_On the three Preceding Aphorisms._
To the reader, who has consented to submit his mind to my temporary
guidance, and who permits me to regard him as my pupil, or junior
fellow-student, I continue to address myself. Should he exist only in
my imagination, let the bread float on the waters! If it be the Bread
of Life, it will not have been utterly cast away.
Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have passed over since
the transit from Religious Morality to Spiritual Religion. My first
attempt was to satisfy you, that there _is_ a Spiritual principle in
Man,[123] and to expose the sophistry of the arguments in support of
the contrary. Our next step was to clear the road of all counterfeits,
by showing what is _not_ the Spirit, what is _not_ Spiritual
Religion.[124] And this was followed by an attempt to establish a
difference in kind between religious truths and the deductions of
speculative science; yet so as to prove, that the former are not only
equally rational with the latter, but that they alone appeal to reason
in the fulness and living reality of their power. This and the state
of mind requisite for the formation of right convictions respecting
spiritual truths, afterwards employed our attention. Having then
enumerated the Articles of the Christian Faith _peculiar_ to
Christianity, I entered on the great object of the present work;
namely, the removal of all valid objections to these articles on
grounds of right reason or conscience. But to render this practicable
it was necessary, first, to present each article in its true
Scriptural purity, by exposure of the caricatures of misinterpreters;
and this, again, could not be satisfactorily done till we were agreed
respecting the faculty entitled to sit in judgment on such questions.
I early foresaw, that my best chance (I will not say, of giving an
_insight_ into the surpassing worth and transcendent reasonableness of
the Christian scheme, but) of rendering the very question
intelligible, depended on my success in determining the true nature
and limits of the human UNDERSTANDING, and in evincing its _diversity_
from REASON. In pursuing this momentous subject, I was tempted in two
or three instances into disquisitions, which if not beyond the
comprehension, were yet unsuited to the taste, of the persons for whom
the work was principally intended. These, however, I have separated
from the running text, and compressed into notes. The reader will at
worst, I hope, pass them by as a leaf or two of waste paper, willingly
given by him to those for whom it may not be paper _wasted_.
Nevertheless, I cannot conceal, that the subject itself supposes, on
the part of the reader, a steadiness in _self-questioning_, a pleasure
in referring to his own inward experience for the facts asserted by
the author, which can only be expected from a person who has fairly
set his heart on arriving at clear and fixed conclusions in matters of
Faith. But where this interest is felt, nothing more than a common
capacity, with the ordinary advantages of education, is required for
the complete comprehension both of the argument and the result. Let
but one thoughtful hour be devoted to the pages 143-165. In all that
follows, the reader will find no difficulty in _understanding_ the
author's meaning, whatever he may have in _adopting_ it.
The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, Original Sin and
Redemption; _that_ the Ground, _this_ the Superstructure of our faith.
The former I have exhibited, first, according to the scheme of the
Westminster Divines and the Synod of Dort; then, according to the[125]
scheme of a contemporary Arminian divine; and lastly, in contrast
with both schemes, I have placed what I firmly believe to be the
_Scriptural_ sense of this article, and vindicated its entire
conformity with reason and experience. I now proceed to the other
momentous article--from the necessitating _Occasion_ of the Christian
Dispensation to Christianity itself. For Christianity and Redemption
are equivalent terms. And here my Comment will be comprised in a few
sentences: for I confine my views to the one object of clearing this
awful mystery from those too current misrepresentations of its nature
and import that have laid it open to scruples and objections, not to
such as shoot forth from an unbelieving heart--(against these a sick
bed will be a more effectual antidote than all the argument in the
world)--but to such scruples as have their birth-place in the reason
and moral sense. Not that it is a mystery--not that _it passeth all
understanding_;--if the doctrine be more than an hyperbolical phrase,
it must do so;--but that it is at variance with the Law revealed in
the conscience; that it contradicts our moral instincts and
intuitions--_this_ is the difficulty, which alone is worthy of an
answer. And what better way is there of correcting the misconceptions
than by laying open the source and occasion of them? What surer way of
removing the scruples and prejudices, to which these misconceptions
have given rise, than by propounding the mystery itself--namely THE
REDEMPTIVE ACT, as the transcendent _Cause_ of Salvation--in the
express and definite words, in which it was enunciated by the Redeemer
himself?
But here, in addition to the three Aphorisms preceding, I interpose a
view of redemption as appropriated by faith, coincident with
Leighton's, though for the greater part expressed in my own words.
_This_ I propose as the right view. Then follow a few sentences
transcribed from Field (an excellent divine of the reign of James I.,
of whose work on the Church it would be difficult to speak too
highly)[127] containing the questions to be solved, and which is
numbered, as an Aphorism, rather to preserve the uniformity of
appearance, than as being strictly such. Then follows the Comment: as
part and commencement of which the Reader will consider the two
paragraphs of pp. 135, 136, written for this purpose and in the
foresight of the present inquiry: and I entreat him therefore to begin
the Comment by re-perusing these.
[123] Elements of Religious Philosophy, _ante_, p. 88--ED.
[124] See _ante_, pp. 96-101.--ED.
[125] To escape the consequences of this scheme, some Arminian divines
have asserted that the penalty inflicted on Adam, and continued in his
posterity, was simply the loss of immortality, Death as the utter
extinction of personal Being: immortality being regarded by them (and
not, I think, without good reason) as a supernatural attribute, and
its loss therefore involved in the forfeiture of supernatural graces.
This theory has its golden side; and as a private opinion, is said to
have the countenance of more than one dignitary of our Church, whose
general orthodoxy is beyond impeachment. For here the _penalty_
resolves itself into the _consequence_, and this the natural and
_naturally_ inevitable consequence of Adam's crime. For Adam, indeed,
it was a _positive_ punishment: a punishment of his guilt, the justice
of which who could have dared arraign? While for the Offspring of Adam
it was simply a _not_ super-adding to their nature the privilege by
which the original man was contra-distinguished from the brute
creation--a mere negation, of which they had no more right to complain
than any other species of animals. God in this view appears only in
his attribute of mercy, as averting by supernatural interposition a
consequence naturally inevitable. This is the golden side of the
theory. But if we approach to it from the opposite direction, it first
excites a just scruple, from the countenance it seems to give to the
doctrine of Materialism. The supporters of this scheme do not, I
presume, contend, that Adam's offspring would not have been born
_men_, but have formed a new species of beasts! And if not, the notion
of a rational, and self-conscious soul, perishing utterly with the
dissolution of the organized body, seems to require, nay, almost
involves, the opinion that the soul is a quality or accident of the
body--a mere harmony resulting from organization.
But let this pass unquestioned. Whatever else the descendants of Adam
might have been without the intercession of Christ, yet (this
intercession having been effectually made) they are now endowed with
souls that are not extinguished together with the material body. Now
unless these divines teach likewise the Romish figment of Purgatory,
and to an extent in which the Church of Rome herself would denounce
the doctrine as an impious heresy: unless they hold, that a punishment
temporary and remedial is the _worst_ evil that the impenitent have to
apprehend in a future state; and that the spiritual Death declared and
foretold by Christ, _the death eternal where the worm never dies_, is
neither Death nor eternal, but a certain _quantum_ of suffering in a
state of faith, hope, and progressive amendment--unless they go these
lengths (and the divines here intended are orthodox Churchmen, men who
would not knowingly advance even a step on the road towards
them)--then I fear, that any advantage their theory might possess over
the Calvinistic scheme in the article of Original Sin, would be dearly
purchased by increased difficulties, and an ultra-Calvinistic
narrowness in the article of Redemption. I at least find it
impossible, with my present human feelings, not to imagine otherwise
than that even in heaven it would be a fearful thing to know, that in
order to my elevation to a lot infinitely more desirable than by
nature it would have been, the lot of so vast a multitude had been
rendered infinitely more calamitous; and that my felicity had been
purchased by the everlasting misery of the majority of my fellow-men,
who if no redemption had been provided, after inheriting the pains and
pleasures of earthly existence during the numbered hours, and the few
and evil--evil yet _few_--days of the years of their mortal life,
would have fallen asleep to wake no more,--would have sunk into the
dreamless sleep of the grave, and have been as the murmur and the
plaint, and the exulting swell and the sharp scream, which the unequal
gust of yesterday snatched from the strings of a wind-harp!
In another place I have ventured to question the spirit and tendency
of Taylor's work on Repentance.[126] But I ought to have added, that
to discover and keep the true medium in expounding and applying the
Efficacy of Christ's Cross and Passion, is beyond comparison the most
difficult and delicate point of practical divinity--and that which
especially needs a guidance from above.
[126] Perhaps in his "Unum Necessarium; or the Doctrine and Practice
of Repentance," part of his "Notes on Jeremy Taylor," pp. 295-325, v.
iii., of the 'Remains,' 1838.--ED.
[127] See also "Notes on Field on the Church" (1628), in Coleridge's
'Remains,' 1838, v. iii., pp. 57-92.--ED.