Chapter XIV: Part 14

There is no immediate prospect, indeed, that we in this particular congregation shall be called upon to practise the duty of which I have been now speaking; and, indeed, it is for that very reason that I could dwell on the subject more freely. But what is going on all around us, what we hear of, read of, and talk of so much as we are many of us likely to do in the next week or two about political matters, _that_ we should be accustomed to look upon as Christians: we should by that standard try our common views and language about it, and, if it may be, correct them: that so hereafter, if we be called upon to act, we may act, according to the Apostle's teaching, in the name of our Lord Jesus. And I am quite sure if we do so think and so act, although our differences of opinion might remain just the same, yet the change in ourselves, and I verily believe in the blessings which God would give us, would be more than we can well believe; and a general election, instead of calling forth, as it now does, a host of unchristian passions and practices, would be rather an exercise of Christian judgment, and forbearance, and faith, and charity; promoting, whatever was the mere political result, the glory of God, advancing Christ's kingdom, and the good of this, as it would be then truly called, Christian nation.

NOTES.

* * * * *

NOTE A. P. 5.

"_But our path is not backwards but onwards_"--This thought is expressed very beautifully in lines as wise and true as they are poetical:

"Grieve not for these: nor dare lament
That thus from childhood's thoughts we roam:
Not backward are our glances bent,
But forward to our Father's home.
Eternal growth has no such fears,
But freshening still with seasons past,
The old man clogs its earlier years,
And simple childhood comes the last."

_Burbridge's Poems_, p. 309.

* * * * *

NOTE B. P. 102.

"_Some may know the story of that German nobleman_," &c.--The Baron von Canitz. He lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was engaged in the service of the electors of Brandenburg, both of the great elector and his successor. He was the author of several hymns, one of which is of remarkable beauty, as may be seen in the following translation, for the greatest part of which I am indebted to the kindness of a friend: but the language of the original, in several places, cannot be adequately translated in English.

Come, my soul, thou must be waking--
Now is breaking
O'er the earth another day.
Come to Him who made this splendour
See thou render
All thy feeble powers can pay.

From the stars thy course be learning:
Dimly burning
'Neath the sun their light grows pale:
So let all that sense delighted
While benighted
From God's presence fade and fail.

Lo! how all of breath partaking,
Gladly waking,
Hail the sun's enlivening light!
Plants, whose life mere sap doth nourish,
Rise and flourish,
When he breaks the shades of night.

Thou too hail the light returning,--
Ready burning
Be the incense of thy powers;--
For the night is safely ended:
God hath tended
With His care thy helpless hours.

Pray that He may prosper ever
Each endeavour
When thine aim is good and true;
But that He may ever thwart thee,
And convert thee,
When thou evil wouldst pursue.

Think that He thy ways beholdeth--
He unfoldeth
Every fault that lurks within;
Every stain of shame gloss'd over
Can discover,
And discern each deed of sin.

Fetter'd to the fleeting hours,
All our powers,
Vain and brief, are borne away;
Time, my soul, thy ship is steering,
Onward veering,
To the gulph of death a prey.

May'st thou then on life's last morrow,
Free from sorrow,
Pass away in slumber sweet;
And released from death's dark sadness,
Rise in gladness,
That far brighter Sun to greet.

Only God's free gifts abuse not,
His light refuse not,
But still His Spirit's voice obey;
Soon shall joy thy brow be wreathing,
Splendour breathing
Fairer than the fairest day.

If aught of care this morn oppress thee,
To Him address thee,
Who, like the sun, is good to all:
He gilds the mountain tops, the while
His gracious smile
Will on the humblest valley fall.

Round the gifts His bounty show'rs,
Walls and tow'rs
Girt with flames thy God shall rear:
Angel legions to defend thee
Shall attend thee,
Hosts whom Satan's self shall fear.

* * * * *

NOTE C. P. 122.

"_But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue of the rule ceases_."--Thus the famous Canon of Vincentius Lirinensis is like tradition itself, always either superfluous or insufficient. Taken literally, it is true and worthless;--because what _all_ have asserted, _always_, and in _all places_, supposing of course that the means of judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputable axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been disputed hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is of no use in settling a question: for what _most_ men have asserted, _most commonly_, and in _most places_, has a certain _à priori_ probability, it is true, but by no means such as may not be outweighed by probabilities on the other side; for the extreme improbability consists not in the prevalence of error amongst millions, or for centuries, or over whole continents,--but in its being absolutely universal, so universal, that truth could not find a single witness at any time or in any country. But the single witness is enough to "justify the ways of God," and reduces what otherwise would have been a monstrous triumph of evil to the character of a severe trial of our faith, severe indeed as the trials of an evil world will be, but no more than a trial such as, with God's grace, may be overcome.

* * * * *

NOTE D. P. 189.

_"It was an admirable definition of that which excites laughter,"_ &c.--[Greek: To geloion apurtaepa ti chai aiochos auodnnoy chai on phthartichon oion enthus to geloion prosopon aischron ti chai dieotruppenon anen odunaes]--_Aristotle, Poetic,_ ii.

* * * * *

NOTE E. P. 245.

"_I would endeavour just to touch upon some of the purposes for which the Scripture tells us that Christ died_."--The Collects for Easter Sunday and the Sundays just before it and after it, illustrate the enumeration here given. The Collect for the Sunday next before Easter speaks of Christ's death only as an "example of his great humility." The Collect for Easter-day speaks of the resurrection, and connects it with our spiritual resurrection, as does also the Collect for the first Sunday after Easter. But the collect for the Second Sunday after Easter speaks of Christ as being at once our sacrifice for sin and our example of godly life,--a sacrifice to be regarded with entire thankfulness, and an example to be daily followed.

* * * * *

NOTE F. P. 282.

"_Such also was to be the state of the Christian Church after our Lord's ascension_."--And therefore, as I think, St. Peter applies to the Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to the Jews living in Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as [Greek: parepidaemois diasporas], (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as strangers and sojourners, scattered up and down in a country that was not properly their own, and living in a sort of banishment from their true home. That the words are not addressed to Jewish Christians, and therefore are not to be understood in their simple historical sense, seems evident from the second chapter of the Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2,3.

* * * * *

NOTE G. P. 315.

"_Not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the times may speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle_," &c.--What I have here said does not at all go beyond what has been said on the same subject by Hooker: "Laws, though both ordained of God himself, and the end for which they were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding, cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient to attain unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that God doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case, therefore, men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they yield thereunto, requiring itself to be changed."--_Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. iii. § 10.

* * * * *

NOTE H. P. 320.

_"Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid of their understandings, and should have sought goodness through prejudice, and blindness, and folly_."--For some time past the words "Rationalism" and "Rationalistic" have been freely used as terms of reproach by writers on religious subjects; the 73d No. of the "Tracts for the Times" is entitled, "On the introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion," and a whole chapter in Mr. Gladstone's late work on Church Principles is headed "Rationalism." Yet we still want a clear definition of the thing signified by this name. The Tract for the Times says, "To rationalize, is to ask for _reasons_ out of place; to ask improperly how we are to _account_ for certain things; to be unwilling to believe them unless they can be accounted for, i.e. referred to something else as a cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them, or taking them up into itself.... It is characterised by two peculiarities;--its love of systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense."--P. 2. Mr. Gladstone says more generally, "Rationalism is commonly, at least in this country, taken to be the reduction of Christian _doctrine_ to the standard and measure of the human understanding."--P. 37. But neither of these definitions will include all the arguments and statements which have been called by various writers "rationalistic;" and while the terms used are thus vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the tendency of this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the intellectual faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve fuller consideration than it has yet received; there is a real evil which the term Rationalism is meant to denounce; but it has not been clearly apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been confounded with it, and denounced under the same name.

I cannot pretend to discuss the subject fully in a mere note, even if I were otherwise competent to do it. But one or two points may be noticed, as likely to assist the inquiry, wherever it is worthily entered on.

1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which Coleridge enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the reason. I do not know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted above, uses the word "understanding" as synonymous with reason, or in that stricter sense in which Coleridge employs it. But the writer of the Tract seems to allude to the stricter sense, when he calls it a characteristic of rationalism "to base its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense." If this be the case, then it would seem that rationalism is the appealing to the decision of the understanding in points where the decision properly belongs not to the understanding, but to the reason. This is a great fault, and one to which all persons who belong to the sensualist school in philosophy, as opposed to the idealist school, would be more or less addicted. But then, this fault consists not in an over-estimating of man's intellectual nature generally, but in the exalting one part of it unduly, to the injury of another part; in deferring to the understanding, rather than to the reason.

2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each other, as if they were commonly described in Scripture as antagonists; whereas faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to lust, being, in fact, a very high exercise of the pure reason; inasmuch as we believe truths which our senses do not teach us, and which our passions would have us, therefore, reject, because those truths are taught by Him in whom reason recognises its own author, and the infallible source of all truth.

3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith; for it may be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far as he does neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards, but a life of passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the brutes, or rather to the devils; for his passions cannot be the mere instinctive appetites of the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual powers, which he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher nature that they are sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature, rather than to the mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.

4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without God, reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and, in a manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper truths; or, being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which concern it, and therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten it. But with God's grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy over sense and understanding, and communicating to it what of itself it could not have discovered, it then having gained strength and light not its own, and doing and seeing consciously by God's help, becomes properly faith.

5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason which entertains the idea of God--an idea essentially made up of truth and goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power exhibited to the senses might, through them, dispose the whole man to acknowledge it as divine; yet power in itself is not divine, it may be devilish. But when reason recognises that, along with this power, there exist also wisdom and goodness, then it perceives that here is God; and the worship which, without reason, might have been idolatry, being now according to reason is faith.

6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of speaking disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary condition of the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we have attained to faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight, rather than by moonlight; following the guidance of infinite reason, instead of finite. But how are we to attain to faith? in other words, how can we distinguish God's voice from the voice of evil? for we must distinguish it to be God's voice before we can have faith in it. We distinguish it, and can distinguish it no otherwise, by comparing it with that idea of God which reason intuitively enjoins, the gift of reason being God's original revelation of himself to man. Now, if the voice which comes to us from the unseen world agree not with this idea, we have no choice but to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no signs of power, in confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be God. God is not power only, but power, and truth, and holiness; and the existence of even infinite power, does not necessarily involve in it truth and holiness also; else the notion of the world being governed by an evil being would be no more than a contradiction in terms; and the horrible strife of the two principles of Manicheism would be a mere matter of indifference; for if power alone constitutes God, whichever principle triumphed over the other, would become God by the very fact of its victory; and thus triumphant evil would be good.

7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and escape the devil worship of idolatry; but the understanding is not a necessary condition of faith, and very often impedes it; for the understanding having for its basis the reports of sense and experience, has no direct way of arriving at things invisible, and rather shrinks back from that world with which it is in no way familiar. It has a work to do in regard to revelation, and an important work; but divine things not being its proper matter, its work concerning them must be subordinate, and its tendency is always to fall back from the invisible to the visible,--from matters of faith to matters of experience. Its work, with respect to revelation, is this--that it should inquire into the truth of the outward signs of it; which outward signs being necessarily things visible and sensible, fall within its province of judgment. Thus understanding judges the external witnesses of a revelation: if miracles be alleged, it is the business of understanding to ascertain the fact of their occurrence; if a book claim to be the record of a revelation, it belongs to the understanding to make out the origin of this book, the time when it was written, who were its authors, and what is the first and grammatical meaning of its language. Or, again, if any men profess to be the depositaries of divine truth, by an extraordinary commission from God, the understanding, being familiar with man's nature and motives, can judge of their credibility--can see whether there are any marks of folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once sensible and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of the understanding to judge is not to be questioned; for all such points are strictly within its dominion; and our Lord's words are of universal application, that we should render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, no less than we should render to God the things that are God's.

Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the understanding, but never without that of the reason. It may exist independent of the understanding, because faith in God is the natural result of the idea of God: and that idea belongs to the reason, and the understanding is not concerned with it. But when a special revelation has been given us, through human instruments; when the understanding is called in to certify the particular fact, that in such and such particular persons, writings, or events, God has made himself manifest in an extraordinary manner; it is the human instrumentality which requires the judgment of the understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore, it is mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the outward and historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in very misplaced contempt for Paley and others who have worked out the historical proof of it. Such persons may observe, if they will, that where the historical evidence has not been listened to, there a belief in Christianity, properly so called, is wanting. Living examples might, I think, be named of men whose reason entirely acknowledges the internal proofs of a divine origin which are contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose understandings are not satisfied as to the facts of the Christian history, and particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection. Such men are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are fully satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but who are indifferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of which another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It is important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving, as an essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is necessarily a call for the judgment of the understanding, although in religious faith simply the understanding may have no place.

8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of rationalism would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the understanding in subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are intermingled. Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine things it cannot;--and thus, where the two are mixed together, its inability to judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions of both, and the judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, the understanding examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part, namely, the power and providence of God, that He is really ever present amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some times and to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves are believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius' Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius' Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with reference to the human part.

9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding has its proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible consists of human writings and contains a human history. Critical and historical inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate; it contains matter which is within the province of the understanding, and the understanding has God's warrant for doing that work which he appointed it to do; only, let us remember, that the understanding cannot ascend to things divine; that for these another faculty is necessary,--reason or faith. If this faculty be living in us, then there can be no rationalism; and what is called so is then no other than the voice of Christian truth. Where a man's writings show that he is keenly alive to the divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and regards it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are not likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides according to its own laws, upon points within its own province, while his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing upon another's dominion, the result will, in all probability, be such as commonly attends the use of God's manifold gifts in their just proportions,--it will image, after our imperfect measure, the holiness of God and the truth of God.

It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest manner, that for the study of the highest moral and spiritual questions another faculty than the understanding is wanting; and that without this faculty the understanding alone cannot arrive at truth. But it is no less true, that while there is, on the one side, a faculty higher than the understanding, which is entitled to pronounce upon its defects; "for he that is spiritual judgeth all things," ([Greek: auachriuei];) so there is a clamour often raised against it, not from above, but from below,--the clamour of mere shallowness and ignorance, and passion. Of this sort is some of the outcry which is raised against rationalism. Men do not leap, _per saltum mortalem_, from ordinary folly to divine wisdom: and the foolish have no right to think that they are angels, because they are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal truth in St. Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish "not to be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life." Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the understanding, but by adding to its perfect work the perfect work of reason, and of reason's perfection, faith.

* * * * *

NOTE I. P. 331.

"_A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St. John,"_ &c.--The interpretation of this chapter, and particularly of the part alluded to in the text, is of no small importance; for it is remarkable, that the highest notions with respect to the presence of our Lord in the Holy Communion are often grounded upon this passage in St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the judgment of others, most decisively repels them.

The whole question resolves itself into this--Are our Lord's words in this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or subordinate to it? That is, do they and the communion alike point to some great truth superior to them both: or do our Lord's words, in St. John, point to the communion itself as their highest meaning?

The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a symbolical action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly the same with that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to understand them not as referring to it, but to the same[14] higher truth to which it refers also: and the more so as the communion is not once mentioned by St. John either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but the idea which the communion expresses appears to have been familiar to his mind; at least, if we suppose that his mention of the blood and water flowing from our Lord's side in his Gospel, and his allusion again to the same fact in his Epistle, have reference in any degree to it, which seems to me most probable.

[Footnote 14: The common tendency to make the Christian sacraments an ultimate end rather than a mean, is exhibited in the heading of the tenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, in our authorized version, where we find the first verses described as stating, that "the Jews' sacraments were types of ours." Whereas, so far is it from the apostle's argument to represent our sacraments as the reality of which the Jews' sacraments were the type, that he is describing theirs and ours as co-ordinate with each other, and both alike subordinate to the same truth; and he argues, that if the Jews, with their sacraments, did notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified, so we should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it also. The erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where we have, on the contrary, the true observation; "the sacraments of the old fathers were all one with ours, for they respected Christ only." It is true that if no more were meant than that "the Jews' sacraments were like ours," there would be no reason to object to the expression; but apparently more is meant, as the word type seems to imply that what it is compared with is the reality, of which it is itself only the image; and one thing cannot properly be called the type of another, when both are but types of the same third thing. But the divines of James the First's reign and of his son's, were to the reformers exactly what the so-called fathers were to the apostles: the very same tendencies, growing up even in Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings, and fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines of the seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish also the church system from the gospel. There are many who readily acknowledge this difference in the English church, while they would deny it in the case of the ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet deemed prudent to avow openly that they prefer the so-called fathers to the apostles, and therefore they try to persuade themselves that both speak the same language. And doubtless, if the Scriptures are to be interpreted according to the rule of the writers of the third, and fourth, and fifth centuries, the thing can easily be effected; as, by a similar process, the Articles of the Church of England, if interpreted according to the rule of the nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak the very sentiments which their authors designed to condemn.]

Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his words, where he says,--"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer these words, which he tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to any outward act of eating and drinking as their highest truth and object.

But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly illustrate the institution and purpose of the communion, and especially the remarkable words which our Lord used in instituting it. They show what infinite importance he attached to that truth which he expressed both in symbolical words and action under the same figure, of eating His body and drinking His blood. But to suppose that that truth can only be realized by one particular ritual action, so that the one great work of a Christian is to receive the Lord's supper,--which it must be, if our Lord's words in the sixth chapter of St. John refer to the communion,--is so contrary to the whole character of our Lord's teaching, and not least so in the very words so misinterpreted, that to maintain such a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold superstitions, is actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's--to bring in a mystical religion instead of a spiritual one,--to do worse than to Judaize.

* * * * *

NOTE K. P. 345.

_"A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some supposed authoritative interpreter of it."_--"The high church party," we have been lately told, "take Holy Scripture for their guide, and, in the interpretation of it, defer to the authority of primitive antiquity: the low church party contend for the sufficiency of private judgment." It is become of the greatest importance to see clearly, not what one party, or another, may contend for, but what is the real truth, and what, accordingly, is the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter. The sermon to which this note refers, is an attempt to show that Scripture is not hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be inexpedient here to consider a little, what are the objections to the principle of the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties which are supposed to beset the opposite principle; and to state, if possible, what the truth of the whole question is.

I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are these: 1st. Its extreme vagueness. What is primitive antiquity? and where is its authority to be found? Does "primitive antiquity" mean the first three centuries? or the first two? or the first five? or the first seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or one of them? or four? or six? Are Irenæus and Tertullian the latest writers of "primitive antiquity?" or does it end with Augustine? or does it comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has lately told us, that our Reformers wished the people to be taught, "that, for almost seven hundred years, the church was most pure." Are we, then, to hold that "primitive antiquity" embraces a period of nearly seven centuries? Seven centuries are considerably more than a third part of the whole duration of the church, from its foundation to this hour: can the third part of a nation's history be called its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a practice taught when Christianity had been more than six hundred years in the world, to be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first place, what length of time is signified by "primitive antiquity."

But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next, where is its authority to be found? In the decisions of the general councils? But if we call the first four centuries "primitive antiquity," we find in this period only two general councils; if we include the fifth century, we get four; if we take in the sixth and seventh centuries, we have then, in all, six general councils. Will the decisions of any, or all, of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative interpretation of Scripture? They give us the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds; they condemn various notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and to some other points of belief; and they contain a variety of regulations for the discipline and order of the church; but, with the exception of some particular passages, there is no authority in the creeds, or canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the interpretation of Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they were before. It is but little then, which the first six general councils will do towards providing the student of Scripture with an infallible standard of interpretation.

Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing claiming to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers, nor yet all the writers of the first seven centuries together, can properly be called the church. They form, even altogether, but a limited number of individuals, who, in different countries, and at different periods, expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but without any public authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most learned of them all, was anathematized by the second council of Constantinople; Tertullian was heretical during a part of his life; Lactantius was taxed with heterodoxy. How are we to know who were sound? And if sound generally, that is to say, if they stand charged with no heretical error, yet it does not follow that a man is infallible because he is not heretical; and none of these writers have been distinguished like the five great Roman lawyers whom the edict of Theodosius[15] selected from the mass, and gave to their decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said that the agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an authority legally, so neither can any number of them be so; and if a moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case; for as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment is _an_ authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either by the worth of the few who differ from the judgment, or by the reason of the case itself; and the concurring judgment of the majority may show no more than the force of a general prejudice, which only a very few individuals were sensible enough to resist.

[Footnote 15: Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is issued in the name of the emperors Theodosius (the younger) and Valentinian (the younger), in the year A.D. 426.]

In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we understand what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of the so-called fathers. The term _authority_ is ambiguous, and according to the sense in which I use it, I should either acknowledge it or deny it.--The writers of the first four, or of the first seven centuries, have _an_ authority, just as the scholiasts and ancient commentators have: some of them, and in some points, are of weight singly; the agreement of many of thorn has much weight; the agreement of almost all of them would have great weight. In this sense, I acknowledge their authority; and it would be against all sound principles of criticism to deny it. But if, by authority, is meant a _decisive_ authority, a judgment which may not be questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case, for any man, or set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such an authority is not human, but divine: if any man pretends to possess it, let him show God's clear warrant for his pretension, or he must be regarded as a deceiver or a madman.

But it may be said, that an authority not to be questioned was conferred, by the Roman law, on the opinions of a certain number of great lawyers: if a judge believed that their interpretation of the law was erroneous, he yet was not at liberty to follow his own private judgment in departing from it. Why may not the same thing be allowed in the church? and why may not the interpretations of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, or Chrysostom, be as decisive, with respect to the true sense of the Scripture, as those of Gaius, Paulus, Modestinus, Ulpian, and Papinian, were acknowledged to be with respect to the sense of the Roman law?

The answer is, that the emperor's edict could absolve the judge from following his own convictions about the sense of the law, because it gave to the authorized interpretation the force of law. The text, as the judge interpreted it, was a law repealed; the comment of the great lawyers was now the law in its room. As a mere literary composition, he might interpret it rightly, and Gaius, or Papinian, might be wrong; but if his interpretation was ever so right grammatically or critically, yet, legally it was nothing to the purpose;--Gaius's interpretation had superseded it, and was not the law which he was bound to obey. But, in the church, the only point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true meaning of the text of the divine law: no human power can invest the comment with equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his judges, "You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs, when they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew up the Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs may have meant, but what their interpreters may have meant: the decemvirs' meaning, if it was their meaning, is no longer the law of Rome." But who can dare to say to a Christian, "You need not consider what was the meaning of our Lord and his apostles; the law for you now is the meaning of Cyprian, or Ambrose, or Chrysostom;--that meaning has superseded the meaning of Christ." A Christian must find out Christ's meaning, and believe that he has found it, or else he must still seek for it. It is a matter, not of outward submission, but of inward faith; and if in our inward mind we are persuaded that the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's meaning, how can we by possibility adopt that interpretation in faith?

Here we come to a grave consideration--that this doctrine of an infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism: it is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is not hard for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it receives whatever the church declares to be true: it may receive any number of doctrines, but it will not really believe them. We may restrain our tongues from disputing them, we may watch every restless thought that would question them, and instantly, by main force, as it were, put it down; but all this time our minds do not assimilate to them; they do not take them up into their own nature, so as to make them a part of themselves, freshening and supplying the life-blood of their very being. Truth must be believed by the mind's own act; our souls must be drawn towards it with a reasonable love; some affinity there must be between it and them, or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic may desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore, a believer.

Authority cannot compel belief; the sceptic who knows not what it is to grasp anything with the firm grasp of faith, may mistake his acquiescence in a doctrine for belief in it; the ignorant and careless, who believe only what their senses tell them, may lay up the words of divine truth in their memory, may repeat them loudly, and be vehement against all who question them. But minds to which faith is a necessity, which cannot be contented to stand by the side of truth, but must become altogether one with it,--minds which know full well the difference between opinion and conviction, between not questioning and believing,--they, when their own action is superseded by an authority foreign to themselves, are in a condition which they find intolerable. Told to believe what they cannot believe; told that they ought not to believe what they feel most disposed to believe; they retire altogether from the region of divine truth, as from a spot tainted with moral death, and devote themselves to other subjects: to physical science, it may be, or to political; where the inherent craving of their nature may yet be gratified, where, however insignificant the truth may be, they may yet find some truth to believe. This has been the condition of too many great men in the church of Rome; and it accounts for that bitterness of feeling with which Machiavelli, and others like him, appear to have regarded the whole subject of Christianity.

The system, then, of deferring to the authority of what is called the ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is impracticable, inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the Scripture, the church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all; and if it were practicable, it would be untenable, because neither the old councils, nor individual writers, could give any sign that they had a divine gift of interpretation; and if such a gift had been given to them, it would have been equivalent to a new revelation, the sense of the comment being thus preferred to what we could not but believe to be the sense of the text. Above all, the system is destructive of faith, having a tendency to substitute passive acquiescence for real conviction; and therefore I should not say that the excess of it was popery, but that it had once and actually those characters of evil which we sometimes express by the term popery, but which may be better signified by the term idolatry; a reverence for that which ought not to be reverenced, leading to a want of faith in that which is really deserving of all adoration and love.

II. But it is said that the system of relying on private judgment is beset by no less evils: that it is itself inconsistent, and leads to Socinianism and Rationalism, and, in the end, to utter unbelief; so that, the choice being only between two evils, men may choose the system of church authority as being the less evil of the two. If this were so, I see not how faith could be attained at all, or what place would be left for Christian truth. But the system of the Church of England[16] is, I am persuaded, fully consistent, and has no tendency either to Socinianism or Rationalism. Let us see first what that system is.

[Footnote 16: Much has been lately written to show that the Church of England allows the authority of the ancient councils and writers, and does not allow the right of private judgment. But it is perfectly clear, from the 21st Article, that it does not allow the authority of councils; that is to say, it holds that a council's exposition of doctrine may be false, and that such an exposition is of no force "unless it may be declared that it be taken out of Holy Scripture." Who, then, is to declare this? for to suppose that the declaration of the council itself is meant is absurd: the answer, I imagine, would be, according to the mind of the Reformers, "Every particular or national church," and especially the King as the head of the church. They would not have allowed private judgment, because they conceived that a private person had nothing to do but to obey the government; and it was for the government to determine what the truth of Scripture was. The Church of England, then, expressly disclaims the authority of councils, and, in its official instruments, it neither allows nor condemns private judgment; but the opinions of the Reformers, and the constitution of the church in the 16th century, were certainly against private judgment: their authority for the interpretation of Scripture was undoubtedly the supreme government of the church, i.e. not the bishops, but the King and parliament. But then this had respect not to the power of discerning truth, but to the right of publishing it, which is an wholly different question. That an individual was not bound _in foro conscientiæ_ to admit the truth of any interpretation of Scripture which did not approve itself to his own mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of England than that if he publicly disputed the interpretation of the church, he might be punished as unruly and a despiser of government. But then it should ever be remembered that the church, with the Reformers, was not the clergy. And now that the right of publication is conceded by the church, it is quite just to say that the Church of England allows private judgment; and if that judgment differ from her own, she condemns not the act of judging at all, but the having come to a false conclusion.

It is urged that the act of I Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be heresy which the first four councils determined to be so. This is true; but it also adjudges to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter declared to be so by "the high court of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in their convocation." The Church of England undoubtedly allowed the decisions of the first four councils, in matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it allowed the three creeds, because it decided that they were agreeable to Scripture; but the binding authority was that of the English Parliament, not of the councils of Nicæa or Constantinople.

As to the canon of 1571, which allows preachers to teach nothing as religious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures, "_and_ which the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that very doctrine of Scripture," it will be observed that it is merely negative, and does not sanction the teaching of the "catholic fathers and ancient bishops," generally, or say that men shall teach what they taught; but that they shall not teach as matter of religious faith, a new deduction from Scripture of their own making, but such truths as had been actually deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great articles of the Christian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no authority, not having received the royal assent.--_See Strype's Life of Parker_, p. 322, ed. 1711.]

It is invidiously described as maintaining "the sufficiency of private judgment." Now we maintain the sufficiency of private judgment in interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that in which every sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting Thucydides or Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always to some one interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the Latin version of his Greek lesson, the true method is to consult all[17] accessible authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of all. And we contend, that, by this process, as we discover, for the most part, the true meaning of Thucydides and Aristotle with undoubted certainty, so we may also discover, not, indeed, in every particular part or passage, but generally, the true meaning of the Holy Scriptures with no less certainty.

[Footnote 17: Of course no reasonable man can doubt the importance of studying the early Christian writers, as illustrating not only the history of their own times, but the New Testament also. For the Old Testament, indeed, they do little or nothing, and for the New they are of much less assistance than might have been expected; but still there is no doubt that they are often useful.]

But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the true one, how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in calling him a heretic? If by the term heretic we are to imply moral guilt, I am not justified in applying it to any Christian, unless his doctrines are positively sinful, or there is something wicked, either in the way of dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of maintaining them. The guilt of any given religious error, in any particular case, belongs only to the judgment of Him who reads the heart. But if we mean by heresy "a grave error in matters of the Christian faith, overthrowing or corrupting some fundamental article of it," then we are as fully justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of Scripture "heresy," as we should be justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of a profane Greek or Latin author, ignorance, or want of scholarship. There is no infallible authority in points of grammar and criticism, yet men do speak confidently, notwithstanding, as to learning and ignorance; Porson and Herman are known to have understood their business, and a writer who were to set their decisions at defiance, and to indulge in mere extravagances of interpretation, would be set down as one who knew nothing about the matter. So we judge daily in all points of literature and science; nay, we in the same manner venture to call some persons mad, and on the strength of our conviction we deprive them of their property, and shut them up in a madhouse: yet if madmen wore to insist that they were sane, and that we were mad, I know not to what infallible authority we could appeal; and, after all, what are we to do with those who deny that authority to be infallible? we must then go to another infallible authority to guarantee the infallibility of the first, and this process will run on for ever.

But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being justified or not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic. The real point of anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men is this: whether a reasonable belief can be fairly carried through; whether the notion of the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not liable to objections no less than the system of church-authority; whether, in short, our Christian faith can be consistently maintained without a mortal leap at some part or other of the process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise, our faith would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on the power of God.

I use these words, because these and other such passages of the Scripture are often quoted as I have now quoted them, and produce a great effect on those who do not observe that they are quoted inapplicably; for the question is not between man's wisdom and God's power, but simply whether we have reason to believe that God's power has been here manifested; or, rather, to see whether we cannot give a reason for the faith which is in us, such faith resting upon God's power and wisdom as manifested in Christ Jesus; for if no reason can be rendered for our faith, then our minds, so far as they are concerned, are believing a lie; they are believing in spite of those laws by which God has determined their nature and condition.