John, ix. 41.
Jesus saith to them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say we see, therefore your sin remaineth.
These words were spoken by our Lord on occasion of a great miracle performed by him, in restoring a man born blind to his sight. This wonderful display of power had its natural effect on the man himself, in converting him to the faith of Jesus; while the Pharisees, who had the fullest evidence laid before them of the fact, persisted obstinately in their infidelity. Yet the blind man, on whom this miracle had been wrought, was one of those whom the Pharisees accounted blind in understanding, also; in other words, he was a plain unlettered man; whereas they themselves were guides to the blind, that is, they pretended to a more than ordinary knowledge of the law and the prophets, by which they were enabled to conduct and enlighten others.
Jesus, therefore, respecting at once his late restoration of the blind man’s sight, and the different effects of that miracle on the minds of the two parties, applies, with singular elegance, to himself, the famous prediction of Isaiah—For judgment, says he, am I come into this world, that they, which see not, might see; and that they who see, might be made blind. The Pharisees were, indeed, sharp-sighted enough to perceive the drift of this application, and therefore said to him, in the same figurative language, Are we blind also? To whom Jesus replied in the words of the text, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say we see, therefore your sin remaineth. As if he had said, “If ye were indeed ignorant of the law and the prophets, as ye account this poor man to be, ye might have some excuse for not believing in me, who appeal to that law and those prophets for the proof of my mission; but being so skilled in them, as ye are, and profess yourselves to be, ye are clearly convicted of a willful, and therefore criminal, infidelity.”
It is implied, we see, in this severe reproof of the Pharisees, that knowledge and faith very well consist together, or rather that, where knowledge is, there faith must needs be, unless a very perverse use be made of that knowledge.
But to this decision of our Lord, the unbelieving world is ready to oppose its own maxims. “It sees so little connexion between faith and knowledge, that it rather concludes them to be incompatible: It allows the ignorant, indeed, who cannot walk by sight, to walk by faith; but, as for the knowing and intelligent, the men of science and understanding, it presumes, that faith cannot be required of these; and that, BECAUSE they see, it is too much to expect of them, to believe in Jesus.”
It is true, the persons, who speak thus slightly of faith, are not the most distinguished in the world by their own parts, or knowledge. But a certain mediocrity of both, inflated by vanity, and countenanced by fashion, is forward to indulge in this free language; and the mischief done by it to Religion, is so great, that it may not be amiss to expose, in few words, the indecency and folly of it.
Faith and knowledge, then, it is said, are at variance with each other. Why? The answer, I suppose, will be, Because faith is in itself unreasonable; in other words, it will be said, That the evidences of our religion are not convincing, and that the doctrines of it are not credible.
One word, then, on each of these bold insinuations.
I. The EVIDENCES of revealed religion are so many and various; they lye so deep, or extend so wide; and consequently the difficulty of collecting them into one view is so great, that few men have, perhaps, comprehended the full force and effect of them. At least, none but persons of very superior industry, as well as understanding, have a right to pronounce on the total amount of such evidence.
But the chief evidences of the Christian Religion are drawn from PROPHECIES, and MIRACLES; and who are they who tell us, that these methods of proof are unreasonable or unsatisfactory?
1. That the argument from PROPHECIES should not convince those, who have not considered the occasion, and design of them, the purposes they were intended to serve, and therefore the degree of light and clearness, with which it was proper they should be given; who have not studied the language in which those prophecies are conveyed, the state of the times in which they were delivered, the manners, the customs, the opinions of those to whom they were addressed; above all, who have not taken the pains to acquire a very exact and extensive knowledge of history, and so are not qualified to judge how far they have been accomplished; that to such persons as these, I say, the argument from prophecy should not appear to have all that evidence which believers ascribe to it, is very likely; but then this effect is to be accounted for, not from their knowledge, but their ignorance, not from their seeing too clearly, but from their not seeing at all, or but imperfectly, into the merits of this argument. As for those, who have searched deepest, and inquired with most care into this kind of evidence, they depose unanimously in its favour, and profess themselves to have received conviction from it. So that, although there may be difficulties in explaining particular prophecies, and though the completion of some be questioned, or not fully apprehended, yet, on the whole, there is so much light arising out of this evidence, that it must be great presumption in any man to say that there is no strength at all in it. Indeed, if the appeal lie to authority (as it must do, if men will not, or cannot, inquire for themselves) we can scarce help concluding that the argument from prophecy carries with it a very considerable degree of evidence, since we find that such a man as Newton, not only submitted to this evidence himself, but thought it no misapplication of his great talents, to illustrate and enforce it. Yet, such is the judgment or temper of our leaders[130] in infidelity, that they had rather turn this very circumstance to the discredit of human nature itself (exhibited in its fairest form, and shining out with full lustre, in the virtues and accomplishments of that divine man) than allow it to do honour to that immortal object of their fear and spite, revealed religion.
2. The other great foundation of our faith is laid in MIRACLES; a sort of evidence, which may be estimated without that learning, or that sagacity, which is required in the case of prophecies; and which some men therefore, out of the abundance of their common sense, have taken the freedom to account of little weight or value. Yet, what opinion soever these persons may have of their own understandings, they will scarce be able to convince a reasonable man that this evidence is not conclusive, and even incontestible, if they will but place it in a fair and just light. For the question is not concerning the evidence of miracles in general, but of miracles so circumstanced and so attested as those of the Gospel. Now, when the Religion to which this attestation is given, has nothing in it which appears unworthy of the Deity; when the purpose for which the supposed miracles are wrought is such as must be allowed the most important of any that, in our ideas, could enter into the divine counsels with regard to mankind; when these miracles have further the advantage of being attested by the most unexceptionable characters, and of being recorded in books, written soon after they were wrought, and by those who saw them wrought, and in books too, which have been transmitted, without any note of suspicion on them, to our times; when, lastly, these miracles have all the circumstances of public notoriety attending them, when no contemporary evidence discredits, and when many otherwise inexplicable facts and events, suppose and confirm them; when such miracles, I say, as these, and under such circumstances only, are alledged in support of the Christian Revelation, it must be a very extraordinary turn of mind that can reject, as nothing, the evidence resulting from them. With any other miracles, however numerous, however confidently asserted, or plausibly set forth, we have nothing to do. There may have been ten thousand impostures of this sort, in the world. But these miracles speak their own credibility so strongly, that they are admitted, on human testimony, with the highest reason; and it must be more than a slender metaphysical argument, taken from their contrariety to what is called experience, which can prevent our belief of them, and overpower the natural sense of the human mind.
It seems then, even on this slight view of the subject, that, if these two capital arguments from prophecies and miracles, for the truth of Christianity, appear inconclusive to unbelievers, the cause must be some other than a want of that evidence, which may satisfy a reasonable man.
II. But, perhaps the DOCTRINES of Christianity are such as revolt the rational mind, and are not capable of being supported by any evidence.
Let us inquire then what truth there is in this second allegation of unbelievers.
It is not possible, in a discourse of this nature, to enter into a detail on the subject; but the chief obstacles to a faith in Jesus, independently of the evidence on which it rests, are, I suppose, these TWO.
1. A confused idea that the law of nature is sufficient to the salvation of mankind;
2. The mysterious nature of the Christian revelation.
Reason, they say, is a sufficient guide in matters of Religion; therefore, Christianity is unnecessary: Again, Christianity is all over mysterious; therefore, it is unreasonable.
Now, it will not be presuming too much to say, that the greater advances any man makes in true knowledge, the more insignificant must these two great stumbling-blocks of infidelity needs appear to him.
1. And, first, for the sufficiency of nature in matters of religion.
Whether nature be a sufficient guide in morals, let the history of mankind declare. They who know most of that history, and have, besides, a philosophic knowledge of human nature, are the proper judges of the question; and to that tribunal I leave it: the rather, because, though it be very clear what its decision must be, I hold, that what is most essential to the Christian religion (which is a very different thing from a republication of the law of nature) is not at all concerned in it.
Let the law of nature be what it will, under this idea of a guide in morals, let Socrates, if you please, be as great a master of it, as Jesus, still the importance of Christianity remains, and is indeed very little affected by that concession.
Our religion teaches, that man is under the sentence of mortality, and that immortal life in happiness, (which is the true idea of Gospel-salvation) is the gift of God through Christ Jesus. These it relates as two facts, which it requires us to believe on its own authority; facts, which could not otherwise have come to our knowledge, and on which the whole superstructure of Christianity is raised.
Now, let the men of reason, the men who say, WE SEE, tell us, whether they are sure that these facts are false; and, if they are not, whether they know of any natural means by which that sentence of mortality can be reversed, or that gift of immortality can be secured.
Yes, they will say, by a moral and virtuous life, and by a religious trust, which nature dictates, in the goodness of the Deity. What? Is any man so assured of his own virtue, as that he dares expect so great things from it? Does he think it so perfect and of such efficacy, as that it should remove a curse which lies on his nature, that it should redeem him from a general sentence, which is gone forth against all mankind? Is it not enough, that he does his duty (though where is the man that does that?) and thereby consults his own true interest in this world, without requiring that his merits should deliver him from the doom of death; or that, of force, they should compel the divine goodness to deliver him from it?
But say, that the boundless mercy of God might so far consider the poor imperfect virtues of his lost creature, as to free him from the bondage of death, will he pretend that he has any claim, even upon infinite goodness itself, for eternal life in glory? All that reason suggests is, that, some way or other, either in this state or in one to come, he shall be no loser by his virtue: but so immense a reward is surely, not of right; and reason is too modest to entertain the least expectation, or even thought of it.
You see then what the sufficiency of nature comes to: It leaves us, for any thing we know, under the sentence of death; and, for any thing we can do, very much short of eternal life. And is this all we get by following nature, as our all-sufficient guide, and rejecting the assistance of Revelation? Are men satisfied to live, as they do here, and then to die for ever; and all this, rather than condescend to lay hold on the mercy of God through Jesus? If they are, their ambition is very moderate; but, surely, this is not a moderation of that sort which is prescribed by reason.
2. But they fly now (and it is their last resource) to the mysterious nature of the dispensation itself, which, they say, is perfectly irreconcileable with the principles of natural reason.
That Christianity is mysterious, that is, that it acquaints us with many things which our faculties could not have discovered, and which they cannot fully comprehend or satisfactorily explain, is an undoubted truth.—The pride of reason, when, from human sciences, where it saw much and thought it saw every thing, it turns to these divine studies, is something mortified to find a representation of things very different from what it should previously have conceived, and impenetrable in many respects by its utmost diligence and curiosity. But then, when further exercised and improved, the same reason presently checks this presumption, as seeing very clearly, that there are inexplicable difficulties every where, in the world of nature, as well as in that of grace, and as seeing too, that, if both systems be the product of infinite wisdom, it could not be otherwise. Next, a thinking man, as his knowledge extends, and his mind opens, easily apprehends, that, in such a scheme as that of Christianity, which runs up into the arcana of the divine councils in regard to man, there will be many particulars of a new and extraordinary nature; and that such a dispensation must partake of the obscurity in which its divine Author chuses to veil his own glory.
Thus, we see, how the objections to the mysterious nature of the Gospel spring out of pride and inconsideration, and are gradually removed, as the mind advances in the further knowledge of God and itself.
Now, suppose there had been no mysterious parts in this Revelation, and that every thing had lain clear and open to the comprehension of natural reason, what would the improved understanding of a wise man have thought of it? Would he not have said, that the whole was of mere human contrivance? since, if it were indeed of divine, it must needs have spoken its original by some marks of divinity, that is, by some signatures of incomprehensible wisdom, impressed upon it. Consider, I say, whether this judgment would not have been made of such a Revelation; and whether there be not more sense and reason in it, than in that other conclusion which many have drawn from the mysterious nature of the Christian religion.
It may appear, from these cursory observations, that faith and knowledge are no such enemies to each other, as they have been sometimes represented; and that neither the evidences of Christianity, nor the doctrines of it, need decline the scrutiny of the most improved reason. Conclude, therefore, when ye hear a certain language on this subject, that it is equally foolish, as it is indecent; and that ye may safely profess a belief in Jesus, without risking the reputation of your wisdom.
Another conclusion is, that, when unbelievers lay claim to a more than ordinary share of sense and penetration, we may allow their claim, if we see fit, for other reasons, but NOT for their disdainful rejection of our divine religion. We must have better proofs of their sufficiency than this, before we subscribe to it. We may even be allowed to conclude, from this circumstance of their unbelief, that they either see not so clearly as they pretend, or that the case is still worse with them, if they do. They are ready to ask us, indeed, in the prompt language of the Pharisees to our Lord, Are we blind also? To which question, having such an answer at hand, we need look out for no other than that of Jesus, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say we see, THEREFORE your sin remaineth.