[1889]
Nemo ergo ex me scire quærat, quod me nescire scio, nisi
forte ut nescire discat.--AUGUSTINUS, _De Civ. Dei_, xii. 7.
[81] The present discussion has arisen out of the use, which has
become general in the last few years, of the terms "Agnostic" and
"Agnosticism."
The people who call themselves "Agnostics" have been charged with
doing so because they have not the courage to declare themselves
"Infidels." It has been insinuated that they have adopted a new name
in order to escape the unpleasantness which attaches to their proper
denomination. To this wholly erroneous imputation, I have replied by
showing that the term "Agnostic" did, as a matter of fact, arise in a
manner which negatives it; and my statement has not been, and cannot
be, refuted. Moreover, speaking for myself, and without impugning the
right of any other person to use the term in another sense, I further
say that Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed,
nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses
absolute faith in the validity of a principle, which is as much
ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways,
but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he
is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can
produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is
what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is
essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as
immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which
men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and
that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in
such inadequately supported propositions. The justification of the
Agnostic principle lies in the success which follows upon its
application, whether in the field of natural, or in that of civil,
history; and in the fact that, so far as these topics are concerned,
no sane man thinks of denying its validity.
Still speaking for myself, I add, that though Agnosticism is not, and
cannot be, a creed, except in so far as its general principle is
concerned; yet that the application of that principle results in the
denial of, or the suspension of judgment concerning, a number of
propositions respecting which our contemporary ecclesiastical
"gnostics" profess entire certainty. And, in so far as these
ecclesiastical persons can be justified in their old-established
custom (which many nowadays think more honoured in the breach than the
observance) of using opprobrious names to those who differ from them,
I fully admit their right to call me and those who think with me
"Infidels"; all I have ventured to urge is that they must not expect
us to speak of ourselves by that title.
The extent of the region of the uncertain, the number of the problems
the investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary
according to the knowledge and the intellectual habits of the
individual Agnostic. I do not very much care to speak of anything as
"unknowable."[82] What I am sure about is that there are many topics
about which I know nothing; and which, so far as I can see, are out of
reach of my faculties. But whether these things are knowable by any
one else is exactly one of those matters which is beyond my knowledge,
though I may have a tolerably strong opinion as to the probabilities
of the case. Relatively to myself, I am quite sure that the region of
uncertainty--the nebulous country in which words play the part of
realities--is far more extensive than I could wish. Materialism and
Idealism; Theism and Atheism; the doctrine of the soul and its
mortality or immortality--appear in the history of philosophy like the
shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally slaying one another and
eternally coming to life again in a metaphysical "Nifelheim." It is
getting on for twenty-five centuries, at least, since mankind began
seriously to give their minds to these topics. Generation after
generation, philosophy has been doomed to roll the stone uphill; and,
just as all the world swore it was at the top, down it has rolled to
the bottom again. All this is written in innumerable books; and he who
will toil through them will discover that the stone is just where it
was when the work began. Hume saw this; Kant saw it; since their time,
more and more eyes have been cleansed of the films which prevented
them from seeing it; until now the weight and number of those who
refuse to be the prey of verbal mystifications has begun to tell in
practical life.
It was inevitable that a conflict should arise between Agnosticism and
Theology; or rather, I ought to say, between Agnosticism and
Ecclesiasticism. For Theology, the science, is one thing; and
Ecclesiasticism, the championship of a foregone conclusion[83] as to
the truth of a particular form of Theology, is another. With
scientific Theology, Agnosticism has no quarrel. On the contrary, the
Agnostic, knowing too well the influence of prejudice and
idiosyncrasy, even on those who desire most earnestly to be impartial,
can wish for nothing more urgently than that the scientific theologian
should not only be at perfect liberty to thresh out the matter in his
own fashion; but that he should, if he can, find flaws in the Agnostic
position; and, even if demonstration is not to be had, that he should
put, in their full force, the grounds of the conclusions he thinks
probable. The scientific theologian admits the Agnostic principle,
however widely his results may differ from those reached by the
majority of Agnostics.
But, as between Agnosticism and Ecclesiasticism, or, as our neighbours
across the Channel call it, Clericalism, there can be neither peace
nor truce. The Cleric asserts that it is morally wrong not to believe
certain propositions, whatever the results of a strict scientific
investigation of the evidence of these propositions. He tells us "that
religious error is, in itself, of an immoral nature."[84] He declares
that he has prejudged certain conclusions, and looks upon those who
show cause for arrest of judgment as emissaries of Satan. It
necessarily follows that, for him, the attainment of faith, not the
ascertainment of truth, is the highest aim of mental life. And, on
careful analysis of the nature of this faith, it will too often be
found to be, not the mystic process of unity with the Divine,
understood by the religious enthusiast; but that which the candid
simplicity of a Sunday scholar once defined it to be. "Faith," said
this unconscious plagiarist of Tertullian, "is the power of saying you
believe things which are incredible."
Now I, and many other Agnostics, believe that faith, in this sense, is
an abomination; and though we do not indulge in the luxury of
self-righteousness so far as to call those who are not of our way of
thinking hard names, we do not feel that the disagreement between
ourselves and those who hold this doctrine is even more moral than
intellectual. It is desirable there should be an end of any mistakes
on this topic. If our clerical opponents were clearly aware of the
real state of the case, there would be an end of the curious delusion,
which often appears between the lines of their writings, that those
whom they are so fond of calling "Infidels" are people who not only
ought to be, but in their hearts are, ashamed of themselves. It would
be discourteous to do more than hint the antipodal opposition of this
pleasant dream of theirs to facts.
The clerics and their lay allies commonly tell us, that if we refuse
to admit that there is good ground for expressing definite convictions
about certain topics, the bonds of human society will dissolve and
mankind lapse into savagery. There are several answers to this
assertion. One is that the bonds of human society were formed without
the aid of their theology; and, in the opinion of not a few competent
judges, have been weakened rather than strengthened by a good deal of
it. Greek science, Greek art, the ethics of old Israel, the social
organisation of old Rome, contrived to come into being, without the
help of any one who believed in a single distinctive article of the
simplest of the Christian creeds. The science, the art, the
jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern
world have grown out of those of Greece and Rome--not by favour of,
but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity,
to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of
this world, were alike despicable.
Again, all that is best in the ethics of the modern world, in so far
as it has not grown out of Greek thought, or Barbarian manhood, is the
direct development of the ethics of old Israel. There is no code of
legislation, ancient or modern, at once so just and so merciful, so
tender to the weak and poor, as the Jewish law; and, if the Gospels
are to be trusted, Jesus of Nazareth himself declared that he taught
nothing but that which lay implicitly, or explicitly, in the religious
and ethical system of his people.
And the scribe said unto him, Of a truth, Teacher, thou hast
well said that he is one; and there is none other but he,
and to love him with all the heart, and with all the
understanding, and with all the strength, and to love his
neighbour as himself, is much more than all whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices. (Mark xii. 32, 33.)
Here is the briefest of summaries of the teaching of the prophets of
Israel of the eighth century; does the Teacher, whose doctrine is thus
set forth in his presence, repudiate the exposition? Nay; we are told,
on the contrary, that Jesus saw that he "answered discreetly," and
replied, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."
So that I think that even if the creeds, from the so-called
"Apostles," to the so-called "Athanasian," were swept into oblivion;
and even if the human race should arrive at the conclusion that,
whether a bishop washes a cup or leaves it unwashed, is not a matter
of the least consequence, it will get on very well. The causes which
have led to the development of morality in mankind, which have guided
or impelled us all the way from the savage to the civilised state,
will not cease to operate because a number of ecclesiastical
hypotheses turn out to be baseless. And, even if the absurd notion
that morality is more the child of speculation than of practical
necessity and inherited instinct, had any foundation; if all the world
is going to thieve, murder, and otherwise misconduct itself as soon as
it discovers that certain portions of ancient history are mythical,
what is the relevance of such arguments to any one who holds by the
Agnostic principle?
Surely, the attempt to cast out Beelzebub by the aid of Beelzebub is a
hopeful procedure as compared to that of preserving morality by the
aid of immorality. For I suppose it is admitted that an Agnostic may
be perfectly sincere, may be competent, and may have studied the
question at issue with as much care as his clerical opponents. But, if
the Agnostic really believes what he says, the "dreadful consequence"
argufier (consistently, I admit, with his own principles) virtually
asks him to abstain from telling the truth, or to say what he believes
to be untrue, because of the supposed injurious consequences to
morality. "Beloved brethren, that we may be spotlessly moral, before
all things let us lie," is the sum total of many an exhortation
addressed to the "Infidel." Now, as I have already pointed out, we
cannot oblige our exhorters. We leave the practical application of the
convenient doctrines of "Reserve" and "Non-natural interpretation" to
those who invented them.
I trust that I have now made amends for any ambiguity, or want of
fulness, in my previous exposition of that which I hold to be the
essence of the Agnostic doctrine. Henceforward, I might hope to hear
no more of the assertion that we are necessarily Materialists,
Idealists, Atheists, Theists, or any other _ists_, if experience had
led me to think that the proved falsity of a statement was any
guarantee against its repetition. And those who appreciate the nature
of our position will see, at once, that when Ecclesiasticism declares
that we ought to believe this, that, and the other, and are very
wicked if we don't, it is impossible for us to give any answer but
this: We have not the slightest objection to believe anything you
like, if you will give us good grounds for belief; but, if you cannot,
we must respectfully refuse, even if that refusal should wreck
mortality and insure our own damnation several times over. We are
quite content to leave that to the decision of the future. The course
of the past has impressed us with the firm conviction that no good
ever comes of falsehood, and we feel warranted in refusing even to
experiment in that direction.
* * * * *
In the course of the present discussion it has been asserted that the
"Sermon on the Mount" and the "Lord's Prayer" furnish a summary and
condensed view of the essentials of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth,
set forth by himself. Now this supposed _Summa_ of Nazarene theology
distinctly affirms the existence of a spiritual world, of a Heaven,
and of a Hell of fire; it teaches the Fatherhood of God and the
malignity of the Devil; it declares the superintending providence of
the former and our need of deliverance from the machinations of the
latter; it affirms the fact of demoniac possession and the power of
casting out devils by the faithful. And from these premises, the
conclusion is drawn, that those Agnostics who deny that there is any
evidence of such a character as to justify certainty, respecting the
existence and the nature of the spiritual world, contradict the
express declarations of Jesus. I have replied to this argumentation by
showing that there is strong reason to doubt the historical accuracy
of the attribution to Jesus of either the "Sermon on the Mount" or the
"Lord's Prayer"; and, therefore, that the conclusion in question is
not warranted, at any rate, on the grounds set forth.
But, whether the Gospels contain trustworthy statements about this and
other alleged historical facts or not, it is quite certain that from
them, taken together with the other books of the New Testament, we may
collect a pretty complete exposition of that theory of the spiritual
world which was held by both Nazarenes and Christians; and which was
undoubtedly supposed by them to be fully sanctioned by Jesus, though
it is just as clear that they did not imagine it contained any
revelation by him of something heretofore unknown. If the
pneumatological doctrine which pervades the whole New Testament is
nowhere systematically stated, it is everywhere assumed. The writers
of the Gospels and of the Acts take it for granted, as a matter of
common knowledge; and it is easy to gather from these sources a series
of propositions, which only need arrangement to form a complete
system.
In this system, Man is considered to be a duality formed of a
spiritual element, the soul; and a corporeal[85] element, the body.
And this duality is repeated in the Universe, which consists of a
corporeal world embraced and interpenetrated by a spiritual world. The
former consists of the earth, as its principal and central
constituent, with the subsidiary sun, planets, and stars. Above the
earth is the air, and below is the watery abyss. Whether the heaven,
which is conceived to be above the air, and the hell in, or below, the
subterranean deeps, are to be taken as corporeal or incorporeal is not
clear. However this may be, the heaven and the air, the earth and the
abyss, are peopled by innumerable beings analogous in nature to the
spiritual element in man, and these spirits are of two kinds, good and
bad. The chief of the good spirits, infinitely superior to all the
others, and their creator, as well as the creator of the corporeal
world and of the bad spirits, is God. His residence is heaven, where
he is surrounded by the ordered hosts of good spirits; his angels, or
messengers, and the executors of his will throughout the universe.
On the other hand, the chief of the bad spirits is Satan, _the_ devil
_par excellence_. He and his company of demons are free to roam
through all parts of the universe, except the heaven. These bad
spirits are far superior to man in power and subtlety; and their whole
energies are devoted to bringing physical and moral evils upon him,
and to thwarting, so far as his power goes, the benevolent intentions
of the Supreme Being. In fact, the souls and bodies of men form both
the theatre and the prize of an incessant warfare between the good and
the evil spirits--the powers of light and the powers of darkness. By
leading Eve astray, Satan brought sin and death upon mankind. As the
gods of the heathen, the demons are the founders and maintainers of
idolatry; as the "powers of the air" they afflict mankind with
pestilence and famine; as "unclean spirits" they cause disease of mind
and body.
The significance of the appearance of Jesus, in the capacity of the
Messiah, or Christ, is the reversal of the satanic work by putting an
end to both sin and death. He announces that the kingdom of God is at
hand, when the "Prince of this world" shall be finally "cast out"
(John xii. 31) from the cosmos, as Jesus, during his earthly career,
cast him out from individuals. Then will Satan and all his devilry,
along with the wicked whom they have seduced to their destruction, be
hurled into the abyss of unquenchable fire--there to endure continual
torture, without a hope of winning pardon from the merciful God, their
Father; or of moving the glorified Messiah to one more act of pitiful
intercession; or even of interrupting, by a momentary sympathy with
their wretchedness, the harmonious psalmody of their brother angels
and men, eternally lapped in bliss unspeakable.
The straitest Protestant, who refuses to admit the existence of any
source of Divine truth, except the Bible, will not deny that every
point of the pneumatological theory here set forth has ample
scriptural warranty. The Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and the
Apocalypse assert the existence of the devil, of his demons and of
Hell, as plainly as they do that of God and his angels and Heaven. It
is plain that the Messianic and the Satanic conceptions of the writers
of these books are the obverse and the reverse of the same
intellectual coinage. If we turn from Scripture to the traditions of
the Fathers and the confessions of the Churches, it will appear that,
in this one particular, at any rate, time has brought about no
important deviation from primitive belief. From Justin onwards, it may
often be a fair question whether God, or the devil, occupies a larger
share of the attention of the Fathers. It is the devil who instigates
the Roman authorities to persecute; the gods and goddesses of paganism
are devils, and idolatry itself is an invention of Satan; if a saint
falls away from grace, it is by the seduction of the demon; if heresy
arises, the devil has suggested it; and some of the Fathers[86] go so
far as to challenge the pagans to a sort of exorcising match, by way
of testing the truth of Christianity. Mediæval Christianity is at one
with patristic, on this head. The masses, the clergy, the theologians,
and the philosophers alike, live and move and have their being in a
world full of demons, in which sorcery and possession are everyday
occurrences. Nor did the Reformation make any difference. Whatever
else Luther assailed, he left the traditional demonology untouched;
nor could any one have entertained a more hearty and uncompromising
belief in the devil, than he and, at a later period, the Calvinistic
fanatics of New England did. Finally, in these last years of the
nineteenth century, the demonological hypotheses of the first century
are, explicitly or implicitly, held and occasionally acted upon by the
immense majority of Christians of all confessions.
Only here and there has the progress of scientific thought, outside
the ecclesiastical world, so far affected Christians, that they and
their teachers fight shy of the demonology of their creed. They are
fain to conceal their real disbelief in one half of Christian doctrine
by judicious silence about it; or by flight to those refuges for the
logically destitute, accommodation or allegory. But the faithful who
fly to allegory in order to escape absurdity resemble nothing so much
as the sheep in the fable who--to save their lives--jumped into the
pit. The allegory pit is too commodious, is ready to swallow up so
much more than one wants to put into it. If the story of the
temptation is an allegory; if the early recognition of Jesus as the
Son of God by the demons is an allegory; if the plain declaration of
the writer of the first Epistle of John (iii. 8), "To this end was the
Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil,"
is allegorical, then the Pauline version of the Fall may be
allegorical, and still more the words of consecration of the
Eucharist, or the promise of the second coming; in fact, there is not
a dogma of ecclesiastical Christianity the scriptural basis of which
may not be whittled away by a similar process.
As to accommodation, let any honest man who can read the New Testament
ask himself whether Jesus and his immediate friends and disciples can
be dishonoured more grossly than by the supposition that they said
and did that which is attributed to them; while, in reality, they
disbelieved in Satan and his demons, in possession and in
exorcism?[87]
An eminent theologian has justly observed that we have no right to
look at the propositions of the Christian faith with one eye open and
the other shut. (Tract 85, p. 29.) It really is not permissible to
see, with one eye, that Jesus is affirmed to declare the personality
and the Fatherhood of God, His loving providence and His accessibility
to prayer; and to shut the other to the no less definite teaching
ascribed to Jesus, in regard to the personality and the misanthropy of
the devil, his malignant watchfulness, and his subjection to
exorcistic formula and rites. Jesus is made to say that the devil "was
a murderer from the beginning" (John viii. 44) by the same authority
as that upon which we depend for his asserted declaration that "God is
a spirit" (John iv. 24).
To those who admit the authority of the famous Vincentian dictum that
the doctrine which has been held "always, everywhere, and by all" is
to be received as authoritative, the demonology must possess a higher
sanction than any other Christian dogma, except, perhaps, those of the
Resurrection and of the Messiahship of Jesus; for it would be
difficult to name any other points of doctrine on which the Nazarene
does not differ from the Christian, and the different historical
stages and contemporary subdivisions of Christianity from one another.
And, if the demonology is accepted, there can be no reason for
rejecting all those miracles in which demons play a part. The Gadarene
story fits into the general scheme of Christianity; and the evidence
for "Legion" and their doings is just as good as any other in the New
Testament for the doctrine which the story illustrates.
It was with the purpose of bringing this great fact into prominence;
of getting people to open both their eyes when they look at
Ecclesiasticism; that I devoted so much space to that miraculous story
which happens to be one of the best types of its class. And I could
not wish for a better justification of the course I have adopted, than
the fact that my heroically consistent adversary has declared his
implicit belief in the Gadarene story and (by necessary consequence)
in the Christian demonology as a whole. It must be obvious, by this
time, that, if the account of the spiritual world given in the New
Testament, professedly on the authority of Jesus, is true, then the
demonological half of that account must be just as true as the other
half. And, therefore, those who question the demonology, or try to
explain it away, deny the truth of what Jesus said, and are, in
ecclesiastical terminology, "Infidels" just as much as those who deny
the spirituality of God. This is as plain as anything can well be, and
the dilemma for my opponent was either to assert that the Gadarene
pig-bedevilment actually occurred, or to write himself down an
"Infidel." As was to be expected, he chose the former alternative; and
I may express my great satisfaction at finding that there is one spot
of common ground on which both he and I stand. So far as I can judge,
we are agreed to state one of the broad issues between the
consequences of agnostic principles (as I draw them), and the
consequences of ecclesiastical dogmatism (as he accepts it), as
follows.
Ecclesiasticism says: The demonology of the Gospels is an essential
part of that account of that spiritual world, the truth of which it
declares to be certified by Jesus.
Agnosticism (_me judice_) says: There is no good evidence of the
existence of a demoniac spiritual world, and much reason for doubting
it.
Hereupon the ecclesiastic may observe: Your doubt means that you
disbelieve Jesus; therefore you are an "Infidel" instead of an
"Agnostic." To which the agnostic may reply: No; for two reasons:
first, because your evidence that Jesus said what you say he said is
worth very little; and secondly, because a man may be an agnostic, in
the sense of admitting he has no positive knowledge, and yet consider
that he has more or less probable ground for accepting any given
hypothesis about the spiritual world. Just as a man may frankly
declare that he has no means of knowing whether the planets generally
are inhabited or not, and yet may think one of the two possible
hypotheses more likely that the other, so he may admit that he has no
means of knowing anything about the spiritual world, and yet may think
one or other of the current views on the subject, to some extent,
probable.
The second answer is so obviously valid that it needs no discussion. I
draw attention to it simply in justice to those agnostics who may
attach greater value that I do to any sort of pneumatological
speculations; and not because I wish to escape the responsibility of
declaring that, whether Jesus sanctioned the demonological part of
Christianity or not, I unhesitatingly reject it. The first answer, on
the other hand, opens up the whole question of the claim of the
biblical and other sources, from which hypotheses concerning the
spiritual world are derived, to be regarded as unimpeachable
historical evidence as to matters of fact.
Now, in respect of the trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives, I was
anxious to get rid of the common assumption that the determination of
the authorship and of the dates of these works is a matter of
fundamental importance. That assumption is based upon the notion that
what contemporary witnesses say must be true, or, at least, has always
a _primâ facie_ claim to be so regarded; so that if the writers of any
of the Gospels were contemporaries of the events (and still more if
they were in the position of eye-witnesses) the miracles they narrate
must be historically true, and, consequently, the demonology which
they involve must be accepted. But the story of the "Translation of
the blessed martyrs Marcellinus and Petrus," and the other
considerations (to which endless additions might have been made from
the Fathers and the mediæval writers) set forth in a preceding essay,
yield, in my judgment, satisfactory proof that, where the miraculous
is concerned, neither considerable intellectual ability, nor undoubted
honesty, nor knowledge of the world, nor proved faithfulness as civil
historians, nor profound piety, on the part of eye-witnesses and
contemporaries, affords any guarantee of the objective truth of their
statements, when we know that a firm belief in the miraculous was
ingrained in their minds, and was the pre-supposition of their
observations and reasonings.
Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demonstrable that we have no
real knowledge of the authorship, or of the date of composition of the
Gospels, as they have come down to us, and that nothing better than
more or less probable guesses can be arrived at on that subject, I
have not cared to expend any space on the question. It will be
admitted, I suppose; that the authors of the works attributed to
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, whoever they may be, are personages
whose capacity and judgment in the narration of ordinary events are
not quite so well certified as those of Eginhard; and we have seen
what the value of Eginhard's evidence is when the miraculous is in
question.
* * * * *
I have been careful to explain that the arguments which I have used in
the course of this discussion are not new; that they are historical
and have nothing to do with what is commonly called science; and that
they are all, to the best of my belief, to be found in the works of
theologians of repute.
The position which I have taken up, that the evidence in favour of
such miracles as those recorded by Eginhard, and consequently of
mediæval demonology, is quite as good as that in favour of such
miracles as the Gadarene, and consequently of Nazarene demonology, is
none of my discovery. Its strength was, wittingly or unwittingly,
suggested, a century and a half ago, by a theological scholar of
eminence; and it has been, if not exactly occupied, yet so fortified
with bastions and redoubts by a living ecclesiastical Vauban, that, in
my judgment, it has been rendered impregnable. In the early part of
the last century, the ecclesiastical mind in this country was much
exercised by the question, not exactly of miracles, the occurrence of
which in biblical times was axiomatic, but by the problem: When did
miracles cease? Anglican divines were quite sure that no miracles had
happened in their day, nor for some time past; they were equally sure
that they happened sixteen or seventeen centuries earlier. And it was
a vital question for them to determine at what point of time, between
this _terminus a quo_ and that _terminus ad quem_, miracles came to an
end.
The Anglicans and the Romanists agreed in the assumption that the
possession of the gift of miracle-working was _primâ facie_ evidence
of the soundness of the faith of the miracle-workers. The supposition
that miraculous powers might be wielded by heretics (though it might
be supported by high authority) led to consequences too frightful to
be entertained by people who were busied in building their dogmatic
house on the sands of early Church history. If, as the Romanists
maintained, an unbroken series of genuine miracles adorned the records
of their Church, throughout the whole of its existence, no Anglican
could lightly venture to accuse them of doctrinal corruption. Hence,
the Anglicans, who indulged in such accusations, were bound to prove
the modern, the mediæval Roman, and the later Patristic miracles
false; and to shut off the wonder-working power from the Church at
the exact point of time when Anglican doctrine ceased and Roman
doctrine began. With a little adjustment--a squeeze here and a pull
there--the Christianity of the first three or four centuries might be
made to fit, or seem to fit, pretty well into the Anglican scheme. So
the miracles, from Justin say to Jerome, might be recognised; while,
in later times, the Church having become "corrupt"--that is to say,
having pursued one and the same line of development further than was
pleasing to Anglicans--its alleged miracles must needs be shams and
impostures.
Under these circumstances, it may be imagined that the establishment
of a scientific frontier between the earlier realm of supposed fact
and the later of asserted delusion, had its difficulties; and torrents
of theological special pleading about the subject flowed from clerical
pens; until that learned and acute Anglican divine, Conyers Middleton,
in his "Free Inquiry," tore the sophistical web they had laboriously
woven to pieces, and demonstrated that the miracles of the patristic
age, early and late, must stand or fall together, inasmuch as the
evidence for the later is just as good as the evidence for the earlier
wonders. If the one set are certified by contemporaneous witnesses of
high repute, so are the other; and, in point of probability, there is
not a pin to choose between the two. That is the solid and
irrefragable, result of Middleton's contribution to the subject. But
the Free Inquirer's freedom had its limits; and he draws a sharp line
of demarcation between the patristic and the New Testament
miracles--on the professed ground that the accounts of the latter,
being inspired, are out of the reach of criticism.
A century later, the question was taken up by another divine,
Middleton's equal in learning and acuteness, and far his superior in
subtlety and dialectic skill; who, though an Anglican, scorned the
name of Protestant; and, while yet a Churchman, made it his business
to parade, with infinite skill, the utter hollowness of the arguments
of those of his brother Churchmen who dreamed that they could be both
Anglicans and Protestants. The argument of the "Essay on the Miracles
recorded in the Ecclesiastical History of the Early Ages"[88] by the
present [1889] Roman Cardinal, but then Anglican Doctor, John Henry
Newman, is compendiously stated by himself in the following passage:--
If the miracles of Church history cannot be defended by the
arguments of Leslie, Lyttleton, Paley, or Douglas, how many
of the Scripture miracles satisfy their conditions? (p. cvii).
And, although the answer is not given in so many words, little doubt
is left on the mind of the reader, that, in the mind of the writer,
it is: None. In fact, this conclusion is one which cannot be resisted,
if the argument in favour of the Scripture miracles is based upon that
which laymen, whether lawyers, or men of science, or historians, or
ordinary men of affairs, call evidence. But there is something really
impressive in the magnificent contempt with which, at times, Dr.
Newman sweeps aside alike those who offer and those who demand such
evidence.
Some infidel authors advise us to accept no miracles which
would not have a verdict in their favour in a court of
justice; that is, they employ against Scripture a weapon
which Protestants would confine to attacks upon the Church;
as if moral and religious questions required legal proof,
and evidence were the test of truth[89] (p. cvii).
"As if evidence were the test of truth"!--although the truth in
question is the occurrence, or the non-occurrence, of certain
phenomena at a certain time and in a certain place. This sudden
revelation of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the
scientific mind is enough to take away the breath of any one
unfamiliar with the clerical organon. As if, one may retort, the
assumption that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a religious
end, in any way alters the fact that they profess to be historical
events, things that actually happened; and, as such, must needs be
exactly those subjects about which evidence is appropriate and legal
proofs (which are such merely because they afford adequate evidence)
may be justly demanded. The Gadarene miracle either happened, or it
did not. Whether the Gadarene "question" is moral or religious, or
not, has nothing to do with the fact that it is a purely historical
question whether the demons said what they are declared to have said,
and the devil-possessed pigs did, or did not, rush over the heights
bounding the Lake of Gennesaret on a certain day of a certain year,
after A.D. 26 and before A.D. 36; for vague and uncertain as New
Testament chronology is, I suppose it may be assumed that the event in
question, if it happened at all, took place during the procuratorship
of Pilate. If that is not a matter about which evidence ought to be
required, and not only legal, but strict scientific proof demanded by
sane men who are asked to believe the story--what is? Is a reasonable
being to be seriously asked to credit statements which, to put the
case gently, are not exactly probable, and on the acceptance or
rejection of which his whole view of life may depend, without asking
for as much "legal" proof as would send an alleged pickpocket to gaol,
or as would suffice to prove the validity of a disputed will?
"Infidel authors" (if, as I am assured, I may answer for them) will
decline to waste time on mere darkenings of counsel of this sort; but
to those Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr. Newman is a truly
formidable antagonist. What, indeed, are they to reply when he puts
the very pertinent question:--
whether persons who not merely question, but prejudge the
Ecclesiastical miracles on the ground of their want of
resemblance, whatever that be, to those contained in
Scripture--as if the Almighty could not do in the Christian
Church what He had not already done at the time of its
foundation, or under the Mosaic Covenant--whether such
reasoners are not siding with the sceptic,
and
whether it is not a happy inconsistency by which they
continue to believe the Scriptures while they reject the
Church[90] (p. liii).