CHAPTER XVI.
The term Latitudinarian, both as a term of praise and a term of reproach, intended by friends to signify that a man was liberal, intended by enemies to denote that he was heterodox, came to be applied to thinkers holding very different opinions. Amongst the Divines, often placed under the generic denomination, very considerable diversities of sentiment existed. Indeed, the name is so loosely used as to be given to some persons whose orthodoxy is above all just suspicion—to others not only verging upon but deeply involved in considerable error. When we examine the essence of Latitudinarianism, and find that it consisted in the elevation of morals above dogmas, in the assertion of charity against bigotry, in abstinence from a curious prying into mysteries, yet in the culture of a spirit of free investigation, we see that there might be lying concealed under much which is truly excellent, elements of a different description. Scepticism might nestle under all this virtue, and all this tolerance—under this love of what is reasonable, and this habit of liberal inquiry. Faith, in that which is most precious, might live in amicable alliance with the distinctive Latitudinarian temper, or scepticism might secretly nestle beneath its wings.
From the beginning of the movement, some who took part in it, betrayed a want of sympathy in those strong Gospel convictions, which are of supreme importance, and in connection with it there were entertained, at an early period of its history, curious speculations respecting the pre-existence of souls, the salvation of the heathen, and the state of the body at the resurrection. Though some of these speculations were only fanciful, and others were capable of an orthodox construction, they certainly indicated a mental tendency very apt to resent the restraints of the Church’s faith, and to run into devious, if not dangerous paths. It was more than possible for this habit of rational and free inquiry to slip from under the control of its better principles, and to assume forms of even a disastrous kind.
LATITUDINARIANISM.
We cannot help recognizing in the movement, one wave amongst many then foaming and breaking over the wide ocean of human thought. Resistance to the strict Calvinistic theory appeared and increased in the French Protestant Church. In the academy of Saumur speculations were rife, undermining the doctrines of imputation and original sin, and pointing to the idea of universal grace.[490] A similar tendency existed in Switzerland, not so manifest but yet operative; for the Formula Consensus adopted in 1675 to exclude Divines, who were not sound in the faith of Geneva, met with violent opposition, and had to be softened down, and explained away. Against orthodox Lutheranism, as expounded in its symbolical books, there had appeared in Germany, in the first half of the century, a scheme in support of union and toleration resting on the basis of the Apostles’ Creed, such a proposal being pronounced by opponents to be Syncretism or a “Lying medley;” and in the second half of the same century may be traced the rise of Pietism under Spener, who, although an orthodox believer, exalted spiritual life above theological belief.[491] Even the Roman Catholic Church throbbed with inquisitive impulses perilous to the blind rule which it upheld. The theology of Jansenism, whilst, under one aspect, it appears as an assertion of orthodox Augustinianism,—under another aspect reveals itself as a protest against authority; and the sentiment of Quietism, with its spiritual ardour, tended to the depreciation of what is dogmatical. The Port Royalists and Madame Guyon were, in fact, falling into a current which they did not comprehend. Biblical criticism was looking the same way. It carried in its bosom elements both of faith and scepticism. Inquiries into the state of the sacred text alarmed many of the learned and the good; and Hermeneutical Canons were being followed, which, while soundly Protestant, imperilled ideas venerable for their antiquity.[492] Historical criticism exposed ancient falsehoods. The spuriousness of the Isidorian Decretals, for ages the stronghold of Papal despotism, was demonstrated by the Protestant Controversialist Blondel, and was acknowledged even by the Catholic Canonist Contius. The abandonment of the scholastic method of reasoning, the triumph of modern philosophy in the Universities of Europe, the formation of a fresh secular literature, and the critical study of history in general, with the explosion of old fables and superstitions, were all signs of the times, conveying the impression that a new epoch was at hand in the history of human intelligence.
Philosophy abroad placed itself at the head of these tendencies. Even Descartes, the Christian, in seeking a basis for positive belief, started with a doubt; Spinoza, the Jew, his disciple in some respects, found his goal in pantheism.[493] The Malmesbury philosopher, Hobbes, and, still earlier, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in their free-thinking speculations, long before any great movement took place at Cambridge, not only laid religion open to the inroads of infidelity, but aided and abetted attacks upon its citadel: Herbert, by denying the necessity of a Scripture revelation, Hobbes by representing Christianity as resting on a foundation, which no reasonable man can tolerate for a moment. Thus widely, for good and for evil, free thought was at work in Europe. Some saw in it a rising storm, which would tear every vessel from its moorings; others believed it to be the breaking up of a winter’s frost, and the melting down of icebergs, which had long chilled the whole intellectual atmosphere. For my own part, I am convinced that there was both evil and good in all this activity, of which the effect may be traced in the history of intellectual inquiry ever since. It is felt in the controversies of the present day; and he is the wise man who strives to distinguish between the precious and the vile, to separate the one from the other, and in the noble service of truth to abstain from any alliance with error.
MILTON’S OPINIONS.
In this notice of the progress of free inquiry one great thinker should be mentioned, whose fame as a poet has so eclipsed the reputation of his genius in other respects, that he is rarely remembered in the character of a theologian, although he really was one. In that capacity he combined, perhaps, beyond any man of his age, peculiarities drawn from two schools, with neither of which could he be identified. In the very title of John Milton’s Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone, there is a Puritan-like renunciation of the Anglican doctrine of patristic authority: his inquiry touches only what the Bible teaches, and he professes, as many others have done, without allowing for educational and constitutional influences, to draw all his conclusions immediately and impartially from Holy Writ. He might free himself from Church trammels of all kinds; nevertheless even he could not deliver his mind from all predilections and prejudgments; and when in his old age he sat down to read the Bible, Milton, no more than other men, could bring to it a tabula rasa ready to receive nothing but unbiassed impressions from the Divine oracles.
The Latitudinarianism of Milton—how far influenced by the spirit of free thought existing at Cambridge I cannot say—appears in his doctrine of the Son of God; yet it modestly presents itself, and it by no means reaches a Socinian conclusion. In contradiction to the title of his Treatise he approaches this mysterious subject, through the medium of certain metaphysical postulates, and teaches that the Son, produced by generation, is neither co-eternal, nor co-essential, and that His existence “was no less owing to the decree and will of the Father, than His priesthood or kingly power, or His resuscitation from the dead.” Milton overlooks, or virtually denies, the distinction in the Nicene Creed, “begotten and not made;” when he says, “nothing can be more evident than that God, of His own will, created or generated, or produced the Son before all things;” and again, whilst professing to discard reason in such matters, and to follow the doctrine of Holy Scripture exclusively, he proceeds to insist metaphysically upon the unity of God, and to confine that unity to the nature of the Father. According to this idea, he interprets a number of texts, respecting the union of Christ with the Father, as meaning no more than that the Father and the Son are one in purpose. Milton examines, seriatim, the texts adduced in proof of the absolute Divinity of the Redeemer, and sets them aside one by one, with a calmness only now and then ruffled by a slight breeze of anger—in striking contrast with the Neptune-like storms of controversy which he raises in most of his polemical works. The negative side of his theory of the nature of the Son is sufficiently clear; not so the positive side. He is not a Trinitarian. He is not a Socinian. Is he an Arian? If so, he belongs to the class nearest to orthodoxy, for all which he denies is the co-eternity, and the co-existence of the Son, whilst he expressly attributes to Him, Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, and universal Authority, as well as Divine works, and Divine honours. His Editor, Dr. Sumner, remarks, that Milton ascribes to the Son as high a share of Divinity as was compatible with the denial of his self-existence, and eternal generation, his co-equality, and co-essentiality with the Father.[494]
Milton devotes a chapter to the doctrine of predestination, which he defines as being not particular but universal:—none are predestinated or elected irrespectively of character (e.g., Peter is not elected as Peter, or John as John, but inasmuch as they are believers, and continue in their belief); and thus, he says, the general decree of election becomes personally applicable to each particular believer, and is ratified to all who remain steadfast in the faith.
MILTON’S OPINIONS.
Milton’s sympathy with Puritanism appears in his views of redemption, regeneration, repentance, justification, and adoption. In his chapter on saving faith he describes it as a full persuasion produced in us through the gift of God, whereby we believe, on the sole authority of the promise itself, that all things are ours, whatsoever he has promised us in Christ, and especially the grace of eternal life.[495]
The spirit of free inquiry, at a later period, ran into decided Arianism and Socinianism: at the time of which I am now speaking, tendencies in that direction were at work in different quarters. When, under the Commonwealth, Philip Nye said that “to his knowledge the denying of the Divinity of Christ was a growing opinion;”—when Edwards said, it had found an entrance into some of the Independent Churches;—when Owen said, “The evil is at the door, there is not a city, a town, scarce a village in England wherein some of this poison is not poured forth;”—these writers might be under the influence of uncharitableness, or of false alarm—both are common in seasons of excitement—but when Parliament resolved, in the year 1652, to seize and burn all copies of the Racovian Catechism, that fact forces us to conclude that the Catechism must have been in circulation, and that the tenets which it expressed were being propagated.
John Biddle, who under the Commonwealth Government suffered much in consequence of his opinions, may be considered the father of Socinianism. Being a man of blameless life, the persecutions that he underwent awaken our sympathy; and it is highly probable, that the treatment which he received, although intended to reclaim him from his errors, only served to drive him further from orthodoxy. He took high ground as to free inquiry; but professed to exercise it simply in getting at the meaning of Scripture; and he exhorted people “to lay aside for a while, controversial writings, together with those prejudicate opinions that have been instilled into the memory and understanding, and closely to apply themselves to the search of the New Testament.” At first he declared, “I believe, that our Saviour Jesus Christ is truly God, by being truly, really, and properly united to the only Person of the Infinite and Almighty Essence;”—this position, instead of being employed by his opponents as an admission, sufficient to keep him, if consistent, within the bounds of evangelical faith, excited their suspicions, and led to fresh controversy, and fresh persecution. Although he continued to use orthodox language, he made it more and more a vehicle for conveying unorthodox ideas. His opinions and modes of expression are equally peculiar.
For example, one of the positions which he lays down is this:—“I believe that there is One principal Minister of God and Christ, principally sent from heaven to sanctify the Church, who, by reason of His eminency, and intimacy with God, is singled out of the number of the other heavenly ministers, or angels, and comprised in the Holy Trinity, being the third Person thereof, and that this Minister of God and Christ is the Holy Spirit.” Further, he observes, “the Trinity which the Apostle Paul believed, consisteth of One God, One Lord, and One Spirit, but not of three Persons in One God.” And he proceeds even to adduce the usual arguments for the personality of the Holy Spirit:—a doctrine which he admits throughout a singular Tract, published by him at an earlier period.
BIDDLE.
In another article of faith, he avers, “I believe that Jesus Christ, to the intent He might be a brother, and have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities, and so become the more ready to help us (the consideration whereof is the greatest encouragement to piety that can be imagined), hath no other than a human nature; and, therefore, in the very nature, is not only a Person (since none but a human person can be our brother), but also our Lord, yea, our God.”
His use of the word Trinity, which it seems he never dropped, he explains by saying, that the Trinity which the Apostle Peter (Acts ii. 36) believed, consisteth of God the Father, of the Man Jesus Christ our Lord, and of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.[496]
In Biddle’s Catechism, which John Owen couples with the Racovian, and elaborately answers in his Vindiciæ Evangelicæ,[497] the author so far from explaining away the language of Holy Writ, pushes its literal interpretation, respecting one subject at least, in a very bold, rude fashion, to such an extreme, that he attributes to the Almighty, a bodily and visible shape, with human affections and passions. Consequently, he objected to the terms infinite and incomprehensible, as forms of speech not used in Scripture, and not applicable to the Supreme Being. Tertullian, it may here be noticed, ascribed corporeality to God, but he seems to have meant by it nothing more than substance and personality.[498]
A very different man from Biddle,—one whom from his absurd manner of talking, we should suspect had in him a touch of insanity,—was Daniel Scargill, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Cambridge. In 1669, he formally and publicly, before the University, recanted the following opinions which he had formerly maintained: that all right of dominion is founded only in power—that moral righteousness is based on the law of the Magistrate—that the authority of Scripture rests on the same foundation—that whatsoever the Civil Government commanded is to be obeyed, although it may be contrary to Divine laws, and “that there is a desirable glory in being, and in being reputed an Atheist—which I implied when I expressly affirmed that I gloried to be an Hobbist and an Atheist.” These retractions indicate the previous entertainment of most extraordinary errors.
In the next chapter I shall examine the mysticism of the Quakers before I proceed to the theology of the Puritans.