The 'nostrum' of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription
of the regular practitioner. Why is this? Because there is something
in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is
overawed.
This is something; and true as far as it goes; that is, however, but a
very little way. The great power of both spiritual and physical
mountebanks rests on that irremovable property of human nature, in force
of which indefinite instincts and sufferings find no echo, no
resting-place, in the definite and comprehensible. Ignorance
unnecessarily enlarges the sphere of these: but a sphere there
is,--facts of mind and cravings of the soul there are,--in which the
wisest man seeks help from the indefinite, because it is nearer and more
like the infinite, of which he is made the image:--for even we are
infinite, even in our finiteness infinite, as the Father in his
infinity. In many caterpillars there is a large empty space in the head,
the destined room for the pushing forth of the 'antennæ' of its next
state of being.
Ib. p. 12.
But the anti-moralists aver * * that they are quoted unfairly;--that
although they disavow, it is true, the necessity, and deny the value,
of practical morality and personal holiness, and declare them to be
totally irrelevant to our future salvation, yet that * * I might have
found occasional recommendations of moral duty which I have neglected
to notice.
The same 'crambe bis decies cocta' of one self-same charge grounded on
one gross and stupid misconception and mis-statement: and to which there
needs no other answer than this simple fact. Let the Barrister name any
one gross offence against the moral law, for which he would shun a man's
acquaintance, and for that same vice the Methodist would inevitably be
excluded publicly from their society; and I am inclined to think that a
fair list of the Barrister's friends and acquaintances would prove that
the Calvinistic Methodists are the austerer and more watchful censors of
the two. If this be the truth, as it notoriously is, what but the
cataract of stupidity uncouched, or the thickest film of bigot-slime,
can prevent a man from seeing that this tenet of justification by faith
alone is exclusively a matter between the Calvinist's own heart and his
Maker, who alone knows the true source of his words and actions; but
that to his neighbours and fellow-creedsmen, his spotless life and good
works are demanded, not, indeed, as the prime efficient causes of his
salvation, but as the necessary and only possible signs of that faith,
which is the means of that salvation of which Christ's free grace is the
cause, and the sanctifying Spirit the perfecter. But I fall into the
same fault I am arraigning, by so often exposing and confuting the same
blunder, which has no claim even at its first enunciation to the
compliment of a philosophical answer. But why, in the name of common
sense, all this endless whoop and hubbub against the Calvinistic
Methodists? I had understood that the Arminian Methodists, or Wesleyans,
are the more numerous body by far. Has there been any union lately? Have
the followers of Wesley abjured the doctrines of their founder on this
head?
Ib. p. 16.
We are told by our new spiritual teachers, that reason is not to be
applied to the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of their doctrines;
they are spiritually discerned, and carnal reason has no concern with
them.
Even under this aversion to reason, as applied to religious grounds, a
very important truth lurks: and the mistake (a very dangerous one I
admit,) lies in the confounding two very different faculties of the mind
under one and the same name;--the pure reason or 'vis scientifica'; and
the discourse, or prudential power, the proper objects of which are the
'phænomena' of sensuous experience. The greatest loss which modern
philosophy has through wilful scorn sustained, is the grand distinction
of the ancient philosophers between the [Greek: noúmena], and [Greek:
phainómena]. This gives the true sense of Pliny--'venerare Deos' (that
is, their statues, and the like,) 'et numina Deorum', that is, those
spiritual influences which are represented by the images and persons of
Apollo, Minerva, and the rest.
Ib. p. 17.
Religion has for its object the moral care and the moral cultivation
of man. Its beauty is not to be sought in the regions of mystery, or
in the flights of abstraction.
What ignorance! Is there a single moral precept of the Gospels not to be
found in the Old Testament? Not one. A new edition of White's
'Diatessaron', with a running comment the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman
writers before Christ, and those after him who, it is morally certain,
drew no aids from the New Testament, is a grand 'desideratum'; and if
anything could open the eyes of Socinians, this would do it.
Ib. p. 24.
The masculine strength and moral firmness which once distinguished the
great mass of the British people is daily fading away. Methodism with
all its cant, &c.
Well! but in God's name can Methodism be at once the effect and the
cause of this loss of masculine strength and moral firmness?--Did
Whitfield and Wesley blow them out at the first puff--these grand
virtues of masculine strength and moral firmness? Admire, I pray you,
the happy antithesis. Yet "feminine" would be an improvement, as then
the sense too would be antithetic. However, the sound is sufficient, and
modern rhetoric possesses the virtue of economy.
Ib. p. 27.
So with the Tinker; I would give him the care of kettles, but I would
not give him 'the cure of souls'. So long as he attended to the
management and mending of his pots and pans, I would wish success to
his ministry: but when he came to declare 'himself' a "chosen vessel,"
and demand permission to take the souls of the people into his holy
keeping, I should think that, instead of a 'licence', it would be more
humane and more prudent to give him a passport to St. Luke's. Depend
upon it, such men were never sent by Providence to rule or to regulate
mankind.
Whoo! Bounteous Providence that always looks at the body clothes and the
parents' equipage before it picks out the proper soul for the baby! Ho!
the Duchess of Manchester is in labour:--quick, Raphael, or Uriel, bring
a soul out of the Numa bin, a young Lycurgus. Or the Archbishop's
lady:--ho! a soul from the Chrysostom or Athanasian locker.--But poor
Moll Crispin is in the throes with twins:--well! there are plenty of
cobblers' and tinkers' souls in the hold--John Bunyan!! Why, thou
miserable Barrister, it would take an angel an eternity to tinker thee
into a skull of half his capacity!
Ib. p. 30, 31.
"A 'truly' awakened conscience," (these anti-moral editors of the
Pilgrim's Progress assure us,) "can never find relief from the law:
(that is, the 'moral law'.) The more he looks for peace 'this way, his
guilt', like a heavy burden, becomes more intolerable; when he becomes
'dead' to the 'law',--as to 'any dependence upon it for
salvation',--by the body of Christ, and married to him, who was raised
from the dead, then, and not till then, his heart is set at liberty,
to run the way of God's commandments."
Here we are taught that the 'conscience' can never find relief from
obedience to the law of the Gospel.
False. We are told by Bunyan and his editors that the conscience can
never find relief for its disobedience to the Law in the Law
itself;--and this is as true of the moral as of the Mosaic Law. I am not
defending Calvinism or Bunyan's theology; but if victory, not truth,
were my object, I could desire no easier task than to defend it against
our doughty Barrister. Well, but I repent--that is, regret it!--Yes! and
so you doubtless regret the loss of an eye or arm:--will that make it
grow again?--Think you this nonsense as applied to morality? Be it so!
But yet nonsense most tremendously suited to human nature it is, as the
Barrister may find in the arguments of the Pagan philosophers against
Christianity, who attributed a large portion of its success to its
holding out an expiation, which no other religion did. Read but that
most affecting and instructive anecdote selected from the Hindostan
Missionary Account by the Quarterly Review. [4] Again let me say I am
not giving my own opinion on this very difficult point; but of one thing
I am convinced, that the 'I am sorry for it, that's enough'--men mean
nothing but regret when they talk of repentance, and have consciences
either so pure or so callous, as not to know what a direful and strange
thing remorse is, and how absolutely a fact 'sui generis'! I have often
remarked, and it cannot be too often remarked (vain as this may sound),
that this essential heterogeneity of regret and remorse is of itself a
sufficient and the best proof of free will and reason, the co-existence
of which in man we call conscience, and on this rests the whole
superstructure of human religion--God, immortality, guilt, judgment,
redemption. Whether another and different superstructure may be raised
on the same foundation, or whether the same edifice is susceptible of
important alteration, is another question. But such is the edifice at
present, and this its foundation: and the Barrister might as rationally
expect to blow up Windsor Castle by discharging a popgun in one of its
cellars, as hope to demolish Calvinism by such arguments as his.
Ib. p. 35, 36.
"And behold a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master,
what shall I do 'to inherit eternal life'?"
"He said unto him, 'What is written in the law? How readest thou?'"
"And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, with all thy soul, and with 'all thy strength', and with all
thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."
"And he said unto him, Thou 'hast answered right. This do, and thou
shall live.'"
Luke x. 25-28.
So would Bunyan, and so would Calvin have preached;--would both of them
in the name of Christ have made this assurance to the Barrister--'This
do, and thou shalt live.' But what if he has not done it, but the very
contrary? And what if the Querist should be a staunch disciple of Dr.
Paley: and hold himself "morally obliged" not to hate or injure his
fellow-man, not because he is compelled by conscience to see the
exceeding sinfulness of sin, and to abhor sin as sin, even as he eschews
pain as pain,--no, not even because God has forbidden it;--but
ultimately because the great Legislator is able and has threatened to
put him to unspeakable torture if he disobeys, and to give him all kind
of pleasure if he does not? [5] Why, verily, in this case, I do foresee
that both the Tinker and the Divine would wax warm, and rebuke the said
Querist for vile hypocrisy, and a most nefarious abuse of God's good
gift, intelligible language. What! do you call this 'loving the Lord
your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
strength, and all your mind,--and your neighbour as yourself'? Whereas
in truth you love nothing, not even your own soul; but only set a
superlative value on whatever will gratify your selfish lust of
enjoyment, and insure you from hell-fire at a thousand times the true
value of the dirty property. If you have the impudence to persevere in
mis-naming this "love," supply any one instance in which you use the
word in this sense? If your son did not spit in your face, because he
believed that you would disinherit him if he did, and this were his main
moral obligation, would you allow that your son loved you--and with all
his heart, and mind, and strength, and soul?--Shame! Shame!
Now the power of loving God, of willing good as good, (not of desiring
the agreeable, and of preferring a larger though distant delight to an
infinitely smaller immediate qualification, which is mere selfish
prudence,) Bunyan considers supernatural, and seeks its source in the
free grace of the Creator through Christ the Redeemer:--this the Kantean
also avers to be supersensual indeed, but not supernatural, but in the
original and essence of human nature, and forming its grand and awful
characteristic. Hence he calls it 'die Menschheit'--the principle of
humanity;--but yet no less than Calvin or the Tinker declares it a
principle most mysterious, the undoubted object of religious awe, a
perpetual witness of that God, whose image ([Greek: eikôn]) it is; a
principle utterly incomprehensible by the discursive intellect;--and
moreover teaches us, that the surest plan for stifling and paralyzing
this divine birth in the soul (a phrase of Plato's as well as of the
Tinker's) is by attempting to evoke it by, or to substitute for it, the
hopes and fears, the motives and calculations, of prudence; which is an
excellent and in truth indispensable servant, but considered as master
and primate of the moral diocese precludes the possibility of virtue (in
Bunyan's phrase, holiness of spirit) by introducing legality; which is
no cant phrase of Methodism, but of authenticated standing in the ethics
of the profoundest philosophers--even those who rejected Christianity,
as a miraculous event, and revelation itself as far as anything
supernatural is implied in it. I must not mention Plato, I suppose,--he
was a mystic; nor Zeno,--he and his were visionaries:--but Aristotle,
the cold and dry Aristotle, has in a very remarkable passage in his
lesser tract of Ethics asserted the same thing; and called it "a divine
principle, lying deeper than those things which can be explained or
enunciated discursively."
Ib. p. 45, 46.
Sure I am that no father of a family that can at all estimate the
importance of keeping from the infant mind whatever might raise impure
ideas or excite improper inquiries will ever commend the Pilgrim's
Progress to their perusal.
And in the same spirit and for the same cogent reasons that the holy
monk Lewis prohibited the Bible in all decent families;--or if they must
have something of that kind, would propose in preference Tirante the
White! O how I abhor this abominable heart-haunting impurity in the
envelope of modesty! Merciful Heaven! is it not a direct consequence
from this system, that we all purchase our existence at the price of our
mother's purity of mind? See what Milton has written on this subject in
the passage quoted in the Friend in the essays on the communication of
truth. [6]
Ib. p. 47.
Let us ask whether the female mind is likely to be trained to purity
by studying this manual of piety, and by expressing its devotional
desires after the following example. "Mercy being a _young_ and
_breeding_ woman _longed_ for something," &c.
Out upon the fellow! I could find it in my heart to suspect him of any
vice that the worst of men could commit!
Ib. pp. 55, 56.
'As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the
obedience of one shall many be made righteous'. The interpretation of
this text is simply this:--As by following the fatal example of one
man's disobedience many were made sinners; so by that pattern of
perfect obedience which Christ has set before us shall many be made
righteous.
What may not be explained thus? And into what may not any thing be thus
explained? It comes out little better than nonsense in any other than
the literal sense. For let any man of sincere mind and without any
system to support look round on all his Christian neighbours, and will
he say or will they say that the origin of their well-doing was an
attempt to imitate what they all believe to be inimitable, Christ's
perfection in virtue, his absolute sinlessness? No--but yet perhaps some
particular virtues; for instance, his patriotism in weeping over
Jerusalem, his active benevolence in curing the sick and preaching to
the poor, his divine forgiveness in praying for his enemies?--I grant
all this. But then how is this peculiar to Christ? Is it not the effect
of all illustrious examples, of those probably most which we last read
of, or which made the deepest impression on our feelings? Were there no
good men before Christ, as there were no bad men before Adam? Is it not
a notorious fact that those who most frequently refer to Christ's
conduct for their own actions, are those who believe him the incarnate
Deity--consequently, the best possible guide, but in no strict sense an
example;--while those who regard him as a mere man, the chief of the
Jewish Prophets, both in the pulpit and from the press ground their
moral persuasions chiefly on arguments drawn from the propriety and
seemliness--or the contrary--of the action itself, or from the will of
God known by the light of reason? To make St. Paul prophesy that all
Christians will owe their holiness to their exclusive and conscious
imitation of Christ's actions, is to make St. Paul a false prophet;--and
what in such case becomes of the boasted influence of miracles? Even as
false would it be to ascribe the vices of the Chinese, or even our own,
to the influence of Adam's bad example. As well might we say of a poor
scrofulous innocent: "See the effect of the bad example of his father on
him!" I blame no man for disbelieving, or for opposing with might and
main, the dogma of Original Sin; but I confess that I neither respect
the understanding nor have confidence in the sincerity of him, who
declares that he has carefully read the writings of St. Paul, and finds
in them no consequence attributed to the fall of Adam but that of his
bad example, and none to the Cross of Christ but the good example of
dying a martyr to a good cause. I would undertake from the writings of
the later English Socinians to collect paraphrases on the New Testament
texts that could only be paralleled by the spiritual paraphrase on
Solomon's Song to be found in the recent volume of "A Dictionary of the
Holy Bible, by John Brown, Minister of the Gospel at Haddington:" third
edition, in the Article, Song.
Ib. p. 63, 64.
Call forth the robber from his cavern, and the midnight murderer from
his den; summon the seducer from his couch, and beckon the adulterer
from his embrace; cite the swindler to appear; assemble from every
quarter all the various miscreants whose vices deprave, and whose
villainies distress, mankind; and when they are thus thronged round in
a circle, assure them--not that there is a God that judgeth the
earth--not that punishment in the great day of retribution will await
their crimes, &c. &c.--Let every sinner in the throng be told that
they will stand 'justified' before God; that the 'righteousness' of
'Christ' will be imputed to 'them', &c.
Well, do so.--Nay, nay! it has been done; the effect has been tried; and
slander itself cannot deny that the effect has been the conversion of
thousands of those very sinners whom the Barrister's fancy thus
convokes. O shallow man! not to see that here lies the main strength of
the cause he is attacking; that, to repeat my former illustration, he
draws the attention to patients in that worst state of disease which
perhaps alone requires and justifies the use of the white pill, as a
mode of exposing the frantic quack who vends it promiscuously! He fixes
on the empiric's cures to prove his murders!--not to forget what ought
to conclude every paragraph in answer to the Barrister's Hints; "and
were the case as alleged, what does this prove against the present
Methodists as Methodists?" Is not the tenet of imputed righteousness the
faith of all the Scotch Clergy, who are not false to their declarations
at their public assumption of the ministry? Till within the last sixty
or seventy years, was not the tenet preached Sunday after Sunday in
every nook of Scotland; and has the Barrister heard that the morals of
the Scotch peasants and artizans have been improved within the last
thirty or forty years, since the exceptions have become more and more
common?--Was it by want of strict morals that the Puritans were
distinguished to their disadvantage from the rest of Englishmen during
the reigns of Elizabeth, James I. Charles I. and II.? And that very
period, which the Barrister affirms to have been distinguished by the
moral vigor of the great mass of Britons,--was it not likewise the
period when this very doctrine was preached by the Clergy fifty times
for once that it is heard from the same pulpits in the present and
preceding generation? Never, never can the Methodists be successfully
assailed, if not honestly, and never honestly or with any chance of
success, except as Methodists;--for their practices, their alarming
theocracy, their stupid, mad, and mad-driving superstitions. These are
their property 'in peculio'; their doctrines are those of the Church of
England, with no other difference than that in the Church Liturgy, and
Articles, and Homilies, Calvinism and Lutheranism are joined like the
two hands of the Union Fire Office:-the Methodists have unclasped them,
and one is Whitfield and the other Wesley.
Ib. p. 75.
"For the same reason that a book written in bad language should never
be put into the hands of a child that speaks correctly, a book
exhibiting instances of vice should never be given to a child that
thinks and acts properly." (Practical Education. By Maria and R.L.
Edgeworth.)
How mortifying that one is never lucky enough to meet with any of these
'virtuosissimos', fifteen or twenty years of age. But perhaps they are
such rare jewels, that they are always kept in cotton! The Kilcrops! I
would not exchange the heart, which I myself had when a boy, while
reading the life of Colonel Jack, or the Newgate Calendar, for a
waggon-load of these brilliants.
Ib. p. 78.
"When a man turns his back on this world, and is in good earnest
resolved for everlasting life, his carnal friends, and ungodly
neighbours, will pursue him with hue and cry; but death is at his
heels, and he cannot stop short of the city of Refuge." (Notes to the
Pilgrim's Progress by Hawker, Burder, &c.) This representation of the
state of real Christians is as mischievous as it is false.
Yet Christ's assertion on this head is positive, and universal; and I
believe it from my inmost soul, and am convinced that it is just as true
A.D. 1810, as A.D. 33.
Ib. p. 82.
The spirit with which all their merciless treatment is to be borne is
next pointed out. * * "'Patient bearing of injuries' is true Christian
fortitude, and will always be more effectual to 'disarm our enemies',
and to bring others to the knowledge of the truth, than all
'arguments' whatever."
Is this Barrister a Christian of any sort or sect, and is he not
ashamed, if not afraid, to ridicule such passages as these? If they are
not true, the four Gospels are false.
Ib. p. 86.
It is impossible to give them credit for integrity when we behold the
obstinacy and the artifice with which they defend their system against
the strongest argument, and against the clearest evidence.
Modest gentleman! I wonder he finds time to write bulky pamphlets: for
surely modesty, like his, must secure success and clientage at the bar.
Doubtless he means his own arguments, the evidence he himself has
adduced:--I say doubtless, for what are these pamphlets but a long
series of attacks on the doctrines of the strict Lutherans and
Calvinists, (for the doctrines he attacks are common to both,) and if he
knew stronger arguments, clearer evidence, he would certainly have given
them;--and then what obstinate rogues must our Bishops be, to have
suffered these Hints to pass into a third edition, and yet not have
brought a bill into Parliament for a new set of Articles? I have not
heard that they have even the grace to intend it.
Ib. p. 88.
On this subject I will quote the just and striking observations of an
excellent modern writer. "In whatever village," says he, "the fanatics
get a footing, drunkenness and swearing,--sins which, being more
exposed to the eye of the world, would be ruinous to their great
pretensions to superior sanctity--will, perhaps, be found to decline;
but I am convinced, from personal observation, that every species of
fraud and falsehood--sins which are not so readily detected, but which
seem more closely connected with worldly advantage--will be found
invariably to increase." (Religion without Cant; by R. Fellowes, A.M.
of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford.)
In answer to this let me make a "very just observation," by some other
man of my opinion, to be hereafter quoted "from an excellent modern
writer;"--and it is this, that from the birth of Christ to the present
hour, no sect or body of men were zealous in the reformation of manners
in society, without having been charged with the same vices in the same
words. When I hate a man, and see nothing bad in him, what remains
possible but to accuse him of crimes which I cannot see, and which
cannot be disproved, because they cannot be proved? Surely, if Christian
charity did not preclude these charges, the shame of convicted parrotry
ought to prevent a man from repeating and republishing them. The very
same thoughts, almost the words, are to be found of the early
Christians; of the poor Quakers; of the Republicans; of the first
Reformers.--Why need I say this? Does not every one know, that a jovial
pot-companion can never believe a water-drinker not to be a sneaking
cheating knave who is afraid of his thoughts; that every libertine
swears that those who pretend to be chaste, either have their mistress
in secret, or far worse, and so on?
Ib. p. 89.
The same religious abstinence from all appearance of recreation on the
Lord's day; and the same neglect of the weightier matters of the moral
law, in the course of the week, &c.
This sentence thus smuggled in at the bottom of the chest ought not to
pass unnoticed; for the whole force of the former depends on it. It is a
true trick, and deserves reprobation.
Ib. p. 97.
Note. It was procured, Mr. Collyer informs us, by the merit of his
"Lectures on Scripture facts." It should have been "Lectures on
'Scriptural' Facts." What should we think of the grammarian, who,
instead of 'Historical', should present us with "Lectures on 'History'
Facts?"
But Law Tracts? And is not 'Scripture' as often used semi-adjectively?
Ib. p. 98.
"Do you really believe," says Dr. Hawker, "that, because man by his
apostacy hath lost his power and ability to obey, God hath lost his
right to command? Put the case that you were called upon, as a
barrister, to recover a debt due from one man to another, and you knew
the debtor had not the ability to pay the 'creditor', would you tell
your client that his debtor was under no legal or moral obligation to
pay what he had no power to do? And would you tell him that the very
expectation of his just right 'was as foolish as it was tyrannical'?"
* * * I will give my reply to these questions distinctly and without
hesitation. * * * Suppose A. to have lent B. a thousand pounds, as a
capital to commence trade, and that, when he purchased his stock to
this amount, and lodged it in his warehouse, a fire were to break out
in the next dwelling, and, extending itself to 'his' warehouse, were
to consume the whole of his property, and reduce him to a state of
utter ruin. If A., my client, were to ask my opinion as to his right
to recover from B., I should tell him that this his right would exist
should B. ever be in a condition to repay the sum borrowed; * * * but
that to attempt to recover a thousand pounds from a man thus reduced
by accident to utter ruin, and who had not a shilling left in the
world, would be 'as foolish as it was tyrannical'.
But this is rank sophistry. The question is:--Does a thief (and a
fraudulent debtor is no better) acquire a claim to impunity by not
possessing the power of restoring the goods? Every moral act derives
its character (says a Schoolman with an unusual combination of
profundity with quaintness) 'aut voluntate originis aut origine
voluntatis'. Now the very essence of guilt, its dire and
incommunicable character, consists in its tendency to destroy the free
will;--but when thus destroyed, are the habits of vice thenceforward
innocent? Does the law excuse the murder because the perpetrator was
drunk? Dr. Hawker put his objection laxly and weakly enough; but a
manly opponent would have been ashamed to seize an hour's victory from
what a move of the pen would render impregnable.
Ib. p. 102, 3.
When at this solemn tribunal the sinner shall be called upon to answer
for the transgression of those 'moral' laws, on obedience to which
salvation was made to depend, will it be sufficient that he declares
himself to have been taught to believe that the Gospel 'had neither
terms nor conditions', and that his salvation was secured by a
covenant which procured him pardon and peace, 'from all eternity': a
covenant, the effects of which no folly or 'after-act whatever' could
possibly destroy?--Who could anticipate the sentence of condemnation,
and not weep in agony over the deluded victim of ignorance and
misfortune who was thus taught a doctrine so fatally false?
What then! God is represented as a tyrant when he claims the penalty of
disobedience from the servant, who has wilfully incapacitated himself
for obeying,--and yet just and merciful in condemning to indefinite
misery a poor "deluded victim of ignorance and imposture," even though
the Barrister, spite of his antipathy to Methodists, would "weep in
agony" over him! But before the Barrister draws bills of imagination on
his tender feelings, would it not have been as well to adduce some last
dying speech and confession, in which the culprit attributed his
crimes--not to Sabbath-breaking and loose company,--but to
sermon-hearing on the 'modus operandi' of the divine goodness in the
work of redemption? How the Ebenezerites would stare to find the
Socinians and themselves in one flock on the sheep-side of the
judgment-seat,--and their cousins, and fellow Methodists, the
Tabernaclers, all caprifled--goats every man:--and why? They held, that
repentance is in the power of every man, with the aid of grace; while
the goats held that without grace no man is able even to repent. A.
makes grace the cause, and B. makes it only a necessary auxiliary. And
does the Socinian extricate himself a whit more clearly? Without a due
concurrence of circumstances no mind can improve itself into a state
susceptible of spiritual happiness: and is not the disposition and
pre-arrangement of circumstances as dependent on the divine will as
those spiritual influences which the Methodist holds to be meant by the
word grace? Will not the Socinian find it as difficult to reconcile with
mercy and justice the condemnation to hell-fire of poor wretches born
and bred in the thieves' nests of St. Giles, as the Methodists the
condemnation of those who have been less favoured by grace? I have one
other question to ask, though it should have been asked before. Suppose
Christ taught nothing more than a future state of retribution and the
necessity and sufficiency of good morals, how are we to explain his
forbidding these truths to be taught to any but Jews till after his
resurrection? Did the Jews reject those doctrines? Except perhaps a
handful of rich men, called Sadducees, they all believed them, and would
have died a thousand deaths rather than have renounced their faith.
Besides, what is there in doctrines common to the creed of all
religions, and enforced by all the schools of philosophy, except the
Epicurean, which should have prevented their being taught to all at the
same time? I perceive, that this difficulty does not press on Socinians
exclusively: but yet it presses on them with far greater force than on
others. For they make Christianity a mere philosophy, the same in
substance with the Stoical, only purer from errors and accompanied with
clearer evidence:--while others think of it as part of a covenant made
up with Abraham, the fulfilment of which was in good faith to be first
offered to his posterity. I ask this only because the Barrister
professes to find every thing in the four Gospels so plain and easy.
Ib. p. 106.
The Reformers by whom those articles were framed were educated in the
Church of Rome, and opposed themselves rather to the perversion of its
power than the errors of its doctrine.
An outrageous blunder.
Ib. p. 107.
Lord Bacon was the first who dedicated his profound and penetrating
genius to the cultivation of sound philosophy, &c.
This very same Lord Bacon has given us his 'Confessio Fidei' at great
length, with full particularity. Now I will answer for the Methodists'
unhesitating assent and consent to it; but would the Barrister subscribe
it?
Ib. p. 108.
We look back to that era of our history when superstition threw her
victim on the pile, and bigotry tied the martyr to his stake:--but we
take our eyes from the retrospect and turn them in thankful admiration
to that Being who has opened the minds of many, and is daily opening
the minds of more amongst us to the reception of these most important
of all truths, that there is no true faith but in practical goodness,
and that the worst of errors is the error of the 'life'.
Such is the conviction of the most enlightened of our Clergy: the
conviction, I trust, of the far greater part * * *. They deem it
better to inculcate the moral duties of Christianity in the pure
simplicity and clearness with which they are revealed, than to go
aside in search of 'doctrinal mysteries'. For as mysteries cannot be
made manifest, they, of course, cannot be understood; and that which
cannot be understood cannot be believed, and can, consequently, make
no part of any system of faith: since no one, till he understands a
doctrine, can tell whether it be true or false; till then, therefore,
he can have no faith in it, for no one can rationally affirm that he
believes that doctrine to be true which he does not know to be so; and
he cannot know it to be true if he does not understand it. In the
religion of a true Christian, therefore, there can be nothing
unintelligible; and if the preachers of that religion do not make
mysteries, they will never find any.
Who? the Bishops, or the dignified Clergy? Have they at length exploded
all "doctrinal mysteries?" Was Horsley "the one red leaf, the last of
its clan," that held the doctrines of the Trinity, the corruption of the
human Will, and the Redemption by the Cross of Christ? Verily, this is
the most impudent attempt to impose a naked Socinianism on the public,
as the general religion of the nation, admitted by all but a dunghill of
mushroom fanatics, that ever insulted common sense or common modesty!
And will "the far greater part" of the English Clergy remain silent
under so atrocious a libel as is contained in this page? Do they indeed
solemnly pray to their Maker weekly, before God and man, in the words of
a Liturgy, which, they know, "cannot be believed?" For heaven's sake, my
dear Southey, do quote this page and compare it with the introduction to
and petitions of the Liturgy, and with the Collects on the Advent, &c.
Ib. p. 110.
We shall discover upon an attentive examination of the subject, that
all those laws which lay the basis of our constitutional liberties,
are no other than the rules of religion transcribed into the judicial
system, and enforced by the sanction of civil authority.
What! Compare these laws, first, with Tacitus's account of the
constitutional laws of our German ancestors, Pagans; and then with the
Pandects and 'Novellæ' of the most Christian Justinian, aided by all his
Bishops. Observe, the Barrister is asserting a fact of the historical
origination of our laws,--and not what no man would deny, that as far as
they are humane and just, they coincide with the precepts of the Gospel.
No, they were "transcribed."
Ib. p. 113.
Where a man holds a certain system of doctrines, the State is bound to
tolerate, though it may not approve, them; but when he demands a
'license to teach' this system to the rest of the community, he
demands that which ought not to be granted incautiously and without
grave consideration. This discretionary power is delegated in trust
for the common good, &c.
All this, dear Southey, I leave to the lash of your indignation. It
would be oppression to do--what the Legislature could not do if it
would--prevent a man's thoughts; but if he speaks them aloud, and asks
either for instruction and confutation, if he be in error, or assent and
honor, if he be in the right, then it is no oppression to throw him into
a dungeon! But the Barrister would only withhold a license! Nonsense.
What if he preaches and publishes without it, will the Legislature
dungeon him or not? If not, what use is either the granting or the
withholding? And this too from a Socinian, who by this very book has, I
believe, made himself obnoxious to imprisonment and the pillory--and
against men, whose opinions are authorized by the most solemn acts of
Parliament, and recorded in a Book, of which there must be one, by law,
in every parish, and of which there is in fact one in almost every house
and hovel!