Improved Version. If by “repudiate” be meant, confess the truth of all
the accusations brought against it, or reject it from our libraries as
unworthy of consultation, we do not repudiate it. But we do refuse to be
held responsible, directly or indirectly, for any portion of its
criticisms; with which we have no more concern, than have our Reverend
assailants with the Translation of Luther or the Institutes of Calvin.
If we are pressed with the personal inquiry, “but, what portion of its
peculiarities, especially in relation to the narrative of the miraculous
conception, do you as a matter of fact, approve?” I can answer for no
one but myself, for we have no theological standards, nor any
restriction on the exercise of private judgment, on such subjects. But,
individually, I have no objection to state, that I consider Mr. Belsham
as having brought over the threshold of his conversion so much of his
original orthodoxy, that, like all who insist upon finding a uniform
doctrinal system prevading the various records of Christianity, he is
justly open to the charge of having accommodated both his criticism and
his interpretations to his belief; that his objections to the
authenticity of both accounts of the miraculous conception, appear to me
altogether inconclusive; that I therefore leave these histories as
integral parts of the gospels they introduce.[62] Whether I receive all
their statements as unerringly true, is a question altogether different;
nor can the Lecturer who calls on us to satisfy him on this point, link
together in one query our reception of these chapters as _authentic_ and
as _true_, without falling into Mr. Belsham’s own error of mixing these
two things so obviously distinct. It no more follows, because these
chapters are Matthew’s, that they must be reconcilable with Luke, and
so, free from objection to their truth; than, because they are
inconsistent with Luke, therefore they cannot be Matthew’s. This part of
the enquiry belongs to the second portion of our discussion respecting
the New Testament; whether, granting that we have the veritable words of
the reputed authors, we have, in consequence, the _ipsissima verba_ of
God. To this topic let us now proceed.
(2.) The advocate of plenary inspiration, having obtained our assent to
the authenticity of the Christian Scriptures, proceeds to show their
truth. He reminds us that the depositions are no longer anonymous; and
that, the testimony having been duly signed, we may examine the
character of the witnesses. We call them therefore before us. They are
plain, plebeian, hard-handed men of toil, who have laboured in the
fields and olive-grounds of Judæa, or held an oar on the Galilean Lake;
who nevertheless have been not without the cottage and the home, the
parent, wife and child; belonging, moreover, to a country having
something to remember, and more to expect. Addressed by a solitary and
houseless wanderer from Nazareth, won by some undefinable attraction
that makes them think him a man of God, they follow him awhile, hoping
for promotion, if he should prove, as they suspect, to be some great
one. Daily this hope declines, but hourly the love increases. They hang
upon his words; their passions sink abashed before his look; they
blindly follow his steps, knowing nothing but that they will be the
steps of mercy; they rebuke the blind beggar who cries; but he calls him
groping to him, and sends him dazzled away; they go to help the cripple,
and ere they reach him, at a word he leaps up in strength; they fly at
the shriek of the maniac from the tombs, when lo! he lapses into
silence, and sits at the feet of the Nazarene in the tears of a right
and grateful mind. How can they leave him? yet why precisely do they
stay? If they depart, it is but to return with joy; and so they linger
still, for they learn to trust him better than themselves. They go with
him sorrowing; with occasional flashes of brilliant ambition, but with
longer darkness between; with lowering hopes, but deepening love; to the
farewell meal; to the moonlit garden, its anguished solitude, its
tranquil surrender to the multitude, making the seeming captive the real
conqueror; a few of them to the trial; one, to the cross; the women,
even to the sepulchre; and all, agitated and unbelieving, were recalled
in breathless haste from their despair by the third day’s tidings, the
Lord has risen indeed! Thenceforth, they too are risen from the dead;
the bandages, as of the grave, drop from their souls; the spirit of God,
which is the spirit of truth, comes to loose them and let go. Not higher
did the Lord ascend to the heaven which holds him now, than did they
rise above the level of their former life. They understand it all, and
can proclaim it; the things that were to come,—that dreadful cross, that
third day, so darkly hidden from their eyes,—are shown them now; a
thousand things which he had said unto them, rush, by the help of this
new spirit, to their remembrance. And forth they go, to tell the things
which they have seen and heard. They most of them perished, not without
joy, in the attempt; but they _did_ tell them, with a voice that could
summon nations and ages to the audience; which things are this day
sounded in our ears.
But I suppose we must endeavour to speak coolly of these venerable men,
if we are to save them from being deprived of their manhood, and turned
into the petrified images and empty vessels of a physical or
intellectual inspiration. Why will the extravagance of Churches compel
us to freeze down our religion into logic, to prevent it blazing into an
unsocial fanaticism? If, however, we must weigh the Apostles’ claims
with nice precision, we must say (at this stage of our enquiry we can
say only) that they were honest personal witnesses of visible and
audible facts; deserving therefore of all the reliance to which
veracity, severely tested, is entitled. To everything then which comes
under the description of _personal testimony_, their demand on our
confidence extends; their own impressions we believe to have been as
they record. But their inferences, their arguments, their
interpretations of ancient writings, their speculations on future
events, however just and perfect in themselves, are no part of the
_report which they give in evidence_, and cannot be established by
appeal to their integrity.
Nor, in this limitation of testimony to its proper province, is there
anything in the slightest degree dishonourable to these “chosen
witnesses.” “Is the judgment of the writers of the New Testament,” says
Archdeacon Paley, “in interpreting passages of the Old, or, sometimes
perhaps in receiving established interpretations, so connected either
with their veracity, or with their means of information concerning what
was passing in their own times, as that a critical mistake, even were it
clearly made out, should overthrow their historical credit? Does it
diminish it? Has it any thing to do with it?” “We do not usually
question the credit of a writer, by reason of an opinion he may have
delivered upon subjects unconnected with his evidence; and even upon
subjects connected with his account, or mixed with it in the same
discourse or writing, we naturally separate facts from opinions,
testimony from observation, narrative from argument.”[63] Moreover, our
dependence upon a faithful witness, besides being restricted to matters
of fact, is measured by his _opportunities_ of observation; and it would
be absurd to insist on his being heard with precisely equal belief,
whether he relates, to the best of his knowledge, that which happened
before he was born, or tells an occurrence that passed under his eyes.
If this distinction be not well founded, then has personal contact with
events no advantage; the stranger is on a footing with the observer; and
all the defensive reasonings which theologians have thrown round
Christianity, from the station which the Apostles occupied as
eye-witnesses, are destitute of meaning; supported though they are by
the sanction of the Apostles themselves, whose constant claim to belief,
when they preached, was this only, “and we are witnesses of these
things.” And if this distinction be well founded, there is just ground
for discriminating between the different parts of an historian’s
narrative, and giving the highest place of credit to that which he had
the best means of knowing; nor is it possible to admit the rule which I
heard laid down on Wednesday evening, that if we discover in an
Evangelist a single incorrect statement, the whole book must be
repudiated,—selection being wholly out of the question. Of the birth of
Christ, for example, St. Matthew was not a witness; of his ministry he
was; and has the report of the latter no higher claim upon belief than
the history of the former,—seen as it was only in retrospect, at the
distance of from thirty to sixty years, and through the colours of a
subsequent life so great, so marvellous, so solemn? Hence, with relation
to the initial chapters of the first and third Evangelists, while I
leave them on an equality with the rest of the Gospels, in respect of
authenticity, I place them in an inferior rank of credibility;
especially since I find it impossible to reconcile them with each other.
To justify this opinion, I will point out two inconsistencies between
them, one chronological, the other geographical. I heard it affirmed on
Wednesday evening, that the former of these difficulties was only
apparent, and arose from the mistaken calculation of our Christian era,
the commencement of whose year, 1, does not really strike, as it ought,
the hour of the nativity. Well, then, we will throw this era aside for
the moment, and employ another mode of reckoning, prevalent among the
historians of those times, dating from the building of Rome. St. Luke
tells us that in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, our Lord was about
thirty years of age; this would assign the birth of Christ, at the
earliest, to Jan. 1 of the year of Rome 751. According to St. Matthew,
he was born full one year before the death of King Herod, whose massacre
of the innocents included all under two years; the latest date that can
be fixed for the death of Herod is Feb. or March 751, so that the
nativity falls, according to one Evangelist not later than 750,
according to the other not earlier than 751.[64] The geographical
discrepancy between the two Evangelists has reference to the habitual
residence of the Virgin Mary; St. Matthew supposes Bethlehem to have
been Joseph’s usual dwelling place; and “nothing can be more evident
than that, according to the account of St. Luke, Joseph was a total
stranger at Bethlehem.” I quote the opinion of the Rev. Connop
Thirlwall, a divine whose distinguished philological attainments have
given him a European reputation, without at present raising him to that
station in his own church, which would best suit his merits and her
dignity.[65]
The variance between two narratives is no sufficient reason for
rejecting both, though it compels the disbelief of one. In the present
instance, the probabilities appear to preponderate in favour of St.
Luke’s. And, returning from the particular case to the general rule, I
conclude this topic by repeating, respecting the “_credibility_” of any
set of historical works, the remark formerly made respecting their
“_authenticity_.” I protest against its being urged upon us as an
indissoluble magnitude, without fractional parts, incapable of increment
or decrement, analysis or composition, which must be taken whole, or
rejected whole; and I claim the right, till it can be shown not to
belong to me, of reducing the recorded events of Scripture into classes,
according to their decree of probability and their force of testimony.
With this qualification, we maintain, with all other Christians, the
ample credibility and the actual truth of the Gospel records, making no
divorce between the natural and the miraculous, but taking both as
inseparably woven together into the texture of the same faithful
narrative.
But this step in the argument, I am reminded, cannot be taken without
another, which brings us directly to the intellectual infallibility of
the Apostles. Among the primary and undisputed facts which they record
from personal experience, are the miracles which they wrought; and
miracles, being an interposition of God, establish the divine authority
of the performer; so that all the lessons and sentiments propounded by a
person so endowed, must be received as immediate communications from the
Unerring Spirit.
To this argument, if somewhat limited in the extent of its conclusion, I
believe that most Unitarians would yield their assent. Certain it is
that their best writers constantly reason from the miraculous acts, to
the doctrinal inspiration of the first preachers of Christianity; and
Dr. Priestley calls it “egregious trifling”[66] to question the
soundness of the proof. Yet it is surely difficult to reconcile it with
fact and Scripture; and not less so to state it logically in words. In
whatever form it is expressed, it rests upon a postulate which I hold to
be false and irreligious; viz., that the supernatural is Divine, the
natural not Divine; that God did the miracles, and since the creation
has done nothing else; that Heaven gave a mission to those whom it thus
endowed, and has given no mission to those who are otherwise endowed.
All peculiar _consecration_ of miracle is obtained by a precisely
proportioned _desecration_ of nature; it is out of a supposed contrast
between the two, that the whole force of the impression arises. The
imagination which overlooks and forgets all that is sacred in the common
earth and sky, that gives itself over to the dream, that all is dead
mechanism,—downright clock-work, wound up, perhaps at creation, but
running down of itself till doom; the heart that feels nothing divine in
life, and nothing holy in man; that has lost, from Epicurean sloth and
sickness of soul, the healthy faculty of spontaneous wonder, and worship
ever fresh,—are the pupils most ripe for this tutelage. The Deity must
be thrust from the universe, or else benumbed there, in order to
concentrate his energies in the preternatural. The speculative convert
to miracles, is the practical Atheist of nature.
I need not remind any reader of the Gospels, of the accordance of this
view with the general temper of our Lord’s mind. His miracles, surely,
sprung from compassionate, not proselytizing impulses; had a practical,
not a didactic air; were not formally wrought as preliminaries to a
discourse, but spontaneously issued from the quietude of pity; they were
not syllogisms, but mercies. Nay, where conviction was most needed, what
is said of him? “He did not many mighty works there, _because of their
unbelief_;”[67] unless he wished them to continue in unbelief, he must
have regarded miracles as an improper instrument of overcoming it. And
can we forget his language of rebuke, “except ye see signs and wonders,
ye will not believe,”[68] When he appeals to his “_works_,” it is to his
“_many good works_;”[69] to the benevolence of his acts, not their
marvellousness chiefly, to their being “the works of his Father,”[70]
conceived in the spirit of God, and bearing the impress of his
character.
This estimate of the logical force of miracles (the moral power of those
which belong to Christianity is incalculable) appears to be consonant
with experience. I conceive that, _in fact_, unbelievers are very seldom
convinced by the appeal to the supernatural; that the avenues of
admission to Christianity lie usually in quite a different direction;
and that the reason and affections surrender to Christ’s spirit, and
thus comprehend the thing signified, before they can receive and
interpret “_the sign_.” Nay, let me put the case home to your own
experience. Would you, by this instrumentality, become convinced of that
which you before held false? If, before your eyes, a person were to
multiply five loaves into five hundred, and then say, “this is to prove
the doctrines which I teach, that God is malignant, and that there is no
heaven after death,”—should you be converted, and follow him as his
disciple? Certainly not; the statement being incredible, the miracle
would be powerless. And the inference I would draw is this: that the
primitive force of persuasion lies in the moral doctrine as estimated by
our reason and conscience, not in the preternatural act displayed before
our senses; for, the moment you test their forces, by bringing them into
collision, the original convictions of the reason obtain the mastery. It
is no answer to say, that such a case is of impossible occurrence. For
the purpose to which I apply it, viz., to try an experiment with our own
minds, respecting the real argumentative capabilities of miracles, an
imaginary case is not only as good as an actual one, but a great deal
better: for so long as a good truth and a good miracle are linked
together, and move in the same direction, we rest confusedly in the
joint support of physical and moral evidence, and are unable to
determine which is the ascendant power.
The statements and examples of Scripture tend to the same conclusion.
The personal disciples of our Lord returned from a mission on which he
had sent them; exclaiming, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us
through thy name,”[71] Yet, though they were possessed of these
miraculous powers, their views of the very kingdom which they had gone
forth to preach were at this time exceedingly narrow and
erroneous,—leading them into acts and desires ambitious, passionate, and
false.
Miracles, then, are simply awakening facts: demanding and securing
reverential and watchful regard to something, or to everything, in the
persons performing them; but not specifically singling out any portion
of their doctrinal ideas, and affording them infallible proof. Is it not
competent to God thus to draw human attention to a _person_, as well as
a truth;—to a _character_, as well as a doctrine? At all events, it is
an unwarrantable presumption in us to select for the All-wise the
particular motive with which exclusively he ought to create a miracle;
instead of humbly noting the actual results, and judging thence of his
divine purposes.
But, it will now be urged, whatever sentiments may be entertained
respecting the proper inference from miracles in general, there is one
in particular which directly establishes the plenary inspiration of the
apostles and first disciples. It is recorded in the book of Acts, that
on the day of Pentecost, when they were with one accord in one place,
the Holy Ghost descended upon all.[72] The two Evangelists, St. Matthew
and St. John, were present; so were St. Peter and St. James; for all
these were Apostles. And we know that, by the laying on of the hands of
the Apostles, the same power passed into all disciples on whom they
might choose to confer the privilege. We cannot suppose any of the New
Testament authors to have been excluded from this class; and must
therefore believe, that every word of the Christian canon was composed
under the influence of the Unerring Spirit. This argument is proposed in
the following words, by Dr. Tattershall, in his published sermon on the
“Nature and Extent of the Right of Private Judgment.”
“The Scriptures have been already proved” ... “to be a true and
authentic history; one of the principal facts of which history is, the
outpouring of the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ.
I take, therefore, as an example, the Gospel of St. Matthew, and reason
as follows:—I learn, from the history, that Christ’s disciples were
inspired by the Holy Ghost; among this number was St. Matthew; therefore
St. Matthew was inspired; and, consequently, that which he wrote, under
this influence of inspiration, is to be regarded as the Word of God.
Whereas, on the other hand, if St. Matthew was not inspired, the history
relates that which is not true, and the credibility of the whole sacred
history is at once destroyed: and, with it, both the Church, and also
Christianity itself, must fall to the ground.”[73]
Now to convey, at the outset, a distinct idea of the reason why this
argument does not convince me, let me say, that I believe St. Matthew to
have been inspired; but I do not believe him to have been infallible. I
am sure that he nowhere puts forth any such claim: and if he does not
affirm it himself, I know not who can affirm it for him. Indeed, to the
advocates of this doctrine it must seem strange, that even St. John the
Divine, instead of bearing down all doubt by this overwhelming claim,
should so modestly and carefully conciliate the belief of his readers,
by appealing to his own human opportunities of information: “and _he
that saw it_ bare record, and his record is true:”[74] “this is the
disciple _that testifieth_ of these things, and wrote these things:”[75]
and that St. Luke should content himself with saying, at the
commencement of his Gospel, that its materials were furnished by those
who “from the beginning were eye-witnesses.”[76]
Everything in this argument clearly depends on the meaning which we are
to attach to the phrases “Holy Ghost,”—“Inspiration,”—“Spirit of
God,”—and other forms of expression employed to denote this peculiar
influence. What, according to the Scriptures, were the _appropriate
functions_ of this Divine Agent? and are we to include among them an
exemption of those on whom its power fell from all possibilities of
error, in narration, in reasoning, in expectation, in speculative and
practical doctrine? In short, do the sacred writers represent this Holy
Spirit as conferring intellectual infallibility?