Their folly is the stuff in which the sound sense of the worldly-wise is at once manifested and remunerated; their idleness of thought, with the pa.s.sions, appet.i.tes, likings and fancies, which are its natural growth, though weeds, give direction and employment to the industry of the other. The accidents of inheritance by birth, of acc.u.mulation of property in partial ma.s.ses, are thus counteracted,--and the aneurisms in the circulating system prevented or rendered fewer and less obstinate,--whilst animal want, the sure general result of idleness and its accompanying vices, tames at length the selfish host, into the laborious slaves and mechanic implements of the self-interested. Thus, without public spirit, nay, by the predominance of the opposite quality, the latter are the public benefactors: and, giving steadfastness and compactness to the whole, lay in the ground of the canva.s.s, on which minds of finer texture may impress beauty and harmony.
Lastly, there is in the heart of all men a working principle,--call it ambition, or vanity, or desire of distinction, the inseparable adjunct of our individuality and personal nature, and flowing from the same source as language--the instinct and necessity in each man of declaring his particular existence, and thus of singling or singularizing himself.
In some this principle is far stronger than in others, while in others its comparative dimness may pa.s.s for its non-existence. But in thoughts at least, and secret fancies there is in all men (idiocy of course excepted) a wish to remain the same and yet to be something else, and something more, or to exhibit what they are, or imagine they might be, somewhere else and to other spectators. Now, though this desire of distinction, when it is disproportionate to the powers and qualities by which the individual is indeed distinguished, or when it is the governing pa.s.sion, or taken as the rule of conduct, is but a "knavish sprite," yet as an attendant and subaltern spirit, it has its good purposes and beneficial effects: and is not seldom
--sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door.
Though selfish in its origin, it yet tends to elevate the individual from selfishness into self-love, under a softer and perhaps better form than that of self-interest, the form of self-respect. Whatever other objects the man may be pursuing, and with whatever other inclinations, he is still by this principle impelled and almost compelled to pa.s.s out of himself in imagination, and to survey himself at a sufficient distance, in order to judge what figure he is likely to make in the eyes of his fellow men. But in thus taking his station as at the apex of a triangle, while the self is at one angle of the base, he makes it possible at least that the image of his neighbour may appear at the other, whether by spontaneous a.s.sociation, or placed there for the purposes of comparison; and so both be contemplated at equal distance. But this is the first step towards disinterestedness; and though it should never be reached, the advantage of the appearance is soon learnt, and the necessity of avoiding the appearance of the contrary. But appearances cannot be long sustained without some touch of the reality. At all events there results a control over our actions; some good may be produced, and many a poisonous or offensive fruit will be prevented.
Courtesy, urbanity, gallantry, munificence; the outward influence of the law shall I call it, or rather fashion of honour--these are the handsome hypocrisies that spring from the desire of distinction. I ask not the genius of a Machiavel, a Tacitus, or a Swift;--it needs only a worldly experience and an observing mind, to convince a man of forty that there is no medium between the creed of misanthropy and that of the gospel.
A pagan might be as orthodox as Paul on the doctrine of works.
First,--set aside the large portion of them that have their source in the const.i.tutional temperament,--the merit of which, if any, belongs to nature, not to the individual agent; and of the remaining number of good works, nine are derived from vices for one that has its origin in virtue. I have often in looking at the water-works, and complex machinery of our manufactories, indulged a humorous mood by fancying that the hammers, cogs, fly-wheels, &c. were each actuated by some appet.i.te, or pa.s.sion--hate, rage, revenge, vanity, cupidity, &c. while the general result was most benignant, and the machine, taken as a whole, the product of power, knowledge, and benevolence! Such a machine does the moral world, the world of human nature, appear--and to those who seem ever more to place the comparison and the alternative between h.e.l.l and earth, and quite overlook the opposition between earth and heaven, I recommend this meditation.
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. [1]
I. MIRACLES--as precluding the contrary evidence of no miracles.
II. The material of Christianity, its existence and history.
III. The doctrines of Christianity, and the correspondence of human nature to those doctrines,--ill.u.s.trated,
1st, historically--as the actual production of a new world, and the dependence of the fate of the planet upon it;--
2nd, individually--from its appeal for its truth to an a.s.serted fact,--which, whether it be real or not, every man possessing reason has an equal power of ascertaining within himself;--namely, a will which has more or less lost its freedom, though not the consciousness that it ought to be and may become free;--the conviction that this cannot be achieved without the operation of a principle connatural with itself;--the evident rationality of an entire confidence in that principle, being the condition and means of its operation;--the experience in his own nature of the truth of the process described by Scripture as far as he can place himself within the process, aided by the confident a.s.surances of others as to the effects experienced by them, and which he is striving to arrive at. All these form a practical Christian. Add, however, a gradual opening out of the intellect to more and more clear perceptions of the strict coincidence of the doctrines of Christianity, with the truths evolved by the mind, from reflections on its own nature. To such a man one main test of the objectivity, the ent.i.ty, the objective truth of his faith, is its accompaniment by an increase of insight into the moral beauty and necessity of the process which it comprises, and the dependence of that proof on the causes a.s.serted. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually trans.m.u.tes faith into knowledge will be the reward of that belief. The Christian, to whom, after a long profession of Christianity, the mysteries remain as much mysteries as before, is in the same state as a schoolboy with regard to his arithmetic to whom the _facit_ at the end of the examples in his cyphering book is the whole ground for his a.s.suming that such and such figures amount to so and so.
3rd. In the above I include the increasing discoveries in the correspondence of the history, the doctrines and the promises of Christianity, with the past, present, and probable future of human nature; and in this state a fair comparison of the religion as a divine philosophy, with all other religions which have pretended to revelations and all other systems of philosophy; both with regard to the totality of its truth and its identification with the manifest march of affairs.
I should conclude that, if we suppose a man to have convinced himself that not only the doctrines of Christianity, which may be conceived independently of history or time, as the Trinity, spiritual influences, &c. are coincident with the truths which his reason, thus strengthened, has evolved from its own sources, but that the historical dogmas, namely, of the incarnation of the creative Logos, and his becoming a personal agent, are themselves founded in philosophical necessity; then it seems irrational, that such a man should reject the belief of the actual appearance of a religion strictly correspondent therewith, at a given time recorded, even as much as that he should reject Caesar"s account of his wars in Gaul, after he has convinced himself "a priori of their probability.
As the result of these convictions he will not scruple to receive the particular miracles recorded, inasmuch as it would be miraculous that an incarnate G.o.d should not work what must to mere men appear as miracles; inasmuch as it is strictly accordant with the ends and benevolent nature of such a being, to commence the elevation of man above his mere senses by attracting and enforcing attention, first through an appeal to those senses. But with equal reason will he expect that no other or greater force should be laid on these miracles as such; that they should not be spoken of as good in themselves, much less as the adequate and ultimate proof of that religion; and likewise he will receive additional satisfaction, should he find these miracles so wrought, and on such occasions, as to give them a personal value as symbols of important truths when their miraculousness was no longer needful or efficacious.
[Footnote 1: Dictated to, and communicated by, Dr. Brabant of Devizes.
Ed.]
CONFESSIO FIDEI
Nov. 3, 1816.
I.
I. I believe that I am a free-agent, inasmuch as, and so far as, I have a will, which renders me justly responsible for my actions, omissive as well as commissive. Likewise that I possess reason, or a law of right and wrong, which, uniting with my sense of moral responsibility, const.i.tutes the voice of conscience.
II. Hence it becomes my absolute duty to believe, and I do believe, that there is a G.o.d, that is, a Being, in whom supreme reason and a most holy will are one with an infinite power; and that all holy will is coincident with the will of G.o.d, and therefore secure in its ultimate consequences by His omnipotence;--having, if such similitude be not unlawful, such a relation to the goodness of the Almighty, as a perfect time-piece will have to the sun.
COROLLARY.
The wonderful works of G.o.d in the sensible world are a perpetual discourse, reminding me of his existence, and shadowing out to me his perfections. But as all language presupposes in the intelligent hearer or reader those primary notions, which it symbolizes; as well as the power of making those combinations of these primary notions, which it represents and excites us to combine,--even so I believe, that the notion of G.o.d is essential to the human mind; that it is called forth into distinct consciousness princ.i.p.ally by the conscience, and auxiliarly by the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the outward creation. It is, therefore, evident to my reason, that the existence of G.o.d is absolutely and necessarily insusceptible of a scientific demonstration, and that Scripture has so represented it. For it commands us to believe in one G.o.d. "I am the Lord thy G.o.d: thou shalt have none other G.o.ds but me". Now all commandment necessarily relates to the will; whereas all scientific demonstration is independent of the will, and is apodictic or demonstrative only as far as it is compulsory on the mind, "volentem, nolentem".
III. My conscience forbids me to propose to myself the pains and pleasures of this life, as the primary motive, or ultimate end, of my actions;--on the contrary, it makes me perceive an utter disproportionateness and heterogeneity between the acts of the spirit, as virtue and vice, and the things of the sense, such as all earthly rewards and punishments must be. Its hopes and fears, therefore, refer me to a different and spiritual state of being: and I believe in the life to come, not through arguments acquired by my understanding or discursive faculty, but chiefly and effectively, because so to believe is my duty, and in obedience to the commands of my conscience. Here ends the first table of my creed, which would have been my creed, had I been born with Adam; and which, therefore, const.i.tutes what may in this sense be called natural religion, that is, the religion of all finite rational beings. The second table contains the creed of revealed religion, my belief as a Christian.
IV. I believe, and hold it as the fundamental article of Christianity, that I am a fallen creature; that I am of myself capable of moral evil, but not of myself capable of moral good, and that an evil ground existed in my will, previously to any given act, or a.s.signable moment of time, in my consciousness. I am born a child of wrath. This fearful mystery I pretend not to understand. I cannot even conceive the possibility of it,--but I know that it is so. My conscience, the sole fountain of certainty, commands me to believe it, and would itself be a contradiction, were it not so--and what is real must be possible.
V. I receive with full and grateful faith the a.s.surance of revelation, that the Word, which is from all eternity with G.o.d, and is G.o.d, a.s.sumed our human nature in order to redeem me, and all mankind from this our connate corruption. My reason convinces me, that no other mode of redemption is conceivable, and, as did Socrates, would have yearned after the Redeemer, though it would not dare expect so wonderful an act of divine love, except only as an effort of my mind to conceive the utmost of the infinite greatness of that love.
VI. I believe, that this a.s.sumption of humanity by the Son of G.o.d, was revealed and realized to vis by the Word made flesh, and manifested to us in Christ Jesus; and that his miraculous birth, his agony, his crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension, were all both symbols of our redemption [Greek (transliterated): phainomena ton noumenon] and necessary parts of the awful process.
VII. I believe in the descent and sending of the Holy Spirit, by whose free grace obtained for me by the merits of my Redeemer, I can alone be sanctified and restored from my natural inheritance of sin and condemnation, be a child of G.o.d, and an inheritor of the kingdom of G.o.d.
COROLLARY.
The Trinity of persons in the Unity of the G.o.d would have been a necessary idea of my speculative reason, deduced from the necessary postulate of an intelligent creator, whose ideas being anterior to the things, must be more actual than those things, even as those things are more actual than our images derived from them; and who, as intelligent, must have had co-eternally an adequate idea of himself, in and through which he created all things both in heaven and earth. But this would only have been a speculative idea, like those of circles and other mathematical figures, to which we are not authorized by the practical reason to attribute reality. Solely in consequence of our Redemption does the Trinity become a doctrine, the belief of which as real is commanded by our conscience. But to Christians it is commanded, and it is false candour in a Christian, believing in original sin and redemption therefrom, to admit that any man denying the divinity of Christ can be a Christian. The true language of a Christian, which reconciles humility with truth would be;--G.o.d and not man is the judge of man: which of the two is the Christian, he will determine; but this is evident, that if the theanthropist is a Christian, the psilanthropist cannot be so; and "vice versa". Suppose, that two tribes used the same written characters, but attached different and opposite meanings to them, so that "niger", for instance, was used by one tribe to convey the notion "black", by the other, "white";--could they, without absurdity, be said to have the same language? Even so, in the instance of the crucifixion, the same image is present to the theanthropist and to the psilanthropist or Socinian--but to the latter it represents a mere man, a good man indeed and divinely inspired, but still a mere man, even as Moses or Paul, dying in attestation of the truth of his preaching, and in order by his resurrection to give a proof of his mission, and inclusively of the resurrection of all men:--to the former it represents G.o.d incarnate taking upon himself the sins of the world, and himself thereby redeeming us, and giving us life everlasting, not merely teaching it. The same difference, that exists between G.o.d and man, between giving and the declaration of a gift, exists between the Trinitarian and the Unitarian. This might be proved in a few moments, if we would only conceive a Greek or Roman, to whom two persons relate their belief, each calling Christ by a different name. It would be impossible for the Greek even to guess, that they both meant the same person, or referred to the same facts.
END OF VOLUME 1.