What you say about doubtful opinions, alterable modes, rites, and
circumstances in religion, I know none so wedded thereto as
yourselves, For you thus argue: "Whatsoever of such are commended by
the custom of the place we live in, or commanded by superiors, or
made by any circumstance convenient to be done, our Christian
liberty consists in this-that we have leave to do them."
So that, do but call them things indifferent, things that are the
customs of the place we live in, or made by any circumstance
convenient, and a man may not doubt but he hath leave to do them,
let him live at Rome or Constantinople, or amidst the greatest
corruption of worship and government. There are therefore,
doubtless, a third sort of fundamentals, by which you can wrestle
with conviction of conscience, and stifle it-by which you can suit
yourself for every fashion, mode, and way of religion. Here you may
hop from Presbyterianism to a prelatical mode; and if time and
chance should serve you, backwards and forwards again: yea, here you
can make use of several consciences, one for this way now, another
for that anon; now putting out the light of this by a sophistical,
delusive argument. then putting out the other by an argument that
best suits the time. Yea, how oft is the candle of the wicked put
out by such glorious learning as this. Nay, _I_ doubt not but a man
of your principles, were he put upon it, would not stick to count
those you call gospel-positive precepts,
[Footnote: "Latitudinarian." This term is used of a "remarkable
class of divines," who flourished in England about the middle and
towards the close of the seventeenth century. Coleridge, in his
Literary Remains, says that they were generally Platonists, and all
of them admirers of Grotius. "They fell into the mistake of finding
in the Greek philosophy many anticipations of the Christian faith,
which in fact were but its echoes. The inference is as perilous as
inevitable, namely, that even the mysteries of Christianity needed
no revelation, having been previously discovered and set forth by
unaided reason." They are thus characterized by Dr. Wm. R. Williams,
("Miscellanies," p. 196:) "Against infidelity and popery they did
good service in the cause of truth. Their dread of enthusiasm made
them frigid, and their mastery of the ancient philosophy made them
profound. Their doctrines were generally Arrninian. Their notions of
church power were less rigid than those of the rival party, and they
were also more tolerant of difference in opinion. But in their
preaching they laid the whole stress, well-nigh, of their efforts
upon morals, to the neglect of doctrine; and in their theology, they
attributed to human reason a strength and authority which gradually
opened the way to the invasion of the gravest heresies. Of generally
purer character than their opponents, they were also abler
preachers. But while valuable as moral treatises, their sermons were
most defective; for the peculiar doctrines and spirit of the gospel
were evaporated." It cannot be doubted, that a class which included
such men as Henry More, Cudworth, Tillotson, and Burnet, hardly
deserves the wholesale reprobation hurled upon it by Bunyan. That
some of them carried their LIBERALISM to a dangerous extreme, and
that all of them allowed too great latitude of sentiment in
theology, and, by their philosophical speculations, obscured the
simple glory of the gospel, is indeed true; but some who bore this
name were men of unquestionable piety, as well as of eminent genius
and scholarship.]
It is interesting to contrast the mixture of divine truth and human
speculation, and the almost melancholy doubts, exhibited in the
writings of so excellent a man as Cudworth, with the strong and
certain convictions, and the clear, well-defined views of Christian
doctrine of John Bunyan, connected as they were in his case with the
almost exclusive study of the word of God. We learn thereby not to
despise learning and philosophy, but to beware of lowering the
authority and of no value at all in the Christian religion; for now,
even now, you do not stick to say that even the duty of going to God
by Christ is one of these, and such a one as, if absolutely
considered in itself, is neither good nor evil.
How, then, if God should cast you into Turkey, where Mahomet reigns
as lord? it is but reckoning that it is the religion and custom of
the country, and that which is authorized by the power that is
there; wherefore, it is but sticking to your dictates of human
nature, and remembering that coming to God by Christ is a thing of
an indifferent nature in itself, and then for peace' sake and to
sleep in a whole skin, you may comply and do as your superior
commands. Why? because in Turkey are your first sort of fundamentals
all found; there are men that have human nature and the law of
morals written in their hearts; they have also the dictates thereof
written within them, which teach them those you call the eternal
laws of righteousness: wherefore you both would agree in your
essential and immutable differences of good and evil, and differ
only about these positive laws--indifferent things. Yea, and Mahomet
also for the time, because by a custom it is made convenient, might
be now accounted worshipful; and the circumstances that attend his
worship, especially those of them that clash not with the dictates
of your human nature, might also be swallowed down.
Behold you here then, good reader, a glorious Latitudinarian, that
can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel on the hook; or
rather like the weathercock that stands on the steeple.