Chapter XIX (3)

[90] Eichhorn, vi. part 1, p. 283. Simon, however, observes that
Socinus knew little Greek or Hebrew, as he owns himself, though
he pretends to decide questions which require a knowledge of
these languages. I quote from Bibliothèque Universelle, vol.
xxiii., p. 498.

[91] Tillotson, in one of his sermons (I cannot give the
reference, writing from memory), dissents, as might be expected,
from this denial of natural religion, but with such encomiums on
Socinus as some archbishops would have avoided.

[92] Socinum sectæ ejus principes nuper Volkelius, nunc Ruarus
non probant, in eo quod circa Dei cognitionem petita e natura
rerum argumenta abdicaverit. Grot. Epist. 964. See too Ruari
Epist., p. 210.

|Crellius. Ruarus.|

40. Crellius was, perhaps, the most eminent of the Racovian school in this century.[93] Many of its members, like himself, were Germans, their sect having gained ground in some of the Lutheran states about this time, as it did also in the United Provinces. Grotius broke a lance with him in his treatise De Satisfactione Christi, to which he replied in another with the same title. Each retired from the field with the courtesies of chivalry towards his antagonist. The Dutch Arminians in general, though very erroneously, supposed to concur in all the leading tenets of the Racovian theologians, treated them with much respect.[94] Grotius was often reproached with the intimacies he kept up among these obnoxious sectaries; and many of his letters, as well as those of Curcellæus and other leading Arminians, bear witness to the personal regard they felt for them.[95] Several proofs of this will be also found in the epistles of Ruarus, a book which throws much light on the theological opinions of the age. Ruarus was a man of acuteness, learning, and piety, not wholly concurring with the Racovians, but not far removed from them.[96] The commentaries of Grotius on the Scriptures have been also charged with Socinianism; but he pleaded that his interpretations were those of the fathers.

[93] Dupin praises Volkelius highly, but says of Crellius: il
avoit beaucoup étudié, mais il n’étoit pas un esprit fort élevé.
Bibl. des Auteurs separés, ii. 614 v. 628. Simon, on the
contrary, (ubi suprà) praises Crellius highly, and says no other
commentator of his party is comparable to him.

[94] The Remonstrants refused to anathematize the Socinians,
Episcopius says, on account of the apparent arguments in their
favour, and the differences that have always existed on that
head. Apologia Confessionis. Episc. Op. vol. i. His own tenets,
were probably what some would call Arian; thus he says, personis
his tribus divinitatem tribui, non collateraliter aut
co-ordinatè, sed subordinatè. Inst. Theol. 1. iv., c. 2, 32.
Grotius says, he finds the Catholics more _tractable_ about the
Trinity than the Calvinists.

[95] Grotius never shrunk from defending his intimacy with Ruarus
and Crellius, and after praising the former, concludes, in one of
his letters, with this liberal and honest sentiment. Ego vero
ejus sum animi, ejusque instituti, ut mihi cum hominibus cunctis,
præcipue cum Christianis quantumvis errantibus necessitudinis
aliquid putem intercedere, idque me neque dictis neque factis
pigeat demonstrare. Epist. 860. Hæretici nisi aliquid haberent
veri ac nobiscum commune, jam hæretici non essent. 2da Series, p.
873. Nihil veri eo factum est deterius, quod in id Socinus
incidit. p. 880. This, he thought, was the case in some
questions, where Socinus, without designing it, had agreed with
antiquity. Neque me pudeat consentire Socino, si quando is in
veram veteremque sententiam incidit, ut sanè fecit in
controversia de justitia per fidem, et aliis nonnullis. Id. p.
797. Socinus hoc non agens in atiquæ ecclesiæ sensus nonnunquam
incidit, et eas partes, ut ingenio valebat, percoluit feliciter.
Admiscuit alia quæ etiam vera dicenti auctoritatem detraxere.
Epist. 966. Even during his controversy with Crellius he wrote to
him in a very handsome manner. Bene autem in epistola tua, quæ
mihi longè gratissimi advenit, de me judicas, non esse me eorum
in numero, qui ob sententias salva pietate dissentientes, alieno
a quoquam sim animo, aut boni alicujus amicitiam repudiare. Etiam
in libro de vera religione, [Volkelii] quem jam percurri,
relecturus et posthac, multa invenio summo cum judicio observata;
illud vero sæculo gratulor, repertos homines, qui neutiquam in
controversiis subtilibus tantum ponunt, quantum in vera vitæ
emendatione, et quotidiano ad sanctitatem profectu. Epist. 280
(1631). He wrote with kindness and regret on the breaking up of
the establishment at Racow in 1638. Ep. 1006: Grotius has been as
obnoxious on the score of Socinianism as of Popery. His
Commentaries on the Scriptures are taxed with it, and in fact he
is not in good odour with any but the Arminian divines, nor do
they, we see, wholly agree with him.

[96] Ruarus nearly agreed with Grotius as to the atonement; at
least the latter thought so. De satisfactione ita mihi respondit,
ut nihil admodum controversiæ relinqueretur. Grot. Epist. 2da
series, p. 881. See also Ruari Epistolæ, p. 148, 282. He paid
also more respect to the second century than some of his
brethren, p. 100, 439, and even struggles to agree with the
Ante-Nicene fathers, though he cannot come up to them, p. 275,
296. But in answer to some of his correspondents who magnified
primitive authority, he well replies: Deinde quæro quis illos
fixit veritati terminos? quis duo illa prima sæcula ab omni
errore absolvit? Annon ecclesiastica historia satis testatur,
nonnullas opiniones portentosas jam tum inter eos qui nomen
Christi dederant, invaluisse? Quin ut verum fatear, res ipsa
docet nonnullos posterioris sevi acutius in enodandis Scripturis
versatos; et ut de nostra ætate dicam, valde me pœniteret Calvini
vestri ac Bezæ si nihilo solidius sacras literas
interpretarentur, quam video illos ipsos, quos tu mihi obducis,
fecisse, p. 183. He lamented the fatal swerving from
protestantism into which reverence for antiquity was leading his
friend Grotius: fortassis et antiquitatis veneratio, quæ gravibus
quibusdam Pontificiorum erroribus præluxit, ultra lineam eum
perduxit, p. 277 (1642); and in answer to Mersenne, who seems to
have had some hopes of his conversion, and recommended to him the
controversy of Grotius with Rivet, he plainly replies that the
former had extenuated some things in the church of Rome which
ought to be altered, p. 258. This he frequently laments in the
course of his letters, but treats him with gentleness in
comparison with some of the sterner Socinians. It is remarkable
that even he and Crellius seem to have excluded the members of
the church of Rome, except the “vulgus ineruditum et Cassandri
gregales,” from salvation; and this while almost all churches
were anathematizing themselves in the same way. Ruar. Epist., p.
9 and p. 167.

This book contains two centuries of epistles, the second of which
is said to be very scarce, and I doubt whether many have read the
first, which must excuse my quotations. The learning, sense, and
integrity of Ruarus, as well as the high respect which Calixtus,
Curcellæus, and other great men felt for him, render the book of
some interest. He tells us that while he was in England, about
1617, a professorship at Cambridge was offered to him, worth
100_l_. per annum, besides as much more from private pupils, p.
71. But he probably mistook the civil speeches of individuals for
an offer: he was not eminent enough for such a proposal on the
part of the university; and at least he must have been silent
about his Socinianism. The morality of the early Socinians was
very strict and even ascetic, proofs of which appear in these
letters, p. 306 et alibi.

|Erastianism.|

41. Two questions of great importance which had been raised in the preceding century, became still more interesting in the present, on account of the more frequent occasion that the force of circumstances gave for their investigation, and the greater names that were engaged in it. Both of these arose out of the national establishment of churches, and their consequent relation to the commonwealth. One regarded the power of the magistrate over the church he recognized; the other involved the right of his subjects to dissent from it by non-conformity, or by a different mode of worship.

|Maintained by Hooker.|

|And Grotius.|

42. Erastus, by proposing to substitute for the ancient discipline of ecclesiastical censures, and especially for excommunication, a perpetual superintendence of the civil power over the faith and practice of the church, had given name to a scheme generally denominated Erastianism, though in some respects far broader than anything he seems to have suggested. It was more elaborately maintained by Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity, and had been, in fact, that on which the English reformation under Henry was originally founded. But as it was manifestly opposed to the ultra-montane pretensions of the See of Rome, and even to the more moderate theories of the catholic church, being, of course, destructive of her independence, so did it stand in equal contradiction to the Presbyterian scheme of Scotland and of the United Provinces. In the latter country, the states of Holland had been favourable to the Arminians, so far at least as to repress any violence against them; the clergy were exasperated and intolerant; and this raised the question of civil supremacy, in which Grotius, by one of his early works entitled Pietas Ordinum Hollandiæ, published in 1613, sustained the right of the magistrate to inhibit dangerous controversies.

|His Treatise on ecclesiastical power of the state.|

43. He returned, after the lapse of some years, to the same theme in a larger and more comprehensive work, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra. It is written upon the Anglican principles of regal supremacy, which had, however, become far less popular with the rulers of our church, than in the days of Cranmer, Whitgift, and Hooker. After stating the question, and proving the ecclesiastical power of the magistrate by natural law, Scripture, established usage, agreement of Heathen and Christian writers, and the reason of the thing, he distinguishes control over sacred offices from their exercise, and proceeds to inquire whether the magistrate may take the latter on himself; which, though practised in the early ages of the world, he finds inconvenient at present, the manners required for the regal and sacerdotal character being wholly different.[97]

[97] Cap. 4.

44. Actions may be prescribed or forbidden by natural divine law, positive divine law, or human law; the latter extending to nothing but what is left indefinite by the other two. But though we are bound not to act in obedience to human laws which contradict the divine, we are also bound not forcibly to resist them. We may defend ourselves by force against an equal, not against a superior, as he proves first from the Digest, and secondly from the New Testament.[98] Thus the rule of passive obedience is unequivocally laid down. He meets the recent examples of resistance to sovereigns, by saying that they cannot be approved where the kings have had an absolute power; but where they are bound by compact or the authority of a senate or of estates, since their power is not unlimited, they may be resisted on just grounds by that authority.[99] “Which I remark,” he proceeds to say, “lest any one, as I sometimes have known, should disgrace a good cause by a mistaken defence.”

[98] Cap. 3.

[99] Sin alicubi reges tales fuere, qui pactis sive positivis
legibus et senatus alicujus aut ordinum decretis adstringerentur,
in hos, ut summum imperium non obtinent, arma ex optimatum
tanquam superiorum sententia sumi justis de causis potuerunt.
Ibid.

45. The magistrate can alter nothing which is definitely laid down by the positive law of God; but he may regulate the circumstantial observance even of such; and as to things undefined in Scripture he has plenary jurisdiction; such as the temporalities of the church, the convocation of synods, the election of pastors. The burthen of proof lies on those who would limit the civil power by affirming anything to be prescribed by the divine law.[100] The authority attributed in Scripture to churches does not interfere with the power of the magistrate, being persuasive and not coercive. The whole church has no coercive power by divine right.[101] But since the visible church is a society of divine institution, it follows that whatever is naturally competent to a lawful society, is competent also to the church, unless it can be proved to be withdrawn from it.[102] It has, therefore, a legislative government (regimen constitutivum), of which he gives the institution of the Lord’s day as an example. But this does not impair the sovereign’s authority in ecclesiastical matters. In treating of that supremacy, he does not clearly show what jurisdiction he attributes to the magistrate; most of his instances relating to the temporalities of the church, as to which no question is likely to arise.[103] But, on the whole, he means undoubtedly to carry the supremacy as far as is done in England.

[100] Ibid.

[101] Cap. 4.

[102] Quandoquidem ecclesia cœtus est divina lege non permissus
tantum sed et institutus, de aspectabili cœtu loquor, sequitur ea
omnia quæ cœtibus legitimis naturaliter competunt, etiam ecclesiæ
competere, quatenus adempta non probantur. Ibid.

[103] Cap. 5.

46. In a chapter on the due exercise of the civil supremacy over the church, he shows more of a protestant feeling than would have been found in him when he approached the latter years of his life;[104] and declares fully against submission to any visible authority in matters of faith, so that sovereigns are not bound to follow the ministers of the church in what they may affirm as doctrine. Ecclesiastical synods he deems often useful, but thinks the magistrate is not bound to act with their consent, and that they are sometimes pernicious.[105] The magistrate may determine who shall compose such synods;[106] a strong position which he endeavours to prove at great length. Even if the members are elected by the church, the magistrate may reject those whom he reckons unfit; he may preside in the assembly, confirm, reject, annul its decisions. He may also legislate about the whole organisation of the established church.[107] It is for him to determine what form of religion shall be publicly exercised; an essential right of sovereignty as political writers have laid it down. And this is confirmed by experience; “for if any one shall ask why the Romish religion flourished in England under Mary, the protestant under Elizabeth, no cause can be assigned but the pleasure of these queens, or, as some might say, of the queens and parliaments.” In this manner Grotius disposes of a great question of casuistry by what has been done; as if murder and adultery might not be established by the same logic. Natural law would be resolved into history, were we always to argue in a similar way. But this, as will appear more fully hereafter, is not the usual reasoning of Grotius. To the objection from the danger of abuse in conceding so much power to the sovereign, he replies that no other theory will secure us better. On every supposition the power must be lodged in men, who are all liable to error. We must console ourselves by a trust in divine providence alone.[108]

[104] Cap. 6. He states the question to be this: An post
apostolorum ætatem aut persona aut cœtus sit aliquis
aspectabilis, de quâ quove certi esse possimus ac debeamus,
quæcunque ab ipsis proponantur, esse indubitatæ veritatis. Negant
hoc Evangelici; aiunt Romanenses.

[105] Cap. 7.

[106] Designare eos, qui ad synodum sunt venturi.

[107] Cap. 8. Nulla in re magis elucescit vis summi imperii, quam
quod in ejus arbitrio est quænam religio publicè exerceatur,
idque præcipuum inter majestatis jura ponunt omnes qui politicè
scripserunt. Docet idem experientia; si enim quæras cur in Anglia
Maria regnante Romana religio, Elizabetha vero imperante,
Evangelica viguerit, causa proxima reddi non poterit, nisi ex
arbitrio reginarum, aut, ut quibusdam videtur, reginarum ac
parlamenti, p. 242.

[108] Cap. 8.

47. The sovereign may abolish false religions and punish their professors, which no one else can. Here again we find precedents instead of arguments; but he says that the primitive church disapproved of capital punishments for heresy, which seems to be his main reason for doing the same. The sovereign may also enjoin silence in controversies, and inspect the conduct of the clergy without limiting himself by the canons, though he will do well to regard them. Legislation and jurisdiction, that is, of a coercive nature, do not belong to the church, except as they may be conceded to it by the civil power.[109] He fully explains the various kinds of ecclesiastical law that have been gradually introduced. Even the power of the keys, which is by divine right, cannot be so exercised as to exclude the appellant jurisdiction of the sovereign; as he proves by the Roman law, and by the usage of the parliament of Paris.[110]

[109] Ibid.

[110] Cap. 9.

48. The sovereign has a control (inspectionem cum imperio) over the ordination of priests, and certainly possesses a right of confirmation, that is, the assignment of an ordained minister to a given cure.[111] And though the election of pastors belongs to the church, this may, for good reasons, be taken into the hands of the sovereign. Instances in point are easily found, and the chapter upon the subject contains an interesting historical summary of this part of ecclesiastical law. In every case, the sovereign has a right of annulling an election, and also of removing a pastor from the local exercise of his ministry.[112]

[111] Cap. 10. Confirmationem hanc summæ potestati acceptam
ferendam nemo sanus negaverit.

[112] Cap. 10.

|Remark upon this theory.|

49. This is the full development of an Erastian theory, which Cranmer had early espoused, and which Hooker had maintained in a less extensive manner. Bossuet has animadverted upon it, nor can it appear tolerable to a zealous churchman.[113] It was well received in England by the lawyers, who had always been jealous of the spiritual tribunals, especially of late years, when, under the patronage of Laud, they had taken a higher tone than seemed compatible with the supremacy of the common law. The scheme, nevertheless, is open to some objections when propounded in so unlimited a manner, none of which is more striking than that it tends to convert differences of religious opinion into crimes against the state, and furnishes bigotry with new arguments as well as new arms, in its conflict with the free exercise of human reason. Grotius, however, feared rather that he had given too little power to the civil magistrate than too much.[114]

[113] See Le Clerc’s remarks on what Bossuet has said.
Bibliothèque Choisie, v. 349.

[114] Ego multo magis vereor, ne minus quam par est
magistratibus, aut plusquam par est pastoribus tribuerim, quam ne
in alteram partem iterum (?) excesserim, nec sic quidem illis
satisfiet qui se ecclesiam vocant. Epist. 42. This was in 1614,
after the publication of the Pietas Ordinum Hollandiæ. As he drew
nearer to the church of Rome, or that of Canterbury, he must
probably have somewhat modified his Erastianism. And yet he seems
never to have been friendly to the temporal power of bishops. He
writes in August, 1641, Episcopis Angliæ videtur mansurum nomen
prope sine re, accisa et opulentia et auctoritate. Mihi non
displicet ecclesiæ pastores et ab inani pompa et a curis
sæcularium rerum sublevari, p. 1011. He had a regard for Laud, as
the restorer of a reverence for primitive antiquity, and
frequently laments his fate; but had said, in 1640, Doleo quod
episcopi nimium intendendo potentiæ suæ nervos odium sibi potius
quam amorem populorum pariunt. Ep. 1390.

|Toleration of religious tenets.|

50. Persecution for religious heterodoxy, in all its degrees, was in the sixteenth century the principle, as well as the practice of every church. It was held inconsistent with the sovereignty of the magistrate to permit any religion but his own; inconsistent with his duty to suffer any but the true. The edict of Nantes was a compromise between belligerent parties; the toleration of the dissidents in Poland was nearly of the same kind; but no state, powerful enough to restrain its sectaries from the exercise of their separate worship, had any scruples about the right and obligation to do so. Even the writers of that century, who seemed most strenuous for toleration, Castalio, Celso, and Koornhert, had confined themselves to denying the justice of penal and especially of capital inflictions for heresy; the liberty of public worship had but incidentally, if at all, been discussed. Acontius had developed larger principles, distinguishing the fundamental from the accessory doctrines of the gospel; which, by weakening the associations of bigotry, prepared the way for a catholic tolerance. Episcopius speaks in the strongest terms of the treatise of Acontius, de Stratagematibus Satanæ, and says that the Remonstrants trod closely in his steps, as would appear by comparing their writings; so that he shall quote no passages in proof, their entire books bearing witness to the conformity.[115]

[115] Episcop. Opera, i. 301 (edit. 1665.)

|Claimed by the Arminians.|

51. The Arminian dispute led by necessary consequence to the question of public toleration. They sought at first a free admission to the pulpits, and in an excellent speech of Grotius, addressed to the magistrates of Amsterdam in 1616, he objects to a separate toleration as rending the bosom of the church. But it was soon evident that nothing more could be obtained; and their adversaries refused this. They were driven therefore to contend for religious liberty, and the writings of Episcopius are full of this plea. Against capital punishment for heresy he raises his voice with indignant severity, and asserts that the whole Christian world abhorred the fatal precedent of Calvin in the death of Servetus.[116] This indicates a remarkable change already wrought in the sentiments of mankind. Certain it is that no capital punishments for heresy were inflicted in protestant countries after this time; nor were they as frequently or as boldly vindicated as before.[117]

[116] Calvinus signum primus extulit supra alios omnes, et
exemplum dedit in theatro Gebennesi funestissimum, quodque
Christianus orbis merito execratur et abominatur; nec hoc
contentus tam atroci ficinore, cruento simul animo et calamo
parentavit. Apologia pro Confess. Remonstrantium, c. 24, p. 241.
The whole passage is very remarkable, as an indignant reproof of
a party, who, while living under popish governments, cry out for
liberty of conscience, and deny the right of punishing opinions;
yet, in all their writings and actions when they have the power,
display the very opposite principles.

[117] De hæreticorum pœnis quæ scripsi, in iis mecum sentit
Gallia et Germania, ut puto, omnis. Grot. Epist., p. 941 (1642.)
Some years sooner there had been remains of the leaven in France.
Adversus hæreticidia, he says, in 1626, satis ut arbitror plane
locutus sum, certè ita ut hic multos ob id offenderim, p. 789.
Our own Fuller, I am sorry to say, in his Church History, written
about 1650, speaks with some disapprobation of the sympathy of
the people with Legat and Wightman, burned by James I., in 1614;
and this is the more remarkable, as he is a well-natured and not
generally bigoted writer. I should think he was the latest
protestant who has tarnished his name by such sentiments. James,
who in some countries would have had certain reasons for dreading
the fire himself, designed to have burned a third heretic, if the
humanity of the multitude had not been greater than his own.

|By the independents.|

|And by Jeremy Taylor.|

52. The Independents claim to themselves the honour of having been the first to maintain the principles of general toleration, both as to freedom of worship, and immunity from penalties for opinion. But that the Arminians were not as early promulgators of the same noble tenets, seems not to have been proved. Crellius in his Vindiciæ pro Religionis Libertate, 1636, contended for the Polish dissidents, and especially for his own sect.[118] The principle is implied, if not expressed, in the writings of Chillingworth, and still more of Hales; but the first famous plea, in this country, for tolerance in religion, on a comprehensive basis and on deep-seated foundations, was the liberty of Prophesying by Jeremy Taylor. This celebrated work was written according to Taylor’s dedication, during his retirement in Wales, wither he was driven, as he expresses it, “by this great storm which hath dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces,” and published in 1647. He speaks of himself as without access to books; it is evident, however, from the abundance of his quotations, that he was not much in want of them: and from this, as well as other strong indications, we may reasonably believe, that a considerable part of this treatise had been committed to paper long before.

[118] This short tract, which will be found among the collected
works of Crellius, in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, contains
a just and temperate pleading for religious liberty, but little
which can appear very striking in modern times. It is said,
nevertheless, to have been translated and republished by
D’Holbach about 1760. This I have not seen, but there must, I
presume, have been a good deal of _condiment_ added to make it
stimulating enough for that school.

|His Liberty of Prophesying.|

53. The argument of this important book rests on one leading maxim, derived from the Arminian divines, as it was in them from Erasmus and Acontius, that the fundamental truths of Christianity are comprised in narrow compass, not beyond the Apostles’ creed in its literal meaning; that all the rest is matter of disputation, and too uncertain, for the most part, to warrant our condemning those who differ from us, as if their error must be criminal. This one proposition, much expanded, according to Taylor’s diffuse style, and displayed in a variety of language, pervades the whole treatise; a small part of which, in comparison with the rest, bears immediately on the point of political toleration, as a duty of civil governments and of churches invested with power. In the greater portion, Taylor is rather arguing against that dogmatism of judgment, which induces men, either singly or collectively, to pronounce with confidence where only a varying probability can be attained. This spirit is the religious, though not entirely the political, motive of intolerance; and, by chasing this from the heart, he inferred not that he should lay wide the door to universal freedom, but dispose the magistrate to consider more equitably the claims of every sect. “Whatsoever is against the foundation of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of obedience, or destructive to human society and the public and just interests of bodies politic, is out of the limits of my question, and does not pretend to compliance or toleration; so that I allow no indifferency, nor any countenance to those religions whose principles destroy government, nor to those religions, if there be any such, that teach ill life.”

|Boldness of his doctrines.|

54. No man, as Taylor here teaches, is under any obligation to believe that in revelation, which is not so revealed, but that wise men and good men have differed in their opinions about it. And the great variety of opinions in churches, and even in the same church, “there being none that is in prosperity,” as he, with rather a startling boldness puts it, “but changes her doctrines every age, either by bringing in new doctrines, or by contradicting her old,” shows that we can have no term of union, but that wherein all agree, the creed of the apostles.[119] And hence, though we may undoubtedly carry on our own private inquiries as much farther as we see reason, none who hold this fundamental faith are to be esteemed heretics, nor liable to punishment. And here he proceeds to reprove all those oblique acts which are not direct persecutions of men’s persons, the destruction of books, the forbidding the publication of new ones, the setting out fraudulent editions and similar acts of falsehood, by which men endeavour to stifle or prevent religious inquiry. “It is a strange industry and an importune diligence that was used by our forefathers; of all those heresies which gave them battle and employment, we have absolutely no record or monument, but what themselves, who are adversaries, have transmitted to us; and we know that adversaries, especially such who observed all opportunities to discredit both the persons and doctrines of the enemy, are not always the best records or witnesses of such transactions. We see it now in this very age, in the present distemperatures, that parties are no good registers of the actions of the adverse side; and, if we cannot be confident of the truth of a story now, now I say that it is possible for any man, and likely that the interested adversary will discover the imposture, it is far more unlikely that after ages should know any other truth, but such as serves the ends of the representers.”[120]

[119] “Since no churches believe themselves infallible, that only
excepted which all other churches say is most of all deceived, it
were strange if, in so many articles, which make up their several
bodies of confessions, they had not mistaken, every one of them,
in some thing or other.” This is Taylor’s fearless mode of
grappling with his argument; and any other must give a church
that claims infallibility the advantage.

[120] Vol. vii, p. 424. Heber’s edition of Taylor.

|His notions of uncertainty in theological tenets.|

55. None were accounted heretics by the primitive church, who held by the Apostles’ creed, till the council of Nice defined some things, rightly indeed, as Taylor professes to believe, but perhaps with too much alteration of the simplicity of ancient faith, so that “he had need be a subtle man who understands the very words of the new determinations.” And this was carried much farther by later councils, and in the Athanasian creed, of which, though protesting his own persuasion in its truth, he intimates not a little disapprobation. The necessary articles of faith are laid down clearly in Scripture; but no man can be secure, as to mysterious points, that he shall certainly understand and believe them in their true sense. This he shows first from the great discrepancy of reading in manuscripts, (an argument which he over-states in a very uncritical and incautious manner); next, from the different senses the words will bear, which there is no certain mark to distinguish, the infinite variety of human understandings, swayed, it may be, by interest, or determined by accidental and extrinsical circumstances, and the fallibility of those means, by which men hope to attain a clear knowledge of scriptural truth. And after exposing, certainly with no extenuation, the difficulties of interpretation, he concludes that since these ordinary means of expounding Scripture are very dubious, “he that is the wisest, and by consequence the likeliest to expound truest, in all probability of reason, will be very far from confidence; and, therefore, a wise man would not willingly be prescribed to by others; and if he be also a just man, he will not impose upon others; for it is best every man should be left in that liberty, from which no man can justly take him, unless he could secure him from error; so here there is a necessity to conserve the liberty of prophesying and interpreting Scripture; a necessity derived from the consideration of the difficulty of Scripture in questions controverted, and the uncertainty of any internal medium of interpretation.”

|His low opinion of the fathers.|

56. Taylor would in much of this have found an echo in the advocates of the church of Rome, and in some protestants of his own communion; but he passed onward to assail their bulwarks. Tradition or the testimony of the church, he holds insufficient and uncertain, for the reasons urged more fully by Daillé; the authority of councils is almost equally precarious, from their inconsistency, their liability to factious passions, and the doubtful authenticity of some of their acts; the pope’s claim to infallibility is combated on the usual grounds; the judgment of the fathers is shown to be inconclusive by their differences among themselves, and their frequent errors; and professing a desire that “their great reputation should be preserved as sacred as it ought,” he refers the reader to Daillé for other things; and, “shall only consider that the writings of the fathers have been so corrupted by the intermixture of heretics, so many false books put forth in their names, so many of their writings lost which would more clearly have explicated their sense, and, at last, an open profession made and a trade of making the fathers speak not what themselves thought, but what other men pleased, that it is a great instance of God’s providence and care of his church, that we have so much good preserved in the writings which we receive from the fathers, and that all truth is not as clear gone as is the certainty of their great authority and reputation.”[121]

[121] It seems not quite easy to reconcile this with what Taylor
has just before said of his desire to preserve the reputation of
the fathers sacred. In no writer is it more necessary to observe
the _animus_ with which he writes; for, giving way to his
impetuosity, when he has said anything that would give offence,
or which he thought incautious, it was not his custom, so far as
we can judge, to expunge or soften it, but to insert something
else of an opposite colour, without taking any pains to harmonize
his context. He probably revised hardly at all what he had
written before it went to the press. This makes it easy to quote
passages, especially short ones, from Taylor, which do not
exhibit his real way of thinking; if, indeed, his way of thinking
itself did not vary with the wind that blew from different
regions of controversy.

|Difficulty of finding out truth.|

57. The authority of the church cannot be any longer alleged when neither that of popes and councils, nor of ancient fathers is maintainable; since the diffusive church has no other means of speaking, nor can we distinguish by any extrinsic test the greater or better portion of it from the worse. And thus, after dismissing respectfully the pretences of some to expound Scripture by the Spirit, as impertinent to the question of dictating the faith of others, he comes to the reason of each man, as the best judge for himself, of religious controversies; reason, that may be exercised either in choosing a guide, if it feel its own incompetency, or in examining the grounds of belief. The latter has great advantages, and no man is bound to know anything of that concerning which he is not able to judge for himself. But reason may err, as he goes on to prove, without being culpable; that which is plain to one understanding being obscure to another, and among various sources of error which he enumerates as incidental to mankind, that of education being “so great and invincible a prejudice, that he who masters the inconvenience of it is more to be commended than he can justly be blamed that complies with it.” And thus not only single men but whole bodies take unhesitatingly and unanimously opposite sides from those who have imbibed another kind of instruction, and “it is strange that all the Dominicans should be of one opinion in the matter of predestination and immaculate conception, and all the Franciscans of the quite contrary, as if their understandings were formed in a different mould and furnished with various principles by their very rule.” These and the like prejudices are not absolute excuses to every one, and are often accompanied with culpable dispositions of mind; but the impossibility of judging others renders it incumbent on us to be lenient towards all, and neither to be peremptory in denying that those who differ from us have used the best means in their power to discover the truth, nor to charge their persons, whatever we may their opinions, with odious consequences which they do not avow.

|Grounds of toleration.|

58. This diffuse and not very well arranged vindication of diversity of judgment in religion, comprised in the first twelve sections of the Liberty of Prophesying, is the proper basis of the second part, which maintains the justice of toleration as a consequence from the former principle. The general arguments, or prejudices, on which punishment for religious tenets had been sustained, turned on their criminality in the eyes of God, and the duty of the magistrate to sustain God’s honour and to guard his own subjects from sin. Taylor, not denying that certain and known idolatry, or any sort of practical impiety, may be punished corporally, because it is matter of fact, asserts that no matter of mere opinion, no errors that of themselves are not sins, are to be persecuted or punished by death or corporal infliction. He returns to his favourite position, that “we are not sure not to be deceived;” mingling this, in that inconsequent allocation of his proofs which frequently occurs in his writings, with other arguments of a different nature. The governors of the church, indeed, may condemn and restrain as far as their power extends, any false doctrine which encourages evil life, or destroys the foundations of religion; but if the church meddles farther with any matters of question, which have not this tendency, so as to dictate what men are to believe, she becomes tyrannical and uncharitable; the Apostles’ creed being sufficient to conserve the peace of the church and the unity of her doctrine. And, with respect to the civil magistrate, he concludes that he is bound to suffer the profession of different opinions, which are neither directly impious and immoral, nor disturb the public peace.

|Inconsistency of one chapter.|

59. The seventeenth chapter, in which Taylor professes to consider which among the sects of Christendom are to be tolerated and in what degree, is written in a tone not easily reconciled with that of the rest. Though he begins by saying that diversity of opinions does more concern public peace than religion, it certainly appears in some passages, that on this pretext of peace, which with the magistrate has generally been of more influence than that of orthodoxy, he withdraws a great deal of that liberty of prophesying which he has been so broadly asserting. Punishment for religious tenets is doubtless not at all the same as restraint of separate worship; yet we are not prepared for the shackles he seems inclined to throw over the latter. Laws of ecclesiastical discipline, which, in Taylor’s age, were understood to be binding on the whole community, cannot, he holds, be infringed by those who take occasion to disagree, without rendering authority contemptible; and if there are any as zealous for obedience to the church, as others may be for their opinions against it, the toleration of the latter’s disobedience may give offence to the former: an argument strange enough in this treatise! But Taylor is always more prone to accumulate reasons than to sift their efficiency. It is indeed, he thinks, worthy to be considered in framing a law of church discipline, whether it will be disliked by any who are to obey it; but, after it is once enacted, there seems no further indulgence practicable than what the governors of the church may grant to particular persons by dispensation. The laws of discipline are for the public good, and must not so far tolerate a violation of themselves as to destroy the good that the public ought to derive from them.[122]

[122] This single chapter is of itself conclusive against the
truth of Taylor’s own allegation that he wrote his Liberty of
Prophesying in order to procure toleration for the episcopal
church of England at the hands of those who had overthrown it. No
one ever dreamed of refusing freedom of opinion to that church;
it was only about public worship that any difficulty could arise.
But, in truth, there is not one word in the whole treatise which
could have been written with the view that Taylor pretends.

|His general defence of toleration.|

60. I am inclined to suspect that Taylor, for some cause, interpolated this chapter after the rest of the treatise was complete. It has as little bearing upon, and is as inconsistent in spirit with, the following sections as with those that precede. To use a familiar illustration, the effect it produces on the reader’s mind is like that of coming on deck at sea, and finding that, the ship having put about, the whole line of coast is reversed to the eye. Taylor, however, makes but a short tack. In the next section, he resumes the bold tone of an advocate for freedom; and, after discussing at great length the leading tenet of the Anabaptists, concludes that, resting as it does on such plausible, though insufficient grounds, we cannot exclude it by any means from toleration, though they may be restrained from preaching their other notions of the unlawfulness of war, or of oaths, or of capital punishment; it being certain that no good religion teaches doctrines whose consequences would destroy all government. A more remarkable chapter is that in which Taylor concludes in favour of tolerating the Romanists, except when they assert the pope’s power of deposing princes, or of dispensing with oaths. The result of all, he says, is this: “Let the prince and the secular power have a care the commonwealth be safe. For whether such or such a sect of Christians be to be permitted, is a question rather political than religious.”

61. In the concluding sections he maintains the right of particular churches to admit all who profess the Apostles’ creed to their communion, and of private men to communicate with different churches, if they require no unlawful condition. But “few churches, that have framed bodies of confession and articles, will endure any person that is not of the same confession; which is a plain demonstration that such bodies of confession and articles do much hurt.” “The guilt of schism may lie on him who least thinks it; he being rather the schismatic who makes unnecessary and inconvenient impositions, than he who disobeys them, because he cannot do otherwise without violating his conscience.”[123] The whole treatise on the Liberty of Prophesying ends with the celebrated parable of Abraham, found, as Taylor says, “in the Jews’ books,” but really in an Arabian writer. This story Franklin, as every one now knows, rather unhandsomely appropriated to himself; and it is a strange proof of the ignorance as to our earlier literature which then prevailed, that for many years it continued to be quoted with his name. It was not contained in the first editions of the Liberty of Prophesying; and, indeed, the book from which Taylor is supposed to have borrowed it was not published till 1641.

[123] This is said also by Hales, in his tract on Schism, which
was published some years before the Liberty of Prophesying. It
is, however, what Taylor would have thought without a prompter.

62. Such is this great pleading for religious moderation; a production not more remarkable in itself than for the quarter from which it came. In the polemical writings of Jeremy Taylor we generally find a staunch and uncompromising adherence to one party; and from the abundant use he makes of authority, we should infer that he felt a great veneration for it. In the Liberty of Prophesying, as has appeared by the general sketch, rather than analysis we have just given, there is a prevailing tinge of the contrary turn of mind, more striking than the comparison of insulated passages can be. From what motives, and under what circumstances, this treatise was written, is not easily discerned. In the dedication to Lord Hatton of the collective edition of his controversial writings after the Restoration, he declares that “when a persecution did arise against the church of England, he intended to make a reservative for his brethren and himself, by pleading for a liberty to our consciences to persevere in that profession, which was warranted by all the laws of God and our superiors.” It is with regret we are compelled to confess some want of ingenuousness in this part of Taylor’s proceedings. No one reading the Liberty of Prophesying can perceive that it had the slightest bearing on any toleration that the episcopal church, in the time of the civil war, might ask of her victorious enemies. The differences between them were not on speculative points of faith, nor turning on an appeal to fathers and councils. That Taylor had another class of controversies in his mind is sufficiently obvious to the attentive reader, and I can give no proof in this place to any other.

|Effect of this treatise.|

63. This was the third blow that the new latitudinarian school of Leyden had aimed in England at the positive dogmatists, who, in all the reformed churches, as in that of Rome, laboured to impose extensive confessions of faith, abounding in inferences of scholastic theology, as conditions of exterior communion, and as peremptory articles of faith. Chillingworth and Hales were not less decisive; but the former had but in an incidental manner glanced at the subject, and the short tract on Schism had been rather deficient in proof of its hardy paradoxes. Taylor, therefore, may be said to have been the first who sapped and shook the foundations of dogmatism and pretended orthodoxy; the first who taught men to seek peace in unity of spirit rather than of belief; and, instead of extinguishing dissent, to take away its sting by charity, and by a sense of human fallibility. The mind thus freed from bigotry is best prepared for the public toleration of differences in religion; but certainly the despotic and jealous temper of governments is not so well combated by Taylor as by later advocates of religious freedom.

|Its defects.|

64. In conducting his argument, he falls not unfrequently into his usual fault. Endowed with a mind of prodigious fertility, which a vast erudition rendered more luxuriant he accumulates without selection whatever presents itself to his mind; his innumerable quotations, his multiplied reasonings, his prodigality of epithets and appositions, are poured along the interminable periods of his writings, with a frequency of repetition, sometimes of the same phrases, which leaves us to suspect that he revised but little what he had very rapidly composed. Certain it is that, in his different works, he does not quite adhere to himself; and it would be more desirable to lay this on the partial views that haste and impetuosity produce, than on a deliberate employment of what he knew to be insufficient reasoning. But I must acknowledge that Taylor’s fairness does not seem his characteristic quality.

65. In some passages of the Liberty of Prophesying, he seems to exaggerate the causes of uncertainty, and to take away from ecclesiastical antiquity even that moderate probability of truth which a dispassionate inquirer may sometimes assign to it. His suspicions of spuriousness and interpolation are too vaguely sceptical, and come ill from one who has no sort of hesitation, in some of his controversies, to allege as authority what he here sets aside with little ceremony. Thus, in the Defence of Episcopacy, published in 1642, he maintains the authenticity of the first fifty of the apostolic canons, all of which, in the Liberty of Prophesying, a very few years afterwards, he indiscriminately rejects. But this line of criticism was not then in so advanced a state as at present; and, from a credulous admission of everything, the learned had come sometimes to more sweeping charges of interpolation and forgery than would be sustained on a more searching investigation. Taylor’s language is so unguarded that he seems to leave the authenticity of all the fathers precarious. Doubtless there is a greater want of security as to books written before the invention of printing than we are apt to conceive, especially where independent manuscripts have not been found; but it is the business of a sagacious criticism, by the aid of internal or collateral evidence, to distinguish, not dogmatically as most are wont, but with a rational, though limited assent, the genuine remains of ancient writers from the incrustations of blundering or of imposture.

|Great erudition of this period.|

|Usher, Fetavius.|

66. A prodigious reach of learning distinguishes the theologians of these fifty years, far greater than even in the sixteenth century; and also, if I am not mistaken, more critical and pointed, though in these latter qualities it was afterwards surpassed. And in this erudition the Protestant churches we may perhaps say, were upon the whole more abundant than that of Rome. But it would be unprofitable to enumerate works which we are incompetent to appreciate. Blondel, Daillé, and Salmasius on the continent, Usher in England, are the most conspicuous names. Blondel sustained the equality of the apostolic church both against the primacy of Rome, and the episcopacy for which the Anglicans contended; Salmasius and Daillé fought on the same side in that controversy. The writings of our Irish primate, Usher, who maintained the antiquity of his order, but not upon such ground as many in England would have desired, are known for their extraordinary learning, in which he has perhaps never been surpassed by an English writer. But for judgment and calm appreciation of evidence, the name of Usher has not been altogether so much respected by posterity, as it was by his contemporaries. The church of Rome had its champions of less eminent renown: Gretser, perhaps the first among them, is not very familiar to our ears; but it is to be remembered, that some of the writings of Bellarmin fall within this period. The Dogmata Theologica of the jesuit Petavius, though but a compilation from the fathers and ancient councils, and not peculiarly directed against the tenets of the reformed, may deserve mention as a monument of useful labour.[124] Labbe, Sirmond, and several others, appear to range more naturally under the class of historical than theological writers. In mere ecclesiastical history--the records of events rather than opinions--this period was far more profound and critical than the preceding. The annals of Baronius were abridged and continued by Spondanus.

[124] The Dogmata Theologica is not a complete work; it extends
only at far as the head of free will. It belongs to the class of
Loci Communes. Morhof, ii. 539.

|Sacred criticism.|

|Grotius, Coccejus.|

67. A numerous list of writers in sacred criticism might easily be produced. Among the Romanists, Cornelius à Lapide has been extolled above the rest by his fellow jesuit Andrès. His Commentaries, published from 1617 to 1642, are reckoned by others too diffuse; but he seems to have a fair reputation with protestant critics.[125] The Lutherans extol Gerhard, and especially Glass, author of the Philologia Sacra, in hermeneutical theology. Rivet was the highest name among the Calvinists. Arminius, Episcopius, the Fratres Poloni, and indeed almost every one who had to defend a cause, found no course so ready, at least among protestants as to explain the Scriptures consistently with his own tenets. Two natives of Holland, opposite in character, in spirit, and principles of reasoning, and consequently the founders of opposite schools of disciples, stand out from the rest--Grotius and Coccejus. Luther, Calvin, and the generality of protestant interpreters in the sixteenth century had, in most instances, rejected with some contempt the allegorical and multifarious senses of Scripture which had been introduced by the fathers, and had prevailed through the dark ages of the church. This adherence to the literal meaning was doubtless promoted by the tenet they all professed, the facility of understanding Scripture. That which was designed for the simple and illiterate, was not to require a key to any esoteric sense. Grotius, however, in his Annotations on the Old and New Testament, published in 1633--the most remarkable book of this kind that had appeared, and which has had a more durable reputation than any perhaps of its precursors--carried the system of literal interpretation still farther, bringing great stores of illustrative learning from profane antiquity, but merely to elucidate the primary meaning, according to ordinary rules of criticism. Coccejus followed a wholly opposite course. Every passage, in his method, teemed with hidden senses; the narratives, least capable of any ulterior application, were converted into typical allusions, so that the Old Testament became throughout an enigmatical representation of the New. He was also remarkable for having viewed, more than any preceding writer, all the relations between God and man under the form of covenants, and introduced the technical language of jurisprudence into theology. This became a very usual mode of treating the subject in Holland, and afterwards in England. The Coccejans were numerous in the United Provinces, though not perhaps deemed quite so orthodox as their adversaries, who, from Gisbert Voet, a theologian of the most inflexible and polemical spirit, were denominated Voetians. Their disputes began a little before the middle of the century, and lasted till nearly its close.[126] The Summa Doctrinæ of Coccejus appeared in 1648, and the Dissertationes Theologicæ of Voet in 1649.

[125] Andrès, Blount. Simon, however, says he is full of an
erudition not to the purpose, which, as his Commentaries on the
Scriptures run to twelve volumes, is not wonderful.

[126] Eichhorn, vi. pt. i., p. 264. Mosheim.

|English Commentators.|