himself, but to change them as frequently as he shall believe himself
led to do so. This natural right is not only sanctioned, but its
exercise is approved, by the Gospel. As long as the opinions of men are
not absolutely right, as long as they fall short of the truth as it will
be perceived in heaven, there is room and occasion for a change; and
such a change, wherever recorded in the New Testament, is recorded with
approbation. Where was there ever a more extensive change of opinion
than in Apollos on his conversion? Yet in his youth, Apollos was as
orthodox, as undoubtedly correct in his religious opinions before the
introduction of Christianity, as any Christian who now subscribes all
the creeds of the Catholic Church. But what would have been the
consequence if he had engaged never to 'take and interpret the
Scriptures otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the'
Rabbis; or if he had promised, vowed, and sworn most constantly to
profess his present faith whole and entire, with God's assistance, to
the end of his life? It is true that no revelation is likely to
supersede the faith of Christians; but it is, at the same time, as
little probable that no developement of the principles of Christianity
should cause gradual changes of opinion in the course of a lifetime, as
it then was that Judaism should not be expanded into the fuller
revelation of the Gospel. If, like Apollos, we believe rightly now, it
is impossible to answer for no change of opinion being necessary to
enable us to believe rightly twenty years hence. The view which we have
already taken of the expansive tendency of the eternal principles of
Christianity authorizes our declaring that a gradual enlargement of
views, _i. e._ change of opinions, is a necessary consequence of the
correct apprehension of religious truth.
Creeds are intended to be permanent and universal professions of faith;
and are the instrument by which a uniformity of faith is to be secured,
if such a thing be yet possible. But creeds never have fulfilled, and
never can fulfil, any one of these purposes. No uniformity of faith has
existed since the first creed was framed; no one formulary has been
universally received among Christians; and experience already indicates,
what the lapse of time will prove,--that no creed will be permanent. If
the most ancient of creeds, commonly called the Apostles', be named in
answer to the last remark, let it be remembered that the first version
of this formulary given by Irenaeus, and the subsequent ones by
Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria, and others, were as widely different
from those now in use as from each other. Widely different versions of
this creed are used in the Catholic Church and the Church of England;
and those who subscribe to the same form of words understand those words
variously. The permanence of this most ancient of creeds is in name
only; and the name itself is a false assumption.
Creeds cannot be permanent and universal, unless the language of which
they consist is also permanent and universal; which no language has ever
been. There is no test by which it can be proved that any two minds
affix precisely the same meaning to the commonest terms; while we have
abundant evidence that very abstract terms (such as abound in creeds)
convey very different notions to different minds. Thus, if the terms of
a language were absolutely immutable, and if one language prevailed over
the whole earth, there would still be room for a variety of
interpretations of anything expressed in that language. But the
mutations which time occasions in every tongue, and the necessity of
translation and re-translation, increase a thousandfold the chances of
such a variety, and indeed render it absolutely unavoidable.
It is well, therefore, that the truths of religious doctrine cannot be
made one with the language in which any age or nation chooses to clothe
them, as that language is necessarily mutable. And it would be well if
believers were henceforth and for ever to desist from the attempt to
connect what is mutable with what is immutable, that which is perishable
with that which is immortal, by requiring the present age to adopt the
language of the past, and providing for a similar adoption by the
future. If they wish the spiritual _conceptions_ of former ages to be
perpetuated, this may best be done by changing the _terms_ as their
meanings become modified, and not by retaining them the more
pertinaciously, the more varied are the conceptions they originate. If
the Gospel itself had been inseparably connected with any form of
language, or embodied in anything but facts, it would ere now have
passed away, or have been so far transformed as to be a different
religion. It would have been untranslateable; it would have been
untransferrable to any country beyond that in which it originated; it
would have been unintelligible to succeeding generations of even native
inhabitants of that country. It is only in so far as Christianity is
disencumbered of formularies of faith, and emancipated from the
guardianship of Councils, that it becomes the religion of mankind. The
metaphysical clauses of the Apostles' Creed, and the canons of the
Council of Trent, may contain the belief of a few, a very few,
speculative minds. The declaration that God sent Christ Jesus into the
world to save sinners, contains the substantial belief of Christendom,
which will be the faith of the whole world,--because it is Christianity.
It is as impossible for a man to prescribe to himself the faith of his
future years, as for one age to prescribe the faith of a succeeding age:
and for the same reasons. He may in his youth state an opinion in
unambiguous terms, and with perfect sincerity, which, if he still hold,
he cannot state in the same terms ten years after. The opinion may be
substantially the same, and yet have such a bearing upon some other
opinion, or may be so modified by some other opinion that the same form
of words may not express it fully, or perhaps correctly. It is yet more
probable that the conceptions which are now attached to the terms are
enlarged by his improved experience; so that, if he would declare the
same truth, he must change his terms; or if he can conscientiously
retain the terms, he must have modified his opinion. What enlightened,
reflecting Christian understands exactly the same by any one parable,
any one axiom, any one fact of Scripture that he did when he first
admitted its truth? He believed it then; he believes it now; but how
differently since science has brought new evidence to light, since
philosophy has developed its origin and tendencies, since experience has
tested its truth, and faith invested it with a hallowed interest and an
indestructible beauty! How, therefore, is it possible for any one
faithfully to engage that his views even of eternal truth shall never be
modified! Witnessing, as every reflecting man does, the gradual
evolution of truth from the vicissitudes of human experience, and from
the successive dispensations and the progressive course of Providence,
he may with safety declare that Gospel truth is immutable and divine;
but he will avoid the presumption of supposing that all her riches are
already shed into his bosom, that her brightest light is poured upon his
feeble eye. He will rather hope that his apprehension will continually
become clearer, his powers invigorated, and his capacities enlarged,
till his views of religious truth become as unlike what they were when
first admitted, as the fair face of nature appears to the new-born
infant and to the mighty poet. He will reject, as an infringement of his
inalienable rights, every attempt to bind him down to engagements which
it may not be in his power to fulfil. He will refuse to promise that his
intellect shall remain stationary; and to permit that any individual,
any council, or any church, shall usurp that spiritual influence which
he trusts shall be immediately dispensed from the fountain of grace and
truth. Desiring wisdom, he asks of God; not profaning and annulling his
prayer by engaging to receive it only in certain measure; and if any
church on earth interfere to prescribe the measure, he rejects the
interference as unauthorized by the letter of the Gospel and condemned
by its spirit.
Christian liberty comprehends an entire freedom from restraint in the
publication of opinions. To his own master every man standeth or
falleth, not only in the formation of his opinions, but in the use he
makes of them when formed. According to his conscientiousness in seeking
for truth, and not according to the accuracy of his judgment, will he be
judged by God in forming his opinions; and when formed, he will be
responsible, not for the rectitude of his influence, but for the
rectitude of his intentions in exerting it. What a man believes to be
the truth, it is his duty to declare in the method and degree which
benevolence and prudence may point out to be the best. For what but this
do we venerate the heroic Stephen, and every other martyr who bore
witness to the truth in the early days of Christianity? Yet for what but
this have Christians been led to the stake by Christians, age after age,
under the pretended sanction of a religion of liberty and brotherly
love? For what but this have Catholics and Protestants vied with each
other in torturing in body and mind men whose conscience was omnipotent
over the love of liberty and life, and who thus showed that, whether
their intellects were or were not unfaithful, their souls were true to
God? For what but this are the lovers of truth even yet too often
punished, directly or indirectly, for inviting others to participate in
the benefits which they believe they have gained. Stephen was stoned
because he was a heretic; Paul worshiped the God of his fathers
according to a way which was then called heresy, and for which he was
persecuted through life and unto death. Peter and John were brought
before the high priest and rulers for publishing their heresy, and
punished for refusing to cease to publish it. Yet has this their heresy
prevailed; and thus shall every new truth prevail, and its promulgators
be honored, in despite of the wrath of man; while the more freely errors
are canvassed, the sooner will they be exposed. What was once said with
truth in relation to the Gospel of truth,--'If this counsel or this work
be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot
overthrow it,'--may be said with equal wisdom of every other kind of
truth and the test of investigation is a much surer one than that which
is furnished by the prejudices and the passions of men. There is no
natural, no Divine law which sanctions the infliction of pain for the
exercise of the intellect, or for communicating the results of that
exercise; and that any human law or custom should have existed by which
injury of mind, body, or estate is made the consequence of the formation
and publication of opinions, is a proof that the natural rights of man
have not been understood, and that the spirit of Christian liberty has
not pervaded Christian society. As long as reproach is attached to the
act of promulgating opinions (independent of the manner,) as long as the
holder of opinions is treated with the same reprobation as the opinions
themselves, as long as he is prospectively consigned over to perdition
as they are to detestation, as long as ideas of merit and demerit are
associated with the convictions of the understanding, or blame is
attached to the act of making those convictions known, not only will the
subordinate principles of the Gospel remain in part unrecognized, but
its essential principles will be violated; for it is clearly a duty of
piety to reveal all that is believed to have been discovered of the
works and ways of God;--and of benevolence to communicate what, being
conceived to be truth, is conceived to be intended for the universal
benefit of the race.
It may excite surprise that we have not here examined the claim of the
Holy Catholic Church to spiritual supremacy: but it will better accord
with our plan to take that claim into consideration while treating of
the temporary institutions of Christianity.
From the essential principles of the Gospel we derive our belief that
Christianity, is not designed for any union, permanent or temporary,
with worldly power and grandeur; that it is incapable of such a
connexion; being injured instead of confirmed by the support of temporal
authority, and impaired instead of adorned by the adjuncts of worldly
pomp. This principle is asserted in words by every Christian Church in
existence; but violated, in fact, by almost as many. Christianity is
acknowledged to be a religion of poverty of spirit, of self-denial, of
looseness from the world and its possessions. If this principle were
carried out into each individual case, it is plain that the pomp and
ambition which have despoiled the Gospel of its purity could no longer
exist. It is remarkable that this poverty and self-denial are most
insisted on in those Churches where the temporal power and luxury are
the most excessive. We hear of them above all from Catholics, whose
popes, cardinals, and bishops have, in every age, exceeded all temporal
princes in the enjoyment of splendor and luxury. We hear of them from
the Church of England, whose superior officers revel in unbounded
wealth, and especially prize the connexion with the State which their
office occasions. While we Unitarians, who hold that Christianity is of
a purely spiritual nature, and therefore dishonored by the pretended
support of powers inferior to its own, insist much less earnestly than
the Catholic Church on the duty of self-mortification and voluntary
poverty. Our Church, were it as extensive as the Catholic, would contain
no ecclesiastical princes, and no friars; no potentates clothed in
purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day from the revenues
of the Church, and no believers whose piety is testified by a vow of
poverty. We believe that our religion ought to be exerted in controling
the passions, exalting the desires, and equalizing the affections, not
so much by regulating the external manifestations of those passions and
desires, as by influencing the heart. Self-denial is taught much better
by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of
innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by
making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by
commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life. But
while the Gospel thus leaves men free to follow the bent of innocent
desires,--to decide, each for himself, what is lawful and expedient,--it
lays a powerful restraint on all the passions, and curbs all
propensities which are inconsistent with its purity and spirituality.
All worldly ambition, all selfish luxury are utterly incompatible with
the faith of the Gospel, which disallows every claim founded on itself
to distinctions of rank, to abundance of wealth, to power over the
possessions of other men, to the indulgence of earthly desires. The
Gospel affords no sanction to the accumulation of wealth, or to the
assumption of authority. It affords examples, on the contrary, of
submission to temporal authority, of the endurance of voluntary poverty
in hardship, not because poverty and hardship are in themselves
spiritually desirable, but because they were necessary to the attainment
of some benevolent end. From the Gospel we learn that Jesus utterly
disclaimed all pretensions to authority, except in those matters where
his authority was supreme. 'Who made me a judge or a divider over you?'
was his remonstrance with those who referred the disposal of an
inheritance to him: and his reply respecting the lawfulness of paying
tribute was such as ought to have obviated all doubt whether temporal
and spiritual power could ever be properly united; 'Render unto Caesar
the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.'
What could be meant by the declaration 'My kingdom is not of this
world,' but that his authority was of a spiritual nature only? Why did
he strenuously oppose every attempt to make him a king? Why did he send
forth the seventy disciples without gold and silver and changes of
raiment? Why did he recommend to the rich man to sell his possessions,
if wealth and power can be made the means of serving the interests of
the Gospel? Why was his indignation so perpetually roused by the
spiritual assumptions of the Pharisees, but because religion was in them
disgraced by its connexion with worldly greatness? Yet not a few
Christians have loved the chief seats in public assemblies, and homage
in the streets; not a few have made proclamation when they dispensed
their alms, and prayed in the high ways; not a few have taken on
themselves to appoint places in the Messiah's kingdom which the Messiah
himself refused to promise, because such power belonged to God alone.
While he declined all interference in matters of temporal concern, and
rejected all support to his Gospel from magisterial authority, and all
benefit from the resources of wealth, it is clear that such support must
ever be needless and such resources unhallowed.
How does it happen, it is perpetually asked, that while the right to
temporal power is abjured in words by every Church, the State religion
of every country affords an instance of its assumption? It happens, as
many other strange and inconsistent things happen, through the misuse of
terms. What we call temporal power, the advocates of a State religion
call spiritual power; and thus have all ecclesiastical abuses been
justified from the day that ecclesiastical domination was established.
By spiritual authority have kings been enthroned and deposed; by
spiritual authority have tributes been raised, wars been originated and
conducted, properties been confiscated, and lives forfeited! By
spiritual authority were the Crusades begun and carried on; by spiritual
authority have popes divided and distributed kingdoms, have cardinals
negotiated and priests intrigued! By spiritual authority did Wolsey
amass his treasures, and rule his sovereign at home, and the agents of
his sovereign abroad! By spiritual authority does the Church of England
demand tithes, and under the same sanction do her bishops legislate.
What then is temporal power? What are worldly pomp and wealth?
The abuses which have deformed every State religion in turn are evident
to all,--even to those who still help to support them; but the origin of
those abuses is not generally ascertained. We ascribe them to the error
of mixing up the permanent principles of Christianity with its temporary
institutions.
Spiritual principles can only be recognized by means of external
manifestations; but the principles and the manifestation are not the
same thing; nor can they have a lasting connexion, as every thing
external is mutable, while the principles of truth are immutable. As
long as mind is connected with body, as long as the intellect can only
be reached through the senses, and the heart through the intellect,
truth must be invested with a form, and realities be accompanied by
shadows. But that form is changeable, and those shadows are fleeting:
the proximate cause of which is the constitution of all material things;
and the final cause, the ultimate universal recognition of the
principles of truth. We have already described how these principles were
communicated to the Israelites by means of ordinances which the mind of
man has long since outgrown. The principles of Christianity were, in
like manner, embodied in institutions, some of which are obsolete, while
others remain; but, since Christianity is destined not to be superseded
by any other scheme, it appears to follow necessarily from the
principles on which we have been reasoning, that none of its
institutions were, like the Jewish, positive, but avowedly adopted from
motives of expediency. It is therefore the belief of a portion of the
Unitarian body, that Christ himself appointed no ordinance for permanent
adoption, and that those which were appointed by the Apostles, and
sanctioned by their practice, were established on the ground of
expediency alone. They were not therefore the less obligatory upon their
disciples in those times, nor upon us, as far as the original ground of
the ordinances remains; but as some apostolic practices have, through
the revolutions of human affairs, become obsolete, it is desirable to
to search into the foundation of all.
Baptism cannot be called a Christian institution, since the rite was
practised long before the mission of the Baptist; but some of our body
adopt it as a Christian ordinance, because it was countenanced by Jesus
and administered by his followers: while other Unitarians, deeming the
practice of baptism inexpedient in their circumstances of age and
country, decline the rite themselves, but recommend its use in cases
analogous to those in which it was first adopted, i. e. in cases of
conversion from Paganism. There are others who wish to abolish it
altogether, from a fear of encouraging superstition by an ungrounded
attachment to external observances.
The ordinance of the Lord's Supper is considered a positive institution
of Christianity by almost the whole of the Christian world, the great
majority of Unitarians included. The Society of Friends, and the
Free-thinking Christians, are perhaps the only sects who positively
decline, from principle, the practice of the rite; while some Unitarians
deem it inconsistent with their principles to believe that Christ
designed the ordinance for permanent and universal adoption. It is
practised by many as a means, a very important means, of increasing love
and exciting to obedience, while they yet cannot plead a Divine sanction
in its favor, or much less suppose that any peculiar quality resides in
what is eaten and drank, or any peculiar virtue in the act of eating and
drinking by which any peculiar privilege can be attained. In these last
suppositions all our body are agreed, since no intimation can be found
in the Scriptures that the sacramental bread and wine were at any time
used otherwise than as merely emblematical of the sacrifice of Christ.
It was the practice of the early Christians to assemble for the supper,
each carrying his portion of the feast, which was eaten like any other
feast, and frequently with excess on the part of the rich, while his
poorer neighbor hungered. 'When ye come together,' says the Apostle (1
Cor. xi. 20-23,), it is not to eat the Lord's Supper; for in eating,
every one taketh before another his own supper, and one is hungry and
another is drunken. What? Have ye not houses to eat and drink in? Or
despise ye the Church of God, and shame them that have not?' (v. 33.)
'Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, wait one for
another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not
together unto condemnation.'--It is not conceivable that these
Christians had any notion that what they ate and drank was in itself
sacred, or that the Apostle was aware of any other purpose of the rite
but that of 'showing forth the Lord's death till he came.'
This rite was usually practised on the first day of the week, when the
disciples met to commemorate the resurrection of their Lord, and to
worship together. The custom of meeting on a stated day for worship has
been continued ever since; and the day has been wisely set apart for
purposes of rest and refreshment to body and mind. An institution so
simple for purposes so salutary will probably, however abused, be of
very long standing, even after it is more generally allowed than at
present, not to be a Divine appointment. The Jewish Sabbath was a Divine
ordinance for the use of the Jews; and by them alone has the last day of
the week been regarded as sacred. The Lord's Day, or, as it sometimes
called, the Christian Sabbath, is a totally different institution, and
one which is professedly arbitrary, though subservient to very important
objects. If the Jews were encouraged by their Messiah to look to the
final purposes of their sabbatical institution, much more ought we, the
subjects of a more enlarged dispensation, to bear in mind that all
external observances are but means to ends; ordinances of which it is
certain that they were made for man, and not man for them.