IN my last two Letters I have given the state of the argument as it would
stand between a Christian, thinking as I do, and a serious well-disposed
Deist. I will now endeavour to state the argument, as between the former
and the advocates for the popular belief,—such of them, I mean, as are
competent to deliver a dispassionate judgment in the cause. And again,
more particularly, I mean the learned and reflecting part of them, who
are influenced to the retention of the prevailing dogma by the supposed
consequences of a different view, and, especially, by their dread of
conceding to all alike, simple and learned, the privilege of picking and
choosing the Scriptures that are to be received as binding on their
consciences. Between these persons and myself the controversy may be
reduced to a single question:—
Is it safer for the individual, and more conducive to the interests of
the Church of Christ, in its twofold character of pastoral and militant,
to conclude thus:—The Bible is the Word of God, and therefore, true,
holy, and in all parts unquestionable? Or thus:—The Bible, considered in
reference to its declared ends and purposes, is true and holy, and for
all who seek truth with humble spirits an unquestionable guide, and
therefore it is the Word of God?
In every generation, and wherever the light of Revelation has shone, men
of all ranks, conditions, and states of mind have found in this volume a
correspondent for every movement toward the better, felt in their own
hearts, the needy soul has found supply, the feeble a help, the sorrowful
a comfort; yea, be the recipiency the least that can consist with moral
life, there is an answering grace ready to enter. The Bible has been
found a Spiritual World, spiritual and yet at the same time outward and
common to all. You in one place, I in another, all men somewhere or at
some time, meet with an assurance that the hopes and fears, the thoughts
and yearnings that proceed from, or tend to, a right spirit in us, are
not dreams or fleeting singularities, no voices heard in sleep, or
spectres which the eye suffers but not perceives. As if on some dark
night a pilgrim, suddenly beholding a bright star moving before him,
should stop in fear and perplexity. But lo! traveller after traveller
passes by him, and each, being questioned whither he is going, makes
answer, “I am following yon guiding star!” The pilgrim quickens his own
steps, and presses onward in confidence. More confident still will he
be, if, by the wayside, he should find, here and there, ancient
monuments, each with its votive lamp, and on each the name of some former
pilgrim, and a record that there he had first seen or begun to follow the
benignant Star!
No otherwise is it with the varied contents of the Sacred Volume. The
hungry have found food, the thirsty a living spring, the feeble a staff,
and the victorious warfarer songs of welcome and strains of music; and as
long as each man asks on account of his wants, and asks what he wants, no
man will discover aught amiss or deficient in the vast and many-chambered
storehouse. But if, instead of this, an idler or scoffer should wander
through the rooms, peering and peeping, and either detects, or fancies he
has detected, here a rusted sword or pointless shaft, there a tool of
rude construction, and superseded by later improvements (and preserved,
perhaps, to make us more grateful for them);—which of two things will a
sober-minded man,—who, from his childhood upward had been fed, clothed,
armed, and furnished with the means of instruction from this very
magazine,—think the fitter plan? Will he insist that the rust is not
rust, or that it is a rust _sui generis_, intentionally formed on the
steel for some mysterious virtue in it, and that the staff and astrolabe
of a shepherd-astronomer are identical with, or equivalent to, the
quadrant and telescope of Newton or Herschel? Or will he not rather give
the curious inquisitor joy of his mighty discoveries, and the credit of
them for his reward?
Or lastly, put the matter thus: For more than a thousand years the Bible,
collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with civilisation, science,
law—in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species,
always supporting, and often leading, the way. Its very presence, as a
believed Book, has rendered the nations emphatically a chosen race, and
this too in exact proportion as it is more or less generally known and
studied. Of those nations which in the highest degree enjoy its
influences it is not too much to affirm, that the differences, public and
private, physical, moral and intellectual, are only less than what might
be expected from a diversity in species. Good and holy men, and the best
and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of history, enthroned in the
hearts of mighty nations, have borne witness to its influences, have
declared it to be beyond compare the most perfect instrument, the only
adequate organ, of Humanity; the organ and instrument of all the gifts,
powers, and tendencies, by which the individual is privileged to rise
above himself—to leave behind, and lose his individual phantom self, in
order to find his true self in that Distinctness where no division can
be—in the Eternal I AM, the Ever-living WORD, of whom all the elect from
the archangel before time throne to the poor wrestler with the Spirit
_until the breaking of day_ are but the fainter and still fainter echoes.
And are all these testimonies and lights of experience to lose their
value and efficiency because I feel no warrant of history, or Holy Writ,
or of my own heart for denying, that in the framework and outward case of
this instrument a few parts may be discovered of less costly materials
and of meaner workmanship? Is it not a fact that the Books of the New
Testament were tried by their consonance with the rule, and according to
the analogy, of faith? Does not the universally admitted canon—that each
part of Scripture must be interpreted by the spirit of the whole—lead to
the same practical conclusion as that for which I am now
contending—namely, that it is the spirit of the Bible, and not the
detached words and sentences, that is infallible and absolute?
Practical, I say, and spiritual too; and what knowledge not practical or
spiritual are we entitled to seek in our Bibles? Is the grace of God so
confined—are the evidences of the present and actuating Spirit so dim and
doubtful—that to be assured of the same we must first take for granted
that all the life and co-agency of our humanity is miraculously
suspended?
Whatever is spiritual, is _eo nomine_ supernatural; but must it be always
and of necessity miraculous? Miracles could open the eyes of the body;
and he that was born blind beheld his Redeemer. But miracles, even those
of the Redeemer himself, could not open the eyes of the self-blinded, of
the Sadducean sensualist, or the self-righteous Pharisee—while to have
said, _I saw thee under the fig-tree_, sufficed to make a Nathanael
believe.
To assert and to demand miracles without necessity was the vice of the
unbelieving Jews of old; and from the Rabbis and Talmudists the infection
has spread. And would I could say that the symptoms of the disease are
confined to the Churches of the Apostasy! But all the miracles, which
the legends of Monk or Rabbi contain, can scarcely be put in competition,
on the score of complication, inexplicableness, the absence of all
intelligible use or purpose, and of circuitous self-frustration, with
those that must be assumed by the maintainers of this doctrine, in order
to give effect to the series of miracles, by which all the nominal
composers of the Hebrew nation before the time of Ezra, of whom there are
any remains, were successively transformed into _automaton_
compositors—so that the original text should be in sentiment, image,
word, syntax, and composition an exact impression of the divine copy! In
common consistency the theologians, who impose this belief on their
fellow Christians, ought to insist equally on the superhuman origin and
authority of the Masora, and to use more respectful terms, than has been
their wont of late, in speaking of the false Aristeas’s legend concerning
the Septuagint. And why the miracle should stop at the Greek Version,
and not include the Vulgate, I can discover no ground in reason. Or if
it be an objection to the latter, that this belief is actually enjoined
by the Papal Church, yet the number of Christians who road the Lutheran,
the Genevan, or our own authorised, Bible, and are ignorant of the dead
languages, greatly exceeds the number of those who have access to the
Septuagint. Why refuse the writ of consecration to these, or to the one
at least appointed by the assertors’ own Church? I find much more
consistency in the opposition made under pretext of this doctrine to the
proposals and publications of Kennicot, Mill, Bentley, and Archbishop
Newcome.
But I am weary of discussing a tenet which the generality of divines and
the leaders of the religious public have ceased to defend, and yet
continue to assert or imply. The tendency manifested in this conduct,
the spirit of this and the preceding century, on which, not indeed the
tenet itself, but the obstinate adherence to it against the clearest
light of reason and experience, is grounded—this it is which, according
to my conviction, gives the venom to the error, and justifies the attempt
to substitute a juster view. As long as it was the common and effective
belief of all the Reformed Churches (and by none was it more sedulously
or more emphatically enjoined than by the great Reformers of our Church),
that by the good Spirit were the spirits tried, and that the light, which
beams forth from the written Word, was its own evidence for the children
of light; as long as Christians considered their Bible as a plenteous
entertainment, where every guest, duly called and attired, found the food
needful and fitting for him, and where each—instead of troubling himself
about the covers not within his reach—beholding all around him glad and
satisfied, praised the banquet and thankfully glorified the Master of the
feast—so long did the tenet—that the Scriptures were written under the
special impulse of the Holy Ghost remain safe and profitable. Nay, in
the sense, and with the feelings, in which it was asserted, it was a
truth—a truth to which every spiritual believer now and in all times will
bear witness by virtue of his own experience. And if in the overflow of
love and gratitude they confounded the power and presence of the Holy
Spirit, working alike in weakness and in strength, in the morning mists
and in the clearness of the full day; if they confounded this communion
and co-agency of divine grace, attributable to the Scripture generally,
with those express, and expressly recorded, communications and messages
of the Most High which form so large and prominent a portion of the same
Scriptures; if, in short, they did not always duly distinguish the
inspiration, the imbreathment, of the predisposing and assisting SPIRIT
from the revelation of the informing WORD, it was at worst a harmless
hyperbole. It was holden by all, that if the power of the Spirit from
without furnished the text, the grace of the same Spirit from within must
supply the comment.
In the sacred Volume they saw and reverenced the bounden wheat-sheaf that
_stood upright_ and had _obeisance_ from all the other sheaves (the
writings, I mean, of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church), sheaves
depreciated indeed, more or less, with tares,
“and furrow-weeds,
Darnel and many an idle flower that grew
Mid the sustaining corn;”
yet sheaves of the same harvest, the sheaves of brethren! Nor did it
occur to them, that, in yielding the more full and absolute honour to the
sheaf of the highly favoured of their Father, they should be supposed to
attribute the same worth and quality to the straw-bands which held it
together. The bread of life was there. And this in an especial sense
was _bread from Heaven_; for no where had the same been found wild; no
soil or climate dared claim it for its natural growth. In simplicity of
heart they received the Bible as the precious gift of God, providential
alike in origin, preservation, and distribution, without asking the nice
question whether all and every part were likewise miraculous. The
distinction between the providential and the miraculous, between the
Divine Will working with the agency of natural causes, and the same Will
supplying their place by a special _fiat_—this distinction has, I doubt
not, many uses in speculative divinity. But its weightiest practical
application is shown, when it is employed to free the souls of the unwary
and weak in faith from the nets and snares, the insidious queries and
captious objections, of the Infidel by calming the flutter of their
spirits. They must be quieted, before we can commence the means
necessary for their disentanglement. And in no way can this be better
effected than when the frightened captives are made to see in how many
points the disentangling itself is a work of expedience rather than of
necessity; so easily and at so little loss might the web be cut or
brushed away.
First, let their attention be fixed on the history of Christianity as
learnt from universal tradition, and the writers of each successive
generation. Draw their minds to the fact of the progressive and still
continuing fulfilment of the assurance of a few fishermen, that both
their own religion, though of Divine origin, and the religion of their
conquerors, which included or recognised all other religious of the known
world, should be superseded by the faith in a man recently and
ignominiously executed. Then induce them to meditate on the universals
of Christian Faith—on Christianity taken as the sum of belief common to
Greek and Latin, to Romanist and Protestant. Show them that this and
only this is the _ordo traditionis_, _quam tradiderunt Apostoli iis
quibus committebant ecclesias_, and which we should have been bound to
follow, says Irenæus, _si neque Apostoli quidem Scripturas reliquissent_.
This is that _regula fidei_, that _sacramentum symboli memoriæ mandatum_,
of which St. Augustine says:—_noveritis hoc esse Fidei Catholicæ
fundamentum super quod edificium surrexit Ecclesiæ_. This is the _norma
Catholici et Ecclesiastici sensus_, determined and explicated, but not
augmented, by the Nicene Fathers, as Waterland has irrefragably shown; a
norm or model of Faith grounded on the solemn affirmations of the Bishops
collected from all parts of the Roman Empire, that this was the essential
and unalterable Gospel received by them from their predecessors in all
the churches as the παράδοσις ἐκκλησιαστικὴ _cui_, says Irenæus,
_assentiunt multæ gentes eorum qui in Christum credunt sine charta et
atramento_, _scriptam habentes per Spiritum in cordibus suis salutem_,
_et veterum traditionem diligenter custodientes_. Let the attention of
such as have been shaken by the assaults of infidelity be thus directed,
and then tell me wherein a spiritual physician would be blameworthy, if
he carried on the cure by addressing his patient in this manner:—
“All men of learning, even learned unbelievers, admit that the greater
part of the objections, urged in the popular works of infidelity, to this
or that verse or chapter of the Bible, prove only the ignorance or
dishonesty of the objectors. But let it be supposed for a moment that a
few remain hitherto unanswered—nay, that to your judgment and feelings
they appear unanswerable. What follows? That the Apostles’ and Nicene
Creed is not credible, the Ten Commandments not to be obeyed, the clauses
of the Lord’s Prayer not to be desired, or the Sermon on the Mount not to
be practised? See how the logic would look. David cruelly tortured the
inhabitants of Rabbah (2 Sam. xii. 31; 1 Chron. xx. 3), and in several of
the Psalms he invokes the bitterest curses on his enemies: therefore it
is not to be believed that _the love of God toward us was manifested in
sending His only begotten Son into the world_, _that we might live
through Him_ (1 John iv. 9). Or, Abijah is said to have collected an
army of 400,000 men, and Jeroboam to have met him with an army of 800,000
men, each army consisting of chosen men (2 Chron. xiii. 3), and making
together a host of 1,200,000, and Abijah to have slain 500,000 out of the
800,000: therefore, the words which admonish us that _if God so loved
us_, _we ought also to love one another_ (1 John iv. 11), even our
enemies, yea, _to bless them that curse_ us, and to _do good to them that
hate_ us (Matt. v. 44), cannot proceed from the Holy Spirit. Or: The
first six chapters of the book of Daniel contain several words and
phrases irreconcilable with the commonly received dates, and those
chapters and the Book of Esther have a traditional and legendary
character unlike that of the other historical books of the Old Testament;
therefore those other books, by contrast with which the former appear
suspicious, and the historical document (1 Cor. xv. 1–8), are not to be
credited!”
We assuredly believe that the Bible contains all truths necessary to
salvation, and that therein is preserved the undoubted Word of God. We
assert likewise that, besides these express oracles and immediate
revelations, there are Scriptures which to the soul and conscience of
every Christian man bear irresistible evidence of the Divine Spirit
assisting and actuating the authors; and that both these and the former
are such as to render it morally impossible that any passage of the small
inconsiderable portion, not included in one or other of these, can supply
either ground or occasion of any error in faith, practice, or affection,
except to those who wickedly and wilfully seek a pretext for their
unbelief. And if in that small portion of the Bible which stands in no
necessary connection with the known and especial ends and purposes of the
Scriptures, there should be a few apparent errors resulting from the
state of knowledge then existing—errors which the best and holiest men
might entertain uninjured, and which without a miracle those men must
have entertained; if I find no such miraculous prevention asserted, and
see no reason for supposing it—may I not, to ease the scruples of a
perplexed inquirer, venture to say to him; “Be it so. What then? The
absolute infallibility even of the inspired writers in matters altogether
incidental and foreign to the objects and purposes of their inspiration
is no part of my creed: and even if a professed divine should follow the
doctrine of the Jewish Church so far as not to attribute to the
_Hagiographa_, in every word and sentence, the same height and fulness of
inspiration as to the Law and the Prophets, I feel no warrant to brand
him as a heretic for an opinion, the admission of which disarms the
infidel without endangering a single article of the Catholic Faith.”—If
to an unlearned but earnest and thoughtful neighbour I give the
advice;—“Use the Old Testament to express the affections excited, and to
confirm the faith and morals taught you, in the New, and leave all the
rest to the students and professors of theology and Church history! You
profess only to be a Christian:”—am I misleading my brother in Christ?
This I believe by my own dear experience—that the more tranquilly an
inquirer takes up the Bible as he would any other body of ancient
writings, the livelier and steadier will be his impressions of its
superiority to all other books, till at length all other books and all
other knowledge will be valuable in his eyes in proportion as they help
him to a better understanding of his Bible. Difficulty after difficulty
has been overcome from the time that I began to study the Scriptures with
free and unboding spirit, under the conviction that my faith in the
Incarnate Word and His Gospel was secure, whatever the result might
be;—the difficulties that still remain being so few and insignificant in
my own estimation, that I have less personal interest in the question
than many of those who will most dogmatically condemn me for presuming to
make a question of it.
So much for scholars—for men of like education and pursuits as myself.
With respect to Christians generally, I object to the consequence drawn
from the doctrine rather than to the doctrine itself;—a consequence not
only deducible from the premises, but actually and imperiously deduced;
according to which every man that can but read is to sit down to the
consecutive and connected perusal of the Bible under the expectation and
assurance that the whole is within his comprehension, and that, unaided
by note or comment, catechism or liturgical preparation, he is to find
out for himself what he is bound to believe and practise, and that
whatever he conscientiously understands by what he reads is to be _his_
religion. For he has found it in his Bible, and the Bible is the
Religion of Protestants!
Would I then withhold the Bible from the cottager and the artisan?—Heaven
forfend! The fairest flower that ever clomb up a cottage window is not
so fair a sight to my eyes as the Bible gleaming through the lower panes.
Let it but be read as by such men it used to be read; when they came to
it as to a ground covered with manna, even the bread which the Lord had
given for his people to eat; where he that gathered much had nothing
over, and he that gathered little had no lack. They gathered every man
according to his eating. They came to it as to a treasure-house of
Scriptures; each visitant taking what was precious and leaving as
precious for others;—Yea, more, says our worthy old Church-historian,
Fuller, where “the same man at several times may in his apprehension
prefer several Scriptures as best, formerly most affected with one place,
for the present more delighted with another, and afterwards, conceiving
comfort therein not so clear, choose other places as more pregnant and
pertinent to his purpose. Thus God orders it, that divers men (and
perhaps the same man at divers times), make use of all His gifts,
gleaning and gathering comfort as it is scattered through the whole field
of the Scripture.”
Farewell.