YOU reply to the conclusion of my Letter: “What have we to do with
_routiniers_? _Quid mihi cum homunculis putata putide reputantibus_?
Let nothings count for nothing, and the dead bury the dead! Who but such
ever understood the tenet in this sense?”
In what sense then, I rejoin, do others understand it? If, with
exception of the passages already excepted, namely, the recorded words of
God—concerning which no Christian can have doubt or scruple,—the tenet in
this sense be inapplicable to the Scripture, destructive of its noblest
purposes, and contradictory to its own express declarations,—again and
again I ask:—What am I to substitute? What other sense is conceivable
that does not destroy the doctrine which it professes to interpret—that
does not convert it into its own negative? As if a geometrician should
name a sugar-loaf an ellipse, adding—“By which term I here mean a
cone;”—and then justify the misnomer on the pretext that the ellipse is
among the conic sections! And yet—notwithstanding the repugnancy of the
doctrine, in its unqualified sense, to Scripture, Reason, and Common
Sense theoretically, while to all practical uses it is intractable,
unmalleable, and altogether unprofitable—notwithstanding its
irrationality, and in the face of your expostulation, grounded on the
palpableness of its irrationality,—I must still avow my belief that,
however fittingly and unsteadily, as through a mist, it _is_ the doctrine
which the generality of our popular divines receive as orthodox, and this
the sense which they attach to the words.
For on what other ground can I account for the whimsical
_subintelligiturs_ of our numerous harmonists—for the curiously inferred
facts, the inventive circumstantial detail, the complemental and
supplemental history which, in the utter silence of all historians and
absence of all historical documents, they bring to light by mere force of
logic? And all to do away some half score apparent discrepancies in the
chronicles and memoirs of the Old and New Testaments—discrepancies so
analogous to what is found in all other narratives of the same story by
several narrators—so analogous to what is found in all other known and
trusted histories by contemporary historians, when they are collated with
each other (nay, not seldom when either historian is compared with
himself), as to form in the eyes of all competent judges a characteristic
mark of the genuineness, independency, and (if I may apply the word to a
book), the veraciousness of each several document; a mark, the absence of
which would warrant a suspicion of collusion, invention, or at best of
servile transcription; discrepancies so trifling in circumstance and
import, that, although in some instances it is highly probable, and in
all instances, perhaps, possible that they are only apparent and
reconcilable, no wise man would care a staw whether they were real or
apparent, reconciled or left in harmless and friendly variance. What, I
ask, could have induced learned and intelligent divines to adopt or
sanction subterfuges, which neutralising the ordinary _criteria_ of full
or defective evidence in historical documents, would, taken as a general
rule, render all collation and cross-examination of written records
ineffective, and obliterate the main character by which authentic
histories are distinguished from those traditional tales, which each
successive reporter enlarges and fashions to his own fancy and purpose,
and every different edition of which more or less contradicts the other?
Allow me to create chasms _ad libitum_, and _ad libitum_ to fill them up
with imagined facts and incidents, and I would almost undertake to
harmonise Falstaff’s account of the rogues in buckram into a coherent and
consistent narrative. What, I say, could have tempted grave and pious
men thus to disturb the foundation of the Temple, in order to repair a
petty breach or rat-hole in the wall, or fasten a loose stone or two in
the outer court, if not an assumed necessity arising out of the peculiar
character of Bible history?
The substance of the syllogism, by which their procedure was justified to
their own minds, can be no other than this. That, without which two
assertions—both of which _must_ be alike true and correct—would
contradict each other, and consequently be, one or both, false or
incorrect, must itself be true. But every word and syllable existing in
the original text of the Canonical Books, from the _Cherethi_ and
_Phelethi_ of David to the name in the copy of a family register, the
site of a town, or the course of a river, were dictated to the sacred
_amanuensis_ by an infallible intelligence. Here there can be neither
more nor less. Important or unimportant gives no ground of difference;
and the number of the writers as little. The secretaries may have been
many—the historian was one and the same, and he infallible. This is the
_minor_ of the syllogism, and if it could be proved, the conclusion would
be at least plausible; and there would be but one objection to the
procedure, namely, its uselessness. For if it had been proved already,
what need of proving it over again, and by means—the removal, namely, of
apparent contradictions—which the infallible Author did not think good to
employ? But if it have not been proved, what becomes of the argument
which derives its whole force and legitimacy from the assumption?
In fact, it is clear that the harmonists and their admirers held and
understood the doctrine literally. And must not that divine likewise
have so understood it, who, in answer to a question concerning the
transcendant blessedness of Jael, and the righteousness of the act, in
which she inhospitably, treacherously, perfidiously murdered sleep, the
confiding sleep, closed the controversy by observing that he wanted no
better morality than that of the Bible, and no other proof of an action’s
being praiseworthy than that the Bible had declared it worthy to be
praised?—an observation, as applied in this instance, so slanderous to
the morality and moral spirit of the Bible as to be inexplicable, except
as a consequence of the doctrine in dispute. But let a man be once fully
persuaded that there is no difference between the two positions: “The
Bible contains the religion revealed by God,” and “Whatever is contained
in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God,” and that whatever can
be said of the Bible, collectively taken, may and must be said of each
and every sentence of the Bible, taken for and by itself, and I no longer
wonder at these paradoxes. I only object to the inconsistency of those
who profess the same belief, and yet affect to look down with a
contemptuous or compassionate smile on John Wesley for rejecting the
Copernican system as incompatible therewith; or who exclaim “Wonderful!”
when they hear that Sir Matthew Hale sent a crazy old woman to the
gallows in honour of the Witch of Endor. In the latter instance it
might, I admit, have been an erroneous (though even at this day the all
but universally received) interpretation of the word, which we have
rendered by _witch_; but I challenge these divines and their adherents to
establish the compatibility of a belief in the modern astronomy and
natural philosophy with their and Wesley’s doctrine respecting the
inspired Scriptures, without reducing the doctrine itself to a plaything
of wax; or rather to a half-inflated bladder, which, when the contents
are rarefied in the heat of rhetorical generalities, swells out round,
and without a crease or wrinkle; but bring it into the cool temperature
of particulars, and you may press, and as it were except, what part you
like—so it be but one part at a time—between your thumb and finger.
Now, I pray you, which is the more honest, nay, which the more
reverential proceeding—to play at fast and loose in this way, or to say
at once, “See here, in these several writings one and the same Holy
Spirit, now sanctifying a chosen vessel, and fitting it for the reception
of heavenly truths proceeding immediately from the mouth of God, and
elsewhere working in frail and fallible men like ourselves, and like
ourselves instructed by God’s word and laws?” The first Christian martyr
had the form and features of an ordinary man, nor are we taught to
believe that these features were miraculously transfigured into
superhuman symmetry; but _he being filled with the Holy Ghost_, _they
that looked steadfastly_ on _him_, _saw his face as it had been the face
of an angel_. Even so has it ever been, and so it ever will be with all
who with humble hearts and a rightly disposed spirit scan the sacred
volume. And they who read it with _an evil heart of unbelief_ and an
alien spirit, what boots for them the assertion that every sentence was
miraculously communicated to the nominal author by God himself? Will it
not rather present additional temptations to the unhappy scoffers, and
furnish them with a pretext of self-justification?
When, in my third letter, I first echoed the question “Why should I not?”
the answers came crowding on my mind. I am well content, however, to
have merely suggested the main points, in proof of the positive harm
which, both historically and spiritually, our religion sustains from this
doctrine. Of minor importance, yet not to be overlooked, are the forced
and fantastic interpretations, the arbitrary allegories and mystic
expansions of proper names, to which this indiscriminate Bibliolatry
furnished fuel, spark, and wind. A still greater evil, and less
attributable to the visionary humour and weak judgment of the individual
expositors, is the literal rendering of Scripture in passages, which the
number and variety of images employed in different places to express one
and the same verity, plainly mark out for figurative. And lastly, add to
all these the strange—in all other writings unexampled—practice of
bringing together into logical dependency detached sentences from books
composed at the distance of centuries, nay, sometimes a _millennium_ from
each other, under different dispensations, and for different objects.
Accommodations of elder Scriptural phrases—that favourite ornament and
garnish of Jewish eloquence; incidental allusions to popular notions,
traditions, apologues (for example, the dispute between the Devil and the
archangel Michael about the body of Moses, Jude 9); fancies and
anachronisms imported from the synagogue of Alexandria into Palestine, by
or together with the Septuagint version, and applied as mere _argumenta
ad homines_ (for example, the delivery of the Law by the disposition of
angels, Acts vii. 53, Gal. iii. 19, Heb. ii. 2),—these, detached from
their context, and, contrary to the intention of the sacred writer, first
raised into independent _theses_, and then brought together to produce or
sanction some new _credendum_ for which neither separately could have
furnished a pretence! By this strange mosaic, Scripture texts have been
worked up into passable likenesses of purgatory, Popery, the Inquisition,
and other monstrous abuses. But would you have a Protestant instance of
the superstitious use of Scripture arising out of this dogma? Passing by
the Cabbala of the Hutchinsonian School as the dotage of a few
weak-minded individuals, I refer you to Bishop Hacket’s sermons on the
Incarnation. And if you have read the same author’s life of Archbishop
Williams, and have seen and felt (as every reader of this latter work
must see and feel) his talent, learning, acuteness, and robust good
sense, you will have no difficulty in determining the quality and
character of a dogma which could engraft such fruits on such a tree.
It will perhaps appear a paradox if, after all these reasons, I should
avow that they weigh less in my mind against the doctrine, than the
motives usually assigned for maintaining and enjoining it. Such, for
instance, are the arguments drawn from the anticipated loss and damage
that would result from its abandonment; as that it would deprive the
Christian world of its only infallible arbiter in questions of faith and
duty, suppress the only common and inappellable tribunal; that the Bible
is the only religious bond of union and ground of unity among Protestants
and the like. For the confutation of this whole reasoning, it might be
sufficient to ask: Has it produced these effects? Would not the contrary
statement be nearer to the fact? What did the Churches of the first four
centuries hold on this point? To what did they attribute the rise and
multiplication of heresies? Can any learned and candid Protestant affirm
that there existed and exists no ground for the charges of Bossuet and
other eminent Romish divines? It is no easy matter to know how to handle
a party maxim, so framed, that with the exception of a single word, it
expresses an important truth, but which by means of that word is made to
convey a most dangerous error.
The Bible is the appointed conservatory, an indispensable criterion, and
a continual source and support of true belief. But that the Bible is the
sole source; that it not only contains, but constitutes, the Christian
Religion; that it is, in short, a Creed, consisting wholly of articles of
Faith; that consequently we need no rule, help, or guide, spiritual or
historical, to teach us what parts are and what are not articles of
Faith—all being such—and the difference between the Bible and the Creed
being this, that the clauses of the latter are all unconditionally
necessary to salvation, but those of the former conditionally so, that
is, as soon as the words are known to exist in any one of the canonical
books; and that, under this limitation, the belief is of the same
necessity in both, and not at all affected by the greater or lesser
importance of the matter to be believed;—this scheme differs widely from
the preceding, though its adherents often make use of the same words in
expressing their belief. And this latter scheme, I assert, was brought
into currency by and in favour of those by whom the operation of grace,
the aids of the Spirit, the necessity of regeneration, the corruption of
our nature, in short, all the peculiar and spiritual mysteries of the
Gospel were explained and diluted away.
And how have these men treated this very Bible? I, who indeed prize and
reverence this sacred library, as of all outward means and conservatives
of Christian faith and practice the surest and the most reflective of the
inward Word; I, who hold that the Bible contains the religion of
Christians, but who dare not say that whatever is contained in the Bible
is the Christian religion, and who shrink from all question respecting
the comparative worth and efficacy of the written Word as weighed against
the preaching of the Gospel, the discipline of the Churches, the
continued succession of the Ministry, and the communion of Saints, lest
by comparing them I should seem to detach them; I tremble at the
processes which the Grotian divines without scruple carry on in their
treatment of the sacred writers, as soon as any texts declaring the
peculiar tenets of our Faith are cited against them—even tenets and
mysteries which the believer at his baptism receives as the title-writ
and bosom-roll of his adoption; and which, according to my scheme, every
Christian born in Church-membership ought to bring with him to the study
of the sacred Scriptures as the master-key of interpretation. Whatever
the doctrine of infallible dictation may be in itself, in _their_ hands
it is to the last degree nugatory, and to be paralleled only by the
Romish tenet of Infallibility—in the existence of which all agree, but
where, and in whom, it exists _stat adhuc sub lite_. Every sentence
found in a canonical Book, rightly interpreted, contains the _dictum_ of
an infallible Mind; but what the right interpretation is—or whether the
very words now extant are corrupt or genuine—must be determined by the
industry and understanding of fallible, and alas! more or less prejudiced
theologians.
And yet I am told that this doctrine must not be resisted or called in
question, because of its fitness to preserve unity of faith, and for the
prevention of schism and sectarian byways! Let the man who holds this
language trace the history of Protestantism, and the growth of sectarian
divisions, ending with Dr. Hawker’s _ultra_-Calvinistic Tracts, and Mr.
Belsham’s New Version of the Testament. And then let him tell me that
for the prevention of an evil which already exists, and which the boasted
preventive itself might rather seem to have occasioned, I must submit to
be silenced by the first learned infidel, who throws in my face the
blessing of Deborah, or the cursings of David, or the Grecisms and
heavier difficulties in the biographical chapters of the Book of Daniel,
or the hydrography and natural philosophy of the Patriarchal ages. I
must forego the means of silencing, and the prospect of convincing, an
alienated brother, because I must not thus answer “My Brother! What has
all this to do with the truth and the worth of Christianity? If you
reject _à priori_ all communion with the Holy Spirit, there is indeed a
chasm between us, over which we cannot even make our voices intelligible
to each other. But if—though but with the faith of a Seneca or an
Antonine—you admit the co-operation of a Divine Spirit in souls desirous
of good, even as the breath of heaven works variously in each several
plant according to its kind, character, period of growth, and
circumstance of soil, clime, and aspect; on what ground can you assume
that its presence is incompatible with all imperfection in the
subject—even with such imperfection as is the natural accompaniment of
the unripe season? If you call your gardener or husbandman to account
for the plants or crops he is raising, would you not regard the special
purpose in each, and judge of each by that which it was tending to?
Thorns are not flowers, nor is the husk serviceable. But it was not for
its thorns, but for its sweet and medicinal flowers that the rose was
cultivated; and he who cannot separate the husk from the grain, wants the
power because sloth or malice has prevented the will. I demand for the
Bible only the justice which you grant to other books of grave authority,
and to other proved and acknowledged benefactors of mankind. Will you
deny a spirit of wisdom in Lord Bacon, because in particular facts he did
not possess perfect science, or an entire immunity from the positive
errors which result from imperfect insight? A Davy will not so judge his
great predecessor; for he recognises the spirit that is now working in
himself, and which under similar defects of light and obstacles of error
had been his guide and guardian in the morning twilight of his own
genius. Must not the kindly warmth awaken and vivify the seed, in order
that the stem may spring up and rejoice in the light? As the genial
warmth to the informing light, even so is the predisposing Spirit to the
revealing Word.”
If I should reason thus—but why do I say _if_? I have reasoned thus with
more than one serious and well-disposed sceptic; and what was the
answer?—“_You_ speak rationally, but seem to forget the subject. I have
frequently attended meetings of the British and Foreign Bible Society,
where I have heard speakers of every denomination, Calvinist and
Arminian, Quaker and Methodist, Dissenting Ministers and Clergymen, nay,
dignitaries of the Established Church, and still have I heard the same
doctrine—that the Bible was not to be regarded or reasoned about in the
way that other good books are or may be—that the Bible was different in
kind, and stood by itself. By some indeed this doctrine was rather
implied than expressed, but yet evidently implied. But by far the
greater number of the speakers it was asserted in the strongest and most
unqualified words that language could supply. What is more, their
principal arguments were grounded on the position, that the Bible
throughout was dictated by Omniscience, and therefore in all its parts
infallibly true and obligatory, and that the men whose names are prefixed
to the several books or chapters were in fact but as different pens in
the hand of one and the same Writer, and the words the words of God
Himself: and that on this account all notes and comments were
superfluous, nay, presumptuous—a profane mixing of human with divine, the
notions of fallible creatures with the oracles of Infallibility—as if
God’s meaning could be so clearly or fitly expressed in man’s as in God’s
own words! But how often you yourself must have heard the same language
from the pulpit!”
What could I reply to this? I could neither deny the fact, nor evade the
conclusion—namely, that such is at present the popular belief. Yes—I at
length rejoined—I have heard this language from the pulpit, and more than
once from men who in any other place would explain it away into something
so very different from the literal sense of their words as closely to
resemble the contrary. And this, indeed, is the peculiar character of
the doctrine, that you cannot diminish or qualify but you reverse it. I
have heard this language from men who knew as well as myself that the
best and most orthodox divines have in effect disclaimed the doctrine,
inasmuch as they confess it cannot be extended to the words of the sacred
writers, or the particular import—that therefore the doctrine does not
mean all that the usual wording of it expresses, though what it does
mean, and why they continue to sanction this hyperbolical wording, I have
sought to learn from them in vain. But let a thousand orators blazon it
at public meetings, and let as many pulpits echo it, surely it behoves
you to inquire whether you cannot be a Christian on your own faith; and
it cannot but be beneath a wise man to be an Infidel on the score of what
other men think fit to include in their Christianity!
Now suppose—and, believe me, the supposition will vary little from the
fact—that in consequence of these views the sceptic’s mind had gradually
opened to the reception of all the truths enumerated in my first Letter.
Suppose that the Scriptures themselves from this time had continued to
rise in his esteem and affection—the better understood, the more dear; as
in the countenance of one, whom through a cloud of prejudices we have at
least learned to love and value above all others, new beauties dawn on us
from day to day, till at length we wonder how we could at any time have
thought it other than most beautiful. Studying the sacred volume in the
light and in the freedom of a faith already secured, at every fresh
meeting my sceptic friend has to tell me of some new passage, formerly
viewed by him as a dry stick on a rotten branch, which has _budded_ and,
like the rod of Aaron, _brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms_, _and
yielded almonds_. Let these results, I say, be supposed—and shall I
still be told that my friend is nevertheless an alien in the household of
Faith? Scrupulously orthodox as I know you to be, will you tell me that
I ought to have left this sceptic as I found him, rather than attempt his
conversion by such means; or that I was deceiving him, when I said to
him:—
“Friend! The truth revealed through Christ has its evidence in itself,
and the proof of its divine authority in its fitness to our nature and
needs; the clearness and cogency of this proof being proportionate to the
degree of self-knowledge in each individual hearer. Christianity has
likewise its historical evidences, and these as strong as is compatible
with the nature of history, and with the aims and objects of a religious
dispensation. And to all these Christianity itself, as an existing power
in the world, and Christendom as an existing fact, with the no less
evident fact of a progressive expansion, give a force of moral
demonstration that almost supersedes particular testimony. These proofs
and evidences would remain unshaken, even though the sum of our religion
were to be drawn from the theologians of each successive century, on the
principle of receiving that only as divine which should be found in
all—_quod semper_, _quod ubique_, _quod ab omnibus_. Be only, my friend!
as orthodox a believer as you would have abundant reason to be, though
from some accident of birth, country, or education, the precious boon of
the Bible, with its additional evidence, had up to this moment been
concealed from you;—and then read its contents with only the same piety
which you freely accord on other occasions to the writings of men,
considered the best and wisest of their several ages! What you find
therein coincident with your pre-established convictions, you will of
course recognise as the Revealed Word, while, as you read the recorded
workings of the Word and the Spirit in the minds, lives, and hearts of
spiritual men, the influence of the same Spirit on your own being, and
the conflicts of grace and infirmity in your own soul, will enable you to
discern and to know in and by what spirit they spake and acted—as far at
least as shall be needful for you, and in the times of your need.
“Thenceforward, therefore, your doubts will be confined to such parts or
passages of the received Canon as seem to you irreconcilable with known
truths, and at variance with the tests given in the Scriptures
themselves, and as shall continue so to appear after you have examined
each in reference to the circumstances of the writer or speaker, the
dispensation under which he lived, the purpose of the particular passage,
and the intent and object of the Scriptures at large. Respecting these,
decide for yourself: and fear not for the result. I venture to tell it
you beforehand. The result will be, a confidence in the judgment and
fidelity of the compilers of the Canon increased by the apparent
exceptions. For they will be found neither more nor greater than may
well be supposed requisite, on the one hand, to prevent us from sinking
into a habit of slothful, undiscriminating acquiescence, and on the other
to provide a check against those presumptuous fanatics who would rend the
_Urim and Thummim from the breastplate of judgment_, and frame oracles by
private divination from each letter of each disjointed gem, uninterpreted
by the Priest, and deserted by the Spirit, which shines in the parts only
as it pervades and irradiates the whole.”
Such is the language in which I have addressed a halting friend—halting,
yet with his face toward the right path. If I have erred, enable me to
see my error. Correct me, or confirm me.
Farewell.