Footnote 14:
Matthew, XXIII.
Now let us see the use you have made of this passage of Scripture, and
to how many purposes your inventive fancy has applied it. In your
discourse at the meeting house in Germantown,[15] you enter largely into
this subject, but as the passage is too long to be transcribed, I shall
endeavour to give the different inferences you draw from it.
Footnote 15:
See sermon at Germantown, page 92.
First, That from the letter of the Scriptures, every thing suitable to
deceive the people can be taken.
Secondly, That as every thing we read in the Scriptures must necessarily
be received through our outward senses, they are only fit for the
outward creature.
Thirdly, That it was the letter of the Scriptures that led men to the
apostacy.
Fourthly, That all that has ever been written, is nothing but that which
the wisdom of man has devised.
Fifthly, In your discourse at Middletown[16], you say, It is but a
shadow which may do for young beginners; and may point them to the right
thing.
Footnote 16:
Sermons, page 226.
Had the commentators who have preceded you, possessed such fertility of
imagination, their works, voluminous as they are, must have been
multiplied to an extent which it is difficult to conceive. Yet after
all, you appear at some moments to have a view of the true use of
Scripture, and of the meaning of that passage which you have perverted
to so many purposes, although you conclude by one of those strange
involutions of ideas with which your attempts at illustration so often
abound.
You say, "All letter written under the influence of God, points us back
to the place from whence it came, and this is all; because as the letter
never could be written without the spirit which stands above it, the
great first cause of all wisdom and knowledge; therefore, unless by the
letter we are gathered to the spirit, we cannot see the letter aright,
for it is the effect; and when we face the letter we turn our backs upon
the cause, just as a man turns his back upon the sun to see his own
shadow."[17]
Footnote 17:
See sermons, page 100.
Here the sentiment is in itself correct, although the conclusion
attempted to be drawn by the puerile conceit with which the sentence
ends, is in direct opposition to it. The needle points to the pole, and
the careful mariner does not turn his back upon it, but with a steady
eye keeps it constantly in view as the guide by which alone he can be
directed through the trackless ocean: so the Christian pilgrim, with the
gospel in his hand, endeavours to explore his way. The book itself
contains not that for which he is seeking, but it has been in mercy
handed down to him by the inspirations of infinite wisdom, as a landmark
to direct him in the way in which he should walk: it has not only taught
him the nature and efficacy of spiritual worship, but it affords a
standard by which all his thoughts may be tried, and enables him to
distinguish between the wanderings of the imagination and the dictates
of eternal wisdom. If contrary to the Scriptures, he rejects them; and
whatever you may think of the superiority of your two-fold revelations,
and the accuracy of your knowledge of the nature and use of right
reason, no _reasonable_ being who is convinced that the Scriptures were
given to us by divine revelation, can believe in the truth of any thing
which does not accord with them.
Such a tissue of inconsistencies has seldom been brought together--you
say that the Scriptures were written under the inspiration of infinite
wisdom, and also assert that they only proceed from the wisdom of man:
you consider them as the box of Pandora from which the apostacy was
derived, and every thing calculated to deceive us may be taken; and
still continue to recommend them as proper to be read by young beginners
in religion: that they, and every thing else that is received by man
through his outward senses, is suitable only to the outward creature;
and yet you are continually addressing your hearers through these
senses, for the purposes of reproof and spiritual instruction.
That passages of Scripture have often been perverted to purposes far
different from the spirit and original intention of them, must be
admitted by all; and the sources from which these perversions have been
derived it is not difficult to conceive.
It was long before any of the outward professors of Christianity had the
hardihood to question their authority: they knew that the whole
Christian world considered this book as the standard by which their
doctrines were to be tested, and whenever their inclinations, or their
vices, impelled them to actions contrary to the pure and obvious meaning
of gospel ordinances, they sought to veil their aberrations by the
perversion of the book itself. The man of the world found in it so many
restraints upon his ambition and fancied enjoyments, that it is not
surprising that he should be anxious to avail himself of every pretence
to enlarge its boundaries and relax the rigour of his bonds. In this
struggle, many of the priesthood were his faithful coadjutors, for they
too felt the uneasiness of the straightened path prescribed to them, and
that the pure Christian doctrines and principles could afford no field
for the indulgence of their vanity by pompous declamation, or for the
display of a superiority of mind by subtile disquisition: all was simple
and practical, such as fishermen could teach and herdsmen understand.
Then began that system of mysticising and allegorising the Scriptures, a
practice which accorded so well with the lively and subtle characters of
the modern Greeks, that every priest became a mystagogue, and the pulpit
a chair of theological alchymy, from which men were taught "how to
reduce divinity to the maxims of the laboratory, explain morality by sal
sulphur and mercury, and allegorize the Scripture itself, and the sacred
mysteries thereof, into the Philosopher's Stone."[18]
Footnote 18:
Locke.
Hence the Scriptures became as one of the sibylline books of Paganism,
to be opened by the priests alone, for they only could explain the
oracles of God; and they acted with more consistency than you have done,
by endeavouring to conceal them from the view of the laity; for if they
are indeed such as _you_ have described, and _they_ have strove to make
them, they ought not only to be concealed from the view of young
beginners in religion, but prohibited to all but the initiated.
Thus was the simplicity of the Christian religion deformed, and the
understandings of men subdued by an ambitious priesthood. They knew that
gravity and meekness were the attributes and best ornaments of a gospel
minister, and while pride and the spirit of domination reigned within
them uncontrolled, they sought, by a sanctimonious exterior and affected
humility, to prolong their sway; and we find the most imperious of the
Roman pontiffs, when treading on the necks of kings, subscribing himself
the servant of the servants of God.
I fear you will consider me as presumptuous, yet I must venture to
entreat you to examine the course you have been pursuing; to consider
whether the habit you have acquired of looking for some hidden novelty
in every passage of Scripture, does not prevent you from perceiving its
obvious meaning; and whether the manifest inconsistencies in which this
practice involves you, is not sufficient proof of your being under the
guidance of a different spirit from that which you claim as a director.
I have no disposition to question the uprightness of your motives, but I
am fully persuaded that the applause with which you have been
surrounded, has given an unhappy bias to your mind; and that if it was
under a right direction, you would be enabled to see, that it is not the
letter of the Scripture, but the habit, (in which you so largely
indulge,) of seeking for meanings other than the letter, which has
caused so many false interpretations and divisions among men: that the
letter is intended to teach us our moral and spiritual duties, and
points out with sufficient clearness the way in which we should walk;
and that the nice distinctions and elaborate refinements of the orator,
neither have a tendency to enlighten the understandings nor purify the
hearts of the audience, though they often gratify the vanity of the one
and amuse the imaginations of the other.