direction their conversion lies; and their so-called exercise of private
judgment is neither right nor wrong in itself, it is a spontaneous act
which they do not think about; if it is any thing, it is but a means of
bringing out their moral characteristics one way or the other. Often, as
in the case of very illiterate and unreflecting persons, it proves
nothing either way; but in those who are not so, it is right or wrong,
as their hearts are right or wrong; it is an exercise not of reason but
of heart. Take, for instance, the case of a servant in a family; she is
baptized and educated in the Church of England, and is religiously
disposed; she goes into Scotland and conforms to the Kirk, to which her
master and mistress belong. She is of course responsible for what she
does, but no one would say that she had formed any purpose, or taken any
deliberate step. In course of time, when perhaps taxed with the change,
she would say in her defence that outward forms matter not, and that
there are good men in Scotland as well as in England; but this is an
after-thought. Again, a careless person, nominally a Churchman, falls
among serious-minded Dissenters, and they reclaim him from vice or
irreligion; on this he joins their communion, and as time goes on,
boasts perhaps of his right of private judgment. At the time itself,
however, no process of inquiry took place within him at all; his heart
was "opened," whether for good or for bad, whether by good influences or
by good and bad mixed. He was not conscious of convincing reasons, but
he took what came to hand, he embraced what was offered, he felt and he
acted. Again, a man is brought up among Unitarians, or in the frigid and
worldly school which got a footing in the Church during last century,
and has been accustomed to view religion as a matter of reason and
form, of obligation, to the exclusion of affectionateness and devotion.
He falls among persons of what is called an Evangelical cast, and finds
his heart interested, and great objects set before it. Such a man falls
in with the sentiments he finds, rather than adopts them. He follows the
leadings of his heart, perhaps of Divine grace, but certainly not any
course of inquiry and proof. There is nothing of argument, discussion,
or choice in the process of his conversion. He has no systems to choose
between, and no grounds to scrutinize.
Now, in all such cases, the sort of private judgment exercised is right
or wrong, not as private judgment, but according to its circumstances.
It is either the attraction of a Divine Influence, such as the mind
cannot master, or it is a suggestion of reason, which the mind has yet
to analyze, before it can bring it to the test of logic. If it is the
former, it is above a private judgment, popularly so-called; if the
latter, it is not yet so much as one.
A second class of conversions on private judgment consists of those
which take place upon the sight or the strong testimony of miracles.
Such was the instance of Rahab, of Naaman, if he may be called a
convert, and of Nebuchadnezzar; of the blind man in John ix, of St.
Paul, of Cornelius, of Sergius Paulus, and many others. Here again the
act of judgment is of a very peculiar character. It is not exactly an
unconscious act, but yet it is hardly an act of judgment. Our belief in
external sensible facts cannot properly be called an act of private
judgment; yet since Protestants, we suppose, would say that the blind
man or Sergius Paulus were converted on private judgment, let it even so
be called, though it is of a very particular kind. Again, conviction
after a miracle also implies the latent belief that such acts are signs
of the Divine Presence, a belief which may be as generally recognized
and maintained, and is as little a peculiar or private feeling as the
impression on the senses of the miracle itself. And this leads to the
mention of a further instance of the sort of private judgments to which
men are invited in Scripture, viz., the exercise of the moral sense. Our
Creator has stamped certain great truths upon our minds, and there they
remain in spite of the fall. St. Paul appeals to one of these at Lystra,
calling on the worshippers of idols to turn from these vanities unto the
Living God; and at Athens, "not to think that the Godhead is like unto
gold, or silver, or stone graven by art and man's device," but to
worship "God who made the world and all things therein." In the same
tone he reminds the Thessalonians of their having "turned to God from
idols to serve the Living and True God." In like manner, doubtless,
other great principles also of religion and morals are rooted in the
minds so deeply, that their denial by any religion would be a
justification of our quitting or rejecting it. If a pagan found his
ecclesiastical polity essentially founded on lying and cheating, or his
ritual essentially impure, or his moral code essentially unjust or
cruel, we conceive this would be a sufficient reason for his renouncing
it for one which was free from these hateful characteristics. Such again
is the kind of private judgment exercised, when maxims of principles,
generally admitted by bodies of men, are acted upon by individuals who
have been ever taught them, as a matter of course, without questioning
them; for instance, if a member of the English Church, who had always
been taught that preaching is the great ordinance of the Gospel, to the
disparagement of the Sacraments, thereupon placed himself under the
ministry of a powerful Wesleyan preacher; or if, from the common belief
that nothing is essential but what is on the surface of Scripture, he
forthwith attached himself to the Baptists, Independents, or Unitarians.
Such men indeed often take their line in consequence of some inward
liking for the religious system they adopt; but we are speaking of their
proceeding as far as it professes to be an act of judgment.
A third class of private judgments recorded in Scripture are those which
are exercised at one and the same time by a great number; if it be not a
contradiction to call such judgments private. Yet here again we suppose
staunch Protestants would maintain that the three thousand at Pentecost,
and the five thousand after the miracle on the lame man, and the "great
company of the priests," which shortly followed, did avail themselves,
and do afford specimens, of the sacred right in question; therefore let
it be ruled so. Such, then, is the case of national conversions to which
we have already alluded. Again, if the Lutheran Church of Germany with
its many theologians, or our neighbor the Kirk,--General Assembly, Men
of Strathbogie, Dr. Chalmers, and all,--came to a unanimous or
quasi-unanimous resolve to submit to the Archbishop of Canterbury as
their patriarch, this doubtless would be an exercise of private judgment
perfectly defensible on Scripture precedents.
Now, before proceeding, let us observe, that as yet nothing has been
found in Scripture to justify the cases of private judgment which are
exemplified in the popular religious biographies of the day. These
generally contain instances of conversions made on the judgment,
definite, deliberate, independent, isolated, of the parties converted.
The converts in these stories had not seen miracles, nor had they
developed their own existing principles or beliefs, nor had they changed
their religion in company with others, nor had they received new truths,
they knew not how. Let us then turn to Scripture a second time, to see
whether we can gain thence any clearer sanction of Private Judgment as
now exercised among us, than our search into Scripture has hitherto
furnished.
3.
There certainly is another method of conversion upon private judgment
described in Scripture, which is much more to our purpose, viz., by
means of the study of Scripture itself. Thus our Lord says to the Jews,
"Search the Scriptures"; and the treasurer of Candace was reading the
book of Isaiah when St. Philip met him; and the men of Berea are said to
be "more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the
word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily,
whether those things were so." And it is added, "therefore many of them
believed." Here at length, it will be said, is a precedent for such acts
of private judgment as are most frequently recommended and instanced in
religious tales; and indeed these texts commonly are understood to make
it certain beyond dispute, that individuals ordinarily may find out the
doctrines of the Gospel for themselves from the private study of
Scripture. A little consideration, however, will convince us that even
these are precedents for something else, that they sanction, not an
inquiry about Gospel doctrine, but about the Gospel teacher; not what
has God revealed, but whom has He commissioned? And this is a very
different thing.
The context of the passage in which our Lord speaks of searching the
Scriptures, shows plainly that their office is that of leading, not to a
knowledge of the Gospel, but of Himself, its Author and Teacher. "Whom
He hath sent," He says, "Him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures, for
in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which _testify
of Me_." He adds, that they "will not come unto Him, that they may have
life," and that "He is come in His Father's name, and they receive Him
not." And again, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for
he _wrote of Me_." It is plain that in this passage our Lord does not
send His hearers to the Old Testament to gain thence the knowledge of
the doctrines of the Gospel by means of their private judgment, but to
gain tests or notes by which to find out and receive Him who was the
teacher of those doctrines; and, though the treasurer of Candace appears
in the narrative to be contemplating our Lord in prophecy, not as the
teacher but the object of the Christian faith, yet still in confessing
that he could not "understand" what he was reading, "unless some man
should guide him," he lays down the principle broadly, which we desire
here to maintain, that the private study of Scripture is not intended
ordinarily as the means of getting a knowledge of the Gospel. In like
manner, St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, refers to the book of Joel,
by way of proving thence, not the Christian doctrine, but the divine
promise that new teachers were to be sent in due season, and the fact
that it was fulfilled in himself and his brethren. "This is that," he
says, "which was spoken by the prophet Joel, I will pour out My Spirit
upon all flesh, and _your sons and your daughters shall prophesy_."
While, then, the conversions recorded in Scripture are brought about in
a very marked way through a _teacher_, and _not_ by means of private
judgment, so again, if an appeal _is_ made to private judgment, this is
done in order to settle who the teacher is, and what are his notes or
tokens, rather than to substantiate this or that religious opinion or
practice. And if such instances bear upon our conduct at this day, as it
is natural to think they do, then of course the practical question
before us is, _who_ is the teacher now, from whose mouth are we to seek
the law, and _what are his notes_?
Now, in remarkable coincidence with this view, we find in both
Testaments that teachers are promised under the dispensation of the
Gospel, so that they who, like the noble Bereans, search the Scriptures
daily will be at little loss _whither_ their private judgment should
lead them in order to gain the knowledge of the truth. In the book of
Isaiah we have the following express promises: "Though the Lord give you
the bread of adversity, and the waters of affliction, yet shall not thy
teachers be removed into a corner any more, but _thine eyes shall see
thy teachers_, and thine ears _shall hear a voice behind thee_, saying,
This is the way," etc. Several tests follow descriptive of the condition
of things or the circumstances in which these teachers are to be found.
First, the absence of idolatry: "Ye shall defile also the covering of
thy graven images of silver, and the ornaments of thy molten images of
gold"; and next the multitude of fellow-believers: "Then shall He give
the _rain of thy seed_, that thou shalt sow the ground withal; in that
day shall thy cattle feed _in large pastures_." Elsewhere the appointed
teacher is noted as speaking with authority and judicially, as: "Every
tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn." And
here again the promises or tests of extent and perpetuity appear: "Thou
shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall
inherit the Gentiles"; and "My kindness shall not depart from them,
neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed." Elsewhere holiness
is mentioned: "It shall be called, The way of holiness, the unclean
shall not pass over it." One more promise shall be cited: "My Spirit
that is upon thee, and My words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not
depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed ... from
henceforth and for ever."
In the New Testament we have the same promises stated far more concisely
indeed, but, what is much more apposite than a longer description, with
the addition of the _name_ of our promised teacher: "The _Church_ of the
living God," says St. Paul, "_the pillar and ground of the truth_." The
simple question then for Private Judgment to exercise itself upon is,
what and where is the Church?
Now let it be observed how exactly this view of the province of Private
Judgment, where it is allowable, as being the discovery not of doctrine,
but of the teacher of doctrine, harmonizes both with the nature of
Religion and the state of human society as we find it. Religion is for
practice, and that immediate. Now it is much easier to form a correct
and rapid judgment of persons than of books or of doctrines. Every one,
even a child, has an impression about new faces; few persons have any
real view about new propositions. There is something in the sight of
persons or of bodies of men, which speaks to us for approval or
disapprobation with a distinctness to which pen and ink are unequal.
This is just the kind of evidence which is needed for use, in cases in
which private judgment is divinely intended to be the means of our
conversion. The multitude have neither the time, the patience, nor the
clearness and exactness of thought, for processes of investigation and
deduction. Reason is slow and abstract, cold and speculative; but man is
a being of feeling and action; he is not resolvable into a _dictum de
omni et nullo_, or a series of hypotheticals, or a critical diatribe, or
an algebraical equation. And this obvious fact does, as far as it goes,
make it probable that, if we are providentially obliged to exercise our
private judgment, the point toward which we have to direct it, is the
teacher rather than the doctrine.
In corroboration, it may be observed, that Scripture seems always to
imply the presence of teachers as the appointed ordinance by which men
learn the truth; and is principally engaged in giving cautions against
false teachers, and tests for ascertaining the true. Thus our Lord bids
us "beware of false prophets," not of false books; and look to their
fruits. And He says elsewhere that "the sheep know His voice," and that
"they know not the voice of strangers." And He predicts false Christs,
and false prophets, who are to be nearly successful against even the
elect. He does not give us tests of false doctrines, but of certain
visible peculiarities or notes applicable to persons or parties. "If
they shall say, Behold, he is in the desert, go not forth; behold, he is
in the secret chamber, believe it not." St. Paul insists on tokens of a
similar kind: "Mark them which cause divisions, and avoid them"; "is
Christ divided?" "beware of dogs, beware of evil workers"; "be followers
together of me, and mark them which walk so, as ye have us for an
ensample." Thus the New Testament equally with the Old, as far as it
speaks of private examination into teaching professedly from heaven,
makes the teacher the subject of that inquiry, and not the thing taught;
it bids us ask for his credentials, and avoid him if he is unholy, or
idolatrous, or schismatical, or if he comes in his own name, or if he
claims no authority, or is the growth of a particular spot or of
particular circumstances.
If there are passages which at first sight seem to interfere with this
statement, they admit of an easy explanation. Either they will be found
to appeal to those instinctive feelings of our nature already spoken of
which supersede argument and proof in the judgments we form of persons
or bodies; as in St. Paul's reference to the idolatry of Athenian
worship, or to the extreme moral corruption of heathenism generally. Or,
again, the criterion of doctrine which they propose to the private
judgment of the individual turns upon the question of its novelty or
previous reception. When St. Paul would describe a false gospel, he
calls it _another_ gospel "than that ye have received"; and St. John
bids us "try the spirits," gives us as the test of truth and error the
"confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh," and warns us
against receiving into our houses any one who "brings not this
doctrine." We conceive then that, on the whole, the notion of gaining
religious truth for ourselves by our private examination, whether by
reading or thinking, whether by studying Scripture or other books, has
no broad sanction in Scripture, is neither impressed upon us by its
general tone, nor enjoined in any of its commands. The great question
which it puts before us for the exercise of private judgment is,--Who
is God's prophet, and where? Who is to be considered the voice of the
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?
4.
Having carried our train of thought as far as this, it is time for us to
proceed to the thesis in which it will be found to issue, viz., that, on
the principles that have been laid down, Dissenters ought to abandon
their own communion, but that members of the English Church ought not to
abandon theirs. Such a position has often been treated as a paradox and
inconsistency; yet we hope to be able to recommend it favorably to the
reader.
Now that seceders, sectarians, independent thinkers, and the like, by
whatever name they call themselves, whether "Wesleyans," "Dissenters,"
"professors of the national religion," "well-wishers of the Church," or
even "Churchmen," are in grievous error, in their mode of exercising
their private judgment, is plain as soon as stated, viz., because they
do not use it in looking out for a teacher at all. They who think they
have, in consequence of their inquiries, found the teacher of truth, may
be wrong in the result they have arrived at; but those who despise the
notion of a teacher altogether, are already wrong before they begin
them. They do not start with their private judgment in that one special
direction which Scripture allows or requires. Scripture speaks of a
certain pillar or ground of truth, as set up to the world, and describes
it by certain characteristics; dissenting teachers and bodies, so far
from professing to be themselves this authority, or to contain among
them this authority, assert there is no such authority to be found
anywhere. When, then, we deny that they are the Church in our meaning of
the word, they ought to take no offence at it, for we are not denying
them any thing to which they lay claim; we are but denying them what
they already put away from themselves as much as we can. They must not
act like the dog in the fable (if it be not too light a comparison), who
would neither use the manger himself, nor relinquish it to others; let
them not grudge to others a manifest Scriptural privilege which they
disown themselves. Is an ordinance of Scripture to be fulfilled nowhere,
because it is not fulfilled in them? By the Church we mean what
Scripture means, "the pillar and ground of the truth"; a power out of
whose mouth the Word and the Spirit are never to fail, and whom whoso
refuses to hear becomes thereupon to all his brethren a heathen man and
a publican. Let the parties in question accept the Scripture definition,
or else not resume the Scripture name; or, rather, let them seek
elsewhere what they are conscious is not among themselves. We hear much
of Bible Christians, Bible religion, Bible preaching; it would be well
if we heard a little of the Bible Church also; we venture to say that
Dissenting Churches would vanish thereupon at once, for, since it is
their fundamental principle that they are not a pillar or ground of
truth, but voluntary societies, without authority and without gifts, the
Bible Church they cannot be. If the serious persons who are in dissent
would really imitate the simple-minded Ethiopian, or the noble Bereans,
let them ask themselves: "Of whom speaketh" the Apostle, or the Prophet,
such great things?--Where is the "pillar and ground"?--Who is it that is
appointed to lead us to Christ?--Where are those teachers which were
never to be removed into a corner any more, but which were ever to be
before our eyes and in our ears? Whoever is right, or whoever is wrong,
they cannot be right who profess not to have found, not to look out
for, not to believe in, that Ordinance to which Apostles and Prophets
give their testimony. So much then for the Protestant side of the
thesis.
One half of it then is easily disposed of; but now we come to the other
side of it, the Roman, which certainly has its intricacies. It is not
difficult to know how we should act toward a religious body which does
not even profess to come to us in the name of the Lord, or to be a
pillar and ground of the truth; but what shall we say when more than one
society, or school, or party, lay claim to be the heaven-sent teacher,
and are rivals one to the other, as are the Churches of England and Rome
at this day? How shall we discriminate between them? Which are we to
follow? Are tests given us for that purpose? Now if tests are given us,
we must use them; but if not, and so far as not, we must conclude that
Providence foresaw that the difference between them would never be so
great as to require of us to leave the one for the other.
However, it is certain that much _is_ said in Scripture about rival
teachers, and that at least some of these rivals are so opposed to each
other, that tests are given us, in order to our shunning the one party,
and accepting the other. In such cases, the one teacher is represented
to be the minister of God, and the other the child and organ of evil.
The one comes in God's name, the other professes to come simply in his
own name. Such a contrast is presented to us in the conflict between
Moses and the magicians of Egypt; all is light on the one side, all
darkness on the other. Or again, in the trial between Elijah and the
prophets of Baal. There is no doubt, in such a case, that it would be
our imperative duty at once to leave the teaching of Satan, and betake
ourselves _to_ the Law and the Prophets. And it will be observed that,
to assist inquirers in doing so, the representatives of Almighty God
have been enabled, in their contests with the enemy, to work miracles,
as Moses was, for instance, and Elijah, in order to make it clear which
way the true teaching lay.
But now will any one say that the contrast between the English and the
Roman, or again, the Greek, Churches, is of this nature?--is any of the
three a "_monstrum nullâ virtute redemptum"?_ Moreover, the magicians
and the priests of Baal "came in their own name"; is that the case with
the Church, English, Roman, or Greek? Is it not certain, even at first
sight, that each of these branches has many high gifts and much grace in
her communion. And, at any rate, as regards our controversy with Rome,
if her champions would maintain that the Church of England is the false
prophet, and she the true one, then let her work miracles as Moses did
in the presence of the magicians, in order to our conviction.