In my last two Letters I have given the state of the argument, as it
would stand between a Christian thinking as I do, and a serious
well-disposed Deist. I will now endeavour to state the argument, as
between the former and the advocates for the popular belief,--such of
them, I mean, as are competent to deliver a dispassionate judgment in
the cause. And again, more particularly, I mean the learned and
reflecting part of them, who are influenced to the retention of the
prevailing dogma by the supposed consequences of a different view,
and, especially, by their dread of conceding to all alike, simple and
learned, the privilege of picking and choosing the Scriptures that are
to be received as binding on their consciences. Between these persons
and myself the controversy[180] may be reduced to a single question:--
Is it safer for the Individual, and more conducive to the interests of
the Church of Christ, in its twofold character of pastoral and
militant, to conclude thus:--The Bible is the Word of God, and
therefore, true, holy, and in all parts unquestionable;--or thus,--The
Bible, considered in reference to its declared ends and purposes, is
true and holy, and for all who seek truth with humble spirits an
unquestionable guide, and therefore it is the Word of God?
In every generation, and wherever the light of Revelation has shone,
men of all ranks, conditions, and states of mind have found in this
Volume a correspondent for every movement toward the Better felt in
their own hearts. The needy soul has found supply, the feeble a help,
the sorrowful a comfort; yea, be the recipiency the least that can
consist with moral life, there is an answering grace ready to enter.
The Bible has been found a spiritual World,--spiritual, and yet at the
same time outward and common to all. You in one place, I in another,
all men somewhere or at some time, meet with an assurance that the
hopes and fears, the thoughts and yearnings that proceed from, or tend
to, a right spirit in us, are not dreams or fleeting singularities, no
voices heard in sleep, or spectres which the eye suffers but not
perceives. As if on some dark night a pilgrim, suddenly beholding a
bright star moving before him, should stop in fear and perplexity. But
lo! traveller after traveller passes by him, and each, being
questioned whither he is going, makes answer, "I am following yon
guiding Star!" The pilgrim quickens his own steps, and presses onward
in confidence. More confident still will he be, if by the way side he
should find, here and there, ancient monuments, each with its votive
lamp, and on each the name of some former pilgrim, and a record that
there he had first seen or begun to follow the benignant Star!
No otherwise is it with the varied contents of the Sacred Volume. The
hungry have found food, the thirsty a living spring, the feeble a
staff, and the victorious warfarer songs of welcome and strains of
music; and as long as each man asks on account of his wants, and asks
what he wants, no man will discover aught amiss or deficient in the
vast and many-chambered storehouse. But if instead of this, an idler
or a scoffer should wander through the rooms, peering and peeping, and
either detects, or fancies he has detected, here a rusted sword or
pointless shaft, there a tool of rude construction, and superseded by
later improvements (and preserved, perhaps, to make us more grateful
for them);--which of two things will a sober-minded man,--who from his
childhood upward had been fed, clothed, armed, and furnished with the
means of instruction from this very magazine,--think the fitter
plan?--Will he insist that the rust is not rust, or that it is a rust
_sui generis_, intentionally formed on the steel for some mysterious
virtue in it, and that the staff and astrolabe of a shepherd-astronomer
are identical with, or equivalent to, the quadrant and telescope of
Newton or Herschel?--Or will he not rather give the curious inquisitor
joy of his mighty discoveries, and the credit of them for his
reward?--
Or lastly, put the matter thus. For more than a thousand years the
Bible, collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with civilization,
science, law,--in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation
of the species, always supporting, and often leading the way. Its very
presence, as a believed Book, has rendered the nations emphatically a
chosen race, and this too in exact proportion as it is more or less
generally known and studied. Of those nations, which in the highest
degree enjoy its influences, it is not too much to affirm, that the
differences public and private, physical, moral and intellectual, are
only less than what might be expected from a diversity in species.
Good and holy men, and the best and wisest of mankind, the kingly
spirits of history, enthroned in the hearts of mighty nations, have
borne witness to its influences, have declared it to be beyond compare
the most perfect instrument, the only adequate organ, of
Humanity;--the organ and instrument of all the gifts, powers, and
tendencies, by which the individual is privileged to rise above
himself--to leave behind, and lose his dividual phantom self, in order
to find his true Self in that Distinctness where no division can
be,--in the Eternal I AM, the Ever-living WORD, of whom all the elect
from the archangel before the throne to the poor wrestler with the
Spirit _until the breaking of day_ are but the fainter and still
fainter echoes. And are all these testimonies and lights of experience
to lose their value and efficiency, because I feel no warrant of
history, or Holy Writ, or of my own heart for denying, that in the
framework and outward case of this instrument a few parts may be
discovered of less costly materials and of meaner workmanship? Is it
not a fact that the Books of the New Testament were tried by their
consonance with the rule, and according to the analogy, of Faith? Does
not the universally admitted canon--that each part of Scripture must
be interpreted by the spirit of the whole--lead to the same practical
conclusion as that for which I am now contending; namely, that it is
the spirit of the Bible, and not the detached words and sentences,
that is infallible and absolute?--Practical, I say, and spiritual
too;--and what knowledge not practical or spiritual are we entitled to
seek in our Bibles? Is the grace of God so confined,--are the
evidences of the present and actuating Spirit so dim and
doubtful,--that to be assured of the same we must first take for
granted that all the life and co-agency of our humanity is
miraculously suspended?
Whatever is spiritual, is _eo nomine_ supernatural; but must it be
always and of necessity miraculous? Miracles could open the eyes of
the body; and he that was born blind beheld his Redeemer. But
miracles, even those of the Redeemer himself, could not open the eyes
of the self-blinded, of the Sadducean sensualist or the self-righteous
Pharisee;--while to have said, _I saw thee under the fig tree_,
sufficed to make a Nathanael believe.
To assert and to demand miracles without necessity was the vice of the
unbelieving Jews of old; and from the Rabbis and Talmudists the
infection has spread. And would I could say that the symptoms of the
disease are confined to the Churches of the Apostasy! But all the
miracles, which the legends of Monk or Rabbi contain, can scarcely be
put in competition, on the score of complication, inexplicableness,
the absence of all intelligible use or purpose, and of circuitous
self-frustration, with those that must be assumed by the maintainers
of this doctrine, in order to give effect to the series of miracles,
by which all the nominal composers of the Hebrew nation before the
time of Ezra, of whom there are any remains, were successively
transformed into _automaton_ compositors,--so that the original text
should be in sentiment, image, word, syntax, and composition an exact
impression of the divine copy! In common consistency the theologians,
who impose this belief on their fellow Christians, ought to insist
equally on the superhuman origin and authority of the Masora, and to
use more respectful terms, than has been their wont of late, in
speaking of the false Aristeas's legend concerning the Septuagint. And
why the miracle should stop at the Greek Version, and not include the
Vulgate, I can discover no ground in reason. Or if it be an objection
to the latter, that this belief is actually enjoined by the Papal
Church, yet the number of Christians who read the Lutheran, the
Genevan, or our own authorized, Bible, and are ignorant of the dead
languages, greatly exceeds the number of those who have access to the
Septuagint. Why refuse the writ of consecration to these, or to the
one at least appointed by the assertors' own Church? I find much more
consistency in the opposition made under pretext of this doctrine to
the proposals and publications of Kennicot, Mill, Bentley, and
Archbishop Newcome.
But I am weary of discussing a tenet, which the generality of divines
and the leaders of the Religious Public have ceased to defend, and yet
continue to assert or imply. The tendency manifested in this conduct,
the spirit of this and the preceding century, on which, not indeed the
tenet itself, but the obstinate adherence to it against the clearest
light of reason and experience, is grounded,--this it is which,
according to my conviction, gives the venom to the error, and
justifies the attempt to substitute a juster view. As long as it was
the common and effective belief of all the Reformed Churches, (and by
none was it more sedulously or more emphatically enjoined than by the
great Reformers of our Church), that by the good Spirit were the
spirits tried, and that the light, which beams forth from the written
Word, was its own evidence for the children of light;--as long as
Christians considered their Bible as a plenteous entertainment, where
every guest, duly called and attired, found the food needful and
fitting for him, and where each--instead of troubling himself about
the covers not within his reach--beholding all around him glad and
satisfied, praised the banquet and thankfully glorified the Master of
the feast,--so long did the Tenet--that the Scriptures were written
under the special impulse of the Holy Ghost remain safe and
profitable. Nay, in the sense, and with the feelings, in which it was
asserted, it was a truth--a truth to which every spiritual believer
now and in all times will bear witness by virtue of his own
experience. And if in the overflow of love and gratitude they
confounded the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, working alike
in weakness and in strength, in the morning mists and in the clearness
of the full day;--if they confounded this communion and co-agency of
divine grace, attributable to the Scripture generally, with those
express, and expressly recorded, communications and messages of the
Most High, which form so large and prominent a portion of the same
Scriptures;--if, in short, they did not always duly distinguish the
inspiration, the imbreathment, of the predisposing and assisting
SPIRIT from the revelation of the informing WORD,--it was at worst a
harmless hyperbole. It was holden by all, that if the power of the
Spirit from without furnished the text, the grace of the same Spirit
from within must supply the comment.
In the sacred Volume they saw and reverenced the bounden wheat-sheaf
that _stood upright_ and had _obeisance_ from all the other
sheaves--(the writings, I mean, of the Fathers and Doctors of the
Church)--sheaves depreciated indeed, more or less, with tares,
and furrow-weeds,
Darnel and many an idle flower that grew
Mid the sustaining corn;
yet sheaves of the same harvest, the sheaves of brethren! Nor did it
occur to them, that, in yielding the more full and absolute honour to
the sheaf of the highly favoured of their Father, they should be
supposed to attribute the same worth and quality to the straw-bands
which held it together. The bread of life was there. And this in an
especial sense was _bread from heaven_; for no where had the same been
found wild; no soil or climate dared claim it for its natural growth.
In simplicity of heart they received the Bible as the precious gift of
God, providential alike in origin, preservation, and distribution,
without asking the nice question, whether all and every part were
likewise miraculous. The distinction between the providential and the
miraculous, between the divine Will working with the agency of natural
causes, and the same Will supplying their place by a special
_fiat_--this distinction has, I doubt not, many uses in speculative
divinity. But its weightiest practical application is shown, when it
is employed to free the souls of the unwary and weak in faith from the
nets and snares, the insidious queries and captious objections, of the
Infidel by calming the flutter of their spirits. They must be
quieted, before we can commence the means necessary for their
disentanglement. And in no way can this be better effected than when
the frightened captives are made to see in how many points the
disentangling itself is a work of expedience rather than of
necessity;--so easily and at so little loss might the web be cut or
brushed away!
First, let their attention be fixed on the history of Christianity as
learnt from universal tradition, and the writers of each successive
generation. Draw their minds to the fact of the progressive and still
continuing fulfilment of the assurance of a few fishermen, that both
their own religion, though of divine origin, and the religion of their
conquerors, which included or recognized all other religions of the
known world, should be superseded by the faith in a man recently and
ignominiously executed. Then induce them to meditate on the universals
of Christian Faith,--on Christianity, taken as the sum of belief
common to Greek and Latin, to Romanist and Protestant. Show them that
this and only this is the _ordo traditionis, quam tradiderunt Apostoli
iis quibus committebant ecclesias_, and which we should have been
bound to follow, says Irenæus, _si neque Apostoli quidem Scripturas
reliquissent_. This is that _regula fidei_, that _sacramentum symboli
memoriæ mandatum_, of which St. Augustine says;--_noveritis hoc esse
Fidei Catholicæ fundamentum super quod edificium surrexit Ecclesiæ_.
This is the _norma Catholici et Ecclesiastici sensus_, determined and
explicated, but not augmented, by the Nicene Fathers, as Waterland has
irrefragably shown;--a norm or model of Faith grounded on the solemn
affirmations of the Bishops collected from all parts of the Roman
Empire, that this was the essential and unalterable Gospel received by
them from their predecessors in all the churches as the παραδοσισ
εκκλησιαστικη, _cui_, says Irenæus, _assentiunt multæ gentes eorum
qui in Christum credunt sine charta et atramento, scriptam habentes
per Spiritum in cordibus suis salutem, et veterum traditionem
diligenter custodientes_. Let the attention of such as have been
shaken by the assaults of Infidelity be thus directed, and then tell
me wherein a spiritual physician would be blameworthy, if he carried
on the cure by addressing his patient in this manner:--
"All men of learning, even learned unbelievers, admit that the greater
part of the objections, urged in the popular works of Infidelity, to
this or that verse or chapter of the Bible, prove only the ignorance
or dishonesty of the objectors. But let it be supposed for a moment
that a few remain hitherto unanswered,--nay, that to your judgment and
feelings they appear unanswerable. What follows? That the Apostles'
and Nicene Creed is not credible, the Ten Commandments not to be
obeyed, the clauses of the Lord's Prayer not to be desired, or the
Sermon on the Mount not to be practised?--See how the logic would
look. David cruelly tortured the inhabitants of Rabbah (_2 Sam._ xii.
31; 1 Chron. xx. 3), and in several of the Psalms he invokes the
bitterest curses on his enemies; therefore it is not to be believed
that _the love of God toward us was manifested in sending his only
begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him_ (1 John
iv. 9). Or: Abijah is said to have collected an army of 400,000 men,
and Jeroboam to have met him with an army of 800,000, each army
consisting of chosen men (2 Chron. xiii. 3), and making together a
host of 1,200,000, and Abijah to have slain 500,000 out of the
800,000: therefore, the words which admonish us that _if God so loved
us, we ought also to love one another_ (1 John iv. 11), even our
enemies, yea, _to bless them that curse_ us, and to _do good to them
that hate_ us (Matt. v. 44), cannot proceed from the Holy Spirit. Or:
The first six chapters of the Book of Daniel contain several words and
phrases irreconcilable with the commonly received dates, and those
chapters and the Book of Esther have a traditional and legendary
character unlike that of the other historical books of the Old
Testament; therefore, those other books, by contrast with which the
former appear suspicious, and the historical document, 1 Cor. xv. 1-8,
are not to be credited!"
We assuredly believe that the Bible contains all truths necessary to
salvation, and that therein is preserved the undoubted Word of God. We
assert likewise that, besides these express oracles and immediate
revelations, there are Scriptures which to the soul and conscience of
every Christian man bear irresistible evidence of the Divine Spirit
assisting and actuating the authors; and that both these and the
former are such as to render it morally impossible that any passage of
the small inconsiderable portion, not included in one or other of
these, can supply either ground or occasion of any error in faith,
practice, or affection, except to those who wickedly and wilfully seek
a pretext for their unbelief. And if in that small portion of the
Bible which stands in no necessary connection with the known and
especial ends and purposes of the Scriptures, there should be a few
apparent errors resulting from the state of knowledge then
existing--errors which the best and holiest men might entertain
uninjured, and which without a miracle those men must have
entertained; if I find no such miraculous prevention asserted, and see
no reason for supposing it--may I not, to ease the scruples of a
perplexed inquirer, venture to say to him: "Be it so. What then? The
absolute infallibility even of the inspired writers in matters
altogether incidental and foreign to the objects and purposes of their
inspiration is no part of my Creed; and even if a professed divine
should follow the doctrine of the Jewish Church so far as not to
attribute to the _Hagiographa_, in every word and sentence, the same
height and fulness of inspiration as to the Law and the Prophets, I
feel no warrant to brand him as a heretic for an opinion, the
admission of which disarms the Infidel without endangering a single
article of the Catholic Faith."--If to an unlearned but earnest and
thoughtful neighbour, I give the advice;--"Use the Old Testament to
express the affections excited, and to confirm the faith and morals
taught you, in the New, and leave all the rest to the students and
professors of theology and Church history! You profess only to be a
Christian:"--am I misleading my brother in Christ?
This I believe by my own dear experience,--that the more tranquilly an
inquirer takes up the Bible as he would any other body of ancient
writings, the livelier and steadier will be his impressions of its
superiority to all other books, till at length all other books and all
other knowledge will be valuable in his eyes in proportion as they
help him to a better understanding of his Bible. Difficulty after
difficulty has been overcome from the time that I began to study the
Scriptures with free and unboding spirit, under the conviction that
my faith in the Incarnate Word and his Gospel was secure, whatever the
result might be;--the difficulties that still remain being so few and
insignificant in my own estimation, that I have less personal interest
in the question than many of those who will most dogmatically condemn
me for presuming to make a question of it.
So much for scholars--for men of like education and pursuits as
myself. With respect to Christians generally, I object to the
consequence drawn from the Doctrine rather than to the Doctrine
itself;--a consequence not only deducible from the premises, but
actually and imperiously deduced; according to which every man that
can but read is to sit down to the consecutive and connected perusal
of the Bible under the expectation and assurance that the whole is
within his comprehension, and that, unaided by note or comment,
catechism or liturgical preparation, he is to find out for himself
what he is bound to believe and practise, and that whatever he
conscientiously understands by what he reads, is to be _his_ religion.
For he has found it in his Bible, and the Bible is the Religion of
Protestants!
Would I then withhold the Bible from the Cottager and the
Artisan?--Heaven forfend! The fairest flower that ever clomb up a
cottage window is not so fair a sight to my eyes, as the Bible
gleaming through the lower panes. Let it but be read as by such men it
used to be read; when they came to it as to a ground covered with
manna, even the bread which the Lord had given for his people to eat;
where he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered
little had no lack. They gathered every man according to his eating.
They came to it as to a treasure-house of Scriptures; each visitant
taking what was precious and leaving as precious for others;--Yea,
more, says our worthy old Church-historian, Fuller, where "the same
man at several times may in his apprehension prefer several Scriptures
as best, formerly most affected with one place, for the present more
delighted with another, and afterwards, conceiving comfort therein not
so clear, choose other places as more pregnant and pertinent to his
purpose. Thus God orders it, that divers men, (and perhaps the same
man at divers times) make use of all his gifts, gleaning and
gathering comfort, as it is scattered through the whole field of the
Scripture."
Farewell.
[180] It is remarkable that both parties might appeal to the same text
of St. Paul,--πασα γραφη θεοπνευστος και ωφελιμος προς
διδασκαλιαν, κ τ. λ. (2 Tim. iii. 16), which favours the one or the
other opinion accordingly as the words are construed; and which,
again, is the more probable construction, depends in great measure on
the preference given to one or other of two different readings, the
one having and the other omitting the conjunction copulative και.
[The English version is:--_All Scripture is given by inspiration of
God, and is profitable, &c._ And in this rendering of the original the
English is countenanced by the established Version of the Dutch
Reformed Church:--_Alle de Schrift is van Godt ingegeven, ende is
nuttigh, &c._ And by Diodati:--_Tutta la Scrittura è divinamente
inspirata, e utile, &c._ And by Martin:--_Toute l'Ecriture est
divinement inspirée, et profitable, &c._ And by Beza:--_Tota Scriptura
divinitus est inspirata, et utilis, &c._
The other rendering is supported by the Vulgate:--_Omnis Scriptura,
divinitus inspirata, utilis est ad, &c._ By Luther:--_Denn alle
Schrift von Gott eingegeben, ist nütse zur, &c._ And by
Calmet:--_Toute l'Ecriture, qui est inspirée de Dieu, est utile, &c._
And by the common Spanish translation:--_Toda Escritura, divinamente
inspirada, es util para enseñar, &c._ This is also the rendering of
the Syriac (Pesch.) and two Arabic Versions, and is followed by
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and most of the Fathers. See the note
in Griesbach. Tertullian represents the sense thus:--_Legimus, Omnem
Scripturam, ædificationi habilem, divinitus inspirari._ De Habit. Mul.
c. iii. Origen has it several times, Θεοπνευστος ουσα, ωφελιμος
εστι, and once as in the received text.--H. N. C.]