I found it distinctly stated by our Lord, that "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" and this served as a key to many passages in the epistles and other parts of scripture illustrative of the same solemn truth. I had never understood, never thought of this. Did my church hold it? Yes; it was not only laid down as a fundamental doctrine in her Articles, but constantly put into the mouths of her congregation, either expressed or clearly implied. Again, I found that not by works but by faith I was to be justified before God; and this also ran through the prayer-book, with unvarying distinctness; though with that book in my hand and its contents on my lips I had been hitherto attempting to scale heaven by a ladder of my own forming.
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The Athanasian creed brought to my recollection a circumstance that had occurred a few years before, the importance of which had never been known to me until I was brought acquainted with the saving truths of the gospel. I now looked back upon it with trembling joy and gratitude to him who had preserved me from a snare into which the pride of intellect, joined to spiritual ignorance, would have been sure to lead me, but for the watchful care of my heavenly Father, still working by means of my blind but sincere reverence for his word. In my native town, Socinianism flourished to a fearful extent; it has long been a very hotbed of that fatal heresy, the holders of which are found among many leading characters of wealth, influence, and high attainments. I knew no more of it than that it was one of the many forms of dissent with which I had nothing to do. I was acquainted with several of its disciples; but as religion formed no part of our social intercourse, its peculiarities were wholly unknown to me.
Not long before my trip to America I had been staying in Norwich, in the same house with a most clever, intelligent, and amiable woman, of whom I was very fond. I knew her to be a dissenter, and that was all. One evening she drew me into a conversation, the commencement of which I forget, but it soon arrived at a denial, on her part, of the Godhead of Christ, which exceedingly astonished me, for I never supposed that could be called in question. I ran for the Bible, saying, I would soon show her it was not to be disputed; and she in return asserted that I could not prove it out of the inspired scriptures. After pondering for a while, I recollected the first chapter of Revelation, which, for its sublimity, I ranked among the highest of my poetical gems, and that it unequivocally proclaimed the divinity of our glorious Lord. I opened at it, on which she burst into a laugh, saying, "You are not so weak as to fancy that book of riddles any part of God's word!" "Why it is in the Bible, you see," replied I, half indignantly. "And who put it there? Come, you are a person of too much sense to believe that the binding up of certain leaves between the two covers of the Bible makes them a part of it. You must exercise the reason that God has given you, and in so doing you will discover so many interpolations and deceptions in that version of yours, that you will be glad to find a more accurate one."
She continued in the same strain for some time. I was greatly agitated; I closed the great Bible, and leaning on it with folded arms, my heart beating violently against the bright red cover, I gave heed to all she said. My love of novelty, passion for investigation, and the metaphysical turn that had sometimes made my father quite uneasy about me, when he saw me at eight years old poring over abstruse reasonings with the zest of an old philosopher, were all in her favor. I felt as if the foundation of my faith was giving way, and I was being launched on a sea of strange uncertainty. When she concluded, I laid my forehead on the book in most deep and anxious thought. I did not pray: God was found of one who sought him not, for surely he alone dictated my answer. I started up, and with the greatest vivacity said, "Mrs. ——, if you can persuade me that the book of Revelation is not inspired, another person may do the same with regard to the book of Genesis, and so of all that lie between them, till the whole Bible is taken away from me. That will never do; I cannot part with my dear Bible. I believe it all, every word of it, and I am sure I should be miserable if I did not." Then, kissing the precious volume with the affection one feels for what is in danger of being lost to us, I carried it back to its shelf, and declined any further discussion on the subject. She told some one else she was sure of having me yet; but the good providence of God interposed to remove me from the scene of danger.
That metaphysical turn I omitted to mention among my early snares; my father checked it, although it was a great hobby of his own. He had seen its fearful abuse in the origin of the French revolution, and regarded it as one of the evil spirits of the age. I recollect the mixture of mirth and vexation depicted in his face one morning, when on his remarking that I did not look well and inquiring if any thing ailed me, I replied, "No, but I could not get any sleep."
"What prevented your sleeping?"
"I was thinking, papa, of 'Cogito, ergo sum'—'I think, therefore I exist'—and I lay awake, trying to find out all about it."
"'Cogito, ergo sum!'" repeated my father, laughing and frowning at the same time; "what will you be at twenty, if you dabble in metaphysics before you are ten? Come, I must set you to study Euclid; that will sober your wild head a little." I took the book with great glee, delighted to have a new field of inquiry, but soon threw it aside. Mathematics and I could never agree. Speculative and imaginative in an extraordinary degree, carrying much sail with scarcely any ballast, what but the ever watchful care of Him who sitteth upon the circle of the earth could have preserved from fatal wrecking a vessel so frail, while yet without pilot, helm, or chart?
It was the recollection of my short encounter with the Socinian that satisfied me respecting the Athanasian creed. I felt that had I taken up its bold assertions and established every one of them, as now I did, by scripture, no sophistry could have staggered my faith, though it had been but a reasoning, not a saving faith, in that high doctrine of the coexistent, coequal Trinity. I did not then know—for of all church history I was ignorant—that its original object was not so much to establish a truth, as to detect and defeat a falsehood. The damnatory clauses, as they are called, did not startle me. I saw clearly the fact that God had made a revelation of himself to man, which revelation man was not at liberty to receive or to reject, and as without faith it is impossible to please God, and that alone is faith which implicitly believes the record that he hath given of his Son, the deductions in question were perfectly fair and orthodox. I frequently wondered, when subsequently brought into the arena of various controversies, at the ease with which, aided by the Bible alone, I settled so many disputed points; and as it really was by the Bible I settled them, man's teaching has never yet on any subject altered my views. * * *