Chapter XIII: Front Matter (13)

Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to believe. For though reason is not the positive and affirmative measure of our faith, and our faith ought to be larger than our [_speculative_] reason, and _take_ something into her heart, that reason can never take into her eye; yet in all our creed there can be nothing _against_ reason. If reason justly contradicts an article, it is not "of the household of Faith." In this there is no difficulty, but that in practice we take care that we do not call _that_ reason, which is not so (_see_ p. 122). For although reason is a right judge,[138] yet it ought not to pass sentence in an inquiry of faith, until all the information be brought in; all that is within, and all that is without, all that is above, and all that is below; all that concerns it in experience, and all that concerns it in act: whatsoever is of pertinent observation and whatsoever is revealed. For else reason may argue very well and yet conclude falsely. It may conclude well in logic, and yet infer a false proposition in theology (p. 115). But when our judge is fully and truly informed in all that whence she is to make her judgment, we may safely follow her whithersoever she invites us.

[138] Which it could not be, in respect of spiritual truths and objects super-sensuous, if it were the same with, and merely another name for "the faculty judging according to sense"--that is, the Understanding, or (as Taylor most often calls it in distinction from Reason) _Discourse_ (_discursus seu facultas discursiva vel discursoria_). The Reason, so instructed and so actuated as Taylor requires in the sentences immediately following, is what I have called the Spirit. [See also note near the end of Aphorism VIII.--ED.]

APHORISM XXI.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

He that speaks against his own reason, speaks against his own conscience: and therefore it is certain, no man serves God with a good conscience, who serves him against his reason.

APHORISM XXII.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

By the eye of reason through the telescope of faith, that is, Revelation, we may see what without this telescope we could never have known to exist. But as one that shuts the eye hard, and with violence curls the eye-lid, forces a fantastic fire from the crystalline humour, and espies a light that never shines, and sees thousands of little fires that never burn; so is he that blinds the eye of reason, and pretends to see by an eye of faith. He makes little images of notions, and some atoms dance before him; but he is not guided by the light, nor instructed by the proposition, but sees like a man in his sleep. IN NO CASE CAN TRUE REASON AND A RIGHT FAITH OPPOSE EACH OTHER.

NOTE PREFATORY TO

APHORISM XXIII.--Less on my own account, than in the hope of fore-arming my youthful friends, I add one other transcript from Bishop Taylor, as from a writer to whose name no taint or suspicion of Calvinistic or schismatical tenets can attach, and for the purpose of softening the offence which, I cannot but foresee, will be taken at the positions asserted in paragraph the first of Aphorism VII., and the documental proofs of the same in the next pages; and this by a formidable party composed of men ostensibly of the most dissimilar creeds, _regular_ Church-divines, voted orthodox by a great majority of suffrages, and the so-called Free-thinking Christians, and Unitarian divines. It is the _former_ class alone that I wish to conciliate: so far at least as it may be done by removing the aggravation of _novelty_ from the offensive article. And surely the simple re-assertion of one of "the two great things," which Bishop Taylor could assert as a fact,--which, he took for granted, that no Christian would think of controverting,--should at least be controverted without bitterness by his successors in the Church. That which was perfectly safe and orthodox in 1657, in the judgment of a devoted Royalist and Episcopalian, ought to be at most but a venial heterodoxy in 1825. For the rest, I am prepared to hear in answer--what has already been so often, and with such theatrical effect dropped, as an _extinguisher_, on my arguments--the famous concluding period of one of the chapters in Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, declared by Dr. Parr to be the _finest_ prose passage in English literature.[139] Be it so. I bow to so great an authority. But if the learned Doctor would impose it on me as the _truest_ as well as the finest, or expect me to admire the logic equally with the rhetoric--αφισταμαι--I start off! As I have been _un-English_ enough to find in Pope's tomb-epigram on Sir Isaac Newton nothing better than a gross and wrongful falsehood, conveyed in an enormous and irreverent hyperbole; so with regard to this passage in question, free as it is from all faults of taste, I have yet the hardihood to confess, that in the sense in which the words _discover_ and _prove_, are here used and intended, I am not convinced of the truth of the principle, (that he alone discovers who proves), and I question the correctness of the particular case, brought as instance and confirmation. I _doubt_ the validity of the assertion as a _general_ rule; and I _deny_ it, as applied to matters of _faith_, to the verities of religion, in the belief of which there must always be somewhat of moral election, "an act of the _Will_ in it as well as of the Understanding, as much _love_ in it as discursive power. True Christian Faith must have in it something of in-evidence, something that must be made up by duty and by obedience."[140] But most readily do I admit, and most fervently do I contend, that the miracles worked by Christ, both as miracles and as fulfilments of prophecy, both as signs and as wonders, made plain discovery, and gave unquestionable proof, of his divine character and authority; that they were to the whole Jewish nation true and appropriate evidences, that HE was indeed come who had promised and declared to their forefathers, _Behold your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense_. _He will come and save you._[141] I receive them as proofs, therefore, of the truth of every word, which he taught who was himself THE WORD: and as sure evidences of the final victory over death and of the life to come, in that they were manifestations of HIM, who said: _I am the resurrection and the Life!_

The obvious inference from the passage in question, if not its express import, is: _Miracula experimenta crucis esse, quibus solis probandum erat, homines non, pecudum instar, omnino perituros esse_. Now this doctrine I hold to be altogether alien from the _spirit_, and without authority in the _letter_, of Scripture. I can recall nothing in the history of human belief, that should induce me, I find nothing in my own moral being that enables me, to understand it. I can, however, perfectly well understand, the readiness of _those_ divines in _hoc Paleii dictum ore pleno jurare, qui nihil aliud in toto Evangelio invenire posse profitentur_. The most unqualified admiration of this superlative passage I find perfectly in character for those, who while Socinianism and Ultra-Socinianism are spreading like the roots of an elm, on and just below the surface, through the whole land, and _here and there_ at least have even dipped under the garden-fence of the Church, and blunted the edge of the labourer's spade in the gayest _parterres_ of our Baal-hamon, who,--while heresies, to which the framers and compilers of our Liturgy, Homilies, and Articles would have refused the very name of Christianity, meet their eyes on the list of religious denominations for every city and large town throughout the kingdom--can yet congratulate themselves with Dr. Paley, in his book on the Evidences, that _the rent has not reached the foundation_[142]--that is, that the corruption of man's will; that the responsibility of man in any sense in which it is not equally predicable of dogs and horses; that the divinity of our Lord, and even his pre-existence; that sin, and redemption through the merits of Christ; and grace; and the especial aids of the Spirit; and the efficacy of prayer; and the subsistency of the Holy Ghost; may all be extruded without breach or rent in the essentials of Christian Faith;--that a man may deny and renounce them all, and remain a _fundamental_ Christian, notwithstanding. But there are many who cannot keep up with Latitudinarians of such a stride; and I trust that the majority of serious believers are in this predicament. Now for all these it would seem more in character to be of Bishop Taylor's opinion, that the belief in question is _presupposed_ in a convert to the Truth in Christ--but at all events not to circulate in the great whispering gallery of the religious public suspicions and hard thoughts of those who, like myself, are of this opinion; who do not dare decry the religious instincts of humanity as a baseless dream; who hold, that to excavate the ground under the faith of all mankind, is a very questionable method of building up our faith, as Christians; who fear, that instead of adding to, they should detract from, the honour of the Incarnate Word by disparaging the light of the Word, that was in the beginning, and which lighteth _every_ man; and who, under these convictions, can tranquilly leave it to be disputed, in some new Dialogues in the shades, between the fathers of the Unitarian Church on the one side, and Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, and Lessing on the other, whether the famous passage in Paley does or does not contain the three dialectic flaws, _petitio principii_, _argumentum in circulo_, and _argumentum contra rem a premisso rem ipsam includente_.

Yes! fervently do I contend, that to satisfy the understanding, that there is a future state, was not the _specific_ Object of the Christian Dispensation; and that neither the belief of a future state, nor the _rationality_ of this belief, is the _exclusive_ attribute of the Christian religion. An _essential_, a _fundamental_, article of _all_ religion it is, and therefore of the Christian; but otherwise than as in connexion with the salvation of mankind from the _terrors_ of that state among the essential articles _peculiar_ to the Gospel Creed (those, for instance, by which it is _contra_-distinguished from the creed of a religious Jew) I do not place it. And before sentence is passed against me, as heterodox, on this ground, let not my judges forget, who it was that assured us, that if a man did not believe in a state of retribution after death, previously and on other grounds, _neither would he believe, though a man should be raised from the dead_.

Again, I am questioned as to my _proofs_ of a future state by men who are so far, and _only_ so far, professed believers, that they admit a God, and the existence of a Law from God: I give them: and the questioners turn from me with a scoff or incredulous smile. Now should others of a less scanty Creed infer the weakness of the reasons assigned by me from their failure in convincing _these_ men; may I not remind them, WHO it was, to whom a similar question was proposed by men of the same class? But at all events it will be enough for my own support to remember it; and to know that HE held such questioners, who could not find a sufficing proof of this great all-concerning verity in the words, _The God of Abraham_, _the God of Isaac_, _and the God of Jacob_ unworthy of any other answer--men not to be satisfied by _any_ proof--by any such proofs, at least, as are compatible with the ends and purposes of all religious conviction; by any proofs, that would not destroy the faith they were intended to confirm, and reverse the whole character and quality of its effects and influences. But if, notwithstanding all here offered in defence of my opinion, I must still be adjudged heterodox and in error,--what can I say, but that _malo cum Platone errare_, and take refuge behind the ample shield of BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR.

APHORISM XXIII.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

In order to his own glory, and for the manifestation of his goodness, and that the accidents of this world might not overmuch trouble those good men who suffered evil things, God was pleased to do TWO GREAT THINGS. The one was: that he sent his Son into the world to take upon him our nature, that every man might submit to a necessity, from which God's own Son was not exempt, when it behoved even _Christ to suffer_, and so to enter into glory. The other great thing was: that God did _not only by Revelation_ and the Sermons of the Prophets _to his Church_, but even to ALL MANKIND _competently_ teach, and _effectively_ persuade, that the soul of man does not die; that though things were ill here, yet to the good who usually feel most of the evils of this life, they should end in honour and advantages. And therefore Cicero had reason on his side to conclude, that there is a time and place after this life, wherein the wicked shall be punished, and the virtuous rewarded; when he considered that Orpheus and Socrates, and many others, just men and benefactors of mankind, were either slain or oppressed to death by evil men. _And all these received not the promise._ But when virtue made men poor; and free speaking of brave truths made the wise to lose their liberty; when an excellent life hastened an opprobrious death, and the obeying Reason and our Conscience lost us our lives, or at least all the means and conditions of enjoying them: it was but time to look about for _another_ state of things, where justice should rule, and virtue find her own portion. And therefore men cast out every line, and turned every stone, and tried every argument: _and sometimes proved it well, and when they did not, yet they believed strongly_; _and_ THEY WERE SURE OF THE THING, WHEN THEY WERE NOT SURE OF THE ARGUMENT.[143]

COMMENT.

A fact may be truly stated, and yet the Cause or Reason assigned for it mistaken; or inadequate; or _pars pro toto_--one only or few of many that might or should have been adduced. The preceding Aphorism is an instance in point. The phenomenon here brought forward by the Bishop, as the ground and occasion of men's belief of a future state--viz. the frequent, not to say ordinary, disproportion between moral worth and worldly prosperity--must, indeed, at all times and in all countries of the civilized world have led the observant and reflecting few, the men of meditative habits and strong feelings of natural equity, to a nicer consideration of the current belief, whether instinctive or traditional. By forcing the Soul in upon herself, this enigma of saint and sage, from Job, David and Solomon to Claudian and Boetius,--this perplexing disparity of success and desert, has, I doubt not, with such men been the occasion of a steadier and more distinct consciousness of a _something_ in man different _in kind_, and which not merely distinguishes but contra-distinguishes, him from brute animals--at the same time that it has brought into closer view an enigma of yet harder solution--the fact, I mean, of a _contradiction_ in the human being, of which no traces are observable elsewhere, in animated or inanimate nature. A struggle of jarring impulses; a mysterious diversity between the injunctions of the mind and the elections of the will; and (last not least) the utter incommensurateness and the unsatisfying qualities of the things around us, that yet are the only objects which our senses discover, or our appetites require us to pursue:--hence for the finer and more contemplative spirits the ever-strengthening suspicion, that the two phenomena must in some way or other stand in close connexion with each other, and that the Riddle of Fortune and Circumstance is but a form or effluence of the Riddle of Man:--and hence again, the persuasion, that the solution of both problems is to be sought for--hence the presentiment, that this solution will be found--in the _contra_-distinctive constituent of humanity, in the _something_ of human nature which is exclusively human;--and--as the objects discoverable by the senses, as all the bodies and substances that we can touch, measure, and weigh, are either mere totals, the unity of which results from the parts, and is of course only apparent; or substances, the unity of action of which is owing to the nature or arrangement of the partible bodies which they actuate or set in motion, (steam for instance, in a steam-engine); as on the one hand the conditions and known or conceivable properties of all the objects which perish and utterly _cease_ to be, together with all the properties which we ourselves have in common with these perishable things, differ _in kind_ from the acts and properties peculiar to our humanity, so that the former cannot even be conceived, cannot without a contradiction in terms be predicated, of the proper and immediate subject of the latter--(for who would not smile at an ounce of Truth, or a square foot of Honour?)--and as, on the other hand, whatever things in visible nature _have_ the character of Permanence, and endure amid continual flux unchanged like a rainbow in a fast-flying shower, (for example, Beauty, Order, Harmony, Finality, Law,) are all akin to the _peculia_ of humanity, are all _congenera_ of Mind and Will, without which indeed they would not only exist in vain, as pictures for moles, but actually not _exist_ at all;--hence, finally, the conclusion, that the soul of man, as the subject of Mind and Will, must likewise possess a principle of permanence, and be destined to endure. And were these grounds lighter than they are, yet as a small weight will make a scale descend, where there is nothing in the opposite scale, or _painted_ weights, which have only an illusive relief or prominence; so in the scale of immortality slight reasons are in effect weighty, and sufficient to determine the judgment, there being no counter-weight, no reasons against them, and no facts in proof of the contrary, that would not prove equally well the cessation of the eye on the removal or diffraction of the eye-glass, and the dissolution or incapacity of the musician on the fracture of his instrument or its strings.

But though I agree with Taylor so far, as not to doubt that the misallotment of worldly goods and fortunes was one principal occasion, exciting well-disposed and spiritually-awakened natures by reflections and reasonings, such as I have here supposed, to mature the presentiment of immortality into full consciousness, into a principle of action and a well-spring of strength and consolation; I cannot concede to this circumstance any thing like the importance and _extent_ of efficacy which he in this passage attributes to it. I am persuaded, that as the belief of all mankind, of all[144] tribes, and nations, and languages, in all ages, and in all states of social union, it must be referred to far deeper grounds, common to man as man; and that its fibres are to be traced to the _tap-root_ of humanity. I have long entertained, and do not hesitate to avow, the conviction, that the argument, from Universality of belief, urged by Barrow and others in proof of the first article of the Creed, is neither in point of _fact_--for two very different objects may be intended, and two, or more, diverse and even contradictory conceptions may be expressed, by the same _name_--nor in legitimacy of conclusion as strong and unexceptionable, as the argument from the same ground for the continuance of our personal being after death. The bull-calf _butts_ with smooth and unarmed brow. Throughout animated nature, of each characteristic organ and faculty there exists a pre-assurance, an instinctive and practical anticipation; and no pre-assurance common to a whole species does in any instance prove delusive.[145] All other prophecies of nature have their exact fulfilment--in every other _ingrafted word_ of promise, nature is found true to her word; and is it in her noblest creature, that she tells her first lie?--(The reader will, of course, understand, that I am here speaking in the assumed character of a mere naturalist, to whom no light of revelation had been vouchsafed; one, who

---- with gentle heart
Had worshipp'd Nature in the hill and valley,
Not knowing what he loved, but loved it all!)

Whether, however, the introductory part of the Bishop's argument is to be received with more or less qualification, the _fact_ itself, as stated in the concluding sentence of the Aphorism, remains unaffected, and is beyond exception true.

If other argument and yet higher authority were required, I might refer to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and to the Epistle to the Hebrews, which whether written by Paul or, as Luther conjectured, by Apollos, is out of all doubt the work of an Apostolic man filled with the Holy Spirit, and composed while the Temple and the glories of the Temple worship were yet in existence. Several of the Jewish and still Judaizing converts had begun to vacillate in their faith, and to _stumble at the stumbling-stone_ of the contrast between the pomp and splendour of the old Law and the simplicity and humility of the Christian Church. To break this sensual charm, to unfascinate these bedazzled brethren, the writer to the Hebrews institutes a comparison between the two religions, and demonstrates the superior spiritual grandeur, the greater intrinsic worth and dignity of the religion of Christ. On the other hand, at Rome where the Jews formed a numerous, powerful, and privileged class (many of them, too, by their proselyting zeal and frequent disputations with the priests and philosophers trained and exercised polemics) the recently-founded Christian Church was, it appears, in greater danger from the reasonings of the Jewish doctors and even of its own Judaizing members, respecting the _use_ of the new revelation. Thus the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to prove the _superiority_ of the Christian Religion; the object of the Epistle to the Romans to prove its _necessity_. Now there was one argument extremely well calculated to stagger a faith newly transplanted and still loose at its roots, and which, if allowed, seemed to preclude the _possibility_ of the Christian religion, as an especial and immediate revelation from God--on the high grounds, at least, on which the Apostle of the Gentiles placed it, and with the exclusive rights and _superseding_ character, which _he_ claimed for it. "You admit" (said they) "the divine origin and authority of the Law given to Moses, proclaimed with thunders and lightnings and the voice of the Most High heard by all the people from Mount Sinai, and introduced, enforced, and perpetuated by a series of the most stupendous miracles. Our religion then was given by God: and can God give a perishable imperfect religion? If not perishable, how can it have a successor? If perfect, how can it need to be superseded?--The entire argument is indeed comprised in the latter attribute of our Law. We know, from an authority which you yourselves acknowledge for divine, that our religion is perfect. _He is the Rock, and his Work is perfect._ (Deuter. xxxii. 4.) If then the religion revealed by God himself to our forefathers is _perfect_, what need have we of another?"--This objection, both from its importance and from its extreme plausibility, for the persons at least, to whom it was addressed, required an answer in both Epistles. And accordingly, the answer is included in the one (that to the Hebrews) and it is the especial purpose and main subject of the other. And how does the Apostle answer it? Suppose--and the case is not impossible[146]--a man of sense, who had studied the evidences of Priestley and Paley with Warburton's Divine Legation, but who should be a perfect stranger to the Writings of St. Paul: and that I put _this_ question to him:--"What do _you_ think, will St. Paul's answer be?" "Nothing," he would reply, "can be more obvious. It is in vain, the Apostle will urge, that you bring your notions of probability and inferences from the arbitrary interpretation of a word in an absolute rather than a relative sense, to invalidate a known _fact_. It is a _fact_, that your Religion is (in _your_ sense of the word) _not_ perfect: for it is deficient in one of the two essential constituents of all true religion, the belief of a future state on solid and sufficient grounds. Had the doctrine indeed been revealed, the stupendous miracles, which you most truly affirm to have accompanied and attested the first promulgation of your religion, would have supplied the requisite proof. But the doctrine was not revealed; and your belief of a future state rests on no solid grounds. You believe it (as far as you believe it, and as many of you as profess this belief) without revelation, and without the only proper and sufficient evidence of its truth. Your religion, therefore, though of divine Origin is, (if taken in disjunction from the new revelation, which I am commissioned to proclaim) but a _religio dimidiata_; and the main purpose, the proper character, and the paramount object of Christ's mission and miracles, is to supply the missing half by a clear discovery of a future state;--and (since "he alone discovers who proves") by proving the truth of the doctrine, now for the first time declared with the requisite authority, by the requisite, appropriate, and alone satisfactory _evidences_."

But _is_ this the Apostle's answer to the Jewish oppugners, and the Judaizing false brethren, of the Church of Christ?--It is _not_ the answer, it does not resemble the answer returned by the Apostle. It is neither parallel nor corradial with the line of argument in either of the two Epistles, or with any one line; but it is a _chord_ that traverses them all, and only touches where it cuts across. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the directly contrary position is repeatedly _asserted_: and in the Epistle to the Romans it is every where _supposed_. The death to which the Law sentenced all sinners (and which even the Gentiles without the _revealed_ Law had announced to them by their consciences, _the judgment of God having been made known even to them_) must be the same death, from which they were saved by the faith of the Son of God; or the Apostle's reasoning would be senseless, his antithesis a mere equivoque, a play on a word, _quod idem sonat, aliud vult_. Christ _redeemed mankind from the curse of the Law_: and we all know, that it was not from temporal death, or the penalties and afflictions of the present life, that believers have been redeemed. The Law, of which the inspired sage of Tarsus is speaking, from which no man can plead excuse; the Law miraculously delivered in thunders from Mount Sinai, which was inscribed on tables of stone for the _Jews_, and written in the hearts of _all_ men (Rom. ii. 15.)--the Law _holy and spiritual_! what was the great point, of which this Law, in its own name, offered no solution? the mystery, which it left behind the veil, or in the cloudy tabernacle of types and figurative sacrifices? Whether there was a judgment to come, and souls to suffer the dread sentence? Or was it not far rather--what are the means of escape; where may grace be found, and redemption? St. Paul says, the latter. The Law brings condemnation: but the conscience-sentenced transgressor's question, "What shall I do to be saved? Who will intercede for me?" she dismisses as beyond the jurisdiction of her court, and takes no cognizance thereof, save in prophetic murmurs or mute outshadowings of mystic ordinances and sacrificial types.--Not, therefore, _that_ there is a Life to come, and a future state; but _what_ each individual Soul may hope for itself therein; and on what grounds; and that this state has been rendered an object of aspiration and fervent desire, and a source of thanksgiving and exceeding great joy; and by whom, and through whom, and for whom, and by what means and under what conditions--_these_ are the _peculiar_ and _distinguishing_ fundamentals of the Christian Faith! These are the revealed Lights and obtained Privileges of the Christian Dispensation! Not alone the knowledge of the boon, but the precious inestimable Boon itself, is the _Grace and Truth that came by Jesus Christ_! I believe Moses, I believe Paul; but I believe _in_ Christ.

[139] Coleridge quotes this passage in his Conclusion.--ED.

[140] J. Taylor's 'Worthy Communicant.'--H.N.C.

[141] Isaiah xxxiv. compared with Matt. x. 34, and Luke xii. 49.--H.N.C.

[142] Conclusion, Part III. ch. 8.--H.N.C.

[143] Sermon at the Funeral of Sir George Dalston.--H.N.C.

[144] I say, _all_: for the accounts of one or two travelling French _philosophers_, professed atheists and partizans of infidelity, respecting one or two African hordes, Caffres, and poor outlawed Boschmen, hunted out of their humanity, ought not to be regarded as exceptions. And as to Hearne's assertion respecting the non-existence and rejection of the belief among the Copper-Indians, it is not only hazarded on very weak and insufficient grounds, but he himself, in another part of his work, unconsciously supplies data, from whence the contrary may safely be concluded. Hearne, perhaps, put down his friend Motannabbi's _Fort_-philosophy for the opinion of his tribe; and from his high appreciation of the moral character of this murderous gymnosophist, it might, I fear, be inferred, that Hearne himself was not the very person one would, of all others, have chosen for the purpose of instituting the inquiry.

[145] See Baron Field's Letters from New South Wales. The poor natives, the lowest in the scale of humanity, evince no symptom of any religion, or the belief of any superior power as the maker of the world; but yet have no doubt that the spirits of their ancestors survive in the form of porpoises, and mindful of their descendants with imperishable affection, drive the whales ashore for them to feast on.

[146] The case here supposed actually occurred in my own experience in the person of a Spanish refugee, of English parents, but from his tenth year resident in Spain, and bred in a family of wealthy, but ignorant and bigoted, Roman Catholics. In mature manhood he returned to England, disgusted with the conduct of the priests and monks, which had indeed for some years produced on his mind its so common effect among the better-informed natives of the South of Europe--a tendency to Deism. The results, however, of the infidel system in France, with his opportunities of observing the effects of irreligion on the French officers in Spain, on the one hand; and the undeniable moral and intellectual superiority of Protestant Britain on the other; had not been lost on him: and here he began to think for himself and resolved to _study_ the subject. He had gone through Bishop Warburton's Divine Legation, and Paley's Evidences; but had never read the New Testament consecutively, and the Epistles not at all.

APHORISM.

ON BAPTISM.

LEIGHTON.

_In those days came John the Baptist, preaching._--It will suffice for our present purpose, if by these[147] words we direct the attention to the origin, or at least first Scriptural record, of BAPTISM, and to the combinement of PREACHING therewith; their aspect each to the other, and their concurrence to one excellent end: the Word unfolding the Sacrament, and the Sacrament sealing the Word; the Word as a Light, informing and clearing the sense of the Seal; and this again, as a Seal, confirming and ratifying the truth of the Word; as you see some significant seals, or engraven signets, have a word about them expressing their sense.

But truly the word is a light and the sacraments have in them of the same light illuminating them. This _sacrament_ of Baptism, the ancients do particularly express by _light_. Yet are they both nothing but darkness to us, till the same light shine in our hearts; for till then we are nothing but darkness ourselves, and therefore the most luminous things are so to us. Noonday is as midnight to a blind man. And we see these ordinances, the word and the sacrament, without profit or comfort for the most part, because we have not of that Divine Light within us. And we have it not, because we ask it not.

COMMENT.

_Or an Aid to Reflection in the forming of a sound Judgment respecting the purport and purpose of the Baptismal Rite, and a just appreciation of its value and importance._

A born and bred Baptist, and paternally descended from the old orthodox Non-conformists, and both in his own and in his father's right a very dear friend of mine, had married a member of the National Church. In consequence of an anxious wish expressed by his lady for the baptism of their first child, he solicited me to put him in possession of my Views respecting this controversy; though principally as to the degree of importance which I attached to it. For as to the point itself, his natural prepossession in favour of the persuasion in which he was born, had been confirmed by a conscientious examination of the arguments on both sides. As the Comment on the preceding Aphorism, or rather as an expansion of its subject matter, I will give the substance of the conversation: and amply shall I have been remunerated, should it be read with the interest and satisfaction with which it was heard. More particularly, should any of my readers find themselves under the same or similar circumstances.

Our discussion is rendered shorter and more easy by our perfect agreement in certain preliminary points. We both disclaim alike every attempt to explain any thing _into_ Scripture, and every attempt to explain any thing _out of_ Scripture. Or if we regard either with a livelier aversion, it is the latter, as being the more fashionable and prevalent. I mean the practice of both high and low _Grotian_ Divines to _explain away_ positive assertions of Scripture on the pretext, that the _literal sense_ is not agreeable to reason, that is, THEIR _particular_ reason. And inasmuch as (in the only right sense of the word), there is no such thing as a _particular_ reason, they must, and in fact they _do_, mean, that the literal sense is not accordant to their _understanding_, that is, to the _notions_ which _their_ understandings have been taught and accustomed to form in _their_ school of philosophy. Thus a Platonist who should become a Christian, would at once, even in texts susceptible of a different interpretation, recognize, because he would expect to find, several doctrines which the disciple of the Epicurean or mechanic school will not receive on the most positive declarations of the Divine Word. And as we agree in the opinion, that the _Minimi-fidian_ party[148] err grievously in the latter point, so I must concede to you, that too many Pædo-baptists (_assertors of Infant Baptism_) have erred, though less grossly, in the former. I have, I confess, no eye for these smoke-like wreaths of inference, this ever widening spiral _ergo_ from the narrow aperture of perhaps a single text; or rather an interpretation forced into it by construing an idiomatic phrase in an artless narrative with the same absoluteness, as if it had formed part of a mathematical problem. I start back from these inverted Pyramids, where the apex is the base. If I should inform any one that I had called at a friend's house, but had found nobody at home, the family having all gone to the play; and if he on the strength of this information, should take occasion to asperse my friend's wife for unmotherly conduct in taking an infant, six months old, to a crowded theatre; would you allow him to press on the words "_nobody_" and "_all_" the family, in justification of the slander? Would you not tell him, that the words were to be interpreted by the nature of the subject, the purpose of the speaker, and their ordinary acceptation; and that he must, or might have known, that infants of that age would not be admitted into the theatre? Exactly so, with regard to the words, _he and all his household_. Had Baptism of infants at that early period of the Gospel been a known practice, or had this been previously demonstrated,--then indeed the argument, that in all probability there were one or more infants or young children in so large a family, would be no otherwise objectionable than as being superfluous, and a sort of anticlimax in logic. But if the words are cited as the proof, it would be a clear _petitio principii_, though there had been nothing else against it. But when we turn back to the Scriptures preceding the narrative, and find repentance and belief demanded as the terms and indispensable conditions of Baptism--_then_ the case above imagined applies in its full force. Equally vain is the pretended analogy from Circumcision, which was no Sacrament at all; but the means and mark of national distinction. In the first instance it was, doubtless, a privilege or mark of superior rank conferred on the descendants of Abraham. In the Patriarchal times this rite was confined (the first governments being Theocracies) to the priesthood, who were set apart to that office from their birth. At a later period this token of the _premier class_ was extended to Kings. And thus, when it was re-ordained by Moses for the whole Jewish nation, it was at the same time said--Ye are _all_ Priests and Kings; ye are a consecrated People. In addition to this, or rather in aid of this, Circumcision was intended to distinguish the Jews by some indelible sign: and it was no less necessary, that Jewish children should be recognizable as Jews, than Jewish adults--not to mention the greater safety of the rite in infancy. Nor was it ever pretended that any Grace was conferred with it, or that the rite was significant of any inward or spiritual operation. In short, an unprejudiced and competent reader need only peruse the first thirty-three paragraphs of the eighteenth section of Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying; and then compare with these the remainder of the Section added by him after the Restoration: those, namely, in which he _attempts_ to overthrow his own arguments. I had almost said, _affects_: for such is the feebleness, and so palpable the sophistry of his answers, that I find it difficult to imagine, that Taylor himself could have been satisfied with them. The only plausible arguments apply with equal force to Baptist and Pædo-baptist; and would prove, if they proved any thing, that both were wrong, and the Quakers only in the right.

Now, in the first place, it is obvious, that nothing conclusive can be drawn from the silence of the New Testament respecting a practice, which, if we suppose it already in use, must yet, from the character of the first converts, have been of comparatively rare occurrence; and which from the predominant, and more concerning, objects and functions of the Apostolic writers (1 Corinth. i. 17.) was not likely to have been mentioned otherwise than incidentally, and very probably therefore might not have occurred to them to mention at all. But, secondly, admitting that the practice was introduced at a later period than that in which the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles were composed: I should yet be fully satisfied, that the Church exercised herein a sound[149] discretion. On either supposition, therefore, it is never without regret that I see a divine of our Church attempting to erect forts on a position so evidently commanded by the strong-hold of his antagonists. I dread the use which the Socinians may make of their example, and the Papists of their failure. Let me not, however, deceive you. (_The reader understands, that I suppose myself conversing with a Baptist._) I am of opinion, that the divines on your side are chargeable with a far more grievous mistake, that of giving a carnal and _Judaizing_ interpretation to the various Gospel texts in which the terms, _baptism_ and _baptize_, occur, contrary to the express and earnest admonitions of the Apostle Paul. And this I say, without in the least retracting my former concession, that the texts appealed to, as commanding or authorizing Infant Baptism, are all without exception made to bear a sense neither contained nor deducible: and likewise that (historically considered) there exists no sufficient _positive_ evidence, that the Baptism of infants was instituted by the Apostles in the practice of the Apostolic age.[150]

Lastly, we both coincide in the full conviction, that it is neither the outward ceremony of Baptism, under any form or circumstances, nor any other ceremony, but such a faith in Christ as tends to produce a conformity to his holy doctrines and example in heart and life, and which faith is itself a declared mean and condition of our partaking of his spiritual body, and of being _clothed upon_ with his righteousness,--that properly makes us Christians, and can alone be enjoined as an Article of Faith necessary to Salvation, so that the denial thereof may be denounced as a damnable heresy. In the strictest sense of essential, this alone is the essential in Christianity, that the same spirit should be growing in us which was in the fulness of all perfection in Christ Jesus. Whatever else is named essential is such because, and only as far as, it is instrumental to this, or evidently implied herein. If the Baptists hold the _visible rite_ to be indispensable to salvation, with what terror must they not regard every disease that befalls their children between youth and infancy! But if they are saved by the faith of the parent, then the outward rite is not essential to salvation, otherwise than as the omission should arise from a spirit of disobedience: and in this case it is the cause, not the effect, the wilful and unbaptized heart, not the unbaptizing hand, that perils it. And surely it looks very like an _inconsistency_ to admit the vicarious faith of the parents and the therein implied promise, that the child shall be Christianly bred up, and as much as in them lies prepared for the communion of saints--to admit this, as safe and sufficient in their own instance, and yet to denounce the same belief and practice as hazardous and unavailing in the Church--the same, I say, essentially, and only differing from their own by the presence of two or three Christian friends as additional securities, and by the promise being expressed!

But you, my filial friend! have studied Christ under a better teacher--the Spirit of Adoption, even the spirit that was in Paul, and which still speaks to us out of his writings. You remember and admire the saying of an old divine, that a ceremony duly instituted was a Chain of Gold round the Neck of Faith; but if in the wish to make it co-essential and consubstantial, you draw it closer and closer, it may strangle the Faith it was meant to deck and designate. You are not so unretentive a scholar as to have forgotten the _pateris et auro_ of your Virgil: or if you were, you are not so inconsistent a reasoner, as to translate the Hebraism, spirit and fire in one place by spiritual fire, and yet to refuse to translate water and spirit by spiritual water in another place: or if, as I myself think, the different position marks a different sense, yet that the former must be _ejusdem generis_ with the latter--the Water of Repentance, reformation in _conduct_; and the Spirit that which purifies the inmost _principle_ of action, as fire purges the metal substantially and not cleansing the surface only!

But in this instance, it will be said, the ceremony, the outward and visible sign, is a Scripture ordinance. I will not reply, that the Romish priest says the same of the anointing of the sick with oil and the imposition of hands. No, my answer is: that this is a very sufficient reason for the continued observance of a ceremonial rite so derived and sanctioned, even though its own beauty, simplicity, and natural significancy had pleaded less strongly in its behalf. But it is no reason why the Church should forget, that the perpetuation of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing, and that a ceremony to be perpetuated is to be perpetuated as a _ceremony_. It is no reason why, knowing and experiencing even in the majority of her own members the proneness of the human mind to[151] superstition, the Church might not rightfully and piously adopt the measures best calculated to check this tendency, and to correct the abuse, to which it had led in any particular rite. But of superstitious notions respecting the baptismal ceremony, and of abuse resulting, the instances were flagrant and notorious. Such, for instance, was the frequent deferring of the baptismal rite to a late period of life, and even to the death-bed, in the belief that the mystic water would cleanse the baptized person from all sin and (if he died immediately after the performance of the ceremony) send him pure and spotless into the other world.

Nor is this all. The preventive remedy applied by the Church is legitimated as well as additionally recommended by the following consideration. Where a ceremony answered and was intended to answer several purposes, which purposes at its first institution were blended in respect of _the time_, but which afterwards, by change of circumstances (as when, for instance, a large and ever-increasing proportion of the members of the Church, or those who at least bore the Christian name, were of Christian parents), were necessarily dis-united--_then_ either the Church has no power or authority delegated to her (which is shifting the ground of controversy)--or she must be authorized to choose and determine, to which of the several purposes the ceremony should be attached.--Now one of the purposes of Baptism was--the making it _publicly manifest_, first, what individuals were to be regarded by the _world_ (Phil. ii. 15.) as belonging to the visible communion of Christians: inasmuch as by their demeanour and apparent condition, the general estimation of _the city set on a hill and not to be hid_ (Matth. v. 14.) could not but be affected--the city that even _in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation_ was bound not only to give no cause, but by all innocent means to prevent every occasion, of _rebuke_. Secondly, to mark out, for the Church itself, those that were entitled to that _especial_ dearness, that watchful and disciplinary love and loving-kindness, which _over and above_ the affections and duties of philanthropy and universal charity, Christ himself had enjoined, and with an emphasis and in a form significant of its great and especial importance,--_A New Commandment I give unto you, that ye love_ one another. By a charity wide as sunshine, and comprehending the whole human race, the body of Christians was to be placed in contrast with the proverbial misanthropy and bigotry of the Jewish Church and people: while yet they were to be distinguished and known to all men, by the peculiar love and affection displayed by them towards the members of their own community; thus exhibiting the intensity of sectarian attachment, yet by the no less notorious and exemplary practice of the duties of universal benevolence, secured from the charge so commonly brought against it, of being narrow and exclusive. "How _kind_ these Christians are to the poor and afflicted, without distinction of religion or country; but how they _love each other_!"

Now combine with this the consideration before urged--the duty, I mean, and necessity of checking the superstitious abuse of the baptismal rite: and I then ask, with confidence, in what way could the Church have exercised a sound discretion more wisely, piously, or effectively, than by fixing, from among the several ends and purposes of Baptism, the outward ceremony to the purposes here mentioned? How could the great body of Christians be more plainly instructed as to the true nature of all outward ordinances? What can be conceived better calculated to prevent the ceremony from being regarded as other and more than a ceremony, if not the administration of the same on an _object_, (yea, a dear and precious _object_) of spiritual duties, though the _conscious_ subject of spiritual operations and graces only by anticipation and in hope;--a subject unconscious as a flower of the dew falling on it, or the early rain, and thus emblematic of the myriads who (as in our Indian empire, and henceforward, I trust, in Africa) are temporally and even morally benefited by the outward existence of Christianity, though as yet ignorant of its saving truth! And yet, on the other hand, what more reverential than the application of this, the common initiatory rite of the East sanctioned and appropriated by Christ--its application, I say, to the very subjects, whom he himself commanded to be _brought_ to him--the children _in arms_, respecting whom _Jesus was much displeased with his disciples, who had rebuked those that brought them_! What more expressive of the true character of that originant yet _generic_ stain, from which the Son of God, by his mysterious incarnation and agony and death and resurrection, and by the Baptism of the Spirit, came to cleanse the children of Adam, than the exhibition of the outward element to infants free from and incapable of _crime_, in whom the evil principle was present only as _potential_ being, and whose outward semblance represented the kingdom of Heaven? And can it--to a man, who would hold himself deserving of _anathema maranatha_ (1 Cor. xvi. 22.) if he did not _love the Lord Jesus_--can it be nothing to such a man, that the introduction and commendation of a new inmate, a new spiritual ward, to the assembled brethren in Christ (--and this, as I have shown above, was _one_ purpose of the baptismal ceremony) does in the baptism of an infant recall our Lord's own presentation in the Temple on the eighth day after his birth? Add to all these considerations the known fact of the frequent exposure and the general light regard of infants, at the time when Infant Baptism is by the Baptists supposed to have been first _ruled_ by the Catholic Church, not overlooking the humane and charitable motives, that influenced Cyprian's decision in its favour. And then make present to your imagination, and meditatively contemplate the still continuing tendency, the profitable, the _beautiful_ effects, of this ordinance _now_ and for so many centuries back, on the great mass of the population throughout Christendom--the softening, elevating exercise of faith and the conquest over the senses, while in the form of a helpless crying babe the presence, and the unutterable worth and value, of an immortal being made capable of everlasting bliss are solemnly proclaimed and carried home to the mind and heart of the hearers and beholders! Nor will you forget the probable influence on the future education of the child, the opportunity of instructing and impressing the friends, relatives, and parents in their best and most docile mood. These are, indeed, the _mollia tempora fandi_.

It is true, that by an unforeseen accident, and through the propensity of all zealots to caricature partial truth into total falsehood--it is too true, that a tree the very contrary in quality of that shown to Moses (Exod. xv. 25.) was afterwards _cast into the sweet waters from this fountain_, and made them like _the waters of Marah_, too bitter to be drunk. I allude to the Pelagian controversy, the perversion of the article of Original Sin by Augustine, and the frightful conclusions which this _durus pater infantum_ drew from the article thus perverted. It is not, however, to the predecessors of this African, whoever they were that authorized Pædo-baptism, and at whatever period it first became general--it is not to the Church at the time being, that these consequences are justly imputable. She had done her best to preclude every superstition, by allowing in urgent cases any and every adult, man and woman, to administer the ceremonial part, the outward rite, of baptism: but reserving to the highest functionary of the Church (even to the exclusion of the co-presbyters) the more proper and spiritual purpose, namely, the declaration of repentance and belief, the free Choice of Christ, as his Lord, and the open profession of the Christian title by an individual in his own name and by his own deliberate act. _This_ office of religion, the essentially moral and spiritual nature of which could not be mistaken, this most _solemn_ office the Bishop alone was to perform.

Thus--as soon as the _purposes_ of the ceremonial rite were by change of circumstances divided, that is, took place at different periods of the believer's life--to the _outward_ purposes, where the effect was to be produced on the consciousness of others, the Church continued to affix the _outward rite_; while to the substantial and spiritual purpose, where the effect was to be produced on the individual's own mind, she gave its beseeming dignity by an ordinance not figurative, but standing in the direct cause and relation of _means_ to the _end_.