Lord Bacon not the author of "The Christian Paradoxes," being a reprint of "Memorials of Godliness and Christianity," by Herbert Palmer, B.D.[[297]] With Introduction, Memoir, and Notes, by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart,[[298]] Kenross. (Private circulation, 1864).
I insert the above in this place on account of a slight connection with the last. Bacon's Paradoxes,—so attributed—were first published as his in some asserted "Remains," 1648.[[299]] They were admitted into his works in 1730, and remain there to this day. The title is "The Character of a believing Christian, set forth in paradoxes and seeming contradictions." The following is a specimen:
"He believes three to be one and one to be three; a father not to be older than his son; a son to be equal with his father; and one proceeding from both to be equal with both: he believes three persons in one nature, and two natures in one person.... He believes the God of all grace to have been angry with one that never offended Him; and that God that hates sin to be reconciled to himself though sinning continually, and never making or being able to make Him any satisfaction. He believes a most just God to have punished a most just person, and to have justified himself, though a most ungodly sinner. He believes himself freely pardoned, and yet a sufficient satisfaction was made for him."
Who can doubt that if Bacon had written this it must have been wrong? Many writers, especially on the
Continent, have taken him as sneering at (Athanasian) Christianity right and left. Many Englishmen have taken him to be quite in earnest, and to have produced a body of edifying doctrine. More than a century ago the Paradoxes were published as a penny tract; and, again, at the same price, in the Penny Sunday Reader, vol. vi, No. 148, a few passages were omitted, as too strong. But all did not agree: in my copy of Peter Shaw's [[300]] edition (vol. ii, p. 283) the Paradoxes have been cut out by the binder, who has left the backs of the leaves. I never had the curiosity to see whether other copies of the edition have been served in the same way. The Religious Tract Society republished them recently in Selections from the Writings of Lord Bacon, (no date; bad plan; about 1863, I suppose). No omissions were made, so far as I find.
I never believed that Bacon wrote this paper; it has neither his sparkle nor his idiom. I stated my doubts even before I heard that Mr. Spedding, one of Bacon's editors, was of the same mind. (Athenæum, July 16, 1864). I was little moved by the wide consent of orthodox men: for I knew how Bacon, Milton, Newton, Locke, etc., were always claimed as orthodox until almost the present day. Of this there is a remarkable instance.
LOCKE AND SOCINIANISM.
Among the books which in my younger day were in some orthodox publication lists—I think in the list of the Christian Knowledge Society, but I am not sure—was Locke's [[301]] "Reasonableness of Christianity." It seems to have come down from the eighteenth century, when the battle was belief in Christ against unbelief, simpliciter, as the
logicians say. Now, if ever there was a Socinian[[302]] book in the world, it is this work of Locke. "These two," says Locke, "faith and repentance, i.e., believing Jesus to be the Messiah, and a good life, are the indispensable conditions of the new covenant, to be performed by all those who would obtain eternal life." All the book is amplification of this doctrine. Locke, in this and many other things, followed Hobbes, whose doctrine, in the Leviathan, is fidem, quanta ad salutem necessaria est, contineri in hoc articulo, Jesus est Christus.[[303]] For this Hobbes was called an atheist, which
many still believe him to have been: some of his contemporaries called him, rightly, a Socinian. Locke was known for a Socinian as soon as his work appeared: Dr. John Edwards,[[304]] his assailant, says he is "Socinianized all over." Locke, in his reply, says "there is not one word of Socinianism in it:" and he was right: the positive Socinian doctrine has not one word of Socinianism in it; Socinianism consists in omissions. Locke and Hobbes did not dare deny the Trinity: for such a thing Hobbes might have been roasted, and Locke might have been strangled. Accordingly, the well-known way of teaching Unitarian doctrine was the collection of the asserted essentials of Christianity, without naming the Trinity, etc. This is the plan Newton followed, in the papers which have at last been published.[[305]]