Your assertion that "you cannot believe what you do not understand," is
often quoted by your followers, as a proof of your having emancipated
yourself from the thraldom of tradition, and risen superior to those
prejudices, which early education, and the authority of antiquity have
fastened on the minds of men; and yet when we examine and compare this
assertion with the doctrines you inculcate, it appears evident that you
have not a correct idea of the meaning of your favourite maxim.
This understanding can only be arrived at by the natural faculties of
perception, judgment, and reasoning, and as the truth of the especial
revelations of which you speak, are propositions which cannot be
demonstrated by the use of these faculties; they must, if assented to,
be purely matters of faith, arising from our belief in the general truth
of the christian dispensation.
There is a clear distinction between things which are according to,
above, and contrary to, reason. The first are propositions, the truth of
which may be discovered by the use of the ideas we have acquired from
sensation and reflection. The second are propositions whose truth cannot
be investigated by these means: and the third, such as are inconsistent
and irreconcileable to our clear and distinct ideas.
Thus, were you to tell us, that without other impulse than your own
_will_, you can give mobility to matter, and at your pleasure reduce it
to a quiescent state, we cannot withhold our assent, because we see you
exercising that dominion in the government of your limbs; and yet so far
from understanding the operation of this wonderful power, the mind
cannot form the least idea how the effect is produced. But when we hear
you declare to one set of people "that the law of the spirit of life in
one, is not the law of the spirit of life in his brother; and that each
individual requires a peculiar law to himself;"[67] and to another,
"that this divine law which is written by the finger of God upon the
tablet of our hearts, is the same to every individual;"[68] we know that
these contradictory assertions cannot both be true; and must withhold
our belief when you declare "that you dare not speak at random,
otherwise you should show that you departed from God's illuminating
spirit;" because our reason will never permit us to believe that such
inconsistencies can proceed from the illuminations of infinite wisdom.
Footnote 67:
Philadelphia Sermons, page 51.
Footnote 68:
New York Sermons, page 124.
"Reason," (says Locke,) "is natural revelation, whereby the eternal
Father of Light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind
that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their
natural faculties. _Revelation_ is natural reason, enlarged by a new set
of discoveries, communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches
the truth of, by the testimony and proof it gives that they come from
God." And he rebukes the presumption of those who reduce the measure of
their belief to the narrow limits of their own understanding, and
declares "it is an over-valuing of ourselves, to reduce all to the
narrow measure of our capacities; and to conclude all things impossible
to be done, whose manner of doing exceeds our comprehension. This is to
make our comprehension _infinite_, or God _finite_, when what he can do,
is limited to what we can conceive of it. If you do not understand the
operations of your own finite mind, that thinking thing, within you, do
not deem it strange, that you cannot comprehend the operations of that
eternal, infinite mind, who made and governs all things, and whom the
heaven of heavens cannot contain."
If a Socinian tells me that he cannot assent to any doctrine which is
not on a level with the comprehension of the human understanding, he is
at least intelligible; for he necessarily rejects the doctrine of
inspiration; but when you make the same assertion, and yet declare that
God is incomprehensible to us as rational creatures, and that all the
aids which science and philosophy can give, can never bring man to
believe rightly in God,[69] and that it is by his inward manifestations
only that we can discover the path of our duty; the assertions are
evidently incompatible; and if any deduction can be drawn from them, it
is, that the indications by which alone we are taught aright, we are not
bound to believe.
Footnote 69:
Philadelphia Sermons, pages 51, 294, and 300.
Reduce your argument to a syllogism, and reflect on the result.
_Prop._ I. We cannot believe any thing which the human understanding
cannot comprehend.
_Prop._ II. Science and philosophy, and all the knowledge which man can
derive from his natural faculties, can never bring him to comprehend or
believe rightly in God.
_Conclusion._ As it is impossible for man to believe any thing which the
human understanding cannot comprehend, and he not being able by the aid
of these faculties to comprehend or believe rightly in God, it is
impossible for him to comprehend or believe rightly in God.
Suppose, (and I think it actually the case,) that you do not perceive
the extent to which your assertion leads, and that you intended to
convey the idea that we are not to believe any thing above the limits of
our natural capacities on the testimony of another, and only when the
same is especially revealed to us; then I would ask why you waste so
much time in descanting on them? According to your own rule, none but
those who are favoured with the same especial revelations can believe
you, and to them your preaching is useless.
These are the inconsistencies of those _who bow the knee to the image of
the Baal of the present day_; who, neglecting the exhortation "not to
think more highly of themselves than they ought to think; but to think
soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of
faith,"[70] have become wise in their own conceits.
Footnote 70:
Romans, chap. xiv.
If indeed the doctrine is true, that nothing is to be believed as of
divine origin, which cannot be accounted for by that faculty of
comprehending and judging which we derive from nature, the number of
religions must be nearly in proportion to the number of individuals.
What will be clear and evident to the more discerning, will be
unintelligible to the superficial and ignorant, and our unbelief will be
increased in the same ratio in which our intellectual faculties are
diminished.
Look from the hillock on which you stand, at the ascending and
descending grades of human intellect, and contemplate the immeasurable
distance between the minds of a Newton and a Hicks; of a Hicks and an
Esquimaux: you will find the last unable to comprehend truths of which
you possess indubitable evidence, and yourself unable to understand many
of the laws by which the universe is governed, although you may have
before you, the demonstrations by which the great philosopher has proved
their truth.
Indeed after all this boast of regulating the conduct by those facts and
circumstances only which we understand, every observer must perceive,
that under the practical exercise of this principle, even the common
affairs of life would stand still; that we all act on the moral
certainty of the existence and operation of things, the cause or
production of which is beyond our comprehension; and that it is from the
evidence of their actual existence, and not the discovery of the means
of it, that our belief in them is established. And such is the weakness
of that understanding on which you so much rely, that even on subjects
where it can with propriety be exercised, we every day see men believing
and disbelieving propositions under the influence of their interests and
inclinations, and sincerely changing their opinions, with their
situations and circumstances.
"Reason," (says the author[71] of a review of the internal evidence of
the christian religion,) "is undoubtedly our surest guide in all matters
which lie within the narrow circle of her intelligence. On the subject
of revelation her province is only to examine its authority and when
that is once proved, she has no more to do, but to acquiesce in its
doctrines; and is therefore never so ill employed as when she pretends
to accommodate them to her own ideas of rectitude and truth. God, says
this _self sufficient teacher_, is perfectly wise, just, and good; and
what is the inference? That all his dispensations must be conformable to
our notions of perfect wisdom, justice, and goodness: but it should
first be proved, that man is as perfect and as wise as his Creator, or
this consequence will by no means follow; but rather the reverse, that
is, that the dispensations of a perfect and all wise being, must
probably, appear unreasonable, and perhaps unjust, to a being imperfect
and ignorant." And in reply to the objections to the divine origin of
the christian religion, from the apparent incredibility of some of its
doctrines, particularly those concerning the trinity, and atonement for
sin by the sufferings and death of Christ, one of which is asserted to
be contrary to all the principles of human reason, and the other to all
our ideas of divine justice, he says, "No arguments founded on
principles which we cannot comprehend, can possibly disprove a
proposition already proved on principles which we do understand: and
therefore on this subject they ought not to be attended to: that three
beings should be one being, is a proposition which certainly contradicts
reason, that is _our_ reason; but it does not from thence follow that it
cannot be true; for there are many propositions which contradict our
reason, and yet are demonstrably true: one is, the very first principle
of all religion, the being of a God; for that any thing should exist
without a cause, or that any thing should be the cause of its own
existence, are propositions equally contradictory to our reason; yet one
of them must be true, or nothing could ever have existed. In like manner
the overruling grace of the Creator, and the free will of his creatures;
his foreknowledge of future events, and the uncertain contingency of
these events, are to our apprehensions absolute contradictions to each
other; and yet the truth of every one of them is demonstrable from
Scripture, reason, and experience. All these difficulties arise from our
imagining that the mode of existence of all beings must be similar to
our own, that is, that they must all exist in time and space; and hence
proceeds our embarrassment on this subject. We know that no two beings,
with whose mode of existence we are acquainted, can exist at the same
point of time, in the same point of space, and that therefore they
cannot be one: but how far beings whose mode of existence bears no
relation to time or space, may be united, we cannot comprehend; and
therefore the possibility of such an union we cannot positively deny."
And to those who assert that even if these doctrines are true, it is
inconsistent with the justice and goodness of the Creator to require
from them the belief of propositions which contradict, or are above the
understanding which he has bestowed on them, he says, "to this I answer,
that christianity requires no such belief: it has discovered to us many
important truths, with which we were before entirely unacquainted, and
amongst them are these, that three beings are sometimes united in the
divine essence, and that God will accept of the sufferings of Christ as
an atonement for the sins of mankind. These, considered as declarations
of facts only, neither contradict, nor are above the reach of human
reason: the first is a proposition as plain, as that three equilateral
lines compose one triangle; the other as intelligible as that one man
should discharge the debts of another. In what manner this union is
formed, or why God accepts these vicarious punishments, or to what
purposes they may be subservient, it informs us not, because no
information would enable us to comprehend these mysteries, and therefore
it does not require that we should know or believe any thing about them.
The truth of these doctrines must rest entirely on the authority of
those who taught them; but then we should reflect that those were the
same persons who taught us a system of religion more sublime, and of
ethics more perfect, than any which our faculties were ever able to
discover, but which, when discovered, are exactly consonant to our
reason, and that therefore we should not hastily reject those
informations which they have vouchsafed to give us, of which our reason
is not a competent judge. If an able mathematician proves to us the
truth of several propositions by demonstrations which we understand, we
hesitate not on his authority to assent to others, the process of whose
proofs we are not able to follow: why therefore should we refuse that
credit to Christ and his apostles which we think reasonable to give to
one another."
Footnote 71:
Soame Jenyns.
We know that the first preachers of the gospel were generally illiterate
men, and that the first converts were among the unlearned and ignorant;
and it was sufficiently intelligible to them because the practical parts
were then taught; which, if not the only, are certainly the most
essential portion of it. Its intrinsic excellence is perhaps the best
evidence of its divine origin; yet it cannot be denied that proofs of
its authority may sometimes be drawn from the speculative inquiries of
learned and pious men. But a very little reflection must convince us how
little the reasoning of uninformed men can be depended on; and that when
they are so unwise as to habituate their minds to such speculations,
their ignorance must continually involve them in error and
contradictions: and it surely would be prudent in these to pause, before
they reject a revelation which does not accord with their crude notions
of reason and the fitness of things, when they recollect that the
diligent and learned researches of the master minds of such men as
Grotius, Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Paley, have ended in convincing them
of its truth.
There are in the Scriptures, allusions to mysteries which it seems not
given to us to comprehend in this state of being; and, consequently, all
inquiries into them are vain: is it not, therefore, reasonable to
believe, that such is not our proper business, and that our concern is
with those truths only, which have a practical operation on the minds
and conduct of men, and which are clearly revealed: and if we examine
the consequences to many of those who are engaged in these theoretic
inquiries, must we not conclude that they tend little to righteousness,
and less to their own peace.