Jesus; therefore you are an "Infidel" instead of an "Agnostic." To which
the agnostic may reply: No; for two reasons: first, because your evidence
that Jesus said what you say he said is worth very little; and secondly,
because a man may be an agnostic, in the sense of admitting he has no
positive knowledge, and yet consider that he has more or less probable
ground for accepting any given hypothesis about the spiritual world. Just
as a man may frankly declare that he has no means of knowing whether the
planets generally are inhabited or not, and yet may think one of the two
possible hypotheses more likely than the other, so he may admit that he has
no means of knowing anything about the spiritual world, and yet may think
one or other of the current views on the subject, to some extent, probable.
The second answer is so obviously valid that it needs no discussion. I draw
attention to it simply in justice to those agnostics who may attach greater
value than I do to any sort of pneumatological speculations, and not
because I wish to escape the responsibility of declaring that, whether
Jesus sanctioned the demonological part of Christianity or not, I
unhesitatingly reject it. The first answer, on the other hand, opens up the
whole question of the claim of the biblical and other sources, from which
hypotheses concerning the spiritual world are derived, to be {467} regarded
as unimpeachable historical evidence as to matters of fact.
Now, in respect of the trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives, I was
anxious to get rid of the common assumption that the determination of the
authorship and of the dates of these works is a matter of fundamental
importance. That assumption is based upon the notion that what contemporary
witnesses say must be true, or, at least, has always a _prima facie_ claim
to be so regarded; so that if the writers of any of the Gospels were
contemporaries of the events (and still more if they were in the position
of eye-witnesses) the miracles they narrate must be historically true, and,
consequently, the demonology which they involve must be accepted. But the
story of the _Translation of the blessed martyrs Marcellinus and Petrus_,
and the other considerations (to which endless additions might have been
made from the Fathers and the mediaeval writers) set forth in a preceding
essay, yield, in my judgment, satisfactory proof that, where the miraculous
is concerned, neither considerable intellectual ability, nor undoubted
honesty, nor knowledge of the world, nor proved faithfulness as civil
historians, nor profound piety, on the part of eye-witnesses and
contemporaries, affords any guarantee of the objective truth of their
statements, when we know that a firm belief in the miraculous was ingrained
in their minds, and was the pre-supposition of their observations and
reasonings.
Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demonstrable that we have no real
knowledge of the {468} authorship, or of the date of composition of the
Gospels, as they have come down to us, and that nothing better than more or
less probable guesses can be arrived at on that subject, I have not cared
to expend any space on the question. It will be admitted, I suppose, that
the authors of the works attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
whoever they may be, are personages whose capacity and judgment in the
narration of ordinary events are not quite so well certified as those of
Eginhard; and we have seen what the value of Eginhard's evidence is when
the miraculous is in question.
I have been careful to explain that the arguments which I have used in the
course of this discussion are not new; that they are historical and have
nothing to do with what is commonly called science; and that they are all,
to the best of my belief, to be found in the works of theologians of
repute.
The position which I have taken up, that the evidence in favour of such
miracles as those recorded by Eginhard, and consequently of mediaeval
demonology, is quite as good as that in favour of such miracles as the
Gadarene, and consequently of Nazarene demonology, is none of my discovery.
Its strength was, wittingly or unwittingly, suggested, a century and a half
ago, by a theological scholar of eminence; and it has been, if not exactly
occupied, yet so fortified with bastions and redoubts by a living
ecclesiastical Vauban, that, in my judgment, it has been rendered
impregnable. In the early part of {469} the last century, the
ecclesiastical mind in this country was much exercised by the question, not
exactly of miracles, the occurrence of which in biblical times was
axiomatic, but by the problem: When did miracles cease? Anglican divines
were quite sure that no miracles had happened in their day, nor for some
time past; they were equally sure that they happened sixteen or seventeen
centuries earlier. And it was a vital question for them to determine at
what point of time, between this _terminus a quo_ and that _terminus ad
quem_, miracles came to an end.
The Anglicans and the Romanists agreed in the assumption that the
possession of the gift of miracle-working was _prima facie_ evidence of the
soundness of the faith of the miracle-workers. The supposition that
miraculous powers might be wielded by heretics (though it might be
supported by high authority) led to consequences too frightful to be
entertained by people who were busied in building their dogmatic house on
the sands of early Church history. If, as the Romanists maintained, an
unbroken series of genuine miracles adorned the records of their Church,
throughout the whole of its existence, no Anglican could lightly venture to
accuse them of doctrinal corruption. Hence, the Anglicans, who indulged in
such accusations, were bound to prove the modern, the mediaeval Roman, and
the later Patristic, miracles false; and to shut off the wonder-working
power from the Church at the exact point of time when Anglican doctrine
ceased and Roman doctrine {470} began. With a little adjustment--a squeeze
here and a pull there--the Christianity of the first three or four
centuries might be made to fit, or seem to fit, pretty well into the
Anglican scheme. So the miracles, from Justin say to Jerome, might be
recognised; while, in later times, the Church having become "corrupt"--that
is to say, having pursued one and the same line of development further than
was pleasing to Anglicans--its alleged miracles must needs be shams and
impostures.
Under these circumstances, it may be imagined that the establishment of a
scientific frontier between the earlier realm of supposed fact and the
later of asserted delusion, had its difficulties; and torrents of
theological special pleading about the subject flowed from clerical pens;
until that learned and acute Anglican divine, Conyers Middleton, in his
_Free Inquiry_, tore the sophistical web they had laboriously woven to
pieces, and demonstrated that the miracles of the patristric age, early and
late, must stand or fall together, inasmuch as the evidence for the later
is just as good as the evidence for the earlier wonders. If the one set are
certified by contemporaneous witnesses of high repute, so are the other;
and, in point of probability, there is not a pin to choose between the two.
That is the solid and irrefragable result of Middleton's contribution to
the subject. But the Free Inquirer's freedom had its limits; and he draws a
sharp line of demarcation between the patristic and the New Testament
miracles--on the professed ground that the accounts of the {471} latter,
being inspired, are out of the reach of criticism.
A century later, the question was taken up by another divine, Middleton's
equal in learning and acuteness, and far his superior in subtlety and
dialectic skill; who, though an Anglican, scorned the name of Protestant;
and, while yet a Churchman, made it his business to parade, with infinite
skill, the utter hollowness of the arguments of those of his brother
Churchmen who dreamed that they could be both Anglicans and Protestants.
The argument of the _Essay on the Miracles recorded in the Ecclesiastical
History of the Early Ages_,[129] by the present Roman Cardinal, but then
Anglican Doctor, John Henry Newman, is compendiously stated by himself in
the following passage:--
If the miracles of Church history cannot be defended by the arguments
of Leslie, Lyttleton, Paley, or Douglas, how many of the Scripture
miracles satisfy their conditions? (p. cvii).
And, although the answer is not given in so many words, little doubt is
left on the mind of the reader, that, in the mind of the writer, it is:
None. In fact, this conclusion is one which cannot be resisted, if the
argument in favour of the Scripture miracles is based upon that which
laymen, whether lawyers, or men of science, or historians, or ordinary men
of affairs, call evidence. But there is something really impressive {472}
in the magnificent contempt with which, at times, Dr. Newman sweeps aside
alike those who offer and those who demand such evidence.
Some infidel authors advise us to accept no miracles which would not
have a verdict in their favour in a court of justice; that is, they
employ against Scripture a weapon which Protestants would confine to
attacks upon the Church; as if moral and religious questions required
legal proof, and evidence were the test of truth[130] (p. cvii).
"As if evidence were the test of truth"!--although the truth in question is
the occurrence, or the non-occurrence of certain phenomena at a certain
time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation of the great gulf fixed
between the ecclesiastical and the scientific mind is enough to take away
the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical organon. As if, one may
retort, the assumption that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a
religious end, in any way alters the fact that they profess to be
historical events, things that actually happened; and, as such, must needs
be exactly those subjects about which evidence is appropriate and legal
proofs (which are such merely because they afford adequate evidence) may be
justly demanded. The Gadarene miracle either happened, or it did not.
Whether the Gadarene "question" is moral or religious, or not, has nothing
to do with the fact that it is a purely {473} historical question whether
the demons said what they are declared to have said, and the
devil-possessed pigs did, or did not, rush over the cliffs bounding the
Lake of Gennesaret on a certain day of a certain year, after A.D. 26 and
before A.D. 36: for vague and uncertain as New Testament chronology is, I
suppose it may be assumed that the event in question, if it happened at
all, took place during the procuratorship of Pilate. If that is not a
matter about which evidence ought to be required, and not only legal, but
strict scientific proof demanded by sane men who are asked to believe the
story--what is? Is a reasonable being to be seriously asked to credit
statements, which, to put the case gently, are not exactly probable, and on
the acceptance or rejection of which his whole view of life may depend,
without asking for as much "legal" proof as would send an alleged
pickpocket to gaol, or as would suffice to prove the validity of a disputed
will?
"Infidel authors" (if, as I am assured, I may answer for them) will decline
to waste time on mere darkenings of counsel of this sort; but to those
Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr. Newman is a truly formidable
antagonist. What, indeed, are they to reply when he puts the very pertinent
question:--
whether persons who not merely question, but prejudge the
Ecclesiastical miracles on the ground of their want of resemblance,
whatever that be, to those contained in Scripture--as if the Almighty
could not do in the Christian Church what He had not already done at
the time of its foundation, or under the Mosaic Covenant--whether such
reasoners are not siding with the sceptic,
{474}
and
whether it is not a happy inconsistency by which they continue to
believe the Scriptures while they reject the Church[131] (p. liii).
Again, I invite Anglican orthodoxy to consider this passage:--
the narrative of the combats of St. Antony with evil spirits, is a
development rather than a contradiction of revelation, viz. of such
texts as speak of Satan being cast out by prayer and fasting. To be
shocked, then, at the miracles of Ecclesiastical history, or to
ridicule them for their strangeness, is no part of a scriptural
philosophy (pp. liii-liv).
Further on, Dr. Newman declares that it has been admitted
that a distinct line can be drawn in point of character and
circumstance between the miracles of Scripture and of Church history;
but this is by no means the case (p. lv) ... specimens are not wanting
in the history of the Church, of miracles as awful in their character
and as momentous in their effects as those which are recorded in
Scripture. The fire interrupting the rebuilding of the Jewish temple,
and the death of Arius, are instances, in Ecclesiastical history, of
such solemn events. On the other hand, difficult instances in the
Scripture history are such as these: the serpent in Eden, the Ark,
Jacob's vision for the multiplication of his cattle, the speaking of
Balaam's ass, the axe swimming at Elisha's word, the miracle on the
swine, and various instances of prayers or prophecies, in which, as in
that of Noah's blessing and curse, words which seem the result of
private feeling are expressly or virtually ascribed to a Divine
suggestion (p. lvi).
Who is to gainsay our ecclesiastical authority {475} here? "Infidel
authors" might be accused of a wish to ridicule the Scripture miracles by
putting them on a level with the remarkable story about the fire which
stopped the rebuilding of the Temple, or that about the death of Arius--but
Dr. Newman is above suspicion. The pity is that his list of what he
delicately terms "difficult" instances is so short. Why omit the
manufacture of Eve out of Adam's rib, on the strict historical accuracy of
which the chief argument of the defenders of an iniquitous portion of our
present marriage law depends? Why leave out the account of the "Bene
Elohim" and their gallantries, on which a large part of the worst practices
of the mediaeval inquisitors into witchcraft was based? Why forget the angel
who wrestled with Jacob, and, as the account suggests, somewhat overstepped
the bounds of fair play, at the end of the struggle? Surely, we must agree
with Dr. Newman that, if all these camels have gone down, it savours of
affectation to strain at such gnats as the sudden ailment of Arius in the
midst of his deadly, if, prayerful,[132] enemies; and the fiery explosion
which {476} stopped the Julian building operations. Though the _words_ of
the "Conclusion" of the _Essay on Miracles_ may, perhaps, be quoted against
me, I may express my satisfaction at finding myself in substantial
accordance with a theologian above all suspicion of heterodoxy. With all my
heart, I can declare my belief that there is just as good reason for
believing in the miraculous slaying of the man who fell short of the
Athanasian power of affirming contradictories, with respect to the nature
of the Godhead, as there is for believing in the stories of the serpent and
the ark told in Genesis, the speaking of Balaam's ass in Numbers, or the
floating of the axe, at Elisha's order, in the second book of Kings.
It is one of the peculiarities of a really sound argument that it is
susceptible of the fullest development; and that it sometimes leads to
conclusions unexpected by those who employ it. To my mind, it is impossible
to refuse to follow Dr. Newman when he extends his reasoning from the
miracles of the patristic and mediaeval ages backward in time as far as
miracles are recorded. But, if the rules of logic are valid, I feel
compelled to extend the argument forward to the alleged Roman miracles of
the present day, which Dr. Newman might not have admitted, but which
Cardinal Newman may hardly reject. Beyond question, there is as good, or
perhaps better, evidence for the miracles worked by our Lady of Lourdes, as
there is for the floating of Elisha's axe, {477} or the speaking of
Balaam's ass. But we must go still further; there is a modern system of
thaumaturgy and demonology which is just as well certified as the
ancient.[133] Veracious, excellent, sometimes learned and acute persons,
even philosophers of no mean pretensions, testify to the "levitation" of
bodies much heavier than Elisha's axe; to the existence of "spirits" who,
to the mere tactile sense, have been indistinguishable from flesh and
blood, and, occasionally, have wrestled with all the vigour of Jacob's
opponent; yet, further, to the speech, in the language of raps, of
spiritual beings, whose discourses, in point of coherence and value, are
far inferior to that of Balaam's humble but sagacious steed. I have not the
smallest doubt that, if these were persecuting times, there is many {478} a
worthy "spiritualist" who would cheerfully go to the stake in support of
his pneumatological faith, and furnish evidence, after Paley's own heart,
in proof of the truth of his doctrines. Not a few modern divines, doubtless
struck by the impossibility of refusing the spiritualist evidence, if the
ecclesiastical evidence is accepted, and deprived of any _a priori_
objection by their implicit belief in Christian Demonology, show themselves
ready to take poor Sludge seriously, and to believe that he is possessed by
other devils than those of need, greed, and vainglory.
Under these circumstances, it was to be expected, though it is none the
less interesting to note the fact, that the arguments of the latest school
of "spiritualists" present a wonderful family likeness to those which adorn
the subtle disquisitions of the advocate of ecclesiastical miracles of
forty years ago. It is unfortunate for the "spiritualists" that, over and
over again, celebrated and trusted media, who really, in some respects,
call to mind the Montanist[134] and gnostic seers of the second century,
are either proved in courts of law to be fraudulent impostors; {479} or, in
sheer weariness, as it would seem, of the honest dupes who swear by them,
spontaneously confess their long-continued iniquities, as the Fox women did
the other day in New York.[135] But, whenever a catastrophe of this kind
takes place, the believers are no wise dismayed by it. They freely admit
that not only the media, but the spirits whom they summon, are sadly apt to
lose sight of the elementary principles of right and wrong; and they
triumphantly ask: How does the occurrence of occasional impostures disprove
the genuine manifestations (that is to say, all those which have not yet
been proved to be impostures or delusions)? And, in this, they
unconsciously plagiarise from the churchman, who just as freely admits that
many ecclesiastical miracles may have been forged; and asks, with calm
contempt, not only of legal proofs, but of common-sense probability, Why
does it follow that none are to be supposed genuine? I must say, however,
that the spiritualists, so far as I know, do not venture to outrage right
reason so boldly as the ecclesiastics. They do not sneer at "evidence"; nor
repudiate the requirement of legal proofs. In fact, there can be no doubt
that the spiritualists produce better evidence for their manifestations
than can be shown either for the miraculous death of Arius, or for the
Invention of the Cross.[136]
{480}
From the "levitation" of the axe at one end of a period of near three
thousand years to the "levitation" of Sludge & Co. at the other end, there
is a complete continuity of the miraculous, with every gradation from the
childish to the stupendous, from the gratification of a caprice to the
illustration of sublime truth. There is no drawing a line in the series
that might be set out of plausibly attested cases of spiritual
intervention. If one is true, all may be true; if one is false, all may be
false.
This is, to my mind, the inevitable result of that method of reasoning
which is applied to the confutation of Protestantism, with so much success,
by one of the acutest and subtlest disputants who have ever championed
Ecclesiasticism--and one cannot put his claims to acuteness and subtlety
higher.
... the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there
were a safe truth it is this.... "To be deep in history is to cease to
be a Protestant."[137]
I have not a shadow of doubt that these anti-Protestant epigrams are
profoundly true. But I have as little that, in the same sense, the
"Christianity of history is not" Romanism; and that to be deeper in history
is to cease to be a Romanist. The reasons which compel my doubts about the
compatibility of the Roman doctrine, or any other form {481} of
Catholicism, with history, arise out of exactly the same line of argument
as that adopted by Dr. Newman in the famous essay which I have just cited.
If, with one hand, Dr. Newman has destroyed Protestantism, he has
annihilated Romanism with the other; and the total result of his
ambidextral efforts is to shake Christianity to its foundations. Nor was
any one better aware that this must be the inevitable result of his
arguments--if the world should refuse to accept Roman doctrines and Roman
miracles--than the writer of Tract 85.
Dr. Newman made his choice and passed over to the Roman Church half a
century ago. Some of those who were essentially in harmony with his views
preceded, and many followed him. But many remained; and, as the quondam
Puseyite and present Ritualistic party, they are continuing that work of
sapping and mining the Protestantism of the Anglican Church which he and
his friends so ably commenced. At the present time, they have no little
claim to be considered victorious all along the line. I am old enough to
recollect the small beginnings of the Tractarian party; and I am amazed
when I consider the present position of their heirs. Their little leaven
has leavened, if not the whole, yet a very large lump of the Anglican
Church; which is now pretty much of a preparatory school for Papistry. So
that it really behoves Englishmen (who, as I have been informed by high
authority, are all, legally, members of the State Church, if they profess
to belong to no other sect) to wake up to what that {482} powerful
organisation is about, and whither it is tending. On this point, the
writings of Dr. Newman, while he still remained within the Anglican fold,
are a vast store of the best and the most authoritative information. His
doctrines on Ecclesiastical miracles and on Development are the
corner-stones of the Tractarian fabric. He believed that his arguments led
either Romeward, or to what ecclesiastics call "Infidelity," and I call
Agnosticism. I believe that he was quite right in this conviction; but
while he chooses the one alternative, I choose the other; as he rejects
Protestantism on the ground of its incompatibility with history, so, _a
fortiori_, I conceive that Romanism ought to be rejected, and that an
impartial consideration of the evidence must refuse the authority of Jesus
to anything more than the Nazarenism of James and Peter and John. And let
it not be supposed that this is a mere "infidel" perversion of the facts.
No one has more openly and clearly admitted the possibility that they may
be fairly interpreted in this way than Dr. Newman. If, he says, there are
texts which seem to show that Jesus contemplated the evangelisation of the
heathen:
... Did not the Apostles hear our Lord? and what was _their_ impression
from what they heard? Is it not certain that the Apostles did not
gather this truth from His teaching? (Tract 85, p. 63).
He said, "Preach the Gospel to every creature." These words _need_ have
only meant "Bring all men to Christianity through Judaism." Make them
Jews, that they may enjoy Christ's privileges, which are lodged in
Judaism; teach them those rites and ceremonies, circumcision and the
like, which {483} hitherto have been dead ordinances, and now are
living: and so the Apostles seem to have understood them (_ibid._ p.
65).