this: that they “ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they
may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.”[540] The
Catholic doctrine, with equal decision, asserts that the Infallibility
of the Romish Church may also be proved by most certain warrants of Holy
Scripture. Suppose then a Church of England Christian with the Bible
before him; he has been previously indoctrinated in the three Creeds,
and these ideas pre-occupying his mind will so far influence his
interpretation. Suppose a Roman Catholic in a like position; he has ever
present to his mind the Infallibility of his Church, and _her_ decisions
must be the limits of _his_ conclusions. Intellectually or morally, no
position can be conceived worse than this for the pursuit or discovery
of truth. The mind is biassed from the first; its calmness and its
candour are subverted, and it is no longer a judge, but a partizan; it
is not to decide on evidence, but, (to use a legal term) to act on the
instruction of its brief. That Creeds have the tendency to distort and
fetter the intellectual workings of the mind, we know from the fact, too
palpable to need proof, that Theologians have always been the most
obstinate in resisting the discoveries of science, and ever the last to
yield. Astronomy, in its glimmerings of scientific truth, was once
Church heresy. A Father of the Church, as it is well known, had
denounced that man as infidel and profane who should dare to assert that
the earth moved round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. On the
other side of this controversy, we have been told that the arts and
sciences have their compendiums as well as religion. It was a most
unfortunate analogy; for how would it have been now with art and
science, had Astronomy been made a Creed at the Council of Nice, and a
confession on Chemistry been compiled by the Westminster divines.
Galileo was pronounced a heretic; and the early Chemists laboured under
strong suspicion of witchcraft. Had we been bound in Astronomy as we are
in Theology, Joshua should be our authority, decisive and irrevocable,
and the calculations of Newton and Laplace should be placed in the index
expurgatorius of Ecclesiastical dogmatism. Even Luther himself, the
author of the greatest of moral revolutions since Christianity, smiled
at the idea that the earth should move round the sun, and said, “that
according to Holy Scripture, Joshua commanded the earth to stand still,
and not the sun.”[541] Had not the progressive energy of human intellect
been stronger, in what a position should we yet have been as to the true
principles of the construction and motion of the universe? Geology as
yet is a scientific heresy; and, to avoid the stigma, orthodox
Geologists have been driven into all modes of eccentric explanation,
some to disjoin the first verse of Genesis from all that follows, and
others to the supposition that a day may mean a thousand years, or if
the speculator needs it, ten thousand or a million. The intellectual
immorality thus occasioned, it is not possible to estimate; for it is a
coarse view of sin to place it altogether in the misdirection of the
passions: certainly, the sins which ever afflicted mankind most, were
the moral perversions of the intellect. And this may be at once
conceived if we have read the history of the Church, and are able to
take a calm and impartial review of its cabals and controversies. I will
not mention here the loss of kindly affections, the loss of charity, the
loss of peace; I merely allude to the immense intellectual waste which
has been occasioned by men setting out on their inquiries with a
foregone conclusion. I shall say nothing on the tomes, enough to make a
library as great as that the Turkish soldier burned, which have been
written to defend the Trinity—I take an example to Protestants more
grateful—I mean, transubstantiation. What was it that for centuries
perpetuated a false and absurd philosophy in Europe? What was it that
made Aristotle the supreme ruler of the Christian Church—not Aristotle,
as he was, the philosoper, but as Churchmen used him, a verbal
quibbler—was it not for the purpose of constructing syllogisms with
orthodox exactness, and by theories on essences, species, forms, and so
forth, to make it evident that under the appearance of bread and wine,
the very God who created the heavens and the earth, and the very man
Christ Jesus who died on Calvary, were virtually present? Go into any
great library, and on this subject alone you may find volumes of which
the very names are too many for memory. Yet, in these there is abundance
of talent, of subtlety, and of acuteness—all in the travail to sustain a
theory. No one can deny, no one will, who knows how equally the Creator
scatters his gifts, that minds of the very highest order were amongst
the schoolmen; yet all these magnificent powers were expended to sustain
one or two absurd positions, enslaving their own intellect, and by their
authority and their influence, enslaving the intellect of Christendom;
and, from the reformation to this hour, there have been the same waste
and perversion of thought. Just consider what tortuous logic, what
wire-drawing ingenuity have been exercised to defend guilt by
imputation, and righteousness by imputation—absurdities as great
morally, as transubstantiation is intellectually. This is the work of
Creeds.
Dissenters are sometimes taunted with want of scholarship. The taunt may
have foundation in fact; perhaps it has, but on what are we to place the
blame? Dissenters, we presume, have a measure of intellect on the
average of other men, and are gifted with as many mental faculties as
those who subscribe the articles of our National Church. God does not
distribute his blessings on the ground of subscription, however
Universities may. The gifts of mind are equal and bountiful like the
beneficence of creation. The same full hand that showers sunlight over
hill and valley, that opens fountains in the rocks, and sows the
wilderness with flowers, without reference to Sect or Church,
impregnates all understandings with the elements of thought, and all
fancies with the germs of beauty. The Dissenter, as the Churchman, hath
eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections. If then this fair
portion of our Maker’s mercy be equally given, whence are we to trace
the want of its proper cultivation? If the orthodox close the
Universities against us by Creeds, draw fast the iron bolt by an iron
theology, take away the key of knowledge, and repulse those that with
all their hearts would enter, place before us tests which, if stupid
enough, we might subscribe without understanding, and if dishonest
enough we might subscribe without believing, but, candidly confessing we
neither understand them nor believe them, therefore refuse to sign
them,—where then is the magnanimity or the generosity which throws in
our teeth, though it were true, that we have not the science of
Cambridge, or the classicality of Oxford. Yet, despite of all
restrictions, Dissent has had a goodly number of noble and cultured
minds—minds able and honest, which, in the hour of need, even the Church
herself was not ashamed to acknowledge, or ashamed to use.
Creeds act as mighty temptations,—as the very Satans of theology;—and
they are not temptations to the covetous and ambitious only, but also to
the weak and good. When sects and Creeds are the standards of
preferment, those with whom preferment is the great object, are made to
add the sin of sanctimonious hypocrisy to that of Ecclesiastical
covetousness and Ecclesiastical ambition. But there are others good in
their own hearts, yet not mighty enough to be martyrs, whom Creeds keep
in a whole life of agony. There are those who entered a religious
community, believing its opinions most enthusiastically, who, by the
further progress of intellect or judgment, may be brought to doubt or
deny them. They are then driven to a desperate alternative, either to
belie their conscience, or to do violence to their hearts. Take the case
of many of the curates and incumbents of the Church of England. Suppose,
that on receiving orders they assented to all the bishop or the Church
prescribed, but that after years of thinking they were compelled to
disbelieve the Athanasian Creed. They are then periodically reading,
with the most serious tones, and from the most solemn place, a statement
of doctrine which they conceive in their souls to be hideous and false,
reading it as the conviction of their own judgments, and as that which
ought to be the saving faith of all men. If the conscience is not
utterly hacknied, if the religious sensibilities are not torn out from
the heart, this must be continually as the torture of the rack. Like all
human faculties, conscience has a limit; beyond a certain point it can
endure no more, and so when bigoted exaction has stretched it to the
last, it must revolt or expire. The alternative in the end is, moral
apathy or theological rebellion—a quiescent hypocrisy, or an open
opposition. But few can brave the contest, and they have no refuge
except a tacit and unwilling submission. Honest men, it may be said,
when they ceased to believe the doctrines they solemnly affirmed, would
renounce them with a denial as public as their profession. It is easy to
say this, but, even for honest men, it is sometimes hard to do it. In
the clerical order especially there are numbers, whose position has been
attained by long study and weary toil—whose very means of life—not to
speak of their station and their friendships—hang upon adherence to the
Creed of their Church. What are these men to do? To dig they are not
able, and to beg they are ashamed. Yet I can easily conceive that many
could abandon rank and friendship, and count them light, in comparison
with their faith, to conscience, that they could take a cell in the
wilderness for their dwelling, quench their thirst at the running
stream, and seek their food on the briar and the bramble, sooner than be
false to their convictions, and do dishonour to the integrity of their
souls. But it may be, that others with themselves are to suffer,—those
whose lives are bound up in their lives,—those to whom they are the only
earthly support and refuge, the wife, the child, the aged father, or the
widowed mother,—whom to cast on the friendless world, were worse than a
thousand martyrdoms. Think, then, of the poor curate of the Church of
England, or the humble incumbent, who has grown long into life, with
claims most pressing multiplying around him—one who once out of his
pulpit knows not where to turn for the bread which his children
crave—and we cannot judge harshly or uncharitably, if the power of his
affections is too strong for the stern demands of duty. I know there
have been those who could commit father, and mother, and wife, and
children, to that good Provider who feedeth the raven and sheltereth the
nest of the sparrow; who could speak the truth and take the
consequences;—I trust there are those yet in the world who could do the
same; but in this or any other age, martyrs must be few, and the spirit
of martyrdom rare. We blame not too severely those who have not the
highest courage of religious heroism, but we may condemn with honest
indignation those institutions that by fencing their position with
Creeds and Articles, compel them to be hypocrites. I do not apply these
assertions to members or ministers of the Church of England, or other
Churches, individually, but any one who has studied the history of
religion, or watched the tendency of institutions, knows that in the
English Establishment, in the Romish, in all establishments that have
been narrowly restrictive, the hypocrisy of ambition, or the hypocrisy
of fear, has been deeply and abundantly nourished.
The Church does not deny a small amount of liberty—no Church can,—it
will therefore allow you to read the Bible, if you desire it, but you
must find nothing therein but what the Church proposes. In the study of
the Sacred text, you must have always before your eyes the three Creeds
and the thirty-nine Articles; find what these prescribe, and it is all
the better for your peace and comfort; miss them, and you are open to
social and spiritual condemnation. Churches which dictate creeds, use
words without meaning, when they say, that you may read the Bible, for
they tell you also, at the commencement, what you ought to find in the
Bible. I shall give an illustration here of my meaning, by an extract
from one of the Oxford Tract writers:—I know well that some object to
these writers, but so far as I have been able to study the subject—and I
have read, attentively or casually, the whole of what are called the
Oxford Tracts,—I think their statements and their doctrines are entirely
in the spirit of their system, and in most exact consistency with their
asseverations and their Creed. There is no medium; we require an
infallible tribunal, or we must have a free judgment; but the
authorities of the English Establishment will give us neither; for with
that we must encounter the twofold endurance of an erring Church and an
enslaved understanding. I think, therefore, the Oxford doctors in most
perfect consistency with their profession; and thus believing, I quote
the following passage, illustrative of these writers, and of the spirit
of Ecclesiastical authority in general. It is a portion of a dialogue
between a minister and his parishioner. Not to spoil the dramatic effect
of it, I shall give you a little more than absolutely belongs to my
subject. Thus speaks the Parishioner to the Pastor:—“My good mother,
said he, not long before her death, said to me very earnestly, My dear
Richard, observe my words: never dare to trifle with God Almighty. By
this I understood her to mean, that in all religious actions we ought to
be very _awful_, and seek nothing but what is right and true. And I knew
she had always disapproved of people’s saying, as they commonly do, that
it little matters what a man’s religion is, if he is but sincere, and
that one opinion, or one place of worship, is as good as another. To
say, or think, or act so, she used to call ‘trifling with God’s truth;’
and do you not think so, (addressing himself to me,) that she was right?
“Indeed I do, said I.
“And, he said, I was very much confirmed in these opinions by constantly
reading a very wise, and as I may say to you, a precious book, which a
gentleman gave me some years ago, whom I met by chance as I was going to
see my father, in the infirmary. It is called, ‘A Selection from Bishop
Wilson’s Works,’ and there are many places which show what his opinions
were on this subject, and I suppose, Sir, there can be no doubt, that
Bishop Wilson was a man of extraordinary wisdom and piety. Then, after a
slight remark from his interlocutor, he observes, And what Bishop Wilson
says is this, or to this effect, that to reject the government of
bishops is to reject the ordinance of God. Having mentioned some
controversy he had with a Dissenter, he observes, it seemed to me (and I
told the man so,) like going round and round in a wheel, to say, that if
he is God’s minister, he preaches what is good, and if he preaches what
is good, he is God’s minister; for still the question would be, what is
right or good? And some would say one thing, and some another; and some
would say, there is nothing good or right in itself, but only as it
seems most expedient to every person for the time being. So, for my own
satisfaction, and hoping for God’s blessing on my future endeavours, I
resolved to search the matter out for myself, as well as I could. My
plan was this: First to see what was said on the subject in the Church
Prayer Book, and then to compare this with the Scriptures. If, after
all, I could not satisfy myself, I should have taken the liberty of
consulting you, Sir, &c. Yours, replied this Rev. instructor to his
prudent catechuman, was a good plan.”
This passage contains the whole spirit of Creeds and Churches. Take the
Prayer Book with you, keep the fear of the bishop before your eyes, and
walk reverently in the way of the Articles. Then read the Scriptures if
you will, but read them to show that all this is Holy Writ.
Creeds are, further, at enmity with truth, because they resist its
development, and embarrass its progression. The world could never have
advanced beyond a fixed point, had it been governed by Churchmen, in the
true Church spirit. For what is it that Creed-makers so insanely
attempt? They attempt what is alike inconsistent with the glory of truth
and the nature of man. Truth is infinite, like its author, and they
would confine it within the limits of the Nicene and Athanasian
formularies. Truth is eternal and progressive, but Creeds would swear us
to the worst barbarisms of the worst ages. Truth is discovered and
carried onward by the independent working of free and various minds, but
Creeds would reduce all to an apathetic uniformity; and had not truth
been greater than Creeds, all that has been done for religion and
science, would now be in eternal silence. Creeds not only thus retard
the progress of Truth, by the sanction of authority, by the influence of
prejudice, by the tenacity of habit; but give errors all but
immortality. Creeds are foes to whatever is most heavenly in our nature;
to conscience, in its rectitude, and to charity in its gentleness; to
conscience by an utter perversion of the moral sense, making that to be
guilt which is not guilt, and giving merit to that which deserves none,
making it righteous to believe one proposition, and sinful to doubt
another, thus creating a factitious vice, and as often denying the
evidence of real virtue; to charity, also, Creeds, I have said, are
foes, and such they are by bitter exclusiveness, by wrong terms of
communion and brotherhood, by dissension, by enmities and contentions,
and by hatred in all its most odious shapes.