infinite Being. Thus the fretfulness of a child is an infinite evil! I was aghast that I could have believed it. Now that it was no longer laid upon me as a duty to uphold the infinitude of God’s retaliation on sin, I saw that it was an immorality to teach that sin was measured by anything else than the heart and will of the agent. That a finite being should deserve infinite punishment, now was manifestly as incredible as that he should deserve infinite reward,–which I had never dreamed.–Again, I saw that the current orthodoxy made Satan eternal conqueror over Christ. In vain does the Son of God come from heaven and take human flesh and die on the cross. In spite of him, the devil carries off to hell the vast majority of mankind, in whom, not misery only, but _Sin_ is triumphant for ever and ever. Thus Christ not only does not succeed in destroying the works of the devil, but even aggravates them.–Again: what sort of _gospel_ or glad tidings had I been holding? Without this revelation no future state at all (I presumed) could be known. How much better no futurity for any, than that a few should be eternally in bliss, and the great majority[2] kept alive for eternal sin as well as eternal misery! My gospel then was bad tidings, nay, the worst of tidings! In a farther progress of thought, I asked, would it not have been better that the whole race of man had never come into existence? Clearly! And thus God was made out to be unwise in creating them. No _use_ in the punishment was imaginable, without setting up Fear, instead of Love, as the ruling principle in the blessed. And what was the moral tendency of the doctrine? I had never borne to dwell upon it: but I before long suspected that it promoted malignity and selfishness, and was the real clue to the cruelties perpetrated under the name of religion. For he who does dwell on it, must comfort himself under the prospect of his brethren’s eternal misery, by the selfish expectation of personal blessedness. When I asked whether I had been guilty of this selfishness, I remembered that I had often mourned, how small a part in my practical religion the future had ever borne. My heaven and my hell had been in the present, where my God was near me to smile or to frown. It had seemed to me a great weakness in my faith, that I never had any vivid imaginations or strong desires of heavenly glory: yet now I was glad to observe, that it had at least saved me from getting so much harm from the wrong side of the doctrine of a future life.
Before I had worked out the objections so fully as here stated, I freely disclosed my thoughts to the friend last named, and to his wife, towards whom he encouraged me to exercise the fullest frankness. I confess, I said nothing about the Unitarian book; for something told me that I had violated Evangelical decorum in opening it, and that I could not calculate how it would affect my friend. Certainly no Romish hierarchy can so successfully exclude heretical books, as social enactment excludes those of Unitarians from our orthodox circles. The bookseller dares not to exhibit their books on his counter: all presume them to be pestilential: no one knows their contents or dares to inform himself. But to return. My friend’s wife entered warmly into my new views; I have now no doubt that this exceedingly distressed him, and at length perverted his moral judgment: he himself examined the texts of the Old Testament, and attempted no answer to them. After I had left his neighbourhood, I wrote to him three affectionate letters, and at last got a reply–of vehement accusation. It can now concern no one to know, how many and deep wounds he planted in me. I forgave; but all was too instructive to forget.
For some years I rested in the belief that the epithet “_secular_ punishment” either solely denoted punishment in a future age, or else only of long duration. This evades the horrible idea of eternal and triumphant Sin, and of infinite retaliation for finite offences. But still, I found my new creed uneasy, now that I had established a practice (if not a right) of considering the moral propriety of punishment. I could not so pare away the vehement words of the Scripture, as really to enable me to say that I thought transgressors _deserved_ the fiery infliction. This had been easy, while I measured their guilt by God’s greatness; but when that idea was renounced, how was I to think that a good-humoured voluptuary deserved to be raised from the dead in order to be tormented in fire for 100 years? and what shorter time could be called secular? Or if he was to be destroyed instantaneously, and “secular” meant only “in a future age,” was he worth the effort of a divine miracle to bring him to life and again annihilate him? I was not willing to refuse belief to the Scripture on such grounds; yet I felt disquietude, that my moral sentiment and the Scripture were no longer in full harmony.
* * * * *
In this period I first discerned the extreme difficulty that there must essentially be, in applying to the Christian Evidences a principle, which, many years before, I had abstractedly received as sound, though it had been a dead letter with me in practice. The Bible (it seemed) contained two sorts of truth. Concerning one sort, man is bound to judge: the other sort is necessarily beyond his ken, and is received only by information from without. The first part of the statement cannot be denied. It would be monstrous to say that we know nothing of geography, history, or morals, except by learning them from the Bible. Geography, history, and other worldly sciences, lie beyond question. As to morals, I had been exceedingly inconsistent and wavering in my theory and in its application; but it now glared upon me, that if man had no independent power of judging, it would have been venial to think Barabbas more virtuous than Jesus. The hearers of Christ or Paul could not draw their knowledge of right and wrong from the New Testament. They had (or needed to have) an inherent power of discerning that his conduct was holy and his doctrine good. To talk about the infirmity or depravity of the human conscience is here quite irrelevant. The conscience of Christ’s hearers may have been dim or twisted, but it was their best guide and only guide, as to the question, whether to regard him as a holy prophet: so likewise, as to ourselves, it is evident that we have no guide at all whether to accept or reject the Bible, if we distrust that inward power of judging, (whether called common sense, conscience, or the Spirit of God,)–which is independent of our belief in the Bible. To disparage the internally vouchsafed power of discerning truth without the Bible or other authoritative system, is, to endeavour to set up a universal moral scepticism. He who may not criticize cannot approve.–Well! Let it be admitted that we discern moral truth by a something within us, and that then, admiring the truth so glorious in the Scriptures, we are further led to receive them as the word of God, and therefore to believe them absolutely in respect to the matters which are beyond our ken.
But two difficulties could no longer be dissembled: 1. How are we to draw the line of separation? For instance, would the doctrines of Reprobation and of lasting Fiery Torture with no benefit to the sufferers, belong to the moral part, which we freely criticize; or to the extra-moral part, as to which we passively believe? 2. What is to be done, if in the parts which indisputably lie open to criticism we meet with apparent error?–The second question soon became a practical one with me: but for the reader’s convenience I defer it until my Fourth Period, to which it more naturally belongs: for in this Third Period I was principally exercised with controversies that do not vitally touch the _authority_ of the Scripture. Of these the most important were matters contested between Unitarians and Calvinists.
When I had found how exactly the Nicene Creed summed up all that I myself gathered from John and Paul concerning the divine nature of Christ, I naturally referred to this creed, as expressing my convictions, when any unpleasant inquiry arose. I had recently gained the acquaintance of the late excellent Dr. Olinthus Gregory, a man of unimpeached orthodoxy; who met me by the frank avowal, that the Nicene Creed was “a great mistake.” He said, that the Arian and the Athanasian difference was not very vital; and that the Scriptural truth lay _beyond_ the Nicene doctrine, which fell short on the same side as Arianism had done. On the contrary, I had learned of an intermediate tenet, called Semi-Arianism, which appeared to me more scriptural than the views of either Athanasius or Arius. Let me bespeak my reader’s patience for a little. Arius was judged by Athanasius (I was informed) to be erroneous in two points; 1. in teaching that the Son of God was a creature; _i.e._ that “begotten” and “made” were two words for the same idea: 2. in teaching, that he had an origin of existence in time; so that there was a distant period at which he was not. Of these two Arian tenets, the Nicene Creed condemned _the former_ only; namely, in the words, “begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father.” But on _the latter_ question the Creed is silent. Those who accepted the Creed, and hereby condemned the great error of Arius that the Son was of different substance from the Father, but nevertheless agreed with Arius in thinking that the Son had a beginning of existence, were called Semi-Arians; and were received into communion by Athanasius, in spite of this disagreement. To me it seemed to be a most unworthy shuffling with words, to say that the Son _was begotten, but was never begotten_. The very form of our past participle is invented to indicate an event in past time. If the Athanasians alleged that the phrase does not allude to “a coming forth” completed at a definite time, but indicates a process at no time begun and at no time complete, their doctrine could not be expressed by our past-perfect tense _begotten_. When they compared the derivation of the Son of God from, the Father to the rays of light which ever flow from the natural sun, and argued that if that sun had been eternal, its emanations would be co-eternal, they showed that their true doctrine required the formula–“always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually.” They showed a real disbelief in our English statement “begotten, not made.” I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing that Christ was “_not begotten, yet begettive_,” roused in me an unspeakable loathing. Yet surely this would have been Athanasius’s most legitimate form of denying Semi-Arianism. In short, the Scriptural phrase, _Son of God_, conveyed to us either a literal fact, or a metaphor. If literal, the Semi-Arians were clearly right, in saying that sonship implied a beginning of existence. If it was a metaphor, the Athanasians forfeited all right to press the literal sense in proof that the Son must be “of the same substance” as the Father.–Seeing that the Athanasians, in zeal to magnify the Son, had so confounded their good sense, I was certainly startled to find a man of Dr. Olinthus Gregory’s moral wisdom treat the Nicenists as in obvious error for not having magnified Christ _enough_. On so many other sides, however, I met with the new and short creed, “Jesus is Jehovah,” that I began to discern Sabellianism to be the prevalent view.
A little later, I fell in with a book of an American Professor, Moses Stuart of Andover, on the subject of the Trinity. Professor Stuart is a very learned man, and thinks for himself. It was a great novelty to me, to find him not only deny the orthodoxy of all the Fathers, (which was little more than Dr. Olinthus Gregory had done,) but avow that _from the change in speculative philosophy_ it was simply impossible for any modern to hold the views prevalent in the third and fourth centuries. Nothing (said he) WAS clearer, than that with us the essential point in Deity is, to be unoriginated, underived; hence with us, _a derived God_ is a self-contradiction, and the very sound of the phrase profane. On the other hand, it is certain that the doctrine of Athanasius, equally as of Arius, was, that the Father is the underived or self-existent God, but the Son is the derived subordinate God. This (argued Stuart) turned upon their belief in the doctrine of Emanations; but as _we_ hold no such philosophical doctrine, the religious theory founded on it is necessarily inadmissible. Professor Stuart then develops his own creed, which appeared to me simple and undeniable Sabellianism.
That Stuart correctly represented the Fathers was clear enough to me; but I nevertheless thought that in this respect the Fathers had honestly made out the doctrine of the Scripture; and I did not at all approve of setting up a battery of modern speculative philosophy against Scriptural doctrine. “How are we to know that the doctrine of Emanations is false? (asked I.) If it is legitimately elicited from Scripture, it is true.”–I refused to yield up my creed at this summons. Nevertheless, he left a wound upon me: for I now could not help seeing, that we moderns use the word _God_ in a more limited sense than any ancient nations did. Hebrews and Greeks alike said _Gods_, to mean any superhuman beings; hence _derived God_ did not sound to them absurd; but I could not deny that in good English it is absurd. This was a very disagreeable discovery: for now, if any one were to ask me whether I believed in the divinity of Christ, I saw it would be dishonest to say simply, _Yes_; for the interrogator means to ask, whether I hold Christ to be the eternal and underived Source of life; yet if I said _No_, he would care nothing for my professing to hold the Nicene Creed.
Might not then, after all, Sabellianism be the truth? No: I discerned too plainly what Gibbon states, that the Sabellian, if consistent, is only a concealed Ebionite, or us we now say, a Unitarian, Socinian. As we cannot admit that the Father was slain on the cross, or prayed to himself in the garden, he who will not allow the Father and the Son to be separate persons, but only two names for one person, _must divide the Son of God and Jesus into two persons_, and so fall back on the very heresy of Socinus which he is struggling to escape.
On the whole, I saw, that however people might call themselves Trinitarians, yet if, like Stuart and all the Evangelicals in Church and Dissent, they turn into a dead letter the _generation_ of the Son of God, and _the procession_ of the Spirit, nothing is possible but Sabellianism or Tritheism: or, indeed, Ditheism, if the Spirit’s separate personality is not held. The modern creed is alternately the one or the other, as occasion requires. Sabellians would find themselves out to be mere Unitarians, if they always remained Sabellians: but in fact, they are half their lives Ditheists. They do not _aim_ at consistency; would an upholder of the pseudo-Athanasian creed desire it? Why, that creed teaches, that the height of orthodoxy is to contradict oneself and protest that one does not. Now, however, rose on me the question: Why do I not take the Irish clergyman at his word, and attack him and others as idolaters and worshippers of three Gods? It was unseemly and absurd in him to try to force me into what he must have judged uncharitableness; but it was not the less incumbent on me to find a reply.
I remembered that in past years I had expressly disowned, as obviously unscriptural and absurd, prayers to the Holy Spirit, on the ground that the Spirit is evidently _God in the hearts of the faithful_, and nothing else: and it did not appear to me that any but a few extreme and rather fanatical persons could be charged with making the Spirit a third God or object of distinct worship. On the other hand, I could not deny that the Son and the Father were thus distinguished to the mind. So indeed John expressly avowed–“truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” I myself also had prayed sometimes to God and sometimes to Christ, alternately and confusedly. Now, indeed, I was better taught! now I was more logical and consistent! I had found a triumphant answer to the charge of Ditheism, in that I believed the Son to be derived from the Father, and not to be the Unoriginated–No doubt! yet, after all, could I seriously think that morally and spiritually I was either better or worse for this discovery? I could not pretend that I was.
This showed me, that if a man of partially unsound and visionary mind made the angel Gabriel a _fourth person_ in the Godhead, it might cause no difference whatever in the actings of his spirit The great question would be, whether he ascribed the same moral perfection to Gabriel as to the Father. If so, to worship him would be no degradation to the soul; even if absolute omnipotence were not attributed, nay, nor a past eternal existence. It thus became clear to me, that Polytheism _as such_ is not a moral and spiritual, but at most only an intellectual, error; and that its practical evil consists in worshipping beings whom we represent to our imaginations as morally imperfect. Conversely, one who imputes to God sentiments and conduct which in man he would call capricious or cruel, such a one, even if he be as monotheistic as a Mussulman, admits into his soul the whole virus of Idolatry.
Why then did I at all cling to the doctrine of Christ’s superior nature, and not admit it among things indifferent? In obedience to the Scripture, I did actually affirm, that, as for as creed is concerned, a man should be admissible into the Church on the bare confession that _Jesus was the Christ_. Still, I regarded a belief in his superhuman origin as of first-rate importance, for many reasons, and among others, owing to its connexion with the doctrine of the Atonement; on which there is much to be said.
* * * * *
The doctrine which I used to read as a boy, taught that a vast sum of punishment was due to God for the sins of men. This vast sum was made up of all the woes due through eternity to the whole human race, or, as some said, to the elect. Christ on the cross bore this punishment himself and thereby took it away: thus God is enabled to forgive without violating justice.–But I early encountered unanswerable difficulty on this theory, as to the question, whether Christ had borne the punishment of _all_ or of _some_ only. If of all, is it not unjust to inflict any of it on any? If of the elect only, what gospel have you to preach? for then you cannot tell sinners that God has provided a Saviour for them; for you do not know whether those whom you address are elect. Finding no way out of this, I abandoned the fundamental idea of _compensation in quantity_, as untenable; and rested in the vaguer notion, that God signally showed his abhorrence of sin, by laying tremendous misery on the Saviour who was to bear away sin.
I have already narrated, how at Oxford I was embarrassed as to the forensic propriety of transferring punishment at all. This however I received as matter of authority, and rested much on the wonderful exhibition made of the evil of sin, when _such_ a being could be subjected to preternatural suffering as a vicarious sinbearer. To this view, a high sense of the personal dignity of Jesus was quite essential; and therefore I had always felt a great repugnance for Mr. Belsham, Dr. Priestley, and the Unitarians of that school, though I had not read a line of their writings.
A more intimate familiarity with St. Paul and an anxious harmonizing of my very words to the Scripture, led me on into a deviation from the popular creed, of the full importance of which I was not for some time aware. I perceived that it is not the _agonies_ of mind or body endured by Christ, which in the Scriptures are said to take away sin, but his “death,” his “laying down his life,” or sometimes even his _resurrection_. I gradually became convinced, that when his “suffering,” or more especially his “blood,” is emphatically spoken of, nothing is meant but his _violent death_. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the analogy of Sacrifice is so pressed, we see that the pains which Jesus bore were in order that he might “learn obedience,” but our redemption is effected by his dying as a voluntary victim: in which, death by bloodshed, not pain, is the cardinal point. So too the Paschal lamb (to which, though not properly a sacrifice, the dying Christ is compared by Paul) was not roasted alive, or otherwise put to slow torment, but was simply killed. I therefore saw that the doctrine of “vicarious agonies” was fundamentally unscriptural.
This being fully discerned, I at last became bold to criticize the popular tenet. What should we think of a judge, who, when a boy had deserved a stripe which would to him have been a sharp punishment, laid the very same blow on a strong man, to whom it was a slight infliction? Clearly this would evade, not satisfy justice. To carry out the principle, the blow might be laid as well on a giant, an elephant, or on an inanimate thing. So, to lay our punishment on the infinite strength of Christ, who (they say) bore in six hours what it would have taken thousands of millions of men all eternity to bear, would be a similar evasion.–I farther asked, if we were to fall in with Pagans, who tortured their victims to death as an atonement, what idea of God should we think them to form? and what should we reply, if they said, it gave them a wholesome view of his hatred of sin? A second time I shuddered at the notions which I had once imbibed as a part of religion, and then got comfort from the inference, how much better men of this century are than their creed. Their creed was the product of ages of cruelty and credulity; and it sufficiently bears that stamp.
Thus I rested in the Scriptural doctrine, that the _death_ of Christ is our atonement. To say the same of the death of Paul, was obviously unscriptural: it was, then, essential to believe the physical nature of Christ to be different from that of Paul. If otherwise, death was due to Jesus as the lot of nature: how could such death have anything to do with our salvation? On this ground the Unitarian doctrine was utterly untenable: I could see nothing between my own view and a total renunciation of the _authority of the doctrines_ promulgated by Paul and John.
Nevertheless, my own view seemed mere and more unmeaning the more closely it was interrogated. When I ascribed death to Christ, what did death mean? and what or whom did I suppose to die? Was it man that died, or God? If man only, how was that wonderful, or how did it concern us? Besides;–persons die, not natures: a _nature_ is only a collection of properties: if Christ was one person, all Christ died. Did, then, God die, and man remain alive! For God to become non-existent is an unimaginable absurdity. But is this death a mere change of state, a renunciation of earthly life? Still it remains unclear how the parting with mere human life could be to one who possesses divine life either an atonement or a humiliation. Was it not rather an escape from humiliation, saving only the mode of death? So severe was this difficulty, that at length I unawares dropt from Semi-Arianism into pure Arianism, by _so_ distinguishing the Son from the Father, as to admit the idea that the Son of God had actually been non-existent in the interval between death and resurrection: nevertheless, I more and more felt, that _to be able to define my own notions on such questions had exceedingly little to do with my spiritual state_. For me it was important and essential to know that God hated sin, and that God had forgiven my sin: but to know one particular manifestation of his hatred of sin, or the machinery by which He had enabled himself to forgive, was of very secondary importance. When He proclaims to me in his word, that He is forgiving to all the penitent, it is not for me to reply, that “I cannot believe that, until I hear how He manages to reconcile such conduct with his other attributes.” Yet, I remembered, this was Bishop Beveridge’s sufficient refutation of Mohammedism, which teaches no atonement.
* * * * *
At the same time great progress had been made in my mind towards the overthrow of the correlative dogma of the Fall of man and his total corruption. Probably for years I had been unawares anti-Calvinistic on this topic. Even at Oxford, I had held that human depravity is a _fact_, which it is absurd to argue against; a fact, attested by Thucydides, Polybius, Horace, and Tacitus, almost as strongly as by St. Paul. Yet in admitting man’s total corruption, I interpreted this of _spiritual_, not of _moral_, perversion: for that there were kindly and amiable qualities even in the unregenerate, was quite as clear a fact as any other. Hence in result I did _not_ attribute to man any great essential depravity, in the popular and moral sense of the word; and the doctrine amounted only to this, that “_spiritually_, man is paralyzed, until the grace of God comes freely upon him.” How to reconcile this with the condemnation, and punishment of man for being unspiritual, I knew not. I saw, and did not dissemble, the difficulty; but received it as a mystery hereafter to be cleared up.
But it gradually broke upon me, that when Paul said nothing stronger than heathen moralists had said about human wickedness, it was absurd to quote his words, any more than theirs, in proof of a _Fall_,–that is, of a permanent degeneracy induced by the first sin of the first man: and when I studied the 5th chapter of the Romans, I found it was _death_, not _corruption_, which Adam was said to have entailed. In short, I could scarcely find the modern doctrine of the “Fall” any where in the Bible. I then remembered that Calvin, in his Institutes, complains that all the Fathers are heterodox on this point; the Greek Fathers being grievously overweening in their estimate of human power; while of the Latin Fathers even Augustine is not always up to Calvin’s mark of orthodoxy. This confirmed my rising conviction that the tenet is of rather recent origin. I afterwards heard, that both it and the doctrine of compensatory misery were first systematized by Archbishop Anselm, in the reign of our William Rufus: but I never took the pains to verify this.
For meanwhile I had been forcibly impressed with the following thought. Suppose a youth to have been carefully brought up at home, and every temptation kept out of his way: suppose him to have been in appearance virtuous, amiable, religious: suppose, farther, that at the age of twenty-one he goes out into the world, and falls into sin by the first temptation:–how will a Calvinistic teacher moralize over such a youth? Will he not say: “Behold a proof of the essential depravity of human nature! See the affinity of man for sin! How fair and deceptive was this young man’s virtue, while he was sheltered from temptation; but oh! how rotten has it proved itself!”–Undoubtedly, the Calvinist would and must so moralize. But it struck me, that if I substituted the name of _Adam_ for the youth, the argument proved the primitive corruption of Adam’s nature. Adam fell by the first temptation: what greater proof of a fallen nature have _I_ ever given? or what is it possible for any one to give?–I thus discerned that there was _a priori_ impossibility of fixing on myself the imputation of _degeneracy_, without fixing the same on Adam. In short, Adam undeniably proved his primitive nature to be frail; so do we all: but as _he_ was nevertheless not primitively corrupt, why should we call ourselves so? Frailty, then, is not corruption, and does not prove degeneracy.
“Original sin” (says one of the 39 Articles) “standeth not in the following of Adam, _as the Pelagians do vainly talk_,” &c. Alas, then! was I become a Pelagian? certainly I could no longer see that Adam’s first sin affected me more than his second or third, or so much as the sins of my immediate parents. A father who, for instance, indulges in furious passions and exciting liquors, may (I suppose) transmit violent passions to his son. In this sense I could not wholly reject the possibility of transmitted corruption; but it had nothing to do with the theological doctrine of the “Federal Headship” of Adam. Not that I could wholly give up this last doctrine; for I still read it in the 5th chapter of Romans. But it was clear to me, that whatever that meant, I could not combine it with the idea of degeneracy, nor could I find a proof of it in the _fact_ of prevalent wickedness. Thus I received a shadowy doctrine on mere Scriptural _authority_; it had no longer any root in my understanding or heart.
Moreover, it was manifest to me that the Calvinistic view is based in a vain attempt to acquit God of having created a “sinful” being, while the broad Scriptural fact is, that he did create a being as truly “liable to sin” as any of us. If that needs no exculpation, how more does _our_ state need it? Does it not suffice to say, that “every creature, because he is a creature and not God, must necessarily be frail?” But Calvin intensely aggravates whatever there is of difficulty: for he supposes God to have created the most precious thing on earth in _unstable equilibrium_, so as to tipple over irrecoverably at the first infinitesimal touch, and with it wreck for ever the spiritual hopes of all Adam’s posterity. Surely all nature proclaims, that if God planted any spiritual nature at all in man, it was in _stable equilibrium_, able to right itself when deranged.
Lastly, I saw that the Calvinistic doctrine of human degeneracy teaches, that God disowns my nature (the only nature I ever had) as not his work, but the devil’s work. He hereby tells me that he is _not_ my Creator, and he disclaims his right over me, as a father who disowns a child. To teach this is to teach that I owe him no obedience, no worship, no trust: to sever the cords that bind the creature to the Creator, and to make all religion gratuitous and vain.
Thus Calvinism was found by me not only not to be Evangelical, but not to be logical, in spite of its high logical pretensions, and to be irreconcilable with any intelligent theory of religion. Of “gloomy Calvinism” I had often heard people speak with an emphasis, that annoyed me as highly unjust; for mine had not been a gloomy religion:–far, very far from it. On the side of eternal punishment, its theory, no doubt, had been gloomy enough; but human nature has a notable art of not realizing all the articles of a creed; moreover, _this_ doctrine is equally held by Arminians. But I was conscious, that in dropping Calvinism I had lost nothing _Evangelical_: on the contrary, the gospel which I retained was as spiritual and deep-hearted as before, only more merciful.
* * * * *
Before this Third Period of my creed was completed, I made my first acquaintance with a Unitarian. This gentleman showed much sweetness of mind, largeness of charity, and a timid devoutness which I had not expected in such a quarter. His mixture of credulity and incredulity seemed to me capricious, and wholly incoherent. First, as to his incredulity, or rather, boldness of thought. Eternal punishment was a notion, which nothing could make him believe, and for which it would be useless to quote Scripture to him; for the doctrine (he said) darkened the moral character of God, and produced malignity in man. That Christ had any higher nature than we all have, was a tenet essentially inadmissible; first, because it destroyed all moral benefit from his example and sympathy, and next, because no one has yet succeeded in even stating the doctrine of the Incarnation without contradicting himself. If Christ was but one person, one mind, then that one mind could not be simultaneously finite and infinite, nor therefore simultaneously God and man. But when I came to hear more from this same gentleman, I found him to avow that no Trinitarian could have a higher conception than he of the present power and glory of Christ. He believed that the man Jesus is at the head of the whole moral creation of God; that all power in heaven and earth is given to him: that he will be Judge of all men, and is himself raised above all judgment. This was to me unimaginable from his point of view. Could he really think Jesus to be a mere man, and yet believe him to be sinless? On what did that belief rest? Two texts were quoted in proof, 1 Pet. ii. 21, and Heb. iv. 15. Of these, the former did not necessarily mean anything more than that Jesus was unjustly put to death; and the latter belonged to an Epistle, which my new friend had already rejected as unapostolic and not of first-rate authority, when speaking of the Atonement. Indeed, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not from the hand of Paul, had very long seemed to me an obvious certainty,–as long as I had had any delicate feeling of Greek style.
That a human child, born with the nature of other children, and having to learn wisdom and win virtue through the same process, should grow up sinless, appeared to me an event so paradoxical, as to need the most amply decisive proof. Yet what kind of proof was possible? Neither Apollos, (if he was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrew,) nor yet Peter, had any power of _attesting_ the sinlessness of Jesus, as a fact known to themselves personally: they could only learn it by some preternatural communication, to which, nevertheless, the passages before us implied no pretension whatever. To me it appeared an axiom,[3] that if Jesus was in physical origin a mere man, he was, like myself, a sinful man, and therefore certainly not my Judge, certainly not an omniscient reader of all hearts; nor on any account to be bowed down to as Lord. To exercise hope, faith, trust in him, seemed then an impiety. I did not mean to impute impiety to Unitarians; still I distinctly believed that English Unitarianism could never afford me a half hour’s resting-place.
Nevertheless, from contact with this excellent person I learned how much tenderness of spirit a Unitarian may have; and it pleasantly enlarged my charity, although I continued to feel much repugnance for his doctrine, and was anxious and constrained in the presence of Unitarians. From the same collision with him, I gained a fresh insight into a part of my own mind. I had always regarded the Gospels (at least the three first) to be to the Epistles nearly as Law to Gospel; that is, the three gospels dealt chiefly in _precept_, the epistles in _motives_ which act on the affections. This did not appear to me dishonourable to the teaching of Christ; for I supposed it to be a pre-determined development. But I now discovered that there was a deeper distaste in me for the details of the human life of Christ, than I was previously conscious of–a distaste which I found out, by a reaction from the minute interest felt in such details by my new friend. For several years more, I did not fully understand how and why this was; viz. that _my religion had always been Pauline_. Christ was to me the ideal of glorified human nature: but I needed some dimness in the portrait to give play to my imagination: if drawn too sharply historical, it sank into something not superhuman, and caused a revulsion of feeling. As all paintings of the miraculous used to displease and even disgust me from a boy by the unbelief which they inspired; so if any one dwelt on the special proofs of tenderness and love exhibited in certain words or actions of Jesus, it was apt to call out in me a sense, that from day to day equal kindness might often be met. The imbecility of preachers, who would dwell on such words as “Weep not,” as if nobody else ever uttered such,–had always annoyed me. I felt it impossible to obtain a worthy idea of Christ from studying any of the details reported concerning him. If I dwelt too much on these, I got a finite object; but I yearned for an infinite one: hence my preference for John’s mysterious Jesus. Thus my Christ was not the figure accurately painted in the narrative, but one kindled in my imagination by the allusions and (as it were) poetry of the New Testament. I did not wish for vivid historical realisation: relics I could never have valued: pilgrimages to Jerusalem had always excited in me more of scorn than of sympathy;–and I make no doubt such was fundamentally Paul’s[4] feeling. On the contrary, it began to appear to me (and I believe not unjustly) that the Unitarian mind revelled peculiarly in “Christ after the flesh,” whom Paul resolved not to know. Possibly in this circumstance will be found to lie the strong and the weak points of the Unitarian religious character, as contrasted with that of the Evangelical, far more truly than in the doctrine of the Atonement. I can testify that the Atonement may be dropt out of Pauline religion without affecting its quality; so may Christ be spiritualized into God, and identified with the Father: but I suspect that a Pauline faith could not, without much violence and convulsion, be changed into devout admiration of a clearly drawn historical character; as though any full and unsurpassable embodiment of God’s moral perfections could be exhibited with ink and pen.
A reviewer, who has since made his name known, has pointed to the preceding remarks, as indicative of my deficiency in _imagination_ and my tendency to _romance_. My dear friend is undoubtedly right in the former point; I am destitute of (creative) poetical imagination: and as to the latter point, his insight into character is so great, that I readily believe him to know me better than I know myself, Nevertheless, I think he has mistaken the nature of the preceding argument. I am, on the contrary, almost disposed to say, that those have a tendency to romance who can look at a picture with men flying into the air, or on an angel with a brass trumpet, and dead men rising out of their graves with good stout muscles, and _not_ feel that the picture suggests unbelief. Nor do I confess to romance in my desire of something _more_ than historical and daily human nature in the character of Jesus; for all Christendom, between the dates A.D. 100 to A.D. 1850, with the exception of small eccentric coteries, has held Jesus to be essentially superhuman. Paul and John so taught concerning him. To believe their doctrine (I agree with my friend) is, in some sense, a weakness of understanding; but it is a weakness to which minds of every class have been for ages liable.
* * * * *
Such had been the progress of my mind, towards the end of what I will call my Third Period. In it the authority of the Scriptures as to some details (which at length became highly important) had begun to be questioned; of which I shall proceed to speak: but hitherto this was quite secondary to the momentous revolution which lay Calvinism prostrate in my mind, which opened my heart to Unitarians, and, I may say, to unbelievers; which enlarged all my sympathies, and soon set me to practise free moral thought, at least as a necessity, if not as a duty. Yet I held fast an unabated reverence for the moral and spiritual teaching of the New Testament, and had not the most remote conception that anything could ever shatter my belief in its great miracles. In fact, during this period, I many times yearned to proceed to India, whither my friend Groves had transferred his labours and his hopes; but I was thwarted by several causes, and was again and again damped by the fear of bigotry from new quarters. Otherwise, I thought I could succeed in merging as needless many controversies. In all the workings of any mind about Tri-unity, Incarnation, Atonement, the Fall, Resurrection, Immortality, Eternal Punishment, how little had any of these to do with the inward exercises of my soul towards God! He was still the same, immutably glorious: not one feature of his countenance had altered to my gaze, or could alter. This surely was the God whom Christ came to reveal, and bring us into fellowship with: this is that, about which Christians ought to have no controversy, but which they should unitedly, concordantly, themselves enjoy and exhibit to the heathen. But oh, Christendom! what dost thou believe and teach? The heathen cry out to thee,–Physician, heal thyself.
[Footnote 1: I afterwards learned that some of those gentlemen esteemed boldness of thought “a lust of the mind,” and as such, an immorality. This enables them to persuade themselves that they do not reject a “heretic” for a matter of _opinion_, but for that which they have a right to call “_immoral_”. What immorality was imputed to me, I was not distinctly informed.]
[Footnote 2: I really thought it needless to quote proof that but _few_ will be saved, Matth. vii. 14. I know there is a class of Christians who believe in Universal salvation, and there are others who disbelieve eternal torment. They must not be angry with me for refuting the doctrine of other Christians, which they hold to be false.]
[Footnote 3: In this (second) edition, I have added an entire chapter expressly on the subject.]
[Footnote 4: The same may probably be said of all the apostles, and their whole generation. If they had looked on the life of Jesus with the same tender and human affection as modern Unitarians and pious Romanists do, the church would have swarmed with _holy coats_ and other relics in the very first age. The mother of Jesus and her little establishment would at once have swelled into importance. This certainly was not the case; which may make it doubtful whether the other apostles dwelt at all more on the _human personality_, of Jesus than Paul did. Strikingly different as James is from Paul, he is in this respect perfectly agreed with him.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED.
It has been stated that I had already begun to discern that it was impossible with perfect honesty to defend every tittle contained in the Bible. Most of the points which give moral offence in the book of Genesis I had been used to explain away by the doctrine of Progress; yet every now and then it became hard to deny that God is represented as giving an actual _sanction_ to that which we now call sinful. Indeed, up and down the Scriptures very numerous texts are scattered, which are notorious difficulties with commentators. These I had habitually _overruled_ one by one: but again of late, since I had been forced to act and talk less and think more, they began to encompass me. But I was for a while too full of other inquiries to follow up coherently any of my doubts or perceptions, until my mind became at length nailed down to the definite study of one well-known passage.
This passage may be judged of extremely secondary importance in itself, yet by its remoteness from all properly spiritual and profound questions, it seemed to afford to me the safest of arguments. The _genealogy_ with which the gospel of Matthew opens, I had long known to be a stumbling-block to divines, and I had never been satisfied with their explanations. On reading it afresh, after long intermission, and comparing it for myself with the Old Testament, I was struck with observing that the corruption of the two names Ahaziah and Uzziah into the same sound (Oziah) has been the cause of merging four generations into one; as the similarity of Jehoiakim to Jehoiachin also led to blending them both in the name Jeconiah. In consequence, there ought to be 18 generations where Matthew has given as only 14: yet we cannot call this on error of a transcriber; for it is distinctly remarked, that the genealogy consists of 14 three times repeated. Thus there were but 14 names inserted by Matthew: yet it ought to have been 18: and he was under manifest mistake. This surely belongs to a class of knowledge, of which man has cognizance: it would not be piety, but grovelling superstition, to avow before God that I distrust my powers of counting, and, in obedience to the written word, I believe that 18 is 14 and 14 is 18. Thus it is impossible to deny, that there is cognizable error in the first chapter of Matthew. Consequently, that gospel is not all dictated by the Spirit of God, and (unless we can get rid of the first chapter as no part of the Bible) the doctrine of the verbal infallibility of the whole Bible, or indeed of the New Testament, is demonstrably false.
After I had turned the matter over often, and had become accustomed to the thought, this single instance at length had great force to give boldness to my mind within a very narrow range. I asked whether, if the chapter were now proved to be spurious, that would save the infallibility of the Bible. The reply was: not of the Bible as it is; but only of the Bible when cleared of that _and of all other_ spurious additions. If by independent methods, such as an examination of manuscripts, the spuriousness of the chapter could now be shown, _this would verify the faculty of criticism_ which has already objected to its contents: thus it would justly urge us to apply similar criticism to other passages.
I farther remembered, and now brought together under a single point of view, other undeniable mistakes. The genealogy of the nominal father of Jesus in Luke is inconsistent with that in Matthew, in spite of the flagrant dishonesty with which divines seek to deny this; and neither evangelist gives the genealogy of Mary, which alone is wanted.–In Acts vii. 16, the land which _Jacob_ bought of the children of Hamor,[1] is confounded with that which _Abraham_ bought of Ephron the Hittite. In Acts v. 36, 37, Gamaliel is made to say that Theudas was earlier in time than Judas of Galilee. Yet in fact, Judas of Galilee preceded Theudas; and the revolt of Theudas had not yet taken place when Gamaliel spoke, so the error is not Gamaliel’s, but Luke’s. Of both the insurgents we have a dear and unimpeached historical account in Josephus.–The slaughter of the infants by Herod, if true, must, I thought, needs have been recorded by the same historian,–So again, in regard to the allusion made by Jesus to Zacharias, son of Barachias, as _last of the martyrs_, it was difficult for me to shake off the suspicion, that a gross error had been committed, and that the person intended is the “Zacharias son of Baruchus,” who, as we know from Josephus, was martyred _within the courts of the temple_ during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, about 40 years after the crucifixion. The well-known prophet Zechariah was indeed son of Berechiah; but he was not last of the martyrs,[2] if indeed he was martyred at all. On the whole, the persuasion stuck to me, that words had been put into the mouth of Jesus, which he could not possibly have used.–The impossibility of settling the names of the twelve apostles struck me as a notable fact.–I farther remembered the numerous difficulties of harmonizing the four gospels; how, when a boy at school, I had tried to incorporate all four into one history, and the dismay with which I had found the insoluble character of the problem,–the endless discrepancies and perpetual uncertainties. These now began to seem to me inherent in the materials, and not to be ascribable to our want of intelligence.
I had also discerned in the opening of Genesis things which could not be literally received. The geography of the rivers in Paradise is inexplicable, though it assumes the tone of explanation. The curse on the serpent, who is to go on his belly–(how else did he go before?)–and eat dust, is a capricious punishment on a race of brutes, one of whom the Devil chose to use as his instrument. That the painfulness of childbirth is caused, not by Eve’s sin, but by artificial habits and a weakened nervous system, seems to be proved by the twofold fact, that savage women and wild animals suffer but little, and tame cattle often suffer as much as human females.–About this time also, I had perceived (what I afterwards learned the Germans to have more fully investigated) that the two different accounts of the Creation are distinguished by the appellations given to the divine Creator. I did not see how to resist the inference that the book is made up of heterogeneous documents, and was not put forth by the direct dictation of the Spirit to Moses.
A new stimulus was after this given to my mind by two short conversations with the late excellent Dr. Arnold at Rugby. I had become aware of the difficulties encountered by physiologists in believing the whole human race to have proceeded in about 6000 years from a single Adam and Eve; and that the longevity (not miraculous, but ordinary) attributed to the patriarchs was another stumbling-block. The geological difficulties of the Mosaic cosmogony were also at that time exciting attention. It was a novelty to me, that Arnold treated these questions as matters of indifference to religion; and did not hesitate to say, that the account of Noah’s deluge was evidently mythical, and the history of Joseph “a beautiful poem.” I was staggered at this. If all were not descended from Adam, what became of St. Paul’s parallel between the first and second Adam, and the doctrine of Headship and Atonement founded on it? If the world was not made in six days, how could we defend the Fourth Commandment as true, though said to have been written in stone by the very finger of God? If Noah’s deluge was a legend, we should at least have to admit that Peter did not know this: what too would be said of Christ’s allusion to it? I was unable to admit Dr. Arnold’s views; but to see a vigorous mind, deeply imbued with Christian devoutness, so convinced, both reassured me that I need not fear moral mischiefs from free inquiry, and indeed laid that inquiry upon me as a duty.
Here, however, was a new point started. Does the question of the derivation of the human race from two parents belong to things cognizable by the human intellect, or to things about which we must learn submissively? Plainly to the former. It would be monstrous to deny that such inquiries legitimately belong to physiology, or to proscribe a free study of this science. If so, there was an _a priori_ possibility, that what is in the strictest sense called “religious doctrine” might come into direct collision, not merely with my ill-trained conscience, but with legitimate science; and that this would call on me to ask: “Which of the two certainties is stronger? that the religious parts of the Scripture are infallible, or that the science is trustworthy?” and I then first saw, that while science had (within however limited a range of thought) demonstration or severe verifications, it was impossible to pretend to anything so cogent in favour of the infallibility of any or some part of the Scriptures; a doctrine which I was accustomed to believe, and felt to be a legitimate presumption; yet one of which it grew harder and harder to assign any proof, the more closely I analyzed it. Nevertheless, I still held it fast, and resolved not to let it go until I was forced.
A fresh strain fell on the Scriptural infallibility, in contemplating the origin of Death. Geologists assured us, that death went on in the animal creation many ages before the existence of man. The rocks formed of the shells of animals testify that death is a phenomenon thousands of thousand years old: to refer the death of animals to the sin of Adam and Eve is evidently impossible. Yet, if not, the analogies of the human to the brute form make it scarcely credible that man’s body can ever have been intended for immortality. Nay, when we consider the conditions of birth and growth to which it is subject, the wear and tear essential to life, the new generations intended to succeed and supplant the old,–so soon as the question is proposed as one of physiology, the reply is inevitable that death is no accident introduced by the perverse will of our first parents, nor any way connected with man’s sinfulness; but is purely a result of the conditions of animal life. On the contrary, St. Paul rests most important conclusions on the fact, that one man Adam by personal sin brought death upon all his posterity. If this was a fundamental error, religious doctrine also is shaken.
In various attempts at compromise,–such as conceding the Scriptural fallibility in human science, but maintaining its spiritual perfection,–I always found the division impracticable. At last it pressed on me, that if I admitted morals to rest on an independent basis, it was dishonest to shut my eyes to any apparent collisions of morality with the Scriptures. A very notorious and decisive instance is that of Jael.–Sisera, when beaten in battle, fled to the tent of his friend Heber, and was there warmly welcomed by Jael, Heber’s wife. After she had refreshed him with food, and lulled him to sleep, she killed him by driving a nail into his temples; and for this deed, (which now-a-days would be called a perfidious murder,) the prophetess Deborah, in an inspired psalm, pronounces Jael to be “blessed above women,” and glorifies her act by an elaborate description of its atrocity. As soon as I felt that I was bound to pass a moral judgment on this, I saw that as regards the Old Testament the battle was already lost. Many other things, indeed, instantly rose in full power upon me, especially the command to Abraham to slay his son. Paul and James agree in extolling Abraham as the pattern of faith; James and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews specify the sacrifice of Isaac as a firstrate fruit of faith: yet if the voice of morality is allowed to be heard, Abraham was (in heart and intention) not less guilty than those who sacrificed their children to Molech.
Thus at length it appeared, that I must choose between two courses. I must EITHER blind my moral sentiment, my powers of criticism, and my scientific knowledge, (such as they were,) in order to accept the Scripture entire; OR I must encounter the problem, however arduous, of adjusting the relative claims of human knowledge and divine revelation. As to the former method, to name it was to condemn it; for it would put every system of Paganism on a par with Christianity. If one system of religion may claim that we blind our hearts and eyes in its favour, so may another; and there is precisely the same reason for becoming a Hindoo in religion as a Christian. We cannot be both; therefore the principle is _demonstrably_ absurd. It is also, of course, morally horrible, and opposed to countless passages of the Scriptures themselves. Nor can the argument be evaded by talking of external evidences; for these also are confessedly moral evidences, to be judged of by our moral faculties. Nay, according to all Christian advocates, they are God’s test of our moral temper. To allege, therefore, that our moral faculties are not to judge, is to annihilate the evidences for Christianity.–Thus, finally, I was lodged in three inevitable conclusions:
1. The moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as having a right and duty to criticize the contents of the Scripture:
2. When so exerted, they condemn portions of the Scripture as erroneous and immoral:
3. The assumed infallibility of the _entire_ Scripture is a proved falsity, not merely as to physiology, and other scientific matters, but also as to morals: and it remains for farther inquiry how to discriminate the trustworthy from the untrustworthy within the limits of the Bible itself.
* * * * *
When distinctly conscious, after long efforts to evade it, that this was and must henceforth be my position, I ruminated on the many auguries which had been made concerning me by frightened friends. “You will become a Socinian,” had been said of me even at Oxford: “You will become an infidel,” had since been added. My present results, I was aware, would seem a sadly triumphant confirmation to the clearsighted instinct of orthodoxy. But the animus of such prophecies had always made me indignant, and I could not admit that there was any merit in such clearsightedness. What! (used I to say,) will you shrink from truth, lest it lead to error? If following truth must bring us to Socinianism, let us by all means become Socinians, or anything else. Surely we do not love our doctrines more than the truth, but because they are the truth. Are we not exhorted to “prove all things, and hold fast that which is good?”–But to my discomfort, I generally found that this (to me so convincing) argument for feeling no alarm, only caused more and more alarm, and gloomier omens concerning me. On considering all this in leisurely retrospect, I began painfully to doubt, whether after all there is much love of truth even among those who have an undeniable strength of religious feeling. I questioned with myself, whether love of truth is not a virtue demanding a robust mental cultivation; whether mathematical or other abstract studies may not be practically needed for it. But no: for how then could it exist in some feminine natures? how in rude and unphilosophical times? On the whole, I rather concluded, that there is in nearly all English education a positive repressing of a young person’s truthfulness; for I could distinctly see, that in my own case there was always need of defying authority and public opinion,–not to speak of more serious sacrifices,–if I was to follow truth. All society seemed so to hate novelties of thought, as to prefer the chances of error in the old.–Of course! why, how could it be otherwise, while Test Articles were maintained?
Yet surely if God is truth, none sincerely aspire to him, who dread to lose their present opinions in exchange for others truer.–I had not then read a sentence of Coleridge, which is to this effect: “If any one begins by loving Christianity more than the truth, he will proceed to love his Church more than Christianity, and will end by loving his own opinions better than either.” A dim conception of this was in my mind; and I saw that the genuine love of God was essentially connected with loving truth as truth, and not truth as our own accustomed thought, truth as our old prejudice; and that the real saint can never be afraid to let God teach him one lesson more, or unteach him one more error. Then I rejoiced to feel how right and sound had been our principle, that no creed can possibly be used as the touchstone of spirituality: for man morally excels man, as far as creeds are concerned, not by assenting to true propositions, but by loving them because they are discerned to be true, and by possessing a faculty of discernment sharpened by the love of truth. Such are God’s true apostles, differing enormously in attainment and elevation, but all born to ascend. For these to quarrel between themselves because they do not agree in opinions, is monstrous. _Sentiment_, surely, not _opinion_, is the bond of the Spirit; and as the love of God, so the love of truth is a high and sacred sentiment, in comparison to which our creeds are mean.
Well, I had been misjudged; I had been absurdly measured by other men’s creed: but might I not have similarly misjudged others, since I had from early youth been under similar influences? How many of my seniors at Oxford I had virtually despised because they were not evangelical! Had I had opportunity of testing their spirituality? or had I the faculty of so doing? Had I not really condemned them as unspiritual, barely because of their creed? On trying to reproduce the past to my imagination, I could not condemn myself quite as sweepingly as I wished; but my heart smote me on account of one. I had a brother, with whose name all England was resounding for praise or blame: from his sympathies, through pure hatred of Popery, I had long since turned away. What was this but to judge him by his creed? True, his whole theory was nothing but Romanism transferred to England: but what then? I had studied with the deepest interest Mrs. Schimmelpenninck’s account of the Portroyalists, and though I was aware that she exhibits only the bright side of her subject, yet the absolute excellencies of her nuns and priests showed that Romanism _as such_ was not fatal to spirituality. They were persecuted: this did them good perhaps, or certainly exhibited their brightness. So too my brother surely was struggling after truth, fighting for freedom to his own heart and mind, against church articles and stagnancy of thought. For this he deserved both sympathy and love: but I, alas! had not known and seen his excellence. But now God had taught me more largeness by bitter sorrow working the peaceable fruit of righteousness; at last then I might admire my brother. I therefore wrote to him a letter of contrition. Some change, either in his mind or in his view of my position, had taken place; and I was happy to find him once more able, not only to feel fraternally, as he had always done, but to act also fraternally. Nevertheless, to this day it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery, how a mind can claim its freedom in order to establish bondage.
For the _peculiarities_ of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can pretend nothing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror. But this system of falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition, will never be destroyed, while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against opinion. These are the outworks of the Romish citadel: until they are razed to the ground, the citadel will defy attack. If we are to blind our eyes, in order to accept an article of King Edward VI., or an argument of St. Paul’s, why not blind them so far as to accept the Council of Trent? If we are to pronounce that a man “without doubt shall perish everlastingly,” unless he believes the self-contradictions of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, why should we shrink from a similar anathema on those who reject the self-contradictions of Transsubstantiation? If one man is cast out of God’s favour for eliciting error while earnestly searching after truth, and another remains in favour by passively receiving the word of a Church, of a Priest, or of an Apostle, then to search for truth is dangerous; apathy is safer; then the soul does not come directly into contact with God and learn of him, but has to learn from, and unconvincedly submit to, some external authority. This is the germ of Romanism: its legitimate development makes us Pagans outright.
* * * * *
But in what position was I now, towards the apostles? Could I admit their inspiration, when I no longer thought them infallible? Undoubtedly. What could be clearer on every hypothesis, than that they were inspired on and after the day of Pentecost, and _yet_ remained ignorant and liable to mistake about the relation of the Gentiles to the Jews? The moderns have introduced into the idea of inspiration that of infallibility, to which either _omniscience_ or _dictation_ is essential. That there was no dictation, (said I,) is proved by the variety of style in the Scriptural writers; that they were not omniscient, is manifest. In truth, if human minds had not been left to them, how could they have argued persuasively? was not the superior success of their preaching to that of Christ, perhaps due to their sharing in the prejudices of their contemporaries? An orator is most persuasive, when he is lifted above his hearers on those points only on which he is to reform their notions. The apostles were not omniscient: granted: but it cannot hence be inferred that they did not know the message given them by God. Their knowledge however perfect, must yet in a human mind have coexisted with ignorance; and nothing (argued I) but a perpetual miracle could prevent ignorance from now and then exhibiting itself in some error. But hence to infer that they are not inspired, and are not messengers from God, is quite gratuitous. Who indeed imagines that John or Paul understood astronomy so well as Sir William Herschel? Those who believe that the apostles might err in human science, need not the less revere their moral and spiritual wisdom.
At the same time it became a matter of duty to me, if possible, to discriminate the authoritative from the unauthoritative in the Scripture, or at any rate avoid to accept and propagate as true that which is false, even if it be false only as science and not as religion. I unawares,–more perhaps from old habit than from distinct conviction,–started from the assumption that my fixed point of knowledge was to be found in the sensible or scientific, not in the moral. I still retained from my old Calvinistic doctrine a way of proceeding, as if purely moral judgment were my weak side, at least in criticizing the Scripture: so that I preferred never to appeal to direct moral and spiritual considerations, except in the most glaringly necessary cases. Thus, while I could not accept the panegyric on Jael, and on Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his son, I did not venture unceremoniously to censure the extirpation of the Canaanites by Joshua: of which I barely said to myself, that it “certainly needed very strong proof” of the divine command to justify it. I still went so far in timidity as to hesitate to reject on internal evidence the account of heroes or giants begotten by angels, who, enticed by the love of women, left heaven for earth. The narrative in Gen. vi. had long appeared to me undoubtedly to bear this sense; and to have been so understood by Jude and Peter (2 Pet. ii.), as, I believe, it also was by the Jews and early Fathers. I did at length set it aside as incredible; not however from moral repugnance to it, (for I feared to trust the soundness of my instinct,) but because I had slid into a new rule of interpretation,–that _I must not obtrude miracles on the Scripture narrative_. The writers tell their story without showing any consciousness that it involves physiological difficulties. To invent a miracle in order to defend this, began to seem to me unwarrantable.
It had become notorious to the public, that Geologists rejected the idea of a universal deluge as physically impossible. Whence could the water come, to cover the highest mountains? Two replies were attempted: 1. The flood of Noah is not described as universal: 2. The flood was indeed universal, but the water was added and removed by miracle.–Neither reply however seemed to me valid. First, the language respecting the universality of the flood is as strong as any that could be written: moreover it is stated that the tops of the high hills _were all covered_, and after the water subsides, the ark settles on the mountains of Armenia. Now in Armenia, of necessity numerous peaks would be seen, unless the water covered them, and especially Ararat. But a flood that covered Ararat would overspread all the continents, and leave only a few summits above. If then the account in Genesis is to be received, the flood was universal. Secondly: the narrator represents the surplus water to have come from the clouds and perhaps from the sea, and again to drain back into the sea. Of a miraculous _creation and destruction_ of water, he evidently does not dream.
Other impossibilities came forward: the insufficient dimensions of the ark to take in all the creatures; the unsuitability of the same climate to arctic and tropical animals for a full year; the impossibility of feeding them and avoiding pestilence; and especially, the total disagreement of the modern facts of the dispersion of animals, with the idea that they spread anew from Armenia as their centre. We have no right to call in a series of miracles to solve difficulties, of which the writer was unconscious. The ark itself was expressly devised to economize miracle, by making a fresh creation of animals needless.
Different in kind was the objection which I felt to the story, which is told twice concerning Abraham and once concerning Isaac, of passing off a wife as a sister. Allowing that such a thing was barely not impossible, the improbability was so intense, as to demand the strictest and most cogent proof: yet when we asked, Who testifies it? no proof appeared that it was Moses; or, supposing it to be he, what his sources of knowledge were. And this led to the far wider remark, that nowhere in the book of Genesis is there a line to indicate who is the writer, or a sentence to imply that the writer believes himself to write by special information from God. Indeed, it is well known that were are numerous small phrases which denote a later hand than that of Moses. The kings of Israel are once alluded to historically, Gen. xxxvi. 31.
Why then was anything improbable to be believed on the writer’s word? as, for instance, the story of Babel and the confusion of tongues? One reply only seemed possible; namely, that we believe the Old Testament in obedience to the authority of the New: and this threw me again to consider the references to the Old Testament in the Christian Scriptures.
* * * * *
But here, the difficulties soon became manifestly more and more formidable. In opening Matthew, we meet with quotations from the Old Testament applied in the most startling way. First is the prophecy about the child Immanuel; which in Isaiah no unbiassed interpreter would have dreamed could apply to Jesus. Next; the words of Hosea, “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” which do but record the history of Israel, are imagined by Matthew to be prophetic of the return of Jesus from Egypt. This instance moved me much; because I thought, that if the text were “spiritualized,” so as to make Israel mean _Jesus_, Egypt also ought to be spiritualized and mean _the world_, not retain its geographical sense, which seemed to be carnal and absurd in such a connection: for Egypt is no more to Messiah than Syria or Greece.–One of the most decisive testimonies to the Old Testament which the New contains, is in John x., 35, where I hardly knew how to allow myself to characterize the reasoning. The case stands thus. The 82nd Psalm rebukes _unjust_ governors; and at length says to them: “I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most high: but ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” In other words:–“though we are apt _to think_ of rulers _as if_ they were superhuman, yet they shall meet the lot of common men.” Well: how is this applied in John?–Jesus has been accused of blasphemy, for saying that “He and his Father are one;” and in reply, he quotes the verse, “I have said, Ye are gods,” as his sufficient justification for calling himself Son of God; for “the Scripture cannot be broken.” I dreaded to precipitate myself into shocking unbelief, if I followed out the thoughts that this suggested; and (I know not how) for a long time yet put it off.
The quotations from the Old Testament in St. Paul had always been a mystery to me. The more I now examined them, the clearer it appeared that they were based on untenable Rabbinical principles. Nor are those in the Acts and in the Gospels any better. If we take free leave to canvass them, it may appear that not one quotation in ten is sensible and appropriate. And shall we then accept the decision of the New Testament writers as final, concerning the value and credibility of the Old Testament, when it is so manifest that they most imperfectly understood that book?
In fact the appeal to them proved too much. For Jude quotes the book of Enoch as an inspired prophecy, and yet, since Archbishop Laurence has translated it from the Ethiopian, we know that book to be a fable undeserving of regard, and undoubtedly not written by “Enoch, the seventh from Adam.” Besides, it does not appear that any peculiar divine revelation taught them that the Old Testament is perfect truth. In point of fact, they only reproduce the ideas on that subject current in their age. So far as Paul deviates from the common Jewish view, it is in the direction of disparaging the Law as essentially imperfect. May it not seem that his remaining attachment to it was still exaggerated by old sentiment and patriotism?
I farther found that not only do the Evangelists give us no hint that they thought themselves divinely inspired, or that they had any other than human sources of knowledge, but Luke most explicitly shows the contrary. He opens by stating to Theophilus, that since many persons have committed to writing the things handed down from eye-witnesses, it seemed good to him also to do the same, since he had “accurately attended to every thing from its sources ([Greek: anothen]).” He could not possibly have written thus, if he had been conscious of superhuman aids. How absurd then of us, to pretend that we know more than Luke knew of his own inspiration!
In truth, the arguments of theologians to prove the inspiration (i.e. infallibility) of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are sometimes almost ludicrous. My lamented friend, John Sterling, has thus summed up Dr. Henderson’s arguments about Mark. “Mark was probably inspired, _because he was an acquaintance of Peter_; and because Dr. Henderson would be reviled by other Dissenters, if he doubted it.”
* * * * *
About this time, the great phenomenon of these gospels,–the casting out of devils,–pressed forcibly on my attention. I now dared to look full into the facts, and saw that the disorders described were perfectly similar to epilepsy, mania, catalepsy, and other known maladies. Nay, the deaf, the dumb, the hunchbacked, are spoken of as devil-ridden. I farther knew that such diseases are still ascribed to evil genii in Mussulman countries: even a vicious horse is believed by the Arabs to be _majnun_, possessed by a Jin or Genie. Devils also are cast out in Abyssinia to this day. Having fallen in with Farmer’s treatise on the Demoniacs, I carefully studied it; and found it to prove unanswerably, that a belief in demoniacal possession is a superstition not more respectable than that of witchcraft. But Farmer did not at all convince me, that the three Evangelists do not share the vulgar error. Indeed, the instant we believe that the imagined possessions were only various forms of disease, we are forced to draw conclusions of the utmost moment, most damaging to the credit of the narrators.[3]
Clearly, they are then convicted of misstating facts, under the influence of superstitious credulity. They represent demoniacs as having a supernatural acquaintance with Jesus, which, it now becomes manifest, they cannot have had. The devils cast out of two demoniacs (or one) are said to have entered into a herd of swine. This must have been a credulous fiction. Indeed, the casting out of devils is so very prominent a part of the miraculous agency ascribed to Jesus, as at first sight to impair our faith in his miracles altogether.
I however took refuge in the consideration, that when Jesus wrought one great miracle, popular credulity would inevitably magnify it into ten; hence the discovery of foolish exaggerations is no disproof of a real miraculous agency: nay, perhaps the contrary. Are they not a sort of false halo round a disc of glory,–a halo so congenial to human nature, that the absence of it might be even wielded as an objection? Moreover, John tells of no demoniacs: does not this show his freedom from popular excitement? Observe the great miracles narrated by John,–the blind man,–and Lazarus–how different in kind from those on demoniacs! how incapable of having been mistaken! how convincing! His statements cannot be explained away: their whole tone, moreover, is peculiar. On the contrary, the three first gospels contain much that (after we see the writers to be credulous) must be judged legendary.
The two first chapters of Matthew abound in dreams. Dreams? Was indeed the “immaculate conception” merely told to Joseph in a _dream_? a dream which not he only was to believe, but we also, when reported to us by a person wholly unknown, who wrote 70 or 80 years after the fact, and gives us no clue to his sources of information! Shall I reply that he received his information by miracle? But why more than Luke? and Luke evidently was conscious only of human information. Besides, inspiration has not saved Matthew from error about demons; and why then about Joseph’s dream and its highly important contents?
In former days, I had never dared to let my thoughts dwell inquisitively on the _star_, which the wise men saw in the East, and which accompanied them, and pointed out the house where the young child was. I now thought of it, only to see that it was a legend fit for credulous ages; and that it must be rejected in common with Herod’s massacre of the children,–an atrocity unknown to Josephus. How difficult it was to reconcile the flight into Egypt with the narrative of Luke, I had known from early days: I now saw that it was waste time to try to reconcile them.
But perhaps I might say:–“That the writers should make errors about the _infancy_ of Jesus was natural; they were distant from the time: but that will not justly impair the credit of events, to which they may possibly have been contemporaries or even eye-witnesses.”–How then would this apply to the Temptation, at which certainly none of them were present? Is it accident, that the same three, who abound in the demoniacs, tell also the scene of the Devil and Jesuit on a pinnacle of the temple; while the same John who omits the demoniacs, omits also this singular story? It being granted that the writers are elsewhere mistaken, to criticize the tale was to reject it.
In near connexion with this followed the discovery, that many other miracles of the Bible are wholly deficient in that moral dignity, which is supposed to place so great a chasm between them and ecclesiastical writings. Why should I look with more respect on the napkins taken from Paul’s body (Acts xix. 12), than on pocket-handkerchiefs dipped in the blood of martyrs? How could I believe, on this same writer’s hearsay, that “the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip” (viii. 39), transporting him through the air; as oriental genii are supposed to do? Or what moral dignity was there in the curse on the barren fig-tree,–about which, moreover, we are so perplexingly told, that it was _not_ the time for figs? What was to be said of a cure, wrought by touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, which drew physical _virtue_ from him without his will? And how could I distinguish the genius of the miracle of tribute-money in the fish’s mouth, from those of the apocryphal gospels? What was I to say of useless miracles, like that of Peter and Jesus walking on the water,–or that of many saints coming out of the graves to show themselves, or of a poetical sympathy of the elements, such as the earthquake and rending of the temple-veil when Jesus died? Altogether, I began to feel that Christian advocates commit the flagrant sophism of treating every objection as an isolated “cavil,” and overrule each as obviously insufficient, with the same confidence as if it were the only one. Yet, in fact, the objections collectively are very powerful, and cannot be set aside by supercilious airs and by calling unbelievers “superficial,” any more than by harsh denunciations.
Pursuing the same thought to the Old Testament, I discerned there also no small sprinkling of grotesque or unmoral miracles. A dead man is raised to life, when his body by accident touches the bones of Elisha: as though Elisha had been a Romish saint, and his bones a sacred relic. Uzzah, when the ark is in danger of falling, puts out his hand to save it, and is struck dead for his impiety! Was this the judgment of the Father of mercies and God of all comfort? What was I to make of God’s anger with Abimelech (Gen. xx.), whose sole offence was, the having believed Abraham’s lie? for which a miraculous barrenness was sent on all the females of Abimelech’s tribe, and was bought off only by splendid presents to the favoured deceiver.–Or was it at all credible that the lying and fraudulent Jacob should have been so specially loved by God, more than the rude animal Esau?–Or could I any longer overlook the gross imagination of antiquity, which made Abraham and Jehovah dine on the same carnal food, like Tantalus with the gods;–which fed Elijah by ravens, and set angels to bake cakes for him? Such is a specimen of the flood of difficulties which poured in, through the great breach which the demoniacs had made in the credit of Biblical marvels.
While I was in this stage of progress, I had a second time the advantage of meeting Dr. Arnold, and had satisfaction in finding that he rested the main strength of Christianity on the gospel of John. The great similarity of the other three seemed to him enough to mark that they flowed from sources very similar, and that the first gospel had no pretensions to be regarded as the actual writing of Matthew. This indeed had been for some time clear to me, though I now cared little about the author’s name, when he was proved to be credulous.–Arnold regarded John’s gospel as abounding with smaller touches which marked the eye-witness, and, altogether, to be the vivid and simple picture of a divine reality, undeformed by credulous legend. In this view I was gratified to repose, in spite of a few partial misgivings, and returned to investigations concerning the Old Testament.
For some time back I had paid special attention to the book of Genesis; and I had got aid in the analysis of it from a German volume. That it was based on _at least_ two different documents, technically called the Elohistic and Jehovistic, soon became clear to me: and an orthodox friend who acknowledged the fact, regarded it as a high recommendation of the book, that it was conscientiously made out of pre-existing materials, and was not a fancy that came from the brain of Moses. My good friend’s argument was not a happy one: no written record could exist of things and times which preceded the invention of writing. After analysing this book with great minuteness, I now proceeded to Exodus and Numbers; and was soon assured, that these had not, any more than Genesis, come forth from one primitive witness of the facts. In all these books is found the striking phenomenon of _duplicate_ or even _triplicate narratives_. The creation of man is three times told. The account of the Flood is made up out of two discrepant originals, marked by the names Elohim and Jehovah; of which one makes Noah take into the ark _seven_ pairs of clean, and _single_ (or double?) pairs of unclean, beasts; while the other gives him two and two of all kinds, without distinguishing the clean. The two documents may indeed in this narrative be almost re-discovered by mechanical separation. The triple statement of Abraham and Isaac passing off a wife for a sister was next in interest; and here also the two which concern Abraham are contrasted as Jehovistic and Elohistic. A similar double account is given of the origin of circumcision, of the names Isaac, Israel, Bethel, Beersheba. Still more was I struck by the positive declaration in Exodus (vi. 3) that _God was_ NOT _known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the name Jehovah_; while the book of Genesis abounds with the contrary fact. This alone convinced me beyond all dispute, that these books did not come from one and the same hand, but are conglomerates formed out of older materials, unartistically and mechanically joined.
Indeed a fuller examination showed in Exodus and Numbers a twofold miracle of the quails, of which the latter is so told as to indicate entire unacquaintance with the former. There is a double description of the manna, a needless second appointment of Elders of the congregation: water is twice brought out of the rock by the rod of Moses, whose faith is perfect the first time and fails the second time. The name of Meribah is twice bestowed. There is a double promise of a guardian angel, a double consecration of Aaron and his sons: indeed, I seemed to find a double or even threefold[4] copy of the Decalogue. Comprising Deuteronomy within my view, I met two utterly incompatible accounts of Aaron’s death; for Deuteronomy makes him die _before_ reaching Meribah Kadesh, where, according to Numbers, he sinned and incurred the penalty of death (Num. xx. 24, Deut x. 6: cf Num. xxxiii. 31, 38).
That there was error on a great scale in all this, was undeniable; and I began to see at least one _source_ of the error. The celebrated miracle of “the sun standing still” has long been felt as too violent a derangement of the whole globe to be used by the most High as a means of discomfiting an army: and I had acquiesced in the idea that the miracle was _ocular_ only. But in reading the passage, (Josh. x. 12-14,) I for the first time observed that the narrative rests on the authority of a poetical book which bears the name of Jasher.[5] He who composed–“Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon!”–like other poets, called on the Sun and Moon to stand and look on Joshua’s deeds; but he could not anticipate that his words would be hardened into fact by a prosaic interpreter, and appealed to in proof of a stupendous miracle. The commentator could not tell what _the Moon_ had to do with it; yet he has quoted honestly.–This presently led me to observe other marks that the narrative has been made up, at least in part, out of old poetry. Of these the most important are in Exodus xv. and Num. xxi., in the latter of which three different poetical fragments are quoted, and one of them is expressly said to be from “the book of the wars of Jehovah,” apparently a poem descriptive of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. As for Exodus xv. it appeared to me (in that stage, and after so abundant proof of error,) almost certain that Moses’ song is the primitive authority, out of which the prose narrative of the passage of the Red Sea has been worked up. Especially since, after the song, the writer adds: v. 19. “For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them: but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.” This comment scarcely could have been added, if the detailed account of ch. xiv. had been written previously. The song of Moses _implies no miracle at all_: it is merely high poetry. A later prosaic age took the hyperbolic phrases of v. 8 literally, and so generated the comment of v. 19, and a still later time expanded this into the elaborate 14th chapter.
Other proofs crowded upon me, that cannot here be enlarged upon. Granting then (for argument) that the four first books of the Pentateuch are a compilation, made long after the event, I tried for a while to support the very arbitrary opinion, that Deuteronomy (all but its last chapter) which seemed to be a more homogeneous composition, was alone and really the production of Moses. This however needed some definite proof: for if tradition was not sufficient to guarantee the whole Pentateuch, it could not guarantee to me Deuteronomy alone. I proceeded to investigate the external history of the Pentateuch, and in so doing, came to the story, how the book of the Law was _found_ in the reign of the young king Josiah, nearly at the end of the Jewish monarchy. As I considered the narrative, my eyes were opened. If the book had previously been the received sacred law, it could not possibly have been so lost, that its contents were unknown, and the fact of its loss forgotten: it was therefore evidently _then first compiled_, or at least then first produced and made authoritative to the nation.[6] And with this the general course of the history best agrees, and all the phenomena of the books themselves.
Many of the Scriptural facts were old to me: to the importance of the history of Josiah I had perhaps even become dim-sighted by familiarity. Why had I not long ago seen that my conclusions ought to have been different from those of prevalent orthodoxy?–I found that I had been cajoled by the primitive assumptions, which though not clearly _stated_, are unceremoniously _used_. Dean Graves, for instance, always takes for granted, that, _until the contrary shall be demonstrated_, it is to be firmly believed that the Pentateuch is from the pen of Moses. He proceeds to set aside, _one by one_, as not demonstrative, the indications that it is of later origin: and when other means fail, he says that the particular verses remarked on were added by a later hand! I considered that if we were debating the antiquity of an Irish book, and in one page of it were found an allusion to the Parliamentary Union with England, we should at once regard the whole book, _until the contrary should be proved_, as the work of this century; and not endure the reasoner, who, in order to uphold a theory that it is five centuries old, pronounced that sentence “evidently to be from a later hand.” Yet in this arbitrary way Dean Graves and all his coadjutors set aside, one by one, the texts which point at the date of the Pentateuch. I was possessed with indignation. Oh sham science! Oh false-named Theology!
O mihi tam longae maneat pars ultima vitae, Spiritus et, quantum sat erit tua dicere facta!
Yet I waited some eight years longer, lest I should on so grave a subject write anything premature. Especially I felt that it was necessary to learn more of what the erudition of Germany had done on these subjects. Michaelis on the New Testament had fallen into my hands several years before, and I had found the greatest advantage from his learning and candour. About this time I also had begun to get more or less aid from four or five living German divines; but none produced any strong impression on me but De Wette. The two grand lessons which I learned from him, were, the greater recency of Deuteronomy, and the very untrustworthy character of the book of Chronicles; with which discovery, the true origin of the Pentateuch becomes still clearer.[7] After this, I heard of Hengstenberg as the most learned writer on the opposite side, and furnished myself with his work in defence of the antiquity of the Pentateuch: but it only showed me how hopeless a cause he had undertaken.
* * * * *
In this period I came to a totally new view of many parts of the Bible; and not to be tedious, it will suffice here to sum up the results.
The first books which I looked at as doubtful, were the Apocalypse and the Epistle to the Hebrews. From the Greek style I felt assured that the former was not by John,[8] nor the latter by Paul. In Michaelis I first learnt the interesting fact of Luther having vehemently repudiated the Apocalypse, so that he not only declared its spuriousness in the Preface of his Bible, but solemnly charged his successors not to print his translation of the Apocalypse without annexing this avowal:–a charge which they presently disobeyed. Such is the habitual unfairness of ecclesiastical corporations. I was afterwards confirmed by Neander in the belief that the Apocalypse is a false prophecy. The only chapter of it which is interpreted,–the 17th,–appears to be a political speculation suggested by the civil war of Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian; and erroneously opines that the eighth emperor of Rome is to be the last, and is to be one of the preceding emperors restored,–probably Nero, who was believed to have escaped to the kings of the East.–As for the Epistle to the Hebrews, (which I was disposed to believe Luther had well guessed to be the production of Apollos,) I now saw quite a different genius in it from that of Paul, as more artificial and savouring of rhetorical culture. As to this, the learned Germans are probably unanimous.
Next to these, the Song of Solomon fell away. I had been accustomed to receive this as a sacred representation of the loves of Christ and the Church: but after I was experimentally acquainted with the playful and extravagant genius of man’s love for woman, I saw the Song of Solomon with new eyes, and became entirely convinced that it consists of fragments of love-songs, some of them rather voluptuous.
After this, it followed that the so-called _Canon_ of the Jews could not guarantee to us the value of the writings. Consequently, such books as Ruth and Esther, (the latter indeed not containing one religious sentiment,) stood forth at once in their natural insignificance. Ecclesiastes also seemed to me a meagre and shallow production. Chronicles I now learned to be not credulous only, but unfair, perhaps so far as to be actually dishonest. Not one of the historical books of the Old Testament could approve itself to me as of any high antiquity or of any spiritual authority; and in the New Testament I found the first three books and the Acts to contain many doubtful and some untrue accounts, and many incredible miracles.
Many persons, after reading thus much concerning me, will be apt to say: “Of course then you gave up Christianity?”–Far from it. I gave up all that was clearly untenable, and clung the firmer to all that still appeared sound. I had found out that the Bible was not to be my religion, nor its perfection any tenet of mine: but what then! Did Paul go about preaching the Bible? nay, but he preached Christ. The New Testament did not as yet exist: to the Jews he necessarily argued from the Old Testament; but that “faith in the book” was no part of Paul’s gospel, is manifest from his giving no list of sacred books to his Gentile converts. Twice indeed in his epistles to Timothy, he recommends the Scriptures of the Old Testament; but even in the more striking passage, (on which such exaggerated stress has been laid,) the spirit of his remark is essentially apologetic. “Despise not, oh Timothy,” (is virtually his exhortation) “the Scriptures that you learned as a child. Although now you have the Spirit to teach you, yet that does not make the older writers useless: for “_every divinely inspired writing is also profitable for instruction &c._” In Paul’s religion, respect for the Scriptures was a means, not an end. The Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible.
Thus the question with me was: “May I still receive Christ as a Saviour from sin, a Teacher and Lord sent from heaven, and can I find an adequate account of what he came to do or teach?” And my reply was, Yes. The gospel of John alone gave an adequate account of him: the other three, though often erroneous, had clear marks of simplicity, and in so far confirmed the general belief in the supernatural character and works of Jesus. Then the conversion of Paul was a powerful argument. I had Peter’s testimony to the resurrection, and to the transfiguration. Many of the prophecies were eminently remarkable, and seemed unaccountable except as miraculous. The origin of Judaism and spread of Christianity appeared to be beyond common experience, and were perhaps fairly to be called supernatural. Broad views such as these did not seem to be affected by the special conclusions at which I had arrived concerning the books of the Bible. I conceived myself to be resting under an Indian Figtree, which is supported by certain grand stems, but also lets down to the earth many small branches, which seem to the eye to prop the tree, but in fact are supported by it. If they were cut away, the tree would not be less strong. So neither was the tree of Christianity weakened by the loss of its apparent props. I might still enjoy its shade, and eat of its fruits, and bless the hand that planted it.
In the course of this period I likewise learnt how inadequate allowance I had once made for the repulsion produced by my own dogmatic tendency on the sympathies of the unevangelical. I now often met persons of Evangelical opinion, but could seldom have any interchange of religious sentiment with them, because every word they uttered warned me that I could escape controversy only while I kept them at a distance: moreover, if any little difference of opinion led us into amicable argument, they uniformly reasoned by quoting texts. This was now inadmissible with me, but I could only have done mischief by going farther than a dry disclaimer; after which indeed I saw I was generally looked on as “an infidel.” No doubt the parties who so came into collision with me, approached me often with an earnest desire and hope to find some spiritual good in me, but withdrew disappointed, finding me either cold and defensive, or (perhaps they thought) warm and disputatious. Thus, as long as artificial tests of spirituality are allowed to exist, their erroneousness is not easily exposed by the mere wear and tear of life. When the collision of opinion is very strong, two good men may meet, and only be confirmed in their prejudices against one another: for in order that one may elicit the spiritual sympathies of the other, a certain liberality is prerequisite. Without this, each prepares to shield himself from attack, or even holds out weapons of offence. Thus “articles of Communion” are essentially articles of Disunion.–On the other hand, if all tests of opinion in a church were heartily and truly done away, then the principles of spiritual affinity and repulsion would act quite undisturbed. Surely therefore this was the only right method?–Nevertheless, I saw the necessity of _one_ test, “Jesus is the Son of God,” and felt unpleasantly that one article tends infallibly to draw another after it. But I had too much, just then to think of in other quarters, to care much about Church Systems.
[Footnote 1: See Gen. xxxiii. 19, and xlix. 29-32, xxiii.]
[Footnote 2: Some say, that Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, named in the Chronicles, is meant; that he is _confounded_ with the prophet, the son of Berechiah, and was _supposed_ to be the last of the martyrs, because the Chronicles are placed last in the Hebrew Bible. This is a plausible view; but it saves the Scripture only by imputing error to Jesus.]
[Footnote 3: My Eclectic Reviewer says (p. 276): “Thus because the evangelists held an erroneous _medical_ theory, Mr. Newman suffered a breach to be made in the credit of the Bible.” No; but as the next sentence states, “because they are convicted of _misstating facts_,” under the influence of this erroneous medical theory. Even this reviewer–candid for an orthodox critic, and not over-orthodox either–cannot help garbling me.]
[Footnote 4: I have explained this in my “Hebrew Monarchy.”]
[Footnote 5: This poet celebrated also the deeds of David (2 Sam. i. 18) according to our translation: if so, he was many centuries later than Joshua; however, the sense of the Hebrew is little obscure.]
[Footnote 6: I have fully discussed this in my “Hebrew Monarchy.”]
[Footnote 7: The English reader may consult Theodore Parker’s translation of De Wette’s Introduction to the Canon of Scripture. I have also amply exhibited the vanity of the _Chronicles_ in my “Hebrew Monarchy.” De Wette has a separate treatise on the Chronicles,]
[Footnote 8: If the date of the Apocalypse is twenty years earlier than that of the fourth Gospel, I now feel no such difficulty in their being the composition of the same writer.]
CHAPTER V.
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN.
I reckon my fifth period to begin from the time when I had totally abandoned the claim of “the Canon” of Scripture, however curtailed, to be received as the object of faith, as free from error, or as something raised above moral criticism; and looked out for some deeper foundation for my creed than any sacred Letter. But an entirely new inquiry had begun to engage me at intervals, viz., _the essential logic of these investigations._ Ought we in any case to receive moral truth in obedience to an apparent miracle of sense? or conversely, ought we ever to believe in sensible miracles because of their recommending some moral truth? I perceived that the endless jangling which goes on in detailed controversy, is inevitable, while the disputants are unawares at variance with one another, or themselves wavering, as to these pervading principles of evidence.–I regard my fifth period to come to an end with the decision of this question. Nevertheless, many other important lines of inquiry were going forward simultaneously.
I found in the Bible itself,–and even in the very same book, as in the Gospel of John,–great uncertainty and inconsistency on this question. In one place, Jesus reproves[1] the demand of a miracle, and blesses those who believe without[2] miracles; in another, he requires that they will submit to his doctrine because[3] of his miracles. Now, this is intelligible, if blind external obedience is the end of religion, and not Truth and inward Righteousness. An ambitious and unscrupulous _Church_, that desires, by fair means or foul, to make men bow down to her, may say, “Only believe; and all is right. The end being gained,–Obedience to us,–we do not care about your reasons.” But _God_ cannot speak thus to man; and to a divine teacher we should peculiarly look for aid in getting clear views of the grounds of faith; because it is by a knowledge of these that we shall both be rooted on the true basis, and saved from the danger of false beliefs.
It, therefore, peculiarly vexed me to find so total a deficiency of clear and sound instruction in the New Testament, and eminently in the gospel of John, on so vital a question. The more I considered it, the more it appeared, as if Jesus were solely anxious to have people believe in Him, without caring on what grounds they believed, although that is obviously the main point. When to this was added the threat of “damnation” on those who did not believe, the case became far worse: for I felt that if such a threat were allowed to operate, I might become a Mohammedan or a Roman Catholic. Could I in any case rationally assign this as a ground for believing in Christ,–“because I am frightened by his threats”–?
Farther thought showed me that a question of _logic_, such as I here had before me, was peculiarly one on which the propagator of a new religion could not be allowed to dictate; for if so, every false system could establish itself. Let Hindooism dictate our logic,–let us submit to its tests of a divine revelation, and its mode of applying them,–and we may, perhaps, at once find ourselves necessitated to “become little children” in a Brahminical school. Might not then this very thing account for the Bible not enlightening us on the topic? namely, since Logic, like Mathematics, belongs to the common intellect,–Possibly so: but still, it cannot reconcile us to _vacillations_ and _contradictions_ in the Bible on so critical a point.
Gradually I saw that deeper and deeper difficulties lay at bottom. If Logic _cannot_ be matter of authoritative revelation, so long as the nature of the human mind is what it is,–if it appears, as a fact, that in the writings and speeches of the New Testament the logic is far from lucid,–if we are to compare Logic with Mathematics and other sciences, which grew up with civilization and long time,–we cannot doubt that the apostles imbibed the logic, like the astronomy, of their own day, with all its defects. Indeed, the same is otherwise plain. Paul’s reasonings are those of a Gamaliel, and often are indefensible by our logical notions. John, also (as I had been recently learning,) has a wonderful similarity to Philo. This being the case, it becomes of deep interest to us to know,–if we are to accept results _at second hand_ from Paul and John,–_what was the sort of evidence which convinced them?_ The moment this question is put, we see the essential defect to which we are exposed, in not being able to cross-examine them. Paul says that “Christ appeared to him:” elsewhere, that he has “received of the Lord” certain facts, concerning the Holy Supper: and that his Gospel was “given to him by revelation.” If any modern made such statements to us, and on this ground demanded our credence, it would be allowable, and indeed obligatory, to ask many questions of him. What does he _mean_ by saying that he has had a “revelation?” Did he see a sight, or hear a sound? or was it an inward impression? and how does he distinguish it as divine?[4] Until these questions are fully answered, we have no materials at all before us for deciding to accept his results: to believe him, merely because he is earnest and persuaded, would be judged to indicate the weakness of inexperience. How then can it be pretended that we have, or can possibly get, the means of assuring ourselves that the apostles held correct principles of evidence and applied them justly, when we are not able to interrogate them?
Farther, it appears that _our_ experience of delusion forces us to enact a very severe test of supernatural revelation. No doubt, we can conceive that which is equivalent to a _new sense_ opening to us; but then it must have verifications connecting it with the other senses. Thus, a particularly vivid sort of dream recurring with special marks, and communicating at once heavenly and earthly knowledge, of which the latter was otherwise verified, would probably be admitted as a valid sort of evidence: but so intense would be the interest and duty to have all unravelled and probed to the bottom, that we should think it impossible to verify the new sense too anxiously, and we should demand the fullest particulars of the divine transaction. On the contrary, it is undeniable that all such severity of research is rebuked in the Scriptures as unbelief. The deeply interesting _process_ of receiving supernatural revelation.–a revelation, _not_ of moral principles, but of outward facts and events, supposed to be communicated in a mode wholly peculiar and unknown to common men,–this process, which ought to be laid open and analyzed under the fullest light, _if we are to believe the results at second hand_, is always and avowedly shrouded in impenetrable darkness. There surely is something here, which denotes that it is dangerous to resign ourselves to the conclusions of the apostles, when their logical notions are so different from ours.
I farther inquired, what sort of miracle I could conceive, that would alter my opinion on a moral question. Hosea was divinely ordered to go and unite himself to an impure woman: could I possibly think that God ordered _me_ to do so, if I heard a voice in the air commanding it? Should I not rather disbelieve my hearing, than disown my moral perceptions? If not, where am I to stop? I may practise all sorts of heathenism. A man who, in obedience to a voice in the air, kills his innocent wife or child, will either be called mad, and shut up for safety, or will be hanged as a desperate fanatic: do I dare to condemn this modern judgment of him? Would any conceivable miracle justify my slaying my wife? God forbid! It _must_ be morally right, to believe moral rather than sensible perceptions. No outward impressions on the eye or ear can be so valid an assurance to me of God’s will, as my inward judgment. How amazing, then, that a Paul or a James could look on Abraham’s intention to slay his son, as indicating a praiseworthy faith!–And yet not amazing: It does but show, that apostles in former days, like ourselves, scrutinized antiquity with different eyes from modern events. If Paul had been ordered by a supernatural voice to slay Peter, he would have attributed the voice to the devil, “the prince of the power of the air,” and would have despised it. He praises the faith of Abraham, but he certainly would never have imitated his conduct. Just so, the modern divines who laud Joseph’s piety towards Mary, would be very differently affected, if events and persons were transported to the present day.
But to return. Let it be granted that no sensible miracle could authorize me so to violate my moral perceptions as to slay (that is, to murder) my innocent wife. May it, nevertheless, authorize me to invade a neighbour country, slaughter the people and possess their cities, although, without such a miracle, the deed would be deeply criminal? It is impossible to say that here, more than in the former case, miracles[5] can turn aside the common laws of morality. Neither, therefore, could they justify Joshua’s war of extermination on the Canaanites, nor that of Samuel on the Amalekites; nor the murder of misbelievers by Elijah and by Josiah. If we are shocked at the idea of God releasing Mohammed from the vulgar law of marriage, we must as little endure relaxation in the great laws of justice and mercy. Farther, if only a _small_ immorality is concerned, shall we then say that a miracle may justify it? Could it authorise me to plait a whip of small cords, and flog a preferment-hunter out of the pulpit? or would it justify me in publicly calling the Queen and her ministers “a brood of vipers, who cannot escape the damnation of hell”[6] Such questions go very deep into the heart of the Christian claims.
I had been accustomed to overbear objections of this sort by replying, that to allow of their being heard would amount to refusing leave to God to give commands to his creatures. For, it seems, if he _did_ command, we, instead of obeying, should discuss whether the command was right and reasonable; and if we thought it otherwise, should conclude that God never gave it. The extirpation of the Canaanites is compared by divines to the execution of a criminal; and it is insisted, that if the voice of society may justify the executioner, much more may the voice of God–But I now saw the analogy to be insufficient and unsound. Insufficient, because no executioner is justified in slaying those whom his conscience tells him to be innocent; and it is a barbarous morality alone, which pretends that he may make himself a passive tool of slaughter. But next, the analogy _assumes_, (what none of my very dictatorial and insolent critics make even the faintest effort to prove to be a fact,) that God, like man, speaks from without: that what we call Reason and Conscience is _not_ his mode of commanding and revealing his will, but that words to strike the ear, or symbols displayed before the senses, are emphatically and exclusively “Revelation.” Besides all this, the command of slaughter to the Jews is not directed against the seven nations of Canaan only, as modern theologians often erroneously assert: it is a _universal_ permission, of avaricious massacre and subjugation of “the cities which are very far off from thee, which are _not_ of the cities of these nations,” Deut, xx. 15.
The thoughts which here fill but a few pages, occupied me a long while in working out; because I consciously, with caution more than with timidity, declined to follow them rapidly. They came as dark suspicions or as flashing possibilities; and were again laid aside for reconsideration, lest I should be carried into antagonism to my old creed. For it is clear that great error arises in religion, by the undue ardour of converts, who become bitter against the faith which they have left, and outrun in zeal their new associates. So also successive centuries oscillate too far on the right and on the left of truth. But so happy was my position, that I needed not to hurry: no practical duty forced me to rapid decision, and a suspense of judgment was not an unwholesome exercise. Meanwhile, I sometimes thought Christianity to be to me, like the great river Ganges to a Hindoo. Of its value he has daily experience: he has piously believed that its sources are in heaven, but of late the report has come to him, that it only flows from very high mountains of this earth. What is he to believe? He knows not exactly: he cares not much: in any case the river is the gift of God to him: its positive benefits cannot be affected by a theory concerning its source.
Such a comparison undoubtedly implies that he who uses it discerns for himself a moral excellence in Christianity, and _submits to it only so far as this discernment commands_. I had practically reached this point, long before I concluded my theoretical inquiries as to Christianity itself: but in the course of this fifth period numerous other overpowering considerations crowded upon me which I must proceed to state in outline.
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All pious Christians feel, and all the New Testament proclaims, that Faith is a moral act and a test of the moral and spiritual that is within us; so that he who is without faith, (faithless, unfaithful, “infidel,”) is morally wanting and is cut off from God. To assent to a religious proposition _solely_ in obedience to an outward miracle, would be Belief; but would not be Faith, any more than is scientific conviction. Bishop Butler and all his followers can insist with much force on this topic, when it suits them, and can quote most aptly from the New Testament to the same effect. They deduce, that a really overpowering miraculous proof would have destroyed the moral character of Faith: yet they do not see that the argument supersedes the authoritative force of outward miracles entirely. It had always appeared to me very strange in these divines, to insist on the stupendous character and convincing power of the Christian miracles, and then, in reply to the objection that they were _not_ quite convincing, to say that the defect was purposely left “to try people’s Faith.” Faith in what? Not surely in the confessedly ill-proved miracle, but in the truth as discernible by the heart _without aid of miracle._
I conceived of two men, Nathaniel and Demas, encountering a pretender to miracles, a Simon Magus of the scriptures. Nathaniel is guileless, sweet-hearted and of strong moral sense, but in worldly matters rather a simpleton. Demas is a sharp man, who gets on well in the world, quick of eye and shrewd of wit, hard-headed and not to be imposed upon by his fellows; but destitute of any high religious aspirations or deep moral insight. The juggleries of Simon are readily discerned by Demas, but thoroughly deceive poor Nathaniel: what then is the latter to do? To say that we are to receive true miracles and reject false ones, avails not, unless the mind is presumed to be capable of discriminating the one from the other. The wonders of Simon are as divine as the wonders of Jesus to a man, who, like Nathaniel, can account for neither by natural causes. If we enact the rule, that men are to “submit their understandings” to apparent prodigies, and that “revelation” is a thing of the outward senses, we alight on the unendurable absurdity, that Demas has faculties better fitted than those of Nathaniel for discriminating religious truth and error, and that Nathaniel, in obedience to eye and ear, which he knows to be very deceivable organs, is to abandon his moral perceptions.
Nor is the case altered, if instead of Simon in person, a huge thing called a Church is presented as a claimant of authority to Nathaniel. Suppose him to be a poor Spaniard, surrounded by false miracles, false erudition, and all the apparatus of reigning and unopposed Romanism. He cannot cope with the priests in cleverness,–detect their juggleries,–refute their historical falsehoods, disentangle their web of sophistry: but if he is truehearted, he may say: “You bid me not to keep faith with heretics: you defend murder, exile, imprisonment, fines, on men who will not submit their consciences to your authority: this I see to be wicked, though you ever so much pretend that God has taught it you.” So, also, if he be accosted by learned clergymen, who undertake to prove that Jesus wrought stupendous miracles, or by learned Moolahs who allege the same of Mohammed or of Menu, he is quite unable to deal with them on the grounds of physiology, physics, or history.–In short, nothing can be plainer, than that _the moral and spiritual sense is the only religious faculty of the poor man_; and that as Christianity in its origin was preached to the poor, so it was to the inward senses that its first preachers appealed, as the supreme arbiters in the whole religious question. Is it not then absurd to say that in the act of conversion the convert is to trust his moral perception, and is ever afterwards to distrust it?
An incident had some years before come to my knowledge, which now seemed instructive. An educated, highly acute and thoughtful person, of very mature age, had become a convert to the Irving miracles, from an inability to distinguish them from those of the Pauline epistles; or to discern anything of falsity which would justify his rejecting them. But after several years he totally renounced them as a miserable delusion, _because_ he found that a system of false doctrine was growing up and was propped by them. Here was a clear case of a man with all the advantages of modern education and science, who yet found the direct judgment of a professed miracle, that was acted before his senses, too arduous for him! He was led astray while he trusted his power to judge of miracle: he was brought right by trusting to his moral perceptions.
When we farther consider, that a knowledge of Natural Philosophy and Physiology not only does not belong to the poor, but comes later in time to mankind than a knowledge of morals;–that a Miracle can only be judged of by Philosophy,–that it is not easy even for philosophers to define what is a “miracle”–that to discern “a deviation from the course of nature,” implies a previous certain knowledge of what _the course of nature_ is,–and that illiterate and early ages certainly have not this knowledge, and often have hardly even the idea,–it becomes quite a monstrosity to imagine that sensible and external miracles constitute the necessary process and guarantee of divine revelation.
Besides, if an angel appeared to my senses, and wrought miracles, how would that assure me of his moral qualities? Such miracles might prove his power and his knowledge, but whether malignant or benign, would remain doubtful, until by purely moral evidence, which no miracles could give, the doubt should be solved.[7] This is the old difficulty about diabolical wonders. The moderns cut the knot, by denying that any but God can possibly work real miracles. But to establish their principle, they make their definition and verification of a miracle so strict, as would have amazed the apostles; and after all, the difficulty recurs, that miraculous phenomena will never prove the goodness and veracity of God, if we do not know these qualities in Him without miracle. There is then a deeper and an earlier revelation of God, which sensible miracles can never give.
We cannot distinctly learn what was Paul’s full idea of a divine revelation; but I can feel no doubt that he conceived it to be, in great measure, an _inward_ thing. Dreams and visions were not excluded from influence, and nacre or less affected his moral judgment; but he did not, consciously and on principle, beat down his conscience in submission to outward impressions. To do so, is indeed to destroy the moral character of Faith, and lay the axe to the root, not of Christian doctrine only, but of every possible spiritual system.
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Meanwhile, new breaches were made in those citadels of my creed which had not yet surrendered.
One branch of the Christian Evidences concerns itself with the _history_ and _historical effects_ of the faith, and among Protestants the efficacy of the Bible to enlighten and convert has been very much pressed. The disputant, however, is apt to play “fast and loose.” He adduces the theory of Christianity when the history is unfavourable, and appeals to the history if the theory is impugned. In this way, just so much is picked out of the mass of facts as suits his argument, and the rest is quietly put aside.
I. In the theory of my early creed, (which was that of the New Testament, however convenient it may be for my critics to deride it as fanatical and _not_ Christian,) cultivation of mind and erudition were classed with worldly things, which might be used where they pre-existed, (as riches and power may subserve higher ends,) but which were quite extraneous and unessential to the spiritual kingdom of Christ. A knowledge of the Bible was assumed to need only an honest heart and God’s Spirit, while science, history, and philosophy were regarded as doubtful and dangerous auxiliaries. But soon after the first reflux of my mind took place towards the Common Understanding, as a guide of life legitimately co-ordinate with Scripture, I was impressed with the consideration that _Free Learning_ had acted on a great scale for the improvement of spiritual religion. I had been accustomed to believe that _the Bible_[8] brought about the Protestant Reformation; and until my twenty-ninth year probably it had not occurred to me to question this. But I was first struck with the thought, that the Bible did not prevent the absurd iniquities of the Nicene and Post Nicene controversy, and that the Church, with the Bible in her hands, sank down into the gulf of Popery. How then was the Bible a sufficient explanation of her recovering out of Popery?
Even a superficial survey of the history shows, that the first improvement of spiritual doctrine in the tenth and eleventh centuries, came from a study of the moral works of Cicero and Boethius;–a fact notorious in the common historians. The Latin moralists effected, what (strange to think!) the New Testament alone could not do.
In the fifteenth century, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, learned Greeks were driven out to Italy and to other parts of the West, and the Roman Catholic world began to read the old Greek