were made, and they have infinitely multiplied the evils against which
it is pretended they are the guards. They are needful, it is said, for
the preservation of the Faith, and instead of preserving the Faith, they
have provoked the wildest unbelief; they are required, it is argued, as
bonds of unity, and instead of this they have bred divisions and
heresies without number; they are means, some will go so far as to say,
of maintaining Christian peace, and instead of this they have rioted in
wars and persecutions the most inhuman and the most sanguinary. The
history of religion shows that unbelief is never so prevalent as when
the Creed is most rigid. The countries and the times in which
Theological ingenuity left least scope for the free play of intellect,
have always been the country and times, when, under the outward guise of
a uniform faith, there has been the most absolute contempt for the
popular religion, as well as for Christianity in general. For the proof
of this need I refer to the French Church, and the withering scepticism
which it nurtured; the Spanish Church; the Italian Church; and to
sustain the same principle we might likewise accumulate heaps of
evidence from the Protestant Churches. As to heresies, the case is still
more clear. One heresy may have called forth a Creed, but one Creed has
produced a thousand heresies; and Creed-makers, when they imagined their
work complete, to their sorrow have found it was but merely commenced.
The history of heresies would be at once humiliating and instructive. In
all varieties we have them on every point in religion, and on all that
has connection with it; on the nature of God. Men not satisfied with a
simple trust, must speculate on the Divine Being—must ascertain whether
he was essentially one, or numerically divided; Churchmen must define,
and after much labour we have such a document as the Athanasian Creed,
and such a doctrine as the Athanasian Trinity. On the nature of Christ,
we have the same subtleizing process; we are tossed between Arius and
Athanasius, and having got clear of these, we are again to be bandied
between Nestorius and Eutychus, and to determine whether Christ’s
godhead and manhood were so united as to make one nature, or so divided
as to constitute two natures; whether his divinity was not instead of a
human soul, or in what relation his human soul stood to his divinity;
whether he had one will or two wills; whether his death was a
substitution or not; whether it was for the elect only, or for the whole
race of man universally. On the Church; what its constitution, what its
extent, what its authority; is it fallible or infallible; and if
infallible, where does that infallibility rest; in the Pope, in a
Council, in both together; in a congregation, or in every individual
Christian? On the Sacraments; are there two or seven; what is their
nature and efficacy; does baptism cleanse from original sin, or does it
not; is it necessary to salvation or not? Roman Catholics affirm both,
and so do the Oxford Tract writers. Is it to be consequent on personal
belief or not; is it to be administered to infants, or to persons of
mature years, and to be by immersion or by sprinkling? Again, we have a
whole crowd of divisions and heresies on the Lord’s Supper; are the
elements actually changed into the substance of Christ, or is Christ
merely present along with them, or is he spiritually, but not
personally, present; is it a rite mystically effective, or is it merely
commemorative? All these questions have been sources of endless division
of opinion; even at the present hour, the Oxford divines teach a
doctrine concerning the Eucharist, which it requires marvellous
perspicacity to distinguish from transubstantiation, while the
Calvinistic evangelicals maintain views which might content the very
lowest sacramentarian. But why speak of Creeds and Articles as means of
religious unity, when the Church of England herself affords us the means
of giving such assertion a flat denial? Within her pale, she has had men
of all and opposite opinions—Arminian and Calvinist, Unitarian and
Tritheist—every possible hue that orthodoxy could assume. Paley smiles
at the idea, as one of most grotesque absurdity, that men should be
thought to believe the articles they sign; they are, according to his
morality, mere articles of peace, intended to exclude no one but Papists
and Anabaptists. If this be true, a man might, as an able writer on
non-conformity says, take a benefice with a good conscience from the
Grand Turk. Nay, not to speak of believing the Articles, we have heard
it asserted, in connection with the Universities, that the youthful
subscribers are not supposed to understand them, or in some cases even
to have read them. The Church of England is perhaps wise in not pushing
matters too far, for in her former efforts to force uniformity, she lost
the best of her sons by thousands; an event that she has cause to regret
to the latest hour of her existence, and for which America should bless
her for ever. The distinction between essentials and non-essentials, is
one of the most quibbling of Theological vanities. Every one knows that
each sect has its essentials and non-essentials, according to the
compass of its Creed, some many and some few: with the Roman Catholic,
Transubstantiation is as essential as the Trinity; he condemns the
orthodox Protestant to perdition for not holding one as well as the
other, whilst both combine to pass sentence on the unfortunate Unitarian
who can receive neither. Again, I assert the distinction is petty and
quibbling, for who is to fix it, where is it to stop; who is to decide
it, and what are to be grounds of the decision? All things are important
to us, as they bear relation to our conscience or our convictions; one
man eateth only herbs, another eateth all things; one man esteemeth one
day above another, another esteemeth every day alike: let every man be
persuaded in his own mind; that is the Apostle’s view of the subject,
and that is the true, the safe, the charitable one. Protestantism has
not lessened or softened the number or the inveteracy of religious
divisions infinitely more perplexed than Romanism in her views of
religious authority, she has given importance to doctrines which the
Church under that system scarcely noticed: such as grace,
predestination, and other similar disputed theories: thus the sting of
controversy has been added to topics that were before sufficiently
repulsive in their dry and technical abstruseness. But it is pitiful, it
is humiliating, not merely to our common Christianity, but to our common
human nature, to see the arrogant assumption with which puny men decree
what their brothers are to believe, now and in all future times, tying
down the mind that should be free as heaven, as it is as progressive as
it is eternal: putting themselves on the throne of God, and dealing
judgment where he deals mercy. The minuteness of theological definition
has surpassed all other efforts of human ingenuity, but it has not alone
deadened the freedom of intellect, but also injured its honesty. On the
Trinity, more especially, heresy has ever been treading closely on
orthodoxy, “until, after revolving round the theological circle,” as
Gibbon says, “we are surprised to find that the Sabellian ends where the
Ebionite had began.” Each theological speculator has his own Trinity,
his own exposition of the Athanasian mystery, until amidst the whirl of
dogmatical contradictions, the mind grows giddy, and knows not where to
rest. The Church of England, as I have observed before, has all systems
between the extremes of Sherlock’s Tritheism and South’s Sabellianism:
between the three infinite minds of the one, and the three _somewhats_
of the other. The ancient Christians afforded full occasion for the
caustic description which Gibbon gives of their disputes, and the modern
Christians have not grown wiser, or learned better. “The Greek word” he
says, “which was chosen to represent this mysterious resemblance, bears
so close an affinity to the orthodox symbol, that the profane of every
age derided the furious contests which the difference of a single
diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoisians. As it
frequently happens that sounds and characters which approach nearest
each other, accidentally represent the most opposite ideas, the
observation would be itself ridiculous, if it were possible to mark any
sensible difference between the doctrine of the Semiarians, as they were
improperly styled, and that of the Catholics themselves. The Bishop of
Poictiers, who in his Phrygian exile, very wisely aimed at a coalition
of parties, endeavours to prove, that by a pious and faithful
interpretation, the Homoousian may be reduced to a consubstantial sense.
Yet he confesses that the word has a dark and suspicious aspect; and, as
if darkness were congenial to theological disputes, “the Semiarians who
advanced to the doors of the Church, assailed them with the most
unrelenting fury.” If it be said, that the Creeds are not the creators
of divisions, but that divisions are the creators of Creeds, I admit
that they act and react on each other. If they create not the
differences which they make, they give them all their bitterness. If it
be said, that independently of Creeds, there would still be endless
variety of private opinions, I grant it; I go further, and say, it were
most desirable there should be such divisions. It is Creeds that
infuriate religion, and turns dissent into dissension. A man who felt he
could form his opinion in freedom, and hold it in peace, would never
persecute another; would never hate another; would never pretend
authority over another; he would give the liberty he used. It is the
authority which Creeds pretend, that constitute one of their greatest
evils. The ancient Church then had Creeds in plenty, but no unity; the
Reformed Churches are in the same position. If it be asserted they have
agreement in essentials, I refer to what I have already said on this
point; but if it be maintained that their difference is only in name,
then, I say, the matter becomes worse, and plainly shows that Creeds,
out of small disputes, can cause gigantic evils. Nothing could be more
bitter than the Sacramentarian Controversy amongst the Reformers;
nothing could be more vile than the language with which they assailed
each other; nothing more furious than the invectives with which they
pelted one another. Each would fix on his opponent what he did not
believe himself; and yet there occasionally peeps out a glimmer, that
they had some sense of their inconsistency. “It is of great importance,”
says Calvin, in writing to Melancthon, ”that the least suspicion of the
divisions that are among ourselves pass not to future ages; for it is
ridiculous beyond all things that can be imagined, that after we have
broken off from the whole world, we should so little agree among
ourselves since the beginning of the Reformation.” The charity of Calvin
was not equal to his discretion, as we may see by this extract.
“Honour, glory, and riches,” says he to the Marquis de Poët, “shall be
the reward of your pains; but, above all, do not fail to rid the country
of those zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us.
Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael
Servetus, the Spaniard.”
In the same spirit is the language of Austin, who was Calvin’s master,
not only in his doctrine, but also in his zeal. “O, you Arian heretic,”
he says, “the thief knew him when he hung upon the cross; the Jews
feared him when he rose from the dead; and you treat him with contempt,
now he is reigning in heaven. Take care, beloved, of the Arian
pestilence!” (Quoted from _Robinson’s Ecclesiastical Researches_, pp.
348, and 181.)
Division and heresy are, in truth, innumerable, and the ideas of
stemming them by Creeds, is to imitate the peasant standing on the
river’s bank, and waiting until it should have all flowed by. “One
doctor of the Lutheran Church,” says Robert Robinson, of Cambridge,
“hath given a comment on heresy and schism, and hath inserted no less
than six hundred and thirty-two sorts of heretics, heresiarchs, and
schismatics, diversified as the birds of heaven, and agreeing only in
one single point, the crime of not staying in what is called the
Church.”
I have now shown that Creeds did not promote unity in the ancient
Church; that they did not promote it in the Roman Church; that they did
not promote it in the Reformed Church; that in the present day they do
not promote it in any of the Protestant Churches; not to allude again to
our own Establishment; to many in the Scotch Church, they are a dead
letter; they are entirely so in the French and German Churches; and in
the Genevese Church, the very school where blackest Calvinism was
fabricated, the arena where the stern persecutor burned Servetus,
Calvin’s spirit is extinct, and his creed repealed. I have shown, then,
that they never produced unity, and I believe the most intrepid
Ecclesiastic will not affirm they have been favourable to Christian
peace. Turn to the page of history; look abroad over the face of the
world, and you have lamentable evidence of the charge. Creeds have
broken the peace of Christendom, and given unwonted fury to all its
strifes; Controversies have arisen without number, and have been
maintained with fanatic zeal, fury, and detestation. What shame should
the opposite conduct of Philosophers flash in the face of
theologians,—men, who in quietness pursued their own studies, and left
their results for the progressive amelioration of their species—whilst
the janglings of Churchmen, wringing through every age, have been empty
of all things but their enmity. Why is it, that we in this hour are not
more profitably engaged,—why is it, that we are not rather seeking out
the woes that crush down humanity, and joining forces to remove
them,—why is it with so much of what is positive to be done, so much of
wretchedness to relieve, so much sin to remove, so many solemn claims on
all sides of us, that when we think of it, we feel as if this were the
veriest trifling; why are we thus in strife, when we might be in union;
why are we compelled to say hard things, and to repel them? It is all to
be charged to Creeds, which with the spirit of Cain, has risen the hand
of brother against brother, and caused contention and an evil heart,
where there ought to be charity and peace. It is all vain, it is not
human nature, no matter how strongly disclaimed, to think, that
polemical contention can be perfectly free from the wrong passions, and
it is better not to pretend to meekness, when the opposite is frequently
but too evident. The days of physical strife in religion, it is to be
hoped, are gone; but upon the head of Creeds there is a blood-stain, a
blood guiltiness, which the whole ocean could not wash out. Religion was
made the watch-word for war; the cross was raised as the symbol of
destruction, and the gathering of nations were around it, to carry ruin
as a flood, ay, into those very scenes, where it once bore the dying
form of him, who said, “I came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save
them.” War, in its simplest utterance, is a word of horror; but
religious war leaves nothing darker to be imagined. In worldly enmities,
when the contest is deadliest, there are touches of human compunction;
in the most sanguinary strife, the voice of mercy is sometimes heard,
and the hand of help is given; fiercest opponents will occasionally be
generous—the oppressed, in the hour of triumph, can be magnanimous to
the tyrant in his fall, but place men against each other with different
religious sentiments, unsheath the sword of the orthodox against the
heretic, the heart becomes steel, the bosom becomes ruthless, and the
man is lost in the fiend. Demand you evidence of this? It is written in
gore over the whole face of earth; call up the shades of the thousands
that sunk in the valleys and the mountains of Judea, of those in the
solitudes of the Alps, that fell under the sword of Romish and merciless
extermination; of those with whose life-blood the fierce Spaniard dyed
the soil of South America; of those who were laid low in the glens of
Scotland by Episcopalian fury,—you would have army of witnesses which no
man could number, the accusers of those who for different faith became
the slayers of their brethren. Creeds are naturally allied to the spirit
of persecution, for they establish the principle, and act on it, that
belief may be a sin, and this is the very life of the persecuting
spirit; it was this that built the Inquisition, which for so many ages
spread its ruthless tempest in the Christianity of Europe; it was this
that called forth the rack, and kindled every fire in which a heretic
was ever sacrificed to the demon-god of bigotry: _it was this created a
Dominic_. Protestants are fond of calling the Roman Catholic Church a
persecuting Church, but that Church can retort the accusation. Every
Church is in truth a persecuting Church which acts in the spirit of a
Creed. The Reformers maintained the right of the civil magistrate to
punish heretics. This, if it needed proof, is triumphantly made out by
Bossuet. “There is no need here,” he says, “of explaining on that
question, whether or no Christian princes have a right to use the sword
against their subjects, enemies to sound doctrine and the Church, the
Protestants being agreed with us in this point. Luther and Calvin have
written books to make good the right and duty of the magistrate in this
point. Calvin reduced it to practice, but against Severus and Valentine
Gentili. Melancthon approved of this procedure by a letter he wrote him
on the subject.” John Knox maintained the same doctrine, and even quoted
the extermination of the Canaanites as a case which would justify like
treatment of heretics. Nay, in the present day, one of the Oxford
theologians asserts, “that we ought to anticipate the evils of error in
the person of the heresiarch,” because he contends that it is better he
should endure pain, than that his error should be propagated, and bring
ruin on his infatuated but less guilty followers. This is the true
inquisitorial religion. A man who holds sentiments like these is a
persecutor in his heart, and it is only by accident that he is not a
persecutor with his hand. A man who could send forth that expression, in
other days might have been grand inquisitor or a familiar of the Holy
Office, and would have dragged his victims to the stake, or gloated over
their tortures on the rack. A heresiarch, he maintains, is unworthy of
compassion; and in correspondence with this are some passages of
Irenæus, quoted with approbation in the Tracts for the Times: “What
prospect, then, of peace have we,” says this reverend and truculent
Ecclesiastic, “who are foes to the brethren? What sacrifice do they
think they celebrate, when they become rivals to the Priesthood? When
gathered together beyond the pale of the Church, do they think that
Christ is still in the midst of them? Though men like these were killed
in the profession of their faith, not even by their blood would these
spots be washed out. The offence of discord is a weighty offence, it
includes no expiation, and is absolved by no suffering.” “They cannot
remain with God,” he says, “who will not remain with one heart in God’s
Church. Though they be cast to the flame, to the fire to be burnt, or
lay down their lives by being a prey to wild beasts, they will gain not
the crown of faith, but the penalty of perfidy; their end, not the
glorious consummation of religious excellence, but the death-blow of
despair. Such men may attain unto death, but can never attain unto the
crown.” Creeds have sharpened the sword of persecution, though the civil
arm was used, and if it now be idle in the sheath, it is more owing to
the tolerance of civil governments, than to any change in the spirit of
Churchmen. If Rome had her Inquisition, England had her Star Chamber; if
Rome had her Dominic, England had her Laud. I wish not, however, to pass
unmitigated censure: I am willing and glad to acknowledge that the
Church of England has had many men who were the lights of their age, but
they had minds which were not cast in the Athanasian mould. It is not
Churches only that persecute, but also sects; not great Churches, but
little ones equally; thus did the Genevese, whilst the spirit of Calvin
ruled in it; thus did the Dutch Churches, while the Dort-decrees had
power, and even Socinus himself persecuted Francis David: a Creed,
however simple, can be made an instrument of unjust power, as well as
the most complex one. The persecuting spirit is not extinct, but
changed; it is now a social and a moral persecution. Long experience has
shown that physical torture is useless, and if the principle remained,
the power is gone. But never can we sum up the whole amount of evil
which Creeds inflicted on the world, until we can count the sighs that
have died unheard in the dungeon; until we know all the bitterness of
heart which waits on hopeless captivity; until we count the pangs of
torture which gave slow consuming death; until we can follow the course
of merciless wars, unsoftened by a touch of pity; until we know all the
friends that have been made enemies, and the griefs which have in many
cases made life a martyrdom; until, in fact, we have all laid bare
before us which that day alone will reveal, which reveals all the hidden
works of darkness.