CALVINISM ABANDONED.
After the excitement was past, I learned many things from the events
which have been named.
First, I had found that the class of Christians with whom I had been
joined had exploded the old Creeds in favour of another of their
own, which was never given me upon authority, and yet was constantly
slipping out, in the words, _Jesus is Jehovah_. It appeared to me
certain that this would have been denounced as the Sabellian heresy
by Athanasias and his contemporaries. I did not wish to run down
Sabellians, much less to excommunicate them, if they would give me
equality; but I felt it intensely unjust when my adherence to the
Nicene Creed was my real offence, that I should be treated as setting
up some novel wickedness against all Christendom, and slandered
by vague imputations which reached far and far beyond my power of
answering or explaining. Mysterious aspersions were made even against
my moral[1] character, and were alleged to me as additional reasons
for refusing communion with me; and when I demanded a tribunal, and
that my accuser would meet me face to face, all inquiry was refused,
on the plea that it was needless and undesirable. I had much reason to
believe that a very small number of persons had constituted themselves
my judges, and used against me all the airs of the Universal Church;
the many lending themselves easily to swell the cry of heresy, when
they have little personal acquaintance with the party attacked.
Moreover, when I was being condemned as in error, I in vain asked
to be told what was the truth. "I accept the Scripture: that is not
enough. I accept the Nicene Creed: that is not enough. Give me then
your formula: where, what is it?" But no! those who thought it their
duty to condemn me, disclaimed the pretensions of "making a Creed"
when I asked for one. They reprobated my interpretation of Scripture
as against that of the whole Church, but would not undertake to
expound that of the Church. I felt convinced, that they could not have
agreed themselves as to what was right: all that they could agree upon
was, that I was wrong. Could I have borne to recriminate, I believed
that I could have forced one of them to condemn another; but, oh! was
divine truth sent us for discord and for condemnation? I sickened at
the idea of a Church Tribunal, where none has any authority to judge,
and yet to my extreme embarrassment I saw that no Church can safely
dispense with judicial forms and other worldly apparatus for defending
the reputation of individuals. At least, none of the national and less
spiritual institutions would have been so very unequitable towards me.
This idea enlarged itself into another,--_that spirituality is no
adequate security for sound moral discernment_. These alienated
friends did not know they were acting unjustly, cruelly, crookedly, or
they would have hated themselves for it: they thought they were
doing God service. The fervour of their love towards him was probably
greater than mine; yet this did not make them superior to prejudice,
or sharpen their logical faculties to see that they were idolizing
words to which they attached no ideas. On several occasions I had
distinctly perceived how serious alarm I gave by resolutely refusing
to admit any shiftings and shufflings of language. I felt convinced,
that if I would but have contradicted myself two or three times, and
then have added, "That is the mystery of it," I could have passed
as orthodox with many. I had been charged with a proud and vain
determination to pry into divine mysteries, barely because I would not
confess to propositions the meaning of which was to me doubtful,--or
say and unsay in consecutive breaths. It was too clear, that a
doctrine which muddles the understanding perverts also the power of
moral discernment. If I had committed some flagrant sin, they would
have given me a fair and honourable trial; but where they could not
give me a public hearing, nor yet leave me unimpeached, without danger
of (what they called) my infecting the Church, there was nothing left
but to hunt me out unscrupulously.
Unscrupulously! did not this one word characterize _all_ religious
persecution? and then my mind wandered back over the whole melancholy
tale of what is called Christian history. When Archbishop Cranmer
overpowered the reluctance of young Edward VI. to burn to death the
pious and innocent Joan of Kent, who moreover was as mystical and
illogical as heart could wish, was Cranmer not actuated by deep
religious convictions? None question his piety, yet it was an awfully
wicked deed. What shall I say of Calvin, who burned Servetus? Why have
I been so slow to learn, that religion is an impulse which animates
us to execute our moral judgments, but an impulse which may be half
blind? These brethren believe that I may cause the eternal ruin of
others: how hard then is it for them to abide faithfully by the laws
of morality and respect my rights! My rights! They are of course
trampled down for the public good, just as a house is blown up to
stop a conflagration. Such is evidently the theory of all
persecution;--which is essentially founded on _Hatred_. As Aristotle
says, "He who is angry, desires to punish somebody; but he who hates,
desires the hated person not even to exist." Hence they cannot endure
to see me face to face. That I may not infect the rest, they desire
my non-existence; by fair means, if fair will succeed; if not, then by
foul. And whence comes this monstrosity into such bosoms? Weakness of
common sense, dread of the common understanding, an insufficient faith
in common morality, are surely the disease: and evidently, nothing so
exasperates this disease as consecrating religious tenets which forbid
the exercise of common sense.
I now began to understand why it was peculiarly for unintelligible
doctrines like Transubstantiation and the Tri-unity that Christians
had committed such execrable wickednesses. Now also for the first
time I understood what had seemed not frightful only, but
preternatural,--the sensualities and cruelties enacted as a part of
religion in many of the old Paganisms. Religion and fanaticism are in
the embryo but one and the same; to purify and elevate them we want a
cultivation of the understanding, without which our moral code may be
indefinitely depraved. Natural kindness and strong sense are aids and
guides, which the most spiritual man cannot afford to despise.
I became conscious that I _had_ despised "mere moral men," as they
were called in the phraseology of my school. They were merged in the
vague appellation of "the world," with sinners of every class; and it
was habitually assumed, if not asserted, that they were necessarily
Pharisaic, because they had not been born again. For some time after I
had misgivings as to my fairness of judgment towards them, I could not
disentangle myself from great bewilderment concerning their state
in the sight of God: for it was an essential part of my Calvinistic
Creed, that (as one of the 39 Articles states it) the very good works
of the unregenerate "undoubtedly have the nature of sin," as indeed
the very nature with which they were born "deserveth God's wrath and
damnation." I began to mourn over the unlovely conduct into which I
had been betrayed by this creed, long before I could thoroughly get
rid of the creed that justified it: and a considerable time had to
elapse, ere my new perceptions shaped themselves distinctly into
the propositions: "Morality is the end. Spirituality is the means:
Religion is the handmaid to Morals: we must be spiritual, in order
that we may be in the highest and truest sense moral." Then at last I
saw, that the deficiency of "mere moral men" is, that their
morality is apt to be too external or merely negative, and therefore
incomplete: that the man who worships a fiend for a God may be in some
sense spiritual, but his spirituality will be a devilish fanaticism,
having nothing in it to admire or approve: that the moral man deserves
approval or love for all the absolute good that he has attained,
though there be a higher good to which he aspires not; and that the
truly and rightly spiritual is he who aims at an indefinitely high
moral excellence, of which GOD is the embodiment to his heart and
soul. If the absolute excellence of morality be denied, there is
nothing for spirituality to aspire after, and nothing in God to
worship. Years before I saw this as clearly as here stated; the
general train of thought was very wholesome, in giving me increased
kindliness of judgment towards the common world of men, who do not
show any religious development. It was pleasant to me to look on
an ordinary face, and see it light up into a smile, and think with
myself: "_there_ is one heart that will judge of me by what I am, and
not by a Procrustean dogma." Nor only so, but I saw that the saints,
without the world, would make a very bad world of it; and that as
ballast is wanted to a ship, so the common and rather low interests
and the homely principles, rules, and ways of feeling, keep the church
from foundering by the intensity of her own gusts.
Some of the above thoughts took a still more definite shape, as
follows. It is clear that A. B. and X. Y. would have behaved towards
me more kindly, more justly, and more wisely, if they had consulted
their excellent strong sense and amiable natures, instead of following
(what they suppose to be) the commands of the word of God. They have
misinterpreted that word: true: but this very thing shows, that one
may go wrong by trusting one's power of interpreting the book,
rather than trusting one's common sense to judge without the book.
It startled me to find, that I had exactly alighted on the Romish
objection to Protestants, that an infallible book is useless, unless
we have an infallible interpreter. But it was not for some time, that,
after twisting the subject in all directions to avoid it, I brought
out the conclusion, that "to go against one's common sense in
obedience to Scripture is a most hazardous proceeding:" for the
"rule of Scripture" means to each of us nothing but his own fallible
interpretation; and to sacrifice common sense to this, is to mutilate
one side of our mind at the command of another side. In the Nicene
age, the Bible was in people's hands, and the Spirit of God surely
was not withheld: yet I had read, in one of the Councils an insane
anathema was passed: "If any one call Jesus God-man, instead of God
and man, let him be accursed." Surely want of common sense, and dread
of natural reason, will be confessed by our highest orthodoxy to have
been the distemper of that day.
* * * * *
In all this I still remained theoretically convinced, that the
contents of the Scriptures, rightly interpreted, were supreme and
perfect truth; indeed, I had for several years accustomed myself to
speak and think as if the Bible were our sole source of all moral
knowledge: nevertheless, there were practically limits, beyond which
I did not, and could not, even attempt to blind my moral sentiment at
the dictation of the Scripture; and this had peculiarly frightened (as
I afterwards found) the first friend who welcomed me from abroad.
I was unable to admit the doctrine of "reprobation," as apparently
taught in the 9th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans;--that "God
hardens in wickedness whomever He pleases, in order that He may show
his long-suffering" in putting off their condemnation to a future
dreadful day: and _especially_, that to all objectors it is a
sufficient confutation--"Nay, but O man, who art thou, that repliest
against God?" I told my friend, that I worshipped in God three great
attributes, all independent,--Power, Goodness, and Wisdom: that in
order to worship Him acceptably, I must discern these _as_ realities
with my inmost heart, and not merely take them for granted on
authority: but that the argument which was here pressed upon me was an
effort to supersede the necessity of my discerning Goodness in God:
it bade me simply to _infer_ Goodness from Power,--that is to say,
establish the doctrine, "Might makes Right;" according to which, I
might unawares worship a devil. Nay, nothing so much distinguished
the spiritual truth of Judaism and Christianity from abominable
heathenism, as this very discernment of God's purity, justice, mercy,
truth, goodness; while the Pagan worshipped mere power, and had no
discernment of moral excellence; but laid down the principle,
that cruelty, impurity, or caprice in a God was to be treated
reverentially, and called by some more decorous name. Hence, I said,
it was undermining the very foundation of Christianity itself,
to require belief of the validity of Rom. ix. 14-24, as my friend
understood it. I acknowledged the difficulty of the passage, and of
the whole argument. I was not prepared with an interpretation; but I
revered St. Paul too much, to believe it possible that he could mean
anything so obviously heathenish, as that first-sight meaning.--My
friend looked grave and anxious; but I did not suspect how deeply I
had shocked him, until many weeks after.
At this very time, moreover, ground was broken in my mind on a new
subject, by opening in a gentleman's library a presentation-copy of a
Unitarian treatise against the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. It was
the first Unitarian book of which I had even seen the outside, and I
handled it with a timid curiosity, as if by stealth, I had only time
to dip into it here and there, and I should have been ashamed to
possess the book; but I carried off enough to suggest important
inquiry. The writer asserted that the Greek word [Greek: aionios],
(secular, or, belonging to the ages,) which we translate _everlasting
and eternal_, is distinctly proved by the Greek translation of the Old
Testament often to mean only _distant time_. Thus in Psalm lxxvi. 5,
"I have considered the years of _ancient_ times:" Isaiah lxiii 11, "He
remembered the days _of old_, Moses and his people;" in which, and
in many similar places, the LXX have [Greek: aionios]. One striking
passage is Exodus xv. 18; ("Jehovah shall reign for ever and ever;")
where the Greek has [Greek: ton aiona kai ex aiona kai eti], which
would mean "for eternity and still longer," if the strict rendering
_eternity_ were enforced. At the same time a suspicion as to
the honesty of our translation presented itself in Micah v. 2, a
controversial text, often used to prove the past eternity of the Son
of God; where the translators give us,--"whose goings forth have been
_from everlasting_," though the Hebrew is the same as they elsewhere
render _from days of old_.
After I had at leisure searched through this new question, I found
that it was impossible to make out any doctrine of a philosophical
eternity in the whole Scriptures. The true Greek word for _eternal_
([Greek: aidios]) occurs twice only: once in Rom. i. 20, as applied
to the divine power, and once in Jude 6, of the fire which has been
manifested against Sodom and Gomorrha. The last instance showed that
allowance must be made for rhetoric; and that fire is called _eternal_
or _unquenchable_, when it so destroys as to leave nothing unburnt.
But on the whole, the very vocabulary of the Greek and Hebrew denoted
that the idea of absolute eternity was unformed. The _hills_ are
called everlasting (secular?), by those who supposed them to have
come into existence two or three thousand years before.--Only in two
passages of the Revelations I could not get over the belief that the
writer's energy was misplaced, if absolute eternity of torment was not
intended: yet it seemed to me unsafe and wrong to found an important
doctrine on a symbolic and confessedly obscure book of prophecy.
Setting this aside, I found no proof of any _eternal_ punishment.
As soon as the load of Scriptural authority was thus taken off from
me, I had a vivid discernment of intolerable moral difficulties
inseparable from the doctrine. First, that every sin is infinite
in ill-desert and in result, _because_ it is committed against an
infinite Being. Thus the fretfulness of a child is an infinite evil!
I was aghast that I could have believed it. Now that it was no longer
laid upon me as a duty to uphold the infinitude of God's retaliation
on sin, I saw that it was an immorality to teach that sin was measured
by anything else than the heart and will of the agent. That a finite
being should deserve infinite punishment, now was manifestly as
incredible as that he should deserve infinite reward,--which I had
never dreamed.--Again, I saw that the current orthodoxy made Satan
eternal conqueror over Christ. In vain does the Son of God come from
heaven and take human flesh and die on the cross. In spite of him, the
devil carries off to hell the vast majority of mankind, in whom, not
misery only, but _Sin_ is triumphant for ever and ever. Thus Christ
not only does not succeed in destroying the works of the devil, but
even aggravates them.--Again: what sort of _gospel_ or glad tidings
had I been holding? Without this revelation no future state at all (I
presumed) could be known. How much better no futurity for any, than
that a few should be eternally in bliss, and the great majority[2]
kept alive for eternal sin as well as eternal misery! My gospel then
was bad tidings, nay, the worst of tidings! In a farther progress of
thought, I asked, would it not have been better that the whole race of
man had never come into existence? Clearly! And thus God was made
out to be unwise in creating them. No _use_ in the punishment was
imaginable, without setting up Fear, instead of Love, as the ruling
principle in the blessed. And what was the moral tendency of the
doctrine? I had never borne to dwell upon it: but I before long
suspected that it promoted malignity and selfishness, and was the real
clue to the cruelties perpetrated under the name of religion. For he
who does dwell on it, must comfort himself under the prospect of his
brethren's eternal misery, by the selfish expectation of personal
blessedness. When I asked whether I had been guilty of this
selfishness, I remembered that I had often mourned, how small a part
in my practical religion the future had ever borne. My heaven and my
hell had been in the present, where my God was near me to smile or to
frown. It had seemed to me a great weakness in my faith, that I never
had any vivid imaginations or strong desires of heavenly glory: yet
now I was glad to observe, that it had at least saved me from getting
so much harm from the wrong side of the doctrine of a future life.
Before I had worked out the objections so fully as here stated, I
freely disclosed my thoughts to the friend last named, and to his
wife, towards whom he encouraged me to exercise the fullest frankness.
I confess, I said nothing about the Unitarian book; for something told
me that I had violated Evangelical decorum in opening it, and that I
could not calculate how it would affect my friend. Certainly no Romish
hierarchy can so successfully exclude heretical books, as social
enactment excludes those of Unitarians from our orthodox circles.
The bookseller dares not to exhibit their books on his counter: all
presume them to be pestilential: no one knows their contents or dares
to inform himself. But to return. My friend's wife entered warmly into
my new views; I have now no doubt that this exceedingly distressed
him, and at length perverted his moral judgment: he himself examined
the texts of the Old Testament, and attempted no answer to them.
After I had left his neighbourhood, I wrote to him three affectionate
letters, and at last got a reply--of vehement accusation. It can now
concern no one to know, how many and deep wounds he planted in me. I
forgave; but all was too instructive to forget.
For some years I rested in the belief that the epithet "_secular_
punishment" either solely denoted punishment in a future age, or else
only of long duration. This evades the horrible idea of eternal and
triumphant Sin, and of infinite retaliation for finite offences.
But still, I found my new creed uneasy, now that I had established
a practice (if not a right) of considering the moral propriety
of punishment. I could not so pare away the vehement words of the
Scripture, as really to enable me to say that I thought transgressors
_deserved_ the fiery infliction. This had been easy, while I measured
their guilt by God's greatness; but when that idea was renounced, how
was I to think that a good-humoured voluptuary deserved to be raised
from the dead in order to be tormented in fire for 100 years? and what
shorter time could be called secular? Or if he was to be destroyed
instantaneously, and "secular" meant only "in a future age," was he
worth the effort of a divine miracle to bring him to life and again
annihilate him? I was not willing to refuse belief to the Scripture on
such grounds; yet I felt disquietude, that my moral sentiment and the
Scripture were no longer in full harmony.
* * * * *
In this period I first discerned the extreme difficulty that there
must essentially be, in applying to the Christian Evidences a
principle, which, many years before, I had abstractedly received as
sound, though it had been a dead letter with me in practice. The Bible
(it seemed) contained two sorts of truth. Concerning one sort, man is
bound to judge: the other sort is necessarily beyond his ken, and
is received only by information from without. The first part of the
statement cannot be denied. It would be monstrous to say that we know
nothing of geography, history, or morals, except by learning them from
the Bible. Geography, history, and other worldly sciences, lie beyond
question. As to morals, I had been exceedingly inconsistent and
wavering in my theory and in its application; but it now glared upon
me, that if man had no independent power of judging, it would have
been venial to think Barabbas more virtuous than Jesus. The hearers of
Christ or Paul could not draw their knowledge of right and wrong from
the New Testament. They had (or needed to have) an inherent power of
discerning that his conduct was holy and his doctrine good. To talk
about the infirmity or depravity of the human conscience is here quite
irrelevant. The conscience of Christ's hearers may have been dim
or twisted, but it was their best guide and only guide, as to the
question, whether to regard him as a holy prophet: so likewise, as
to ourselves, it is evident that we have no guide at all whether
to accept or reject the Bible, if we distrust that inward power of
judging, (whether called common sense, conscience, or the Spirit of
God,)--which is independent of our belief in the Bible. To disparage
the internally vouchsafed power of discerning truth without the Bible
or other authoritative system, is, to endeavour to set up a universal
moral scepticism. He who may not criticize cannot approve.--Well! Let
it be admitted that we discern moral truth by a something within us,
and that then, admiring the truth so glorious in the Scriptures, we
are further led to receive them as the word of God, and therefore to
believe them absolutely in respect to the matters which are beyond our
ken.
But two difficulties could no longer be dissembled: 1. How are we
to draw the line of separation? For instance, would the doctrines
of Reprobation and of lasting Fiery Torture with no benefit to the
sufferers, belong to the moral part, which we freely criticize; or to
the extra-moral part, as to which we passively believe? 2. What is to
be done, if in the parts which indisputably lie open to criticism we
meet with apparent error?--The second question soon became a practical
one with me: but for the reader's convenience I defer it until my
Fourth Period, to which it more naturally belongs: for in this Third
Period I was principally exercised with controversies that do not
vitally touch the _authority_ of the Scripture. Of these the most
important were matters contested between Unitarians and Calvinists.
When I had found how exactly the Nicene Creed summed up all that I
myself gathered from John and Paul concerning the divine nature
of Christ, I naturally referred to this creed, as expressing my
convictions, when any unpleasant inquiry arose. I had recently gained
the acquaintance of the late excellent Dr. Olinthus Gregory, a man of
unimpeached orthodoxy; who met me by the frank avowal, that the
Nicene Creed was "a great mistake." He said, that the Arian and the
Athanasian difference was not very vital; and that the Scriptural
truth lay _beyond_ the Nicene doctrine, which fell short on the
same side as Arianism had done. On the contrary, I had learned of an
intermediate tenet, called Semi-Arianism, which appeared to me more
scriptural than the views of either Athanasius or Arius. Let me
bespeak my reader's patience for a little. Arius was judged by
Athanasius (I was informed) to be erroneous in two points; 1. in
teaching that the Son of God was a creature; _i.e._ that "begotten"
and "made" were two words for the same idea: 2. in teaching, that he
had an origin of existence in time; so that there was a distant period
at which he was not. Of these two Arian tenets, the Nicene Creed
condemned _the former_ only; namely, in the words, "begotten, not
made; being of one substance with the Father." But on _the latter_
question the Creed is silent. Those who accepted the Creed, and hereby
condemned the great error of Arius that the Son was of different
substance from the Father, but nevertheless agreed with Arius in
thinking that the Son had a beginning of existence, were called
Semi-Arians; and were received into communion by Athanasius, in spite
of this disagreement. To me it seemed to be a most unworthy shuffling
with words, to say that the Son _was begotten, but was never
begotten_. The very form of our past participle is invented to
indicate an event in past time. If the Athanasians alleged that the
phrase does not allude to "a coming forth" completed at a definite
time, but indicates a process at no time begun and at no time
complete, their doctrine could not be expressed by our past-perfect
tense _begotten_. When they compared the derivation of the Son of God
from, the Father to the rays of light which ever flow from the natural
sun, and argued that if that sun had been eternal, its emanations
would be co-eternal, they showed that their true doctrine required the
formula--"always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order
to be rebegotten perpetually." They showed a real disbelief in our
English statement "begotten, not made." I overruled the objection,
that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for
it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed
in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing
that Christ was "_not begotten, yet begettive_," roused in me an
unspeakable loathing. Yet surely this would have been Athanasius's
most legitimate form of denying Semi-Arianism. In short, the
Scriptural phrase, _Son of God_, conveyed to us either a literal fact,
or a metaphor. If literal, the Semi-Arians were clearly right, in
saying that sonship implied a beginning of existence. If it was a
metaphor, the Athanasians forfeited all right to press the literal
sense in proof that the Son must be "of the same substance" as the
Father.--Seeing that the Athanasians, in zeal to magnify the Son, had
so confounded their good sense, I was certainly startled to find a
man of Dr. Olinthus Gregory's moral wisdom treat the Nicenists as in
obvious error for not having magnified Christ _enough_. On so many
other sides, however, I met with the new and short creed, "Jesus is
Jehovah," that I began to discern Sabellianism to be the prevalent
view.
A little later, I fell in with a book of an American Professor, Moses
Stuart of Andover, on the subject of the Trinity. Professor Stuart is
a very learned man, and thinks for himself. It was a great novelty to
me, to find him not only deny the orthodoxy of all the Fathers, (which
was little more than Dr. Olinthus Gregory had done,) but avow that
_from the change in speculative philosophy_ it was simply impossible
for any modern to hold the views prevalent in the third and fourth
centuries. Nothing (said he) WAS clearer, than that with us the
essential point in Deity is, to be unoriginated, underived; hence with
us, _a derived God_ is a self-contradiction, and the very sound of the
phrase profane. On the other hand, it is certain that the doctrine of
Athanasius, equally as of Arius, was, that the Father is the underived
or self-existent God, but the Son is the derived subordinate God.
This (argued Stuart) turned upon their belief in the doctrine of
Emanations; but as _we_ hold no such philosophical doctrine, the
religious theory founded on it is necessarily inadmissible. Professor
Stuart then develops his own creed, which appeared to me simple and
undeniable Sabellianism.
That Stuart correctly represented the Fathers was clear enough to
me; but I nevertheless thought that in this respect the Fathers had
honestly made out the doctrine of the Scripture; and I did not at
all approve of setting up a battery of modern speculative philosophy
against Scriptural doctrine. "How are we to know that the doctrine of
Emanations is false? (asked I.) If it is legitimately elicited from
Scripture, it is true."--I refused to yield up my creed at this
summons. Nevertheless, he left a wound upon me: for I now could not
help seeing, that we moderns use the word _God_ in a more limited
sense than any ancient nations did. Hebrews and Greeks alike said
_Gods_, to mean any superhuman beings; hence _derived God_ did not
sound to them absurd; but I could not deny that in good English it is
absurd. This was a very disagreeable discovery: for now, if any one
were to ask me whether I believed in the divinity of Christ, I saw it
would be dishonest to say simply, _Yes_; for the interrogator means to
ask, whether I hold Christ to be the eternal and underived Source of
life; yet if I said _No_, he would care nothing for my professing to
hold the Nicene Creed.
Might not then, after all, Sabellianism be the truth? No: I discerned
too plainly what Gibbon states, that the Sabellian, if consistent, is
only a concealed Ebionite, or us we now say, a Unitarian, Socinian. As
we cannot admit that the Father was slain on the cross, or prayed to
himself in the garden, he who will not allow the Father and the Son to
be separate persons, but only two names for one person, _must divide
the Son of God and Jesus into two persons_, and so fall back on the
very heresy of Socinus which he is struggling to escape.
On the whole, I saw, that however people might call themselves
Trinitarians, yet if, like Stuart and all the Evangelicals in Church
and Dissent, they turn into a dead letter the _generation_ of the Son
of God, and _the procession_ of the Spirit, nothing is possible but
Sabellianism or Tritheism: or, indeed, Ditheism, if the Spirit's
separate personality is not held. The modern creed is alternately
the one or the other, as occasion requires. Sabellians would find
themselves out to be mere Unitarians, if they always remained
Sabellians: but in fact, they are half their lives Ditheists. They do
not _aim_ at consistency; would an upholder of the pseudo-Athanasian
creed desire it? Why, that creed teaches, that the height of orthodoxy
is to contradict oneself and protest that one does not. Now, however,
rose on me the question: Why do I not take the Irish clergyman at his
word, and attack him and others as idolaters and worshippers of three
Gods? It was unseemly and absurd in him to try to force me into
what he must have judged uncharitableness; but it was not the less
incumbent on me to find a reply.
I remembered that in past years I had expressly disowned, as obviously
unscriptural and absurd, prayers to the Holy Spirit, on the ground
that the Spirit is evidently _God in the hearts of the faithful_, and
nothing else: and it did not appear to me that any but a few extreme
and rather fanatical persons could be charged with making the Spirit
a third God or object of distinct worship. On the other hand, I could
not deny that the Son and the Father were thus distinguished to the
mind. So indeed John expressly avowed--"truly our fellowship is with
the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." I myself also had prayed
sometimes to God and sometimes to Christ, alternately and confusedly.
Now, indeed, I was better taught! now I was more logical and
consistent! I had found a triumphant answer to the charge of Ditheism,
in that I believed the Son to be derived from the Father, and not to
be the Unoriginated--No doubt! yet, after all, could I seriously think
that morally and spiritually I was either better or worse for this
discovery? I could not pretend that I was.
This showed me, that if a man of partially unsound and visionary mind
made the angel Gabriel a _fourth person_ in the Godhead, it might
cause no difference whatever in the actings of his spirit The great
question would be, whether he ascribed the same moral perfection
to Gabriel as to the Father. If so, to worship him would be no
degradation to the soul; even if absolute omnipotence were not
attributed, nay, nor a past eternal existence. It thus became clear
to me, that Polytheism _as such_ is not a moral and spiritual, but at
most only an intellectual, error; and that its practical evil consists
in worshipping beings whom we represent to our imaginations as morally
imperfect. Conversely, one who imputes to God sentiments and conduct
which in man he would call capricious or cruel, such a one, even if
he be as monotheistic as a Mussulman, admits into his soul the whole
virus of Idolatry.
Why then did I at all cling to the doctrine of Christ's superior
nature, and not admit it among things indifferent? In obedience to the
Scripture, I did actually affirm, that, as for as creed is concerned,
a man should be admissible into the Church on the bare confession that
_Jesus was the Christ_. Still, I regarded a belief in his superhuman
origin as of first-rate importance, for many reasons, and among
others, owing to its connexion with the doctrine of the Atonement; on
which there is much to be said.
* * * * *
The doctrine which I used to read as a boy, taught that a vast sum of
punishment was due to God for the sins of men. This vast sum was made
up of all the woes due through eternity to the whole human race, or,
as some said, to the elect. Christ on the cross bore this punishment
himself and thereby took it away: thus God is enabled to forgive
without violating justice.--But I early encountered unanswerable
difficulty on this theory, as to the question, whether Christ had
borne the punishment of _all_ or of _some_ only. If of all, is it not
unjust to inflict any of it on any? If of the elect only, what gospel
have you to preach? for then you cannot tell sinners that God has
provided a Saviour for them; for you do not know whether those whom
you address are elect. Finding no way out of this, I abandoned the
fundamental idea of _compensation in quantity_, as untenable; and
rested in the vaguer notion, that God signally showed his abhorrence
of sin, by laying tremendous misery on the Saviour who was to bear
away sin.
I have already narrated, how at Oxford I was embarrassed as to the
forensic propriety of transferring punishment at all. This however
I received as matter of authority, and rested much on the wonderful
exhibition made of the evil of sin, when _such_ a being could be
subjected to preternatural suffering as a vicarious sinbearer. To
this view, a high sense of the personal dignity of Jesus was quite
essential; and therefore I had always felt a great repugnance for Mr.
Belsham, Dr. Priestley, and the Unitarians of that school, though I
had not read a line of their writings.
A more intimate familiarity with St. Paul and an anxious harmonizing
of my very words to the Scripture, led me on into a deviation from the
popular creed, of the full importance of which I was not for some
time aware. I perceived that it is not the _agonies_ of mind or body
endured by Christ, which in the Scriptures are said to take away sin,
but his "death," his "laying down his life," or sometimes even
his _resurrection_. I gradually became convinced, that when his
"suffering," or more especially his "blood," is emphatically spoken
of, nothing is meant but his _violent death_. In the Epistle to the
Hebrews, where the analogy of Sacrifice is so pressed, we see that the
pains which Jesus bore were in order that he might "learn obedience,"
but our redemption is effected by his dying as a voluntary victim: in
which, death by bloodshed, not pain, is the cardinal point. So too
the Paschal lamb (to which, though not properly a sacrifice, the dying
Christ is compared by Paul) was not roasted alive, or otherwise put to
slow torment, but was simply killed. I therefore saw that the doctrine
of "vicarious agonies" was fundamentally unscriptural.
This being fully discerned, I at last became bold to criticize the
popular tenet. What should we think of a judge, who, when a boy had
deserved a stripe which would to him have been a sharp punishment,
laid the very same blow on a strong man, to whom it was a slight
infliction? Clearly this would evade, not satisfy justice. To carry
out the principle, the blow might be laid as well on a giant, an
elephant, or on an inanimate thing. So, to lay our punishment on the
infinite strength of Christ, who (they say) bore in six hours what it
would have taken thousands of millions of men all eternity to bear,
would be a similar evasion.--I farther asked, if we were to fall in
with Pagans, who tortured their victims to death as an atonement, what
idea of God should we think them to form? and what should we reply,
if they said, it gave them a wholesome view of his hatred of sin? A
second time I shuddered at the notions which I had once imbibed as a
part of religion, and then got comfort from the inference, how much
better men of this century are than their creed. Their creed was the
product of ages of cruelty and credulity; and it sufficiently bears
that stamp.
Thus I rested in the Scriptural doctrine, that the _death_ of Christ
is our atonement. To say the same of the death of Paul, was obviously
unscriptural: it was, then, essential to believe the physical nature
of Christ to be different from that of Paul. If otherwise, death was
due to Jesus as the lot of nature: how could such death have anything
to do with our salvation? On this ground the Unitarian doctrine was
utterly untenable: I could see nothing between my own view and a total
renunciation of the _authority of the doctrines_ promulgated by Paul
and John.
Nevertheless, my own view seemed mere and more unmeaning the more
closely it was interrogated. When I ascribed death to Christ, what
did death mean? and what or whom did I suppose to die? Was it man
that died, or God? If man only, how was that wonderful, or how did it
concern us? Besides;--persons die, not natures: a _nature_ is only a
collection of properties: if Christ was one person, all Christ
died. Did, then, God die, and man remain alive! For God to become
non-existent is an unimaginable absurdity. But is this death a mere
change of state, a renunciation of earthly life? Still it remains
unclear how the parting with mere human life could be to one who
possesses divine life either an atonement or a humiliation. Was it not
rather an escape from humiliation, saving only the mode of death?
So severe was this difficulty, that at length I unawares dropt from
Semi-Arianism into pure Arianism, by _so_ distinguishing the Son from
the Father, as to admit the idea that the Son of God had actually
been non-existent in the interval between death and resurrection:
nevertheless, I more and more felt, that _to be able to define my
own notions on such questions had exceedingly little to do with my
spiritual state_. For me it was important and essential to know that
God hated sin, and that God had forgiven my sin: but to know one
particular manifestation of his hatred of sin, or the machinery
by which He had enabled himself to forgive, was of very secondary
importance. When He proclaims to me in his word, that He is forgiving
to all the penitent, it is not for me to reply, that "I cannot believe
that, until I hear how He manages to reconcile such conduct with his
other attributes." Yet, I remembered, this was Bishop Beveridge's
sufficient refutation of Mohammedism, which teaches no atonement.
* * * * *
At the same time great progress had been made in my mind towards the
overthrow of the correlative dogma of the Fall of man and his total
corruption. Probably for years I had been unawares anti-Calvinistic
on this topic. Even at Oxford, I had held that human depravity is
a _fact_, which it is absurd to argue against; a fact, attested by
Thucydides, Polybius, Horace, and Tacitus, almost as strongly as by
St. Paul. Yet in admitting man's total corruption, I interpreted this
of _spiritual_, not of _moral_, perversion: for that there were kindly
and amiable qualities even in the unregenerate, was quite as clear a
fact as any other. Hence in result I did _not_ attribute to man any
great essential depravity, in the popular and moral sense of the word;
and the doctrine amounted only to this, that "_spiritually_, man
is paralyzed, until the grace of God comes freely upon him." How to
reconcile this with the condemnation, and punishment of man for being
unspiritual, I knew not. I saw, and did not dissemble, the difficulty;
but received it as a mystery hereafter to be cleared up.
But it gradually broke upon me, that when Paul said nothing stronger
than heathen moralists had said about human wickedness, it was absurd
to quote his words, any more than theirs, in proof of a _Fall_,--that
is, of a permanent degeneracy induced by the first sin of the first
man: and when I studied the 5th chapter of the Romans, I found it was
_death_, not _corruption_, which Adam was said to have entailed. In
short, I could scarcely find the modern doctrine of the "Fall" any
where in the Bible. I then remembered that Calvin, in his Institutes,
complains that all the Fathers are heterodox on this point; the Greek
Fathers being grievously overweening in their estimate of human power;
while of the Latin Fathers even Augustine is not always up to Calvin's
mark of orthodoxy. This confirmed my rising conviction that the tenet
is of rather recent origin. I afterwards heard, that both it and the
doctrine of compensatory misery were first systematized by Archbishop
Anselm, in the reign of our William Rufus: but I never took the pains
to verify this.
For meanwhile I had been forcibly impressed with the following
thought. Suppose a youth to have been carefully brought up at home,
and every temptation kept out of his way: suppose him to have been in
appearance virtuous, amiable, religious: suppose, farther, that at the
age of twenty-one he goes out into the world, and falls into sin by
the first temptation:--how will a Calvinistic teacher moralize over
such a youth? Will he not say: "Behold a proof of the essential
depravity of human nature! See the affinity of man for sin! How fair
and deceptive was this young man's virtue, while he was sheltered from
temptation; but oh! how rotten has it proved itself!"--Undoubtedly,
the Calvinist would and must so moralize. But it struck me, that if I
substituted the name of _Adam_ for the youth, the argument proved
the primitive corruption of Adam's nature. Adam fell by the first
temptation: what greater proof of a fallen nature have _I_ ever given?
or what is it possible for any one to give?--I thus discerned that
there was _à priori_ impossibility of fixing on myself the imputation
of _degeneracy_, without fixing the same on Adam. In short, Adam
undeniably proved his primitive nature to be frail; so do we all: but
as _he_ was nevertheless not primitively corrupt, why should we call
ourselves so? Frailty, then, is not corruption, and does not prove
degeneracy.
"Original sin" (says one of the 39 Articles) "standeth not in the
following of Adam, _as the Pelagians do vainly talk_," &c. Alas, then!
was I become a Pelagian? certainly I could no longer see that Adam's
first sin affected me more than his second or third, or so much as the
sins of my immediate parents. A father who, for instance, indulges
in furious passions and exciting liquors, may (I suppose) transmit
violent passions to his son. In this sense I could not wholly reject
the possibility of transmitted corruption; but it had nothing to do
with the theological doctrine of the "Federal Headship" of Adam. Not
that I could wholly give up this last doctrine; for I still read it in
the 5th chapter of Romans. But it was clear to me, that whatever that
meant, I could not combine it with the idea of degeneracy, nor could
I find a proof of it in the _fact_ of prevalent wickedness. Thus I
received a shadowy doctrine on mere Scriptural _authority_; it had no
longer any root in my understanding or heart.
Moreover, it was manifest to me that the Calvinistic view is based in
a vain attempt to acquit God of having created a "sinful" being, while
the broad Scriptural fact is, that he did create a being as truly
"liable to sin" as any of us. If that needs no exculpation, how more
does _our_ state need it? Does it not suffice to say, that "every
creature, because he is a creature and not God, must necessarily
be frail?" But Calvin intensely aggravates whatever there is of
difficulty: for he supposes God to have created the most precious
thing on earth in _unstable equilibrium_, so as to tipple over
irrecoverably at the first infinitesimal touch, and with it wreck for
ever the spiritual hopes of all Adam's posterity. Surely all nature
proclaims, that if God planted any spiritual nature at all in man, it
was in _stable equilibrium_, able to right itself when deranged.
Lastly, I saw that the Calvinistic doctrine of human degeneracy
teaches, that God disowns my nature (the only nature I ever had) as
not his work, but the devil's work. He hereby tells me that he is
_not_ my Creator, and he disclaims his right over me, as a father
who disowns a child. To teach this is to teach that I owe him no
obedience, no worship, no trust: to sever the cords that bind the
creature to the Creator, and to make all religion gratuitous and vain.
Thus Calvinism was found by me not only not to be Evangelical, but
not to be logical, in spite of its high logical pretensions, and to
be irreconcilable with any intelligent theory of religion. Of "gloomy
Calvinism" I had often heard people speak with an emphasis,
that annoyed me as highly unjust; for mine had not been a gloomy
religion:--far, very far from it. On the side of eternal punishment,
its theory, no doubt, had been gloomy enough; but human nature has a
notable art of not realizing all the articles of a creed; moreover,
_this_ doctrine is equally held by Arminians. But I was conscious,
that in dropping Calvinism I had lost nothing _Evangelical_: on
the contrary, the gospel which I retained was as spiritual and
deep-hearted as before, only more merciful.
* * * * *
Before this Third Period of my creed was completed, I made my first
acquaintance with a Unitarian. This gentleman showed much sweetness
of mind, largeness of charity, and a timid devoutness which I had not
expected in such a quarter. His mixture of credulity and incredulity
seemed to me capricious, and wholly incoherent. First, as to his
incredulity, or rather, boldness of thought. Eternal punishment was a
notion, which nothing could make him believe, and for which it would
be useless to quote Scripture to him; for the doctrine (he said)
darkened the moral character of God, and produced malignity in man.
That Christ had any higher nature than we all have, was a tenet
essentially inadmissible; first, because it destroyed all moral
benefit from his example and sympathy, and next, because no one has
yet succeeded in even stating the doctrine of the Incarnation without
contradicting himself. If Christ was but one person, one mind, then
that one mind could not be simultaneously finite and infinite, nor
therefore simultaneously God and man. But when I came to hear more
from this same gentleman, I found him to avow that no Trinitarian
could have a higher conception than he of the present power and glory
of Christ. He believed that the man Jesus is at the head of the whole
moral creation of God; that all power in heaven and earth is given to
him: that he will be Judge of all men, and is himself raised above all
judgment. This was to me unimaginable from his point of view. Could
he really think Jesus to be a mere man, and yet believe him to be
sinless? On what did that belief rest? Two texts were quoted in
proof, 1 Pet. ii. 21, and Heb. iv. 15. Of these, the former did not
necessarily mean anything more than that Jesus was unjustly put to
death; and the latter belonged to an Epistle, which my new friend had
already rejected as unapostolic and not of first-rate authority, when
speaking of the Atonement. Indeed, that the Epistle to the Hebrews
is not from the hand of Paul, had very long seemed to me an obvious
certainty,--as long as I had had any delicate feeling of Greek style.
That a human child, born with the nature of other children, and having
to learn wisdom and win virtue through the same process, should grow
up sinless, appeared to me an event so paradoxical, as to need the
most amply decisive proof. Yet what kind of proof was possible?
Neither Apollos, (if he was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrew,)
nor yet Peter, had any power of _attesting_ the sinlessness of Jesus,
as a fact known to themselves personally: they could only learn it by
some preternatural communication, to which, nevertheless, the passages
before us implied no pretension whatever. To me it appeared an
axiom,[3] that if Jesus was in physical origin a mere man, he was,
like myself, a sinful man, and therefore certainly not my Judge,
certainly not an omniscient reader of all hearts; nor on any account
to be bowed down to as Lord. To exercise hope, faith, trust in
him, seemed then an impiety. I did not mean to impute impiety to
Unitarians; still I distinctly believed that English Unitarianism
could never afford me a half hour's resting-place.
Nevertheless, from contact with this excellent person I learned how
much tenderness of spirit a Unitarian may have; and it pleasantly
enlarged my charity, although I continued to feel much repugnance
for his doctrine, and was anxious and constrained in the presence of
Unitarians. From the same collision with him, I gained a fresh insight
into a part of my own mind. I had always regarded the Gospels (at
least the three first) to be to the Epistles nearly as Law to Gospel;
that is, the three gospels dealt chiefly in _precept_, the epistles
in _motives_ which act on the affections. This did not appear to me
dishonourable to the teaching of Christ; for I supposed it to be a
pre-determined development. But I now discovered that there was a
deeper distaste in me for the details of the human life of Christ,
than I was previously conscious of--a distaste which I found out, by
a reaction from the minute interest felt in such details by my new
friend. For several years more, I did not fully understand how and why
this was; viz. that _my religion had always been Pauline_. Christ was
to me the ideal of glorified human nature: but I needed some dimness
in the portrait to give play to my imagination: if drawn too sharply
historical, it sank into something not superhuman, and caused a
revulsion of feeling. As all paintings of the miraculous used to
displease and even disgust me from a boy by the unbelief which they
inspired; so if any one dwelt on the special proofs of tenderness and
love exhibited in certain words or actions of Jesus, it was apt to
call out in me a sense, that from day to day equal kindness might
often be met. The imbecility of preachers, who would dwell on such
words as "Weep not," as if nobody else ever uttered such,--had always
annoyed me. I felt it impossible to obtain a worthy idea of Christ
from studying any of the details reported concerning him. If I
dwelt too much on these, I got a finite object; but I yearned for an
infinite one: hence my preference for John's mysterious Jesus. Thus my
Christ was not the figure accurately painted in the narrative, but one
kindled in my imagination by the allusions and (as it were) poetry of
the New Testament. I did not wish for vivid historical realisation:
relics I could never have valued: pilgrimages to Jerusalem had always
excited in me more of scorn than of sympathy;--and I make no doubt
such was fundamentally Paul's[4] feeling. On the contrary, it began
to appear to me (and I believe not unjustly) that the Unitarian mind
revelled peculiarly in "Christ after the flesh," whom Paul resolved
not to know. Possibly in this circumstance will be found to lie the
strong and the weak points of the Unitarian religious character, as
contrasted with that of the Evangelical, far more truly than in the
doctrine of the Atonement. I can testify that the Atonement may be
dropt out of Pauline religion without affecting its quality; so may
Christ be spiritualized into God, and identified with the Father: but
I suspect that a Pauline faith could not, without much violence and
convulsion, be changed into devout admiration of a clearly drawn
historical character; as though any full and unsurpassable embodiment
of God's moral perfections could be exhibited with ink and pen.
A reviewer, who has since made his name known, has pointed to the
preceding remarks, as indicative of my deficiency in _imagination_ and
my tendency to _romance_. My dear friend is undoubtedly right in the
former point; I am destitute of (creative) poetical imagination: and
as to the latter point, his insight into character is so great, that
I readily believe him to know me better than I know myself,
Nevertheless, I think he has mistaken the nature of the preceding
argument. I am, on the contrary, almost disposed to say, that those
have a tendency to romance who can look at a picture with men flying
into the air, or on an angel with a brass trumpet, and dead men rising
out of their graves with good stout muscles, and _not_ feel that the
picture suggests unbelief. Nor do I confess to romance in my desire
of something _more_ than historical and daily human nature in the
character of Jesus; for all Christendom, between the dates A.D. 100
to A.D. 1850, with the exception of small eccentric coteries, has held
Jesus to be essentially superhuman. Paul and John so taught concerning
him. To believe their doctrine (I agree with my friend) is, in some
sense, a weakness of understanding; but it is a weakness to which
minds of every class have been for ages liable.
* * * * *
Such had been the progress of my mind, towards the end of what I will
call my Third Period. In it the authority of the Scriptures as to
some details (which at length became highly important) had begun to be
questioned; of which I shall proceed to speak: but hitherto this
was quite secondary to the momentous revolution which lay Calvinism
prostrate in my mind, which opened my heart to Unitarians, and, I may
say, to unbelievers; which enlarged all my sympathies, and soon set me
to practise free moral thought, at least as a necessity, if not as
a duty. Yet I held fast an unabated reverence for the moral and
spiritual teaching of the New Testament, and had not the most remote
conception that anything could ever shatter my belief in its great
miracles. In fact, during this period, I many times yearned to proceed
to India, whither my friend Groves had transferred his labours and his
hopes; but I was thwarted by several causes, and was again and again
damped by the fear of bigotry from new quarters. Otherwise, I thought
I could succeed in merging as needless many controversies. In all
the workings of any mind about Tri-unity, Incarnation, Atonement, the
Fall, Resurrection, Immortality, Eternal Punishment, how little had
any of these to do with the inward exercises of my soul towards God!
He was still the same, immutably glorious: not one feature of his
countenance had altered to my gaze, or could alter. This surely was
the God whom Christ came to reveal, and bring us into fellowship with:
this is that, about which Christians ought to have no controversy, but
which they should unitedly, concordantly, themselves enjoy and exhibit
to the heathen. But oh, Christendom! what dost thou believe and teach?
The heathen cry out to thee,--Physician, heal thyself.
[Footnote 1: I afterwards learned that some of those gentlemen
esteemed boldness of thought "a lust of the mind," and as such, an
immorality. This enables them to persuade themselves that they do not
reject a "heretic" for a matter of _opinion_, but for that which they
have a right to call "_immoral_". What immorality was imputed to me, I
was not distinctly informed.]
[Footnote 2: I really thought it needless to quote proof that but
_few_ will be saved, Matth. vii. 14. I know there is a class of
Christians who believe in Universal salvation, and there are others
who disbelieve eternal torment. They must not be angry with me for
refuting the doctrine of other Christians, which they hold to be
false.]
[Footnote 3: In this (second) edition, I have added an entire chapter
expressly on the subject.]
[Footnote 4: The same may probably be said of all the apostles, and
their whole generation. If they had looked on the life of Jesus with
the same tender and human affection as modern Unitarians and pious
Romanists do, the church would have swarmed with _holy coats_ and
other relics in the very first age. The mother of Jesus and her
little establishment would at once have swelled into importance. This
certainly was not the case; which may make it doubtful whether the
other apostles dwelt at all more on the _human personality_, of Jesus
than Paul did. Strikingly different as James is from Paul, he is in
this respect perfectly agreed with him.]