Mialism, find its true self, show itself in its beauty and power, and
help, not hinder, man's totality. The endeavour will very likely be in
vain; for growth is slow and the ages are long, and it may well be that
for harmonising Hebraism with Hellenism more preparation is needed than
man has yet had. But failures do something, as well as successes,
towards the final achievement. The cup of cold water could be hardly
more than an ineffective effort at succour; yet it counted. To disengage
the religion of England from unscriptural Protestantism, political
Dissent, and a spirit of watchful jealousy, may be an aim not in our day
reachable; and still it is well to level at it.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM
PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
* * * * *
ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM.
I.
M. Renan sums up his interesting volume on St. Paul by saying:--'After
having been for three hundred years, thanks to Protestantism, the
Christian doctor _par excellence_, Paul is now coming to an end of his
reign.' All through his book M. Renan is possessed with a sense of this
close relationship between St. Paul and Protestantism. Protestantism has
made Paul, he says; Pauline doctrine is identified with Protestant
doctrine; Paul is a Protestant doctor, and the counterpart of Luther. M.
Renan has a strong distaste for Protestantism, and this distaste extends
itself to the Protestant Paul. The reign of this Protestant is now
coming to an end, and such a consummation evidently has M. Renan's
approval.
_St. Paul is now coming to an end of his reign._ Precisely the contrary,
I venture to think, is the judgment to which a true criticism of men and
of things, in our own country at any rate, leads us. The Protestantism
which has so used and abused St. Paul is coming to an end; its
organisations, strong and active as they look, are touched with the
finger of death; its fundamental ideas, sounding forth still every week
from thousands of pulpits, have in them no significance and no power for
the progressive thought of humanity. But the reign of the real St. Paul
is only beginning; his fundamental ideas, disengaged from the elaborate
misconceptions with which Protestantism has overlaid them, will have an
influence in the future greater than any which they have yet had,--an
influence proportioned to their correspondence with a number of the
deepest and most permanent facts of human nature itself.
Elsewhere[16] I have pointed out how, for us in this country,
Puritanism is the strong and special representative of Protestantism.
The Church of England existed before Protestantism, and contains much
besides Protestantism. Remove the schemes of doctrine, Calvinistic or
Arminian, which for Protestantism, merely as such, have made the very
substance of its religion, and all that is most valuable in the Church
of England would still remain. These schemes, or the ideas out of which
they spring, show themselves in the Prayer Book; but they are not what
gives the Prayer Book its importance and value. But Puritanism exists
for the sake of these schemes; its organisations are inventions for
enforcing them more purely and thoroughly. Questions of discipline and
ceremonies have, originally at least, been always admitted to be in
themselves secondary; it is because that conception of the ways of God
to man which Puritanism has formed for itself appeared to Puritanism
superlatively true and precious, that Independents and Baptists and
Methodists in England, and Presbyterians in Scotland, have been impelled
to constitute for inculcating it a church-order where it might be less
swamped by the additions and ceremonies of men, might be more simply and
effectively enounced, and might stand more absolute and central, than in
the church-order of Anglicans or Roman Catholics.
[Footnote 16: See _Culture and Anarchy_, chap. iv.]
Of that conception the cardinal points are fixed by the terms _election_
and _justification_. These terms come from the writings of St. Paul, and
the scheme which Puritanism has constructed with them professes to be
St. Paul's scheme. The same scheme, or something very like it, has been,
and still is, embraced by many adherents of the Churches of England and
Rome; but these Churches rest their claims to men's interest and
attachment not on the possession of such a scheme, but on other grounds
with which we have for the present nothing to do. Puritanism's very
reason for existing depends on the worth of this its vital conception,
derived from St. Paul's writings; and when we are told that St. Paul is
a Protestant doctor whose reign is ending, a Puritan, keen, pugnacious,
and sophisticating simple religion of the heart into complicated
theories of the brain about election and justification, we in England,
at any rate, can best try the assertion by fixing our eyes on our own
Puritans, and comparing their doctrine and their hold on vital truth
with St. Paul's.
This we propose now to do, and, indeed, to do it will only be to
complete what we have already begun. For already, when we were speaking
of Hebraism and Hellenism,[17] we were led to remark how the
over-Hebraising of Puritanism, and its want of a wide culture, do so
narrow its range and impair its vision that even the documents which it
thinks all-sufficient, and to the study of which it exclusively rivets
itself, it does not rightly understand, but is apt to make of them
something quite different from what they really are. In short, no man,
we said, who knows nothing else, knows even his Bible. And we showed how
readers of the Bible attached to essential words and ideas of the Bible
a sense which was not the writer's; and in particular how this had
happened with regard to the Pauline doctrine of resurrection. Let us
take the present opportunity of going further in the same road; and
instead of lightly disparaging the great name of St. Paul, let us see if
the needful thing is not rather to rescue St. Paul and the Bible from
the perversions of them by mistaken men.
[Footnote 17: See _Culture and Anarchy_, chap. v.]
So long as the well-known habit, on which we have so often enlarged,
prevails amongst our countrymen, of holding mechanically their ideas
themselves, but making it their chief aim to work with energy and
enthusiasm for the organisations which profess those ideas, English
Puritanism is not likely to make such a return upon its own thoughts,
and upon the elements of its being, as to accomplish for itself an
operation of the kind needed; though it has men whose natural faculties,
were they but free to use them, would undoubtedly prove equal to the
task. The same habit prevents our Puritans from being reached by
philosophical works, which exist in sufficient numbers and of which M.
Reuss's history of the growth of Christian theology[18] is an admirable
specimen,--works where the entire scheme of Pauline doctrine is laid out
with careful research and impartial accuracy. To give effect to the
predominant points in Paul's teaching, and to exhibit these in so plain
and popular a manner as to invite and almost compel men's comprehension,
is not the design of such works; and only by writings with this design
in view will English Puritanism be reached.
[Footnote 18: _Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne au Siècle
Apostolique_, par Edouard Reuss; Strasbourg et Paris (in 2 vols.
8vo.) There is now (1875) an English translation of M. Reuss's
work.]
Our one qualification for the business in hand lies in that belief of
ours, so much contested by our countrymen, of the primary needfulness of
seeing things as they really are, and of the greater importance of ideas
than of the machinery which exists for them. If by means of letting our
consciousness work quite freely, and by following the methods of
studying and judging thence generated, we are shown that we ought in
real truth neither to abase St. Paul and Puritanism together, as M.
Renan does, nor to abase St. Paul but exalt Puritanism, nor yet to exalt
both Puritanism and St. Paul together, but rather to abase Puritanism
and exalt St. Paul, then we cannot but think that even for Puritanism
itself, also, it will be the best, however unpalatable, to be shown
this. Puritanism certainly wishes well to St. Paul; it cannot wish to
compromise him by an unintelligent adhesion to him and a blind adoption
of his words, instead of being a true child to him. Yet this is what it
has really done. What in St. Paul is secondary and subordinate,
Puritanism has made primary and essential; what in St Paul is figure and
belongs to the sphere of feeling, Puritanism has transported into the
sphere of intellect and made formula. On the other hand, what is with
St. Paul primary, Puritanism has treated as subordinate: and what is
with him thesis, and belonging (so far as anything in religion can
properly be said thus to belong) to the sphere of intellect, Puritanism
has made image and figure.
And first let us premise what we mean in this matter by primary and
secondary, essential and subordinate. We mean, so far as the apostle is
concerned, a greater or less approach to what really characterises him
and gives his teaching its originality and power. We mean, so far as
truth is concerned, a greater or less agreement with facts which can be
verified, and a greater or less power of explaining them. What
essentially characterises a religious teacher, and gives him his
permanent worth and vitality, is, after all, just the scientific value
of his teaching, its correspondence with important facts, and the light
it throws on them. Never was the truth of this so evident as now. The
scientific sense in man never asserted its claim so strongly; the
propensity of religion to neglect those claims, and the peril and loss
to it from neglecting them, never were so manifest. The license of
affirmation about God and his proceedings, in which the religious world
indulge, is more and more met by the demand for verification. When
Calvinism tells us: 'It is agreed between God and the Mediator Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, surety for the redeemed, as parties-contractors,
that the sins of the redeemed should be imputed to innocent Christ, and
he both condemned and put to death for them, upon this very condition,
that whosoever heartily consents unto the covenant of reconciliation
offered through Christ, shall, by the imputation of his obedience unto
them, be justified and holden righteous before God;'--when Calvinism
tells us this, is it not talking about God just as if he were a man in
the next street, whose proceedings Calvinism intimately knew and could
give account of, could verify that account at any moment, and enable us
to verify it also? It is true, when the scientific sense in us, the
sense which seeks exact knowledge, calls for that verification,
Calvinism refers us to St. Paul, from whom it professes to have got this
history of what it calls 'the covenant of redemption.' But this is only
pushing the difficulty a stage further back. For if it is St. Paul, and
not Calvinism, that professes this exact acquaintance with God and his
doings, the scientific sense calls upon St. Paul to produce the facts by
which he verifies what he says; and if he cannot produce them, then it
treats both St. Paul's assertion, and Calvinism's assertion after him,
as of no real consequence.
No one will deny that such is the behaviour of science towards religion
in our day, though many may deplore it. And it is not that the
scientific sense in us denies the rights of the poetic sense, which
employs a figured and imaginative language. But the language we have
just been quoting is not figurative and poetic language, it is
scholastic and scientific language. Assertions in scientific language
must stand the tests of scientific examination. Neither is it that the
scientific sense in us refuses to admit willingly and reverently the
name of God, as a point in which the religious and the scientific sense
may meet, as the least inadequate name for that universal order which
the intellect feels after as a law, and the heart feels after as a
benefit. 'We, too,' might the men of science with truth say to the men
of religion--'we, too, would gladly say _God_, if only, the moment one
says _God_, you would not pester one with your pretensions of knowing
all about him.' That _stream of tendency by which all things strive to
fulfil the law of their being_, and which, inasmuch as our idea of real
welfare resolves itself into this fulfilment of the law of one's being,
man rightly deems the fountain of all goodness, and calls by the
worthiest and most solemn name he can, which is God, science also might
willingly own for the fountain of all goodness, and call God. But
however much more than this the heart may with propriety put into its
language respecting God, this is as much as science can with strictness
put there. Therefore, when the religious world, following its bent of
trying to describe what it loves, amplifying and again amplifying its
description, and guarding finally this amplified description by the most
precise and rigid terms it can find, comes at last, with the best
intentions, to the notion of a sort of magnified and non-natural man,
who proceeds in the fashion laid down in the Calvinistic thesis we have
quoted, then science strikes in, remarks the difference between this
second notion and the notion it originally admitted, and demands to have
the new notion verified, as the first can be verified, by facts. But
this does not unsettle the first notion, or prevent science from
acknowledging the importance and the scientific validity of propositions
which are grounded upon the first notion, and shed light over it.
Nevertheless, researches in this sphere are now a good deal eclipsed in
popularity by researches in the sphere of physics, and no longer have
the vogue which they once had. I have related how an eminent physicist
with whose acquaintance I am honoured, imagines me to have invented the
author of the _Sacra Privata_; and that fashionable newspaper, the
_Morning Post_, undertaking,--as I seemed, it said, very anxious about
the matter,--to supply information as to who the author really was, laid
it down that he was Bishop of Calcutta, and that his ideas and writings,
to which I attached so much value, had been among the main provocatives
of the Indian mutiny. Therefore it is perhaps expedient to refresh our
memory as to these schemes of doctrine, Calvinistic or Arminian, for the
upholding of which, as has been said, British Puritanism exists, before
we proceed to compare them, for correspondence with facts and for
scientific validity, with the teaching of St. Paul.
Calvinism, then, begins by laying down that God from all eternity
decreed whatever was to come to pass in time; that by his decree a
certain number of angels and men are predestinated, out of God's mere
free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works in
them, to everlasting life; and others foreordained, according to the
unsearchable counsel of his will, whereby he extends or withholds mercy
as he pleases, to everlasting death. God made, however, our first
parents, Adam and Eve, upright and able to keep his law, which was
written in their hearts; at the same time entering into a contract with
them, and with their posterity as represented in them, by which they
were assured of everlasting life in return for perfect obedience, and of
everlasting death if they should be disobedient. Our first parents,
being enticed by Satan, a fallen angel speaking in the form of a
serpent, broke this _covenant of works_, as it is called, by eating the
forbidden fruit; and hereby they, and their posterity in them and with
them, became not only liable to eternal death, but lost also their
natural uprightness and all ability to please God; nay, they became by
nature enemies to God and to all spiritual good, and inclined only to
evil continually. This, says Calvinism, is our original sin; the bitter
root of all our actual transgressions, in thought, word, and deed.
Yet, though man has neither power nor inclination to rise out of this
wretched fallen state, but is rather disposed to lie insensible in it
till he perish, another covenant exists by which his condition is
greatly affected. This is the _covenant of redemption_, made and agreed
upon, says Calvinism, between God the Father and God the Son in the
Council of the Trinity before the world began. The sum of the covenant
of redemption is this: God having, by the eternal decree already
mentioned, freely chosen to life a certain number of lost mankind, gave
them before the world began to God the Son, appointed Redeemer, on
condition that if he humbled himself so far as to assume the human
nature in union with the divine nature, submit himself to the law as
surety for the elect, and satisfy justice for them by giving obedience
in their name, even to suffering the cursed death of the cross, he
should ransom and redeem them from sin and death, and purchase for them
righteousness and eternal life. The Son of God accepted the condition,
or _bargain_ as Calvinism calls it; and in the fulness of time came, as
Jesus Christ, into the world, was born of the Virgin Mary, subjected
himself to the law, and completely paid the due ransom on the cross.
God has in his word, the Bible, revealed to man this covenant of grace
or redemption. All those whom he has predestinated to life he in his own
time effectually calls to be partakers in the release offered. Man is
altogether passive in this call, until the Holy Spirit enables him to
answer it. The Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity, applies to
the elect the redemption purchased by Christ, through working faith in
them. As soon as the elect have faith in Jesus Christ, that is, as soon
as they give their consent heartily and repentantly, in the sense of
deserved condemnation, to the covenant of grace, God justifies them by
imputing to them that perfect obedience which Christ gave to the law,
and the satisfaction also which upon the cross Christ gave to justice in
their name. They who are thus called and justified are by the same power
likewise sanctified; the dominion of carnal lusts being destroyed in
them, and the practice of holiness being, in spite of some remnants of
corruption, put in their power. Good works, done in obedience to God's
moral law, are the fruits and evidences of a true faith; and the persons
of the faithful elect being accepted through Christ, their good works
also are accepted in him and rewarded. But works done by other and
unregenerate men, though they may be things which God commands, cannot
please God and are sinful. The elect can after justification and
sanctification no more fall from the state of grace, but shall certainly
persevere to the end and be eternally saved; and of this they may, even
in the present life, have the certain assurance. Finally, after death,
their souls and bodies are joyfully joined together again in the
resurrection, and they remain thenceforth for ever with Christ in glory;
while all the wicked are sent away into hell with Satan, whom they have
served.
We have here set down the main doctrines of Calvinistic Puritanism
almost entirely in words of its own choosing. It is not necessary to
enter into distinctions such as those between sublapsarians and
supralapsarians, between Calvinists who believe that God's decree of
election and reprobation was passed in foresight of original sin and on
account of it, and Calvinists who believe that it was passed absolutely
and independently. The important points of Calvinism,--original sin,
free election, effectual calling, justification through imputed
righteousness,--are common to both. The passiveness of man, the activity
of God, are the great features in this scheme; there is very little of
what man thinks and does, very much of what God thinks and does; and
what God thinks and does is described with such particularity that the
figure we have used of the man in the next street cannot but recur
strongly to our minds.
The positive Protestantism of Puritanism, with which we are here
concerned, as distinguished from the negative Protestantism of the
Church of England, has nourished itself with ardour on this scheme of
doctrine. It informs and fashions the whole religion of Scotland,
established and nonconforming. It is the doctrine which Puritan flocks
delight to hear from their ministers. It was Puritanism's constant
reproach against the Church of England, that this essential doctrine was
not firmly enough held and set forth by her. At the Hampton Court
Conference in 1604, in the Committee of Divines appointed by the House
of Lords in 1641, and again at the Savoy Conference in 1661, the
reproach regularly appeared. 'Some have defended,' is the Puritan
complaint, 'the whole gross substance of Arminianism, that the act of
conversion depends upon the concurrence of man's free will; some do
teach and preach that good works are concauses with faith in the act of
justification; some have defended universal grace, some have absolutely
denied original sin.' As Puritanism grew, the Calvinistic scheme of
doctrine hardened and became stricter. Of the Calvinistic confessions of
faith of the sixteenth century,--the Helvetic Confession, the Belgic
Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism,--the Calvinism is so moderate as
to astonish any one who has been used only to its later developments.
Even the much abused canons of the Synod of Dort no one can read
attentively through without finding in parts of them a genuine movement
of thought,--sometimes even a philosophic depth,--and a powerful
religious feeling. In the documents of the Westminster Assembly,
twenty-five years later, this has disappeared; and what we call the
British Philistine stands in his religious capacity, sheer and stark,
before us. Seriousness is the one merit of these documents, but it is a
seriousness too mixed with the alloy of mundane strife and hatred to be
called a religious feeling. Not a trace of delicacy of perception, or of
philosophic thinking; the mere rigidness and contentiousness of the
controversialist and political dissenter; a Calvinism exaggerated till
it is simply repelling; and to complete the whole, a machinery of
covenants, conditions, bargains, and parties-contractors, such as could
have proceeded from no one but the born Anglo-Saxon man of business,
British or American.
However, a scheme of doctrine is not necessarily false because of the
style in which its adherents may have at a particular moment enounced
it. From the faults which disfigure the performance of the Westminster
divines the profession of faith prefixed to the Congregational
_Year-Book_ is free. The Congregationalists form one of the two great
divisions of English Puritans. 'Congregational churches believe,' their
_Year-Book_ tells us, 'that the first man disobeyed the divine command,
fell from his state of innocence and purity, and involved all his
posterity in the consequences of that fall. They believe that all who
will be saved were the objects of God's eternal and electing love, and
were given by an act of divine sovereignty to the Son of God. They
believe that Christ meritoriously obtained eternal redemption for us,
and that the Holy Spirit is given in consequence of Christ's mediation.'
The essential points of Calvinism are all here. To this profession of
faith, annually published in the _Year-Book_ of the Independents,
subscription is not required; Puritanism thus remaining honourably
consistent with the protests which, at the Restoration, it made against
the call for subscription. But the authors of the _Year-Book_ say with
pride, and it is a common boast of the Independent churches, that though
they do not require subscription, there is, perhaps, in no religious
body, such firm and general agreement in doctrine as among
Congregationalists. This is true, and it is even more true of the flocks
than of the ministers, of whom the abler and the younger begin to be
lifted by the stream of modern ideas. Still, up to the present time, the
Protestantism of one great division of English Puritans is undoubtedly
Calvinist; the Baptists holding in general the scheme of Calvinism yet
more strictly than the Independents.