To be contented to know things as God has made us capable of knowing them is, then, a first principle necessary to secure us from falling into error; and if there is any subject upon which we should be most on our guard against error, it is surely that which I have called here the first philosophy. God is hid from us in the majesty of His nature, and the little we discover of Him must be discovered by the light that is reflected from His works. Out of this light, therefore, we should never go in our inquiries and reasonings about His nature, His attributes, and the order of His providence; and yet upon these subjects men depart the furthest from it—nay, they who depart the furthest are the best heard by the bulk of mankind. The less men know, the more they believe that they know. Belief passes in their minds for knowledge, and the very circumstances which should beget doubt produce increase of faith. Every glittering apparition that is pointed out to them in the vast wild of imagination passes for a reality; and the more distant, the more confused, the more incomprehensible it is, the more sublime it is esteemed. He who should attempt to shift these scenes of airy vision for those of real knowledge might expect to be treated with scorn and anger by the whole theological and metaphysical tribe, the masters and the scholars; he would be despised as a plebeian philosopher, and railed at as an infidel. It would be sounded high that he debased human nature, which has a “cognation,” so the reverend and learned Doctor Cudworth calls it, with the divine; that the soul of man, immaterial and immortal by its nature, was made to contemplate higher and nobler objects than this sensible world, and even than itself, since it was made to contemplate God and to be united to Him. In such clamour as this the voice of truth and of reason would be drowned, and, with both of them on his side, he who opposed it would make many enemies and few converts—nay, I am apt to think that some of these, if he made any, would say to him, as soon as the gaudy visions of error were dispelled, and till they were accustomed to the simplicity of truth, “Pol me occidistis.” Prudence forbids me, therefore, to write as I think to the world, whilst friendship forbids me to write otherwise to you. I have been a martyr of faction in politics, and have no vocation to be so in philosophy.
But there is another consideration which deserves more regard, because it is of a public nature, and because the common interests of society may be affected by it. Truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance, revelations of the Creator, inventions of the creature, dictates of reason, sallies of enthusiasm, have been blended so long together in our systems of theology that it may be thought dangerous to separate them, lest by attacking some parts of these systems we should shake the whole. It may be thought that error itself deserves to be respected on this account, and that men who are deluded for their good should be deluded on.
Some such reflections as these it is probable that Erasmus made when he observed, in one of his letters to Melancthon, that Plato, dreaming of a philosophical commonwealth, saw the impossibility of governing the multitude without deceiving them. “Let not Christians lie,” says this great divine: “but let it not be thought neither that every truth ought to be thrown out to the vulgar.” (“Non expedit omnem veritatem prodere vulgo.”) Scævola and Varro were more explicit than Erasmus, and more reasonable than Plato. They held not only that many truths were to be concealed from the vulgar, but that it was expedient the vulgar should believe many things that were false. They distinguished at the same time, very rightly, between the regard due to religions already established, and the conduct to be held in the establishment of them. The Greek assumed that men could not be governed by truth, and erected on this principle a fabulous theology. The Romans were not of the same opinion. Varro declared expressly that if he had been to frame a new institution, he would have framed it “ex naturæ potius formula.” But they both thought that things evidently false might deserve an outward respect when they are interwoven into a system of government. This outward respect every good citizen will show them in such a case, and they can claim no more in any. He will not propagate these errors, but he will be cautious how he propagates even truth in opposition to them.
There has been much noise made about free-thinking; and men have been animated in the contest by a spirit that becomes neither the character of divines nor that of good citizens, by an arbitrary tyrannical spirit under the mask of religious zeal, and by a presumptuous factious spirit under that of liberty. If the first could prevail, they would establish implicit belief and blind obedience, and an Inquisition to maintain this abject servitude. To assert antipodes might become once more as heretical as Arianism or Pelagianism; and men might be dragged to the jails of some Holy Office, like Galilei, for saying they had seen what in fact they had seen, and what every one else that pleased might see. If the second could prevail, they would destroy at once the general influence of religion by shaking the foundations of it which education had laid. These are wide extremes. Is there no middle path in which a reasonable man and a good citizen may direct his steps? I think there is.
Every one has an undoubted right to think freely—nay, it is the duty of every one to do so as far as he has the necessary means and opportunities. This duty, too, is in no case so incumbent on him as in those that regard what I call the first philosophy. They who have neither means nor opportunities of this sort must submit their opinions to authority; and to what authority can they resign themselves so properly and so safely as to that of the laws and constitution of their country? In general, nothing can be more absurd than to take opinions of the greatest moment, and such as concern us the most intimately, on trust; but there is no help against it in many particular cases. Things the most absurd in speculation become necessary in practice. Such is the human constitution, and reason excuses them on the account of this necessity. Reason does even a little more, and it is all she can do. She gives the best direction possible to the absurdity. Thus she directs those who must believe because they cannot know, to believe in the laws of their country, and conform their opinions and practice to those of their ancestors, to those of Coruncanius, of Scipio, of Scævola—not to those of Zeno, of Cleanthes, of Chrysippus.
But now the same reason that gives this direction to such men as these will give a very contrary direction to those who have the means and opportunities the others want. Far from advising them to submit to this mental bondage, she will advise them to employ their whole industry to exert the utmost freedom of thought, and to rest on no authority but hers—that is, their own. She will speak to them in the language of the Soufys, a sect of philosophers in Persia that travellers have mentioned. “Doubt,” say these wise and honest freethinkers, “is the key of knowledge. He who never doubts, never examines. He who never examines, discovers nothing. He who discovers nothing, is blind and will remain so. If you find no reason to doubt concerning the opinions of your fathers, keep to them; they will be sufficient for you. If you find any reason to doubt concerning them, seek the truth quietly, but take care not to disturb the minds of other men.”
Let us proceed agreeably to these maxims. Let us seek truth, but seek it quietly as well as freely. Let us not imagine, like some who are called freethinkers, that every man, who can think and judge for himself, as he has a right to do, has therefore a right of speaking, any more than of acting, according to the full freedom of his thoughts. The freedom belongs to him as a rational creature; he lies under the restraint as a member of society.
If the religion we profess contained nothing more than articles of faith and points of doctrine clearly revealed to us in the Gospel, we might be obliged to renounce our natural freedom of thought in favour of this supernatural authority. But since it is notorious that a certain order of men, who call themselves the Church, have been employed to make and propagate a theological system of their own, which they call Christianity, from the days of the Apostles, and even from these days inclusively, it is our duty to examine and analyse the whole, that we may distinguish what is divine from what is human; adhere to the first implicitly, and ascribe to the last no more authority than the word of man deserves.
Such an examination is the more necessary to be undertaken by every one who is concerned for the truth of his religion and for the honour of Christianity, because the first preachers of it were not, and they who preach it still are not, agreed about many of the most important points of their system; because the controversies raised by these men have banished union, peace, and charity out of the Christian world; and because some parts of the system savour so much of superstition and enthusiasm that all the prejudices of education and the whole weight of civil and ecclesiastical power can hardly keep them in credit. These considerations deserve the more attention because nothing can be more true than what Plutarch said of old, and my Lord Bacon has said since: one, that superstition, and the other, that vain controversies are principal causes of atheism.
I neither expect nor desire to see any public revision made of the present system of Christianity. I should fear an attempt to alter the established religion as much as they who have the most bigot attachment to it, and for reasons as good as theirs, though not entirely the same. I speak only of the duty of every private man to examine for himself, which would have an immediate good effect relatively to himself, and might have in time a good effect relatively to the public, since it would dispose the minds of men to a greater indifference about theological disputes, which are the disgrace of Christianity and have been the plagues of the world.
Will you tell me that private judgment must submit to the established authority of Fathers and Councils? My answer shall be that the Fathers, ancient and modern, in Councils and out of them, have raised that immense system of artificial theology by which genuine Christianity is perverted and in which it is lost. These Fathers are fathers of the worst sort, such as contrive to keep their children in a perpetual state of infancy, that they may exercise perpetual and absolute dominion over them. “Quo magis regnum in illos exerceant pro sua libidine.” I call their theology artificial, because it is in a multitude of instances conformable neither to the religion of Nature nor to Gospel Christianity, but often repugnant to both, though said to be founded on them. I shall have occasion to mention several such instances in the course of these little essays. Here I will only observe that if it be hard to conceive how anything so absurd as the pagan theology stands represented by the Fathers who wrote against it, and as it really was, could ever gain credit among rational creatures, it is full as hard to conceive how the artificial theology we speak of could ever prevail, not only in ages of ignorance, but in the most enlightened. There is a letter of St. Austin wherein he says that he was ashamed of himself when he refuted the opinions of the former, and that he was ashamed of mankind when he considered that such absurdities were received and defended. The reflections might be retorted on the saint, since he broached and defended doctrines as unworthy of the Supreme All-Perfect Being as those which the heathens taught concerning their fictitious and inferior gods. Is it necessary to quote any other than that by which we are taught that God has created numbers of men for no purpose but to damn them? “Quisquis prædestinationis doctrinam invidia gravat,” says Calvin, “aperte maledicit Deo.” Let us say, “Quisquis prædestinationis doctrinam asserit, blasphemat”. Let us not impute such cruel injustice to the all-perfect Being. Let Austin and Calvin and all those who teach it be answerable for it alone. You may bring Fathers and Councils as evidences in the cause of artificial theology, but reason must be the judge; and all I contend for is, that she should be so in the breast of every Christian that can appeal to her tribunal.
Will you tell me that even such a private examination of the Christian system as I propose that every man who is able to make it should make for himself, is unlawful; and that, if any doubts arise in our minds concerning religion, we must have recourse for the solution of them to some of that holy order which was instituted, by God Himself, and which has been continued by the imposition of hands in every Christian society, from the Apostles down to the present clergy? My answer shall be shortly this: it is repugnant to all the ideas of wisdom and goodness to believe that the universal terms of salvation are knowable by the means of one order of men alone, and that they continue to be so even after they have been published to all nations. Some of your directors will tell you that whilst Christ was on earth the Apostles were the Church; that He was the Bishop of it; that afterwards the admission of men into this order was approved, and confirmed by visions and other divine manifestations; and that these wonderful proofs of God’s interposition at the ordinations and consecrations of presbyters and bishops lasted even in the time of St. Cyprian—that is, in the middle of the third century. It is pity that they lasted no longer, for the honour of the Church, and for the conviction of those who do not sufficiently reverence the religious society. It were to be wished, perhaps, that some of the secrets of electricity were improved enough to be piously and usefully applied to this purpose. If we beheld a shekinah, or divine presence, like the flame of a taper, on the heads of those who receive the imposition of hands, we might believe that they receive the Holy Ghost at the same time. But as we have no reason to believe what superstitious, credulous, or lying men (such as Cyprian himself was) reported formerly, that they might establish the proud pretensions of the clergy, so we have no reason to believe that five men of this order have any more of the Divine Spirit in our time, after they are ordained, than they had before. It would be a farce to provoke laughter, if there was no suspicion of profanation in it, to see them gravely lay hands on one another, and bid one another receive the Holy Ghost.
Will you tell me finally, in opposition to what has been said, and that you may anticipate what remains to be said, that laymen are not only unauthorised, but quite unequal, without the assistance of divines, to the task I propose? If you do, I shall make no scruple to tell you, in return, that laymen may be, if they please, in every respect as fit, and are in one important respect more fit than divines to go through this examination, and to judge for themselves upon it. We say that the Scriptures, concerning the divine authenticity of which all the professors of Christianity agree, are the sole criterion of Christianity. You add tradition, concerning which there may be, and there is, much dispute. We have, then, a certain invariable rule whenever the Scriptures speak plainly. Whenever they do not speak so, we have this comfortable assurance—that doctrines which nobody understands are revealed to nobody, and are therefore improper objects of human inquiry. We know, too, that if we receive the explanations and commentaries of these dark sayings from the clergy, we take the greatest part of our religion from the word of man, not from the Word of God. Tradition, indeed, however derived, is not to be totally rejected; for if it was, how came the canon of the Scriptures, even of the Gospels, to be fixed? How was it conveyed down to us? Traditions of general facts, and general propositions plain and uniform, may be of some authority and use. But particular anecdotical traditions, whose original authority is unknown, or justly suspicious, and that have acquired only an appearance of generality and notoriety, because they have been frequently and boldly repeated from age to age, deserve no more regard than doctrines evidently added to the Scriptures, under pretence of explaining and commenting them, by men as fallible as ourselves. We may receive the Scriptures, and be persuaded of their authenticity, on the faith of ecclesiastical tradition; but it seems to me that we may reject, at the same time, all the artificial theology which has been raised on these Scriptures by doctors of the Church, with as much right as they receive the Old Testament on the authority of Jewish scribes and doctors whilst they reject the oral law and all rabbinical literature.
He who examines on such principles as these, which are conformable to truth and reason, may lay aside at once the immense volumes of Fathers and Councils, of schoolmen, casuists, and controversial writers, which have perplexed the world so long. Natural religion will be to such a man no longer intricate, revealed religion will be no longer mysterious, nor the Word of God equivocal. Clearness and precision are two great excellences of human laws. How much more should we expect to find them in the law of God? They have been banished from thence by artificial theology, and he who is desirous to find them must banish the professors of it from his councils, instead of consulting them. He must seek for genuine Christianity with that simplicity of spirit with which it is taught in the Gospel by Christ Himself. He must do the very reverse of what has been done by the persons you advise him to consult.
You see that I have said what has been said, on a supposition that, however obscure theology may be, the Christian religion is extremely plain, and requires no great learning nor deep meditation to develop it. But if it was not so plain, if both these were necessary to develop it, is great learning the monopoly of the clergy since the resurrection of letters, as a little learning was before that era? Is deep meditation and justness of reasoning confined to men of that order by a peculiar and exclusive privilege? In short, and to ask a question which experience will decide, have these men who boast that they are appointed by God “to be the interpreters of His secret will, to represent His person, and to answer in His name, as it were, out of the sanctuary”—have these men, I say, been able in more than seventeen centuries to establish an uniform system of revealed religion—for natural religion never wanted their help among the civil societies of Christians—or even in their own? They do not seem to have aimed at this desirable end. Divided as they have always been, they have always studied in order to believe, and to take upon trust, or to find matter of discourse, or to contradict and confute, but never to consider impartially nor to use a free judgment. On the contrary, they who have attempted to use this freedom of judgment have been constantly and cruelly persecuted by them.
The first steps towards the establishment of artificial theology, which has passed for Christianity ever since, were enthusiastical. They were not heretics alone who delighted in wild allegories and the pompous jargon of mystery; they were the orthodox Fathers of the first ages, they were the disciples of the Apostles, or the scholars of their disciples; for the truth of which I may appeal to the epistles and other writings of these men that are extant—to those of Clemens, of Ignatius, or of Irenæus, for instance—and to the visions of Hermes, that have so near a resemblance to the productions of Bunyan.
The next steps of the same kind were rhetorical. They were made by men who declaimed much and reasoned ill, but who imposed on the imaginations of others by the heat of their own, by their hyperboles, their exaggerations, the acrimony of their style, and their violent invectives. Such were the Chrysostoms, the Jeromes, an Hilarius, a Cyril, and most of the Fathers.
The last of the steps I shall mention were logical, and these were made very opportunely and very advantageously for the Church and for artificial theology. Absurdity in speculation and superstition in practice had been cultivated so long, and were become so gross, that men began to see through the veils that had been thrown over them, as ignorant as those ages were. Then the schoolmen arose. I need not display their character; it is enough known. This only I will say—that having very few materials of knowledge and much subtilty of wit they wrought up systems of fancy on the little they knew, and invented an art, by the help of Aristotle, not of enlarging, but of puzzling, knowledge with technical terms, with definitions, distinctions, and syllogisms merely verbal. They taught what they could not explain, evaded what they could not answer, and he who had the most skill in this art might put to silence, when it came into general use, the man who was consciously certain that he had truth and reason on his side.
The authority of the schools lasted till the resurrection of letters. But as soon as real knowledge was enlarged, and the conduct of the understanding better understood, it fell into contempt. The advocates of artificial theology have had since that time a very hard task. They have been obliged to defend in the light what was imposed in the dark, and to acquire knowledge to justify ignorance. They were drawn to it with reluctance. But learning, that grew up among the laity, and controversies with one another, made this unavoidable, which was not eligible on the principles of ecclesiastical policy. They have done with these new arms all that great parts, great pains, and great zeal could do under such disadvantages, and we may apply to this order, on this occasion, “si Pergama dextra,” etc. But their Troy cannot be defended; irreparable breaches have been made in it. They have improved in learning and knowledge, but this improvement has been general, and as remarkable at least among the laity as among the clergy. Besides which it must be owned that the former have had in this respect a sort of indirect obligation to the latter; for whilst these men have searched into antiquity, have improved criticism, and almost exhausted subtilty, they have furnished so many arms the more to such of the others as do not submit implicitly to them, but examine and judge for themselves. By refuting one another, when they differ, they have made it no hard matter to refute them all when they agree. And I believe there are few books written to propagate or defend the received notions of artificial theology which may not be refuted by the books themselves. I conclude, on the whole, that laymen have, or need to have, no want of the clergy in examining and analysing the religion they profess.
But I said that they are in one important respect more fit to go through this examination without the help of divines than with it. A layman who seeks the truth may fall into error; but as he can have no interest to deceive himself, so he has none of profession to bias his private judgment, any more than to engage him to deceive others. Now, the clergyman lies strongly under this influence in every communion. How, indeed, should it be otherwise? Theology is become one of those sciences which Seneca calls “scientiæ in lucrum exeuntes;” and sciences, like arts whose object is gain, are, in good English, trades. Such theology is, and men who could make no fortune, except the lowest, in any other, make often the highest in this; for the proof of which assertion I might produce some signal instances among my lords the bishops. The consequence has been uniform; for how ready soever the tradesmen of one Church are to expose the false wares—that is, the errors and abuses—of another, they never admit that there are any in their own; and he who admitted this in some particular instance would be driven out of the ecclesiastical company as a false brother and one who spoiled the trade.
Thus it comes to pass that new Churches may be established by the dissensions, but that old ones cannot be reformed by the concurrence, of the clergy. There is no composition to be made with this order of men. He who does not believe all they teach in every communion is reputed nearly as criminal as he who believes no part of it. He who cannot assent to the Athanasian Creed, of which Archbishop Tillotson said, as I have heard, that he wished we were well rid, would receive no better quarter than an atheist from the generality of the clergy. What recourse now has a man who cannot be thus implicit? Some have run into scepticism, some into atheism, and, for fear of being imposed on by others, have imposed on themselves. The way to avoid these extremes is that which has been chalked out in this introduction. We may think freely without thinking as licentiously as divines do when they raise a system of imagination on true foundations, or as sceptics do when they renounce all knowledge, or as atheists do when they attempt to demolish the foundations of all religion and reject demonstration. As we think for ourselves, we may keep our thoughts to ourselves, or communicate them with a due reserve and in such a manner only as it may be done without offending the laws of our country and disturbing the public peace.
I cannot conclude my discourse on this occasion better than by putting you in mind of a passage you quoted to me once, with great applause, from a sermon of Foster, and to this effect: “Where mystery begins, religion ends.” The apophthegm pleased me much, and I was glad to hear such a truth from any pulpit, since it shows an inclination, at least, to purify Christianity from the leaven of artificial theology, which consists principally in making things that are very plain mysterious, and in pretending to make things that are impenetrably mysterious very plain. If you continue still of the same mind, I shall have no excuse to make to you for what I have written and shall write. Our opinions coincide. If you have changed your mind, think again and examine further. You will find that it is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature’s God—that is, he follows God in His works and in His Word; nor presumes to go further, by metaphysical and theological commentaries of his own invention, than the two texts, if I may use this expression, carry him very evidently. They who have done otherwise, and have affected to discover, by a supposed science derived from tradition or taught in the schools, more than they who have not such science can discover concerning the nature, physical and moral, of the Supreme Being, and concerning the secrets of His providence, have been either enthusiasts or knaves, or else of that numerous tribe who reason well very often, but reason always on some arbitrary supposition.
Much of this character belonged to the heathen divines, and it is in all its parts peculiarly that of the ancient Fathers and modern doctors of the Christian Church. The former had reason, but no revelation, to guide them; and though reason be always one, we cannot wonder that different prejudices and different tempers of imagination warped it in them on such subjects as these, and produced all the extravagances of their theology. The latter had not the excuse of human frailty to make in mitigation of their presumption. On the contrary, the consideration of this frailty, inseparable from their nature, aggravated their presumption. They had a much surer criterion than human reason; they had divine reason and the Word of God to guide them and to limit their inquiries. How came they to go beyond this criterion? Many of the first preachers were led into it because they preached or wrote before there was any such criterion established, in the acceptance of which they all agreed, because they preached or wrote, in the meantime, on the faith of tradition and on a confidence that they were persons extraordinarily gifted. Other reasons succeeded these. Skill in languages, not the gift of tongues, some knowledge of the Jewish cabala and some of heathen philosophy, of Plato’s especially, made them presume to comment, and under that pretence to enlarge the system of Christianity with as much licence as they could have taken if the word of man, instead of the Word of God, had been concerned, and they had commented the civil, not the divine, law. They did this so copiously that, to give one instance of it, the exposition of St. Matthew’s Gospel took up ninety homilies, and that of St. John’s eighty-seven, in the works of Chrysostom; which puts me in mind of a Puritanical parson who, if I mistake not—for I have never looked into the folio since I was a boy and condemned sometimes to read in it—made one hundred and nineteen sermons on the hundred and nineteenth Psalm.
Now all these men, both heathens and Christians, appeared gigantic forms through the false medium of imagination and habitual prejudice; but were, in truth, as arrant dwarfs in the knowledge to which they pretended as you and I and all the sons of Adam. The former, however, deserved some excuse; the latter none. The former made a very ill use of their reason, no doubt, when they presume to dogmatise about the divine nature, but they deceived nobody. What they taught, they taught on their own authority, which every other man was at liberty to receive or reject as he approved or disapproved the doctrine. Christians, on the other hand, made a very ill use of revelation and reason both. Instead of employing the superior principle to direct and confine the inferior, they employed it to sanctify all that wild imagination, the passions, and the interests of the ecclesiastical order suggested. This abuse of revelation was so scandalous that whilst they were building up a system of religion under the name of Christianity, every one who sought to signalise himself in the enterprise—and they were multitudes—dragged the Scriptures to his opinion by different interpretations, paraphrases, comments. Arius and Nestorius both pretended that they had it on their sides; Athanasius and Cyril on theirs. They rendered the Word of God so dubious that it ceased to be a criterion, and they had recourse to another—to Councils and the decrees of Councils. He must be very ignorant in ecclesiastical antiquity who does not know by what intrigues of the contending factions—for such they were, and of the worst kind—these decrees were obtained; and yet, an opinion prevailing that the Holy Ghost, the same Divine Spirit who dictated the Scriptures, presided in these assemblies and dictated their decrees, their decrees passed for infallible decisions, and sanctified, little by little, much of the superstition, the nonsense, and even the blasphemy which the Fathers taught, and all the usurpations of the Church. This opinion prevailed and influenced the minds of men so powerfully and so long that Erasmus, who owns in one of his letters that the writings of Œcolampadius against transubstantiation seemed sufficient to seduce even the elect (“ut seduci posse videantur etiam electi”), declares in another that nothing hindered him from embracing the doctrine of Œcolampadius but the consent of the Church to the other doctrine (“nisi obstaret consensus Ecclesiæ”). Thus artificial theology rose on the demolitions, not on the foundations, of Christianity; was incorporated into it; and became a principal part of it. How much it becomes a good Christian to distinguish them, in his private thoughts at least, and how unfit even the greatest, the most moderate, and the least ambitious of the ecclesiastical order are to assist us in making this distinction, I have endeavoured to show you by reason and by example.
It remains, then, that we apply ourselves to the study of the first philosophy without any other guides than the works and the Word of God. In natural religion the clergy are unnecessary; in revealed they are dangerous guides.