2 Cor. iv. 3.
If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.
The text implies, that the evidence, with which Christianity is attended, may fail of convincing the minds of some men. And indeed from the time that the Sun of righteousness rose upon the earth, there have always been those, who could not, or would not, be enlightened by Him.
Now it might be a question, whether this effect were owing to the nature of the evidence itself, or to some obscurity in the manner of proposing it. This, I say, might have been a question, even among Christians themselves, if the Apostle had not determined it to our hands. He who was fully instructed in the truths of the Gospel, knew the evidence, with which they were accompanied, was enlightened by the same spirit that had inspired them, and had great experience in the different tempers and capacities of men, roundly asserts that Infidelity has no countenance, either from within or without, neither from the sort or degree of evidence, by which the Christian Revelation is supported, nor from any mysterious conveyance of it; but that, universally, the fault lies in those, who do not receive it. If the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: to those, who would not be convinced by any evidence whatsoever.
What the evidences of Christianity, in fact, are, and how abundantly sufficient for the conviction of all reasonable men, I shall not now enquire. The subject is fitter for a volume, than a discourse in this place. Let it be supposed, on St. Paul’s authority, that those evidences are sufficient; still ye may be curious to know, and it may tend to the establishment of your faith to understand, how it has come to pass, that so much light could be resisted.
To this question a pertinent answer has been given from the prejudices and passions, from the vices and corruptions of unbelievers; it being no new thing that men should love darkness rather than light, when their deeds are, and when they have resolved with themselves they shall be, evil[101]. For, as our Lord himself argues in this case, Every one that doth evil, hateth the light, lest his deeds should be reproved: But he that doth the Truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be manifested, that they are wrought in God[102].
But then it has been replied, that, though Vice may be many times the ground of infidelity, and the condemnation of such men be just, yet that some, too, have disbelieved from no such motives; that the Gospel has been rejected by persons, who appear to have been men of large and liberal minds, as free, as others, from all perverse prejudices, and as little subject to gross vice or passion: Nay, that, in the class of unbelievers, there have been those who have distinguished themselves as much by the purity of their lives, as the brightness of their understandings.
All this may be true; and yet our Saviour affirms, that he, who believeth not, is condemned already[103]; and St. Paul in the text, to the same purpose, that if the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. There must needs, then, be some latent cause of this strange fact; some secret depravity lurking in the mind of those, who disbelieve the Gospel, thought appearances be thus fair and flattering. And, though Christian Charity be not forward to think evil of his neighbour, yet in this case we have reason to suspect it: and what we suspect, we may perhaps find, in a VICE so secret and insinuating, that it creeps upon men unawares; so congenial, as it were, to our depraved nature, that hardly any man can be sure of his being wholly free from it; and so ingenious in disguising itself, as to pass upon others, nay upon the man possessed by it, for one of his best qualities.
By these characters, ye will easily see I speak of self-love, or rather the vicious exertion of it in what we call, PRIDE: A vice, which may as fatally obstruct our pursuit of Truth, as any the most vulgar immorality; and the rather, because it is not easily suspected or acknowledged by us.
This vice then it may be, that hides the Gospel from those better sort of men, to whom it is hid. They had need examine themselves well, for it assumes, as I said, the most imposing forms. Who would look for it, in the cultivation of the mind, and the love of Virtue? Yet in either of these, it may lie concealed: and an inquirer into the truth of the most rational, and the purest of all religions, may be prejudiced against it by a double Pride, by the PRIDE OF REASON, and the PRIDE OF VIRTUE.
I. First, Infidelity may proceed from the Pride of Reason.
When it pleased God to bestow the faculty of Reason on his creature, Man, he intended that this substitute of himself should be the guide of life, and the handmaid of Religion. And that it might serve to these purposes, it was made sagacious enough, if honestly exerted, to lead him to some competent knowledge of his Maker, and of his moral duty, and to judge of the pretensions of any further light from Heaven, which might be graciously vouchsafed to him.
Man, proud of this free Gift, was in haste to make trial of its strength; and finding it could do something, too easily concluded it could do every thing. Yet its weakness soon appeared; first, in man’s transgression, and consequent forfeiture of another free Gift, that of immortality; and next, in the portentous errors he fell into, both in respect of virtue and religion. For God, who had graciously intended for him, in due time, another and safer guide, to prepare him for the reception of it, and to convince him, in the mean time, how much it was wanted, had suffered him to abuse this, to the worst purposes, of immorality, and idolatry: by both which the earth was generally overspread for many ages, and even in the most enlightened times, notwithstanding his Reason might, and should have taught him better.
But God’s wisdom and goodness foresaw this abuse, and provided, from the first, for the correction of it. He had signified his purpose from the moment of man’s transgression, and afterwards by a gradual opening of his scheme, in many successive revelations; all terminating in that universal redemption of mankind by the sacrifice, and through the Gospel, of his Son. This last and greatest instance of the divine love for man, it might be expected, after so much experience of his own debility and folly, he would gladly and thankfully receive; and, that he might be qualified to discern the hand of God from the practices of fallible and designing men, was one main end, as I said, which God designed in lighting up the lamp of Reason in him.
But now this boasted Guide, though found to be poor and weak, grew proud and presumptuous. It would not only judge of the credentials of divine Revelation (which was its proper office, and without which faculty of judging there could be no security from the endless impostures of fanaticism and superstition, but not content with this power) it would decide peremptorily on the nature and fitness of the Revelation itself; and would either admit none, or such only, as it should perfectly comprehend.
Here, then, Reason forgot its own use, and power: its use, which was to bring him to the acknowledgement of a divine Religion; and its power, which did not enable him to judge of the infinite counsels of God, but to try whether any such were revealed to him. In a word, he forgot that his utmost capacity extended no farther than just to see whether the proposed Revelation were such as might come from God, as contradicting no clear and certain principles of reason, and whether the evidences were such as proved that it did so. If it contained nothing repugnant to right Reason, that is, to a prior light derived from the same source of Truth, it might come from Heaven; if the attestations of it were clear and convincing, it must proceed from that quarter. To try its credibility and authority, was then within the province of Reason: to determine of its absolute necessity and fitness, and to explore the depth and height of those counsels, on which it is framed, was above its reach and comprehension.
Yet Reason assumed to herself, too generally, this latter office; and this I call, the PRIDE of Reason. Hence all its wanderings and miscarriages; from this perverse application of its powers arose all the heresies that have distracted the Christian Church, and all the infidel systems that have been invented to overthrow it. In both cases, men would be wise above, or against, what was written.
Of the Heresies, I have nothing to say at this time. They appear at large in the ecclesiastical historian. Of the dreams of infidelity, as arising from the fumes of pride, so much is to be said, as my present subject requires of me, but this in as few words as possible.
The pride of Reason has then pronounced (as it operated at different times, and on different tempers), that Revelation is unnecessary, because Reason could see and discover by its own light all that was needful to our direction and happiness—that, if it were wanted by us, it was impossible to be given consistently with the laws of nature and experience—that as to that pretended scheme of Revelation, called the Gospel, its morality indeed was pure enough, but that it carried no other internal marks of its divinity: that its doctrines were such as Reason would not expect, and in many cases could not understand: that it talked of divine things in a manner that was strange and extraordinary; of a purpose to redeem mankind which, if it were needful at all, might have been effected by more rational and less operose methods; and to save and sanctify them by such means as seemed fanciful and delusive: that the divine nature was spoken of in high mysterious terms, which puzzle and confound our Metaphysics; and that the offices, in which the Godhead was employed, are either degrading, or such as imply an immoderate and inconceivable condescension.
And what then, say others, is the basis on which this incredible Revelation rests? Why on Miracles, which we cannot admit, as being violations or suspensions of those laws, by which we know the Supreme Being governs the world; and on Prophecies, which may have been feigned, as many have been, or which imply such a prescience in the Deity of free contingent events, as is perhaps impossible. If the Gospel then is to be admitted as a truly divine Revelation, convince us, that its external proofs are above all doubt and suspicion; and that all its internal characters are such as lie open to the perfect scrutiny, and entire investigation of our faculties.
Thus does the Pride of Reason vaunt itself, against Reason. For, if to any or all of these objections (on which so many infidel systems hang) we should only say, that they are nothing to the purpose, what could the objectors reply to us? If pressed closely, they could only take refuge in this principle, that no Religion can be divine, all the reasons of which are not fully known to us; a principle, for which they have surely no warrant from right Reason. How do they know what is necessary, or fit, or right, with regard to the divine dispensations, I mean (which is the case here) when they only silence, not contradict our Reason? Every thing may be fit and right, and might appear to be so, if the whole scheme of Providence were fully unveiled to us. It must be fit and right, whether we see it or no, if the Religion in question be credibly attested: And the credibility will depend not on our fancies or expectations of I know not what irresistible evidence (which it might be best and wisest not to give) but on the real moment of the arguments, on which it is established.
So that the last effort of Infidelity is only an appeal to the ignorance of mankind; which proves nothing but the necessity of a long-forgotten virtue, Modesty, in our researches into Religion.
We see then how the Pride of Reason has betrayed presumptuous men into a disbelief of Revelation, and how true it is that, if the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, as well by this means, as by any other.
II. But, secondly, there is A PRIDE OF VIRTUE, as well as of Reason: and by this Pride, too, (such is the infirmity of our common nature) the Gospel may be hid from us.
On whatever foundation a man chuses to build his moral system, he easily convinces himself of the worth and excellence of moral action. The reasonableness, the utility, and the beauty of Virtue are so conspicuous, that even the vicious look up to her with respect, and the virtuous easily grow enamoured of her. Thus it came to be among the extravagances of the Stoics, its best friends in the pagan world, that virtue was not only the perfection of man’s nature, but that it raised him in some sense, above the Divine[104]. And to make their arrogant system all of a piece, they further maintained that this super-celestial virtue, in which they gloried, was their own proper acquisition; that they derived it wholly from themselves, and that God did not, and could not give it[105].
This, you will say, was stoical pride; but it is, too commonly, also, the pride of virtue, of whatever denomination. Penetrated with a lively sense of its use and excellence, virtuous men, especially of a certain temperament, take fire from their own heated ideas, and flame out into a kind of moral fanaticism. They consider virtue, as the supreme and only good, absolute in itself, and independant of any other. They exalt and deify themselves in their own imaginations; and, though their language may be more decent, the sense of their hearts is truly stoical.
See, now, whether virtue, under this intoxication, be in a condition to benefit by the sober truths of the Gospel. It presents to us a frightful picture of the moral world; much is said concerning the weakness and inefficacy of moral virtue. This representation, of itself, is disgusting. But one great design of the Gospel was to reform this state of things: And thus far is well: But by what means would it reform it? Why, among others, by Faith and Hope. Yet, in Faith, the proud moralist sees no virtue, at all; and Hope, in his ideas, degrades and servilizes his adored virtue. The Gospel proposes to save us by the sacrifice of Christ: But He acknowledges no need of any sacrifice; relies, with confidence, on his own merits; and disdains the notion of an intercessor. He holds, that nothing more could be intended by a Revelation, if such were given, than the promotion of our virtue; and that we want not its aid, for that purpose: that we read our duty in the sense of our own minds; which Reason enforces in as high terms, as the Gospel, in a more engaging way, and on principles more sublime and generous.
Above all, the Gospel speaks much of the succours of Grace, as necessary to infuse and to confirm our virtue; a language, which the Pride of virtue will not understand: And of a Heaven, and a Hell; by which if any thing more be meant than the proper natural effects of virtue and vice itself, the idea is rejected, as superfluous and even childish.
To such an extreme of folly, and even impiety, may the Pride of virtue carry us; and so fatally may the Gospel be hid from those, whom this last infirmity of human nature blinds by its specious illusions! And that this is no ideal picture, but one taken from the life, will appear to those who know any thing of human nature; and of the perverse prejudices, by which some ingenious, and otherwise virtuous men, have suffered themselves to be misled in their religious inquiries[106].
Enough has been said to shew the issue of intellectual and moral Pride: And how it comes to pass that men lose themselves, who reason, on Religion, without modesty, or would be virtuous without Religion.
The application is short, but striking. It is, That men should examine themselves well, before they presume to think slightly of the Gospel. They may learn to suspect the power and influence of their grosser passions, when they see that even these refined ones may corrupt their judgement, and betray them into Infidelity.
The Apostle says expressly, that if the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: and who, that rejects the Gospel, but must tremble for himself, when his REASON, nay his VIRTUE, may be the instrument of his ruin?