If there be aught _Spiritual_ in Man, the Will must be such.
_If_ there be a Will, there must be a Spirituality in Man.
I suppose both positions granted. The Reader admits the reality of the
power, agency, or mode of Being expressed in the term, Spirit; and the
actual existence of a Will. He sees clearly, that the idea of the
former is necessary to the conceivability of the latter; and that,
_vice versá_, in asserting the _fact_ of the latter he presumes and
instances the truth of the former--just as in our common and received
Systems of Natural Philosophy, the Being of imponderable Matter is
assumed to render the lode-stone intelligible, and the Fact of the
lode-stone adduced to prove the reality of imponderable Matter.
In short, I suppose the reader, whom I now invite to the third and
last division of the work, already disposed to reject for himself and
his human brethren the insidious title of "Nature's noblest _animal_,"
or to retort it as the unconscious irony of the Epicurean poet on the
animalizing tendency of his own philosophy. I suppose him convinced,
that there is more in man than can be rationally referred to the life
of Nature and the mechanism of Organization; that he has a will not
included in this mechanism; and that the Will is in an especial and
pre-eminent sense the spiritual part of our Humanity.
Unless, then, we have some distinct notion of the Will, and some
acquaintance with the prevalent errors respecting the same, an insight
into the nature of Spiritual Religion is scarcely possible; and our
reflections on the particular truths and evidences of a Spiritual
State will remain obscure, perplexed, and unsafe. To place my reader
on this requisite vantage-ground, is the purpose of the following
exposition.
We have begun, as in geometry, with defining our Terms; and we
proceed, like the Geometricians, with stating our POSTULATES; the
difference being, that the postulates of Geometry _no_ man _can_ deny,
those of Moral Science are such as no _good_ man _will_ deny. For it
is _not_ in our power to disclaim our nature, as _sentient_ beings;
but it _is_ in our power to disclaim our nature as _moral_ beings.[65]
It is possible (barely possible, I admit) that a man may have remained
ignorant or unconscious of the Moral Law within him: and a man need
only persist in disobeying the Law of Conscience to _make_ it possible
for himself to deny its existence, or to reject or repel it as a
phantom of Superstition. Were it otherwise, the Creed would stand in
the same relation to Morality as the multiplication table.
This then is the distinction of Moral Philosophy--_not_ that I begin
with one or more _assumptions_: for this is common to _all_ science;
but--that I assume a something, the proof of which no man can _give_
to another, yet every man may _find_ for himself. If any man assert,
that he _can_ not find it, I am _bound_ to disbelieve him. I cannot do
otherwise without unsettling the very foundations of my own moral
nature. For I either find it as an _essential_ of the Humanity
_common_ to him and me: or I have not _found_ it at all, except as an
hypochondriast finds _glass_ legs. If, on the other hand, he _will_
not find it, he excommunicates himself. He forfeits his _personal_
rights, and becomes a _Thing_: that is, one who may rightfully be
_employed_, or _used_ as[66] means to an end, against his will, and
without regard to his interest.
All the significant objections of the Materialist and Necessitarian
are contained in the term, Morality, all the objections of the infidel
in the term, Religion. The very terms, I say, imply a something
_granted_, which the Objection supposes _not_ granted. The term
_presumes_ what the objection denies, and in denying _presumes_ the
contrary. For it is most important to observe, that the reasoners on
_both_ sides commence by taking something for granted, our assent to
which they ask or demand: that is, both set off with an Assumption in
the form of a Postulate. But the Epicurean assumes what according to
himself he neither is nor can be under any _obligation_ to assume, and
demands what he _can_ have no _right_ to demand: for _he_ denies the
reality of _all_ moral Obligation, the existence of _any_ Right. If he
use the _words_, Right and Obligation, he does it deceptively, and
means only Power and Compulsion. To overthrow the Faith in aught
higher or other than Nature and physical Necessity, is the very
purpose of his argument. He desires you only to _take for granted_,
that _all_ reality is _in_cluded in Nature, and he may then safely
defy you to ward off his conclusion--that _nothing_ is _ex_cluded!
But as he cannot morally demand, neither can he rationally expect,
your assent to this premiss: for he cannot be ignorant, that the best
and greatest of men have devoted their lives to the enforcement of the
contrary, that the vast majority of the human race in all ages and in
all nations have believed in the contrary; and there is not a language
on earth, in which he could argue, for ten minutes, in support of his
scheme, without sliding into words and phrases, that imply the
contrary. It has been said, that the Arabic has a thousand names for a
lion; but this would be a trifle compared with the number of
superfluous words and useless synonyms that would be found in an
_Index Expurgatorius_ of any European dictionary constructed on the
principles of a consistent and strictly consequential Materialism.
The _Christian_ likewise grounds _his_ philosophy on assertions; but
with the best of all _reasons_ for making them--namely, that he
_ought_ so to do. He asserts what he can neither prove, nor account
for, nor himself comprehend; but with the strongest _inducements_,
that of understanding thereby whatever else it most concerns him to
understand aright. And yet his assertions have nothing in them of
theory or hypothesis; but are in immediate reference to three ultimate
_facts_; namely, the Reality of the LAW OF CONSCIENCE; the existence
of a RESPONSIBLE WILL, as the subject of that law; and lastly, the
existence of EVIL--of Evil essentially such, not by accident of
outward circumstances, not derived from its physical consequences, nor
from any cause, out of itself. The first is a Fact of Consciousness;
the second a Fact of Reason necessarily concluded from the first; and
the third a Fact of History interpreted by both.
_Omnia exeunt in mysterium_, says a schoolman; that is, _There is
nothing, the absolute ground of which is not a Mystery_. The contrary
were indeed a contradiction in terms: for how can that, which is to
explain all things, be susceptible of an explanation? It would be to
suppose the same thing first and second at the same time.
If I rested here, I should merely have placed my Creed in direct
opposition to that of the Necessitarians, who assume (for observe
_both_ Parties begin in an _Assumption_, and cannot do otherwise) that
motives act on the Will, as bodies act on bodies; and that whether
mind and matter are essentially the same, or essentially different,
they are both alike under one and the same law of compulsory
Causation. But this is far from exhausting my intention. I mean at the
same time to oppose the disciples of SHAFTESBURY and those who,
substituting one Faith for another, have been well called the pious
Deists of the last century, in order to distinguish them from the
Infidels of the present age, who _persuade_ themselves, (for the thing
itself is not possible) that they reject all Faith. I declare my
dissent from these too, because they imposed upon themselves an _idea_
for a fact: a most sublime idea indeed, and so necessary to human
nature, that without it no virtue is conceivable: but still an idea.
In contradiction to their splendid but delusory tenets, I profess a
deep conviction that man was and is a _fallen_ creature, not by
accidents of bodily constitution, or any other cause, which _human_
wisdom in a course of ages might be supposed capable of removing; but
as diseased in his _Will_, in that Will which is the true and only
strict synonime of the word, I, or the intelligent Self. Thus at each
of these two opposite roads (the philosophy of Hobbes and that of
Shaftesbury), I have placed a directing post, informing my
fellow-travellers, that on neither of these roads can they see the
Truths to which I would direct their attention.
But the place of starting was at the meeting of _four_ roads, and one
only was the right road. I proceed, therefore, to preclude the opinion
of those likewise, who indeed agree with me as to the moral
Responsibility of man in opposition to Hobbes and the Anti-Moralists,
and that he is a fallen creature, essentially diseased, in opposition
to Shaftesbury and the misinterpreters of Plato; but who differ from
me in exaggerating the diseased _weakness_ of the Will into an
absolute privation of all Freedom, thereby making moral
responsibility, not a mystery _above_ comprehension, but a direct
contradiction, of which we do distinctly comprehend the absurdity.
Among the consequences of this doctrine, is that direful one of
swallowing up all the attributes of the Supreme Being in the one
Attribute of infinite Power, and thence deducing that things are good
and wise because they were created, and not created through Wisdom and
Goodness. Thence too the awful Attribute of _Justice_ is explained
away into a mere right of absolute _Property_; the sacred distinction
between things and persons is erased; and the selection of persons for
virtue and vice in this life, and for eternal happiness or misery in
the next, is represented as the result of a mere _Will_, acting in the
blindness and solitude of its own Infinity. The title of a work
written by the great and pious Boyle is "Of the Awe, which the human
Mind owes to the Supreme Reason." This, in the language of these
gloomy doctors, must be translated into--"The horror, which a Being
capable of eternal Pleasure or Pain is compelled to feel at the idea
of an Infinite Power, about to inflict the latter on an immense
majority of human Souls, without any power on their part either to
prevent it or the actions which are (not indeed its causes but) its
assigned _signals_, and preceding links of the same iron chain!"
Against these tenets I maintain, that a Will conceived separately from
Intelligence is a Non-entity and a mere phantasm of abstraction; and
that a Will, the state of which does in _no sense_ originate in its
own act, is an absolute contradiction. It might be an Instinct, an
Impulse, a plastic Power, and, if accompanied with consciousness, a
Desire; but a Will it _could_ not be. And this _every_ human being
_knows_ with equal _clearness_, though different minds may _reflect_
on it with different degrees of _distinctness_; for who would not
smile at the notion of a rose _willing_ to put forth its buds and
expand them into flowers? That such a phrase would be deemed a
_poetic_ licence proves the difference in the things: for all
metaphors are grounded on an apparent likeness of things essentially
different. I utterly disclaim the notion, that any _human_
Intelligence, with whatever power it might manifest itself, is _alone_
adequate to the office of restoring health to the Will: but at the
same time I deem it impious and absurd to hold, that the Creator would
have _given_ us the faculty of Reason, or that the Redeemer would in
so many varied forms of argument and persuasion have _appealed_ to it,
if it had been either totally useless or wholly impotent. Lastly, I
find all these several Truths reconciled and united in the belief,
that the imperfect human understanding can be effectually exerted only
in _subordination_ to, and in a dependent _alliance_ with, the means
and aidances supplied by the All-perfect and Supreme Reason; but that
under these conditions it is not only an admissible, but a necessary,
instrument of bettering both ourselves and others.
* * * * *
We may now proceed to our reflections on the _Spirit_ of Religion. The
first three or four Aphorisms I have selected from the Theological
Works of Dr. Henry More, a contemporary of Archbishop Leighton, and
like him, holden in suspicion by the Calvinists of that time as a
Latitudinarian and Platonizing Divine, and who probably, like him,
would have been arraigned as a Calvinist by the Latitudinarians (I
cannot say, Platonists) of this day, had the suspicion been equally
groundless. One or two I have ventured to add from my own Reflections.
The purpose, however, is the same in all--that of declaring, in the
first place, what Spiritual Religion is _not_, what is _not_ a
Religious Spirit, and what are _not_ to be deemed influences of the
Spirit. If after these declaimers I shall without proof be charged by
any with renewing or favouring the errors of the _Familists_,
_Vanists_, _Seekers_, _Behmenists_, or by whatever other names Church
History records the poor bewildered Enthusiasts, who in the swarming
time of our Republic turned the facts of the Gospel into allegories,
and superseded the written ordinances of Christ by a pretended
Teaching and sensible Presence of the Spirit, I appeal against them to
their own consciences, as wilful slanderers. But if with proof, I have
in these Aphorisms signed and sealed my own condemnation.
"These things I could not forbear to write. For _the Light within me_,
that is, _my Reason and Conscience_, does assure me, that the Ancient
and Apostolic Faith according to the _historical_ meaning thereof, and
in the _literal_ sense of the Creed, is solid and true: and that
_Familism_[67] in its fairest form and under whatever disguise, is a
smooth tale to seduce the simple from their Allegiance to Christ."