right to forgive sins been conferred by those who seemed themselves to need forgiveness. A writer in the Oxford Tracts observes, “Nor even though we may admit that many of those who formed the connecting links of this holy chain were themselves unworthy of the high charge reposed in them, can this furnish us with any solid ground for doubting or denying their power to exercise that legitimate authority with which they were duly invested, of transmitting the sacred gift to worthier followers.”[614]

In its doctrine of Sacraments, then, and in that of Ecclesiastical authority and succession, the Church of England is thoroughly imbued with the sacerdotal character. It doubtless contains far better elements and nobler conceptions than those which it has been my duty to exhibit now; and solemnly insists on faith of heart, and truth of conscience, and Christian devotedness of life, as well as on the observance of its ritual; with the external it unites the internal condition of sanctification. But insisting on the theory of a mystic efficacy in the Christian rites, it necessarily fails to reconcile these with each other: and hence the opposite parties within its pale; the one magnifying faith and personal spirituality, the other exalting the sacraments and ecclesiastical communion. They represent respectively the two constituent and clashing powers, which met at the formation of the English Church, and of which it effected the mere compromise, not the reconciliation; I mean, the priestliness of Rome, and the prophetic spirit of the Reformers. Never, since apostolic days, did heaven bless us with truer prophet than Martin Luther. It was his mission (no modern man had ever greater,) to substitute the idea of personal faith for that of sacerdotal reliance. And gloriously, with bravery and truth of soul amid a thousand hindrances, did he achieve it. But though, ever since, the priests have been down, and faith has been up, yet did the hierarchy unavoidably remain, and insisted that something should be made of it, and at least some colourable terms proposed. Hence, every reformed Church exhibits a coalition between the new and the old ideas: and combined views of religion, which must ultimately prove incompatible with each other; the formal with the spiritual; the idea of worship as a means of propitiating God, with the conception of it as an expression of love in man; the notion of Church authority with that of individual freedom; the admission of a licence to think, with a prohibition of thinking wrong. In our national Church, the old spirit was ascendant over the new, though long forced into quiescence by the temper of modern times. Now it is attempting to re-assert its power, not without strenuous resistance. Indeed, the present age seems destined to end the compromise between the two principles, from the union of which Protestantism assumed its established forms. The truce seems everywhere breaking up: a general disintegration of churches is visible; tradition is ransacking the past for claims and dignities, and canvassing present timidity for fresh authority, to withstand the wild forces born at the Reformation, and hurrying us fast into an unknown future.

Let us now turn to the primitive Christianity; which, I submit, is throughout wholly anti-sacerdotal.

Surely it must be admitted that the general spirit of our Lord’s personal life and ministry was that of the Prophet, not of the Priest; tending directly to the disparagement of whatever priesthood existed in his country, without visibly preparing the substitution of anything at all analogous to it. The sacerdotal order felt it so; and with the infallible instinct of self-preservation, they watched, they hated, they seized, they murdered him. The priest in every age has a natural antipathy to the prophet, dreads him as kings dread revolution, and is the first to detect his existence. The solemn moment and the gracious words, of Christ’s first preaching in Nazareth, struck with fate the temple in Jerusalem. To the old men of the village, to the neighbours who knew his childhood, and companions who had shared its rambles and its sports, he said, with the quiet flush of inspiration; “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor: he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”[615] The Spirit of the Lord in Galilee! speaking with the peasantry, dwelling in villages, and wandering loose and where it listeth among the hills! This would never do, thought the white-robed Levites of the Holy City; it would be as a train of wild-fire in the Temple. And were they not right? When it was revealed that sanctity is no thing of place and time, that a way is open from earth to heaven, from every field or mountain trod by human feet, and through every roof that shelters a human head; that amid the crowd and crush of life, each soul is in personal solitude with God, and by speech or silence (be they but true and loving) may tell its cares and find its peace; that a divine allegiance might cost nothing, but the strife of a dutiful will and the patience of a filial heart; how could any priesthood hope to stand? See how Jesus himself, when the Temple was close at hand, and the sunshine dressed it in its splendour, yet withdrew his prayers to the midnight of Mount Olivet, He entered those courts to teach, rather than to worship; and when there, he is felt to take no consecration, but to give it; to bring with him the living spirit of God, and spread it throughout all the place. When evening closes his teachings, and he returns late over the Mount to Bethany, did he not feel that there was more of God in the night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above him, and the sad love within him, than in the place called “Holy” which he had left? And when he had knocked at the gate of Lazarus the risen and become his guest; when, after the labours of the day, he unburthened his spirit to the affections of that family, and spake of things divine to the sisters listening at his feet; did they not feel, as they retired at length, that the whole house was full of God, and that there is no sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within us all? In childhood, he had once preferred the temple and its teachings to his parents’ home: now, to his deeper experience, the temple has lost its truth; while the cottage and the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices and constant duties of this life, seem covered with the purest consecration. True, he vindicated the sanctity of the temple, when he heard within its enclosure the hum of traffic and the chink of gain, and would not have the house of prayer turned into a place of merchandise: because in this there was imposture and a lie, and Mammon and the Lord must ever dwell apart. In nothing must there be mockery and falsehood; and while the temple stands, it must be a temple true.

Our Lord’s whole ministry then (to which we may add that of his apostles) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite to that of priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed locality, without form, without rites; with teaching free, occasional and various, with sympathies ever with the people, and a strain of speech never marked by invective, except against the ruling sacerdotal influence;—all these characters proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet of the Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his enemies, the word “PRIEST” (ἱερεὺς) never occurs in either the historical or epistolary writings of the New Testament, except in the Epistle to the Hebrews. And there its application is not a little remarkable. It is applied to Christ alone: it is declared to belong to him, only after his ascension: it is said that, while on earth, he neither was, nor could be, a priest: and if it is admitted that he holds the office in heaven, this is only to satisfy the demand of the Hebrew Christians for some sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to reconcile them to having no priest on earth. The writer acknowledges one great pontiff in the world above, that the whole race may be superseded in the world below; and banishes priesthood into invisibility, that men may never see its shadow more. All the terms of office which are given to the first preachers of the gospel and superintendents of churches—as Deacon, Elder or Presbyter, Overseer or Bishop, are Lay-terms, belonging previously, not to ecclesiastical, but to civil life; an indication, surely, that no analogy was thought to exist between the Apostolic and the Sacerdotal relations.[616] I shall, no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which our Lord is supposed to have given their commission to his first representatives; “Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven;”[617] and shall be asked whether this does not convey to them and their successors an official authority to forgive sins, and dispense the decrees of the unseen world. I reply briefly:

1st, That the power here granted does not relate to the dispensations of the future life, but solely to what would be termed, in modern language, the allotment of church-membership. The previous verse proves this, furnishing as it does a particular case of the general authority here assigned. It directs the apostles under what circumstances they are to remove an offender from a Christian society, and treat him as an unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican. Having given them their rule, he freely trusts the application of it to them: and being about to retire ere long, from personal intervention in the affairs of his kingdom, he assures them that their decisions shall be his, and that he may be considered as adopting in heaven their determinations upon earth. He simply “consigns to his apostles discretionary power to direct the affairs of his church, and superintend the diffusion of the glad tidings: they may bind and loose, that is, open and shut the door of admission to their community, as their judgment may determine; employing or rejecting applicants for the missionary office; dissociating from their assemblies obstinate delinquents; receiving with openness, or dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, according to their estimate of his qualifications and motives.”

2ndly, It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any one being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the persons immediately addressed. Not a word is said of any official successor or any distant age. No indication is afforded, that any idea of futurity was present to the mind of Jesus: and a title of perpetual office, an instrument creating and endowing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be admitted, to be somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power has been successfully claimed, the title is seldom difficult to prove.

The alleged RITUAL of Christianity, consisting of the sacraments of Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less destitute of sanction from the Scriptures. The former we shall see reason to regard as simply an initiatory form, applicable only to Christian converts, and limited therefore to adults; the latter as purely a commemoration: neither therefore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy.

For baptism it is impossible to establish any supernatural origin. It is admitted to have existed before the Christian æra; and to have been employed by the Jews on the admission of proselytes to their religion. It is certain that it is not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic dispensation; and though prevalent before the period of the New Testament, is nowhere enforced or recognised in the writings of the Old. It arose therefore in the interval between the only two systems which Christians acknowledged to be supernatural: and must be considered as of natural and human origin, invested, thus far, with no higher authority than its own appropriateness may confer. There seem to have been two modes of construing the symbol: the one founded on the cleansing effect of the water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on the appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the eye of a spectator. The former was an image of the Heathen convert’s purification from a foul idolatry; and his transition to a stainless condition under a divine and justifying law. The latter represented him, when he vanished in the stream, as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its sight; and when he re-appeared, as emerging or born again to a better state; the “old man” was “buried in baptism,” and when he “rose again,” he had altogether “become new.”[618] The ceremony then was appropriately used in any case of transition from a depressed and corrupt state of existence to a hopeful and blessed one; from a false or imperfect religion to one true and heavenly.

But it will be said, whatever the origin of Baptism, it was employed and sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned his apostles to go and baptize all nations. True; but is there no difference between the adoption of a practice already extant,—of a practice which was as much the mere institutional dress of the apostles’ nation, as the sandals whose dust they were to shake off against the faithless, were the customary clothing of the apostles’ feet,—and the authoritative appointment of a Sacrament? They were going forth to make converts: and why should they not have recourse to the form familiarly associated with the act? Familiar association recommended its adoption in that age and clime; and the absence of such association elsewhere and in other times may be thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony thus taken up must be presumed to retain its acquired sense and its established extent of application: and if so, baptism must be strictly limited to the admission of proselytes from other faiths. This accords with the known practice of the apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries, persuaded to become Christians. Not a single case of the use of the rite with children can be adduced from Scripture: and the only argument by which such employment of it is ever justified is this; that a household is said to have been baptized, and all nations were to receive the offer of it; and that the household may, the nations must, have contained children. It is evident that such reasoning could never have been propounded, unless the practice had existed first, and the defence had been found afterwards.

With the system of infant baptism, vanish almost all the ideas which the prevalent theology has put into the rite; and it becomes as intelligible and expressive to one who believes in the good capacities of human nature, as to those who esteem it originally depraved. ‘How unmeaning,’ say our orthodox opponents, ‘is this ceremony in Unitarian hands; denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents! of what regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if not of the washing away of that hereditary sin, which they refuse to acknowledge? for when the infant is brought to the font, he can as yet have no other guilt than this.’ I reply; the objection has no force except against the use of infant baptism in our churches,—which I am not anxious to defend: but of course those Unitarians who employ it, conceive it to be the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of truths and feelings which they hold dear. For myself, I believe, with our opponents, that the doctrine of original sin and the practice of infant baptism do belong to each other, and must stand or fall together: and therefore deem it a fact very significant of the apostles’ theology, that no infant can be shown ever to have been “brought to the font” by these first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the new-birth which baptism (i.e. recent and genuine discipleship to Jesus) may give to the maturely-convinced Christian, he must have a great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew conceptions and language in relation to the Messiah, but of the spirituality of the gospel, and of the fresh creations of character which it calls up, who can be much puzzled about its meaning.

In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with mystic power; but an initiatory form, possibly of consuetudinary obligation only; but if enjoined, applicable exclusively to proselytes, and misemployed in the case of infants; a sign of conversion, not a means of salvation; confided to no sacerdotal order, but open to every man fitted to give it an appropriate use.

I turn to the Lord’s Supper; with design to show, what it is not, and what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament, any more than it is an expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us that it has a ritual character, we are first assured that it is clearly the successor in the Gospel to the Passover under the Law. Well,—even if it were so, it would still be simply commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a festival, filled with great remembrances, and inspired with religious joy. Such was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem;—the annual gathering of families and kindred, a sacred carnival under the spring sky and in sight of unreaped fields, when the memory was recalled of national deliverance, and the tale was told of traditional glories, and the thoughts brought back of bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage ended, of the promised land possessed. The Jewish festival was no more than this; unless, with Archbishop Magee and others, we erroneously conceive it to be a proper sacrifice.[619] So that those who would interpret the Lord’s Supper by the Passover have their choice between two views: that it is a simple commemoration; or that it is an expiatory sacrifice: in the former case, they quit the Church of England; in the latter, they fall into the Church of Rome.

But, in truth, there is no propriety in applying the name ‘Christian passover’ to the Communion. The notion rests entirely on this circumstance; that the first three Evangelists describe the last Supper as the Paschal Supper. But the institutional part of that meal was over before the cup was distributed, and the repetition of the act enjoined. Nor is there the slightest trace, either in the subsequent scriptures, or in the earliest history of the Church, that the Communion was thought to bear relation to the passover. The time, the frequency, the mode, of the two were altogether different. Indeed, when we observe that not one of these particulars is prescribed and determined by our Lord at all, when we notice the slight and transient manner in which he drops his wish that they would “do this in remembrance of” him, when we compare these features of the account with the elaborate precision of Moses respecting hours, and materials, and dates, and places, and modes in the establishment of the Hebrew festivals, it is scarcely possible to avoid the impression, that we are reading narrative, not law; an utterance of personal affection, rather than the legislative enactment of an everlasting institution.[620] However this may be, no importance can be attached to the reported coincidence in the time of that meal with the day of passover: for the apostle John, who gives by far the fullest account of what happened at that table (yet never mentions the institution of the supper), states that this was not the paschal meal at all, which did not occur, he says, till the following day of crucifixion.[621]

‘But,’ it will be said, ‘the gospels are not the only parts of Scripture, whence the nature of the eucharist may be learned. Language is employed by St. Paul in reference to it, which cannot be understood of a mere memorial, and implies that awful consequences hung on the worthy or unworthy participation in the rite. Does he not even say, that a man may “eat and drink damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body?”’

The passage whence these words are cited certainly throws great light on the institution of which we treat: but there must be a total disregard to the whole context and the general course of the apostle’s reasoning before it can be made to yield any argument for the mystical character of the rite.[622] It would appear that the Corinthian church was in the habit of celebrating the Lord’s Supper in a way which, even if it had never been disgraced by any indecorum, must have struck a modern Christian with wonder at its singularity. The members met together in one room or church, each bringing his own supper, of such quantity and quality as his opulence or poverty might allow. To this the apostle does not object, but apparently considers it a part of the established arrangement. But these Christians were divided into factions, and had not learned the true uniting spirit of their faith: nor do they seem to have acquired that sobriety of habit and sanctity of mind, which their profession ought to have induced. When they entered the place of meeting, they broke up into groups and parties, class apart from class, and rich deserting poor: each set began its separate meal, some indulging in luxury and excess, others with scarce the means of keeping the commemoration at all; and, infamous to tell, the blessed supper of the Lord was sunk into a tavern meal. So gross and habitual had the abuse become, that the excesses had affected the health and life of these guilty and unworthy partakers. They had made no distinction between the Communion and an ordinary repast, had lost all perception of the memorial significance of their meeting, had not discriminated or “discerned the Lord’s body:” and so they had eaten and drunk judgment (improperly rendered “damnation” in the English Version) to themselves; and many were weak and sickly among them, and many even slept. Well would it be, if they would look on this as a chastening of the Lord: in which case they might take warning, and escape being cast out of the church, and driven to take their chance with the unbelieving and heathen world. “When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”

In order to remedy all this corruption, St. Paul reminds them, that to eat and drink under the same roof, in the church, does not constitute proper Communion: that, to this end, they must not break up into sections, and retain their property in the food, but all participate seriously together. He directs that an absolute separation shall be made between the occasions for satisfying hunger and thirst, and those for observing this commemorative rite, discriminating carefully the memorial of the Lord’s body from every thing else. He refers them all to the original model of the institution, the parting meal of Christ, before his betrayal; and by this example, as a criterion, he would have every man examine himself, and after that pattern eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Hence it appears,

That the unworthy partaker was the riotous Corinthian, who made no distinction between the sacred Communion and a vulgar meal:

That the judgment or damnation which such brought on themselves, was sickliness, weakness, and premature but natural death:

That the self-examination which the apostle recommends to the communicant is, a comparison of his mode of keeping the rite, with the original model of the Last Supper:

That in the Corinthian Church there was no Priest, or officiating dispenser of the elements: and that St. Paul did not contemplate or recommend the appointment of any such person.

The Lord’s Supper, then, I conclude, was and is a simple commemoration. Am I asked, ‘of what? Why, according to Unitarian views, the death on the cross merits the memorial, more than the remaining features of our Lord’s history,—more even than the death of many a noble martyr, who has sealed his testimony to truth by like self-sacrifice?’ The answer will be found at length in the Lecture on the Atonement, where the Scriptural conceptions of Christ’s death are expounded in detail. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to recal an idea, which has more than once been thrown out during this course: that if Jesus had taken up his Messianic power without death, he would have remained a Hebrew, and been limited to the people amid whom he was born. He quitted his mortal personality, he left this fleshly tabernacle of existence, and became immortal, that his nationality might be destroyed, and all men drawn in as subjects of his reign. It was the cross that opened to the nations the blessed ways of life, and put us all in relations not of law, but of love, to him and God. Hence the memorial of his death celebrates the universality and spirituality of the gospel; declares the brotherhood of men, the fatherhood of providence, the personal affinity of every soul with God. That is no empty rite, which overflows with these conceptions.

Christianity, then, I maintain, is without Priest, and without Ritual. It altogether coalesces with the prophetic idea of religion, and repudiates the sacerdotal. Christ himself was transcendently THE PROPHET. He brought down God to this our life, and left his spirit amid its scenes. The Apostles were prophets; they carried that spirit abroad, revealing everywhere to men the sanctity of their nature, and the proximity of their heaven. Nor am I even unwilling to admit an Apostolic succession, never yet extinct, and never more to be extinguished. But then it is by no means a rectilinear regiment of incessant priests; but a broken, scattered, yet glorious race of prophets; the genealogy of great and Christian souls, through whom the primitive conceptions of Jesus have propagated themselves from age to age; mind producing mind, courage giving birth to courage, truth developing truth, and love ever nurturing love, so long as one good and noble spirit shall act upon another. Luther surely was the child of Paul: and what a noble offspring has risen to manhood from Luther’s soul; whom to enumerate, were to tell the best triumphs of the modern world. These are Christ’s true ambassadors; and never did he mean any follower of his to be called a priest. He has his genuine messenger, wherever, in the Church or in the world, there toils any one of the real prophets of our race; any one who can create the good and great in other souls, whether by truth of word or deed, by the inspiration of genuine speech, or the better power of a life merciful and holy.

* * * * *

And here, my friends, with my subject might my Lecture close; were it not that we are assembled now to terminate this controversy: and that a few remarks in reference to its whole course and spirit seem to be required.

That the recent aggression upon the principles of Unitarian Christianity, was prompted by no unworthy motive, individual or political, but by a zeal, Christian so far as its spirit is disinterested, and unchristian only so far as it is exclusive, has never been doubted or denied by my brother ministers or myself. That much personal consideration and courtesy have been evinced towards us during the controversy, it is so grateful to us to acknowledge, that we must only regret the theological obstructions in the way of that mutual knowledge, which softens the prejudices, and corrects the errors of the closet. From such errors, the lot of our fallible nature, we are deeply aware that we cannot be exempt, and profoundly wish that, by others’ aid or by our own, we could discover them. Meanwhile, we do not feel that our opponents have been successful in the offer which they have made, of help towards this end. They are too little acquainted with our history and character, and have far too great a horror of us, to succeed in a design, demanding rather the benevolence of sympathy and trust, than that of antipathy and fear. Hence have arisen certain complaints and charges against our system and its tendencies, which, having been reiterated again and again in the Christ Church Lectures, and scarcely noticed in our own, claim a concluding observation or two now.

1. We are said to be infidels in disguise, and our system to be drifting fast towards utter unbelief. At all events, it is said we make great advances that way.

It is by no means unusual to dismiss this charge on a whirlwind of declamation, designed to send it and the infidel to the greatest possible distance. My friend who delivered the first Lecture, noticed it in a far different spirit; and in a discussion where truth and wisdom had any chance, his reply would have prevented any recurrence to the statement. Let me try to imitate him in the testimony which I desire to add upon this point.

Every one, I presume, who disbelieves any thing, is, with respect to that thing, an infidel. Departure from any prevalent and established ideas, is inevitably an approach to infidelity; the extent of the departure, not the reasonableness or propriety of it, is the sole measure of the nearness of that approach; which, however wise and sober, when estimated by a true and independent criterion, will appear, to persons strongly possessed by the ascendant notions, nothing less than alarming, amazing, awful. In short, the average popular creed of the day, is the mental standard, from which the stadia are measured off towards that invisible, remote, nay, even imaginary place, lodged somewhere within chaos, called utter unbelief. Christianity at first was blank infidelity: and disciples, being of course the atheists of their day, were thought a fit prey for the wild beasts of the amphitheatre. Every rejection of tradition, again, is unbelief with respect to it; and to those who hold its authority, it is the denial of an essential. It is too evident to need proof, that the average popular belief cannot be assumed, by any considerate person, as a standard of truth. To make it an objection against any class of men, that they depart from it, is to prove no error against them; and no one, who is not willing to call in the passions of the multitude in suffrage on the controversies of the few, will condescend to enforce the charge.

But only observe how, in the present instance, the matter stands. In the popular religion we discern, mixed up together, two constituent portions; certain peculiar doctrines which characterize the common orthodoxy; and certain universal Christian truths remaining, when these are subtracted. The infidel throws away both of these; we throw away the former only: and thus far, no doubt, we partially agree with him. But on what grounds do we severally justify this rejection? In answer to this question, compare the views, with respect both to the authority and to the interpretation of Scripture, held by the three parties, the Trinitarian, the Unbeliever, the Unitarian. The Unbeliever does not usually find fault with the orthodox interpretation of the Bible, but allows it to pass, as probably the real meaning of the book, only he altogether denies the divine character and authority of the whole religion; he therefore agrees with the Trinitarian respecting interpretation, disagrees with him respecting authority. The Unitarian, again, admits the divine character of Christianity, but understands it differently from the Trinitarian; he therefore reverses the former case, agrees with the orthodox on the authority, disagrees respecting interpretation. It follows, that with the unbeliever he agrees in neither, and is therefore further from him than his Trinitarian accuser.

I have given this explanation, from regard simply to logical truth. I have no desire to join in the outcry against even the deliberate unbeliever in the Gospel, as if he must necessarily be a fiend. Profoundly loving and trusting Christianity myself, I yet feel indignant at the persecution which theology, policy, and law inflict on the many who, with undeniable exercise of conscientiousness and patience of research, are yet unable to satisfy themselves respecting its evidence. The very word ‘infidel,’ implying not simply an intellectual judgment, but bad moral qualities, conveys an unmerited insult, and ought to be repudiated by every generous disputant. The more deeply we trust Christianity, the more should we protest against its being defended by a body-guard of passions, willing to do for it precisely the services which they might equally render to the vulgarest imposture.

2. We were recently accused, amid acknowledgments of our honesty, with want of anxiety about spiritual truth: and the following justification of the charge was offered: “The Word of God has informed us, that they who seek the truth shall find it; that they who ask for holy wisdom shall receive it; but it must be a really anxious inquiry—a heart-felt desire for the blessing. ‘If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.’[623] Such promises are express,—they cannot be broken,—God will give the blessing to the sincere, anxious inquirer. But the two qualities must go together. A man may be sincere in his ignorance and spiritual torpor; but let the full desire for God’s favour, his pardoning mercy, and his enlightening grace spring up in the heart, and we may rest assured that the desire will soon be accomplished. Admitting, then, the sincerity of Unitarians, we doubt their anxiety, for we are well persuaded from God’s promises, that if they possessed both, they would be delivered from their miserable system, and be brought to the knowledge of the truth.”[624]

The praise of our “sincerity,” conveyed in these bland sentences, we are anxious to decline: not that we undervalue the quality: but because we find, on near inspection, that it has all been emptied out of the word before its presentation, and the term comes to us hollow and worthless. It affords a specimen of the mode in which alone our opponents appear able to give any credit to heretics: many phrases of approbation they freely apply to us; but they take care to draw off the whole meaning first. We must reject these “Greek presents:” and we are concerned that any Christian divine can so torture and desecrate the names of virtue, as to make them instruments of disparagement and injury. This play with words, which every conscience should hold sacred, and every lip pronounce with reverence,—this careless and unmeaning application of them in discourse,—indicates a loose adhesion to the mind of the ideas denoted by them, which we regard with unfeigned astonishment and grief. What, let me ask, can be the “sincerity” of an inquirer, who is not “anxious” about the truth? How can he be “sincerely” persuaded that he sees, who voluntarily shuts his eyes? Unless this word is to be degraded into a synonyme for indolence and self-complacency, no professed seeker of truth must have the praise of sincerity, who does not abandon all worship of his own state of mind as already perfect, who is not ready to listen to every calm doubt as to the voice of heaven,—to undertake with gratitude the labour of reaching new knowledge,—to maintain his faith and his profession in scrupulous accordance with his perception of evidence; and, at any moment of awakening, to spring from his most brilliant dreams into God’s own morning light, with a matin hymn upon his lips for his new-birth from darkness and from sleep. The earnestness implied in this state of mind is perhaps not precisely the same, as that with which our Trinitarian opponents seem to be familiar. The “anxiety” which they appear to feel for themselves is, to keep their existing state of belief: the “anxiety” which they feel for us is, that we should have it. We are to hold ourselves ready for a change; they are not to be expected to desire it. If a doubt of our opinions should occur to us, we are to foster it carefully, and follow it out as a beckoning of the Holy Spirit: if a doubt of their sentiments should occur to them, they are to crush it on the spot, as a reptile-thought sent of Satan to tempt them. “Our aim,” says the concluding Lecturer again, “has been to beget a deep spirit of inquiry:”[625] and so has ours, I would reply: only you and we have severally prosecuted this aim in different ways. We have personally listened, and personally inquired, and earnestly recommended all whom our influence could reach, to do the same: and few indeed will be the Unitarian libraries containing one of these series of lectures, that will not exhibit the other by its side. You have entered this controversy, evidently strange to our literature and history; and any deficiency in such reading before, has not been compensated by anxiety to listen now. Your people have been warned against us, and are taught to regard the study of our publications as blasphemy at second-hand: and were they really so simple as to act upon your avowed wish “to beget a deep spirit of inquiry,” and plunge into the investigation of Unitarian authors, and judge for themselves of Unitarian worship, they would speedily hear the word of recal, and discover that they were practically disappointing the whole object of this controversy.

Having said thus much respecting the unmeaning use of language in the Lecturer’s disparaging estimate of Unitarian “anxiety,” we may profitably direct a moment’s attention to the reasoning which it involves. It presents us with the standing fallacy of intolerance, which is sufficiently rebuked by being simply exhibited. Our opponents reason thus:

God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err: The Unitarians do fatally err: Therefore, The Unitarians are not really anxious.

Now it is clear that we must conceive our opponents to be no less mistaken than they suppose us to be. They are as far from us, as we from them; and from either point, taken as a standard, the measure of error must be the same. Moreover, we cannot but eagerly assent to the principle of the Lecturer’s first premiss, that God will never let the truly anxious fatally miss their way. So that there is nothing, in the nature of the case, to prevent our turning this same syllogism, with a change in the names of the parties, against our opponents. Yet we should shrink, with severe self-reproach, from drawing any such unfavourable conclusion respecting them, as they deduce of us. Accordingly, we manage our reasoning thus:

God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err: The Trinitarians show themselves to be really anxious: Therefore, The Trinitarians do not fatally err.

Our opponents are more sure that their judgment is in the right, than that their neighbours’ conscience is in earnest. They sacrifice other men’s characters to their own self-confidence: we would rather distrust our self-confidence, and rely on the visible signs of a good and careful mind. We honour other men’s hearts, rather than our own heads. How can it be just, to make the agreement between an opponent’s opinion and our own, the criterion of his proper conduct of the inquiry? Every man feels the injury, the moment the rule is turned against himself: and every good man should be ashamed to direct it against his brother.

3. Our reverend opponents affect to have laboured under a great disadvantage, from the absence of any recognized standard of Unitarian belief. ‘We give you,’ they say, ‘our Articles and Creeds, which we unanimously undertake to defend, and which expose a definite object to all heretical attacks. In return, you can furnish us with no authorised exposition of your system; but leave us to gather our knowledge of it from individual writers, for whose opinions you refuse to be responsible, and whose reasonings, when refuted by us, you can conveniently disown.’

Plausible as this complaint may appear, I venture to affirm, that it is vastly easier to ascertain the common belief of Unitarians, than that of the members of the Established Church: and for this plain reason, that with us there really is such a thing as a common faith, though defined in no confession; in the Anglican Church there is not, though articles and creeds profess it. The characteristic tenets of Unitarian Christianity are so simple and unambiguous, that little scope exists for variety in their interpretation: to the propositions expressing them all their professors attach distinct and the same ideas;—so far, at least, as such accordance is possible in relation to subjects inaccessible both to demonstration and to experience. But the Trinitarian hypothesis, venturing with presumptuous analysis far into the Divine psychology, presents us with ideas confessedly inapprehensible; propounded in language which, if used in its ordinary sense, is self-contradictory, and if not, is unmeaning, and ready in its emptiness to be filled by any arbitrary interpretation;—and actually understood so variously by those who subscribe to them, that the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Tritheist and the Sabellian, unite to praise them. Indeed, in the history of the English Church, so visible is the sweep of the centre of orthodoxy over the whole space from the confines of Romanism to the verge of Unitarianism, that our ecclesiastical chronology is measured by its oscillations. Our respected opponents know full well, that it is not necessary to search beyond the clergy of this town, or even beyond the morning and afternoon preaching in one and the same church, in order to encounter greater contrasts in theology, than could be found in a whole library of Unitarian divinity. What mockery then to refer us to these articles as expositions of clerical belief, when the moment we pass beyond the words, and address ourselves to the sense, every shade of contrariety appears: and no one definite conception can be adopted of such a doctrine as that of the Trinity, without some church expositor or other starting up to rebuke it as a misrepresentation! How poor the pride of uniformity, which contents itself with lip-service to the symbol, in the midst of heart-burnings about the reality!

In order to test the force of the objection to which I am referring, let us advert, in detail, to the topics which exhibit the Unitarian and Trinitarian theology in most direct opposition. It will appear that the advantage of unity lies, in this instance, on the side of heresy; and that if multiformity be a prime characteristic of error, there is a wide difference between orthodoxy and truth. There are four great subjects comprised in the controversy between the church and ourselves: the nature of God; of Christ; of sin; of punishment. On these several points (which, considered as involving on our part denials of previous ideas, may be regarded as containing the negative elements of our belief) all our modern writers, without material variation or exception, maintain the following doctrines:

UNITARIAN DOCTRINES, opposed to CHURCH DOCTRINES.

(1.) The Personal Unity of God. (1.) The Trinity in Unity.

(2.) The Simplicity of Nature in (2.) Two distinct Natures in Christ. Christ.

(3.) The Personal Origin and (3.) The Transferable Nature and Identity of Sin. Vicarious Removal of Sin.

(4.) The Finite Duration of (4.) The Eternity of Hell Future Suffering. Torments.

Now no one at all familiar with polemical literature can deny, that the modes and ambiguities of doctrine comprised in this Trinitarian list, are more numerous than can be detected in the parallel “heresies.” I am willing indeed to admit an exception in respect to the last of the topics, and to allow that the belief in the finite duration of future punishment has opposed itself, in two forms, to the single doctrine of everlasting torments. But when the systems are compared at their other corresponding points, the boast of orthodox uniformity instantly vanishes. Since the primitive jealousy between the Jewish and Gentile Christianity, the rivalry between the “Monarchy” and the “Economy,” the believers in the personal Unity of God, though often severed by ages from each other, have held that majestic truth in one unvaried form. Never was there an idea so often lost and recovered, yet so absolutely unchanged: a sublime, but occasional visitant of the human mind, assuring us of the perpetual oneness of our own nature, as well as the Divine. We can point to no unbroken continuity of our great doctrine: and if we could, we should appeal with no confidence to the evidence of so dubious a phenomenon; for if a system of ideas once gains possession of society, and attracts to itself complicated interests and feelings, many causes may suffice to ensure its indefinite preservation. But we can point to a greater phenomenon; to the long and repeated extinction of our favourite belief, to its submersion beneath a dark and restless fanaticism; and its invariable resurrection, like a necessary intuition of the soul, in times of purer light, with its features still the same; stamped with imperishable identity of truth, and, like him to whom it refers, without variableness or shadow of a turning. Meanwhile, who will undertake to enumerate and define the succession of Trinities by which this doctrine has been bewildered and banished? Passing by the Aristotelian, the Platonic, the Ciceronian, the Cartesian Trinity,—quitting the stormy disputes, and contradictory decisions of the early councils, shall we find among even the modern fathers of our national church, any approach to unanimity? Am I to be content with the doctrine of Bishop Bull, and subordinate the Son to the Father as the sole fountain of divinity? Or must I rise to the Tritheism of Waterland and Sherlock? or, accepting the famous decision of the University of Oxford, descend with Archbishop Whately, to the modal Trinity of South and Wallis? Are we to understand the phrase, three persons, to mean three beings united by “perichoresis,” three “mutual inexistences,” three “modes,” three “differences,” three “contemplations,” or three “somewhats;” or, being told that this is but a vain prying into a mystery, shall we be satisfied to leave the phrase without idea at all? It is to the last degree astonishing to hear from Trinitarian divines, the praises of uniformity of belief; seeing that it is one of the chief labours of ecclesiastical history to record the incessant effort, vain to the present day, to give some stability of meaning to the fundamental doctrines of their faith.

The same remark applies, with little modification, to the opposite views respecting the person of the Saviour. It is true that Unitarians, agreed respecting the singleness of nature in Christ, differ respecting the natural rank of that nature, whether his soul were human or angelic. But, for this solitary variety among these heretics, how many doctrines of the Logos and the Incarnation does orthodox literature contain? Can any one affirm, that when the council of Ephesus had arbitrated between the Eutychian doctrine of absorption, and the Nestorian doctrine of separation, all doubt and ambiguity was removed by the magic phrase “Hypostatic union?” Since the monophysite contest was at its height, has the Virgin Mary been left in undisputed possession of her title as “Mother of God?” Has the Eternal Generation of the Son encountered no orthodox suspicions, and the Indwelling scheme received no orthodox support? And if we ask these questions: “What respectively happened to the two natures on the cross? what has become of Christ’s human soul now? is it separate from the Godhead like any other immortal spirit, or is it added to the Deity, so as to introduce into his nature a new and fourth element?” shall we receive from the many voices of the church but one accordant answer? Nay, do the authors of this controversy suppose that, during its short continuance, they have been able to maintain their unanimity? If they do, I believe that any reader who thinks it worth while to register the varieties of error, would be able to undeceive them. If the diversities of doctrine cannot easily and often be shown to amount to palpable inconsistencies, this must be ascribed, I believe, to the mystic and technical phraseology, the substitute rather than the expression for precise ideas,—which has become the vernacular dialect of orthodox divinity. The jargon of theology affords a field too barren, to bear so vigorous a weed as an undisputed contradiction.

It is needless to dwell on the numerous forms under which the doctrine of atonement has been held by those who subscribe the articles of our national church: while its Unitarian opponents have taken their fixed station on the personal character and untransferable nature of sin. One writer tells us that only the human nature perished on the cross; another that God himself expired: some say, that Christ suffered no more intensely, but only more “meritoriously,” than many a martyr; others, that he endured the whole quantity of torment due to the wicked whom he redeemed: some, that it is the spotlessness of his manhood that is imputed to believers; others, that it is the holiness of his Deity. From the high doctrine of satisfaction to the very verge of Unitarian heresy, every variety of interpretation has been given to the language of the established formularies respecting Christian redemption. Nor is it yet determined whether, in the lottery of opinion, the name of Owen, Sykes, or Magee, shall be drawn for the prize of orthodoxy.

And if from those parts of our belief, to which the accidents of their historical origin have given a negative character, we turn to those which are positive, not the slightest reason will appear for charging them with uncertainty and fluctuation. All Unitarian writers maintain the Moral Perfection and Fatherly Providence of the Infinite Ruler; the Messiahship of Jesus Christ, in whose person and spirit there is a Revelation of God and a Sanctification for Man; the Responsibility and Retributive Immortality of men; and the need of a pure and devout heart of Faith, as the source of all outward goodness and inward communion with God. These great and self-luminous points, bound together by natural affinity, constitute the fixed centre of our religion. And on subjects beyond this centre, we have no wider divergences than are found among those who attach themselves to an opposite system. For example, the relations between Scripture and Reason, as evidences and guides in questions of doctrine, are not more unsettled among us, than are the relations between Scripture and Tradition in the Church. Nor is the perpetual authority of the “Christian rites” so much in debate among our ministers, as the efficacy of the Sacraments among the clergy. In truth, our diversities of sentiment affect far less what we believe, than the question why we believe it. Different modes of reasoning, and different results of interpretation, are no doubt to be found among our several authors. We all make our appeal to the records of Christianity: but we have voted no particular commentator into the seat of authority. And is not this equally true of our opponents’ church? Their articles and creeds furnish no textual expositions of Scripture, but only results and deductions from its study. And so variously have these results been elicited from the sacred writings, that scarcely a text can be adduced in defence of the Trinitarian scheme, which some witness unexceptionably orthodox may not be summoned to prove inapplicable. In fine, we have no greater variety of critical and exegetical opinion than the divines from whom we dissent: while the system of Christianity in which our Scriptural labours have issued, has its leading characteristics better determined and more apprehensible, than the scheme which the articles and creeds have vainly laboured to define.

The refusal to embody our sentiments in any authoritative formula appears to strike observers as a whimsical exception to the general practice of churches. The peculiarity has had its origin in hereditary and historical associations: but it has its defence in the noblest principles of religious freedom and Christian communion. At present, it must suffice to say, that our Societies are dedicated, not to theological opinions, but to religious worship: that they have maintained the unity of the spirit, without insisting on any unity of doctrine: that Christian liberty, love, and piety are their essentials in perpetuity, but their Unitarianism an accident of a few or many generations;—which has arisen, and might vanish, without the loss of their identity. We believe in the mutability of religious systems, but the imperishable character of the religious affections;—in the progressiveness of opinion within, as well as without, the limits of Christianity. Our forefathers cherished the same conviction: and so, not having been born intellectual bondsmen, we desire to leave our successors free. Convinced that uniformity of doctrine can never prevail, we seek to attain its only good,—peace on earth and communion with heaven,—without it. We aim to make a true Christendom,—a commonwealth of the faithful,—by the binding force, not of ecclesiastical creeds, but of spiritual wants, and Christian sympathies: and indulge the vision of a Church that “in the latter days shall arise,” like “the mountain of the Lord,” bearing on its ascent the blossoms of thought proper to every intellectual clime, and withal massively rooted in the deep places of our humanity, and gladly rising to meet the sunshine from on high.

And now, friends and brethren, let us say a glad farewell to the fretfulness of controversy, and retreat again, with thanksgiving, into the interior of our own venerated truth. Having come forth, at the severer call of duty, to do battle for it, with such force as God vouchsafes to the sincere, let us go in to live and worship beneath its shelter. They tell you, it is not the true faith. Perhaps not: but then, you think it so; and that is enough to make your duty clear, and to draw from it, as from nothing else, the very peace of God. May be, we are on our way to something better, unexistent and unseen as yet; which may penetrate our souls with nobler affection, and give a fresh spontaneity of love to God and all immortal things. Perhaps there cannot be the truest life of faith, except in scattered individuals, till this age of conflicting doubt and dogmatism shall have passed away. Dark and leaden clouds of materialism hide the heaven from us: red gleams of fanaticism pierce through, vainly striving to reveal it; and not till the weight is heaved from off the air, and the thunders roll down the horizon, will the serene light of God flow upon us, and the blue infinite embrace us again. Meanwhile, we must reverently love the faith we have: to quit it for one that we have not, were to lose the breath of life, and die.

NOTE.

---------------------

The Jewish Passover not a proper Sacrifice.

In an essay on “the one great end of the life and death of Christ,” Dr. Priestley makes the following observations on the words (occurring in 1 Cor. v. 7,) “Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us:” “This allusion to the paschal lamb makes it also probable, that the death of Christ is called a sacrifice only by way of figure, because these two (viz., sacrifice and the paschal lamb) are quite different and inconsistent ideas. The paschal lamb is never so much as termed a sacrifice in the Old Testament, except once, Exodus xii. 27, where it is called ‘the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover.’ However, it could only be called a sacrifice in this place, in some secondary and partial sense, and not in the proper and primary sense of the word; for there was no priest employed upon the occasion, no altar made use of, no burning, nor any part offered to the Lord; all which circumstances were essential to every proper sacrifice. The blood indeed was sprinkled upon the door-posts, but this was originally nothing more than a token to the destroying angel to pass by that house; for there is no propitiation or atonement said to be made by it: and the paschal lamb is very far from having been ever called a sin-offering, or said to be killed on account of sin.”[626]

Every reader, I apprehend, understands this description of the manner of celebrating the passover, to refer to the particular “occasion” spoken of “in this place” (Exod. xii. 27). ‘The writer of this verse,’ argues Dr. Priestley, ‘could not use the word sacrifice in its strictest sense; for his own narrative of the very celebration to which it is applied, describes it as destitute of all the essentials of a proper sacrifice.’ The allusion to the blood sprinkled upon the door-posts, as “a token to the destroying angel to pass by that house,” immediately connects Dr. Priestley’s assertions with the Egyptian passover. By cutting out this allusion, and otherwise breaking up the passage in quotation, Archbishop Magee has contrived to conceal its character as an historical description of a single occasion, and to give it the air of a general account of the Jewish paschal ceremony in all ages. Having accomplished this, and obtained for himself the liberty of travelling for a reply over the whole Hebrew history and traditions, he says; “Now in answer to these several assertions, I am obliged to state the direct contradiction of each; for, 1st, the passage in Exodus xii. 27, is not the only one, in which the paschal lamb is termed זבח, a sacrifice, it being expressly so called in no less than four passages in Deuteronomy (xvi. 2, 4, 5, 6), and also in Exodus xxxv. 25, and its parallel passage xxiii. 18.—2. A priest was employed.—3. An altar was made use of.—4. There was a burning, and a part offered to the Lord: the inwards being burnt upon the altar, and the blood poured out at the foot thereof.”[627] The last three of these “direct contradictions” establish nothing but this Prelate’s habit (not adopted, we may presume, without urgent necessity) of misrepresenting his opponents in order to confute them: for it is quite needless to observe that, in the Egyptian passover, of which alone Dr. Priestley speaks, there was neither priest, altar, nor burning: and though the Archbishop should be able to detect all these elements in a festival of King Josiah’s time, he will have proved no error against the passage which he criticises. In his first contradiction, he would have gained an advantage over his opponent, had not his eagerness induced him to strain his evidence too far. A more modest disputant would have thought it sufficient to reckon three successive verses (Deut. xvi. 4, 5, 6) in which the same phrase is simply repeated, as a single instead of a triple authority: the other citation from the same passage is not to the point, as will presently be shown: and in one of the verses quoted from Exodus (xxiii. 18) the word זבח does not occur at all in relation to the passover. So that Dr. Priestley having discovered two passages too few, the Prelate makes compensation by discovering two passages too many.

Having said thus much in reference to Archbishop Magee’s fairness to his opponent, I will add a few strictures on the reasonings by which he supports his general position, that the passover was a proper sacrifice. He adduces two arguments from words, and three from facts. 1. The word זבח, sacrifice, is applied to the passover.—2. The word קרבן, Corban, a sacred offering, is applied to it.—3. The slaying of the lamb took place at the tabernacle or temple.—4. The blood was offered at the foot of the altar.—5. The fat and entrails were burnt as an offering on the altar fire.

(1.) It has been already stated, that Archbishop Magee has improperly adduced two passages, as applying the word sacrifice to the passover. The first of these is Exod. xxiii. 18, where it is said: “Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain till morning.” The second clause here undoubtedly refers to the paschal lamb: but the term “sacrifice” occurring in it is not the proper translation of the original; nor is the Hebrew word the same that is correctly so rendered in the first clause. The phrases being not the same, but discriminated, in the two parts of the verse, the less reason exists for supposing that both allude to the passover. More probably, the reference in the former is to the sacrifices appropriate to the feast of unleavened bread, which being contiguous to the passover in time, is naturally conjoined with it in the precepts of this verse.

The second irrelevant passage is Deut. xvi. 2: “Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and of the herd.” Since the paschal lamb could not be taken “from the herd,” it is evident that the word “passover,” is used here in a wider sense,[628] to denote the joint eight days’ festival, including that of unleavened bread, when heifers were offered “from the herd.” This more comprehensive meaning of the term is frequent, not merely with Josephus and the later Jewish writers, but in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves; and renders inconclusive most of the arguments by which the passover is made to assume the appearance of a proper sacrifice. An example occurs in the very next verse: “Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread therewith,” that is, with the passover; and in 2 Chron. xxxv. 9: “Conaniah also (and other persons) gave unto the priests for the passover offerings, 2,600 small cattle, and 300 oxen.”

In the remaining places, however, this feast is undoubtedly called a sacrifice. But then it is clear that the Hebrew word זבח is used with a latitude, which renders it impossible to draw from it any inference as to the character of the ceremony to which it is applied. It denotes slaying of animals for food, without any necessary reference to a sacred use.[629] Thus, 1 Sam. xxviii. 24. “And the woman had a fat calf in the house; and she hasted and killed it,” (sacrificed it, תזבחהו); also 1 Kings, xix. 21. “And he took a yoke of oxen, and slew them (ויזבחהו), and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat.” And the substantive occurs thus in Prov. xvii. 1. “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices (evidently meats,—the luxury of animal food) with strife.”

(2.) The passover is called קרבן, Corban, a sacred offering, in Numb. ix. 7, 13. Certain men who had been defiled by performing funeral rites, present themselves to Moses, and say, “Wherefore are we kept back, that we may not offer the offering of the Lord in his appointed season among the children of Israel?” And then follows the law which Moses takes occasion from this incident to announce; that persons disqualified by absence on a journey, or by uncleanness, from joining in the celebration at the appointed time, may observe it at the corresponding period of the next month. Such disqualifications, if existing at all, would have excluded from the whole eight days’ festival, including the feast of unleavened bread, and held the parties away till the following month; “the offering of the Lord,” therefore, which they were kept back from presenting, comprised all the sacrifices proper to the “season;” and the word “offering” is comprehensively applied to the whole set, from its particular propriety in reference to the most numerous portion of them, the sacrifices at the feast of unleavened bread. The paschal lamb, by itself, is never, I believe, designated by this term.

In treating of the actual details of the paschal ceremony, it is necessary to distinguish between those which were of legal obligation, and those which were merely consuetudinary or occasional. Nothing can justly be pronounced an essential of the celebration, which is not enjoined in the statutes appointing it; and should other customs present themselves in the historical instances of the commemoration which we possess, they cannot be received as authoritative illustrations of its intended character, but as accessaries appended by convenience, tradition, or sacerdotal influence.[630] With this remark I proceed to the next argument.

(3.) The slaying of the paschal lamb is said to have been restricted to the tabernacle or temple.

The only passage from the law, adduced to prove this, is Deut. xvi. 2, 5, 6, where it is said, “Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee; but at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name in, there shalt thou sacrifice the passover at even.” The reader might naturally suppose that Jerusalem was here denoted by the phrase, “the place which the Lord thy God shall choose,” in contradistinction from the provincial cities described as “any of thy gates;” but Archbishop Magee sets aside this interpretation, by referring us to this very same expression in Deut. xii. 5, 6, 11, 14, where it evidently means the tabernacle or temple, not the city; for a multitude of rites are there enumerated, to be performed, “in the place that the Lord shall choose,” which could be celebrated only at the sanctuary. It so happens, however, that in this enumeration, the Passover is precisely the one thing which is not mentioned; from which we might fairly infer, that it was not among the ceremonies limited to the sanctuary; and further, that in addition to the vague description of place common to both passages, there occurs exclusively in the latter, the additional one, “there shall ye eat, BEFORE THE LORD YOUR GOD,” which is well known to be the usual mode of designating the tabernacle. And that in the passover-law, the locality intended was the city, and not the sanctuary, is evident from a verse which Archbishop Magee has not thought it necessary to quote, though it is the immediate sequel of his citation; “and thou shalt roast and eat it (the paschal lamb) in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.” Whatever doubt may exist about the slaying, the roasting and eating could not take place at the tabernacle.

The law, then, nowhere prescribes the slaying of the paschal lamb at the sanctuary. But neither does it forbid this; and therefore we are not surprised that the act should take place there, on any particular occasion rendering such arrangement obviously convenient; or as a general practice, in concession to any strong interests tending to draw it thither. When, therefore, a long period of idolatry and political confusion had obliterated from the minds of the Israelites the very memory of their religious rites; when new modes of worship had become habitual, and the annual festival had grown strange; when, to induce them to come up to the passover at all, their monarch was obliged to provide for them the whole number of their victims, and the officiating Levites needed to study again the appointed ceremonies of the season; it is no wonder that king Josiah thought it expedient to collect “the whole congregation” at the temple, and there to let them witness the form of slaying, by well-trained hands, and receive instruction how to complete the celebration of their feast. Such was the solemn passover described in 2 Chron. xxxv. and that in the reign of Hezekiah, mentioned in the thirtieth chapter of the same book; the circumstances of both which were too peculiar to afford evidence of a general practice, much less of a legal essential.

That in later times it was the custom to slay the paschal lambs in the Temple courts, there can be no doubt. The system of ecclesiastical police, and the operation of sacerdotal interests created the practice. It was the business of the priests to see to the execution of the festival-law; to ascertain who incurred the penalty due to neglect of the prescribed rite: to register the numbers of those who observed it; and to take care that neither too many nor too few should partake at the same table. All this required that the heads of families should present themselves, and report their intended arrangements to the authorities at the temple. The priests moreover, being the judges of the qualifications of the animals for the paschal table, availed themselves of this power, to become graziers and provision-dealers. As the lambs must be presented for their inspection, and were liable to be turned back if pronounced imperfect, it became more convenient to buy the victim at once at the Temple courts: and on the spot where the purchase was made, the slaying would naturally follow. Lightfoot, speaking of the law which originally required the lamb to be chosen four days before it was killed, says, “It is not to be doubted but every one in after times took up their own lambs as they did in Egypt, but it is somewhat doubtful whether they did it in the same manner. It is exceedingly probable, that as the priests took up the lambs for the daily sacrifice four days before they were to be offered, as we have observed elsewhere; so also that they provided lambs for the people at the passover, taking them up in the market four days before, and picking and culling out those that were fit, and agreeable to the command. For whereas the law was so punctual that they should be without blemish, and their traditions had summed up so large a sum of blemishes, as that they reckon seventy-three, it could not be but the law and their traditions which they prized above the law should be endlessly broken, if every one took up his own lamb in the market at Jerusalem at adventure. The priests had brought a market of sheep and oxen against such times as these into the temple, (for if it had not been their doing, they must not have come there,) where they having before-hand picked out in the market such lambs and bullocks as were fit for sacrifice or passover, they sold them in the temple at a dearer rate, and so served the people’s turn and their own profit: for which, amongst other of their hucksteries, our Saviour saith, they had made the house of prayer a den of thieves.”[631]

(4.) The blood is said to have been poured out as an offering at the foot of the altar.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us