declamation, designed to send it and the infidel to the greatest
possible distance. My friend who delivered the first Lecture, noticed it
in a far different spirit; and in a discussion where truth and wisdom
had any chance, his reply would have prevented any recurrence to the
statement. Let me try to imitate him in the testimony which I desire to
add upon this point.
Every one, I presume, who disbelieves _any thing_, is, with respect to
that thing, _an infidel_. Departure from any prevalent and established
ideas, is inevitably an approach to infidelity; the extent of the
departure, not the reasonableness or propriety of it, is the sole
measure of the nearness of that approach; which, however wise and sober,
when estimated by a true and independent criterion, will appear, to
persons strongly possessed by the ascendant notions, nothing less than
alarming, amazing, awful. In short, the average popular creed of the
day, is the mental standard, from which the stadia are measured off
towards that invisible, remote, nay, even imaginary place, lodged
somewhere within chaos, called utter unbelief. Christianity at first was
blank infidelity: and disciples, being of course the atheists of their
day, were thought a fit prey for the wild beasts of the amphitheatre.
Every rejection of tradition, again, is unbelief with respect to it; and
to those who hold its authority, it is the denial of an essential. It is
too evident to need proof, that the average popular belief cannot be
assumed, by any considerate person, as a standard of truth. To make it
an objection against any class of men, that they depart from it, is to
prove no error against them; and no one, who is not willing to call in
the passions of the multitude in suffrage on the controversies of the
few, will condescend to enforce the charge.
But only observe how, in the present instance, the matter stands. In the
popular religion we discern, mixed up together, two constituent
portions; certain _peculiar_ doctrines which characterize the common
orthodoxy; and certain _universal_ Christian truths remaining, when
these are subtracted. The infidel throws away both of these; we throw
away the former only: and thus far, no doubt, we partially agree with
him. But _on what grounds_ do we severally justify this rejection? In
answer to this question, compare the views, with respect both to the
_authority_ and to the _interpretation_ of Scripture, held by the three
parties, the Trinitarian, the Unbeliever, the Unitarian. The Unbeliever
does not usually find fault with the orthodox _interpretation_ of the
Bible, but allows it to pass, as probably the real meaning of the book,
only he altogether denies the divine character and authority of the
whole religion; he therefore _agrees_ with the Trinitarian respecting
interpretation, disagrees with him respecting _authority_. The
Unitarian, again, admits the divine character of Christianity, but
understands it differently from the Trinitarian; he therefore reverses
the former case, _agrees_ with the orthodox on the authority,
_disagrees_ respecting interpretation. It follows, that with the
unbeliever he agrees _in neither_, and is therefore further from him
than his Trinitarian accuser.
I have given this explanation, from regard simply to logical truth. I
have no desire to join in the outcry against even the deliberate
unbeliever in the Gospel, as if he must necessarily be a fiend.
Profoundly loving and trusting Christianity myself, I yet feel indignant
at the persecution which theology, policy, and law inflict on the many
who, with undeniable exercise of conscientiousness and patience of
research, are yet unable to satisfy themselves respecting its evidence.
The very word ‘_infidel_,’ implying not simply an intellectual judgment,
but bad moral qualities, conveys an unmerited insult, and ought to be
repudiated by every generous disputant. The more deeply we trust
Christianity, the more should we protest against its being defended by a
body-guard of passions, willing to do for it precisely the services
which they might equally render to the vulgarest imposture.
2. We were recently accused, amid acknowledgments of our _honesty_, with
want of _anxiety_ about spiritual truth: and the following justification
of the charge was offered: “The Word of God has informed us, that they
who seek the truth shall find it; that they who ask for holy wisdom
shall receive it; but it must be a _really anxious inquiry_—a heart-felt
desire for the blessing. ‘If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest
for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the
Lord, and find the knowledge of God.’[623] Such promises are
express,—they cannot be broken,—God will give the blessing to the
_sincere_, _anxious_ inquirer. But the two qualities must go together. A
man may be sincere in his ignorance and spiritual torpor; but let the
full desire for God’s favour, his pardoning mercy, and his enlightening
grace spring up in the heart, and we may rest assured that the desire
will soon be accomplished. Admitting, then, the sincerity of Unitarians,
we doubt their anxiety, for we are well persuaded from God’s promises,
that if they possessed both, they would be delivered from their
miserable system, and be brought to the knowledge of the truth.”[624]
The praise of our “_sincerity_,” conveyed in these bland sentences, we
are anxious to decline: not that we undervalue the quality: but because
we find, on near inspection, that it has all been emptied out of the
word before its presentation, and the term comes to us hollow and
worthless. It affords a specimen of the mode in which alone our
opponents appear able to give any credit to heretics: many phrases of
approbation they freely apply to us; but they take care to draw off the
whole meaning first. We must reject these “Greek presents:” and we are
concerned that any Christian divine can so torture and desecrate the
names of virtue, as to make them instruments of disparagement and
injury. This play with words, which every conscience should hold sacred,
and every lip pronounce with reverence,—this careless and unmeaning
application of them in discourse,—indicates a loose adhesion to the mind
of the ideas denoted by them, which we regard with unfeigned
astonishment and grief. What, let me ask, can be the “_sincerity_” of an
inquirer, who is not “_anxious_” _about the truth_? How can _he_ be
“_sincerely_” persuaded that he sees, who voluntarily shuts his eyes?
Unless this word is to be degraded into a synonyme for indolence and
self-complacency, no professed seeker of truth must have the praise of
sincerity, who does not abandon all worship of his own state of mind as
already perfect, who is not ready to listen to every calm doubt as to
the voice of heaven,—to undertake with gratitude the labour of reaching
new knowledge,—to maintain his faith and his profession in scrupulous
accordance with his perception of evidence; and, at any moment of
awakening, to spring from his most brilliant dreams into God’s own
morning light, with a matin hymn upon his lips for his new-birth from
darkness and from sleep. The earnestness implied in this state of mind
is perhaps not precisely the same, as that with which our Trinitarian
opponents seem to be familiar. The “anxiety” which they appear to feel
for themselves is, to keep their existing state of belief: the “anxiety”
which they feel for us is, that we should have it. We are to hold
ourselves ready for a change; they are not to be expected to desire it.
If a doubt of _our opinions_ should occur _to us_, we are to foster it
carefully, and follow it out as a beckoning of the Holy Spirit: if a
doubt of _their sentiments_ should occur _to them_, they are to crush it
on the spot, as a reptile-thought sent of Satan to tempt them. “Our
aim,” says the concluding Lecturer again, “has been to beget a deep
spirit of inquiry:”[625] and so has ours, I would reply: only you and we
have severally prosecuted this aim in different ways. We have personally
listened, and personally inquired, and earnestly recommended all whom
our influence could reach, to do the same: and few indeed will be the
Unitarian libraries containing one of these series of lectures, that
will not exhibit the other by its side. You have entered this
controversy, evidently strange to our literature and history; and any
deficiency in such reading before, has not been compensated by anxiety
to listen now. Your people have been warned against us, and are taught
to regard the study of our publications as blasphemy at second-hand: and
were they really so simple as to act upon your avowed wish “to beget a
deep spirit of inquiry,” and plunge into the investigation of Unitarian
authors, and judge for themselves of Unitarian worship, they would
speedily hear the word of recal, and discover that they were practically
disappointing the whole object of this controversy.
Having said thus much respecting the unmeaning use of language in the
Lecturer’s disparaging estimate of Unitarian “anxiety,” we may
profitably direct a moment’s attention to the _reasoning_ which it
involves. It presents us with the standing fallacy of intolerance, which
is sufficiently rebuked by being simply exhibited. Our opponents reason
thus:
God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err:
The Unitarians _do_ fatally err:
Therefore, The Unitarians are not really anxious.
Now it is clear that we must conceive our opponents to be no less
mistaken than they suppose us to be. They are as far from us, as we from
them; and from either point, taken as a standard, the measure of error
must be the same. Moreover, we cannot but eagerly assent to the
principle of the Lecturer’s first premiss, that God will never let the
truly anxious fatally miss their way. So that there is nothing, in the
nature of the case, to prevent our turning this same syllogism, with a
change in the names of the parties, against our opponents. Yet we should
shrink, with severe self-reproach, from drawing any such unfavourable
conclusion respecting them, as they deduce of us. Accordingly, we manage
our reasoning thus:
God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err:
The Trinitarians show themselves to be really anxious:
Therefore, The Trinitarians do not fatally err.
Our opponents are more sure that their judgment is in the right, than
that their neighbours’ conscience is in earnest. They sacrifice other
men’s characters to their own self-confidence: we would rather distrust
our self-confidence, and rely on the visible signs of a good and careful
mind. We honour other men’s hearts, rather than our own heads. How can
it be just, to make the agreement between an opponent’s opinion and our
own, the criterion of his proper conduct of the inquiry? Every man feels
the injury, the moment the rule is turned against himself: and every
good man should be ashamed to direct it against his brother.
3. Our reverend opponents affect to have laboured under a great
disadvantage, from the absence of any recognized standard of Unitarian
belief. ‘We give you,’ they say, ‘our Articles and Creeds, which we
unanimously undertake to defend, and which expose a definite object to
all heretical attacks. In return, you can furnish us with no authorised
exposition of your system; but leave us to gather our knowledge of it
from individual writers, for whose opinions you refuse to be
responsible, and whose reasonings, when refuted by us, you can
conveniently disown.’
Plausible as this complaint may appear, I venture to affirm, that it is
vastly easier to ascertain the common belief of Unitarians, than that of
the members of the Established Church: and for this plain reason, that
with us there really is such a thing as a common faith, though defined
in no confession; in the Anglican Church there is not, though articles
and creeds profess it. The characteristic tenets of Unitarian
Christianity are so simple and unambiguous, that little scope exists for
variety in their interpretation: to the propositions expressing them all
their professors attach _distinct and the same_ ideas;—so far, at least,
as such accordance is possible in relation to subjects inaccessible both
to demonstration and to experience. But the Trinitarian hypothesis,
venturing with presumptuous analysis far into the Divine psychology,
presents us with ideas confessedly inapprehensible; propounded in
language which, if used in its ordinary sense, is self-contradictory,
and if not, is unmeaning, and ready in its emptiness to be filled by any
arbitrary interpretation;—and actually understood so variously by those
who subscribe to them, that the Calvinist and the Arminian, the
Tritheist and the Sabellian, unite to praise them. Indeed, in the
history of the English Church, so visible is the sweep of the centre of
orthodoxy over the whole space from the confines of Romanism to the
verge of Unitarianism, that our ecclesiastical chronology is measured by
its oscillations. Our respected opponents know full well, that it is not
necessary to search beyond the clergy of this town, or even beyond the
morning and afternoon preaching in one and the same church, in order to
encounter greater contrasts in theology, than could be found in a whole
library of Unitarian divinity. What mockery then to refer us to these
articles as expositions of clerical belief, when the moment we pass
beyond the words, and address ourselves to the sense, every shade of
contrariety appears: and no one definite conception can be adopted of
such a doctrine as that of the Trinity, without some church expositor or
other starting up to rebuke it as a misrepresentation! How poor the
pride of uniformity, which contents itself with lip-service to the
symbol, in the midst of heart-burnings about the reality!
In order to test the force of the objection to which I am referring, let
us advert, in detail, to the topics which exhibit the Unitarian and
Trinitarian theology in most direct opposition. It will appear that the
advantage of unity lies, in this instance, on the side of heresy; and
that if multiformity be a prime characteristic of error, there is a wide
difference between orthodoxy and truth. There are four great subjects
comprised in the controversy between the church and ourselves: the
nature of God; of Christ; of sin; of punishment. On these several points
(which, considered as involving on our part denials of previous ideas,
may be regarded as containing the _negative_ elements of our belief) all
our modern writers, without material variation or exception, maintain
the following doctrines:
UNITARIAN DOCTRINES, _opposed to_ CHURCH DOCTRINES.
(1.) The Personal Unity of God. (1.) The Trinity in Unity.
(2.) The Simplicity of Nature in (2.) Two distinct Natures in
Christ. Christ.
(3.) The Personal Origin and (3.) The Transferable Nature and
Identity of Sin. Vicarious Removal of Sin.
(4.) The Finite Duration of (4.) The Eternity of Hell
Future Suffering. Torments.
Now no one at all familiar with polemical literature can deny, that the
modes and ambiguities of doctrine comprised in this Trinitarian list,
are more numerous than can be detected in the parallel “heresies.” I am
willing indeed to admit an exception in respect to the last of the
topics, and to allow that the belief in the finite duration of future
punishment has opposed itself, in two forms, to the single doctrine of
everlasting torments. But when the systems are compared at their other
corresponding points, the boast of orthodox uniformity instantly
vanishes. Since the primitive jealousy between the Jewish and Gentile
Christianity, the rivalry between the “Monarchy” and the “Economy,” the
believers in the personal Unity of God, though often severed by ages
from each other, have held that majestic truth in one unvaried form.
Never was there an idea so often lost and recovered, yet so absolutely
unchanged: a sublime, but occasional visitant of the human mind,
assuring us of the perpetual oneness of our own nature, as well as the
Divine. We can point to no unbroken continuity of our great doctrine:
and if we could, we should appeal with no confidence to the evidence of
so dubious a phenomenon; for if a system of ideas once gains possession
of society, and attracts to itself complicated interests and feelings,
many causes may suffice to ensure its indefinite preservation. But we
can point to a greater phenomenon; to the long and repeated extinction
of our favourite belief, to its submersion beneath a dark and restless
fanaticism; and its invariable resurrection, like a necessary intuition
of the soul, in times of purer light, with its features still the same;
stamped with imperishable identity of truth, and, like him to whom it
refers, without variableness or shadow of a turning. Meanwhile, who will
undertake to enumerate and define the succession of Trinities by which
this doctrine has been bewildered and banished? Passing by the
Aristotelian, the Platonic, the Ciceronian, the Cartesian
Trinity,—quitting the stormy disputes, and contradictory decisions of
the early councils, shall we find among even the modern fathers of our
national church, any approach to unanimity? Am I to be content with the
doctrine of Bishop Bull, and subordinate the Son to the Father as the
sole fountain of divinity? Or must I rise to the Tritheism of Waterland
and Sherlock? or, accepting the famous decision of the University of
Oxford, descend with Archbishop Whately, to the modal Trinity of South
and Wallis? Are we to understand the phrase, three persons, to mean
three beings united by “perichoresis,” three “mutual inexistences,”
three “modes,” three “differences,” three “contemplations,” or three
“somewhats;” or, being told that this is but a vain prying into a
mystery, shall we be satisfied to leave the phrase without idea at all?
It is to the last degree astonishing to hear from Trinitarian divines,
the praises of uniformity of belief; seeing that it is one of the chief
labours of ecclesiastical history to record the incessant effort, vain
to the present day, to give some stability of meaning to the fundamental
doctrines of their faith.
The same remark applies, with little modification, to the opposite views
respecting the person of the Saviour. It is true that Unitarians, agreed
respecting the singleness of nature in Christ, differ respecting the
natural rank of that nature, whether his soul were human or angelic.
But, for this solitary variety among these heretics, how many doctrines
of the Logos and the Incarnation does orthodox literature contain? Can
any one affirm, that when the council of Ephesus had arbitrated between
the Eutychian doctrine of absorption, and the Nestorian doctrine of
separation, all doubt and ambiguity was removed by the magic phrase
“Hypostatic union?” Since the monophysite contest was at its height, has
the Virgin Mary been left in undisputed possession of her title as
“Mother of God?” Has the Eternal Generation of the Son encountered no
orthodox suspicions, and the Indwelling scheme received no orthodox
support? And if we ask these questions: “What respectively happened to
the two natures on the cross? what has become of Christ’s human soul
now? is it separate from the Godhead like any other immortal spirit, or
is it added to the Deity, so as to introduce into his nature a new and
fourth element?” shall we receive from the many voices of the church but
one accordant answer? Nay, do the authors of this controversy suppose
that, during its short continuance, they have been able to maintain
their unanimity? If they do, I believe that any reader who thinks it
worth while to register the varieties of error, would be able to
undeceive them. If the diversities of doctrine cannot easily and often
be shown to amount to palpable inconsistencies, this must be ascribed, I
believe, to the mystic and technical phraseology, the substitute rather
than the expression for precise ideas,—which has become the vernacular
dialect of orthodox divinity. The jargon of theology affords a field too
barren, to bear so vigorous a weed as an undisputed contradiction.
It is needless to dwell on the numerous forms under which the doctrine
of atonement has been held by those who subscribe the articles of our
national church: while its Unitarian opponents have taken their fixed
station on the personal character and untransferable nature of sin. One
writer tells us that only the human nature perished on the cross;
another that God himself expired: some say, that Christ suffered no more
intensely, but only more “meritoriously,” than many a martyr; others,
that he endured the whole quantity of torment due to the wicked whom he
redeemed: some, that it is the spotlessness of his manhood that is
imputed to believers; others, that it is the holiness of his Deity. From
the high doctrine of satisfaction to the very verge of Unitarian heresy,
every variety of interpretation has been given to the language of the
established formularies respecting Christian redemption. Nor is it yet
determined whether, in the lottery of opinion, the name of Owen, Sykes,
or Magee, shall be drawn for the prize of orthodoxy.
And if from those parts of our belief, to which the accidents of their
historical origin have given a _negative_ character, we turn to those
which are _positive_, not the slightest reason will appear for charging
them with uncertainty and fluctuation. All Unitarian writers maintain
the Moral Perfection and Fatherly Providence of the Infinite Ruler; the
Messiahship of Jesus Christ, in whose person and spirit there is a
Revelation of God and a Sanctification for Man; the Responsibility and
Retributive Immortality of men; and the need of a pure and devout heart
of Faith, as the source of all outward goodness and inward communion
with God. These great and self-luminous points, bound together by
natural affinity, constitute the fixed centre of our religion. And on
subjects beyond this centre, we have no wider divergences than are found
among those who attach themselves to an opposite system. For example,
the relations between Scripture and Reason, as evidences and guides in
questions of doctrine, are not more unsettled among us, than are the
relations between Scripture and Tradition in the Church. Nor is the
perpetual authority of the “Christian rites” so much in debate among our
ministers, as the efficacy of the Sacraments among the clergy. In truth,
our diversities of sentiment affect far less _what_ we believe, than the
question _why_ we believe it. Different modes of reasoning, and
different results of interpretation, are no doubt to be found among our
several authors. We all make our appeal to the records of Christianity:
but we have voted no particular commentator into the seat of authority.
And is not this equally true of our opponents’ church? Their articles
and creeds furnish no textual expositions of Scripture, but only results
and deductions from its study. And so variously have these results been
elicited from the sacred writings, that scarcely a text can be adduced
in defence of the Trinitarian scheme, which some witness unexceptionably
orthodox may not be summoned to prove inapplicable. In fine, we have no
greater variety of critical and exegetical opinion than the divines from
whom we dissent: while the system of Christianity in which our
Scriptural labours have issued, has its leading characteristics better
determined and more apprehensible, than the scheme which the articles
and creeds have vainly laboured to define.