inspiration for argument between us. In his letter of February 18th, Mr.
Ould gives this account of our projected controversy: “We proposed to
discuss with you the EVIDENCE of the genuineness, authenticity, and
INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES;” he taunts us with _reluctance_ to
take up this “greatest of testimonial questions,” with “refusing to come
forward boldly, and _debate it fairly before the church_.”[10] We _have_
come forward boldly, and this is now the alleged reason why there is to
be _no debate at all before the church_. Moreover, at the time when you
said “we accept your terms,” you regarded us as holding the very
opinions which are now made the excuse for a retreat; in your first
lecture they are made a chief ground of indictment against us, and pages
are crowded with citations from Unitarian writers, expressing those same
sentiments, which, when avowed by your own opponents, are to make them
unfit to be addressed, and to exempt you from the duty of reply. Of the
spirit of this proceeding, observers of honourable mind must judge;
they, as well as you, are well aware, that to pronounce men unworthy of
attack, is itself an attack of the last degree of bitterness.
II. Your refusal to settle with us the meaning of Scripture till the
plenary inspiration is acknowledged, is in plain contradiction to your
own principles. You fix the imputation of _deception_ on our statement,
that “the process of interpretation may go on undisturbed by any
reference to the theory of verbal inspiration.” Yet is this only a
repetition of what Mr. Byrth himself says, “In whatever light the
Christian Scriptures are regarded, whether as the result of plenary
inspiration, as we Trinitarians believe, or as the uninspired
productions of the first teachers of Christianity, or even as the
forgeries of imposture, _the meaning_ of their contents is a _question
apart from all others_.”[11]
Dr. Tattershall, in common with all sound divines, makes it the _first
step_ of scriptural inquiry to “examine the contents” of the books under
the guidance of the following principle: that “any message coming from
God must be consistent with the character of the same holy being, as
exhibited in his works,” and must have “consistency with itself:”[12]
and he justly states, that whether we ought to take the _last step_, of
admitting the divine authority of the doctrines, must still be
contingent on those doctrines, “being themselves wise and
holy,”—“lessons worthy of God.”[13] These principles are violated,
unless our investigation into your doctrines is taken in the following
order:—
I. Are your doctrines _true to the sense of Scripture_? If _not_, the
controversy ends here; if they _are_, then,
II. Are they _self-consistent; reconcilable with the teachings of God’s
works, pure and holy_? If _not_, the controversy ends _here_; if they
_are_, then,
III. Do they come to us clothed with divine authority, and conveyed in
the language of plenary inspiration?
Your system, then, must establish its _existence in the Bible_ (which is
a matter of interpretation), and its _credibility in itself_ (which we
presume there must be _some criterion_ to determine), _before_ the
question of inspiration is capable of being discussed. We deny both
these preliminaries; protesting that we cannot find your system in the
Scriptures; and that if we could, it appears to us so far from
“self-consistent,” “wise and holy,” and “worthy of God,” as exceedingly
to embarrass the claims to divine authority, of any writings which
contain it. It was then in implicit obedience to your own rules that we
proposed to let the question of interpretation take the lead; and no
less so, that we presume to form a judgment respecting the internal
character of doctrines professing to be scriptural. Permit us to ask
how, but by some “light in ourselves,” we are to determine whether
doctrines are “wise and holy,” “self-consistent,” and “worthy of God?”
Secondly. You plead that we have forfeited our claim on the fulfilment
of your engagement, by a statement of opinion in our second lecture, to
this effect: that miracles do not enable us to infer the intellectual
infallibility of the performer. This, it seems, is an unexpected heresy,
and cancels all promises. You appear to be affected by the Popish
tendencies of the age; and to have adopted the notion, that no faith is
to be kept with heretics. On this point we remark as follows:—
1st. We are astonished at your assertion, that this idea about miracles
deprives us of any “common medium of reason” with you. Did you not
“propose to discuss with us” the “evidence of the plenary inspiration of
the holy Scriptures,” under the persuasion that we should take the
negative side? In such discussion, would you not have argued from the
miracles to the inspiration? And how did you suppose that we should
reply? You were well aware that we should _admit_ the miracles; and
equally well aware that we should _deny_ the plenary inspiration of
those that wrought them. It cannot be supposed that, at this point, you
would have had no more to say; but you would have proceeded, as many
able writers have already done, to seek some “common medium of
reason,”—some considerations, that is, having force with both parties;
by which you might hope to fasten the disputed connection between your
premises and your conclusion.
2nd. We are still more astonished to hear that this sentiment puts us “a
step beyond common Deism,” “in undisputed possession of the field of
infidelity,” and even in “separation from our common humanity;” seeing
that the opinion has been held by
BISHOP SHERLOCK:—Who says, “Miracles cannot prove _the truth_ of any
doctrine; and men do not speak accurately when they say the doctrines
are proved by the miracles; for, in truth, there is _no connection_
between miracles and doctrines.”[14]
JOHN LOCKE:—“Even in those books which have the greatest proof of
Revelation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm their
being so, _the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, not the
doctrine by the miracles_.”[15]
DR. SAMUEL CLARKE:—“We can hardly affirm, with any certainty, that any
particular effect, how great or miraculous soever it may seem to us, is
beyond the power of all created beings (whom he explains further to be,
‘subordinate intelligences, _good_ or _evil_ angels,’) in the universe
to produce.” He believes the Devil to “be able, by reason of his
invisibility, to work _true and real miracles_;” and “whether such
(_i.e._ miraculous) interposition be the immediate work of God, or of
some good or evil angel, can hardly be discovered merely by the work
itself.”
He accordingly lays down _the conditions under which_ the miracles will
prove the doctrine.[16]
BISHOP FLEETWOOD:—“Spirits may perform most strange and astonishing
things,—may convey men through the air, or throw a mountain two miles at
a cast.”[17]
The notions expressed by the last two writers, respecting the superhuman
agency of good and evil spirits, evidently destroy, no less than the
more philosophical principle of Sherlock and Locke, all power of
reasoning from miracles, as such, to the divine authority and
inspiration of the performers. You cannot be ignorant of the fact, that
these notions prevailed among all the Fathers of both the Greek and
Latin churches; that they were almost universal among Christians till
very recent times; and that your own church lodges with the Bishop of
the Diocese a discretionary power to license clergymen to cast out
devils.[18]
Nor need we remind you that, by yet another process of thought, the
Society of Friends assigns to miracles the rank which you think so
profane. “We know,” says Barclay on this subject, “that the devil can
form a sound of words, and convey it to the outward ear; that he can
easily deceive the outward senses, by making things appear which are
not. Yea, do we not see that the Jugglers and Mountebanks can do as much
as all that, by their legerdemain? God forbid then that the saint’s
faith should be founded on so fallacious a foundation as man’s outward
and fallible senses.”[19] And he urges, “that there must be other ways
of ascertaining divine truth; for as to miracles, John the Baptist and
divers of the Prophets wrought none that we hear of, and yet were both
immediately and extraordinarily sent.”[20] By different modes of
thinking, all these (Christians?) have arrived at the sentiment in
question, so that we occupy “the field of infidelity,” without being
“separated from” at least a goodly portion of “our humanity.” That this
sentiment should be of so deep a dye of Deism is the more remarkable,
because it is advanced and vindicated as a _scriptural sentiment_,—a
plea which, however foolish, can be shown to be so, only by discussing
_the interpretation_ of the New Testament. You have proposed no
explanation of the state of the Apostles’ minds before the day of
Pentecost. On that day they either did, or they did not, become more
enlightened than before. If they did not, the gift of the Holy Spirit
conferred no illumination; if they did, they were deficient in light
before; and the miraculous powers they had possessed and exercised did
not imply infallibility. We thought, indeed, that the comparative
narrowness of their views before this period had been universally
admitted. With respect to the appeal which in the presence of the
Baptist’s disciples our Lord makes to his miraculous acts, you are quite
aware that we do _not_ regard it as “worthless,” though you say we
“_must_” do so. These acts (the _climax_ of which, however, was no
miracle at all,—“the poor have the Gospel preached to them,”) fully
answered _the purpose for which they were appealed to_, viz., to
determine whether Jesus was “He that should come,” or whether John was
“to look for another;” for as Bishop Sherlock remarks though miracles
may not (he says “_cannot_) prove the _truth_ of any doctrine,” they
“prove _the commission_ of the person who does them to proceed from
God.”[21] We repeat, then, that we have started no topic which you did
not invite; we have taken up no method of discussion which your own
rules did not prescribe; we have advanced no idea for which your own
Church should be unprepared. You have quitted this controversy without
any justification from the unexpected nature of _our sentiments_, and we
are persuaded that you can plead no discourtesy in our proposals
respecting the _mechanical arrangements_. On this point we think it
right to state thus publicly the overtures which we made to you, through
the excellent clergyman who communicated with us as your representative.
An objection having been urged by Mr. Ould to discussion through the
newspapers, on the ground that they are read by “the ignorant scoffer,
the sceptical, the profane,” we proposed the following plan:—That for
twelve or any limited number of weeks, a joint weekly pamphlet of
thirty-two pages should be published, each party furnishing sixteen
pages; that the first number of the series should contain a positive
statement, _from each party_, of its fundamental principles in religion,
of that which it undertook to assail, and that which it undertook to
defend; and that within the limits of this programme, the replies in the
subsequent numbers should confine themselves. Thus each party would have
chosen its own ground, at first; and both would have disappeared from
the public view together, at last. This proposal was rejected without
any reason being assigned, except that there were “too many difficulties
in the way;” and though all preliminaries were to be settled “by
previous agreement,” we were told that in the following _Courier_ we
should find a letter addressed to us, which we might answer in whatever
way we thought proper. The public who have watched the proceedings in
this matter will bear witness, with our consciences, that we were _not
the first_ to enter this controversy; that we have _not been the first_
to leave it; and that, in its progress, we have departed from no pledge,
and been guilty of no evasion.
And now, Gentlemen, accept from us in conclusion, our solemn protest
against the language of unmeasured insult, in which, under the cover of
sanctity, the associated clergymen whom you represent, have thought
proper to speak of our religion; against the accusations personally
addressed to us, in the presence of 3,000 people, by the Lecturers in
Christ Church, of “mean subterfuges,” “of sneering,” of “savage grins,”
of “damnable blasphemy,” of “the greatest imaginable guilt,” of “doing
despite to the Spirit of Grace,” of “the most odious of crimes against
the Majesty of Heaven,” and in common with all Unitarians of forming our
belief, from “the blindness of graceless hearts,” too bad “to have been
touched by any spirit of God,” and against the visible glee, fierce as
Tertullian’s, with which “the faithful” are reminded that ere long, _we
must and shall_ bow our proud knees, whether we like it or not, to the
object of their peculiar worship;—so that they are sure of their triumph
in heaven, however questionable it may be on earth. You began the
controversy by ascribing to us one shade of “infidelity;” you end it by
ascribing to us a blacker. Beneath “the lowest deep,” there is it seems
“a lower still.” We have sat quietly under all this, bearing the rude
friction upon everything that is most dear to us, assured that if
anything in heaven or earth be certain, it is this;—that no spirit of
God ever spake thus, or thus administered the poison of human passions,
falsely labelled as the medicine of a divine love. What is the
difference between your religion and ours, that this high tone (than
which, to a pure moral taste, nothing surely can be _lower_) should be
assumed against us? We believe, no less than you, in an infallible
Revelation (though had we the misfortune to doubt it, we might be, in
the sight of God, neither worse nor better than yourselves); you in a
Revelation of an unintelligible Creed to the understanding; we in a
Revelation of moral perfection, and the spirit of duty to the heart; you
in a Revelation of the metaphysics of Deity; we in a Revelation of the
character and providence of the Infinite Father; you in a Redemption
which saves the few, and leaves with Hell the triumph after all; we in a
Redemption which shall restore to all at length the image and the
immortality of God: we _do_ reserve, as you suggest, “_a sort of
inspiration_” for the founders of Christianity, “a sort” as much higher
than your cold, dogmatical, scientific inspiration, as the intuitions of
conscience are higher than the predications of logic, and the free
spirit of God, than the petty precision of men. We believe in a
spiritual and moral Revelation, most awakening, most sanctifying, most
holy; which _words_, being the signs of hard and definite ideas, could
never express, and which is therefore pourtrayed in a mind divinely
finished for the purpose, acting awhile on Earth and publicly
transferred to Heaven. All men may see that such a Revelation
corresponds well with the medium which conveys it; but a set of
scholastic propositions, like Articles and Creeds, might as well have
been written on the sky; and many a bitter doubt and bitterer
controversy might have been spared.
We believe, Gentlemen, that the minds of serious and considerate persons
are weary of the aggressions of Churches upon the private and secret
faith of the individual heart; that they will not long be forced to live
on the dry husks of Creeds which have lost the kernel of true life; nor
accept mere puzzles as divine mysteries. It is at the peril of all
religion that its illimitable truths are embalmed in definite formulas,
and the abyss of God confidently measured by thrusting out the foot-rule
of ecclesiastical wisdom. The things most holy cannot without injury be
thus turned from the contemplation of the affections, to the small
criticism of the intellect; and the acute and polished dividing-knife of
dialectics, when applied to cut theology into propositions, is apt to
leave scarce a shred of faith.
That all professing ministers of the Gospel may speedily turn from their
divisions of belief to a hearty union of spirit, is the desire and
prayer of
Us, who in this temper, and in better times, might have been
owned as
Your fellow-labourers,
JAMES MARTINEAU.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
March 25th, 1839. HENRY GILES.
-----
Footnote 10:
Rev. F. Ould’s Letter of February 11.
Footnote 11:
Rev. T. Byrth’s Lecture, Part I. p. 114.
Footnote 12:
Rev. Dr. Tattershall’s Lecture on the Integrity of the Canon, p. 69.
Footnote 13:
“Whatever lessons of instruction or doctrines they teach us, _these
doctrines being themselves wise and holy_, must have been delivered
under a divine sanction, and therefore possess divine authority.
“If he (that is, the person who performs miracles) also teaches
lessons,—_lessons worthy of God_,—these lessons undoubtedly come to us
clothed with divine authority.”—_Dr. Tattershall’s Lecture_, pp. 70,
71.
Footnote 14:
Sherlock’s Discourses, No. 10, Hughes’s edition, Vol. I. p. 197, and
No. 15, Vol. I. p. 278.
Footnote 15:
Lord King’s Life of Locke, p. 125.
Footnote 16:
Sermons at the Boyle Lecture, Prop. xiv.
Footnote 17:
Essay on Miracles, p. 99, _seq._, as quoted by Farmer in his
Dissertation on Miracles, chap. i. § 3.
Footnote 18:
“No minister or ministers shall, _without the licence and direction of
the Bishop of the Diocese_, first obtained and had under his hand and
seal, ... attempt, upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession
or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any devil or devils,
under pain of the imputation of imposture or cozenage, and deposition
from the ministry.”—_Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical_, lxxii.
Footnote 19:
Apology for the True Christian Divinity, Prop. ii, pp. 35, 36.
Footnote 20:
Ibid. Prop. x. p. 296.
Footnote 21:
Discourses, No. 10, Hughes’s edition, vol. i. p. 197.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE
OF THE
UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.
An attempt has been made, in a preface to the Lecture to which the
following pages are a reply, to break the force, by anticipation, of the
statements they contain. The Answerer, however, evidently did not hear
the statements; and the preface proceeds upon some rumour of what was
said. If Clergymen are conscientiously prevented from going to hear
Unitarians, they ought also to be conscientiously prevented from
answering what they did not hear. I am represented as saying that
Trinitarians do not gather, but _lecture_: I said Trinitarianism does
not gather, but _scatters_. I am represented as arguing the tendency of
Trinitarianism to Popery from the recent movement of the Oxford Tract
divines in that direction: I argued the tendency of Trinitarianism to
Popery _from its fundamental principles_, and I referred to the Oxford
movement as one of the visible manifestations of the demonstrated
tendency.
I shall notice the instances in which the Preface proceeds upon anything
like a true apprehension of what was said—
1. Page vii. viii.—“When men tell us that Jesus did not weep over
_errors of opinion_, we maintain that it was the ‘error of opinion’
which led them to reject him as the Messiah over which he lamented.”
Now, 1. Is the unbelief of the Jews in the Christ, when he was
exhibiting his divine credentials in his Character and in his Miracles
before their eyes and to their hearts, in any respect similar to our
unbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity, which we, accepting both the
Scriptures and Christ, declare we cannot find to be authorized by
either? And 2. Is it not evident that Jesus attributed the unbelief of
the Jews to _Moral_ Causes, and that therefore, and _only_ therefore, he
condemned it? “This is the Condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, _because their deeds
were evil_.” John iii. 19.
2. Page viii.—“But these principles involve a violation of unity.” And
what if they do? Did not our Saviour emphatically declare, “Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace but a
sword.” 1. Christ is here not describing the final purpose of his
Mission nor the natural operation of his Spirit, but the immediate
opposition and contention which his religion would excite both in Jew
and Gentile before it rooted out the old Faiths: And 2. The Christ is
not here alluding to differences between _Christians themselves_,
between those who did accept him; but to the necessary conflict of the
Spirit of Jesus with the Antagonist spirits of Judaism and Heathenism.
This also is the great subject of the Book of Revelations.
3. Page xi.—“But it is a priestly spirit which says, ‘you must
believe.’” This ought to be reckoned with the instances in which the
answer proceeds upon an incorrect rumour of what was said; which was to
this effect,—“that it is the priestly spirit, whose constant cry is,
unless you believe _this doctrine_, and unless you believe _that
doctrine_, you cannot be saved.” Belief in Jesus, entire spiritual Trust
in him, as, for all providential purposes, one with God, we have
explicitly stated as our view of the essentials of Christianity.
Page xxi.—We do not know how far the Author extends his approval of “the
tactics of holy war.” For ourselves we disapprove of all such tactics,
especially the tactics of substituting a mere illustration or practical
verification of an argument, for the argument itself, and then dealing
with the illustration as if there was no general principle behind it, as
if the illustration was represented as _the grounds_ of the principle,
when it is only represented as one of its outward operations. And yet
this “argumentum a particulari ad universale,” is one which the author
employs in his description of Unitarianism in almost every page of his
Lecture.
J. H. T.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE
OF THE
UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.
---------------------
COLOSSIANS I. 27, 28.—_Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we preach,
warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we
may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus._
GALATIANS II. 4, 5.—_And that because of false brethren unawares brought
in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in
Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage; to whom we
gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of
the gospel might continue with you._