Something near forty years of examination of the theologies on and
off--more years very much on than quite off--have given me a good title--to
myself, I ask no one else for leave--to make the following remarks: A
conclusion has _premises_, facts or doctrines from proof or authority, and
_mode of inference_. There may be invention or {34} falsehood of premise,
with good logic; and there may be tenable premise, followed by bad logic;
and there may be both false premise _and_ bad logic. The Roman system has
such a powerful manufactory of premises, that bad logic is little wanted;
there is comparatively little of it. The doctrine-forge of the Roman Church
is one glorious compound of everything that could make Heraclitus[71] sob
and Democritus[72] snigger. But not the only one. The Protestants, in
tearing away from the Church of Rome, took with them a fair quantity of the
results of the Roman forge, which they could not bring themselves to give
up. They had more in them of Martin than of Jack. But they would have no
premises, except from the New Testament; though some eked out with a few
general Councils. The consequence is that they have been obliged to find
such a logic as would bring the conclusions they require out of the
canonical books. And a queer logic it is; nothing but the Roman forge can
be compared with the Protestant loom. The picking, the patching, the
piecing, which goes to the Protestant _termini ad quem_,[73] would be as
remarkable to the general eye, as the Roman manufacture of _termini a
quo_,[74] if it were not that the world at large seizes the character of an
asserted fact better than that of a mode of inference. A grand step towards
the deification of a lady, made by alleged revelation 1800 years after her
death, is of glaring evidence: two or three additional shiffle-shuffles
towards defence of saying the Athanasian curse in church and unsaying it
out of church, are hardly noticed. Swift has bungled his satire where he
makes Peter a party to finding out what he wants, _totidem syllabis_ and
_totidem literis_, {35} when he cannot find it _totidem verbis_[75] This is
Protestant method: the Roman plan is _viam faciam_; the Protestant plan is
_viam inveniam_.[76] The public at large begins to be conversant with the
ways of _wriggling out_, as shown in the interpretations of the damnatory
parts of the Athanasian Creed, the phrases of the Burial Service, etc. The
time will come when the same public will begin to see the ways of
_wriggling in_. But one thing at a time: neither Papal Rome nor Protestant
Rome was built--nor will be pulled down--in a day.
The distinction above drawn between the two great antitheses of Christendom
may be illustrated as follows. Two sets of little general dealers lived
opposite to one another: all sold milk. Each vaunted its own produce: one
set said that the stuff on the other side the way was only chalk and water;
the other said that the opposites sold all sorts of filth, of which calves'
brain was the least nasty. Now the fact was that both sets sold milk, and
from the same dairy: but adulterated with different sorts of dirty water:
and both honestly believed that the mixture was what they were meant to
sell and ought to sell. The great difference between them, about which the
apprentices fought each other like Trojans, was that the calves' brain men
poured milk into the water, and the chalk men poured water into the milk.
The Greek and Roman sects on one side, the Protestant sects on the other,
must all have _churches_: the Greek and Roman sects pour the New Testament
into their churches; the Protestant sects pour their churches into the New
Testament. The Greek and Roman insist upon the New Testament being no more
than part and parcel of their churches: the Protestant insist upon their
churches being as much part and parcel of the New Testament. All dwell
vehemently upon the doctrine that there must be milk {36} somewhere; and
each says--I have it. The doctrine is true: and can be verified by any one
who can and will go to the dairy for himself. Him will the several traders
declare to have no milk at all. They will bring their own wares, and
challenge a trial: they want nothing but to name the judges. To vary the
metaphor, those who have looked at Christianity in open day, know that all
who see it through painted windows shut out much of the light of heaven and
color the rest; it matters nothing that the stains are shaped into what are
meant for saints and angels.
But there is another side to the question. To decompose any substance, it
must be placed between the poles of the battery. Now theology is but one
pole; philosophy is the other. No one can make out the combinations of our
day unless he read the writings both of the priest and the philosopher: and
if any one should hold the first word offensive, I tell him that I mean
_both_ words to be _significant_. In reading these writings, he will need
to bring both wires together to find out what it is all about. Time was
when most priests were very explicit about the fate of philosophers, and
most philosophers were very candid about their opinion of priests. But
though some extremes of the old sorts still remain, there is now, in the
middle, such a fusion of the two pursuits that a plain man is wofully
puzzled. The theologian writes a philosophy which seems to tell us that the
New Testament is a system of psychology; and the philosopher writes a
Christianity which is utterly unintelligible as to the question whether the
Resurrection be a fact or a transcendental allegory. What between the
theologian who assents to the Athanasian denunciation in what seems the
sense of no denunciation, and the philosopher who parades a Christianity
which looks like no revelation, there is a maze which threatens to have the
only possible clue in the theory that everything is something else, and
nothing is anything at all. But this is a paradox far beyond my handling:
it is a Budget of itself. {37}