Footnotes
The following passage, from an article in the “Independent,” by Henry Ward Beecher, is valuable, perhaps, as the testimony of one who has “summered it and wintered it” with Orthodoxy:—
“Does anybody inquire why, if so thinking, we occasionally give such sharp articles upon the great religious newspapers, ‘The Observer,’ ‘The Intelligencer,’ and the like? O, pray do not think it from any ill will. It is all kindness! We only do it to keep our voice in practice. We have made Orthodoxy a study. And by an attentive examination of ‘The Presbyterian,’ ‘The Observer,’ ‘The Puritan Recorder,’ and such like unblemished confessors, we have perceived that no man is truly sound who does not pitch into somebody that is not sound; and that a real modern orthodox man, like a nervous watch dog, must sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark incessantly at everything that comes in sight along the highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, either he must growl and gnaw his reserved bones, or bark at the moon to keep up the sonorousness of his voice. And so, for fear that the sweetness of our temper may lead men to think that we have no theologic zeal, we lift up in objurgation now and then—as much as to say, ‘Here we are, fierce and orthodox; ready to growl when we cannot bite.’ ”
The doctrine of the Roman Catholics, as stated by Moehler, a distinguished Roman Catholic, is as follows:—
“The doctrine of the Catholic Church on original sin is extremely simple, and may be reduced to the following propositions: Adam, by sin, lost his original justice and holiness, drew down on himself, by his disobedience, the displeasure and judgments of the Almighty, incurred the penalty of death, and thus, in all his parts,—in his body as well as soul,—became strangely deteriorated. Thus his sinful condition is transmitted to all his posterity as descended from him, entailing the consequence that man is, of himself, incapable—even with the aid of the most perfect ethical law offered to him from without (not excepting even the one in the Old Covenant)—to act in a manner agreeable to God, or in any other way to be justified before him, save only by the merits of Jesus Christ.”
The doctrine of the Church of England concerning original sin and free will is in its ninth and tenth articles, and declares that,—
“Original sin is ... the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is, of his own nature, inclined to evil, ... and therefore in every person born into the world it deserveth God's wrath and damnation....
“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will.”
The early Fathers took different views of the origin of sin. Tertullian ascribed it to human impatience. “Nunc ut compendio dictum sit, omne peccatum impatientiæ adscribendum.” (Tertul. De Patien. 5.) Origen thinks laziness the cause of sin; sin is a negation—not doing right. Justin Martyr ascribes the origin of sin to sensuality. Origen (after Philo) considered the story of the fall as an allegory, and a type of what takes place in all men.
Ovid. Metam. 7:18.
“Si possem, sanior essem.
Sed trahit invitam nova vis; aliudque cupido,
Mens aliud suadet, video meliora, proboque,
Deteriora sequor.”
See, also, the story, in the Cyropædia, of Araspes and his two souls.
In addition to the extracts from Professor Hovey, Meyer, Lücke, and De Wette, the following passages from F. D. Maurice (“Theological Essays”) are interesting, as showing a concurrence of testimony from yet another quarter to the thesis of this section:—
“When any one ventures to say to an English audience, that eternity is not a mere negation of time, that it denotes something real, substantial, before all time, he is told at once that he is departing from the simple, intelligible meaning of words; that he is introducing novelties; that he is talking abstractions. This language is perfectly honest in the mouths of those who use it. But they do not know where they learned it. They did not get it from peasants, or women, or children. They did not get it from the Bible. They got it from Locke. And if I find that I cannot interpret the language and thoughts of peasants, and women, and children, and that I cannot interpret the plainest passages of the Bible, or the whole context of it, while I look through the Locke spectacles, I must cast them aside....
“Suppose, instead of taking this method of asserting the truth of all God's words, the most blessed and the most tremendous, we reject the wisdom of our forefathers, and enact an article declaring that all are heretics, and deniers of the truth, who do not hold that eternal means endless, and that there cannot be a deliverance from eternal punishment. What is the consequence? Simply this, I believe: the whole gospel of God is set aside. The state of eternal life and eternal death is not one we can refer only to the future, or that we can in any wise identify with the future. Every man who knows what it is to have been in a state of sin, knows what it is to have been in a state of death. He cannot connect that death with time; he must say that Christ has brought him out of the bonds of eternal death. Throw that idea into the future and you deprive it of all its reality, of all its power. I know what it means all too well while you let me connect it with my present and personal being, with the pangs of conscience which I suffer now. It becomes a mere vague dream and shadow to me when you project it into a distant world. And if you take from me the belief that God is always righteous, always maintaining a fight with evil, always seeking to bring his creatures out of it, you take everything from me—all hope now, all hope in the world to come. Atonement, redemption, satisfaction, regeneration, become mere words, to which there is no counterpart in reality.”
Olshausen, an Orthodox commentator, speaks thus in regard to Christ's predictions concerning his coming, in Matt. ch. 24, 25:—
“One of the most striking examples of the binding of the present and future in one narrative, and one which presents many difficulties, is to be found in these passages. Plain descriptions of the impending destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish state blend with no less apparent descriptions of the coming of Christ in his kingdom. It cannot be denied that the Orthodox interpreters are far less natural and unforced than the others, in their treatment of this passage. Their dogmatic views lead them to put apart from each other elements which are blended together by Matthew and by the other evangelists. For example, Schott says, that the description of Christ's coming begins (Matt. 24:29) immediately after ‘the tribulation,’ &c., and that all before that belongs to the destruction of Jerusalem. But apart from the impossibility of regarding the 29th verse as the beginning of something entirely new, there are also in the passages which follow distinct references to the present generation (verse 34), and in the first part as distinct references to ‘the last time.’ We do not, therefore scruple (says Olshausen) to accept the simple explanation which alone suits the text, that Christ speaks of his coming as coincident with the destruction of Jerusalem, and with the downfall of the Jewish state.”
The most interesting question, perhaps, is as to the opinions of Jesus himself about his coming. That he forsaw the overthrow of Jerusalem and the Temple is certain. Everything indicates that he possessed a marvellous power of reading the future in the present, and saw in the condition of the Jewish mind the inevitable overthrow of their state. He also saw that through his death all men should be brought to him, and that he should become King in the way in which he described to Pilate his royalty, i.e., King of the truth. All who love the truth shall, sooner or later, obey his voice. In what way, then, did he expect to come? In the way he himself indicates the coming of his kingdom—like leaven, working secretly in the dough; like seed, sprouting mysteriously in the ground; like lightning, seen everywhere at once. By these images alone could he convey to his disciples his ideas. He longed to tell them many things more, but they were not able; to bear them.
The latest illustration of Orthodox ideas on this subject we have met with is contained in a little tract which has fallen in our way, containing “extracts from a sermon addressed to the students in the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Xenia, Ohio, by Rev. William Davidson.” It begins in this somewhat enigmatical way:—
“It is an unspeakably terrible thing for any one—for even a youth or a heathen—to be lost.”
Why this limiting particle “even” is introduced is not explained. It seems to be implied either that a youth and a heathen have not as much to lose as others, or else that we are not bound to feel so much for their loss as for that of others. After a little poetry (which we omit, as it is altogether too stern a matter for any sentimental ornament), Mr. Davidson proceeds:—
“Nor is this all to those who suffer least. It is not only the loss of all, and a horrible lake of ever-burning fire, but there are horrible objects, filling every sense and every faculty; and there are horrible engines and instruments of torture. There are the ‘chains of darkness,’ thick, heavy, hard, and smothering as the gloom of blank and black despair—chains strong as the cords of omnipotence, hot as the crisping flames of vengeance, indestructible and eternal as justice. With chains like these, every iron link burning into the throbbing heart, is bound each doomed, damned soul, on a bed of burning marl, under an iron roof, riven with tempests, and dripping with torrents of unquenchable fire.”
The object of the preacher being to make as terrific a picture as possible, he accumulates these material images of bodily torment in order to excite the imagination to the utmost. We can conceive of his writing these sentences carefully in his comfortable study, in an easy chair, by the side of a cheerful fire, with a smile of self-complacency, as he selects each striking expression. Then he proceeds:—
“Nor is this all. Unmortified appetites, hungry as death, insatiable as the grave, torture it. Every passion burning, an unsealed volcano in the heart. Every base lust a tiger unchained—a worm undying, let loose to prey on soul and body. Pride, vanity, envy, shame, treachery, deceit, falsehood, fell revenge, and black despair, malice, and every unholy emotion, are so many springs of excruciating and ever-increasing agonies, are so many hot and stifling winds, tossing the swooning, sweltering soul on waves of fire. And there will be deadly hunger, but no food; parching thirst, but no water; eternal fatigue, but no rest; eternal lust of sensuous and intellectual pleasures, but no gratification. And there will be terrible companions, or rather foes, there. Eternal longings after society, but no companion, no love, and no sympathy there. Every one utterly selfish, hateful, and hating. Every one cunning, false, malignant, fierce, fell, and devilish. All commingle in the confusion and the carnage of one wide-spread, pitiless, truceless, desperate strife. And there will be terrible sights and sounds there. Fathers and sons, pastors and people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, with swollen veins and bloodshot eyes, straining towards each other's throats and hearts, reprobate men, and devils in form and features, hideous to as great a degree as are the beauties of the blest in heaven beautiful. And there are groans and curses, and everlasting wailings, as harsh and horrible as heaven's songs, shouts, and anthems are sweet, joyous, and enrapturing. And there will be terrible displays of the divine power and skill, and infinitely awful displays of merciless and omnipotent justice, in the punishment of that rebel crew, that generation of moral vipers full grown, that congregation of moral monsters.”
All this, however, is not enough. It is necessary to go further, and represent God in the character of the devil, in order to complete the picture.
“Upon such an assembly, God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, cannot look but with utter detestation. His wrath shall come up in his face. His face shall be red in his anger. He will whet his glittering sword, and his hand shall take hold on vengeance; and he shall recompense. He shall launch forth his lightnings, and shoot abroad his arrows. He shall unseal all his fountains, and pour out his tumbling cataracts of vengeance. He shall build his batteries aloft, and thunder upon them from the heavens. His eye shall not pity them, nor shall his soul spare for their crying. The day of vengeance is in his heart, and it is what he has his heart set on. He will delight in it. He will show his wrath, and make his power known. That infinite power has never been fully made known yet; but it will be then. It is but a little that we see of it in creation and providence; but we shall see it, fully revealed, in the destruction of that rebel crew. He will tread them in his anger, and trample them in his fury, and will stain his raiment with their blood. The cup of the wine of his fierce wrath shall contain no mixture of mercy at all. And they will not be able to resist that wrath, nor will they be able to endure it; but they shall, in soul and body, sink wholly down into the second death. The iron heel of omnipotent and triumphing justice, pitiless and rejoicing, shall tread them down, and crush them lower still, and lower ever, in that burning pit which knows no bottom. All this, and more and worse, do the Scriptures declare; and that preacher who hesitates to proclaim it has forsworn his soul, and is a traitor to his trust.”
Now, it is simple truth to say that the blasphemer and profane swearer who spends fifty years in cursing God and Christ is not so blasphemous as the man who writes such sentences as these about the Almighty, and utters them to young men as a preparation for their work in the ministry. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah shall rise up in the day of judgment against those who speak thus of God, and shall condemn them. The Pagans, who represent their gods as horrid idols, pleased with blood and slaughter, have an excuse, which Mr. Davidson has not, for they do not have the gospel of the Lord Jesus in their hands. Thus he continues:—
“And all this shall be forever. It shall never, never end. (Matt. ch. 25.) The wicked go away into everlasting torments. This is a bitter ingredient in their cup of wormwood, a more terrible thing in their terrible doom. If after enduring it all for twice ten thousand times ten thousand years, they might have a deliverance, or at least some abatement, it were less terrible. But this may never, never be. Their estate is remediless. There is a great gulf fixed, and they cannot pass from thence. Or, if after suffering all this as many years as there are aqueous particles in air and ocean, they might then be delivered, or if, after repeating that amazing period as many times as there are sand-grains in the globe, they might then be delivered, there would be some hope. Or, if you multiply this latter sum—too infinite to be expressed by figures, and too limitless to be comprehended by angels—by the number of atoms that compose the universe, and there might be deliverance when they had passed those amazing, abysmal gulfs of duration, then there would be some hope. But no! when all is suffered and all is past, still all beyond is eternity.”
To show how some Roman Catholics write in the middle of the nineteenth century, we quote the following from a Roman Catholic book, published in England, by Rev. J. Furniss, being especially “a book for children.” Wishing to spare our readers such horrors, we put it here, advising no one of weak nerves to read its atrocious descriptions.
“The fourth dungeon is ‘the boiling kettle.’ Listen: there is a sound like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle which is boiling? No. Then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy; the brain is boiling and bubbling in his head; the marrow is boiling in his bones. The fifth dungeon is the ‘red-hot oven,’ in which is a little child. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire; it beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. To this child God was very good. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God in his mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood.”
We take the following from the “Monthly Religious Magazine:”—
“The ‘Country Parson,’ in his late work, the ‘Autumn Holidays,’ contends that the fear of future punishment in another world has little influence in deterring from crime. He ought to have added, that the reason may be, that there is so little belief in any spiritual world whatever, among men of grosser sensuality; and that future punishment, as it is preached in the old theology, is so arbitrary as to seem unreal, and is losing its power over all thinking minds. The following case is cited from the experience of a Scotch minister. No ministers, let it be remembered, preach the literal flames of a local hell in tones more awful than they.
“His parishioners were sadly addicted to drinking to excess. Men and women were given alike to this degrading vice. He did all he could to repress it, but in vain. For many years he warned the drunkards, in the most solemn manner, of the doom they might expect in another world; but, so far as he knew, not a pot of ale or glass of spirits the less was drunk in the parish in consequence of his denunciations. Future woe melted into mist in the presence of a replenished jug or a market-day. A happy thought struck the clergyman. In the neighboring town, there was a clever medical man, a vehement teetotaler; him he summoned to his aid. The doctor came, and delivered a lecture on the physical consequences of drunkenness, illustrating his lecture with large diagrams, which gave shocking representations of the stomach, lungs, heart, and other vital organs as affected by alcohol. These things came home to the drunkards, who had not cared a rush for final perdition. The effect produced was tremendous. Almost all the men and women of the parish took the total abstinence pledge; and since that day drunkenness has nearly ceased in that parish. Nor was the improvement evanescent; it has lasted two or three years.”
Tholuck, in his charming work on the Sermon on the Mount, speaks thus (“Bergpredigt Christ. von A. Tholuck.”) “Two principal defects are found in the usual treatment of this doctrine: first, the different aspects and relations of the kingdom of God are by many considered as different meanings of the word, and are left standing side by side, without any attempt to ground their unity in some fundamental idea. Or, secondly, and still worse, a single aspect of the term is taken up, and the rest are wholly neglected. Examples of the first defect are to be found in Zwingle, in his note to John 3:3. (Here the kingdom of God is considered as divine doctrine and preaching of the gospel, as in Luke 18; sometimes it is taken for eternal life, Matt. 25; Luke 14; sometimes for the church and congregation of the faithful, as Matt. 13:24.) The later lexicographers, as Schleusner and Bretschneider, have not avoided these vague statements; and the last of them is particularly defective in his article on this phrase. Trahl more correctly sums up all these significations of the word thus: ‘Happiness, present and future, obtained through Christ.’ But in this definition the notion of ‘a kingdom’ is omitted. The opposite defect of taking only one of the meanings of the matter, to the neglect of the rest, is to be found, for example, in Koppe and Keil, according to whom the expression relates merely to the future reign of the Messiah one day to be established.
“Our own explanation of this expression starts from the phrase ‘kingdom of God,’ which explains the others, ‘kingdom of heaven’ and ‘kingdom of Christ.’ We think that the fundamental idea has been grasped by none more correctly than by Origen among the ancients, and by Calvin among the reformers. The phase of the idea principally dwelt upon by the Church Fathers may be seen in their explanation of the third petition of the Lord's Prayer, which Augustine especially examines profoundly. Most of them understand by it the realm of glory, the future revelation of Christ. Origen alone, in his book on Prayer, taken a more exact view of the subject. In like manner Calvin, in his Commentary on the Harmony. So Luther, in his fine Sermon on the Kingdom of God. Our own fundamental view we express thus: ‘A community in which God reigns, not by force, but by being obeyed freely from love, and which is therefore necessarily united in itself by mutual love.’ The Saviour came upon the earth to found such a community, and since it can only be completely established after he has conquered all his enemies, this kingdom of Christ belongs in its perfection to the other world.”
We have no room to enter into an examination of this question at this time, and can only give a general statement on this subject from one of the authorities which happens to be at hand:—
“All the Fathers” (before Augustine, fourth and fifth century) “differed from Augustine in attributing freedom of will to man in his present state. Thus Justin: ‘Every created being is so constituted as to be capable of vice or virtue.’ Cyril of Jerusalem: ‘Know that thou hast a soul possessed of free will; for thou dost not sin by birth (κατὰ γένεσιν), nor by fortune, but we sin by free choice.’ All the Latin Fathers also maintained that free will was not lost after the fall. The Fathers also denied in part, that man is born infected with Adam's sin. Thus Athenagoras says in his Apology, ‘Man is in a good state, not only in respect to his Creator, but also in respect to his natural generation.’ ”—Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism. Translated by Rev. Ralph Emerson, Professor in the Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass.
Dr. Horace Bushnell, a favorite authority with Dr. Huntington, whom Dr. Huntington quotes largely, and whose views he earnestly recommends, gives us his testimony to this point, thus (“God in Christ,” pp. 130, 131):—
“A very large portion of Christian teachers, together with the general mass of disciples, undoubtedly hold three real living persons in the interior nature of God; that is, three consciousnesses, wills, hearts, understandings.”
“A very large portion of Christian teachers” hold, then, to a belief in three Gods; and with them is joined “the general mass of the disciples.” The only Unity held by these teachers is, he goes on to say, “a social Unity.” Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are, in their view, socially united only, and preside in that way, as a kind of celestial Tritheocracy, over the world. This heresy, he says, “because of its clear opposition to Unitarianism, is counted safe, and never treated as a heresy.” That is, the Christian Church allows the belief in three Gods, and will not discipline those who hold that opinion; but, if you believe strictly and only in one God, you cannot be saved!
Thus speaks Dr. Bushnell on this head (“God in Christ,” p. 139):—
“Besides, it is another source of mental confusion, connected with this view of three metaphysical persons, that, though they are all declared to be infinite and equal, they really are not so. The proper deity of Christ is not held in this view. He is begotten, sent, supported, directed, by the Father, in such a sense as really annihilates his deity. This has been shown in a truly searching and convincing manner by Schleiermacher, in his historical essay on the Trinity; and, indeed, you will see at it at a glance, that this view of a metaphysical Trinity of persons breaks down in the very point which is commonly regarded as its excellence—its assertion of the proper deity of Christ.”