# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 5/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V.
THE PROTESTANT PARTY.
The distinctive idea of Protestantism is this: the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the direct Word of God, and therefore the only Infallible Rule of religious Faith and Practice. It logically denied that an inspired man was needed to stand between mankind and the inspired Word. Each man must consult the Scriptures for himself; expound them for himself, by the common rules of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Each man, therefore, must have freedom of conscience up to this point, but no further. God was immanent in the Scriptures; not in the Church. The ecclesiastical tradition was no better than other traditions. It might, or it might not, be true. The Catholic Church had no miraculous inspiration.
Now it was a great step for the human race to make this assertion in the sixteenth century; it demanded no little manhood to do so at that time. Where were the men who had made it in the sixth, and all subsequent centuries? ​Their bones and their disgrace paved the highway on which Luther walked as a giant to a fame world-wide and abiding. At first the work of the Protestants, like that of all the Reformers, was negative, exposing the errors and sins of the Catholic party; clearing the spot on which to erect their Church; fighting with words and blows. In the war of the giants, sore strokes must be laid on. The ground shook and the sky rang with the quarrel. “God will see,” said stout Martin, “which gives out first, the Pope or Luther.” The Church thundered and lightened from the seven-hilled city looking with a frown towards Saxony. Luther gave back thunder for thunder, scorn for scorn. Did the Church condemn Luther? He paid it back in the same pence. The Church says, “Luther is a heretic, and should be burned had we skill to catch him.” Luther declares, “The Pope is a wolf possessed with the devil, and we ought to raise the hue and cry, and tear him to pieces without judge or jury.”
I. The Merit of Protestantism.
Its merit as a Reformation was both negative and positive. It was right in declaring the Roman Church, with its clergy, cardinals, councils, popes, no more inspired than other men, and therefore no more fit than others to keep Tradition, expound Scripture, and hold the keys of Heaven; nay, more, that by reason of their prejudice, ignorance, sloth, ambition, crime, and sin in general, they had less inspiration, for they had grieved away the Spirit of God. It was right in denying the authority of the Church in temporal matters; in declaring that its tradition was no better than other tradition, nay, was even less valuable, for the Church had told lies in the premises, and the fact was undeniable. The Protestants justified their words in this matter by exposing the weak points of the Church, its lies, false doctrines, and wicked practices; its arrogance and worldly ambition; the disagreement of the popes; the contradictions of the councils and fathers, and the crimes of the clergy, who make up the Church. It was right in examining the canon of Scripture, casting off what was apocryphal, or spurious; in demanding that the laity should have the Bible and the Sacraments in full, and claim ​the right to interpret Scripture, reject tradition, relics, saints, and have nothing between them and Christ or God. It was right in demanding freedom of conscience for all men, up to the point of accepting the Scriptures. This was no vulgar merit, but one we little appreciate. The men who fight the battle for all souls, rarely get justice from the world.
II. The Vice and Defect of Protestantism.
Its capital vice was to limit the power of private inspiration, and, since there must be somewhere a standard external or within us, to make the Bible Master of the Soul. Theoretically, it narrowed the sources of religious truth, and instead of three, as the Catholics, it gave us but one; though practically it did more than the Catholics, for it brought men directly to one fountain of truth. Now if the Catholic had an undue reverence for the organized Church, so had the Protestant for the Scriptures. Both sought in the world of concrete things an infallible source and standard of moral and religious truth. There is none such out of human consciousness; neither in the Church, nor the Bible. Both must be idealized to support this pretension. Accordingly as the one party idealized the Church; assumed its divine Origin, its Infallibility, and the exclusive Immanence of God therein; so the other assumed the divine origin of the Scriptures, their Infallibility, and the exclusive Immanence of God in them. Has either party proved its point? Neither is capable of proof. As the Catholic maintained, in the very teeth of notorious facts, that there was no contradiction in the doctrines of the ​Church, its popes and councils, and more eminent Fathers; in the very face of Reason, that all its doctrines were true and divine; so did the Protestant, in the teeth of facts equally notorious, deny there was any contradiction in the doctrines of the Bible, its prophets, evangelists, apostles; in the very face of Reason, declared that every word of Scripture was the word of God, and eternally true! Nay, more, the Protestants maintained that the record of Scripture was so sacred, that a divine Providence watched over it and kept all errors from the manuscript. What a cry the Protestants made about the “various readings.” Could Cappellus get his book on the textual variations of the Old Testament printed under Protestant favour? A perpetual miracle, said Protestantism, kept the text of the Old Testament and New Testament from the smallest accident. But that doctrine would not stand against the noble army of various readings—thirty thousand strong.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The Protestants, denying there was inspiration now as in Paul's time, yet knowing they must have religious truth or the Word of God, clung like dying men to the letter of the Bible, as their only hope. The words of the Bible had but one meaning, not many; that was to be got at by the usual methods—pious and honest study of the grammatical, logical, rhetorical sense thereof. With its word, man must stop, for he has reached the fountain-head. But has the word of God become a letter; is all truth in the Bible, and is no error, no contradiction therein? Was the doctrine once revealed to the saints, revealed once for all? Is the Bible a Finality, and man only provisional? So said Protestantism. This was its vice. But God has set one thing against another, so that all work together for good. It was a great step to get back to the Bible, and freedom of conscience, and good sense in its exposition.
Protestantism wrought wonders, and overthrew the magi​cians in the Egypt of the Church. It saw the ecclesiastical Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, with destruction opening its hungry jaws to devour them. But it had a mixed multitude in its own train, and left the people in the wilderness, wandering like the Gibeonites, with no power to get bread from Heaven, or water from the living rock. Its Jethros were philologists who knew nothing of the spiritual land of hills and brooks, and milk and honey. Its leaders—men noble as Moses, men of vast soul, and Herculean power to do and suffer, to speak and be silent—had a Pisgah view of the land of promise, and wished God would put his spirit on all the people; but they died and gave no sign. The nations are still wandering in the desert; carrying the Sanctuary, the Ark, the Table of the Law; sometimes sighing after the leeks and garlics left behind; now and then worshipping a calf of gold, of parchment, or spoken wind; murmuring and rebellious; with here and there a Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rising up in their ranks, clouds enough, but with no Moses nor Pillar of Fire. Still, God be praised, we are no longer slaves under the iron bondage of the Church. They were MEN who dared to come out, those heroes of the Reformation. This Protest against the Roman Church was one of the noblest the world ever saw; perhaps never surpassed but once, and then by a single soul, big as yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Stout-hearted Martin Luther, with his face rugged, homely, and honest, with a soul of fire, and words like cannon-shot, a heart that feared neither Pope nor Devil, and a living faith which sang in his dungeon,—“The Lord our God is a castle strong,”—the greatest of the prophets and the “chiefest of apostles” seems little to him. We may thank God and take courage, remembering that such men have been, and may be. There is no tyranny like the spiritual—that of soul over soul; no heroism like that which breaks the bonds of such tyranny. You shall find men thick as acorns in autumn, who will wade neck-deep in blood, and charge up to the cannon's mouth, when it rains shot as snow-flakes at Christmas. Such men may be had for red coats and dollars, and “fame.” It requires only vulgar bravery for that, and men who are “food for powder.” But to oppose the institution which your fathers loved in centuries gone by; to sweep off the ​altars, forms, and usages that ministered to your mother's piety, helped her bear the bitter ills and cross of life, and gave her winged tranquillity in the hour of death; to sunder your ties of social sympathy; destroy the rites associated with the aspiring dream of childhood, and its earliest prayer, and the sunny days of youth—to disturb these because they weave chains, invisible but despotic, which bind the arm and fetter the foot, and confine the heart; to hew down the hoary tree under whose shadow the nations played their game of life, and found in death the clod of the valley sweet to their weary bosom,—to destroy all this because it poisons the air and stifles the breath of the world—it is a sad and a bitter thing; it makes the heart throb, and the face, that is hard as iron all over in public, weeps in private, weak woman's tears it may be. Such trials are not for vulgar souls; they feel not the riddle of the world. The vulgar Church—it will do for them, for it bakes bread, and brews beer. Would you more? No. That is enough for blind mouths. Duty, Freedom, Truth, a divine Life, what are they? Trifles no doubt to monk Tetzel, the Leos and the Bembos, and other sleek persons, new and old. But to a heart that swells with Religion, like the Atlantic pressed by the wings of the storm, they are the real things of God, for which all poor temporalities of fame, ease, and life are to be cast to the winds. It is needful that a man be true; not that he live. Are men dogs, that they must be happy ? Luther dared to be undone.
The sacramental error of Protestantism in restricting private judgment to the doctrines of the Bible, was in part neutralized by admitting freedom of individual conscience, and therefore the right and the duty to interpret the Bible. Here it allowed great latitude. Each man might determine by historical evidence his own canon of Scripture, in some measure, and devise his own method of interpretation. Yet the old spirit of the Church was still there, to watch over the exegesis. The Bible was found very elastic, and therefore hedges were soon set about it in the shape of symbolical books, creeds, thirty-nine articles, catechisms, and confessions of faith, which cooped up the soul in narrower limits. But these formularies, like the Scriptures, ​were found also indefinite, and would hold the most opposite doctrines, for though the schoolmen doubted whether two similar spirits could occupy at once the same point of space, it is put beyond a doubt that two very dissimilar doctrines may occupy the same words at the same time. Taking “substance for doctrine,” any creed may be subscribed to, and a solemn ecclesiastical farce continue to be enacted, as edifying if not so entertaining as the old Miracle-plays. That was popular advice for theologians which the old Jesuit gave: “Let us fix our own meaning to the words, and then subscribe them.” The maxim is still “as good as new.”
This new and exclusive reverence for the Bible led to popular versions of it; to a hard study of its original tongues; and a most diligent examination of all the means interpreting its words. Here a wide field was opened for critical study, which even yet has not been thoroughly explored. A host of theological scholars sprang up, armed to the teeth with Greek and “the terrible Hebrew,” and attended by a Babylonian legion of oriental tongues and rabbinical studies,—scholars who had no peers in the Church, at least, since the time of Jerome, who translated, so he says, the book of Tobit from the Chaldaic in a day! But this study led to extravagance. Sound principles of interpretation were advanced by some of the Reformers, but they were soon abandoned. Thus, to take a single example: Luther, Zwingle, and Melancthon said, A passage of Scripture can have but one meaning. It is unquestionably true. But certain doctrines must be maintained, and defended by Scripture; therefore if this could not be done by the natural meaning of Scripture, a secondary sense or a type must be sought. Of course it was found. The old allegorical way of interpretation was bad, but this typical improvement and doctrine of secondary senses was decidedly worse. In the hands of both Protestant and Catholic interpreters, the Bible is clay, to be turned into any piece of ecclesiastical pottery the case may require; ​persecuted in one sense they flee into another. It is a very Proteus, and takes all forms at pleasure. Now it is a river placid as starlight, then a lion roaring for his prey. Job went through some troubles in his life, as the poem relates; but even death has not placed him where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Professors and critics have handled him more sorely than Satan, his friends, or his wife. They have made him “sin with his lips;” his saddest disease he has caught at their hands; his greatest calamity was his exposition. “Oh that mine adversary had written a book," said the patient man. Did he wish to explain it? Then is he rightly treated, for the explainers have ploughed upon his back; they made long their furrows. Moses, says the Hebrew Scripture, was the most tormented of all the earth, but his trials in the wilderness were nothing to his sufferings on the rack of exegesis. The Critics and Truth have disputed over him as the Devil and Michael, but not without railing. The prophets had a hard time of it in their day and generation; but Jeremiah was put into his darkest dungeon by Christian scholars; Isaiah was never so painfully sawn asunder as by the interpreters, to whom facts are as no facts, and one day as a thousand years, in their chronology. Jonah and Daniel were never in such fatal jeopardy as at the present day. A choleric man in the Psalms could not curse his foes, but he uttered maledictions against “the enemies of the Church;” nor speak of recovering from illness, but “he predicts an event which took place a thousand years later.” A young Hebrew could not write an Anacreontic, but he spoke “of the Church and Christ.” Nay, Daniel, Paul, and John must predict the “abomination of Rome;” all the great events as they take place, and even the end of the world, in the day some fanatical interpreter happens to live. Is the Bible the Protestant standard of faith? Then it is more uncertain than the things to be measured. The cloud in Hamlet is not more variable than the “infallible rule” in the hands of the interpreters. The best things are capable of the worst abuse. Alas, when shall Science and Religion have their place with the sons of men?
Now since Protestantism denied the Immanence of God ​in the Church, as such, and flouted the claim to inspiration when made by any modern, it is plain there could be no one Authoritative Church; all qualitatively were equal, resting on the same foundation. Then admitting freedom of judgment, within the limits of the Bible, and great latitude in expounding that; not very often burning men for heresy,—though cases enough in point might easily be cited,—and encouraging great activity of mind, it led to diversity of opinions, sentiments, and practice. This began in the Reformers themselves. Religion took different shapes in Ulrich von Hutten and John Calvin. Men obeyed their natural affinities, and grouped themselves into sects, each of which recognizing the great principle of all Religion; the special doctrine of Christianity; the peculiar dogma of Protestantism has also some distinctive tenet of its own. Soon as the outward pressure of Papal hostility was somewhat lightened, these conflicting elements separated into several Churches. Now neglecting those, with which we in New England have little to do, the rest may be divided into two parties, namely:—
I. Those who set out from the idea that God is a Sovereign.
II. Those who set out from the idea that God is a Father.
The theology and ethics, the virtue and vice, of each require a few words.
I. The Party that sets out from the Sovereignty of God.
This party takes the supernatural view before pointed out. It makes God an awful king. The universe shudders at his presence. The thunder and earthquake are but faint whispers of his wrath, as the magnificence of earth and sky is but one ray out from the heaven of his glory. He sits in awful state. Human flesh quails at the thought of Him. It is terrible to fall into his hands, as fall we must. Man was made not to be peaceful and blessed, but to serve the selfishness of the All-King, to glorify God and to praise him. Originally, Man was made pure and upright. But in order to tempt beyond his strength the frail creature he had made, God forbid him the exercise of a natural inclination, not evil in itself. Man disobeyed the ​arbitrary command. He “fell.” His first sin brought on him the eternal vengeance of the all-powerful King; hurled him at once from his happiness; took from him the majesty of his nature; left him poor, and impotent, and blind, and naked; transmitting to each of his children all the “guilt” of the primeval sin. Adam was the “federal head of the human race.” “In Adam's fall we sinned all.” Man has now no power of himself to discern good from evil, and follow the good. His best efforts are but “filthy rags” in God's sight; his prayer an “abomination.” Man is born “totally depraved.” Sin is native in his bones. Hell is his birthright. To be anything acceptable to God he must renounce his “nature,” violate the law of the soul. He is a worm of the dust, and turns this way and that, and up and down, but finds nothing in Nature to cling by and climb on.
God is painted in the most awful colours of the Old Testament. The flesh quivers while we read, and the soul recoils upon itself with suppressed breath, and ghastly face, and sickening heart. The very Heavens are not clean in his sight. The grim, awful King of the world, “a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children;” “angry with the wicked every day,” and “keeping anger for ever;” “of purer eyes than to behold iniquity,” he hates Sin, though he created it, and Man, though he made him to fall, “with a perfect hatred.” Vengeance is his, and he will repay. He must therefore punish Man with all the exquisite torture which infinite Thought can devise, and Omnipotence apply; a Creditor, he exacts the uttermost farthing; a King, upheld by his fury, the smallest offence is high-treason, the greatest of crimes. His code is Draconian; he that offends in one point is guilty of all; good were it for that man he had never been born; extremest vengeance awaits him; the jealous God will come upon him in an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him asunder. Hence comes the doctrine of “eternal damnation,” a dogma which Epicurus and Strato would have called it blasphemy to teach.
But God, though called personal, is yet infinite. Mercy therefore must be part of his nature. He desires to save man from the horrors of hell. Shall he change the nature of things? That is impossible. Shall he forgive all man​kind outright? The infinite King forgive high-treason! It is not consistent with divine dignity to forgive the smallest violation of his perfect law. A sin, however small, is “an infinite evil.” He must have an infinite “satisfaction.” All the human race are sinners, by being born of woman. The damning sin of Adam vests in all their bones. They must suffer eternal damnation to atone for their inherited sin, unless some “substitute” take their place.
Now it has long been a maxim in the courts of law,—whence many forensic terms have been taken and applied to theology,—especially since the time of Anselm—that a man's property may suffer in the place of his person, and since his friends may transfer their property to him, they may suffer in his place “vicarious punishment.” Thus before Almighty God, there may be a substitute for the sinner. This doctrine is a theological fiction. It is of the same family with what are called “legal fictions” in the courts, and “practical fictions” in the street: a large and ancient family it must be confessed, that has produced great names. But no man can be a substitute for another, for sin is infinite and he finite. Though all the liquid fires of hell be poured from eternity on the penitent head of the whole race, not a single sin, committed by one man, even in his sleep, could be thereby atoned for. An infinite “ransom” must be paid to save a single soul. God's “Mercy” overcomes his “Justice,” for Man deserves nothing but “damnation,” He will provide the ransom. So he sent down his Son to fulfil all the law—which man could not fulfil,—realize infinite goodness, and thus merit the infinite reward, and then suffer all the tortures of infinite sin, as if he had not fulfilled it, and thus prepare a ransom for all; “purchasing” their “salvation.” Thus men are saved from hell, by the “vicarious suffering” of the Son. But this would leave them in a negative state; not bad enough for hell; not good enough for Heaven. The “merits” of the Son, as well as his sufferings, must be set down to their account, and thus man is elevated to Heaven by the “imputed righteousness” of the Son.
But how can the Son achieve these infinite merits and ​endure this infinite torment and “redeem” and “save” the race? He must be infinite, and then it follows; for all the actions of the Infinite are also infinite, in this logic. But two Infinites there cannot be. The Son, therefore, is the Father, and the Father the Son. God's Justice is appeased by God's Mercy. God “sacrifices” God for the sake of men. Thus the infinite “satisfaction” is accomplished; with God, God has paid God the infinite ransom, for the infinite sin; the “sacrifice” has been offered; the “atonement” completed; “we are bought with a price;” “as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
Now in the very teeth of logic this system under consideration maintains that God did not thus purchase the redemption of all, for such “forgiveness” would ill comport with his dignity. Therefore certain “conditions” are to be complied with, before man is entitled to this salvation. God knew from all eternity who would be saved, and they are said to be “elected from before the foundation of the world,” to eternal happiness. God is the cause of their compliance—for men have no free-will,—hence “fore-ordination;” they are not saved by their own merit, but each by Christ's—hence “particular redemption;” having no will, they must be “called” and moved by God, and if elected must be sure to come to him—hence “effectual calling;” if to be saved, they must certainly continue in “grace”—hence the “perseverance of the saints.” The salvation of the “elect,” the damnation of the non-elect, is all effected by the “decrees of God;” the “agency of the Holy Spirit,” the “satisfaction of Christ,” all is a work of “divine grace.”
The doctrine of the “Trinity” has always been connected with this system. It does not embrace three Gods, as it has been often alleged, but one God in three persons, as the Hindoos have one God in thirty million persons, and the Pantheists one God in all persons and all things. The Father sits on the throne of his glory; the Son, at his right hand, “intercedes” for man; the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from the Father and the Son, “calls” the saints and makes them “persevere.” This doctrine of a Trinity covers a truth, though it often conceals it. Its ​religious significance—the same with that of Polytheism—seems to be this; God does not limit himself within the unity of his essence, but incarnates himself in man—hence the Son; diffuses himself in space and in spirit, works with men both to will and to do—hence the Holy Ghost.”
1. Merits of this Party.
This party has great practical merits. The doctrine sketched above shows the hatefulness of sin, the terrible evils it brings upon the world. Alas, it need not look long to see them. It shows Man at first the child of God; holding daily intercourse with the Father; enjoying the raptures of Heaven on earth, but by one step, cast out, degraded, lost, undone! It shows the world full of sweet sunshine, truth, beauty, love, till Sin entered, and then—“the trail of the Serpent is over it all.” It tells how sin benumbs the mind, palsies the heart, and shuts out wisdom at every entrance, bringing death to the intellect, death to the affections, death to the soul. The great Enemy of men is the child of sin. It tells Man he is the son of God, fallen from his high estate, and crushed by the Fall; but he may yet return. Christ will bind up his wounds; wash away all sin, with his blood, and he may start anew. It encourages men who are steeped in sin; tells them they may yet return. It says, “Come unto Christ.” But alas, the wounded man, with no freedom, must wait till the Holy Ghost, like the good Samaritan, bind up his wounds and bid him rise and walk. If he is of the elect, the invitation will come, and each hopes he is of that blessed company.
One excellence comes out of its very defect: it thinks none can be saved but by accepting Christianity, a knowledge of which comes though the letter of the Bible. Therefore it is indefatigable in sending Bibles and missionaries the world over. If they do little good where they go, the very purpose and effort are good. A man is always warmed by the smoke of his own generous sacrifice.
It recommends an austere morality. It calls on men to repent; addresses rousing sermons to the fears of the wicked, and stirs men whom higher motives would not ​move—men who ask pay for goodness. It has a deep reverence for God; and counts religion a reality; insists on a right heart. It watches over sin with a jealous eye. Coming from a principle so deep as reverence for God; believes it has all of truth in the lids of the Bible; confiding in the intercession and atonement of Christ; setting before the righteous the certainty of God's aid if they are faithful, to assure their perseverance, and promising all the rewards of heaven, it makes men strong, very strong. We see its influence, good and bad, on some of the fathers of New England, in their self-denial, their penitence, their austere devotion, the unconquerable daring, the religious awe which marked those iron men.
2. The Vices of this Party.
If it have great merits, it has great faults, which come from its peculiar doctrine, while its merits have a deeper source. It makes God dark and awful; a judge not a protector; a king not a Father; jealous, selfish, vindictive. He is the Draco of the Universe; the Author of Sin, but its unforgiving avenger. Man must hate the picture it makes of God. He is the Jehovah of the book of Numbers, more cruel than Odin or Baal. He punishes sin—though its Author—for his own glory, not for Man's benefit and correction. All the lovely traits of divine character it bestows upon the Son; he is mild and beautiful as God is awful and morose. Men rush from the Father; they flee to the Son. Its religion is Fear of God, not love of him, for Man cannot love what is not lovely.
This system degrades Man. It deprives him of freedom. It makes him not only the dwarf of himself—for the actual man is but the dwarf of the ideal and possible man—but a being hapless and ill-born; the veriest worm that crawls the globe. To take a step toward Heaven he must deny his nature, and crucify himself. He is born totally depraved, and laden besides with the sins of Adam. He can do nothing to recover from these sins; the righteousness of Christ is the only ground of the sinner's justification; this righteousness is received through “faith,” which is “the gift of God,” and so “salvation is wholly of grace.” The salvation of Man is wrought for him, not by him. It ​logically annihilates the difference between good and evil, denying the ultimate value of a manly life. It takes out of the pale of humanity its fairest sons, prophets, saints, apostles, Moses, Jesus, Paul, and makes their character miraculous, not manly. It tears off the crown of royalty from Man, makes Jesus a God; does not tell us we are born sons of God, as much as Jesus, and may stand as close to God. It does not tell of God now, near at hand, but a long while ago. It makes the Bible a tyrant of the soul. It is our master in all departments of thought. Science must lay his kingly head in the dust; Reason veil her majestic countenance; Conscience bow him to the earth; Affection keep silence when the priest uplifts the Bible. Man is subordinate to the apocryphal, ambiguous, imperfect, and often erroneous Scripture of the Word; the Word itself, as it comes straightway from the fountain of Truth, through Reason, Conscience, Affection, and the Soul, he must not have. It takes the Bible for God's statute-book; combines old Hebrew notions into a code of ethics; takes figures for fact; settles questions in Morals and Religion by texts of Scripture! It can justify anything out of the Bible. It wars to the knife against gaiety of heart; condemns amusement as sinful; sneers at Common Sense; spits upon Reason, calling it “carnal;” appeals to low and selfish aims—to Fear, the most selfish and base of all passions. Fear of hell is the bloody knout with which it scourges reluctant flesh across the finite world, and whips him smarting into Heaven at last. It does not know that goodness is its own recompense, and vice its own torture, that judgment takes place daily, and God's laws execute themselves. Shall I be bribed to goodness by hope of Heaven; or driven by fear of hell? It makes men do nothing from the love of what is good, beautiful, and true. It asks, Shall a man love goodness as a picture, for itself? Its divine life is but a good bargain. It makes a day of judgment; heaven and hell to begin after death, while goodness is Heaven, and vice Hell, now and for ever.
It makes Religion unnatural to men, and of course hostile; Christianity alien to the soul. It paves Hell with children's bones; has a personal Devil in the world, to harry the land, and lure or compel men to eternal woe. Its God is diabolical. It puts an Intercessor between God ​and Man; relies on the Advocate. Cannot the Infinite love his frail children without teasing? Needs He a chancellor, to advise Him to use forgiveness and mercy? Can men approach the Every-where present only by attorney, as a beggar comes to a Turkish king? Away with such folly. Jesus of Nazareth bears his own sins, not another's. How can his righteousness be “imputed” to me! Goodness out of me is not mine; helps me no more than another's food feeds or his sleep refreshes me. Adam's sin,—it was Adam's affair, not mine.
This system applies to God the language of kings' courts, trial, sentence, judgment, pardon, satisfaction, allegiance, day of judgment. Like a courtier it lays stress on forms—baptism, which in itself is nothing but a dispensation of water; the Lord's Supper, which of itself is nothing but a dispensation of wine and bread. It dwells in professions of faith; watches for God's honour. It makes men stiff, unbending, cold, formal, austere, seldom lovely. They have the strength of the Law, not the beauty of the Gospel; the cunning of the Pharisee, not the simplicity of the Christian. You know its followers soon as you see them; the rose is faded out of their cheeks; their mouths drooping and sad; their appearance says, Alas, my fellow-worm! there is no more sunshine, for the world is damned! It is a faith of stern, morose men, well befitting the descendants of Odin, and his iron peers; its Religion is a principle, not a sentiment; a foreign matter imported into the soul, by forethought and resolution; not a native fountain of joy and gladness, leaping up in winter's frost and summer's gladness, playing in the sober autumn or the sunshine of spring. Its Christianity is frozen mercury in the bosom of the warm-hearted Christian, who, by nature, would go straight to God, pray as spontaneous as the blackbird sings, love a thousand times where he hated not once, and count a divine life the greatest good in this world, and ask nothing more in the next. The Heaven of this system is a grand pay-day, where Humility is to have its coach and six, forsooth, because she has been humble; the Saints and Martyrs, who bore trials in the world, are to take their vengeance by shouting “Hallelujah, Glory to God,” when they see the anguish of their old persecutors, and the “smoke of their torment ascending up for ever ​and ever.” Do the joys of Paradise pall on the pleasure-jaded sense of the “Elect?” They look off in the distance to the tortures of the damned, where Destruction is naked before them, and Hell hath no covering; where the Devil with his angels stirreth up the embers of the fire which is never quenched; where the doubters, whom the Church could neither answer nor put to silence; where the great men of antiquity, Confucius, Budha, Hermes, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; where the men, great, and gifted, and glorious, who mocked at difficulty, softened the mountains of despair, and hewed a path amid the trackless waste, that mortal feet might tread the way of peace; where the great men of modern times, who would not insult the Deity by bowing to the foolish word of a hireling priest—where all these writhe in their tortures, turn and turn and find no ray, but yell in fathomless despair; and when the Elect behold all this, they say, striking on their harps of gold, “Aha! We are comforted and Thou art tormented, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, and our garments are washed white in the blood of the Lamb.”
This system exists nowhere in its perfection; that is, only ideal. It is incarnated imperfectly in many forms. But it is the groundwork of the Popular Theology of New England. It appears variously modified in all the chief denominations of North America and Great Britain. No one of all the sects which represents it but has great excellencies in spite of this hateful system. Each of them is doing a good but imperfect work. A rude nation must have a rude doctrine. Yet such is the system on which they rest their Theology. Though their Religion, say what they will, comes from no such quarter. This system is older than Protestantism, and is the child of many fathers. However it is continually approaching its end. The battering-ram which levelled the philosophy of the Stagirite and the schoolmen, will beat, ere long, on the Theology of the Church, and how shall it stand? It is based on a lie, and that lie undermined. A man who ​loves wife and child, and would die any death to save a friend, will be slow to believe in total depravity; he that sees a swarm of bees in summer, or hears the blackbird sing in his honeysuckle, will not believe God is a devil, though all the divines in the Church quote the Fathers and Scriptures to prove it. God speaks truth always; will the pulpit prevail against Him? The sands of this Theology are numbered, and its glass shaken.
II. The Party that sets out from the Paternity of God.
This system makes God not a King but a Father and Mother, infinite in power, wisdom, and love. His love rays out in every direction, seeking to bless the all of things. The world, its overarching heavens, its ocean, its mountains, its flowers that brighten in the sunbeam; the crimson and purple that weave a lustrous veil for the face of Day, at the rising and decline of light; the living things of earth, beast, bird, fish, insect, so full of happiness that the world hums with its joy,—all these it counts but a whisper of God's goodness, though all which these babbling elements can teach. It sees the same in the Bible, for it will see itself, and walks in the shade of its own halo of glory, and so treads on rainbows where it steps.
This doctrine of God's goodness is a mighty truth, poorly apprehended as yet, though destined to a great work, and development which shall never end. Men can only see in God what is in themselves. Their conception of God cannot transcend their own ideal stature of spirit. Since goodness is not active in most men, nor love predominant, they see God as Power to be feared; at best as Wisdom to be reverenced; not as Goodness to be loved; nor can they till themselves become lovely.
1. The Merits of this Party.
The merits of this system are very great. It makes goodness the cause of all. God made the world to bless it. His love flowed forth a celestial stream that sparkles in the sky, surrounding the world. Apparent evils are but good in disguise, save only sin, and this Man brings on himself, through the imperfection of his nature, pro​gressive and free. Goodness is infinite, but sin and evil finite. It sees a perfect system of optimism everywhere. The infinite Love must desire the best thing, the infinite Wisdom devise means for that end, and the infinite Power bring about the result. All things are overruled for good at the last. Sin is a point which mistaken men pass through in their development. Suffering is Man's instructor. It was good for Isaiah and Stephen and Paul to bear the burdens they bore; Affliction is success in a mask. It makes the world look fair and the face joyful. It hears the word of Love even in the voice of the earthquake and the tread of the pestilence. Evil is not ultimate but transient. It tells man of his noble nature; his lofty duty; his fair destination if faithful. It makes Religion natural to Man; bids him obey its law and be blessed; not to be good or do good for fear of Hell or hope of Heaven, but for itself. It would not have men fear God—the Religion of the Old Testament; but love him—the Religion of the New Testament. It tells us we are made for progressive goodness here, and Heaven hereafter. It denies original sin, or admitting that, makes it of no effect, for Christ has restored all to their first estate; thus avoiding the logical absurdity of the last form. Its Hell is not eternal, for the Infinite Love of God must make the whole of existence a blessing to each man. God is so lovely that we flee, as children, to his arms, a refuge from all the troubles, follies, and sins of life. It shows this uncontainable goodness in earth and sea and sky; in the prophets and apostles, sent to bless; in Jesus, the noble man who came to help the world—to seek and save the lost. It fills the soul with tranquillity, peace, and exceeding trust in God. Serenely the man goes about his duties; is not borne down with his cross, though never so weighty; looks on and smiles, fearing no evil but error and lack of faith. As he looks back, he sees an end of his perfection, but does not despair at the broadness of the divine law, though his steps totter in this infancy of his being, for he sees worlds open before him, where a stronger sunlight and a purer sky await him ; where Reason, Conscience, the Affections, and the Soul shall finish their perfect work, and he shall not be weary with his walk, nor faint though he runs.
​This system allows no ultimate evil, as a background of God; believes in no vindictive punishment. The woes of sin are but its antidote. Suffering comes from wrongdoing, as well-being from virtue. If there be suffering in the next world, it is, as in this, but the medicine of the sickly soul. It allows no contradiction between God's Justice and Mercy. We require to be reconciled with Him, not He with us. We love Him soon as seen. It makes religion inward; of the life and heart; the Son's service, not the Slave's; a sentiment, as well as principle; an encouragement no less than a restraint. God seeks to pour himself into the heart, as the sun into the roses of June. These are no vulgar merits.
2. The Defects and Vices of this Party.
So far as this system is derived from its fundamental Idea, it has no defect nor vice, for the Idea is absolute and answers to the fact that God is good. But the absurdities of other forms mingle their pestilent breath with the fragrance of truth; and the party that poorly espouses this divine idea has its defects. Men do not see the sinfulness of sin; underrate the strength of human passion, cupidity, wrath, selfishness, intrenched in the institutions of the world, and belonging to the present low stage of civilization. They reflect too little on the evil that comes from violating the law of God; overlook the horrors of outraged conscience, and do not remember that suffering must last as long as error, and man only can remove that from himself. They are not sufficiently zealous to do good to others, in a spiritual way.
This party has also its redundancies. It has taken much from the ungrateful doctrines of the darker system. Its followers rely on Authority, as all Protestants have done. They make a man depend on Christ, who died centuries ago—not on himself, who lives now; forgetting that it is not the death of Jesus that helps us, but the death of Sin in our heart; not the life of Jesus, the personal Christ, however divine, but the life of Goodness, Holiness, Love, in our own heart. A Christ outside the man is nothing; his divine life nothing. God is not a magician to blot sin ​out of the soul, and make men the same as if they had never sinned. Each man must be his own Christ, or he is no Christian.
No sect has fully developed the doctrine that is legitimately derived from this absolute Idea. When its time comes it will annihilate this poor theology of our time, and give Man his birthright. Some have attempted the work in all ages, and shared the fate of men before their time. Their bones lie mouldering in many a spot, accursed of men. They bore a prophet's mission, and met his fate. Their seed has not perished out of the earth.
This doctrine in some measure tinges the faith of all sects with its rosy light. It abates the austerity of the Calvinist, the exclusiveness of the Baptist; does a great work in the camp of the Methodist. All Churches have some of it, from the Episcopalian to the Mormonite, though in spite of their theology. There is something so divine in Religion, that it softens the ruggedest natures, and lets light even into theology. The sects, however, which chiefly rely upon it, are the Universalists, the Restorationists, and Unitarians. But how poorly they do their work; with what curtains of darkness do they overcloud the holy of holies! What poor ineptitudes do they offer us in the midst of the sublimest doctrines; how does the timid littleness of their achievement, or endeavour, stand rebuked before Absolute Religion; before the motto on the banner of Christianity: God is Love! What despair of Man, of Reason, of Goodness; what bowing and cringing to tradition! Are not men born in our time as of old, or has a race of Liliputs and Manikins succeeded to Moses, Socrates, Jesus, and Paul? But this must pass. The two former have at their basis the old supernatural theology, and differ from the strictest sect mainly in their exegesis; they would believe anything which the Bible taught. They are, however, doing a great work. But the latter are of more importance in this respect, and, though few in numbers, deserve a notice by themselves.
Of the Unitarians, and their present Position.
At first the “Unitarian heresy,” as it was presump​tuously called, was a protest against the unreasonable and unscriptural doctrines of the Church; a protest on the part of Reason and Conscience; an attempt to apply good sense to theology, to reconcile Knowledge with Belief, Reason with Revelation, to humanize the Church. Its theology was of the supernatural character mingled with more or less of naturalism and spiritualism. It held to the first positive principles of the Reformation—the Bible and Private Judgment. Contending, as it must, with the predominant sects, then even more arrogant and imperious than now—perhaps not knowing so well the ground they stood on—its work, like most Reformations, was at first critical and negative. It was a “Statement of Reasons for not believing” certain doctrines, very justly deemed not scriptural. Thus it protested against the Trinity, total depravity, vindictive and eternal punishment, the common doctrines of the satisfaction of Christ, the malevolent character ascribed to God by the popular theology. It recommended a deep, true Morality lived for its own sake; perhaps sometimes confounded Morality with Piety. To make sure of Heaven, it demanded a manly life, laying more stress on the character than the creed; more on honesty, diligence, charity, than on grace before meat, or morning and evening prayers. In point of moral and religious life, as set forth in the two Great Commands, its advocates fear no comparison with any sect. It was not boastful, but modest, cautious, unassuming; mindful of its own affairs; not giving a blow for a blow, nor returning abuse—of which there was no lack—with similar abuse. It had a great work to do, and did it nobly. The spirit of reformers was in its leading men. The sword of polemic theology rarely fell into more just and merciful hands. But the time has not come to celebrate with due honour the noble heart, the manly forbearance, the Christian heroism of those who have gone where the weary are at rest, or who yet linger here. They fought the battle like Christian scholars, long and well. The sevenfold shield of Orthodoxy was clove asunder, spite of its gorgon head. Its terrible spear, with its “five points,” was somewhat blunted.
Thus far Unitarianism was but carrying out the principles of the Protestant Reformation, to get at the pure doctrines of Scripture, which was still the standard of ​faith. Some, it seems, silently abandoned the divine and infallible character of the Old Testament—as Socinus had done—but clung strongly as ever to that of the New Testament, while they admitted the greatest latitude in the criticism and exegesis of that collection. The Unitarians were at first the most reasonable of sectarians. The Bible was their creed. Thinking men, who would conclude for themselves, say the Church what it might say, naturally came up to Unitarianism. Hence its growth in the most highly cultivated portion of the New World, and the most moral, it has been said. Men sick of the formality, the doctrines, the despotism of other sects, disgusted with the sophistry whose burrow was in the Church; pained at the charlatanry which anointed dulness sometimes showed, as the clerical mantle blew aside, by chance—these also came up to the Unitarians. Besides these, perhaps men of no spiritual faith, who hated to hear hell mentioned, or to have piety demanded, came also, hoping to have less required of them. Pious men, hungering and thirsting after truth—men born religious, found here their home, where the Mind and the Soul were both promised their rights. This explains the growth of the sect. The Unitarians, seeing the violence, the false zeal, of other sects, the compassing of sea and land to make a proselyte, went, it may be thought, to the opposite extreme, in some cases. They were called “cold,” and were never accused of carrying matters too fast and too far, and pushing Religion to extremes. They were never good fighters, unless when occasion compelled. They stood on the defensive, and never crossed their neighbour's borders, except to defend their own. They thought it better to live down an opponent, than to talk him down, or even hew him down,—the old theological way of silencing an adversary whom it was difficult to answer.
Still, however, it seems there always were in their ranks men who thought freedom was too free; that “there must be limits to free inquiry,” even within the canon; and Unitarians must have a “creed.” Others began to look into the mythology of the Old Testament, and to talk very freely about the imperfections in the New Testament. Some even doubted if the whale swallowed Jonah. ​“Biblical criticism” opened men's eyes, and “terrible questions” were asked ; great problems were coming up which Luther never anticipated, for mankind has not stood still for three centuries, but has studied science and history, and learned some things never known before.
At length the negative work was well over, and the hostile forces of other sects were withdrawn, or the war changed into an armed neutrality, at most “a war of posts.” The “Christian name,” however, is not yet allowed the Unitarians by their foes, and a hearty malediction, a sly curse, or a jealous caution, shows even at this day the spirit that yet keeps its “theological odium,” venomous as before. It is no strange thing for Unitarians to be pronounced Infidels, and remanded to Hell by their fellow Christians! Now the time has come for Unitarianism—representing the movement party in theological affairs—to do something; develope the truth it has borne, latent and unconscious, in its bosom. It is plain what the occasion demands. Good sense must be applied to Theology, Religion applied to life, both to be done radically, fearlessly, with honest earnestness; assumptions must be abandoned; the facts sought for; their relation and their law determined, and thus truth got at. Did the early Reformers see all things; are we to stop where they stopped, and because they stopped? All false assumptions must be laid aside. The very foundation of Protestantism—the infallibility of Scripture—is that a Fact, or a No-Fact? But this is just the thing that is not done; which Unitarianism is not doing. The Trojan horse of sectarian organization is brought into the citadel with the usual effect upon that citadel. The “Unitarian sect” is divided. There is an “Old School,” and a “New School,” as it is called, and a chasm between them, not wide, as yet, but very deep. “The Old School” holds, in part, to the first principles of the Reformation; sees no further; differs theoretically from the “Orthodox” party, in exegesis, and that alone; like that is ready to believe anything which has a Thus-saith-the-Lord before it, at least if we may judge from the issue so often made; its Christianity rests on the Authority of Jesus; that on the authority of his miracles; and his miracles on the testimony of the Evangelists. Therefore it is just as certain there is ​a God, or an immortal soul, and religious duties, as it is certain that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, or that John wrote the fourth Gospel and never made a mistake in it! It has somebody's word for it. But whose? Its religious doctrine is legitimated only by the sensations of the apostles. This party says, as the Unitarian fathers never said: There must be limits to free inquiry; we must not look into the grounds of religious belief, lest they be found no grounds; “where ignorance is bliss 't is folly to be wise!” The old landmarks must not be passed by, nor the Bible questioned as to its right to be master over the soul. Christianity must be rested on the authority of Christ, and that on the miracles, and the words of the New Testament. We must not inquire into their authority. If there is a contradiction between the Word of the New Testament and Reason, why the “Word” must be believed in spite of Reason, for we can be much more certain of what we read than of what we know!
Thus the old school assumes a position abhorred by primitive Unitarianism, which declared that free inquiry should never stop but with a conviction of truth. Unitarianism, as represented by the majority of its adherents, refuses to fall back on Absolute Religion and Morality, with no reliance on Form, Tradition, Scripture, personal Authority. It creeps behind texts, usage, and does not look facts in the face. The cause, in part, is plain as noonday. It is connected with a poor and sensual philosophy, the same in its basis with that which gave birth to the selfish system of Paley, the scepticism of Hume, the materialism of Hobbes, the denial of the French Deists; the same philosophy which drives other sects in despair to their supernatural theory. This cuts men off from direct communion with God, and curtails all their efforts. Unitarianism, therefore, is in danger of becoming a truncated supernaturalism, its apex shorn off; all of supernaturalism but the supernatural. With a philosophy too rational to go to the full length of the supernatural theory, too sensual to embrace the spiritual method and ask no person to mediate between man and God, it oscillates between the two; humanizes the Bible, yet calls it miraculous; believes in man's greatness, freedom, and spiritual nature, yet asks for a Mediator and Redeemer, and says, “Christ ​established a new relation between Man and God;” it admits man can pray for himself, and God hear for himself, and yet prays “in the name of Christ,” and trusts an “intercessor.” It censures the traditionary sects, yet sits itself among the tombs, and mourns over things past and gone; believes the humanity of Jesus, that he was a model-man for us all, yet his miraculous birth likewise and miraculous powers, and makes him an anomalous and impossible being. It blinds men's eyes with the letter, yet bids them look for the spirit; stops their ears with texts of the Old Testament, and then asks them to listen to the voice of God in their heart; it reverences Jesus manfully, yet denounces all such as preach Absolute Religion and Morality, as he did, on its own authority, with nothing between them and God, neither tradition nor person. Well might a weeping Jeremiah say of it, “Alas for thee, now hast thou forsaken the promise of thy youth, the joy of thine espousals!” or with the son of Sirach, “How wise wast thou in thy youth, and as a flood filled with understanding. Thy soul covered the whole earth; thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou wast beloved; the countries marvelled at thee for thy songs and proverbs, and parables, and interpretations; but by thy body wast thou brought into subjection; thou didst stain thine honour, so that thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, and was grieved for thy folly!” It has not kept its faith. It clings to the skirts of tradition, which, as a scarecrow in a garden of cucumbers—keepeth nothing.” It would believe nothing not reasonable, and yet all things scriptural; so it will not look facts in the face, and say, This is in the Bible, yes, in the New Testament, but out of Reason none the less. So with perfect good faith, it “explains away” what is offensive: “This is not in the canon. That is a false interpretation.” To such a proficiency has this art of explaining away been carried that the Scripture is a piece of wax in the Unitarian hand, and takes any shape: the Devil is an oriental figure of speech; Paul believed in him no more than Peter Bayle; the miraculous birth of Jesus, the ascension in the body, the stories of Abraham, Jonah, Daniel, are “true as symbols not as facts;” Moses and Isaiah never speak of Jesus in the Law and the Prophets, yet Jesus is right ​when he says they did; David in the Psalm is a sick man, speaking only of himself, but when Simon Peter quotes that Psalm, the inspired king is predicting Jesus of Nazareth! These things are notorious facts. If the Athanasian Creed, the thirty-nine articles of the English church, and the Pope's bull “Unigenitus,” could be found in a Greek manuscript, and proved the work of an “inspired” apostle, no doubt Unitarianism would in good faith explain all three, and deny they taught the doctrine of the Trinity or the fall of man. The Unitarian doctrine of inspiration—can any one tell what it is?
But let the sect be weighed in an even balance, its theological defects be set off against the vast service it has done, and is still doing for morals and religion. But this is not the place for its praise. Of the “new school” of Unitarians, if such it may be called, embracing as it does men of the greatest possible diversity of religious sentiment and opinion—it is not decorous to speak here.
Now Unitarianism must do one of two things, affirm the great doctrines of Absolute Religion—teaching that man is greater than the Bible, ministry, or church, that God is still immanent in mankind, that man saves himself by his own and not another's character, that a perfect manly life is the true service, and the only service God requires, the only source of well-being now or ever—it must do this, or cease to represent the progress of man in theology, and then some other will take its office; stand God-parent to the fair child it has brought into the world, but dares not own.
To sum up what has been said:—we see that the Catholic and the Protestant party both start with a false assumption, the Divinity of the Churches, or that of the Bible; both claim mastery over the Soul; but both fail to give or allow the Absolute Religion. Both set bounds to Man, ​which must be reached if they are not already. Both represent great truths, out of which their excellence and power proceed, but both great falsehoods, which impoverish their excellence. Each is too narrow for the Soul; should the persons who sit in these Churches rise to the stature of men, they must carry away roof and steeple, for Man is greater than the Churches he allows to tyrannize over him.
* ↑ It is not necessary to cite the proofs of the above statements from the Reformers, as they may be seen in the dogmatical writers so often referred to before. However, the most significant passages may be found collected in Harles, Theologische Encyclopädie und Methodologie, Leips. 1837, Chap. III. IV. The early Reformers differ in opinion as to the authority of the Bible. It is well known with what freedom and contempt Luther himself spoke of parts of the canon, and the stories of miracles in the Gospels and Pentateuch. But his own opinion fluctuated on this as on many other points. He cared little for Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Indeed, it would not require a very perverse ingenuity to make out, from the Reformers, a Straussianismus ante Straussium.
* ↑ This is, logically speaking, the fundamental principle of the Reformers, though qualifications of it may be found in Luther, Melancthon, Zwingle, and Calvin, which detract much from its scientific rigour. But still the principle was laid down at the bottom of the Protestant fabric, and is yet a stone of stumbling and rock of offence to free men.
* ↑ Chemnitz, Loci communes, Pt. III. p. 235, et al., denounces the doctrine of the Church, that the Bible was “imperfect, insufficient, ambiguous, and obscure.” Luther and Melancthon condemn the old practice of allegorizing Scripture. See the passages collected in Harles, ubi sup. p. 133, et seq., and the dogmatical writers above referred to, Strauss, Glaubenslehre, § 12, 13, Seckendorf, De Lutheranismo, &c., ed. 1688, p. 10, 38, 130, 74. But on the other side, see Gazzaniga, ubi sup. Vol. I. p. 171, et seq.
* ↑ Luther himself did not always adhere to this rule in explaining the Old Testament.
* ↑ See Strauss, Leben Jesu, § 3, 4; Palfrey, ubi sup. Vol. II. Lect. xxxiii.; Rosenmüller, Handbuch für Literatur der bib. Kritik. &c., Vol. IV. p. 1, et seq.
* ↑ “Qui non habet in crumena, luet in cute,” is a maxim; and its converse holds good in theology.
* ↑ See Theism, &c., Sermons III. IV.
* ↑ See Miscellanies, Art. XII., and Sermon of the Relation of Ecclesiastical Institutions, &c.
* ↑ I have been careful not to cite authorities lest individual churches or writers should be deemed responsible for the sin of the mass. But I have not spoken without book.
* ↑ Theism, &c., Sermons V.-X.
* ↑ It has since been made, and such a creed!
* ↑ Dr Palfrey's work on the Old Testament by one of its most distinguished scholars, finds small favour with this party, though, excepting the valuable works of Dr Geddes above referred to, it is the only attempt ever made in the English tongue to look the facts of the Old Testament manfully in the face!
* ↑ The above was written in 1841, since then the American Unitarians, as a Body, have retreated still further back, siding with Medieval Theology and American Slavery.