conscientiousness sets at defiance the dangers of the system they have
adopted: indeed my own private friendships warrant me in saying so: but
it is not well to lead others into dangerous paths where our own skill
indeed may enable us to walk safely, but where the hindmost, whom we are
not leading by the hand, are in continual hazard of deviating from the
true course; and therefore whilst honouring individual virtues, I
continue to consider the whole system erroneous: one whose tendency is to
create spiritual pride, and lower the standard of Christian benevolence
by restricting to a party that fellowship which should be universal. It
does but substitute the excitement of the crowded church where a popular
preacher charms with all the graces of rhetoric, of the committee room,
of the speakers at Exeter Hall, for the ball room and the theatre; with
this difference, that in the first case the instinct which makes the mind
seek this excitement, is overlooked; the man believes himself performing
a meritorious action, and looks with some contempt on his weaker
brethren, who cannot exist without worldly amusements; on the other he
knows what he is about, and if he be well-intentioned, guards against
excess. It would be wiser therefore to acknowledge the instinct; not bad
in itself, for God implanted it, and if it be denied a due indulgence,
the mind sinks into hopeless imbecility; and not to blame those who seek
other, but innocent means of gratifying it. {122a}
The extracts that I am about to give, from the writings of two men of
note, in that party, distinguished also for their genuine Christian
feeling, will show that they saw the dangers I have pointed out, and were
anxious to guard against them. The following extracts are given in Mr.
Sidney’s “Life of the Rev. Rowland Hill.” {122b}
“I hate dry doctrinal preaching, without warm, affectionate, and
experimental applications. Oh! ’tis most pleasant to love one another
with pure hearts fervently. Love is of God, for ‘God is love.’ The
summit of our happiness must be the perfection of our holiness. By this
blessed grace we have the brightest evidence that we are ‘born of God.’
If we allow that little shades of difference may exist, we ought to ‘love
as brethren,’ and where Christian candour and love are found to reign,
the odious sin of schism, according to its general interpretation, cannot
exist.” “It is no sign that we value the blessings of God, if we can
part with them” (i.e. dear friends) “without regret. That mind is badly
framed that prefers stoical indifference to Christian sensibility, and
though the pain is abundantly more acute where those finer feelings of
the mind are found to exist; yet who deserves the name of a human being
who is without them?” “While a soul within our reach is ignorant of a
Saviour, we must endeavour to win it to Christ. How weary I am of a
great deal of what is called the ‘_religious world_!’ High and Low
Church Sectarianism seems to be the order of the day; we are much more
busy in contending for _parties_ than for _principles_. These evils are
evidences of a lack of genuine Christianity. Oh! when shall that happy
day dawn upon us, when real Christians and Christian ministers of all
denominations shall come nearer to each other.”
The next extracts shall be from the writings of one who was scarcely
appreciated by the world in general, but of whose excellencies I was
enabled to judge, during my residence at Cambridge; Mr. Simeon.
“Religion appears in its true colours when it regulates our conduct in
social life; your religion must be seen, not in the church, or in the
closet only, but in the shop, the family, the field: it must mortify
pride and every other evil passion, and must bring faith into exercise.
Try yourselves by this standard: see what you are as husbands or wives,
parents or children, masters or servants.” {124}
“The self-righteous, self-applauding moralist can spy out the failings
and infirmities of those who profess a stricter system of religion; but
let me ask such an one, ‘Are there not in thee, even in thee, sins
against the Lord thy God?’ Verily if thou wouldst consult thy own
conscience, thou wouldst see little reason, and feel little inclination
too, to cast stones at others. Professors of religion also are but too
guilty of this same fault, being filled with an overweening conceit of
their own excellencies, and a contemptuous disregard of their less
spiritual neighbours. But I would ask the professed follower of Christ,
Are there not sins with thee too as well as with the pharisaic formalist?
Are there not great and crying evils in the religious world, which prove
a stumbling block to those around them? Are there not often found among
professors of religion the same covetous desires, the same fraudulent
practices, the same deviations from truth and honour, as are found in
persons who make no profession? Are there not many whose tempers are so
unsubdued, that they make their whole families a scene of contention and
misery? Yes! Though the accusations which are brought against the whole
body of religious people as ‘hypocrites,’ are a gross calumny, there is
but too much ground for them in the conduct of many.” “Nothing is more
common, and nothing more delusive than a noisy, talkative religion. True
religion is a humble, silent, retired thing; not affecting public notice,
but rather wishing to approve itself to God. It is not in _saying_
‘Lord, Lord!’ but in _doing_ the will of our heavenly Father, that we
shall find acceptance at the last day. Happy would it be if many who
place all their religion in running about and hearing sermons, and
talking of the qualifications of ministers, would attend to this hint,
and endeavour to acquire more of that wisdom which evinces its Divine
origin by the excellence of its fruits.” {126}
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LETTER X.
ON ROMANISM AND CEREMONIAL RELIGION.
I promised that as the completion of my task, I would notice those
differences which have occurred in the bosom of the church itself, even
though they can scarcely be called _sects_; I therefore propose to
conclude my correspondence with a short survey of the above-named, which
I think should rather be viewed as the working out of great principles,
than as parties distinguished by particular creeds or opinions on
abstract subjects. I may run counter to some prejudices, perhaps, in so
doing; but the truth is well worth running a tilt for:—you may sit by as
umpire, and decide when I have done, whether I have carried my spear in a
knightly fashion.
Though I shall not think it necessary, like Racine’s advocate in Les
Plaideurs, to go back to the Assyrians and the Babylonians to illustrate
my proposition, yet I must begin from a very distant period, in order to
make my views thoroughly comprehensible. I must therefore beg you to
notice that the tendency of man’s mind always is, and always has been,
towards the visible and the tangible. The pure abstraction of a
Governing Will without any perceptible presence, has in it something too
remote from the common habits, powers, and feelings of human nature, ever
to be thoroughly embraced by the heart of man; and we find that the Deity
has always condescended so far to the weakness of his creatures, as to
give the imagination some resting place. Thus the patriarch had his
altar of sacrifice, where the fire from heaven marked the present
Deity—and the Israelite had first the pillar of the cloud, and then the
tabernacle, where the mysterious Shechinah dwelt over the mercy seat.
Yet even this indistinct representation of an embodied Deity, did not
satisfy the people: they required a _form_, tangible, visible, and Aaron
yielded to the wish; because he thought it a prudent and allowable
compliance with the weakness of human nature. He was wrong, and was
punished for it; and this transaction we shall find the type and
foreshadowing of every thing that has since happened in the world with
regard to religion. The Almighty gives man just enough to rest his
thoughts upon: it is the fire on the altar, the cloud, the temple, and
last of all _the man_, in whom our devotion may find also an object of
affection: but he requires that we shall not go beyond this. We must not
return to earth, and make for ourselves a worship less spiritual than he
has instituted; on the contrary, he requires us to pierce through the
veil as we advance in knowledge, and discern the spiritual through the
visible. Hence the perpetual denunciations of the prophets against the
Jews for their adherence to forms, which latterly they did adhere to,
instead of giving attention to the purification of their hearts.
Among all but the Israelites, the progress of the tangible was much more
rapid: idolatry, with all its gross rites, had established itself among
_the people_, at any rate, in Egypt, at a very early period; and spread
from that old and luxurious empire, through the more simple states which
sprang up around and from it. The Exodus was a warning from on high,
that there was a Being, unseen and intangible, whose fiat governed all
things: and this lesson was not wholly without fruit: yet still the human
race reverted to the objects of the senses, till, in God’s good time, he
sent his Son: presented a tangible form on which the mind could
dwell—then removed it from the earth, and said, “You may now think on
this, and give your imagination a resting place: this form you shall see
again; but in mean time you must purify your hearts from earthly desires:
that form will only greet your eyes when you have cast off the burthen of
the flesh, and have entered upon a spiritual existence.” The first
Christians remembered and loved the man; his precepts, his example, his
smallest words or actions were recurred to with the fondness of personal
friendship; and this carried Christianity through the first two
centuries; but then this remembrance began to have a character of
abstraction, and again the human heart called for tangibility. Then
came, step by step, gorgeous ceremonies, pictures, representations of the
personal presence and sufferings of the Saviour. The very requirements
of those who quitted the splendid and sensual rites of heathenism for the
faith of Christ, led the Christian doctors to endeavour to replace the
festival of the idol by something analogous in the Christian church: and
thus without well knowing what they were tending to, the heads of the
church yielded one point of spiritualism after another; sought to
captivate and awe the people by impressive ceremonies; and finished by
the sin of Aaron: they set up the image and said, “These be thy Gods, O
Israel! that brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” {131a} For be it
observed here, that Aaron set up this image merely as a tangible
representation of the true Deity; _a help to the devotion of the people_,
who could not worship without seeing something.
This then is Romanism; it is not transubstantiation, nor the mediation of
the Virgin and the Saints, {131b} nor the infallibility of popes and
councils; these are natural consequences indeed, but the distinctive
character of the Romish church is _tangibility_. “There is the actual
flesh,” it says, “there is the representation of the actual human
presence of saints and martyrs; there is the actual man enthroned, who
represents the power of God:” but it might have fifty other ways of
satisfying this restless craving of the human mind, and it would be
equally pernicious in any of these forms. Man’s great struggle has
always been between the animal and the spiritual nature, and when
religion goes one step farther towards tangibility than the Deity himself
has allowed, the animal nature gains strength; and vice and
licentiousness follow as naturally, among the mass of the people, as rain
follows the cloud.
Observe, I do not here deny that many may profess a religion of sense,
and remain spiritually-minded themselves: Heathenism had its Socrates,
its Xenocrates, &c.—Romanism has its Pascal, its Fenelon, and a train of
other great names: but look at the _people_ during that period, and the
account will be very different. When an ignorant man imagines that he
can remove the Divine anger by a sacrifice or a penance, he avoids the
trouble of curbing his passions, and compounds, as he thinks, for
indulgence of the one, by the performance of the other; but when he is
told that purity of life and thought is the only road to Divine favour,
if he sins, he sins at least with some feelings of compunction, some
dread that he may not have it in his power to remove the stain he is
incurring. The preaching of Wesley reformed multitudes, all enthusiastic
as it was; but it would be difficult to find a parallel in the annals of
Romanism. As great a movement of the public mind was made by the
preaching of Peter the Hermit; but how different was the object and the
result! The personal pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, as a mode of
wiping out sin, was undertaken by thousands, who perished miserably, or,
if they lived, came back not better men than they went: under a system of
less tangibility, and a preaching as effective, they might have staid in
their homes, and glorified God by a life such as Christ came to teach and
to exemplify.
It is so much easier to make a pilgrimage, or endure a long fast, than to
subdue and tame the animal nature till it becomes obedient to the
rational will, and seconds instead of resisting its wishes, that it is
not surprising that in all ages a religion of outward observance should
be more popular than one of inward purification. Those even which set
off with the highest pretensions in this way have degenerated, and the
outward and visible form is too often substituted for the inward and
spiritual grace, which it was intended to _represent_ not to _supersede_.
That religion therefore has the best chance of influencing the soul,
which, as far as is possible, renounces outward demonstrations which
human indolence is so glad to rely on, and preaches boldly and
effectually the uselessness of ceremonies, farther than as they tend to
preserve the remembrance of HIM who came to call the world back to
HIMSELF, to trample on the sensual and the animal, and to raise man to
his pristine, or rather, to what is to be his future state. A public
acknowledgment of Christ as our Master and Lord, and a compliance with
his own few and simple ordinances; are all that Christian duty requires,
and nearly as much as Christian prudence will permit. The rest is a
matter of worldly expediency, and should be so regarded.
No doubt rests on my own mind—I leave others to think as they may—that
Episcopacy was the established form of the Church as soon as the
Christian communities began to assume enough of regularity to admit of
any settled order; and I think it a wise form. As far as any institution
can, it secures unity and decency in the church: and as far as any
institution can, that was not positively established by Christ himself,
it possesses, in my mind, the sanction of antiquity. It gives the
concentration of purpose and regularity of effort which is bestowed by
the discipline of an army; for as in an army a detachment acts upon the
same system of tactics, and obeys officers constituted by the same
authority, and thus assists the efforts of the main body, and falls into
rank with it when they meet; so the church, under such a form, may send
detachments to the ends of the earth, who may meet after long years, as
brothers of the same communion, and find that though the individuals have
passed away, others have stepped into their place in the ranks, and are
teaching what their predecessors taught. The benefit of church
discipline, therefore, in my mind is great; but I do not suppose that
salvation depends on it, because God has repeatedly declared that Christ
died _for all_, {135a} and that he is not willing that any should perish;
{135b} consequently he can hardly have made our eternal state dependent
on what no man can accomplish for himself. A person may not have it in
his power to receive baptism from an ordained priest, but he may live as
Christ taught; or, having never heard of Christ even, he may, like the
gentiles, win glory and immortality, {135c} if, having not the law, he be
a law unto himself. I would not receive Christ’s ordinances from the
hands of any but an ordained priest, myself, because if a doubt exist in
my mind, I sin in doing the doubtful thing; but herein I speak only for
myself; let every man do as he is “persuaded in his mind” {136} in
matters of secondary import, as all ceremonial matters must be.
You will now be prepared for my opinion with regard to the late movement
made in the church by the Anglo-Catholics, as they term themselves;
Puseyites, or Newmanites, as they have been termed by others. They have
been thought to have introduced innovations—they have not:—there is not
one of the ceremonies or practices which they have recommended, which was
not very early practised in the church; but it was from the undue
importance attached to these ceremonies, which came to be regarded with
reverence from having been instituted by apostles and martyrs, that the
after growth of Roman superstition sprang up so rankly. I believe the
first promoters of this movement were as remote from actual Romanism as I
am, when they first began it; but when once reason is submitted to any
human dictum, in matters of religion, there is no resting place till we
arrive at the “infallible” guide which the Romish church claims to be.
There alone can the soul which will not think for itself, find a ready
and confident director. Accordingly, we find that some of those very men
who but a few years back exposed the errors of Romanism, have now yielded
themselves blindfold to the guidance of that very church, which, as long
as they allowed themselves to reason, they acknowledged to have departed
from the truth. Yet it is perhaps fortunate for the people generally,
that this declension of its pastors has been as rapid and complete as it
has been:—they were going back towards the sin of Aaron—they were
insisting on ceremonies as necessary to salvation, thus rendering
religion gross and tangible, and the people thus taught would soon have
forgotten what those ceremonies were intended to represent, and have
depended for salvation on what could not avail them in the hour of need:
for the repetition of prayer is not necessarily praying, nor is the
reception of the eucharist necessarily sanctification, though these may
be the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace which
is working in the heart. Once teach a man that _any_ ceremony is
_requisite_ to salvation, and he will soon go a step further by himself,
and think the outward ceremony sufficient without the inward grace. This
indeed is but a necessary corollary; for if the ceremony be requisite to
salvation, then the inward grace working purity of life, avails not
without the ceremony; and thus purity of life is no longer a substantive
virtue; it cannot stand alone; and the prop which it requires being so
very strong, why should not the prop itself be all in all? This will be
the course of ratiocination in the mind of the mass of mankind, whether
avowed or not; and however the promoters of a ceremonial religion may
shrink from such a consequence, it is so certain, as all experience
shows, that they might as well throw a man who cannot swim into the
water, and recommend him not to drown, as give a half instructed man a
ceremony, which he is told is requisite to salvation, and expect that he
will not cling to that, as the more convenient and least difficult
observance; and whilst perfect in complying with every ordinance of the
church, forget that he has overlooked the weightier matters of the
law—judgment, justice, and mercy.
This may sound harsh, but it is true; and I appeal to the calm judgment
even of the excellent Dr. Pusey himself, who has so unintentionally drawn
many into a course from which, haply, he would now gladly draw them back,
whether it be not so? His learning will show him how, through all ages,
the spiritualism taught from heaven, has been counteracted by the visible
and the tangible contrived by man; and in the step from the patriarchal
religion, to the idolatry of Greece and Rome; from Christianity as
preached by Christ and his Apostles, to the gross superstitions of the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, he may see a type of what
would be the consequence of again enforcing a ceremonial religion.
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APPENDIX.
The following are extracts from the “Christianæ Religionis Institutio,”
of Faustus Socinus:
_Q_. Quid igitur de Dei natura, sive essentia, nosse omnino nos debere
statuis?
_R_. Hæc duo in summa. Quod sit et quod unus tantum sit.
* * * * *
_Q_. Verum quid quæso saltem de Spiritu Sancto nunc mihi dicis de quo
isti similiter affirmant eum esse divinam personam, nempe tertiam, et
unum atque eundem numero Deum cum Patre et Filio?
_R_. Nempe illum non esse personam aliquam a Deo cujus est spiritus,
distinctam, sed tantum modo (ut nomen ipsum _Spiritus_, quod flatum et
afflationem, ut sic loquar, significat, docere potest) ipsius Dei vim et
efficaciam quandam, id est eam, quæ secum sanctitatem aliquam afferat.
* * * * *
_Q_. Quid censes de Christi natura sive essentia nobis cognitii esse
necessarium?
_R_. Id, ut antea dixi, sine cujus cognitione voluntas Dei erga nos per
ipsum Christum patefacta, a nobis vel sciri, vel servari nequeat.
_Q_. Quid igitur ex iis quæ ad Christi naturam sive essentiam pertinent,
ejusmodi esse censes?
_R_. Vix quidquam. Nam quædam, quæ ad ipsius Christi personam alioqui
pertinent, et nobis omnino ob prædictam causam cognita esse debent, non
naturalia illi sunt, sed a Deo postmodum ipsi data et concessa, et sic ad
Dei voluntatem sunt referenda, et quidem ad primam quam fecimus ejus
partem, id est ad Dei operationes.
_Q_. Quæ nam sunt ista?
_R_. Divinum imperium quod in nos habet. Rom. xiv. 9.; et suprema illa
majestas. Ephes. i. 20, &c.; qua quidquid usquam est, aut excogitari
potest, præter unam tantum ipsius Dei majestatem longe excellit. 1 Cor.
xv. 27. Phil. ii. 8, 9. Heb. ii. 9. Hæc enim Christo haud naturalia
esse, sed a Deo Patre illi data fuisse, ipsumque ea per et propter mortem
atque obedientiam et resurrectionem suam adeptum esse, apertissime
scriptura testatur.
_Q_. Cur vero hæc de Christo cognoscere omnino debemus?
_R_. Quia, ut Christum divino cultu officiamus vult Deus. Joh. v. 25.
Psal. xlv. 12. Heb. i. 6. Philip. ii. 10.; ejus generis, inquam, cultu
cujus is est, quem ipsi Deo exhibere debemus.
* * * * *
_Q_. Quid de ipsa tamen Christi essentia seu natura statuis?
_R_. De Christi essentia ita statuo, illum esse hominem. Rom. v. 15.;
in virginis utero, et sic sine viri ope, divini spiritus vi conceptum ac
formatum. Matt. i. 20. 23. Luc. i. 35.; indeque genitum, primum quidem
patibilem ac mortalem. 2 Cor. xiii. 4.; donec, scilicet munus sibi a Deo
demandatum hie in terris obivit; deinde vero postquam in cœlum ascendit,
impatibilem et immortalem factum. Rom. vi. 9.
* * * * *
_Q_. Quid enim primum sibi vult, quod innuis hoc quod Christus Dei
filius sit proprius et unigenitus non omnino ad ejus naturam pertinere?
_R._ Divina ista Christi filiatio, eatenus tantum ad ejus naturam aliquo
modo referri potest, quatenus id respicit quod Christus divini Spiritus
vi sine viri ope in virginis utero conceptus et formatus fuit. Nam
hujusce rei causa eum Dei filium vocatum ire, ipsius Dei Angelus ipsimet
virgini, ex qua natus est, prædixit. Luc. i. 35; et quidem consequenter
Dei filium proprium et unigenitum, cum nemo alius hac ratione, et ab ipso
primo ortu Dei films unquam extiterit.
* * * * *
_R_. Quod attinet ad primum testimonium quod habetur (i.e. of
præexistence) Joh. i. 3. Dictio universalis _omnia_ non prorsus
universaliter accipienda est, sed ad subjectam materiam restringenda, ut
scilicet ea tantum omnia complectatur, quæ ad Evangelium pertinent.
_Q_. Sed quid dices, quod in loco isto apud Johannem additur; sine
verbo, id est Deo filio, nihil esse factum?
_R_. Immo cum certum esse videatur, mox sequentia verba _quod factum
est_ (quidquid nonnulli contra sentiant) cum additione ista conjungenda
esse: dicendum potius videtur, voluisse Evangelistam cum ista addidit
indicare se de quibusdam nunquam antea et nova ac mirabili ratione factis
loqui. Nam ad docendum simpliciter se loqui de iis quæ sunt facta nec
semper fuerunt, satis habebat illa verba addere, _et sine ipso factum est
nihil_. Itaque mysterio non videtur carere, quod præterea addit _quod
factum est_; subaudi novum et mirabile, ad mundi ipsius statum pertinens,
&c. &c.