In studying the narrative of John I was strongly impressed by the fact, that the glory and greatness of the Son of G.o.d is constantly ascribed to the will and pleasure of the Father. I had been accustomed to hear this explained of his _mediatorial_ greatness only, but this now looked to me like a make-shift, and to want the simplicity of truth--an impression which grew deeper with closer examination.
The emphatic declaration of Christ, "My Father is greater than I,"
especially arrested my attention. Could I really expound this as meaning, "My Father, the Supreme G.o.d, in greater than I am, _if you look solely to my human nature?_" Such a truism can scarcely have deserved such emphasis. Did the disciples need to be taught that G.o.d was greater than man? Surely, on the contrary, the Saviour must have meant to say: "_Divine as I am_, yet my heavenly Father is greater than I, _even when you take cognizance of my divine nature._" I did not then know, that my comment was exactly that of the most orthodox Fathers; I rather thought they were against me, but for them I did not care much. I reverenced the doctrine of the Trinity as something vital to the soul; but felt that to love the Fathers or the Athanasian Creed more than the Gospel of John would be a supremely miserable superst.i.tion. However, that Creed states that there is no inequality between the Three Persons: in John it became increasingly clear to me that the divine Son is unequal to the Father. To say that "the Son of G.o.d" meant "Jesus as man," was a preposterous evasion: for there is no higher t.i.tle for the Second Person of the Trinity than this very one--Son of G.o.d. Now, in the 5th chapter, when the Jews accused Jesus "of making himself equal to G.o.d," by calling himself Son of G.o.d Jesus even hastens to protest against the inference as a misrepresentation --beginning with: "The Son can do nothing of himself:" and proceeds elaborately to ascribe all his greatness to the Father"s will. In fact, the Son is emphatically "he who is sent," and the Father is "he who sent him:" and all would feel the deep impropriety of trying to exchange these phrases. The Son who is sent,--sent, not _after_ he was humbled to become man, but _in order to_ be so humbled,--was NOT EQUAL TO, but LESS THAN, the Father who sent him. To this I found the whole Gospel of John to bear witness; and with this conviction, the truth and honour of the Athanasian Creed fell to the ground. One of its main tenets was proved false; and yet it dared to utter anathemas on all who rejected it!
I afterwards remembered my old thought, that we must surely understand _our own words_, when we venture to speak at all about divine mysteries. Having gained boldness to gaze steadily on the topic, I at length saw that the compiler of the Athanasian Creed did _not_ understand his own words. If any one speaks of _three men_, all that he means is, "three objects of thought, of whom each separately may be called Man." So also, all that could possibly be meant by _three G.o.ds_, is, "three objects of thought, of whom each separately may be called G.o.d." To avow the last statement, as the Creed does, and yet repudiate Three G.o.ds, is to object to the phrase, yet confess to the only meaning which the phrase can convey. Thus the Creed really teaches polytheism, but saves orthodoxy by forbidding any one to call it by its true name. Or to put the matter otherwise: it teaches three Divine Persons, and denies three G.o.ds; and leaves us to guess what else is a Divine Person but a G.o.d, or a G.o.d but a Divine Person. Who, then, can deny that this intolerant creed is a malignant riddle?
That there is nothing in the Scripture about Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity I had long observed; and the total absence of such phraseology had left on me a general persuasion that the Church had systematized too much. But in my study of John I was now arrested by a text, which showed me how exceedingly far from a _Tri-unity_ was the Trinity of that Gospel,--if trinity it be. Namely, in his last prayer, Jesus addresses to his Father the words: "This is life eternal, that they may know _Thee, the only True G.o.d_, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" I became amazed, as I considered these words more and more attentively, and without prejudice; and I began to understand how prejudice, when embalmed with reverence, blinds the mind. Why had I never before seen what is here so plain, that the _One G.o.d_ of Jesus was not a Trinity, but was _the First Person_, of the ecclesiastical Trinity?
But on a fuller search, I found this to be Paul"s doctrine also: for in 1 Corinth, viii., when discussing the subject of Polytheism, he says that "though there be to the heathen many that are called G.o.ds, yet to us there is but _One G.o.d_, the Father, _of_ whom are all things; and _One Lord_, Jesus Christ, _by_ whom are all things." Thus he defines Monotheism to consist in holding the person of the Father to be the One G.o.d; although this, if any, should have been the place for a "Trinity in Unity."
But did I proceed to deny the Divinity of the Son? By no means: I conceived of him as in the highest and fullest sense divine, short of being Father and not Son. I now believed that by the phrase "only begotten Son," John, and indeed Christ himself, meant to teach us that there was an unpa.s.sable chasm between him and all creatures, in that he had a true, though a derived divine nature; an indeed the Nicene Creed puts the contrast, he was "begotten, not made." Thus all Divine glory dwells in the Son, but it is _because_ the Father has willed it. A year or more afterward, when I had again the means of access to books, and consulted that very common Oxford book, "Pearson on the Creed," (for which I had felt so great a distaste that I never before read it)--I found this to be the undoubted doctrine of the great Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, who laid much emphasis on two statements, which with the modern Church are idle and dead--viz. that "the Son was _begotten_ of his Father _before all worlds_," and that "the Holy Spirit _proceedeth from_ the Father and the Son." In the view of the old Church, the Father alone was the Fountain of Deity,--(and _therefore_ fitly called, The One G.o.d,--and, the Only True G.o.d)--while the Deity of the other two persons was real, yet derived and subordinate. Moreover, I found in Gregory n.a.z.ianzen and others, that to confess this derivation of the Son and Spirit and the underivedness of the Father alone, was in their view quite essential to save Monotheism; the _One_ G.o.d being the underived Father.
Although in my own mind all doubt as to the doctrine of John and Paul on the main question seemed to be quite cleared away from the time that I dwelt on their explanation of Monotheism, this in no respect agitated me, or even engaged me in any farther search. There was nothing to force me into controversy, or make this one point of truth unduly preponderant. I concealed none of my thoughts from my companions; and concerning them I will only say, that whether they did or did not feel acquiescence, they behaved towards me with all the affection and all the equality which I would have wished myself to maintain, had the case been inverted. I was, however, sometimes uneasy, when the thought crossed my mind,--"What if we, like Henry Martyn, were charged with Polytheism by Mohammedans, and were forced to defend ourselves by explaining in detail our doctrine of the Trinity? _Perhaps_ no two of us would explain it alike, and this would expose Christian doctrine to contempt." Then farther it came across me; How very remarkable it is, that the Jews, those strict Monotheists, never seem to have attacked the apostles for polytheism!
It would have been so plausible an imputation, one that the instinct of party would so readily suggest, if there had been any external form of doctrine to countenance it. Surely it is transparent that the Apostles did not teach as Dr. Waterland. I had always felt a great repugnance to the argumentations concerning the _Personality_ of the Holy Spirit; no doubt from an inward sense, however dimly confessed, that they were all words without meaning. For the disputant who maintains this dogma, tells us in the very next breath that _Person_ has not in this connexion its common signification; so that he is elaborately enforcing upon us we know not what. That the Spirit of G.o.d meant in the New Testament _G.o.d in the heart_, had long been to me a sufficient explanation: and who by logic or metaphysics will carry us beyond this?
While we were at Aleppo, I one day got into religious discourse with a Mohammedan carpenter, which left on me a lasting impression. Among other matters, I was peculiarly desirous of disabusing him of the current notion of his people, that our gospels are spurious narratives of late date. I found great difficulty of expression; but the man listened to me with much attention, and I was encouraged to exert myself. He waited patiently till I had done, and then spoke to the following effect: "I will tell you, sir, how the case stands. G.o.d has given to you English a great many good gifts. You make fine ships, and sharp penknives, and good cloth and cottons; and you have rich n.o.bles and brave soldiers; and you write and print many learned books: (dictionaries and grammars:) all this is of G.o.d. But there is one thing that G.o.d has withheld from you, and has revealed to us; and that is, the knowledge of the true religion, by which one may be saved." When he thus ignored my argument, (which was probably quite unintelligible to him,) and delivered his simple protest, I was silenced, and at the same time amused. But the more I thought it over, the more instruction I saw in the case. His position towards me was exactly that of a humble Christian towards an unbelieving philosopher; nay, that of the early Apostles or Jewish prophets towards the proud, cultivated, worldly wise and powerful heathen. This not only showed the vanity of any argument to him, except one purely addressed to his moral and spiritual faculties; but it also indicated to me that Ignorance has its spiritual self-sufficiency as well as Erudition; and that if there is a Pride of Reason, so is there a Pride of Unreason.
But though this rested in my memory, it was long before I worked out all the results of that thought.
Another matter brought me some disquiet. An Englishman of rather low tastes who came to Aleppo at this time, called upon us; and as he was civilly received, repeated his visit more than once. Being unenc.u.mbered with fastidiousness, this person before long made various rude attacks on the truth and authority of the Christian religion, and drew me on to defend it. What I had heard of the moral life of the speaker made me feel that his was not the mind to have insight into divine truth; and I desired to divert the argument from external topics, and bring it to a point in which there might be a chance of touching his conscience. But I found this to be impossible. He returned actively to the a.s.sault against Christianity, and I could not bear to hear him vent historical falsehoods and misrepresentations damaging to the Christian cause, without contradicting them. He was a half-educated man, and I easily confuted him to my own entire satisfaction: but he was not either abashed or convinced; and at length withdrew as one victorious.--On reflecting over this, I felt painfully, that if a Moslem had been present and had understood all that had been said, he would have remained in total uncertainty which of the two disputants was in the right: for the controversy had turned on points wholly remote from the sphere of his knowledge or thought.
Yet to have declined the battle would have seemed like conscious weakness on my part. Thus the historical side of my religion, though essential to it, and though resting on valid evidence, (as I unhesitatingly believed,) exposed me to attacks in which I might incur virtual defeat or disgrace, but in which, from the nature of the case, I could never win an available victory. This was to me very disagreeable, yet I saw not my way out of the entanglement.
Two years after I left England, a hope was conceived that more friends might be induced to join us; and I returned home from Bagdad with the commission to bring this about, if there were suitable persons disposed for it. On my return, and while yet in quarantine on the coast of England, I received an uncomfortable letter from a most intimate spiritual friend, to the effect, that painful reports had been every where spread abroad against my soundness in the faith.
The channel by which they had come was indicated to me; but my friend expressed a firm hope, that when I had explained myself, it would all prove to be nothing.
Now began a time of deep and critical trial to me and to my Creed; a time hard to speak of to the public; yet without a pretty full notice of it, the rest of the account would be quite unintelligible.
The Tractarian movement was just commencing in 1833. My brother was taking a position, in which he was bound to show that he could sacrifice private love to ecclesiastical dogma; and upon learning that I had spoken at some small meetings of religious people, (which he interpreted, I believe, to be an a.s.suming of the Priest"s office,) he separated himself entirely from my private friendship and acquaintance. To the public this may have some interest, as indicating the disturbing excitement which animated that cause: but my reason for naming the fact here is solely to exhibit the practical positions into which I myself was thrown. In my brother"s conduct there was not a shade of unkindness, and I have not a thought of complaining of it. My distress was naturally great, until I had fully ascertained from him that I had given no personal offence. But the mischief of it went deeper. It practically cut me off from other members of my family, who were living in his house, and whose state of feeling towards me, through separation and my own agitations of mind, I for some time totally mistook.
I had, however, myself slighted relationship in comparison with Christian brotherhood;--_sectarian_ brotherhood, some may call it;--I perhaps had none but myself to blame: but in the far more painful occurrences which were to succeed one another for many months together, I was blameless. Each successive friend who asked explanations of my alleged heresy, was satisfied,--or at least left me with that impression,--after hearing me: not one who met me face to face had a word to reply to the plain Scriptures which I quoted.
Yet when I was gone away, one after another was turned against me by somebody else whom I had not yet met or did not know: for in every theological conclave which deliberates on joint action, the most bigoted scorns always to prevail.
I will trust my pen to only one specimen of details. The Irish clergyman was not able to meet me. He wrote a very desultory letter of grave alarm and inquiry, stating that he had heard that I was endeavouring to sound the divine nature by the miserable plummet of human philosophy,--with much beside that I felt to be mere commonplace which every body might address to every body who differed from him.
I however replied in the frankest, most cordial and trusting tone, a.s.suring him that I was infinitely far from imagining that I could "by searching understand G.o.d;" on the contrary, concerning his higher mysteries, I felt I knew absolutely nothing but what he revealed to me in his word; but in studying this word, I found John and Paul to declare the Father, and not the Trinity, to be the One G.o.d. Referring him to John xvii, 3, 1 Corinth. viii, 5, 6, I fondly believed that one so "subject to the word" and so resolutely renouncing man"s authority _in order that_ he might serve G.o.d, would immediately see as I saw.
But I a.s.sured him, in all the depth of affection, that I felt how much fuller insight he had than I into all divine truth; and not he only, but others to whom I alluded; and that if I was in error, I only desired to be taught more truly; and either with him, or at his feet, to learn of G.o.d. He replied, to my amazement and distress, in a letter of much tenderness, but which was to the effect,--that if I allowed the Spirit of G.o.d to be with him rather than with me, it was wonderful that I set my single judgment against the mind of the Spirit and of the whole Church of G.o.d; and that as for admitting into Christian communion one who held my doctrine, it had this absurdity, that while I was in such a state of belief, it was my duty to anathematize _them_ as idolaters.--Severe as was the shock given me by this letter, I wrote again most lovingly, humbly, and imploringly: for I still adored him, and could have given him my right hand or my right eye,--anything but my conscience. I showed him that if it was a matter of action, I would submit; for I unfeignedly believed that he had more of the Spirit of G.o.d than I: but over my secret convictions I had no power.
I was shut up to obey and believe G.o.d rather than man, and from the nature of the case, the profoundest respect for my brother"s judgment could not in itself alter mine. As to the whole _Church_ being against me, I did not know what that meant: I was willing to accept the Nicene Creed, and this I thought ought to be a sufficient defensive argument against the Church. His answer was decisive;--he was exceedingly surprized at my recurring to mere ecclesiastical creeds, as though they could have the slightest weight; and he must insist on my acknowledging, that, in the two texts quoted, the word Father meant the Trinity, if I desired to be in any way recognized as holding the truth.
The Father meant the Trinity!! For the first time I perceived, that so vehement a champion of the sufficiency of the Scripture, so staunch an opposer of Creeds and Churches, was wedded to an extra-Scriptural creed of his own, by which he tested the spiritual state of his brethren. I was in despair, and like a man thunderstruck. I had nothing more to say. Two more letters from the same hand I saw, the latter of which was, to threaten some new acquaintances who were kind to me, (persons wholly unknown to him,) that if they did not desist from sheltering me and break off intercourse, they should, as far as his influence went, themselves everywhere be cut off from Christian communion and recognition. This will suffice to indicate the sort of social persecution, through which, after a succession of struggles, I found myself separated from persons whom I had trustingly admired, and on whom I had most counted for union: with whom I fondly believed myself bound up for eternity; of whom some were my previously intimate friends, while for others, even on slight acquaintance, I would have performed menial offices and thought myself honoured; whom I still looked upon as the blessed and excellent of the earth, and the special favourites of heaven; whose company (though oftentimes they were considerably my inferiors either in rank or in knowledge and cultivation) I would have chosen in preference to that of n.o.bles; whom I loved solely because I thought them to love G.o.d, and of whom I asked nothing, but that they would admit me as the meanest and most frail of disciples. My heart was ready to break: I wished for a woman"s soul, that I might weep in floods. Oh, Dogma! Dogma! how dost them trample under foot love, truth, conscience, justice! Was ever a Moloch worse than thou? Burn me at the stake; then Christ will receive me, and saints beyond the grave will love me, though the saints here know me not But now I am alone in the world: I can trust no one. The new acquaintances who barely tolerate me, and old friends whom reports have not reached, (if such there be,) may turn against me with animosity to-morrow, as those have done from whom I could least have imagined it. Where is union? where is the Church, which was to convert the heathen?
This was not my only reason, yet it was soon a sufficient and at last an overwhelming reason, against returning to the East. The pertinacity of the attacks made on me, and on all who dared to hold by me in a certain connexion, showed that I could no longer be anything but a thorn in the side of my friends abroad; nay, I was unable to predict how they themselves might change towards me. The idea of a Christian Church propagating Christianity while divided against itself was ridiculous. Never indeed had I had the most remote idea, that my dear friends there had been united to me by agreement in intellectual propositions; nor could I yet believe it. I remembered a saying of the n.o.ble-hearted Groves: "Talk of loving me while I agree with them! Give me men that will love me when I differ from them and contradict them: those will be the men to build up a true Church." I asked myself,--was I then possibly different from all? With me,--and, as I had thought, with all my Spiritual friends,--intellectual dogma was not the test of spirituality. A hundred times over had I heard the Irish clergyman emphatically enunciate the contrary. Nothing was clearer in his preaching, talking and writing, than that salvation was a present real experienced fact; a saving of the soul from the dominion of baser desires, and an inward union of it in love and homage to Christ, who, as the centre of all perfection, glory, and beauty, was the revelation of G.o.d to the heart. He who was thus saved, could not help knowing that he was reconciled, pardoned, beloved; and therefore he rejoiced in G.o.d his Saviour: indeed, to imagine joy without this personal a.s.surance and direct knowledge, was quite preposterous. But on the other hand, the soul thus spiritually minded has a keen sense of like qualities in others. It cannot but discern when another is tender in conscience, disinterested, forbearing, scornful of untruth and baseness, and esteeming nothing so much as the fruits of the Spirit: accordingly, John did not hesitate to say: "_We know_ that we have pa.s.sed from death unto life, _because_ we love the brethren." Our doctrine certainly had been, that the Church was the a.s.sembly of the saved, gathered by the vital attractions of G.o.d"s Spirit; that in it no one was Lord or Teacher, but one was our Teacher, even Christ: that as long as we had no earthly bribes to tempt men to join us, there was not much cause to fear false brethren; for if we were heavenly minded, and these were earthly, they would soon dislike and shun us. Why should we need to sit in judgment and excommunicate them, except in the case of publicly scandalous conduct?
It is true, that I fully believed certain intellectual convictions to be essential to genuine spirituality: for instance, if I had heard that a person unknown to me did not believe in the Atonement of Christ, I should have inferred that he had no spiritual life. But if the person had come under my direct knowledge, my _theory_ was, on no account to reject him on a question of Creed, but in any case to receive all those whom Christ had received, all on whom the Spirit of G.o.d had come down, just as the Church at Jerusalem did in regard to admitting the Gentiles, Acts xi. 18. Nevertheless, was not this perhaps a theory pleasant to talk of, but too good for practice? I could not tell; for it had never been so severely tried. I remembered, however, that when I had thought it right to be baptized as an adult, (regarding my baptism as an infant to have been a mischievous fraud,) the sole confession of faith which I made, or would endure, at a time when my "orthodoxy" was unimpeached, was: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of G.o.d:"[2] to deny which, and claim to be acknowledged as within the pale of the Christian Church, seemed to be an absurdity. On the whole, therefore, it did not appear to me that this Church-theory had been hollow-hearted with _me_ nor unscriptural, nor in any way unpractical; but that _others_ were still infected with the leaven of creeds and formal tests, with which they reproached the old Church.
Were there, then, no other hearts than mine, aching under miserable bigotry, and refreshed only when they tasted in others the true fruits of the Spirit,--"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control?"--To imagine this was to suppose myself a man supernaturally favoured, an angel upon earth. I knew there must be thousands in this very point more true-hearted than I: nay, such still might some be, whose names I went over with myself: but I had no heart for more experiments. When such a man as he, the only mortal to whom I had looked up as to an apostle, had unhesitatingly, unrelentingly, and without one mark that his conscience was not on his side, flung away all his own precepts, his own theories, his own magnificent rebukes of Formalism and human Authority, and had made _himself_ the slave and _me_ the victim of those old and ever-living tyrants,--whom henceforth could I trust? The resolution then rose in me, to love all good men from a distance, but never again to count on permanent friendship with any one who was not himself cast out as a heretic.
Nor, in fact, did the storm of distress which these events inflicted on me, subside until I willingly received the task of withstanding it, as G.o.d"s trial whether I was faithful. As soon as I gained strength to say, "O my Lord, I will bear not this only, _but more also_,[3] for thy sake, for conscience, and for truth,"--my sorrows vanished, until the next blow and the next inevitable pang. At last my heart had died within me; the bitterness of death was past; I was satisfied to be hated by the saints, and to reckon that those who had not yet turned against me would not bear me much longer.--Then I conceived the belief, that if we may not make a heaven on earth for ourselves out of the love of saints, it is in order that we may find a truer heaven in G.o.d"s love.
The question about this time much vexed me, what to do about receiving the Holy Supper of the Lord, the great emblem of brotherhood, communion, and church connexion. At one time I argued with myself, that it became an unmeaning form, when not partaken of in mutual love; that I could never again have free intercourse of heart with any one;--why then use the rite of communion, where there is no communion?
But, on the other hand, I thought it a mode of confessing Christ, and that permanently to disuse it, was an unfaithfulness. In the Church of England I could have been easy as far as the communion formulary was concerned; but to the entire system I had contracted an incurable repugnance, as worldly, hypocritical, and an evil counterfeit. I desired, therefore, to creep into some obscure congregation, and there wait till my mind had ripened as to the right path in circ.u.mstances so perplexing. I will only briefly say, that I at last settled among some who had previously been total strangers to me. To their good will and simple kindness I feel myself indebted: peace be to them! Thus I gained time, and repose of mind, which I greatly needed.
From the day that I had mentally decided on total inaction as to all ecclesiastical questions, I count the termination of my Second Period.
My ideal of a spiritual Church had blown up in the most sudden and heartbreaking way; overpowering me with shame, when the violence of sorrow was past. There was no change whatever in my own judgment, yet a total change of action was inevitable: that I was on the eve of a great transition of mind I did not at all suspect. Hitherto my reverence for the authority of the whole and indivisible _Bible_ was overruling and complete. I never really had dared to criticize it; I did not even exact from it self-consistency. If two pa.s.sages appeared to be opposed, and I could not evade the difficulty by the doctrine of Development and Progress, I inferred that there was _some_ mode of conciliation unknown to me; and that perhaps the depth of truth in divine things could ill be stated in our imperfect language. But from the man who dared to interpose _a human comment_ on the Scripture, I most rigidly demanded a clear, single, self-consistent sense. If he did not know what he meant, why did he not hold his peace? If he did know, why did he so speak as to puzzle us? It was for this uniform refusal to allow of self-contradiction, that it was more than once sadly predicted of me at Oxford that I should become "a Socinian;"
yet I did not apply this logical measure to any compositions but those which were avowedly "uninspired" and human.
As to moral criticism, my mind was practically prostrate before the Bible. By the end of this period I had persuaded myself that morality so changes with the commands of G.o.d, that we can scarcely attach any idea of _immutability_ to it. I am, moreover, ashamed to tell any one how I spoke and acted against my own common sense under this influence, and when I was thought a fool, prayed that I might think it an honour to become a fool for Christ"s sake. Against no doctrine did I dare to bring moral objections, except that of "Reprobation." To Election, to Preventing Grace, to the Fall and Original Sin of man, to the Atonement, to Eternal Punishment, I reverently submitted my understanding; though as to the last, new inquiries had just at this crisis been opening on me. Reprobation, indeed, I always repudiated with great vigour, of which I shall presently speak. That was the full amount of my original thought; and in it I preserved entire reverence for the sacred writers.
As to miracles, scarcely anything staggered me. I received the strangest and the meanest prodigies of Scripture, with the same unhesitating faith, as if I had never understood a proposition of physical philosophy, nor a chapter of Hume and Gibbon.
[Footnote 1: Very unintelligent criticism of my words induces me to add, that "the _credentials_ of Revelation," as distinguished from "the _contents_ of Revelation," are here intended. Whether such a distinction can be preserved is quite another question. The view here exhibited is essentially that of Paley, and was in my day the prevalent one at Oxford. I do not think that the present Archbishop of Canterbury will disown it, any more than Lloyd, and Burton, and Hampden,--bishops and Regius Professors of Divinity.]
[Footnote 2: Borrowed from Acts viii. 37.]
[Footnote 3: Virgil (aeneid vi.) gives the Stoical side of the same thought: Tu ne cede malis, _sed contra audentior ito_.]
CHAPTER III.
CALVINISM ABANDONED.
After the excitement was past, I learned many things from the events which have been named.
First, I had found that the cla.s.s of Christians with whom I had been joined had exploded the old Creeds in favour of another of their own, which was never given me upon authority, and yet was constantly slipping out, in the words, _Jesus is Jehovah_. It appeared to me certain that this would have been denounced as the Sabellian heresy by Athanasias and his contemporaries. I did not wish to run down Sabellians, much less to excommunicate them, if they would give me equality; but I felt it intensely unjust when my adherence to the Nicene Creed was my real offence, that I should be treated as setting up some novel wickedness against all Christendom, and slandered by vague imputations which reached far and far beyond my power of answering or explaining. Mysterious aspersions were made even against my moral[1] character, and were alleged to me as additional reasons for refusing communion with me; and when I demanded a tribunal, and that my accuser would meet me face to face, all inquiry was refused, on the plea that it was needless and undesirable. I had much reason to believe that a very small number of persons had const.i.tuted themselves my judges, and used against me all the airs of the Universal Church; the many lending themselves easily to swell the cry of heresy, when they have little personal acquaintance with the party attacked.
Moreover, when I was being condemned as in error, I in vain asked to be told what was the truth. "I accept the Scripture: that is not enough. I accept the Nicene Creed: that is not enough. Give me then your formula: where, what is it?" But no! those who thought it their duty to condemn me, disclaimed the pretensions of "making a Creed"
when I asked for one. They reprobated my interpretation of Scripture as against that of the whole Church, but would not undertake to expound that of the Church. I felt convinced, that they could not have agreed themselves as to what was right: all that they could agree upon was, that I was wrong. Could I have borne to recriminate, I believed that I could have forced one of them to condemn another; but, oh! was divine truth sent us for discord and for condemnation? I sickened at the idea of a Church Tribunal, where none has any authority to judge, and yet to my extreme embarra.s.sment I saw that no Church can safely dispense with judicial forms and other worldly apparatus for defending the reputation of individuals. At least, none of the national and less spiritual inst.i.tutions would have been so very unequitable towards me.
This idea enlarged itself into another,--_that spirituality is no adequate security for sound moral discernment_. These alienated friends did not know they were acting unjustly, cruelly, crookedly, or they would have hated themselves for it: they thought they were doing G.o.d service. The fervour of their love towards him was probably greater than mine; yet this did not make them superior to prejudice, or sharpen their logical faculties to see that they were idolizing words to which they attached no ideas. On several occasions I had distinctly perceived how serious alarm I gave by resolutely refusing to admit any shiftings and shufflings of language. I felt convinced, that if I would but have contradicted myself two or three times, and then have added, "That is the mystery of it," I could have pa.s.sed as orthodox with many. I had been charged with a proud and vain determination to pry into divine mysteries, barely because I would not confess to propositions the meaning of which was to me doubtful,--or say and unsay in consecutive breaths. It was too clear, that a doctrine which muddles the understanding perverts also the power of moral discernment. If I had committed some flagrant sin, they would have given me a fair and honourable trial; but where they could not give me a public hearing, nor yet leave me unimpeached, without danger of (what they called) my infecting the Church, there was nothing left but to hunt me out unscrupulously.
Unscrupulously! did not this one word characterize _all_ religious persecution? and then my mind wandered back over the whole melancholy tale of what is called Christian history. When Archbishop Cranmer overpowered the reluctance of young Edward VI. to burn to death the pious and innocent Joan of Kent, who moreover was as mystical and illogical as heart could wish, was Cranmer not actuated by deep religious convictions? None question his piety, yet it was an awfully wicked deed. What shall I say of Calvin, who burned Servetus? Why have I been so slow to learn, that religion is an impulse which animates us to execute our moral judgments, but an impulse which may be half blind? These brethren believe that I may cause the eternal ruin of others: how hard then is it for them to abide faithfully by the laws of morality and respect my rights! My rights! They are of course trampled down for the public good, just as a house is blown up to stop a conflagration. Such is evidently the theory of all persecution;--which is essentially founded on _Hatred_. As Aristotle says, "He who is angry, desires to punish somebody; but he who hates, desires the hated person not even to exist." Hence they cannot endure to see me face to face. That I may not infect the rest, they desire my non-existence; by fair means, if fair will succeed; if not, then by foul. And whence comes this monstrosity into such bosoms? Weakness of common sense, dread of the common understanding, an insufficient faith in common morality, are surely the disease: and evidently, nothing so exasperates this disease as consecrating religious tenets which forbid the exercise of common sense.
I now began to understand why it was peculiarly for unintelligible doctrines like Transubstantiation and the Tri-unity that Christians had committed such execrable wickednesses. Now also for the first time I understood what had seemed not frightful only, but preternatural,--the sensualities and cruelties enacted as a part of religion in many of the old Paganisms. Religion and fanaticism are in the embryo but one and the same; to purify and elevate them we want a cultivation of the understanding, without which our moral code may be indefinitely depraved. Natural kindness and strong sense are aids and guides, which the most spiritual man cannot afford to despise.
I became conscious that I _had_ despised "mere moral men," as they were called in the phraseology of my school. They were merged in the vague appellation of "the world," with sinners of every cla.s.s; and it was habitually a.s.sumed, if not a.s.serted, that they were necessarily Pharisaic, because they had not been born again. For some time after I had misgivings as to my fairness of judgment towards them, I could not disentangle myself from great bewilderment concerning their state in the sight of G.o.d: for it was an essential part of my Calvinistic Creed, that (as one of the 39 Articles states it) the very good works of the unregenerate "undoubtedly have the nature of sin," as indeed the very nature with which they were born "deserveth G.o.d"s wrath and d.a.m.nation." I began to mourn over the unlovely conduct into which I had been betrayed by this creed, long before I could thoroughly get rid of the creed that justified it: and a considerable time had to elapse, ere my new perceptions shaped themselves distinctly into the propositions: "Morality is the end. Spirituality is the means: Religion is the handmaid to Morals: we must be spiritual, in order that we may be in the highest and truest sense moral." Then at last I saw, that the deficiency of "mere moral men" is, that their morality is apt to be too external or merely negative, and therefore incomplete: that the man who worships a fiend for a G.o.d may be in some sense spiritual, but his spirituality will be a devilish fanaticism, having nothing in it to admire or approve: that the moral man deserves approval or love for all the absolute good that he has attained, though there be a higher good to which he aspires not; and that the truly and rightly spiritual is he who aims at an indefinitely high moral excellence, of which G.o.d is the embodiment to his heart and soul. If the absolute excellence of morality be denied, there is nothing for spirituality to aspire after, and nothing in G.o.d to worship. Years before I saw this as clearly as here stated; the general train of thought was very wholesome, in giving me increased kindliness of judgment towards the common world of men, who do not show any religious development. It was pleasant to me to look on an ordinary face, and see it light up into a smile, and think with myself: "_there_ is one heart that will judge of me by what I am, and not by a Procrustean dogma." Nor only so, but I saw that the saints, without the world, would make a very bad world of it; and that as ballast is wanted to a ship, so the common and rather low interests and the homely principles, rules, and ways of feeling, keep the church from foundering by the intensity of her own gusts.
Some of the above thoughts took a still more definite shape, as follows. It is clear that A. B. and X. Y. would have behaved towards me more kindly, more justly, and more wisely, if they had consulted their excellent strong sense and amiable natures, instead of following (what they suppose to be) the commands of the word of G.o.d. They have misinterpreted that word: true: but this very thing shows, that one may go wrong by trusting one"s power of interpreting the book, rather than trusting one"s common sense to judge without the book.
It startled me to find, that I had exactly alighted on the Romish objection to Protestants, that an infallible book is useless, unless we have an infallible interpreter. But it was not for some time, that, after twisting the subject in all directions to avoid it, I brought out the conclusion, that "to go against one"s common sense in obedience to Scripture is a most hazardous proceeding:" for the "rule of Scripture" means to each of us nothing but his own fallible interpretation; and to sacrifice common sense to this, is to mutilate one side of our mind at the command of another side. In the Nicene age, the Bible was in people"s hands, and the Spirit of G.o.d surely was not withheld: yet I had read, in one of the Councils an insane anathema was pa.s.sed: "If any one call Jesus G.o.d-man, instead of G.o.d and man, let him be accursed." Surely want of common sense, and dread of natural reason, will be confessed by our highest orthodoxy to have been the distemper of that day.
In all this I still remained theoretically convinced, that the contents of the Scriptures, rightly interpreted, were supreme and perfect truth; indeed, I had for several years accustomed myself to speak and think as if the Bible were our sole source of all moral knowledge: nevertheless, there were practically limits, beyond which I did not, and could not, even attempt to blind my moral sentiment at the dictation of the Scripture; and this had peculiarly frightened (as I afterwards found) the first friend who welcomed me from abroad.
I was unable to admit the doctrine of "reprobation," as apparently taught in the 9th chapter of Paul"s Epistle to the Romans;--that "G.o.d hardens in wickedness whomever He pleases, in order that He may show his long-suffering" in putting off their condemnation to a future dreadful day: and _especially_, that to all objectors it is a sufficient confutation--"Nay, but O man, who art thou, that repliest against G.o.d?" I told my friend, that I worshipped in G.o.d three great attributes, all independent,--Power, Goodness, and Wisdom: that in order to worship Him acceptably, I must discern these _as_ realities with my inmost heart, and not merely take them for granted on authority: but that the argument which was here pressed upon me was an effort to supersede the necessity of my discerning Goodness in G.o.d: it bade me simply to _infer_ Goodness from Power,--that is to say, establish the doctrine, "Might makes Right;" according to which, I might unawares worship a devil. Nay, nothing so much distinguished the spiritual truth of Judaism and Christianity from abominable heathenism, as this very discernment of G.o.d"s purity, justice, mercy, truth, goodness; while the Pagan worshipped mere power, and had no discernment of moral excellence; but laid down the principle, that cruelty, impurity, or caprice in a G.o.d was to be treated reverentially, and called by some more decorous name. Hence, I said, it was undermining the very foundation of Christianity itself, to require belief of the validity of Rom. ix. 14-24, as my friend understood it. I acknowledged the difficulty of the pa.s.sage, and of the whole argument. I was not prepared with an interpretation; but I revered St. Paul too much, to believe it possible that he could mean anything so obviously heathenish, as that first-sight meaning.--My friend looked grave and anxious; but I did not suspect how deeply I had shocked him, until many weeks after.
At this very time, moreover, ground was broken in my mind on a new subject, by opening in a gentleman"s library a presentation-copy of a Unitarian treatise against the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. It was the first Unitarian book of which I had even seen the outside, and I handled it with a timid curiosity, as if by stealth, I had only time to dip into it here and there, and I should have been ashamed to possess the book; but I carried off enough to suggest important inquiry. The writer a.s.serted that the Greek word [Greek: aionios], (secular, or, belonging to the ages,) which we translate _everlasting and eternal_, is distinctly proved by the Greek translation of the Old Testament often to mean only _distant time_. Thus in Psalm lxxvi. 5, "I have considered the years of _ancient_ times:" Isaiah lxiii 11, "He remembered the days _of old_, Moses and his people;" in which, and in many similar places, the LXX have [Greek: aionios]. One striking pa.s.sage is Exodus xv. 18; ("Jehovah shall reign for ever and ever;") where the Greek has [Greek: ton aiona kai ex aiona kai eti], which would mean "for eternity and still longer," if the strict rendering _eternity_ were enforced. At the same time a suspicion as to the honesty of our translation presented itself in Micah v. 2, a controversial text, often used to prove the past eternity of the Son of G.o.d; where the translators give us,--"whose goings forth have been _from everlasting_," though the Hebrew is the same as they elsewhere render _from days of old_.
After I had at leisure searched through this new question, I found that it was impossible to make out any doctrine of a philosophical eternity in the whole Scriptures. The true Greek word for _eternal_ ([Greek: aidios]) occurs twice only: once in Rom. i. 20, as applied to the divine power, and once in Jude 6, of the fire which has been manifested against Sodom and Gomorrha. The last instance showed that allowance must be made for rhetoric; and that fire is called _eternal_ or _unquenchable_, when it so destroys as to leave nothing unburnt.
But on the whole, the very vocabulary of the Greek and Hebrew denoted that the idea of absolute eternity was unformed. The _hills_ are called everlasting (secular?), by those who supposed them to have come into existence two or three thousand years before.--Only in two pa.s.sages of the Revelations I could not get over the belief that the writer"s energy was misplaced, if absolute eternity of torment was not intended: yet it seemed to me unsafe and wrong to found an important doctrine on a symbolic and confessedly obscure book of prophecy.
Setting this aside, I found no proof of any _eternal_ punishment.