authority of Fathers and Councils? My answer shall be that the Fathers,
ancient and modern, in Councils and out of them, have raised that immense
system of artificial theology by which genuine Christianity is perverted
and in which it is lost. These Fathers are fathers of the worst sort,
such as contrive to keep their children in a perpetual state of infancy,
that they may exercise perpetual and absolute dominion over them. “Quo
magis regnum in illos exerceant pro sua libidine.” I call their theology
artificial, because it is in a multitude of instances conformable neither
to the religion of Nature nor to Gospel Christianity, but often repugnant
to both, though said to be founded on them. I shall have occasion to
mention several such instances in the course of these little essays.
Here I will only observe that if it be hard to conceive how anything so
absurd as the pagan theology stands represented by the Fathers who wrote
against it, and as it really was, could ever gain credit among rational
creatures, it is full as hard to conceive how the artificial theology we
speak of could ever prevail, not only in ages of ignorance, but in the
most enlightened. There is a letter of St. Austin wherein he says that
he was ashamed of himself when he refuted the opinions of the former, and
that he was ashamed of mankind when he considered that such absurdities
were received and defended. The reflections might be retorted on the
saint, since he broached and defended doctrines as unworthy of the
Supreme All-Perfect Being as those which the heathens taught concerning
their fictitious and inferior gods. Is it necessary to quote any other
than that by which we are taught that God has created numbers of men for
no purpose but to damn them? “Quisquis prædestinationis doctrinam
invidia gravat,” says Calvin, “aperte maledicit Deo.” Let us say,
“Quisquis prædestinationis doctrinam asserit, blasphemat”. Let us not
impute such cruel injustice to the all-perfect Being. Let Austin and
Calvin and all those who teach it be answerable for it alone. You may
bring Fathers and Councils as evidences in the cause of artificial
theology, but reason must be the judge; and all I contend for is, that
she should be so in the breast of every Christian that can appeal to her
tribunal.
Will you tell me that even such a private examination of the Christian
system as I propose that every man who is able to make it should make for
himself, is unlawful; and that, if any doubts arise in our minds
concerning religion, we must have recourse for the solution of them to
some of that holy order which was instituted, by God Himself, and which
has been continued by the imposition of hands in every Christian society,
from the Apostles down to the present clergy? My answer shall be shortly
this: it is repugnant to all the ideas of wisdom and goodness to believe
that the universal terms of salvation are knowable by the means of one
order of men alone, and that they continue to be so even after they have
been published to all nations. Some of your directors will tell you that
whilst Christ was on earth the Apostles were the Church; that He was the
Bishop of it; that afterwards the admission of men into this order was
approved, and confirmed by visions and other divine manifestations; and
that these wonderful proofs of God’s interposition at the ordinations and
consecrations of presbyters and bishops lasted even in the time of St.
Cyprian—that is, in the middle of the third century. It is pity that
they lasted no longer, for the honour of the Church, and for the
conviction of those who do not sufficiently reverence the religious
society. It were to be wished, perhaps, that some of the secrets of
electricity were improved enough to be piously and usefully applied to
this purpose. If we beheld a shekinah, or divine presence, like the
flame of a taper, on the heads of those who receive the imposition of
hands, we might believe that they receive the Holy Ghost at the same
time. But as we have no reason to believe what superstitious, credulous,
or lying men (such as Cyprian himself was) reported formerly, that they
might establish the proud pretensions of the clergy, so we have no reason
to believe that five men of this order have any more of the Divine Spirit
in our time, after they are ordained, than they had before. It would be
a farce to provoke laughter, if there was no suspicion of profanation in
it, to see them gravely lay hands on one another, and bid one another
receive the Holy Ghost.
Will you tell me finally, in opposition to what has been said, and that
you may anticipate what remains to be said, that laymen are not only
unauthorised, but quite unequal, without the assistance of divines, to
the task I propose? If you do, I shall make no scruple to tell you, in
return, that laymen may be, if they please, in every respect as fit, and
are in one important respect more fit than divines to go through this
examination, and to judge for themselves upon it. We say that the
Scriptures, concerning the divine authenticity of which all the
professors of Christianity agree, are the sole criterion of Christianity.
You add tradition, concerning which there may be, and there is, much
dispute. We have, then, a certain invariable rule whenever the
Scriptures speak plainly. Whenever they do not speak so, we have this
comfortable assurance—that doctrines which nobody understands are
revealed to nobody, and are therefore improper objects of human inquiry.
We know, too, that if we receive the explanations and commentaries of
these dark sayings from the clergy, we take the greatest part of our
religion from the word of man, not from the Word of God. Tradition,
indeed, however derived, is not to be totally rejected; for if it was,
how came the canon of the Scriptures, even of the Gospels, to be fixed?
How was it conveyed down to us? Traditions of general facts, and general
propositions plain and uniform, may be of some authority and use. But
particular anecdotical traditions, whose original authority is unknown,
or justly suspicious, and that have acquired only an appearance of
generality and notoriety, because they have been frequently and boldly
repeated from age to age, deserve no more regard than doctrines evidently
added to the Scriptures, under pretence of explaining and commenting
them, by men as fallible as ourselves. We may receive the Scriptures,
and be persuaded of their authenticity, on the faith of ecclesiastical
tradition; but it seems to me that we may reject, at the same time, all
the artificial theology which has been raised on these Scriptures by
doctors of the Church, with as much right as they receive the Old
Testament on the authority of Jewish scribes and doctors whilst they
reject the oral law and all rabbinical literature.
He who examines on such principles as these, which are conformable to
truth and reason, may lay aside at once the immense volumes of Fathers
and Councils, of schoolmen, casuists, and controversial writers, which
have perplexed the world so long. Natural religion will be to such a man
no longer intricate, revealed religion will be no longer mysterious, nor
the Word of God equivocal. Clearness and precision are two great
excellences of human laws. How much more should we expect to find them
in the law of God? They have been banished from thence by artificial
theology, and he who is desirous to find them must banish the professors
of it from his councils, instead of consulting them. He must seek for
genuine Christianity with that simplicity of spirit with which it is
taught in the Gospel by Christ Himself. He must do the very reverse of
what has been done by the persons you advise him to consult.
You see that I have said what has been said, on a supposition that,
however obscure theology may be, the Christian religion is extremely
plain, and requires no great learning nor deep meditation to develop it.
But if it was not so plain, if both these were necessary to develop it,
is great learning the monopoly of the clergy since the resurrection of
letters, as a little learning was before that era? Is deep meditation
and justness of reasoning confined to men of that order by a peculiar and
exclusive privilege? In short, and to ask a question which experience
will decide, have these men who boast that they are appointed by God “to
be the interpreters of His secret will, to represent His person, and to
answer in His name, as it were, out of the sanctuary”—have these men, I
say, been able in more than seventeen centuries to establish an uniform
system of revealed religion—for natural religion never wanted their help
among the civil societies of Christians—or even in their own? They do
not seem to have aimed at this desirable end. Divided as they have
always been, they have always studied in order to believe, and to take
upon trust, or to find matter of discourse, or to contradict and confute,
but never to consider impartially nor to use a free judgment. On the
contrary, they who have attempted to use this freedom of judgment have
been constantly and cruelly persecuted by them.
The first steps towards the establishment of artificial theology, which
has passed for Christianity ever since, were enthusiastical. They were
not heretics alone who delighted in wild allegories and the pompous
jargon of mystery; they were the orthodox Fathers of the first ages, they
were the disciples of the Apostles, or the scholars of their disciples;
for the truth of which I may appeal to the epistles and other writings of
these men that are extant—to those of Clemens, of Ignatius, or of
Irenæus, for instance—and to the visions of Hermes, that have so near a
resemblance to the productions of Bunyan.
The next steps of the same kind were rhetorical. They were made by men
who declaimed much and reasoned ill, but who imposed on the imaginations
of others by the heat of their own, by their hyperboles, their
exaggerations, the acrimony of their style, and their violent invectives.
Such were the Chrysostoms, the Jeromes, an Hilarius, a Cyril, and most of
the Fathers.
The last of the steps I shall mention were logical, and these were made
very opportunely and very advantageously for the Church and for
artificial theology. Absurdity in speculation and superstition in
practice had been cultivated so long, and were become so gross, that men
began to see through the veils that had been thrown over them, as
ignorant as those ages were. Then the schoolmen arose. I need not
display their character; it is enough known. This only I will say—that
having very few materials of knowledge and much subtilty of wit they
wrought up systems of fancy on the little they knew, and invented an art,
by the help of Aristotle, not of enlarging, but of puzzling, knowledge
with technical terms, with definitions, distinctions, and syllogisms
merely verbal. They taught what they could not explain, evaded what they
could not answer, and he who had the most skill in this art might put to
silence, when it came into general use, the man who was consciously
certain that he had truth and reason on his side.
The authority of the schools lasted till the resurrection of letters.
But as soon as real knowledge was enlarged, and the conduct of the
understanding better understood, it fell into contempt. The advocates of
artificial theology have had since that time a very hard task. They have
been obliged to defend in the light what was imposed in the dark, and to
acquire knowledge to justify ignorance. They were drawn to it with
reluctance. But learning, that grew up among the laity, and
controversies with one another, made this unavoidable, which was not
eligible on the principles of ecclesiastical policy. They have done with
these new arms all that great parts, great pains, and great zeal could do
under such disadvantages, and we may apply to this order, on this
occasion, “si Pergama dextra,” etc. But their Troy cannot be defended;
irreparable breaches have been made in it. They have improved in
learning and knowledge, but this improvement has been general, and as
remarkable at least among the laity as among the clergy. Besides which
it must be owned that the former have had in this respect a sort of
indirect obligation to the latter; for whilst these men have searched
into antiquity, have improved criticism, and almost exhausted subtilty,
they have furnished so many arms the more to such of the others as do not
submit implicitly to them, but examine and judge for themselves. By
refuting one another, when they differ, they have made it no hard matter
to refute them all when they agree. And I believe there are few books
written to propagate or defend the received notions of artificial
theology which may not be refuted by the books themselves. I conclude,
on the whole, that laymen have, or need to have, no want of the clergy in
examining and analysing the religion they profess.
But I said that they are in one important respect more fit to go through
this examination without the help of divines than with it. A layman who
seeks the truth may fall into error; but as he can have no interest to
deceive himself, so he has none of profession to bias his private
judgment, any more than to engage him to deceive others. Now, the
clergyman lies strongly under this influence in every communion. How,
indeed, should it be otherwise? Theology is become one of those sciences
which Seneca calls “scientiæ in lucrum exeuntes;” and sciences, like arts
whose object is gain, are, in good English, trades. Such theology is,
and men who could make no fortune, except the lowest, in any other, make
often the highest in this; for the proof of which assertion I might
produce some signal instances among my lords the bishops. The
consequence has been uniform; for how ready soever the tradesmen of one
Church are to expose the false wares—that is, the errors and abuses—of
another, they never admit that there are any in their own; and he who
admitted this in some particular instance would be driven out of the
ecclesiastical company as a false brother and one who spoiled the trade.
Thus it comes to pass that new Churches may be established by the
dissensions, but that old ones cannot be reformed by the concurrence, of
the clergy. There is no composition to be made with this order of men.
He who does not believe all they teach in every communion is reputed
nearly as criminal as he who believes no part of it. He who cannot
assent to the Athanasian Creed, of which Archbishop Tillotson said, as I
have heard, that he wished we were well rid, would receive no better
quarter than an atheist from the generality of the clergy. What recourse
now has a man who cannot be thus implicit? Some have run into
scepticism, some into atheism, and, for fear of being imposed on by
others, have imposed on themselves. The way to avoid these extremes is
that which has been chalked out in this introduction. We may think
freely without thinking as licentiously as divines do when they raise a
system of imagination on true foundations, or as sceptics do when they
renounce all knowledge, or as atheists do when they attempt to demolish
the foundations of all religion and reject demonstration. As we think
for ourselves, we may keep our thoughts to ourselves, or communicate them
with a due reserve and in such a manner only as it may be done without
offending the laws of our country and disturbing the public peace.
I cannot conclude my discourse on this occasion better than by putting
you in mind of a passage you quoted to me once, with great applause, from
a sermon of Foster, and to this effect: “Where mystery begins, religion
ends.” The apophthegm pleased me much, and I was glad to hear such a
truth from any pulpit, since it shows an inclination, at least, to purify
Christianity from the leaven of artificial theology, which consists
principally in making things that are very plain mysterious, and in
pretending to make things that are impenetrably mysterious very plain.
If you continue still of the same mind, I shall have no excuse to make to
you for what I have written and shall write. Our opinions coincide. If
you have changed your mind, think again and examine further. You will
find that it is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a
real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows
Nature and Nature’s God—that is, he follows God in His works and in His
Word; nor presumes to go further, by metaphysical and theological
commentaries of his own invention, than the two texts, if I may use this
expression, carry him very evidently. They who have done otherwise, and
have affected to discover, by a supposed science derived from tradition
or taught in the schools, more than they who have not such science can
discover concerning the nature, physical and moral, of the Supreme Being,
and concerning the secrets of His providence, have been either
enthusiasts or knaves, or else of that numerous tribe who reason well
very often, but reason always on some arbitrary supposition.
Much of this character belonged to the heathen divines, and it is in all
its parts peculiarly that of the ancient Fathers and modern doctors of
the Christian Church. The former had reason, but no revelation, to guide
them; and though reason be always one, we cannot wonder that different
prejudices and different tempers of imagination warped it in them on such
subjects as these, and produced all the extravagances of their theology.
The latter had not the excuse of human frailty to make in mitigation of
their presumption. On the contrary, the consideration of this frailty,
inseparable from their nature, aggravated their presumption. They had a
much surer criterion than human reason; they had divine reason and the
Word of God to guide them and to limit their inquiries. How came they to
go beyond this criterion? Many of the first preachers were led into it
because they preached or wrote before there was any such criterion
established, in the acceptance of which they all agreed, because they
preached or wrote, in the meantime, on the faith of tradition and on a
confidence that they were persons extraordinarily gifted. Other reasons
succeeded these. Skill in languages, not the gift of tongues, some
knowledge of the Jewish cabala and some of heathen philosophy, of Plato’s
especially, made them presume to comment, and under that pretence to
enlarge the system of Christianity with as much licence as they could
have taken if the word of man, instead of the Word of God, had been
concerned, and they had commented the civil, not the divine, law. They
did this so copiously that, to give one instance of it, the exposition of
St. Matthew’s Gospel took up ninety homilies, and that of St. John’s
eighty-seven, in the works of Chrysostom; which puts me in mind of a
Puritanical parson who, if I mistake not—for I have never looked into the
folio since I was a boy and condemned sometimes to read in it—made one
hundred and nineteen sermons on the hundred and nineteenth Psalm.
Now all these men, both heathens and Christians, appeared gigantic forms
through the false medium of imagination and habitual prejudice; but were,
in truth, as arrant dwarfs in the knowledge to which they pretended as
you and I and all the sons of Adam. The former, however, deserved some
excuse; the latter none. The former made a very ill use of their reason,
no doubt, when they presume to dogmatise about the divine nature, but
they deceived nobody. What they taught, they taught on their own
authority, which every other man was at liberty to receive or reject as
he approved or disapproved the doctrine. Christians, on the other hand,
made a very ill use of revelation and reason both. Instead of employing
the superior principle to direct and confine the inferior, they employed
it to sanctify all that wild imagination, the passions, and the interests
of the ecclesiastical order suggested. This abuse of revelation was so
scandalous that whilst they were building up a system of religion under
the name of Christianity, every one who sought to signalise himself in
the enterprise—and they were multitudes—dragged the Scriptures to his
opinion by different interpretations, paraphrases, comments. Arius and
Nestorius both pretended that they had it on their sides; Athanasius and
Cyril on theirs. They rendered the Word of God so dubious that it ceased
to be a criterion, and they had recourse to another—to Councils and the
decrees of Councils. He must be very ignorant in ecclesiastical
antiquity who does not know by what intrigues of the contending
factions—for such they were, and of the worst kind—these decrees were
obtained; and yet, an opinion prevailing that the Holy Ghost, the same
Divine Spirit who dictated the Scriptures, presided in these assemblies
and dictated their decrees, their decrees passed for infallible
decisions, and sanctified, little by little, much of the superstition,
the nonsense, and even the blasphemy which the Fathers taught, and all
the usurpations of the Church. This opinion prevailed and influenced the
minds of men so powerfully and so long that Erasmus, who owns in one of
his letters that the writings of Œcolampadius against transubstantiation
seemed sufficient to seduce even the elect (“ut seduci posse videantur
etiam electi”), declares in another that nothing hindered him from
embracing the doctrine of Œcolampadius but the consent of the Church to
the other doctrine (“nisi obstaret consensus Ecclesiæ”). Thus artificial
theology rose on the demolitions, not on the foundations, of
Christianity; was incorporated into it; and became a principal part of
it. How much it becomes a good Christian to distinguish them, in his
private thoughts at least, and how unfit even the greatest, the most
moderate, and the least ambitious of the ecclesiastical order are to
assist us in making this distinction, I have endeavoured to show you by
reason and by example.
It remains, then, that we apply ourselves to the study of the first
philosophy without any other guides than the works and the Word of God.
In natural religion the clergy are unnecessary; in revealed they are
dangerous guides.