admit of some excuse. The worst is, that, when Heaven had revealed of
itself what it saw fit, this irreverent humour of searching into the
deep things of God, was not cured, but indeed carried to a greater, if
possible, at least to a more criminal excess; as I shall now shew in a
slight sketch of the mischiefs, which have arisen, from this audacious
treatment even of the divine word.
2. Of the _Jewish_ corruptions I shall say nothing, because they did not
so directly spring from a licence of speculation in the Rabbins: though
their readiness in admitting unauthorized traditions, and in giving way
to evasive glosses on the Law, had something of the same character in it,
and led to the same ill effects.
But when the _Gospel_, that last and best revelation of the divine will,
was vouchsafed to mankind, it might be expected, that the most curious
would keep themselves within the bounds of modesty and respect: that they
would thankfully receive the information imparted to them, would improve
it to its right use, and acquiesce in the want of that light, which it
was not thought proper to give.
But, no; the same ungoverned curiosity, that had wantoned so long in
the schools of pagan philosophy, rioted, with a still more luxuriant
extravagance, in the Christian church: as if that unholy flame had
catched new strength from the fires of the altar; and the revealed
articles of our creed had been only so much fresh fuel to feed and
augment it.
Hence, in the days of the Apostles themselves, we hear much of men that,
_strove about words, to no profit_—of _profane and vain babblings_, that
tended to nothing but _ungodliness_[197], of arrogant reasoners, who
_intruded into those things, which they had not seen, vainly puft up by
their fleshly minds[198], of_ extravagant speculatists, who allegorized
and explained away the fundamental articles of the faith, even the
_resurrection_ itself[199]: which, in the literal sense, was rejected as
a gross doctrine, not suited to the apprehensions of wise men.
Thus the seeds of this evil were early sown, and began to shoot up in
those rank heresies, of which a full harvest presently appeared.
The Gnostic and Manichæan impieties led the way. Others, of as ill
name, followed from all quarters; especially from the sects of pagan
philosophy; which now pressed into the church, and, in their haste,
forgot to leave their quibbles and their metaphysicks behind them. The
evidences of the Gospel had, indeed, extorted their assent: but how ill
prepared they were for the practice of the new religion, sufficiently
appeared, when, instead of submitting themselves to the word of God, they
would needs torture it into a compliance with their own fancies. Every
convert found his own tenets in the doctrine of Jesus: and would be a
Christian only, on the principles of his pagan theology.
Thus the pure and simple faith of the Gospel was adulterated by every
folly, which delirious reason could invent and propagate; till, instead
of _joy and peace in believing_, the destined fruits of Christianity
_through the power of the holy Ghost_[200], all was dissonance and
distraction: contentious pride, and fierce inexorable debate.
These mischiefs continued very long; when Plato, at one time, and
Aristotle, at another, gave the law to the Christian world; and decided
in all questions, or rather confounded all, which the subtlety of human
wit could extract from the plainest articles of the Christian faith.
Even the barbarous ages could not suppress this fatal ingenuity. The
wits of the school-men teemed with fresh chimæras, in the shade of their
cloysters; as the minds of disturbed visionaries are observed to be more
than commonly active and prolific in the dark.
At length Reason grew ashamed of these more than fruitless altercations:
and a few divine men, at the Reformation, seemed resolved to take the
scriptures for their guide, and to shut up all their inquiries in a frank
and full submission to the written word. Still their former bad habits,
imperceptibly almost, stuck close to them; for which they had only
this excuse to make, that the zeal of their opponents forced them into
dispute. Necessity, sharpened their invention; their successes, begot
pride; and persecution, engendered hate. In this way, and by these steps,
it was, that the Protestants grew ingenious and dogmatical. In opposition
to the church of Rome, they would explain doctrines, of which they
had no just ideas; founded on texts of Scripture, which they did not
understand. Presently, as was natural for men in their blind situation,
they quarrelled among themselves; and their presumption, we may be sure,
was not lessened, but increased, by this misadventure. The issue of all
these conflicts was, an inundation of dark and dangerous writings, on
subjects[201], which confound human reason, and in which religion has no
concern.
In process of time, however, these evils were, in part, removed.
Philosophers[202] examined the scriptures with care, and explained them
with reverence: and, what is more, Divines[203] became, in the best sense
of the word, philosophers. Between them, much light was thrown on the
general scheme of revelation. Its utility, its necessity, was shewn: its
sublime views were opened: its evidences were cleared: its doctrines,
vindicated: and its authority, maintained. Reason saw to distinguish
between its own province, and that of faith: It grew severe in exacting
its own rights: and modest in prescribing to those of the revelation
itself.
But while men of superior sense were thus intent on reforming the bad
theology of former times, the rest were too generally involved in it.
They were unwilling to give up their darling habit _of gazing up into
heaven_: that is, of framing, or adopting theories, which had neither
solidity, nor use; and of explaining mysteries, which they could not
understand[204].
Nor was the effect of this folly, merely to disgrace themselves.
Christianity was too frequently seen in the false light, in which
these rash adventurers had placed it: And men of shallow minds, and
libertine principles, were ready enough to take advantage of all
their indiscretions. For on this ground only, or chiefly, the various
structures of modern infidelity stand. The presumptuous positions
of particular men, or churches, are forwardly taken for the genuine
doctrines of Christianity: And those positions, being not unfrequently
either wholly unintelligible, or even contrary to the plainest reason,
the charge of nonsense, or of falshood, is, thus, dexterously transferred
on the Gospel itself. And, though the abuse be gross and palpable, yet,
when dressed out with a shew of argument, or varnished over with a little
popular eloquence, it shall easily pass on ill-inclined, or unwary men.
It is surely time for us to benefit by this sad experience. We, the
teachers of religion, should learn, not to be _wise above what is
written_: And you, who would profit in this school, should not think much
to restrain your curiosity within these bounds, which, not the Scriptures
only, but, right reason prescribes.
For let it not be surmized, that, in deducing this account of the
mischiefs, which have sprung from ill-directed inquiries into religion,
my purpose is in any degree to discountenance the use of reason in such
matters. Christianity, if it be indeed divine, will bear the strictest
examination; and it is the prerogative of our protestant profession to
support itself on the footing of free inquiry. The way of argument is so
far from being hurtful to the cause of revelation, that it is, in truth,
the basis and foundation of it. We dishonour, we affront our holy faith,
if we believe it hath, or can have any other. Only let us take heed,
that Reason do her proper work; and that we do not dream, or fancy, or
presume, when we think we reason.
In the instances, before given, the fault was in concluding without
premises, and in arguing without ideas. When men call this _reasoning_,
they forget the meaning of the term, as well as mistake the extent of
their own faculties. We cannot reason on all subjects, because there are
many subjects which we cannot understand: And by the term, _reasoning_,
is only meant an act of the mind, which draws right conclusions from
intelligible propositions. The nature of the infinite Being, the mode of
his existence, the œconomy of his providence, are inscrutable to us, and
probably to the highest angels. Why then intrude into such things, as no
man hath seen, or can see? All that remains is, to admit no proposition,
which is not clearly revealed; and, for the rest, to admit, on the
authority of the revealer, what must be true, though we cannot, in the
way of reason, perceive that it is so.
The inutility of all researches into divine things, without a strict
adherence to this well-grounded principle, is apparent; the presumption
of them, is ridiculous; but, above all, the mischiefs of them, are
deplorable.
Men bewilder themselves, in inextricable difficulties: they disbelieve,
on incompetent grounds: they give up the Gospel, and, with it, their best
hopes, for the gratification of the idlest vanity: or they mis-spend
their time in exploring articles of faith, instead of attending, to the
obvious end and use of them.
To return to the text, which led us into these reflexions. The disciples
were _looking up into heaven_, when they should have been considering how
to follow him thither. Is not our folly the same, or rather is it not
more inexcusable, when gazing, with our weak reason, on celestial things,
we neglect the ends, for which a glympse of them is afforded to us? For
there is not an article of our creed, which may not make us better, if
not wiser: And obedience, that is, _faith working by love_, whatever some
may think, is of another value in the sight of God, and of higher concern
to man, than all knowledge.
SERMON XLV.
PREACHED JUNE 23, 1776.
St. MATTH. xiii. 55, 56.
_Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his
brethren, James and Joses and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are not
they all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they
were offended in him._
We have, in these words, a striking picture of ENVY; which makes us
unwilling to see, or to acknowledge, any pre-eminence in those, whom we
have familiarly known and conversed with, and whom we have been long used
to regard as our inferiors, or, at most, but on a level with ourselves.
Our Lord’s neighbours and countrymen, who had been acquainted with him
from his youth, could repeat the names of his whole family, and knew the
ordinary condition, in which they lived, were out of patience to think
that, so descended and so circumstanced, he should be grown at once into
distinction among them, and should be taken notice of for abilities and
powers, which they, none of them, possessed.
This temper of mind, I say, is here very graphically expressed; and it
operated among the Jews with a more than common malignity, shedding its
venom on those, whom not their own industry, but the special favour of
Heaven had raised above their fellows, and had commissioned to go forth
with extraordinary powers (of which they had frequent instances in their
history) for the common benefit of themselves and of mankind. Whence it
acquired even the authority of a proverbial sentence,—that _a prophet
hath no honour in his own country, and in his own house_[205].
But, I mean not to enlarge, at present, on this moral topick. There is
_another_, and very important use to be made of these words, which is,
to let us see, “how very small a matter will serve to overpower the
strongest evidence of our religion, though proposed with all imaginable
advantage to us, when we _hate to be reformed_, or, for any other reason,
have no mind to be convinced of its truth.”
This strange power of _prejudice_ is exemplified in the text, and will
deserve our serious consideration.
Our blessed Lord had now given many proofs of the divine virtue, that
was lodged in him; and was, therefore, moved, not only by the duty of
his office, but, as we may suppose, by that regard which every good man
hears to his country, to make a tender of his mercies to those persons,
especially, among whom he had been brought up. Accordingly, we are
told, that he came to his own city of Nazareth, and _preached in their
Synagogue, insomuch that_ the people of that place _were astonished, and
said, whence hath this man this wisdom_, which appears in his doctrine,
_and these mighty works_, which we have seen him perform? And then,
calling to mind the mean circumstances of his birth and family, before
repeated, they expressed their dissatisfaction, or, as the text says,
_were offended in him_.
But, were those circumstances a reason for rejecting a _doctrine_, which
astonished them with its wisdom; and _works_, which they owned to be
_mighty_, and above the common power of man? Rather, sure, the opposite
conduct was to be expected; and, because they knew certainly, from the
mean extraction and education of him who taught and did these things,
that he had no means of _acquiring_ his abilities (if they were at all to
be acquired) in an ordinary way, they ought, methinks, to have had their
minds impressed with a full assurance, that they were owing, as they were
by himself ascribed, to the power of God.
But, no: rather than admit a conclusion, which hurt their pride, and
crossed their foolish prejudices, they stifle the strongest conviction
of their own minds; and resolve not to receive a prophet, whom they had
long desired and expected, who came to them with all the credentials of
a prophet, and with the offer of what they most wanted, the remission
of their sins, and the inestimable gift of eternal life. And all this,
because the prophet was _the son of a carpenter_, in their own town, and
because his _brethren and sisters_, persons of a mean condition, _were
all with them_.
When we contemplate such a conduct, as this, we are ready to say, that
it sprung from a more than common perverseness of character, and that
the people of Nazareth were more unreasonable and sottish, as the common
proverb made them to be, than the rest of _Israel_[206].
Yet, if we turn our thoughts on the other tribes and cities of that
nation, on the inhabitants of Judæa, and even of Jerusalem, we shall
find, that they reasoned no better than the men of Nazareth had done; and
discovered equal, indeed, much the same prejudices as those, by which our
Lord’s own countrymen had been misled.
For, what else was it to say, as they commonly did, that _no prophet
could come out of Galilee_[207]; that he could not be the Messiah,
because his disciples were illiterate fishermen[208], and not Scribes and
Pharisees; because none of their rulers believed on him[209]; because he
conversed, sometimes, with publicans and sinners[210]; because he did not
observe their minute ceremonies or traditions[211]; because he manifested
his divine power in healing the sick, and casting out devils, and not in
breaking to pieces the Roman empire and restoring the temporal kingdom
of Israel[212]; because—but I need not instance in more particulars:
Universally, the Jews, of all places and denominations, rejected their
Lord and Saviour for reasons, the most absurd and trivial; for reasons,
that came from the heart, and not the head, which shewed they were under
the power of some contemptible prejudice, and would yield to no evidence,
unless that was complied with.
Still, “the Jews, in general, you will say, were unlike other people.
Tell us how the polished Heathens reasoned on the subject of Christ’s
mission; and whether, when the Gospel was addressed to them, they opposed
it on the footing of those senseless prejudices, which you have enough
disgraced.”
Luckily, I have it in my power to accept this challenge; and to shew you,
on the best authority, that those men of enlightened minds and renowned
wisdom were as weak in their sophisms, and as childish in their cavils
against the new religion, as the Jews themselves.
We read in the Acts of the Apostles[213], that St. Paul came to Ephesus,
a rich, learned, idolatrous city of Asia; that he applied himself more
especially to the instruction of its Gentile inhabitants; _disputing
daily, for two years together, in the school of one Tyrannus_, a teacher
of rhetorick, or philosophy, as we may suppose, and a convert to the
faith of Jesus. That his success was great, we may conclude, both from
his long residence, and from _the special miracles_, which he wrought,
among them. Yet, when _the word of God had grown mightily and prevailed,
a certain silver-smith, who made silver shrines_ for the Goddess of the
place, had credit enough with this well instructed city, because its
trade was likely to suffer by the downfall of idolatry, to raise such
an uproar among the people, that the Apostle’s labours were, at once,
overturned by this powerful argument, and he, himself, compelled to leave
them to their old infatuations: which was much such treatment, as Jesus
himself had received from the Gadarenes; who, because he had permitted
the devils, ejected out of one of their people, to enter into a herd
of swine, and to destroy them, would not be saved at this expence, and
required him, but civilly indeed, _to depart out of their coasts_. Now,
was that _craft_, or this _husbandry_, a matter to be put in competition
with the saving of their souls, which they had reason to expect from the
preaching of Paul and Jesus? Or, is it not clear, that a petty interest,
that is, a sordid _prejudice_, prevailed against the most precious hopes,
supported by the fullest evidence?
But these were _prejudices_ of the ignorant vulgar. Let us see, then,
what success St. Paul had in a nobler scene, among wits and sages, men
of refined sense and reason, in the head-quarters of politeness and
civility, in the eye of Greece itself, in one word, Athens[214]. Here,
the great Apostle, who had the charity, and the ability, to _make himself
all things to all men_, encountered their ablest philosophers; reasoning
with them, even before their revered court of Areopagus, on their own
favourite topics of _God, and the Soul_, in a strain of argument, which
was clearly unanswerable; and concluding his weighty apology with _Jesus
and the Resurrection_. But what was the effect of all this truth on the
minds of these liberal heathens? Why the text says—_when they heared of
the resurrection of the dead, some_ (that is, the Epicureans) _mocked_;
and why? because their philosophy admitted no future state: while
_others_ (the Stoics) _said, We will hear thee again of this matter_;
but, for as poor reason, as the other, because their philosophy taught I
know not what of a certain renovation of the world, which, for the credit
of their sect, they were half inclined to confound with the Christian
resurrection. You see, in both parties, the power of prejudice; where
yet the occasion was the most interesting, the hearers the most capable,
the ability or the speaker, independently of his assumed inspiration,
unquestionably great, and where the conclusion, (so carelessly dismissed)
was, after all, a question of FACT, which had no dependance on the
fanciful tenets of either party.
I should weary you and myself, should I carry on this deduction through
the following ages of the Christian church; and shew, as I might easily
do, that the ablest men of science, who opposed Christianity, did it on
grounds no better than those of these Athenian sophists. We see what
these grounds were, in the fragments, that remain to us, of many ancient
unbelievers[215], men, the most acute and learned of their times; while
yet every man of sense, that now reads and considers their objections,
will own, whether he be himself a Christian or not, that they are
altogether weak and frivolous, and have the face not so much of sound,
or even colourable arguments, as of faint and powerless prepossessions
against unwelcome truth.
I shall only instance in _one_ of these prepossessions, which you think
prodigious. The Roman empire, labouring under its own vices, and many
_physical_ evils, which then lay heavy upon it, experienced, in the
fourth century, that reverse of fortune, which, in its turn, the greatest
nations must expect. But by this time Christianity had spread itself
through all the provinces, and was become the religion of the state. In
these circumstances, the Heathens, very generally, not the rabble only,
but the gravest and wisest of the Heathens; ascribed these disasters
to the abolition of idolatry; and thought it an unanswerable argument
against the faith of Jesus, that it did not maintain their empire in
that degree of splendour and prosperity, to which, in the days of pagan
worship, it had happily been raised. And this miserable superstition,
which we now only pity, or, perhaps, smile at, made so deep an impression
on the minds of men, that the greatest of the ancient fathers, and
particularly St. Austin[216], were scarce able, with all their learning
and authority, to bring it into contempt.
Such was the power of _ancient_ prejudice against the Christian religion.
But I hasten to set before you, in few words, what its tyranny has been
in _later_ times.
The accidental and temporary commotions, which reformed religion
produced in our western world, furnished in the minds of many, a notable
_argument_ against the cause of Protestantism, which, when taken up and
improved, as it soon was, by state-policy, had, indeed, a fatal influence
on its success. But, even as to Christianity itself, that day-spring of
knowledge, which broke upon us at the Reformation, and, as they say,
has been brightening from that time to this, could not disperse those
phantoms of prejudice, which are forever haunting the human mind.
Men, who piqued themselves on their sagacity, presently started up,
and said, that, because popery had been found to be an imposture,
Christianity was so too; and because the legendary tales of the
cloysters had been convicted of falshood, that the Scriptures themselves
deserved but little regard. And when afterwards these suspicions gave
way to sober criticism and learned inquiry, _prejudices_ still arose,
in various shapes, against the EVIDENCES, and the DOCTRINES of the
Gospel-Revelation. We were told, that the _prophecies_ proved nothing,
because some of them were too obscure, and others too plain. Could both
these objections come from the oracle, Reason? Or, is it so much as
likely, that either of them did so? when, for any thing it could tell,
both the clearness, and the obscurity might be suitable to the occasion,
and each, be fit, in its place. Then again, there were others bold enough
to deny the existence of _miracles_, not, because many have been forged,
but because none can be true. Was this, too, the voice of Reason? or, is
not St. Paul’s appeal to common sense enough to disgrace this fancy to
the end of the world—_Why should it be thought a thing incredible with
you that_ GOD _should raise the dead_?[217] God, who surely has _power_
to do this, or other miracles, when his _wisdom_ sees fit.
The _contents_ of the Gospel have also been treated, I do not say with as
little respect, but with as little shew of reason and argument, as the
evidences of it.
For instance, it was current, not long ago, that “Christianity was as old
as the Creation;” the meaning of which wise saying was, that Christianity
could not be true, because the _moral_ part of it was such, as nature
taught, and had at all times been able to discover by its own light.
Admit the fact: what follows? That therefore a divine revelation needs
not repeat and could not occasionally enforce the laws of nature. Is
reason, pure unmixed reason, accustomed to trifle at this rate?