Chapter X: Front Matter (10)

[101] _Neque quiquam addubito, quin ea candidis omnibus faciat satis. Quid autem facias istis qui vel ob ingenii pertinaciam sibi satisfieri nolint, vel stupidiores sint quam ut satisfactionem intelligant? Nam quemadmodum Simonides dixit, Thessalos hebetiores esse quam ut possint a se decipi, ita quosdam videas stupidiores quam ut placari queant. Adhuc non mirum est invenire quod calumnietur qui nihil aliud quærit nisi quod calumnietur._ (Erasmi Epist. ad Dorpium.) At all events, the paragraph passing through the medium of my own prepossessions, if any fault be found with it, the fault probably, and the blame certainly, belongs to the reporter.

[102] And which (I may add) in a more enlightened age, and in a Protestant country, impelled more than one German University to anathematize Fr. Hoffman's discovery of carbonic acid gas, and of its effects on animal life, as hostile to religion, and tending to atheism! Three or four students at the university of Jena, in the attempt to raise a spirit for the discovery of a supposed hidden treasure, were strangled or poisoned by the fumes of the charcoal they had been burning in a close garden-house of a vineyard near Jena, while employed in their magic fumigations and charms. One only was restored to life: and from his account of the noises and spectres (_in_ his ears and eyes) as he was losing his senses, it was taken for granted that _the bad spirit_ had destroyed them. Frederic Hoffman admitted that it was a _very bad_ spirit that had _tempted_ them, the Spirit of Avarice and Folly; and that a very _noxious_ Spirit (gas, or _geist_,) was the immediate cause of their death. But he contended that this latter spirit was the _spirit_ of charcoal, which would have produced the same effect, had the young men been chaunting psalms instead of incantations: and acquitted the devil of all _direct_ concern in the business. The Theological Faculty took the alarm: even physicians pretended to be horror-stricken at Hoffman's audacity. The controversy and its appendages embittered several years of this great and good man's life.

_Reflections Introductory to Aphorism X._

The most _momentous_ question a man can ask is, Have I a Saviour? And yet as far as the individual querist is concerned, it is premature and to no purpose, unless another question has been previously put and answered, (alas! too generally put after the wounded conscience has already given the answer!) namely, Have I any need of a Saviour? For him who _needs_ none, (O bitter irony of the evil Spirit, whose whispers the proud Soul takes for its own thoughts, and knows not how the Tempter is scoffing the while!) there _is_ none, as long as he feels no need. On the other hand, it is scarcely possible to have answered this question in the affirmative, and not ask--first, _in what_ the necessity consists? secondly, _whence_ it proceeded? and, thirdly, how far the answer to this second question is or is not contained in the answer to the first? I intreat the intelligent reader, who has taken me as his temporary guide on the straight, but yet, from the number of cross roads, difficult way of religious Inquiry, to halt a moment, and consider the main points, that, in this last division of my work, have been already offered for his reflection. I have attempted then to fix the proper meaning of the words, Nature and Spirit, the one being the _antithesis_ to the other: so that the most general and _negative_ definition of Nature is, Whatever is not Spirit; and _vice versâ_ of Spirit, That which is not comprehended in Nature: or in the language of our elder divines, that which transcends Nature. But nature is the term in which we comprehend all things that are representable in the forms of time and space, and subjected to the relations of cause and effect: and the cause of the existence of which, therefore, is to be sought for perpetually in something antecedent. The word itself expresses this in the strongest manner possible: _Natura_, that which is _about to be_ born, that which is always _becoming_. It follows, therefore, that whatever originates its own acts, or in any sense contains in itself the cause of its own state, must be _spiritual_, and consequently _super-natural_: yet not on that account necessarily _miraculous_. And such must the responsible WILL in us be, if it be at all.

A prior step had been to remove all misconceptions from the subject; to show the reasonableness of a belief in the reality and real influence of a universal and divine Spirit; the compatibility and possible communion of such a Spirit with the Spiritual principle in individuals; and the analogy offered by the most undeniable truths of Natural Philosophy.[103]

These views of the Spirit, and of the Will as Spiritual, form the ground-work of my scheme. Among the numerous corollaries or appendents, the first that presented itself respects the question, Whether there is any faculty in man by which a knowledge of spiritual truths, or of any truths not abstracted from nature, is rendered possible? and an Answer is attempted in the Comment on Aphorism VIII. And here I beg leave to remark, that in this comment the only novelty, and, if there be merit, the only merit is--that there being two very different Meanings, and two different Words, I have here and in former Works appropriated one meaning to one of the Words, and the other to the other--instead of using the words indifferently and by haphazard: a confusion, the ill effects of which in this instance are so great and of such frequent occurrence in the works of our ablest philosophers and divines, that I should select it before all others in proof of Hobbes's Maxim:--that it is a short, downhill passage from errors in words to errors in things. The difference of the Reason from the Understanding, and the imperfection and limited sphere of the latter, have been asserted by many both before and since Lord Bacon;[104] but still the habit of using Reason and Understanding as synonyms, acted as a disturbing force. Some it led into mysticism, others it set on explaining away a clear difference _in kind_ into a mere superiority in degree: and it partially eclipsed the truth for all.

In close connexion with this, and therefore forming the Comment on the Aphorism next following, is the subject of the legitimate exercise of the Understanding and its limitation to Objects of Sense; with the errors both of unbelief and of misbelief, which result from its extension beyond the sphere of possible Experience. Wherever the forms of reasoning appropriate only to the _natural_ world are applied to _spiritual_ realities, it may be truly said, that the more strictly logical the reasoning is in all its _parts_, the more irrational it is as a _whole_.

To the reader thus armed and prepared, I now venture to present the so called mysteries of Faith, that is, the peculiar tenets and especial constituents of Christianity, or Religion in spirit and in truth. In right order I must have commenced with the Articles of the Trinity and Apostacy, including the question respecting the Origin of Evil, and the Incarnation of the WORD. And could I have followed this order, some difficulties that now press on me would have been obviated.--But (as has already been explained) the limits of the present volume rendered it alike impracticable and inexpedient; for the necessity of my argument would have called forth certain hard though most true sayings, respecting the hollowness and tricksy sophistry of the so called "Natural Theology," "Religion of Nature," "Light of Nature," and the like, which a brief exposition could not save from innocent misconceptions, much less protect against plausible misinterpretation.--And yet both Reason and Experience have convinced me, that in the greater number of our ALOGI, who feed on the husks of Christianity, the disbelief of the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ included, has its origin and support in the assumed self-evidence of this Natural Theology, and in their ignorance of the insurmountable difficulties which (on the same mode of reasoning) press upon the fundamental articles of their own Remnant of a Creed. But arguments, which would prove the falsehood of a known truth, must themselves be false, and can prove the falsehood of no other position in _eodem genere_.

This _hint_ I have thrown out as a _spark_ that may perhaps fall where it will kindle. And worthily might the wisest of men make inquisition into the three momentous points here spoken of, for the purposes of speculative insight, and for the formation of enlarged and systematic views of the destination of man, and the dispensation of God. But the _practical_ Inquirer (I speak not of those who inquire for the gratification of curiosity, and still less of those who labour as students only to shine as disputants; but of one, who seeks the truth, because he feels the want of it,) the practical Inquirer, I say, hath already placed his foot on the rock, if he have satisfied himself that whoever needs not a Redeemer is more than human. Remove for him the difficulties and objections, that oppose or perplex his belief of a crucified Saviour; convince him of the reality of sin, which is impossible without a knowledge of its true nature and inevitable consequences; and then satisfy him as to the _fact_ historically, and as to the truth spiritually, of a redemption therefrom by Christ; do this for him, and there is little fear that he will permit either logical quirks or metaphysical puzzles to contravene the plain dictate of his common sense, that the Sinless One that redeemed mankind from sin, must have been more than man; and that He who brought Light and Immortality into the world, could not in his own nature have been an inheritor of Death and Darkness. It is morally impossible that a man with these convictions should suffer the objection of Incomprehensibility (and this on a subject of _Faith_) to overbalance the manifest absurdity and contradiction in the notion of a mediator between God and the human race, at the same infinite distance from God as the race for whom he mediates.

The origin of evil, meanwhile, is a question interesting only to the metaphysician, and in a system of moral and religious philosophy. The man of sober mind, who seeks for truths that possess a moral and practical interest, is content to be _certain_, first, that evil must have had a beginning, since otherwise it must either be God, or a co-eternal and co-equal rival of God; both impious notions, and the latter foolish to boot:--secondly, that it could not originate in God; for if so, it would be at once evil and not evil, or God would be at once God (that is, infinite Goodness) and not God--both alike impossible positions. Instead therefore of troubling himself with this barren controversy, he more profitably turns his inquiries to _that_ evil which most concerns himself, and of which he _may_ find the origin.

The entire Scheme of _necessary_ Faith may be reduced to two heads;--first, the object and occasion, and, secondly, the fact and effect,--of our redemption by Christ: and to this view does the order of the following Comments correspond. I have begun with ORIGINAL SIN, and proceeded in the following Aphorism to the doctrine of Redemption. The Comments on the remaining Aphorisms are all subsidiary to these, or written in the hope of making the minor tenets of general belief be believed in a spirit worthy of these. They are, in short, intended to supply a febrifuge against aguish scruples and horrors, the hectic of the soul;--and "for servile and thrall-like fear to substitute that adoptive and cheerful boldness, which our new alliance with God requires of us as Christians." (_Milton._) NOT the Origin of Evil, NOT the _Chronology_ of Sin, or the chronicles of the original Sinner; but Sin originant, underived from without, and no passive link in the adamantine chain of Effects, each of which is in its turn an _instrument_ of Causation, but no one of them a Cause;--NOT with Sin _inflicted_, which would be a Calamity;--NOT with Sin (that is, an evil tendency) _implanted_, for which let the planter be responsible; but I begin with _Original_ Sin. And for this purpose I have selected the Aphorism from the ablest and most formidable antagonist of this doctrine, Bishop JEREMY TAYLOR, and from the most eloquent work of this most eloquent of divines.[106] Had I said, of men, Cicero would forgive me, and Demosthenes nod assent![107]

APHORISM X.

_On Original Sin._

JEREMY TAYLOR.

Is there any such thing? That is not the question. For it is a fact acknowledged on all hands almost: and even those who will not confess it in words, confess it in their complaints. For my part I cannot but confess that _to be_, which I feel and groan under, and by which all the world is miserable.

Adam turned his back on the sun, and dwelt in the dark and the shadow. He sinned, and brought evil into his _supernatural_ endowments, and lost the Sacrament and Instrument of Immortality, the Tree of Life in the centre of the garden.[108] He then fell under the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate and ignorant soul. His sin made him sickly, his sickness made him peevish: his sin left him ignorant, his ignorance made him foolish and unreasonable. His sin left him to his _nature_: and by nature, whoever was to be born at all, was to be born a child, and to do before he could understand, and to be bred under laws to which he was always bound, but which could not always be exacted; and he was to choose when he could not reason, and had passions most strong when he had his understanding most weak; and the more need he had of a curb, the less strength he had to use it! And this being the case of all the world, what was _every_ man's evil became _all_ men's greater evil; and though alone it was very bad, yet when they came together it was made much worse. Like ships in a storm, every one alone hath enough to do to outride it; but when they meet, besides the evils of the storm, they find the intolerable calamity of their mutual concussion; and every ship that is ready to be oppressed with the tempest, is a worse tempest to every vessel against which it is violently dashed. So it is in mankind. Every man hath evil enough of his own, and it is hard for a man to live up to the rule of his own reason and conscience. But when he hath parents and children, friends and enemies, buyers and sellers, lawyers and clients, a family and a neighbourhood--then it is that every man dashes against another, and one relation requires what another denies; and when one speaks another will contradict him; and that which is well spoken is sometimes innocently mistaken; and that upon a good cause produces an evil effect; and by these, and ten thousand other concurrent causes, man is made more than most miserable.[109]

COMMENT.

The first question we should put to ourselves, when we have to read a passage that perplexes us in a work of authority, is; What does the writer _mean_ by all this? And the second question should be, What does he intend by all this? In the passage before us, Taylor's _meaning_ is not quite clear. A sin is an evil which has its ground or origin in the agent, and not in the compulsion of circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and if this absence likewise be the effect of Circumstance (that is, if it have been neither directly nor indirectly caused by the agent himself) the evil _derives_ from the circumstances; and therefore (in the Apostle's sense of the word, sin, when he speaks of the exceeding sinfulness of sin) such _evil_ is not _sin_; and the person who suffers it, or who is the compelled instrument of its infliction on others, may feel _regret_, but cannot feel _remorse_. So likewise of the word origin, original, or originant. The reader cannot too early be warned that it is not applicable, and, without abuse of language, can never be applied, to a mere _link_ in a chain of effects, where each, indeed, stands in the relation of a _cause_ to those that follow, but is at the same time the _effect_ of all that precede. For in these cases a cause amounts to little more than an antecedent. At the utmost it means only a _conductor_ of the causative influence; and the old axiom, _causa causæ causa causati_, applies, with a never-ending regress to each several link, up the whole chain of nature. But this _is_ Nature: and no _natural_ thing or act can be called originant, or be truly said to have an _origin_[110] in any other. The moment we assume an origin in nature, a true _beginning_, an actual first--that moment we rise _above_ nature, and are compelled to assume a _supernatural_ power. (Gen. i. 1.)

It will be an equal convenience to myself and to my readers, to let it be agreed between us, that we will generalize the word Circumstance, so as to understand by it, as often as it occurs in this Comment, all and every thing not connected with the Will, past or present, of a Free Agent. Even though it were the blood in the chambers of his heart, or his own inmost sensations, we will regard them as _circumstantial, extrinsic_, or _from without_.

In this sense of the word Original, and in the sense before given of Sin, it is evident that the phrase, original sin, is a pleonasm, the epithet not adding to the thought, but only enforcing it. For if it be sin, it must be _original_; and a state or act, that has not its origin in the will, may be calamity, deformity, disease, or mischief; but a _sin_ it cannot be. It is not enough that the act appears voluntary, or that it is intentional; or that it has the most hateful passions or debasing appetite for its proximate cause and accompaniment. All these may be found in a mad-house, where neither law nor humanity permit us to condemn the actor of sin. The reason of law declares the maniac not a free-agent; and the verdict follows of course--Not guilty. Now mania, as distinguished from idiocy, frenzy, delirium, hypochondria, and derangement (the last term used specifically to express a suspension or disordered state of the understanding or adaptive power) is the occultation or eclipse of reason, as the power of ultimate ends. The maniac, it is well known, is often found clever and inventive in the selection and adaptation of means to _his_ ends; but his _ends_ are madness. He has lost his reason. For though Reason, in finite Beings, is not the Will--or how could the Will be opposed to the Reason?--yet it is the _condition_, the _sine qua non_ of a _Free_-will.

We will now return to the extract from Jeremy Taylor on a theme of deep interest in itself, and trebly important from its _bearings_. For without just and distinct views respecting the Article of Original Sin, it is impossible to understand aright any one of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. Now my first complaint is, that the eloquent Bishop, while he admits the _fact_ as established beyond controversy by universal experience, yet leaves us wholly in the dark as to the main point, supplies us with no answer to the principal question--why he names it Original Sin. It cannot be said, We know what the Bishop _means_, and what matters the name? for the _nature_ of the fact, and in what light it should be regarded by us, depends on the nature of our answer to the question, whether Original Sin is or is not the right and proper designation. I can imagine the same quantum of _sufferings_, and yet if I had reason to regard them as symptoms of a commencing change, as pains of growth, the temporary deformity and misproportions of immaturity, or (as in the final sloughing of the caterpillar) the throes and struggles of the waxing or evolving PSYCHE, I should think it no Stoical flight to doubt, how far I was authorized to declare the Circumstance an _evil_ at all. Most assuredly I would not express or describe the fact as an evil having an origin in the sufferers themselves or as sin.

Let us, however, waive this objection. Let it be supposed that the Bishop uses the word in a different and more comprehensive sense, and that by sin he understands evil of all kind connected with or resulting from _actions_--though I do not see how we can represent the properties even of inanimate bodies (of poisonous substances for instance) except as _acts_ resulting from the constitution of such bodies. Or if this sense, though not unknown to the Mystic divines, should be _too_ comprehensive and remote, we will suppose the Bishop to comprise under the term sin, the evil accompanying or consequent on _human_ actions and purposes:--though here too, I have a right to be informed, for what reason and on what grounds Sin is thus limited to _human_ agency? And truly, I should be at no loss to assign the reason. But then this reason would instantly bring me back to my first definition; and any other reason, than that the human agent is endowed with Reason, and with a Will which can place itself either in subjection or in opposition to his Reason--in other words, that man is alone of all known animals a responsible creature--I neither know nor can imagine.

Thus, then, the sense which Taylor--and with him the antagonists generally of this Article as propounded by the first Reformers--attaches to the words, Original Sin, needs only be carried on into its next consequence, and it will be found to _imply_ the sense which I have given--namely, that Sin is Evil having an _Origin_. But inasmuch as it is _evil_, in God it cannot originate: and yet in some _Spirit_ (that is, in some _supernatural_ power) it _must_. For in _Nature_ there is no origin. Sin therefore is spiritual Evil: but the spiritual in man is the Will. Now when we do not refer to any particular sins, but to that state and constitution of the Will, which is the ground, condition, and common Cause of all Sins; and when we would further express the truth, that this corrupt _nature_ of the Will must in some sense or other be considered as its own act, that the corruption must have been self-originated;--in this case and for this purpose we may, with no less propriety than force, entitle this dire spiritual evil and source of all evil, that is absolutely such, Original Sin. I have said, "the corrupt _nature_ of the Will." I might add, that the admission of a _nature_ into a spiritual essence by its own act is a corruption.

Such, I repeat, would be the inevitable conclusion, _if_ Taylor's sense of the term were carried on into its immediate consequences. But the whole of his most eloquent Treatise makes it certain that Taylor did not carry it on: and consequently Original Sin, according to his conception, is a calamity which being common to all men must be supposed to result from their common nature: in other words, the universal Calamity of Human _Nature_.

Can we wonder, then, that a mind, a heart like Taylor's should reject, that he should strain his faculties to explain away, the belief that this calamity, so dire in itself, should appear to the All-merciful God a rightful cause and motive for inflicting on the wretched sufferers a calamity infinitely more tremendous; nay, that it should be incompatible with Divine Justice _not_ to punish it by everlasting torment? Or need we be surprised if he found nothing that could reconcile his mind to such a belief, in the circumstance that the acts now _consequent_ on this calamity and either directly or indirectly _effects_ of the same, were, five or six thousand years ago in the instance of a certain individual and his accomplice, _anterior_ to the calamity, and the _Cause_ or _Occasion_ of the same;--that what in all other men is _disease_, in these two persons was _guilt_;--that what in us is _hereditary_, and consequently _nature_, in _them_ was _original_, and consequently _sin_? Lastly, might it not be presumed, that so enlightened, and at the same time so affectionate, a divine, would even fervently disclaim and reject the pretended justifications of God grounded on flimsy analogies drawn from the imperfections of human ordinances and human justice-courts--some of very doubtful character even as human institutes, and all of them just only as far as they are necessary, and rendered necessary chiefly by the weakness and wickedness, the limited powers and corrupt passions, of mankind? The more confidently might this be presumed of so acute and practised a logician, as Taylor, in addition to his other extraordinary gifts, is known to have been, when it is demonstrable that the most current of these justifications rests on a palpable equivocation: namely, the gross misuse of the word right.[111] An instance will explain my meaning. In as far as, from the known frequency of dishonest or mischievious persons, it may have been found _necessary_, in so far is the law _justifiable_ in giving landowners the right of proceeding against a neighbour or fellow-citizen for even a slight trespass on that which the law has made their property:--nay, of proceeding in sundry instances criminally and even capitally. But surely, either there is no religion in the world, and nothing obligatory in the precepts of the Gospel, or there are occasions in which it would be very _wrong_ in the proprietor to exercise the _right_, which yet it may be highly _expedient_ that he should possess. On this ground it is, that Religion is the sustaining opposite of Law.

That Taylor, therefore, should have striven fervently against the Article so interpreted and so vindicated, is, (for me, at least) a subject neither of surprise nor of complaint. It is the doctrine which he _substitutes_, it is the weakness and inconsistency betrayed in the defence of this substitute; it is the unfairness with which he blackens the established Article--for to give it, as it has been caricatured by a few Ultra-Calvinists during the fever of the (so called) Quinquarticular controversy, was in effect to blacken it--and then imposes another scheme, to which the same objections apply with even increased force, a scheme which seems to differ from the former only by adding fraud and mockery to injustice; these are the things that excite my wonder; it is of these that I complain. For what does the Bishop's scheme amount to?--God, he tells us, required of Adam a perfect obedience, and made it possible by endowing him "with perfect rectitudes and super-natural heights of grace" proportionate to the obedience which he required. As a _consequence_ of his disobedience, Adam lost this rectitude, this perfect sanity and proportionateness of his intellectual, moral and corporeal state, powers and impulses; and as the _penalty_ of his crime, he was deprived of all super-natural aids and graces. The death, with whatever is comprised in the Scriptural sense of the word, death, began from that moment to work in him, and this _consequence_ he conveyed to his offspring, and through them to all his posterity, that is, to all mankind. They were _born_ diseased in mind, body and will. For what less than disease can we call a necessity of error and a predisposition to sin and sickness? Taylor, indeed, _asserts_, that though perfect obedience became incomparably more difficult, it was not, however, absolutely _impossible_. Yet he himself admits that the contrary was _universal_; that of the countless millions of Adam's posterity, not a single individual ever realized, or approached to the realization of, this possibility; and (if my memory[113] does not deceive me) Taylor himself has elsewhere exposed--and if he has not, yet Common Sense will do it for him--the sophistry in asserting of a whole what may be true of the whole, but--is in fact true only, of each of its component parts. Any one may snap a horse-hair: therefore, any one may perform the same feat with the horse's tail. On a level floor (on the hardened sand, for instance, of a sea-beach) I chalk two parallel straight lines, with a width of eight inches. It is _possible_ for a man, with a bandage over his eyes, to keep within the path for two or three paces: therefore, it is _possible_ for him to walk blindfold for two or three leagues without a single deviation! And this _possibility_ would suffice to acquit me of _injustice_, though I had placed man-traps within an inch of one line, and knew that there were pit-falls and deep wells beside the other!

This _assertion_, therefore, without adverting to its discordance with, if not direct contradiction to, the tenth and thirteenth Articles of our Church, I shall not, I trust, be thought to rate below its true value, if I treat it as an _infinitesimal_ possibility that may be safely dropped in the calculation:--and so proceed with the argument. The consequence then of Adam's crime was, by a natural necessity, inherited by persons who could not (the Bishop affirms) in any sense have been accomplices in the crime or partakers in the guilt: and yet consistently with the divine holiness, it was not possible that the same perfect obedience should not be required of them. Now what would the idea of equity, what would the law inscribed by the Creator in the heart of man, seem to dictate in this case? Surely, that the supplementary aids, the super-natural graces correspondent to a law above nature, should be increased in proportion to the diminished strength of the agents, and the increased resistance to be overcome by them. But no! not only the consequence of Adam's act, but the penalty due to his crime, was perpetuated. His descendants were despoiled or left destitute of these aids and graces, while the obligation to perfect obedience was continued; an obligation too, the non-fulfilment of which brought with it death and the unutterable woe that cleaves to an immortal soul for ever alienated from its Creator.

Observe, that all these _results_ of Adam's fall enter into Bishop Taylor's scheme of Original Sin equally as into that of the first Reformers. In this respect the Bishop's doctrine is the same with that laid down in the Articles and Homilies of the Established Church. The only difference that has hitherto appeared, consists in the aforesaid _mathematical_ possibility of fulfilling the whole law, which in the Bishop's scheme is affirmed to remain still in human nature, or (as it is elsewhere expressed) in the nature of the human Will.[114] But though it were possible to grant this existence of a power in all men, which in no man was ever exemplified, and where the _non_-actualization of such power is, _a priori_, so certain, that the belief or imagination of the contrary in any individual is expressly given us by the Holy Spirit as a test, whereby it may be known that _the truth is not in him_, as an infallible sign of imposture or self-delusion! Though it were possible to grant this, which, consistently with Scripture and the principles of reasoning which we apply in all other cases, it is not possible to grant;--and though it were possible likewise to overlook the glaring sophistry of concluding in relation to a series of indeterminate length, that whoever can do any one, can therefore do all; a conclusion, the futility of which must force itself on the common-sense of every man who understands the proposition;--still the question will arise--Why, and on what principle of equity, were the unoffending sentenced to be born with so fearful a disproportion of their powers to their duties? Why were they subjected to a law, the fulfilment of which was all but impossible, yet the penalty on the failure tremendous? Admit that for those who had never enjoyed a happier lot, it was no punishment to be made to inhabit a ground which the Creator had cursed, and to have been born with a body prone to sickness, and a soul surrounded with temptation, and having the worst temptation within itself in its own _temptibility_;--to have the duties of a spirit with the wants and appetites of an animal! Yet on such imperfect Creatures, with means so scanty and impediments so numerous, to impose the same task-work that had been required of a Creature with a pure and entire nature, and provided with super-natural aids--if this be not to inflict a penalty;--yet to be placed under a law, the difficulty of obeying which is infinite, and to have momently to struggle with this difficulty, and to live momently in hazard of these consequences--if this be no punishment;--words have no correspondence with thoughts, and thoughts are but shadows of each other, shadows that own no substance for their anti-type!

Of such an outrage on common-sense, Taylor was incapable. He himself calls it a penalty; he admits that in effect it is a punishment: nor does he seek to suppress the question that so naturally arises out of this admission;--on what principle of equity were the innocent offspring of Adam _punished_ at all? He meets it, and puts-in an answer. He states the problem, and gives his solution--namely, that "God on Adam's account was so exasperated with mankind, that being angry he would still continue the punishment"! "The case" (says the Bishop) "is this: Jonathan and Michal were Saul's children. It came to pass, that seven of Saul's issue were to be hanged: all equally innocent, equally culpable." [_Before I quote further, I feel myself called on to remind the reader, that these two last words were added by Jeremy Taylor without the least grounds in Scripture, according to which_, (2 Samuel, xxi.) _no crime was laid to their charge, no blame imputed to them_. _Without any pretence of culpable conduct on their part, they were arraigned as children of Saul, and sacrificed to a point of state-expedience. In recommencing the quotation, therefore, the reader ought to let the sentence conclude with the words--_] "all equally innocent. David took the five sons of Michal, for she had left him unhandsomely. Jonathan was his friend: and therefore he spared _his_ son, Mephibosheth. Here it was indifferent as to the guilt of the persons" (_Bear in mind, reader, that no guilt was attached to either of them!_) "whether David should take the sons of Michal or of Jonathan; but it is likely that as upon the kindness that David had to Jonathan, he spared his son; so upon the just provocation of Michal, he made that evil fall upon them, which, it may be, they should not have suffered, if their mother had been kind. Adam was to God, as Michal to David."[115]

This answer, this solution proceeding too from a divine so pre-eminently gifted, and occurring (with other passages not less startling) in a vehement refutation of the received doctrine on the express ground of its opposition to the clearest conceptions and best feelings of mankind--this it is that surprises me! It is of this that I complain! The Almighty Father _exasperated_ with those, whom the Bishop has himself in the same treatise described as "innocent and most unfortunate"--the two things best fitted to conciliate love and pity! Or though they did not remain innocent, yet those whose abandonment to a mere nature, while they were left amenable to a law above nature, he affirms to be the irresistible cause, that they one and all _did_ sin! And this decree illustrated and justified by its analogy to one of the worst actions of an imperfect mortal! From such of my readers as will give a thoughtful perusal to these works of Taylor, I dare anticipate a concurrence with the judgment which I here transcribe from the blank space at the end of the _Deus Justificatus_ in my own copy; and which, though twenty years[116] have elapsed since it was written, I have never seen reason to recant or modify. "This most eloquent Treatise may be compared to a statue of Janus, with the one face, which we must suppose fronting the Calvinistic tenet, entire and fresh, as from the master's hand: beaming with life and force, witty scorn on the lip, and a brow at once bright and weighty with satisfying reason:--the other, looking toward the "something to be put in its place," maimed, featureless, and weather-bitten into an almost visionary confusion and indistinctness."[117]

With these expositions I hasten to contrast the _Scriptural_ article respecting Original Sin, or the corrupt and sinful Nature of the Human Will, and the belief which alone is required of us, as Christians. And here the first thing to be considered, and which will at once remove a world of error, is; that this is no tenet first introduced or imposed by Christianity, and which, should a man see reason to disclaim the authority of the Gospel, would no longer have any claim on his attention. It is no perplexity that a man may get rid of by ceasing to be a Christian, and which has no existence for a philosophic Deist. It is a FACT, affirmed, indeed, in the Christian Scriptures alone with the force and frequency proportioned to its consummate importance; but a fact acknowledged in _every_ religion that retains the least glimmering of the patriarchal faith in a God infinite, yet _personal_--a Fact assumed or implied as the basis of every religion, of which any relics remain of earlier date than the last and total apostacy of the Pagan world, when the faith in the great I AM, the _Creator_, was extinguished in the sensual Polytheism, which is inevitably the final result of Pantheism or the worship of nature; and the only form under which the Pantheistic scheme--that, according to which the world is God, and the material universe itself the one only _absolute_ Being--can exist for a people, or become the popular creed. Thus in the most ancient books of the Brahmins, the deep sense of this Fact, and the doctrines grounded on obscure traditions of the promised remedy, are seen struggling, and now gleaming, now flashing, through the mist of Pantheism, and producing the incongruities and gross contradictions of the Brahmin Mythology: while in the rival sect--in that most strange _phænomenon_, the religious atheism of the Buddhists: with whom God is only universal matter considered abstractedly from all particular forms--the Fact is placed among the delusions natural to man, which, together with other superstitions grounded on a supposed _essential_ difference between right and wrong, _the sage_ is to decompose and precipitate from the _menstruum_ of _his_ more refined apprehensions! Thus in denying the Fact, they virtually acknowledge it.

From the remote East turn to the mythology of Lesser Asia, to the descendants of Javan who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed the Isles. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic solution we find the same _Fact_, and as characteristic of the human _race_, stated in that earliest and most venerable _mythus_ (or symbolic parable) of Prometheus--that truly wonderful Fable, in which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind (Θεος φιλανθρωπος) are united in the same person; and thus in the most striking manner noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal tradition with the incongruous scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both gods and men are mere powers and products of nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its wiser enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of this great problem of the Moral World, the beautiful Parable of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a _rival_ FALL OF MAN: and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the human race was again recognized. In the assertion of ORIGINAL SIN the Greek Mythology rose and set.

But not only was the _fact_ acknowledged of a law in the nature of man resisting the law of God; (and whatever is placed in active and direct oppugnancy to the good is, _ipso facto_, positive evil;) it was likewise an acknowledged MYSTERY, and one which by the nature of the subject must ever remain such--a problem, of which any other solution, than the statement of the _Fact_ itself, was demonstrably _impossible_. That it is so, the least reflection will suffice to convince every man, who has previously satisfied himself that he is a responsible being. It follows necessarily from the postulate of a responsible Will. Refuse to grant this, and I have not a word to say. Concede this and you concede all. For this is the essential attribute of a Will, and contained in the very _idea_, that whatever determines the Will acquires this power from a previous determination of the Will itself. The Will is ultimately self-determined, or it is no longer a _Will_ under the law of perfect freedom, but a _nature_ under the mechanism of cause and effect. And if by an act, to which it had determined itself, it has subjected itself to the determination of nature (in the language of St. Paul, to the law of the flesh), it receives a nature into itself, and so far it becomes a nature: and this is a corruption of the Will and a corrupt nature. It is also a _Fall_ of Man, inasmuch as his Will is the condition of his personality; the ground and condition of the attribute which constitutes him _man_. And the ground work of _personal_ Being is a capacity of acknowledging the Moral Law (the Law of the Spirit, the Law of Freedom, the Divine Will) as that which should, of itself, suffice to determine the Will to a free obedience of the law, the law working therein by its own exceeding lawfulness.[118] This, and this alone, is _positive_ Good; good in itself, and independent of all relations. Whatever resists, and, as a positive force, opposes _this_ in the Will is therefore evil. But an evil in the Will is an evil Will; and as all moral evil (that is, all evil that is evil without reference to its contingent physical consequences) is _of_ the Will, this evil Will must have its source in the Will. And thus we might go back from act to act, from evil to evil, _ad infinitum_, without advancing a step.

We call an individual a _bad_ man, not because an action is contrary to the law, but because it has led us to conclude from it some _Principle_ opposed to the law, some private maxim, or by-law in the Will contrary to the universal law of right reason in the conscience, as the _ground_ of the action. But this evil principle again must be grounded in some other principle which has been made determinant of the Will by the Will's own self-determination. For if not, it must have its ground in some necessity of nature, in some instinct or propensity imposed, not acquired, another's work not our own. Consequently, neither act nor principle could be imputed; and relatively to the agent, not _original_, not _sin_.

Now let the grounds on which the fact of an evil inherent in the Will is affirmable in the instance of any one man, be supposed equally applicable in _every_ instance, and concerning all men: so that the fact is asserted of the individual, _not_, because he has committed this or that crime, or because he has shown himself to be _this_ or _that_ man, but simply because he is _a_ man. Let the evil be supposed such as to imply the impossibility of an individual's referring to any particular time at which it might be conceived to have commenced, or to any period of his existence at which it was not existing. Let it be supposed, in short, that the subject stands in no relation whatever to time, can neither be called _in_ time nor _out of_ time; but that all relations of time are as alien and heterogeneous in this question, as the relations and attributes of space (north or south, round or square, thick or thin) are to our affections and moral feelings. Let the reader suppose this, and he will have before him the precise import of the Scriptural _doctrine_ of Original Sin; or rather of the Fact acknowledged in all ages, and recognized but not originating, in the Christian Scriptures.

In addition to this it will be well to remind the inquirer, that the stedfast conviction of the existence, personality, and moral attributes of God, is presupposed in the acceptance of the Gospel, or required as its indispensable preliminary. It is taken for granted as a point which the hearer had already decided for himself, a point finally settled and put at rest: not by the removal of all difficulties, or by any such increase of insight as enabled him to meet every objection of the Epicurean or the sceptic with a full and precise answer; but because he had convinced himself that it was folly as well as presumption in so imperfect a creature to expect it; and because these difficulties and doubts disappeared at the beam, when tried against the weight and convictive power of the reasons in the other scale. It is, therefore, most unfair to attack Christianity, or any article which the Church has declared a Christian doctrine, by arguments, which, if valid, are valid against all religion. Is there a disputant who scorns a mere _postulate_, as the basis of any argument in support of the Faith; who is too high-minded _to beg_ his ground, and will take it by a strong hand? Let him fight it out with the Atheists, or the Manichæans; but not stoop to pick up their arrows, and then run away to discharge them at Christianity or the Church!

The only true way is to state the doctrine, believed as well by Saul of Tarsus, _yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against_ the Church of Christ, as by Paul the Apostle _fully preaching the Gospel of Christ_. A moral Evil is an evil that has its origin in a Will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. But the actual existence of moral evil we are bound in conscience to admit; and that there is an evil common to all is a fact; and this evil must therefore have a common ground. Now this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine Will: it must therefore be referred to the will of man. And this evil ground we call Original Sin. It is a _mystery_, that is, a fact, which we see, but cannot explain; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, but can neither comprehend nor communicate. And such by the quality of the subject (namely, a responsible _Will_) it must be, if it be truth at all.

A sick man, whose complaint was as obscure as his sufferings were severe and notorious, was thus addressed by a humane stranger: "My poor Friend! I find you dangerously ill, and on this account only, and having certain information of your being so, and that you have not wherewithal to pay for a physician, I have come to you. Respecting your disease, indeed, I can tell you nothing, that you are capable of understanding, more than you know already, or can only be taught by reflection on your own experience. But I have rendered the disease no longer irremediable. I have brought the remedy with me: and I now offer you the means of immediate relief, with the assurance of gradual convalescence, and a final perfect cure; nothing more being required on your part, but your best endeavours to follow the prescriptions I shall leave with you. It is, indeed, too probable, from the nature of your disease, that you will occasionally neglect or transgress them. But even this has been calculated on in the plan of your cure, and the remedies provided, if only you are sincere and in right earnest with yourself, and have your _heart_ in the work. Ask me not how such a disease can be conceived possible. Enough for the present that you know it to be real: and I come to cure the disease not to explain it."

Now, what if the patient or some of his neighbours should charge this good Samaritan, with having given rise to the mischievous notion of an inexplicable disease, involving the honour of the King of the country;--should inveigh against _him_ as the author and first introducer of the notion, though of the numerous medical works composed ages before _his_ arrival, and by physicians of the most venerable authority, it was scarcely possible to open a single volume without finding some description of the disease, or some lamentation of its malignant and epidemic character:--and, lastly, what if certain pretended friends of this good Samaritan, in their zeal to vindicate him against this absurd charge, should assert that he was a perfect stranger to this disease, and boldly deny that he had ever said or done any thing connected with it, or that implied its existence?

In this Apologue or imaginary case, reader, you have the true bearings of Christianity on the fact and doctrine of Original Sin. The doctrine (that is, the confession of a known fact) Christianity has only in common with every religion, and with every philosophy, in which the reality of a responsible Will and the _essential_ difference between good and evil have been recognised. _Peculiar_ to the Christian religion are the remedy and (for all purposes but those of a merely speculative curiosity) the solution. By the annunciation of the remedy it affords all the solution which our _moral_ interests require; and even in that which remains, and must remain, unfathomable, the Christian finds a new motive to walk humbly with the Lord his God.

Should a professed Believer ask you whether that, which is the ground of responsible action in _your_ will, could in any way be responsibly present in the Will of Adam,--answer him in these words: "_You_, Sir! can no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive the affirmative. The corruption of my will may very warrantably be spoken of as a _consequence_ of Adam's fall, even as my birth of Adam's existence; as a consequence, a link in the historic chain of instances, whereof Adam is the first. But that it is _on account_ of Adam; or that this evil principle was, _a priori_, inserted or infused into my Will by the will of another--which is indeed a contradiction in terms, my Will in such case being no _Will_--_this_ is nowhere asserted in Scripture explicitly or by implication." It belongs to the very essence of the doctrine, that in respect of Original Sin _every_ man is the adequate representative of _all_ men. What wonder, then, that where no inward ground of preference existed, the choice should be determined by outward relations, and that the first _in time_ should be taken as the diagram? Even in Genesis the word, Adam, is distinguished from a proper name by an Article before it. It is _the_ Adam, so as to express the _genus_, not the individual--or rather, perhaps, I should say, _as well as_ the individual. But that the word with its equivalent, _the old man_, is used symbolically and universally by St. Paul, (1 Cor. xv. 22, 45. Eph. iv. 22. Col. iii. 9. Rom. vi. 6.) is too evident to need any proof.