Rom. xvi. 19.
I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil.
In considering the first part of this precept, I endeavoured to give some general description of Religious or CHRISTIAN WISDOM; both in respect of the END it has in view, and of the MEANS employed by it: I further exemplified some of those subordinate WAYS, in which the prudent application even of those means is seen and expressed: And all this, for the sake of those sincere, but over-zealous persons, who are apt to think that wisdom hath little to do in the prosecution of honest and upright purposes.
It now remains to treat that other part of the text, which requires us to be INNOCENT, as well as wise, to be SIMPLE CONCERNING EVIL. And this, perhaps, will be thought the more important branch of the subject. For, generally speaking, the ways of wisdom, when our purposes are the very best, are not only the most effectual, but the safest and most convenient. So that prudence is likely to be a favourite virtue with us. But the case is different with regard to simplicity concerning evil; which is often found a hard and disagreeable injunction; as it may happen to cross our passions and the more immediate views of self-interest. So that this SIMPLICITY will sometimes seem, what the world is ready enough to call it, folly: and therefore, for the credit of our sense, as well as virtue, we should be well apprized of the worth and excellence of this Christian duty.
The virtue of SIMPLICITY consists, in general, in following the plain ingenuous sense of the mind; in taking our measures according to the dictates of conscience, and acting, on all occasions, without reserve, duplicity, or self-imposture, up to our notions of obligation. It is the office of WISDOM to see that our conscience be rightly informed: But our INTEGRITY is shewn in doing that which conscience, be it erroneously informed or no, requires of us. It consists, in a word, in whatever we understand by an honesty of nature; in observing, universally, that which we believe to be right, and avoiding what we know, or but suspect[123] to be wrong.
This simplicity of mind may be almost said to be born with us. It is the bias of nature on our young minds; and our earliest instructions, as well as the first efforts of reason, strengthen and confirm it. But the impression lasts not long. We are scarcely entered into life, when we begin to treat it as one of those childish things, which it is beneath the dignity of our riper age to be amused with. The passions put forth and grow luxuriant; and why, we say to ourselves, should this tender apprehension of evil check their growth, and restrain their activity? We are now in the season of pleasure; and can there be any hurt in taking a little of it, out of that narrow path, which our early prejudices have prescribed to us?
Still, as we advance in years, fresh objects arise, and other passions engage us in the pursuit of them. Wealth and honour, or what we improperly call our interests, have now an ascendant over us; and the passion for each is rarely gratified but at the expence of some virtue. And thus it comes to pass, that, though we set out in the world with a warm sense of truth and honour, experience by degrees refines us out of these principles; and our hearts, instead of retaining that infant purity, the grace and ornament of our nature, and which Christ so especially requires[124] in the professors of his religion, are all over stained with fraud, dissimulation, and disingenuity. We are even proud of the acquisition, and call it a knowledge of life: so dextrous are we in giving a good name to our worst qualities!
But effects follow their causes; and the vice we are now considering is not the less operative, nor the less hurtful, for the specious terms in which we dress it up, and present it to each other.
Of its malignity I shall give two or three instances; and, to fit them the better for use, they shall be taken from very different quarters; from the cabinets of the wise, and the schools of the learned, as well as from the vulgar haunts of careless and licentious men. We shall learn, perhaps, to reverence the Apostle’s advice, when we find that the neglect of it has DEGRADED RELIGION; RELAXED MORALITY, and POLLUTED COMMON LIFE.
To begin with an instance which shews how dangerous it is to depart from this simplicity concerning evil, in the great concerns of RELIGION.
I. When the priest, the sage, and the politician joined together in the days of heathenism to propagate among the people a superstition, which themselves condemned and detested; when they did their utmost to support a senseless, an immoral, an irreligious worship; when they strove, by every seducing artifice, to keep up that strong delusion, which God, in his just indignation, had sent among them, to believe a lye, (for such in its whole fabric and constitution was the old Pagan idolatry) when these men, who knew the truth, were yet contented to hold it in unrighteousness; they believed, no doubt, nay, they made no scruple to boast, that they had acted with consummate prudence; and that, in sacrificing the interests of religious truth (a small matter in their estimation) they had most effectually provided for the public interest. But what sentence does the Scripture pass on these men of ancient and renowned wisdom? Why this severe and mortifying one, That professing themselves wise, they became fools. And how well they deserved this censure, we understand from their own history; where we read, That Pagan idolatry, thus countenanced and supported, teemed with all the vices, of which our depraved nature is capable; and that the several contrivances of its wise advocates to keep an impious and barefaced falshood in credit, served only to produce, first, a SUSPICION, and in the end, an open and avowed CONTEMPT, of all Religion.
However, the ends of divine wisdom were greatly promoted by this sad experience of human folly. For Christianity, which made its appearance at this juncture, found it an easier task to establish itself on the ruins of a fallen, or falling superstition. Truth, which had for so long a time been anxiously kept out of sight, was now the more welcome to those, who wished her appearance. And the detection of those prophane arts, which had been so manifestly employed in that service, disposed the most perverse or careless the more easily to reconcile themselves to her.
And it would have been happy if the sense of this advantage, which the simplicity of truth obtained, in the first pages of the Gospel, over all the frauds of imposture, had prevented Christians from copying afterwards what they had so successfully contended against and exposed. Then had a great dishonour of the Christian name been avoided. But that truth, whose virtues are here magnified, must not be dissembled. The practice of lying for the cause of God, too soon revived, and became too frequent in the Christian world. It is in vain to think of diverting your minds, more especially, from that great part of it, which has long since forgotten to be simple concerning evil. But true wisdom will ever be justified of her children. These dishonest arts, which could not support a bad cause, have been injurious and disgraceful to the best. They have corrupted the ingenuous spirit of the Gospel, they have adulterated the sincere word of God; and, in both ways, have produced innumerable mischiefs, in civil and religious life. They have helped to bring into discredit or disuse a true Christian temper; and have unhappily created in the minds of many an undeserved prejudice against the Christian faith.
II. But if these men have dishonoured Religion, others have defiled MORALITY; yet both assume to themselves the title of wise men; and for that very reason, because they have departed as far as possible from the virtue of simplicity.
And here your indignation cannot but rise more especially against a set of men, who, applying the subtleties of school-philosophy to the plain science of Ethics, have made as free with the precepts of the Gospel, as some others had done with its doctrines. These men, under the respectable name of Casuists, have presumed to wind up, or let down the obligation of moral duties to what pitch they please. Such as have taken the STRICTER side, deserve but small thanks for perplexing the minds of good men with needless scruples; and discouraging the rest with those austerities, which our Religion no where commands, and the condition of human life will not admit. But for that looser sort, who by a thousand studied evasions, qualifications, and distinctions, dissolve the force of every moral precept; and, as the Pharisees of old, make the word of God of none effect by their impious glosses, I know not what term of reproach you will think bitter enough for them. The sacred writers thought it sufficient to deliver the rules of life in general terms[125]; leaving it, as they well might, to common sense and common honesty, to make the application of them to particular cases, as they chanced to arise. But this officious sophistry intervening and perverting the ingenuous sense of the mind, instructs us how to transgress them all with impunity, and even innocence. By the help of this magic, we may extract the sting of guilt from every known sin; and, if we have but wit enough, may be as wicked as we please with a safe conscience.
If the features of this corrupt casuistry have not been overcharged; or, indeed, if there be any such thing in the world as a corrupt casuistry, it may concern us to reflect, that this pest of society could not have arisen but from a contempt of the Apostle’s rule, of being simple concerning evil.
III. Hitherto we have exemplified the breach of this rule in the learned, and the wise. And it may be thought that nothing but perverted science could qualify men for so prodigious a depravity. But there is a casuistry of the heart, as well as head; and we find by woeful experience, that men may refine themselves out of that simplicity which the Gospel enjoins, without the assistance of unblessed knowledge.
For I come now, in the last place, to instance in the vulgar tribes of libertine and careless men. Of whom we may observe, that when indulged passion has taught them to make light of an honest mind; the consequence is, that they run into all excesses, and are rarely hindered from working all uncleanness with greediness. It is true, indeed, that no man becomes at once desperately and irretrievably wicked. But it is not less true, that when this great step is taken of prevaricating with a man’s own conscience, the other stages of iniquity are presently passed over. And how indeed can it be otherwise? So long as a man preserves the integrity of his natural disposition, there is always hope that, though particular passions may prevail for a time, reason and virtue will, in the end, regain their dominion over him. At least, he will be constantly checked and kept back in the career of his vices. But when this sincerity of heart is lost; when he confounds the differences of right and wrong, palliating the deformities of vice, or bestowing on vice itself the attractions of virtue; then all reasonable expectation of a return is cut off; since this perverted ingenuity tends to make him easy under his sins, and leaves him at leisure to pursue his evil courses with security.
We see then from the excesses into which these different sorts of men have been led, by the refinements of POLICY, of ABUSED SCIENCE, and DELUSIVE PASSION, how dangerous it is to bid adieu to that simplicity concerning evil, which the Holy Apostle requires of us.
It remains, that we cannot provide too cautiously against those evasive PLEAS AND PRETENCES, which would incline us to part with it.
These PRETENCES are infinite: for, when the heart is corrupted, the understanding is ready to pander to every lust that importunes it. But we may know the principal of them by these signs. To be simple concerning evil is the easiest thing in the world; but we may suspect that something wrong is ready to intrude itself, “WHEN we cast about for excuses to cover the nakedness of ingenuity; when we are driven to distinctions and far-fetched reasoning for our justification; when we pause a moment between the clear conviction of duty, on one hand, and any indirect views on the other; more particularly, WHEN we find the tone of our virtue relax at the consideration of what we may chance to lose by adhering to it; when we but suspect, that a severe unqualifying virtue looks like inhumanity; when we think our dependencies and connexions in life have a demand upon conscience; when we lament with the politician, that good men are impracticable, and so, from a principle of public spirit, resolve not to encounter that prejudice: Above all, when we go about to regulate morality by what a knowledge of the world teaches; when custom is pleaded in opposition to duty, and vice itself authorized by fashion[126]; when we acknowledge what we do is in itself not justifiable, but excuse it by a pretence of the good ends we hope to serve by it; when we are willing to plead the infirmity of nature, the power of temptation, the prevalence of example; when we venture too securely on the confines of immorality, and are curious to know how near we may go to vice, without being directly vicious.”
These, and such as these, are the dangerous insinuations which attempt our virtue. And how, you will ask, shall we secure ourselves from them? By reason and argument? By speculation and philosophy? Shall we stay to examine their several pretences, call these delusive pleas to account, and shew we can confute them all, before we reject them?
Alas, I dare not advise this method; which besides its other inconveniencies, is not, I doubt, a very safe one. Our heads may be unequal to the task; or, which is worse, our hearts may betray us. At the best, we shall waste much time in these ingenious inquiries, when the business of life demands an immediate determination. St. Paul has shewn us a shorter and more excellent way, when he bids us, Be simple concerning evil. In virtue of this sacred admonition, a wise man will think it sufficient to dismiss these vain insinuations at once, without so much as spending a thought upon them. “What,” he will say to himself, “if I cannot detect the falsehood of these pleas, I have a heart, that revolts against them. I cannot, perhaps, disentangle the sophistry of these arguments; but I feel the baseness of the conclusion, and I see in others the folly of acting upon it. It were ill with vice indeed, if it had no false colours to appear in; and error would be hooted out of the world, if she did not hide her obliquities under the garb of reason. But what are these disguises to me, who am neither dazzled by the one, nor duped by the other? Let the curious, if they will, inquire, wherein the imposture consists: I have that within me, which tells me in a moment, they are but impostures. In vain then, will such a one conclude, are these insidious attempts on me, who take a sure refuge in the word of God, and the integrity of my own virtue. Be the pretences what they will, the confutation of them is no part of a Christian’s care. I may exercise my understanding profitably in other matters. It is my duty to consider much of the ways of doing good. I may be prudent and WISE here. But, EXPERIENCE, and CONSCIENCE, and RELIGION, command me to be, SIMPLE CONCERNING EVIL.”