As soon as the load of Scriptural authority was thus taken off from me, I had a vivid discernment of intolerable moral difficulties inseparable from the doctrine. First, that every sin is infinite in ill-desert and in result, _because_ it is committed against an infinite Being. Thus the fretfulness of a child is an infinite evil!
I was aghast that I could have believed it. Now that it was no longer laid upon me as a duty to uphold the infinitude of G.o.d"s retaliation on sin, I saw that it was an immorality to teach that sin was measured by anything else than the heart and will of the agent. That a finite being should deserve infinite punishment, now was manifestly as incredible as that he should deserve infinite reward,--which I had never dreamed.--Again, I saw that the current orthodoxy made Satan eternal conqueror over Christ. In vain does the Son of G.o.d come from heaven and take human flesh and die on the cross. In spite of him, the devil carries off to h.e.l.l the vast majority of mankind, in whom, not misery only, but _Sin_ is triumphant for ever and ever. Thus Christ not only does not succeed in destroying the works of the devil, but even aggravates them.--Again: what sort of _gospel_ or glad tidings had I been holding? Without this revelation no future state at all (I presumed) could be known. How much better no futurity for any, than that a few should be eternally in bliss, and the great majority[2]
kept alive for eternal sin as well as eternal misery! My gospel then was bad tidings, nay, the worst of tidings! In a farther progress of thought, I asked, would it not have been better that the whole race of man had never come into existence? Clearly! And thus G.o.d was made out to be unwise in creating them. No _use_ in the punishment was imaginable, without setting up Fear, instead of Love, as the ruling principle in the blessed. And what was the moral tendency of the doctrine? I had never borne to dwell upon it: but I before long suspected that it promoted malignity and selfishness, and was the real clue to the cruelties perpetrated under the name of religion. For he who does dwell on it, must comfort himself under the prospect of his brethren"s eternal misery, by the selfish expectation of personal blessedness. When I asked whether I had been guilty of this selfishness, I remembered that I had often mourned, how small a part in my practical religion the future had ever borne. My heaven and my h.e.l.l had been in the present, where my G.o.d was near me to smile or to frown. It had seemed to me a great weakness in my faith, that I never had any vivid imaginations or strong desires of heavenly glory: yet now I was glad to observe, that it had at least saved me from getting so much harm from the wrong side of the doctrine of a future life.
Before I had worked out the objections so fully as here stated, I freely disclosed my thoughts to the friend last named, and to his wife, towards whom he encouraged me to exercise the fullest frankness.
I confess, I said nothing about the Unitarian book; for something told me that I had violated Evangelical decorum in opening it, and that I could not calculate how it would affect my friend. Certainly no Romish hierarchy can so successfully exclude heretical books, as social enactment excludes those of Unitarians from our orthodox circles.
The bookseller dares not to exhibit their books on his counter: all presume them to be pestilential: no one knows their contents or dares to inform himself. But to return. My friend"s wife entered warmly into my new views; I have now no doubt that this exceedingly distressed him, and at length perverted his moral judgment: he himself examined the texts of the Old Testament, and attempted no answer to them.
After I had left his neighbourhood, I wrote to him three affectionate letters, and at last got a reply--of vehement accusation. It can now concern no one to know, how many and deep wounds he planted in me. I forgave; but all was too instructive to forget.
For some years I rested in the belief that the epithet "_secular_ punishment" either solely denoted punishment in a future age, or else only of long duration. This evades the horrible idea of eternal and triumphant Sin, and of infinite retaliation for finite offences.
But still, I found my new creed uneasy, now that I had established a practice (if not a right) of considering the moral propriety of punishment. I could not so pare away the vehement words of the Scripture, as really to enable me to say that I thought transgressors _deserved_ the fiery infliction. This had been easy, while I measured their guilt by G.o.d"s greatness; but when that idea was renounced, how was I to think that a good-humoured voluptuary deserved to be raised from the dead in order to be tormented in fire for 100 years? and what shorter time could be called secular? Or if he was to be destroyed instantaneously, and "secular" meant only "in a future age," was he worth the effort of a divine miracle to bring him to life and again annihilate him? I was not willing to refuse belief to the Scripture on such grounds; yet I felt disquietude, that my moral sentiment and the Scripture were no longer in full harmony.
In this period I first discerned the extreme difficulty that there must essentially be, in applying to the Christian Evidences a principle, which, many years before, I had abstractedly received as sound, though it had been a dead letter with me in practice. The Bible (it seemed) contained two sorts of truth. Concerning one sort, man is bound to judge: the other sort is necessarily beyond his ken, and is received only by information from without. The first part of the statement cannot be denied. It would be monstrous to say that we know nothing of geography, history, or morals, except by learning them from the Bible. Geography, history, and other worldly sciences, lie beyond question. As to morals, I had been exceedingly inconsistent and wavering in my theory and in its application; but it now glared upon me, that if man had no independent power of judging, it would have been venial to think Barabbas more virtuous than Jesus. The hearers of Christ or Paul could not draw their knowledge of right and wrong from the New Testament. They had (or needed to have) an inherent power of discerning that his conduct was holy and his doctrine good. To talk about the infirmity or depravity of the human conscience is here quite irrelevant. The conscience of Christ"s hearers may have been dim or twisted, but it was their best guide and only guide, as to the question, whether to regard him as a holy prophet: so likewise, as to ourselves, it is evident that we have no guide at all whether to accept or reject the Bible, if we distrust that inward power of judging, (whether called common sense, conscience, or the Spirit of G.o.d,)--which is independent of our belief in the Bible. To disparage the internally vouchsafed power of discerning truth without the Bible or other authoritative system, is, to endeavour to set up a universal moral scepticism. He who may not criticize cannot approve.--Well! Let it be admitted that we discern moral truth by a something within us, and that then, admiring the truth so glorious in the Scriptures, we are further led to receive them as the word of G.o.d, and therefore to believe them absolutely in respect to the matters which are beyond our ken.
But two difficulties could no longer be dissembled: 1. How are we to draw the line of separation? For instance, would the doctrines of Reprobation and of lasting Fiery Torture with no benefit to the sufferers, belong to the moral part, which we freely criticize; or to the extra-moral part, as to which we pa.s.sively believe? 2. What is to be done, if in the parts which indisputably lie open to criticism we meet with apparent error?--The second question soon became a practical one with me: but for the reader"s convenience I defer it until my Fourth Period, to which it more naturally belongs: for in this Third Period I was princ.i.p.ally exercised with controversies that do not vitally touch the _authority_ of the Scripture. Of these the most important were matters contested between Unitarians and Calvinists.
When I had found how exactly the Nicene Creed summed up all that I myself gathered from John and Paul concerning the divine nature of Christ, I naturally referred to this creed, as expressing my convictions, when any unpleasant inquiry arose. I had recently gained the acquaintance of the late excellent Dr. Olinthus Gregory, a man of unimpeached orthodoxy; who met me by the frank avowal, that the Nicene Creed was "a great mistake." He said, that the Arian and the Athanasian difference was not very vital; and that the Scriptural truth lay _beyond_ the Nicene doctrine, which fell short on the same side as Arianism had done. On the contrary, I had learned of an intermediate tenet, called Semi-Arianism, which appeared to me more scriptural than the views of either Athanasius or Arius. Let me bespeak my reader"s patience for a little. Arius was judged by Athanasius (I was informed) to be erroneous in two points; 1. in teaching that the Son of G.o.d was a creature; _i.e._ that "begotten"
and "made" were two words for the same idea: 2. in teaching, that he had an origin of existence in time; so that there was a distant period at which he was not. Of these two Arian tenets, the Nicene Creed condemned _the former_ only; namely, in the words, "begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father." But on _the latter_ question the Creed is silent. Those who accepted the Creed, and hereby condemned the great error of Arius that the Son was of different substance from the Father, but nevertheless agreed with Arius in thinking that the Son had a beginning of existence, were called Semi-Arians; and were received into communion by Athanasius, in spite of this disagreement. To me it seemed to be a most unworthy shuffling with words, to say that the Son _was begotten, but was never begotten_. The very form of our past participle is invented to indicate an event in past time. If the Athanasians alleged that the phrase does not allude to "a coming forth" completed at a definite time, but indicates a process at no time begun and at no time complete, their doctrine could not be expressed by our past-perfect tense _begotten_. When they compared the derivation of the Son of G.o.d from, the Father to the rays of light which ever flow from the natural sun, and argued that if that sun had been eternal, its emanations would be co-eternal, they showed that their true doctrine required the formula--"always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually." They showed a real disbelief in our English statement "begotten, not made." I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing that Christ was "_not begotten, yet begettive_," roused in me an unspeakable loathing. Yet surely this would have been Athanasius"s most legitimate form of denying Semi-Arianism. In short, the Scriptural phrase, _Son of G.o.d_, conveyed to us either a literal fact, or a metaphor. If literal, the Semi-Arians were clearly right, in saying that sonship implied a beginning of existence. If it was a metaphor, the Athanasians forfeited all right to press the literal sense in proof that the Son must be "of the same substance" as the Father.--Seeing that the Athanasians, in zeal to magnify the Son, had so confounded their good sense, I was certainly startled to find a man of Dr. Olinthus Gregory"s moral wisdom treat the Nicenists as in obvious error for not having magnified Christ _enough_. On so many other sides, however, I met with the new and short creed, "Jesus is Jehovah," that I began to discern Sabellianism to be the prevalent view.
A little later, I fell in with a book of an American Professor, Moses Stuart of Andover, on the subject of the Trinity. Professor Stuart is a very learned man, and thinks for himself. It was a great novelty to me, to find him not only deny the orthodoxy of all the Fathers, (which was little more than Dr. Olinthus Gregory had done,) but avow that _from the change in speculative philosophy_ it was simply impossible for any modern to hold the views prevalent in the third and fourth centuries. Nothing (said he) WAS clearer, than that with us the essential point in Deity is, to be unoriginated, underived; hence with us, _a derived G.o.d_ is a self-contradiction, and the very sound of the phrase profane. On the other hand, it is certain that the doctrine of Athanasius, equally as of Arius, was, that the Father is the underived or self-existent G.o.d, but the Son is the derived subordinate G.o.d.
This (argued Stuart) turned upon their belief in the doctrine of Emanations; but as _we_ hold no such philosophical doctrine, the religious theory founded on it is necessarily inadmissible. Professor Stuart then develops his own creed, which appeared to me simple and undeniable Sabellianism.
That Stuart correctly represented the Fathers was clear enough to me; but I nevertheless thought that in this respect the Fathers had honestly made out the doctrine of the Scripture; and I did not at all approve of setting up a battery of modern speculative philosophy against Scriptural doctrine. "How are we to know that the doctrine of Emanations is false? (asked I.) If it is legitimately elicited from Scripture, it is true."--I refused to yield up my creed at this summons. Nevertheless, he left a wound upon me: for I now could not help seeing, that we moderns use the word _G.o.d_ in a more limited sense than any ancient nations did. Hebrews and Greeks alike said _G.o.ds_, to mean any superhuman beings; hence _derived G.o.d_ did not sound to them absurd; but I could not deny that in good English it is absurd. This was a very disagreeable discovery: for now, if any one were to ask me whether I believed in the divinity of Christ, I saw it would be dishonest to say simply, _Yes_; for the interrogator means to ask, whether I hold Christ to be the eternal and underived Source of life; yet if I said _No_, he would care nothing for my professing to hold the Nicene Creed.
Might not then, after all, Sabellianism be the truth? No: I discerned too plainly what Gibbon states, that the Sabellian, if consistent, is only a concealed Ebionite, or us we now say, a Unitarian, Socinian. As we cannot admit that the Father was slain on the cross, or prayed to himself in the garden, he who will not allow the Father and the Son to be separate persons, but only two names for one person, _must divide the Son of G.o.d and Jesus into two persons_, and so fall back on the very heresy of Socinus which he is struggling to escape.
On the whole, I saw, that however people might call themselves Trinitarians, yet if, like Stuart and all the Evangelicals in Church and Dissent, they turn into a dead letter the _generation_ of the Son of G.o.d, and _the procession_ of the Spirit, nothing is possible but Sabellianism or Tritheism: or, indeed, Ditheism, if the Spirit"s separate personality is not held. The modern creed is alternately the one or the other, as occasion requires. Sabellians would find themselves out to be mere Unitarians, if they always remained Sabellians: but in fact, they are half their lives Ditheists. They do not _aim_ at consistency; would an upholder of the pseudo-Athanasian creed desire it? Why, that creed teaches, that the height of orthodoxy is to contradict oneself and protest that one does not. Now, however, rose on me the question: Why do I not take the Irish clergyman at his word, and attack him and others as idolaters and worshippers of three G.o.ds? It was unseemly and absurd in him to try to force me into what he must have judged uncharitableness; but it was not the less inc.u.mbent on me to find a reply.
I remembered that in past years I had expressly disowned, as obviously unscriptural and absurd, prayers to the Holy Spirit, on the ground that the Spirit is evidently _G.o.d in the hearts of the faithful_, and nothing else: and it did not appear to me that any but a few extreme and rather fanatical persons could be charged with making the Spirit a third G.o.d or object of distinct worship. On the other hand, I could not deny that the Son and the Father were thus distinguished to the mind. So indeed John expressly avowed--"truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." I myself also had prayed sometimes to G.o.d and sometimes to Christ, alternately and confusedly.
Now, indeed, I was better taught! now I was more logical and consistent! I had found a triumphant answer to the charge of Ditheism, in that I believed the Son to be derived from the Father, and not to be the Unoriginated--No doubt! yet, after all, could I seriously think that morally and spiritually I was either better or worse for this discovery? I could not pretend that I was.
This showed me, that if a man of partially unsound and visionary mind made the angel Gabriel a _fourth person_ in the G.o.dhead, it might cause no difference whatever in the actings of his spirit The great question would be, whether he ascribed the same moral perfection to Gabriel as to the Father. If so, to worship him would be no degradation to the soul; even if absolute omnipotence were not attributed, nay, nor a past eternal existence. It thus became clear to me, that Polytheism _as such_ is not a moral and spiritual, but at most only an intellectual, error; and that its practical evil consists in worshipping beings whom we represent to our imaginations as morally imperfect. Conversely, one who imputes to G.o.d sentiments and conduct which in man he would call capricious or cruel, such a one, even if he be as monotheistic as a Mussulman, admits into his soul the whole virus of Idolatry.
Why then did I at all cling to the doctrine of Christ"s superior nature, and not admit it among things indifferent? In obedience to the Scripture, I did actually affirm, that, as for as creed is concerned, a man should be admissible into the Church on the bare confession that _Jesus was the Christ_. Still, I regarded a belief in his superhuman origin as of first-rate importance, for many reasons, and among others, owing to its connexion with the doctrine of the Atonement; on which there is much to be said.
The doctrine which I used to read as a boy, taught that a vast sum of punishment was due to G.o.d for the sins of men. This vast sum was made up of all the woes due through eternity to the whole human race, or, as some said, to the elect. Christ on the cross bore this punishment himself and thereby took it away: thus G.o.d is enabled to forgive without violating justice.--But I early encountered unanswerable difficulty on this theory, as to the question, whether Christ had borne the punishment of _all_ or of _some_ only. If of all, is it not unjust to inflict any of it on any? If of the elect only, what gospel have you to preach? for then you cannot tell sinners that G.o.d has provided a Saviour for them; for you do not know whether those whom you address are elect. Finding no way out of this, I abandoned the fundamental idea of _compensation in quant.i.ty_, as untenable; and rested in the vaguer notion, that G.o.d signally showed his abhorrence of sin, by laying tremendous misery on the Saviour who was to bear away sin.
I have already narrated, how at Oxford I was embarra.s.sed as to the forensic propriety of transferring punishment at all. This however I received as matter of authority, and rested much on the wonderful exhibition made of the evil of sin, when _such_ a being could be subjected to preternatural suffering as a vicarious sinbearer. To this view, a high sense of the personal dignity of Jesus was quite essential; and therefore I had always felt a great repugnance for Mr.
Belsham, Dr. Priestley, and the Unitarians of that school, though I had not read a line of their writings.
A more intimate familiarity with St. Paul and an anxious harmonizing of my very words to the Scripture, led me on into a deviation from the popular creed, of the full importance of which I was not for some time aware. I perceived that it is not the _agonies_ of mind or body endured by Christ, which in the Scriptures are said to take away sin, but his "death," his "laying down his life," or sometimes even his _resurrection_. I gradually became convinced, that when his "suffering," or more especially his "blood," is emphatically spoken of, nothing is meant but his _violent death_. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the a.n.a.logy of Sacrifice is so pressed, we see that the pains which Jesus bore were in order that he might "learn obedience,"
but our redemption is effected by his dying as a voluntary victim: in which, death by bloodshed, not pain, is the cardinal point. So too the Paschal lamb (to which, though not properly a sacrifice, the dying Christ is compared by Paul) was not roasted alive, or otherwise put to slow torment, but was simply killed. I therefore saw that the doctrine of "vicarious agonies" was fundamentally unscriptural.
This being fully discerned, I at last became bold to criticize the popular tenet. What should we think of a judge, who, when a boy had deserved a stripe which would to him have been a sharp punishment, laid the very same blow on a strong man, to whom it was a slight infliction? Clearly this would evade, not satisfy justice. To carry out the principle, the blow might be laid as well on a giant, an elephant, or on an inanimate thing. So, to lay our punishment on the infinite strength of Christ, who (they say) bore in six hours what it would have taken thousands of millions of men all eternity to bear, would be a similar evasion.--I farther asked, if we were to fall in with Pagans, who tortured their victims to death as an atonement, what idea of G.o.d should we think them to form? and what should we reply, if they said, it gave them a wholesome view of his hatred of sin? A second time I shuddered at the notions which I had once imbibed as a part of religion, and then got comfort from the inference, how much better men of this century are than their creed. Their creed was the product of ages of cruelty and credulity; and it sufficiently bears that stamp.
Thus I rested in the Scriptural doctrine, that the _death_ of Christ is our atonement. To say the same of the death of Paul, was obviously unscriptural: it was, then, essential to believe the physical nature of Christ to be different from that of Paul. If otherwise, death was due to Jesus as the lot of nature: how could such death have anything to do with our salvation? On this ground the Unitarian doctrine was utterly untenable: I could see nothing between my own view and a total renunciation of the _authority of the doctrines_ promulgated by Paul and John.
Nevertheless, my own view seemed mere and more unmeaning the more closely it was interrogated. When I ascribed death to Christ, what did death mean? and what or whom did I suppose to die? Was it man that died, or G.o.d? If man only, how was that wonderful, or how did it concern us? Besides;--persons die, not natures: a _nature_ is only a collection of properties: if Christ was one person, all Christ died. Did, then, G.o.d die, and man remain alive! For G.o.d to become non-existent is an unimaginable absurdity. But is this death a mere change of state, a renunciation of earthly life? Still it remains unclear how the parting with mere human life could be to one who possesses divine life either an atonement or a humiliation. Was it not rather an escape from humiliation, saving only the mode of death?
So severe was this difficulty, that at length I unawares dropt from Semi-Arianism into pure Arianism, by _so_ distinguishing the Son from the Father, as to admit the idea that the Son of G.o.d had actually been non-existent in the interval between death and resurrection: nevertheless, I more and more felt, that _to be able to define my own notions on such questions had exceedingly little to do with my spiritual state_. For me it was important and essential to know that G.o.d hated sin, and that G.o.d had forgiven my sin: but to know one particular manifestation of his hatred of sin, or the machinery by which He had enabled himself to forgive, was of very secondary importance. When He proclaims to me in his word, that He is forgiving to all the penitent, it is not for me to reply, that "I cannot believe that, until I hear how He manages to reconcile such conduct with his other attributes." Yet, I remembered, this was Bishop Beveridge"s sufficient refutation of Mohammedism, which teaches no atonement.
At the same time great progress had been made in my mind towards the overthrow of the correlative dogma of the Fall of man and his total corruption. Probably for years I had been unawares anti-Calvinistic on this topic. Even at Oxford, I had held that human depravity is a _fact_, which it is absurd to argue against; a fact, attested by Thucydides, Polybius, Horace, and Tacitus, almost as strongly as by St. Paul. Yet in admitting man"s total corruption, I interpreted this of _spiritual_, not of _moral_, perversion: for that there were kindly and amiable qualities even in the unregenerate, was quite as clear a fact as any other. Hence in result I did _not_ attribute to man any great essential depravity, in the popular and moral sense of the word; and the doctrine amounted only to this, that "_spiritually_, man is paralyzed, until the grace of G.o.d comes freely upon him." How to reconcile this with the condemnation, and punishment of man for being unspiritual, I knew not. I saw, and did not dissemble, the difficulty; but received it as a mystery hereafter to be cleared up.
But it gradually broke upon me, that when Paul said nothing stronger than heathen moralists had said about human wickedness, it was absurd to quote his words, any more than theirs, in proof of a _Fall_,--that is, of a permanent degeneracy induced by the first sin of the first man: and when I studied the 5th chapter of the Romans, I found it was _death_, not _corruption_, which Adam was said to have entailed. In short, I could scarcely find the modern doctrine of the "Fall" any where in the Bible. I then remembered that Calvin, in his Inst.i.tutes, complains that all the Fathers are heterodox on this point; the Greek Fathers being grievously overweening in their estimate of human power; while of the Latin Fathers even Augustine is not always up to Calvin"s mark of orthodoxy. This confirmed my rising conviction that the tenet is of rather recent origin. I afterwards heard, that both it and the doctrine of compensatory misery were first systematized by Archbishop Anselm, in the reign of our William Rufus: but I never took the pains to verify this.
For meanwhile I had been forcibly impressed with the following thought. Suppose a youth to have been carefully brought up at home, and every temptation kept out of his way: suppose him to have been in appearance virtuous, amiable, religious: suppose, farther, that at the age of twenty-one he goes out into the world, and falls into sin by the first temptation:--how will a Calvinistic teacher moralize over such a youth? Will he not say: "Behold a proof of the essential depravity of human nature! See the affinity of man for sin! How fair and deceptive was this young man"s virtue, while he was sheltered from temptation; but oh! how rotten has it proved itself!"--Undoubtedly, the Calvinist would and must so moralize. But it struck me, that if I subst.i.tuted the name of _Adam_ for the youth, the argument proved the primitive corruption of Adam"s nature. Adam fell by the first temptation: what greater proof of a fallen nature have _I_ ever given?
or what is it possible for any one to give?--I thus discerned that there was _a priori_ impossibility of fixing on myself the imputation of _degeneracy_, without fixing the same on Adam. In short, Adam undeniably proved his primitive nature to be frail; so do we all: but as _he_ was nevertheless not primitively corrupt, why should we call ourselves so? Frailty, then, is not corruption, and does not prove degeneracy.
"Original sin" (says one of the 39 Articles) "standeth not in the following of Adam, _as the Pelagians do vainly talk_," &c. Alas, then!
was I become a Pelagian? certainly I could no longer see that Adam"s first sin affected me more than his second or third, or so much as the sins of my immediate parents. A father who, for instance, indulges in furious pa.s.sions and exciting liquors, may (I suppose) transmit violent pa.s.sions to his son. In this sense I could not wholly reject the possibility of transmitted corruption; but it had nothing to do with the theological doctrine of the "Federal Headship" of Adam. Not that I could wholly give up this last doctrine; for I still read it in the 5th chapter of Romans. But it was clear to me, that whatever that meant, I could not combine it with the idea of degeneracy, nor could I find a proof of it in the _fact_ of prevalent wickedness. Thus I received a shadowy doctrine on mere Scriptural _authority_; it had no longer any root in my understanding or heart.
Moreover, it was manifest to me that the Calvinistic view is based in a vain attempt to acquit G.o.d of having created a "sinful" being, while the broad Scriptural fact is, that he did create a being as truly "liable to sin" as any of us. If that needs no exculpation, how more does _our_ state need it? Does it not suffice to say, that "every creature, because he is a creature and not G.o.d, must necessarily be frail?" But Calvin intensely aggravates whatever there is of difficulty: for he supposes G.o.d to have created the most precious thing on earth in _unstable equilibrium_, so as to tipple over irrecoverably at the first infinitesimal touch, and with it wreck for ever the spiritual hopes of all Adam"s posterity. Surely all nature proclaims, that if G.o.d planted any spiritual nature at all in man, it was in _stable equilibrium_, able to right itself when deranged.
Lastly, I saw that the Calvinistic doctrine of human degeneracy teaches, that G.o.d disowns my nature (the only nature I ever had) as not his work, but the devil"s work. He hereby tells me that he is _not_ my Creator, and he disclaims his right over me, as a father who disowns a child. To teach this is to teach that I owe him no obedience, no worship, no trust: to sever the cords that bind the creature to the Creator, and to make all religion gratuitous and vain.
Thus Calvinism was found by me not only not to be Evangelical, but not to be logical, in spite of its high logical pretensions, and to be irreconcilable with any intelligent theory of religion. Of "gloomy Calvinism" I had often heard people speak with an emphasis, that annoyed me as highly unjust; for mine had not been a gloomy religion:--far, very far from it. On the side of eternal punishment, its theory, no doubt, had been gloomy enough; but human nature has a notable art of not realizing all the articles of a creed; moreover, _this_ doctrine is equally held by Arminians. But I was conscious, that in dropping Calvinism I had lost nothing _Evangelical_: on the contrary, the gospel which I retained was as spiritual and deep-hearted as before, only more merciful.
Before this Third Period of my creed was completed, I made my first acquaintance with a Unitarian. This gentleman showed much sweetness of mind, largeness of charity, and a timid devoutness which I had not expected in such a quarter. His mixture of credulity and incredulity seemed to me capricious, and wholly incoherent. First, as to his incredulity, or rather, boldness of thought. Eternal punishment was a notion, which nothing could make him believe, and for which it would be useless to quote Scripture to him; for the doctrine (he said) darkened the moral character of G.o.d, and produced malignity in man.
That Christ had any higher nature than we all have, was a tenet essentially inadmissible; first, because it destroyed all moral benefit from his example and sympathy, and next, because no one has yet succeeded in even stating the doctrine of the Incarnation without contradicting himself. If Christ was but one person, one mind, then that one mind could not be simultaneously finite and infinite, nor therefore simultaneously G.o.d and man. But when I came to hear more from this same gentleman, I found him to avow that no Trinitarian could have a higher conception than he of the present power and glory of Christ. He believed that the man Jesus is at the head of the whole moral creation of G.o.d; that all power in heaven and earth is given to him: that he will be Judge of all men, and is himself raised above all judgment. This was to me unimaginable from his point of view. Could he really think Jesus to be a mere man, and yet believe him to be sinless? On what did that belief rest? Two texts were quoted in proof, 1 Pet. ii. 21, and Heb. iv. 15. Of these, the former did not necessarily mean anything more than that Jesus was unjustly put to death; and the latter belonged to an Epistle, which my new friend had already rejected as unapostolic and not of first-rate authority, when speaking of the Atonement. Indeed, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not from the hand of Paul, had very long seemed to me an obvious certainty,--as long as I had had any delicate feeling of Greek style.
That a human child, born with the nature of other children, and having to learn wisdom and win virtue through the same process, should grow up sinless, appeared to me an event so paradoxical, as to need the most amply decisive proof. Yet what kind of proof was possible?
Neither Apollos, (if he was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrew,) nor yet Peter, had any power of _attesting_ the sinlessness of Jesus, as a fact known to themselves personally: they could only learn it by some preternatural communication, to which, nevertheless, the pa.s.sages before us implied no pretension whatever. To me it appeared an axiom,[3] that if Jesus was in physical origin a mere man, he was, like myself, a sinful man, and therefore certainly not my Judge, certainly not an omniscient reader of all hearts; nor on any account to be bowed down to as Lord. To exercise hope, faith, trust in him, seemed then an impiety. I did not mean to impute impiety to Unitarians; still I distinctly believed that English Unitarianism could never afford me a half hour"s resting-place.
Nevertheless, from contact with this excellent person I learned how much tenderness of spirit a Unitarian may have; and it pleasantly enlarged my charity, although I continued to feel much repugnance for his doctrine, and was anxious and constrained in the presence of Unitarians. From the same collision with him, I gained a fresh insight into a part of my own mind. I had always regarded the Gospels (at least the three first) to be to the Epistles nearly as Law to Gospel; that is, the three gospels dealt chiefly in _precept_, the epistles in _motives_ which act on the affections. This did not appear to me dishonourable to the teaching of Christ; for I supposed it to be a pre-determined development. But I now discovered that there was a deeper distaste in me for the details of the human life of Christ, than I was previously conscious of--a distaste which I found out, by a reaction from the minute interest felt in such details by my new friend. For several years more, I did not fully understand how and why this was; viz. that _my religion had always been Pauline_. Christ was to me the ideal of glorified human nature: but I needed some dimness in the portrait to give play to my imagination: if drawn too sharply historical, it sank into something not superhuman, and caused a revulsion of feeling. As all paintings of the miraculous used to displease and even disgust me from a boy by the unbelief which they inspired; so if any one dwelt on the special proofs of tenderness and love exhibited in certain words or actions of Jesus, it was apt to call out in me a sense, that from day to day equal kindness might often be met. The imbecility of preachers, who would dwell on such words as "Weep not," as if n.o.body else ever uttered such,--had always annoyed me. I felt it impossible to obtain a worthy idea of Christ from studying any of the details reported concerning him. If I dwelt too much on these, I got a finite object; but I yearned for an infinite one: hence my preference for John"s mysterious Jesus. Thus my Christ was not the figure accurately painted in the narrative, but one kindled in my imagination by the allusions and (as it were) poetry of the New Testament. I did not wish for vivid historical realisation: relics I could never have valued: pilgrimages to Jerusalem had always excited in me more of scorn than of sympathy;--and I make no doubt such was fundamentally Paul"s[4] feeling. On the contrary, it began to appear to me (and I believe not unjustly) that the Unitarian mind revelled peculiarly in "Christ after the flesh," whom Paul resolved not to know. Possibly in this circ.u.mstance will be found to lie the strong and the weak points of the Unitarian religious character, as contrasted with that of the Evangelical, far more truly than in the doctrine of the Atonement. I can testify that the Atonement may be dropt out of Pauline religion without affecting its quality; so may Christ be spiritualized into G.o.d, and identified with the Father: but I suspect that a Pauline faith could not, without much violence and convulsion, be changed into devout admiration of a clearly drawn historical character; as though any full and unsurpa.s.sable embodiment of G.o.d"s moral perfections could be exhibited with ink and pen.
A reviewer, who has since made his name known, has pointed to the preceding remarks, as indicative of my deficiency in _imagination_ and my tendency to _romance_. My dear friend is undoubtedly right in the former point; I am dest.i.tute of (creative) poetical imagination: and as to the latter point, his insight into character is so great, that I readily believe him to know me better than I know myself, Nevertheless, I think he has mistaken the nature of the preceding argument. I am, on the contrary, almost disposed to say, that those have a tendency to romance who can look at a picture with men flying into the air, or on an angel with a bra.s.s trumpet, and dead men rising out of their graves with good stout muscles, and _not_ feel that the picture suggests unbelief. Nor do I confess to romance in my desire of something _more_ than historical and daily human nature in the character of Jesus; for all Christendom, between the dates A.D. 100 to A.D. 1850, with the exception of small eccentric coteries, has held Jesus to be essentially superhuman. Paul and John so taught concerning him. To believe their doctrine (I agree with my friend) is, in some sense, a weakness of understanding; but it is a weakness to which minds of every cla.s.s have been for ages liable.
Such had been the progress of my mind, towards the end of what I will call my Third Period. In it the authority of the Scriptures as to some details (which at length became highly important) had begun to be questioned; of which I shall proceed to speak: but hitherto this was quite secondary to the momentous revolution which lay Calvinism prostrate in my mind, which opened my heart to Unitarians, and, I may say, to unbelievers; which enlarged all my sympathies, and soon set me to practise free moral thought, at least as a necessity, if not as a duty. Yet I held fast an unabated reverence for the moral and spiritual teaching of the New Testament, and had not the most remote conception that anything could ever shatter my belief in its great miracles. In fact, during this period, I many times yearned to proceed to India, whither my friend Groves had transferred his labours and his hopes; but I was thwarted by several causes, and was again and again damped by the fear of bigotry from new quarters. Otherwise, I thought I could succeed in merging as needless many controversies. In all the workings of any mind about Tri-unity, Incarnation, Atonement, the Fall, Resurrection, Immortality, Eternal Punishment, how little had any of these to do with the inward exercises of my soul towards G.o.d!
He was still the same, immutably glorious: not one feature of his countenance had altered to my gaze, or could alter. This surely was the G.o.d whom Christ came to reveal, and bring us into fellowship with: this is that, about which Christians ought to have no controversy, but which they should unitedly, concordantly, themselves enjoy and exhibit to the heathen. But oh, Christendom! what dost thou believe and teach?
The heathen cry out to thee,--Physician, heal thyself.
[Footnote 1: I afterwards learned that some of those gentlemen esteemed boldness of thought "a l.u.s.t of the mind," and as such, an immorality. This enables them to persuade themselves that they do not reject a "heretic" for a matter of _opinion_, but for that which they have a right to call "_immoral_". What immorality was imputed to me, I was not distinctly informed.]
[Footnote 2: I really thought it needless to quote proof that but _few_ will be saved, Matth. vii. 14. I know there is a cla.s.s of Christians who believe in Universal salvation, and there are others who disbelieve eternal torment. They must not be angry with me for refuting the doctrine of other Christians, which they hold to be false.]
[Footnote 3: In this (second) edition, I have added an entire chapter expressly on the subject.]
[Footnote 4: The same may probably be said of all the apostles, and their whole generation. If they had looked on the life of Jesus with the same tender and human affection as modern Unitarians and pious Romanists do, the church would have swarmed with _holy coats_ and other relics in the very first age. The mother of Jesus and her little establishment would at once have swelled into importance. This certainly was not the case; which may make it doubtful whether the other apostles dwelt at all more on the _human personality_, of Jesus than Paul did. Strikingly different as James is from Paul, he is in this respect perfectly agreed with him.]