Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

Many laborious and voluminous discussions might have been saved, if the simple and very reasonable rule had been adopted of waiving investigation into the credibility of any narrative of supernatural or pretended supernatural events, said to have taken place upon consecrated ground, or under sacred roofs. Fanes, caves, groves, churches, convents, cells, are places in which the lover of history will make but a transient stay: and he may easily find better employment than in sifting the evidence on which rest such stories as that of the roof-descended oil, used at the baptism of Clovis; or that of the relics discovered by Ambrose for the confutation of royal error, and a thousand others of like nature. Those who, reading church history cursorily, are perplexed by the frequency of suspicious miracle, are probably not aware, generally, how very large a proportion of all such annoying relations may be readily and reasonably disposed of by adhering to the rule above stated.

The miraculous powers existing in the church after the apostolic age, rest under a cloud that is not now to be thoroughly dispelled. But with safety the following propositions may be affirmed: first, That the Christian doctrine probably received some miraculous attestations after the death of the apostles; secondly, That so early as the commencement of the fourth century, fraudulent or deceptive pretensions to miraculous power were very frequently advanced; and lastly, That at that period, and subsequently, there are instances, not a few, of a certain sort of sincerity and fervor in religion, conjoined with very exceptionable attempts to acquire a thaumaturgal reputation. These deplorable cases deserve particular attention, especially as they show what are the natural fruits of fictitious pietism.

If we choose to read the church history of the early centuries in the spirit of frigid scepticism, all the toil and perplexity that belong to the exercise of cautious and candid discrimination will be at once saved; and we shall, in every instance, where supernatural interposition is alleged, and whatever may be the quality of the evidence, or the character of the facts, take up that obvious explanation which is offered, by attributing a greedy credulity to the laity of those times, and a villanous and shameless knavery to the clergy. But this short method, how satisfactory soever it may be to indolence, or how gratifying soever to malignity, can never approve itself to those who are at once well informed of facts, and accustomed to analyze evidence with precision. The compass of human nature includes many motives, deep, and intricate, of which infidelity never dreams, and which, in its unobservant arrogance, it can never comprehend.

Long before the time when ecclesiastical narratives of supernatural occurrences assume a character decidedly suspicious, or manifestly faithless, the great facts of Christianity had, with a large class of persons, and especially with the recluses, become the objects of day-dream contemplation, and formed rather the furniture of a theatre of celestial machinery, than the exciting causes of simple faith, and hope, and joy. The divine glories, the brightness of the future life, the history and advocacy of the Mediator, the agency of angels, and of demons, were little else, to many, than the incentives of intellectual intoxication. When once this misuse of religious ideas had gained possession of the mind, it brought with it an irresistible prurience, asking for the marvellous, just as voluptuousness asks for the aliments of pleasure. This demand will be peculiarly importunate among those who have to uphold their faith in the front of a gainsaying world; and who would much rather confound the scoffer by the blaze of a new miracle, than convince him by an argumentative appeal to an old one.

The first step towards the pseudo-miraculous is taken without doing any violence to conscience, and little even to good sense; provided that opinions of a favoring kind are generally prevalent. Good, and even judicious men, might be so under the influence of the imagination as to have their sleep hurried with visions, and their waking meditations quickened by unearthly voices; and might complacently report such celestial favors to greedy hearers, without a particle of dishonest consciousness.[9] Thus the taste for things extraordinary was at once cherished and powerfully sanctioned by the example of men eminently wise and holy. Then, with an inferior class of men, the progression from illusions, real and complete, to such as were in part aided by a little spontaneity and contrivance, and which, though somewhat unsatisfactory to the narrator, were devoured without scruple by the hearer, could not be difficult. The temptation to produce a commodity so much in demand was strong; often too strong for those whose moral sense had been debilitated by an habitual inebriety of the imagination. Another step towards religious fraud was more easily taken than avoided, when it was eagerly looked for by open-mouthed credulity, and when the church might cheaply and securely be glorified, and Gentilism triumphantly confuted. The plain ground of Christian integrity having once been abandoned, the shocks of a downward progress towards the most reprehensible extreme of deception were not likely to awaken remorse.

Practices, therefore, which, viewed in their naked merits, must excite the detestation of every Christian mind, might insensibly gain ground among those who were far from deserving the designation of thorough knaves. They were fervent and laborious in their zeal to propagate Christianity; they believed it cordially, and themselves hoped for eternal life in their faith; and in the strength of this hope were ready "to give their bodies to be burned." They prayed, they watched, they fasted, and crucified the flesh, and did everything which an enthusiastical intensity of feeling could prompt; and this feeling prompted them to promote the gospel, as well by juggling as by preaching.

But had not these religious forgers read the unbending morality of the gospel? Or, reading it, was it possible that they could think the sacrifice of honesty an acceptable offering to the God of truth? The difficulty can be solved only by calculating duly the influence of imaginative pietism in paralyzing the conscience; and if the facts of the case still seem hard to comprehend, it will be necessary, for illustration, to recur to instances that may be furnished, alas! by most Christian communities in our own times. Is it impossible to find individuals fervent, and in a certain sense sincere, in their devotions, and zealous and liberal in their endeavors to diffuse Christianity, and, perhaps, in many respects amiable, who, nevertheless, admit into their habitual course of conduct very gross contrarieties to the plainest rules of Christian morality? When instances of this sort are under discussion, it is alike unsatisfactory to affirm of the parties in question, that they are, in the common sense of the term, hypocrites; or to grant that their piety is genuine, but defective. The first supposition, though it may cut the difficulty, does not by any means nicely accord with the facts: and the second puts contempt upon the most explicit and solemn declarations of our Lord and his ministers, whose style of enforcing the divine law will never allow those who are flagrantly vicious, those who are "workers of iniquity," to be called 'imperfect Christians.'

One alternative presents itself for the solution of the pressing difficulty. The religion of these delinquent professors is sincere in its kind, and perhaps fervent; but not less fictitious than sincere. Or rather the religion they profess is not Christianity, but an image of it. Whatever there is in the Gospel that may stimulate emotion without breaking up the conscience, has been admitted and felt; but the heart has not been made "alive towards God." Repentance has had no force, the desire of pardon no intensity. Certain vices may be shunned and reprobated, and others as freely indulged; for nothing is really inconsistent with the dreams of religious delusion—except only the waking energy of true virtue. And thus it was with many in the ancient church; the stupendous objects of the unseen world had kindled the imagination; and in harmony with this state of mind, a supernatural heroism and an unnatural style of virtue were admired and practised, because they fed the flames of a fictitious happiness, which compensated for the renunciation of the pleasures of sense. In this spirit martyrdom was courted, and deserts were peopled, until they ceased to be solitudes; and in this spirit also miracles were affirmed, or fabricated, not perhaps so often by knaves as by visionaries.

Tho subject of the suspicious pretensions to miraculous power advanced by many of the ancient Christian writers should not be dismissed without remarking, that it is one thing to compose a gaudy narrative (de virtutibus) of the wonder-working powers of a saint gone to his rest in the preceding century, and another to be the actor in scenes of religious juggling. If this distinction be duly considered, a very large mass of perplexing matter will at once be discharged from the page of ecclesiastical history, and that without doing the smallest violence either to charity, or to the laws of evidence. Some foolish presbyter, or busy monk, gifted with a talent of description, has collected the church tales current in his time, concerning a renowned father. The turgid biography, applauded in the monastery where it was produced, slipped away silently to the faithful of distant establishments, and without having ever undergone that ordeal of real and local publicity which authenticates common history, was suffused through Christendom, as it were, beneath the surface of notoriety, and so has come down to modern times to load the memory of some good man with unmerited disgrace.

V. The practice of mystifying the Scriptures must be named as an especial characteristic of monkish religion.