I have known books written on Tolerance, the proper title of which would
be--intolerant or intolerable books on tolerance. Should not a man who
writes a book expressly to inculcate tolerance learn to treat with respect,
or at least with indulgence, articles of faith which tens of thousands ten
times told of his fellow-subjects or his fellow-creatures believe with all
their souls, and upon the truth of which they rest their tranquillity in
this world, and their hopes of salvation in the next,--those articles being
at least maintainable against his arguments, and most certainly innocent in
themselves?--Is it fitting to run Jesus Christ in a silly parallel with
Socrates--the Being whom thousand millions of intellectual creatures, of
whom I am a humble unit, take to be their Redeemer, with an Athenian
philosopher, of whom we should know nothing except through his
glorification in Plato and Xenophon?--And then to hitch Latimer and
Servetus together! To be sure there was a stake and a fire in each case,
but where the rest of the resemblance is I cannot see. What ground is there
for throwing the odium of Servetus's death upon Calvin alone?--Why, the
mild Melancthon wrote to Calvin[1], expressly to testify his concurrence in
the act, and no doubt he spoke the sense of the German reformers; the Swiss
churches _advised_ the punishment in formal letters, and I rather think
there are letters from the English divines, approving Calvin's conduct!--
Before a man deals out the slang of the day about the great leaders of the
Reformation, he should learn to throw himself back to the age of the
Reformation, when the two great parties in the church were eagerly on the
watch to fasten a charge of heresy on the other. Besides, if ever a poor
fanatic thrust, himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. He was a
rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he could in the way of insult and
ribaldry to provoke the feeling of the Christian church. He called the
Trinity _triceps monstrum et Cerberum quendam tripartitum_, and so on.
Indeed, how should the principle of religious toleration have been
acknowledged at first?--It would require stronger arguments than any which
I have heard as yet, to prove that men in authority have not a right,
involved in an imperative duty, to deter those under their control from
teaching or countenancing doctrines which they believe to be damnable, and
even to punish with death those who violate such prohibition. I am sure
that Bellarmine would have had small difficulty in turning Locke round his
fingers' ends upon this ground. A _right_ to protection I can understand;
but a _right_ to toleration seems to me a contradiction in terms. Some
criterion must in any case be adopted by the state; otherwise it might be
compelled to admit whatever hideous doctrine and practice any man or number
of men may assert to be his or their religion, and an article of his or
their faith. It was the same Pope who commanded the Romanists of England to
separate from the national church, which previously their own consciences
had not dictated, nor the decision of any council,--and who also commanded
them to rebel against Queen Elizabeth, whom they were bound to obey by the
laws of the land; and if the Pope had authority for one, he must have had
it for the other. The only true argument, as it seems to me, apart from
Christianity, for a discriminating toleration is, that _it is of no use_ to
attempt to stop heresy or schism by persecution, unless, perhaps, it be
conducted upon the plan of direct warfare and massacre. You _cannot_
preserve men in the faith by such means, though you may stifle for a while
any open appearance of dissent. The experiment has now been tried, and it
has failed; and that is by a great deal the best argument for the
magistrate against a repetition of it.
I know this,--that if a parcel of fanatic missionaries were to go to
Norway, and were to attempt to disturb the fervent and undoubting
Lutheranism of the fine independent inhabitants of the interior of that
country, I should be right glad to hear that the busy fools had been
quietly shipped off--any where. I don't include the people of the seaports
in my praise of the Norwegians;--I speak of the agricultural population. If
that country could be brought to maintain a million more of inhabitants,
Norway might defy the world; it would be [Greek: autarhk_as] and
impregnable; but it is much under-handed now.
[Footnote 1:
Melancthon's words are:--"Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. Affirmo
etiam vestros magistratus juste fecisse quod hominem blasphemum, re
ordine judicata, _interfecerunt_." 14th Oct. 1554.--ED.]
_January_ 12. 1834.
ARTICLES OF FAITH.--MODERN QUAKERISM.--DEVOTIONAL
SPIRIT.--SECTARIANISM.--ORIGEN.
I have drawn up four or perhaps five articles of faith, by subscription, or
rather by assent, to which I think a large comprehension might take place.
My articles would exclude Unitarians, and I am sorry to say, members of the
church of Rome, but with this difference--that the exclusion of Unitarians
would be necessary and perpetual; that of the members of the church of Rome
depending on each individual's own conscience and intellectual light. What
I mean is this:--that the Romanists hold the faith in Christ,--but
unhappily they also hold certain opinions, partly ceremonial, partly
devotional, partly speculative, which have so fatal a facility of being
degraded into base, corrupting, and even idolatrous practices, that if the
Romanist will make _them_ of the essence of his religion, he must of course
be excluded. As to the Quakers, I hardly know what to say. An article on
the sacraments would exclude them. My doubt is, whether Baptism and the
Eucharist are properly any _parts_ of Christianity, or not rather
Christianity itself;--the one, the initial conversion or light,--the other,
the sustaining and invigorating life;--both together the [Greek: ph_os ahi
z_oh_a], which are Christianity. A line can only begin once; hence, there
can be no repetition of baptism; but a line may be endlessly prolonged by
continued production; hence the sacrament of love and life lasts for ever.
But really there is no knowing what the modern Quakers are, or believe,
excepting this--that they are altogether degenerated from their ancestors
of the seventeenth century. I should call modern Quakerism, so far as I
know it as a scheme of faith, a Socinian Calvinism. Penn himself was a
Sabellian, and seems to have disbelieved even the historical fact of the
life and death of Jesus;--most certainly Jesus of Nazareth was not Penn's
Christ, if he had any. It is amusing to see the modern Quakers appealing
now to history for a confirmation of their tenets and discipline--and by so
doing, in effect abandoning the strong hold of their founders. As an
_imperium in imperio_, I think the original Quakerism a conception worthy
of Lycurgus. Modern Quakerism is like one of those gigantic trees which are
seen in the forests of North America,--apparently flourishing, and
preserving all its greatest stretch and spread of branches; but when you
cut through an enormously thick and gnarled bark, you find the whole inside
hollow and rotten. Modern Quakerism, like such a tree, stands upright by
help of its inveterate bark alone. _Bark_ a Quaker, and he is a poor
creature.
* * * * *
How much the devotional spirit of the church has suffered by that necessary
evil, the Reformation, and the sects which have sprung up subsequently to
it! All our modern prayers seem tongue-tied. We appear to be thinking more
of avoiding an heretical expression or thought than of opening ourselves to
God. We do not pray with that entire, unsuspecting, unfearing, childlike
profusion of feeling, which so beautifully shines forth in Jeremy Taylor
and Andrewes and the writings of some of the older and better saints of the
Romish church, particularly of that remarkable woman, St. Theresa.[1] And
certainly Protestants, in their anxiety to have the historical argument on
their side, have brought down the origin of the Romish errors too late.
Many of them began, no doubt, in the Apostolic age itself;--I say errors--
not heresies, as that dullest of the fathers, Epiphanius, calls them.
Epiphanius is very long and fierce upon the Ebionites. There may have been
real heretics under that name; but I believe that, in the beginning, the
name was, on account of its Hebrew meaning, given to, or adopted by, some
poor mistaken men--perhaps of the Nazarene way--who sold all their goods
and lands, and were then obliged to beg. I think it not improbable that
Barnabas was one of these chief mendicants; and that the collection made by
St. Paul was for them. You should read Rhenferd's account of the early
heresies. I think he demonstrates about eight of Epiphanius's heretics to
be mere nicknames given by the Jews to the Christians. Read "Hermas, or the
Shepherd," of the genuineness of which and of the epistle of Barnabas I
have no doubt. It is perfectly orthodox, but full of the most ludicrous
tricks of gnostic fancy--the wish to find the New Testament in the Old.
This gnosis is perceptible in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but kept
exquisitely within the limit of propriety. In the others it is rampant, and
most truly "puffeth up," as St. Paul said of it.
What between the sectarians and the political economists, the English are
denationalized. England I see as a country, but the English nation seems
obliterated. What could redintegrate us again? Must it be another threat of
foreign invasion?
[Footnote 1:
She was a native of Avila in Old Castile, and a Carmelite nun. Theresa
established an order which she called the "Reformed," and which became very
powerful. Her works are divided into ten books, of which her autobiography
forms a remarkable part. She died in 1582, and was canonised by Gregory XV.
in 1622--ED.]
* * * * *
I never can digest the loss of most of Origen's works: he seems to have
been almost the only very great scholar and genius combined amongst the
early Fathers. Jerome was very inferior to him.
_January_ 20. 1834.