YOU are now, my dear friend, in possession of my whole mind on this
point—one thing only excepted which has weighed with me more than all the
rest, and which I have therefore reserved for my concluding letter. This
is the impelling principle or way of thinking, which I have in most
instances noticed in the assertors of what I have ventured to call
Bibliolatry, and which I believe to be the main ground of its prevalence
at this time, and among men whose religious views are anything rather
than enthusiastic. And I here take occasion to declare, that my
conviction of the danger and injury of this principle was and is my chief
motive for bringing the doctrine itself into question; the main error of
which consists in the confounding of two distinct conceptions—revelation
by the Eternal Word, and actuation of the Holy Spirit. The former indeed
is not always or necessarily united with the latter—the prophecy of
Balaam is an instance of the contrary,—but yet being ordinarily, and only
not always, so united, the term, “Inspiration,” has acquired a double
sense.
First, the term is used in the sense of Information miraculously
communicated by voice or vision; and secondly, where without any sensible
addition or infusion, the writer or speaker uses and applies his existing
gifts of power and knowledge under the predisposing, aiding, and
directing actuation of God’s Holy Spirit. Now, between the first sense,
that is, inspired revelation, and the highest degree of that grace and
communion with the Spirit which the Church under all circumstances, and
every regenerate member of the Church of Christ, is permitted to hope and
instructed to pray for, there is a positive difference of kind—a chasm,
the pretended overleaping of which constitutes imposture, or betrays
insanity. Of the first kind are the Law and the Prophets, no jot or
tittle of which can pass unfulfilled, and the substance and last
interpretation of which passes not away; for they wrote of Christ, and
shadowed out the everlasting Gospel. But with regard to the second,
neither the holy writers—the so-called _Hagiographi_—themselves, nor any
fair interpretations of Scripture, assert any such absolute diversity, or
enjoin the belief of any greater difference of degree, than the
experience of the Christian World, grounded on and growing with the
comparison of these Scriptures with other works holden in honour by the
Churches, has established. And _this_ difference I admit, and doubt not
that it has in every generation been rendered evident to as many as read
these Scriptures under the gracious influence of the spirit in which they
were written.
But alas! this is not sufficient; this cannot but be vague and
unsufficing to those with whom the Christian religion is wholly
objective, to the exclusion of all its correspondent subjective. It must
appear vague, I say, to those whose Christianity as matter of belief is
wholly external, and like the objects of sense, common to all alike;
altogether historical, an _opus operatum_—its existing and present
operancy in no respect differing from any other fact of history, and not
at all modified by the supernatural principle in which it had its origin
in time. Divines of this persuasion are actually, though without their
own knowledge, in a state not dissimilar to that into which the Latin
Church sank deeper amid deeper from the sixth to the fourteenth century;
during which time religion was likewise merely objective and
superstitious—a letter proudly emblazoned and illuminated, but yet a dead
letter that was to be read by its own outward glories without the light
of the Spirit in the mind of the believer. The consequence was too
glaring not to be anticipated, and, if possible, prevented. Without that
spirit in each true believer, whereby we know the spirit of truth and the
spirit of error in all things appertaining to salvation, the consequence
must be—so many men, so many minds! And what was the antidote which the
Priests and Rabbis of this purely objective Faith opposed to this peril?
Why, an objective, outward Infallibility, concerning which, however, the
differences were scarcely less or fewer than those which it was to heal;
an Infallibility which taken literally and unqualified, became the source
of perplexity to the well-disposed, of unbelief to the wavering, and of
scoff and triumph to the common enemy, and which was, therefore, to be
qualified and limited, and then it meant so munch and so little that to
men of plain understandings and single hearts it meant nothing at all.
It resided here. No! there. No! but in a third subject. Nay! neither
here, nor there, nor in the third, but in all three conjointly!
But even this failed to satisfy; and what was the final resource—the
doctrine of those who would not be called a Protestant Church, but in
which doctrine the Fathers of Protestantism in England would have found
little other fault, than that it might be affirmed as truly of the
decisions of any other bishop as of the Bishop of Rome? The final
resource was to restore what ought never to have been removed—the
correspondent subjective, that is, the assent and confirmation of the
Spirit promised to all true believers, as proved and manifested in the
reception of such decision by the Church Universal in all its rightful
members.
I comprise and conclude the sum of my conviction in this one sentence.
Revealed religion (and I know of no religion not revealed) is in its
highest contemplation the unity, that is, the identity or co-inherence,
of subjective and objective. It is in itself, and irrelatively at once
inward life and truth, and outward fact and luminary. But as all power
manifests itself in the harmony of correspondent opposites, each
supposing and supporting the other; so has religion its objective, or
historic and ecclesiastical pole and its subjective, or spiritual and
individual pole. In the miracles and miraculous parts of religion—both
in the first communication of Divine truths, and in the promulgation of
the truths thus communicated—we have the union of the two, that is, the
subjective and supernatural displayed objectively—outwardly and
phenomenally—_as_ subjective and supernatural.
Lastly, in the Scriptures, as far as they are not included in the above
as miracles, and in the mind of the believing and regenerate reader and
meditater, there is proved to us the reciprocity or reciprocation of the
spirit as subjective and objective, which in conformity with the scheme
proposed by me, in aid of distinct conception and easy recollection, I
have named the Indifference. What I mean by this, a familiar
acquaintance with the more popular parts of Luther’s works, especially
his “Commentaries,” and the delightful volume of his “Table Talk,” would
interpret for me better than I can do for myself. But I do my best, when
I say that no Christian probationer, who is earnestly working out his
salvation, and experiences the conflict of the spirit with the evil and
the infirmity within him and around him, can find his own state brought
before him, and, as it were, antedated, in writings reverend even for
their antiquity and enduring permanence, and far more and more abundantly
consecrated by the reverence, love, and grateful testimonies of good men,
through the long succession of ages, in every generation, and under all
states of minds and circumstances of fortune, that no man, I say, can
recognise his own inward experiences in such writings, and not find an
objectiveness, a confirming and assuring outwardness, and all the main
characters of reality reflected therefrom on the spirit, working in
himself and in his own thoughts, emotions, and aspirations, warring
against sin and the motions of sin. The unsubstantial, insulated self
passes away as a stream; but these are the shadows and reflections of the
Rock of Ages, and of the Tree of Life that starts forth from its side.
On the other hand, as much of reality, as much of objective truth, as the
Scriptures communicate to the subjective experiences of the believer, so
much of present life, of living and effective import, do these
experiences give to the letter of these Scriptures. In the one _the
Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit_, that we have received the
_spirit of adoption_; in the other our spirit bears witness to the power
of the Word, that it is indeed the Spirit that proceedeth from God. If
in the holy men thus actuated all imperfection of knowledge, all
participation in the mistakes and limits of their several ages had been
excluded, how could these writings be or become the history and example,
the echo and more lustrous image of the work and warfare of the
sanctifying principle in us? If after all this, and in spite of all
this, some captious litigator should lay hold of a text here or there—St.
Paul’s _cloak left at Troas with Carpus_, or a verse from the Canticles,
and ask, “Of what spiritual use is this?”—the answer is ready:—It proves
to us that nothing can be so trifling, as not to supply an evil heart
with a pretext for unbelief.
Archbishop Leighton has observed that the Church has its extensive and
intensive states, and that they seldom fall together. Certain it is,
that since kings have been her nursing fathers, and queens her nursing
mothers, our theologians seem to act in the spirit of fear rather than in
that of faith; and too often, instead of inquiring after the truth in the
confidence that whatever is truth must be fruitful of good to all who
_are in Him that is true_, they seek with vain precautions to _guard
against the possible inferences_ which perverse and distempered minds may
pretend, whose whole Christianity—do what we will—is and will remain
nothing but a pretence.
You have now my entire mind on this momentous question, the grounds on
which it rests, and the motives which induce me to make it known; and I
now conclude by repeating my request: Correct me, or confirm me.
Farewell.