I. I proceed first to prove them the foes of heavenly faith.
Creeds disqualify the mind for the pursuit of truth. This is my first assertion, and I shall establish its correctness in several particulars. Creeds generate mental apathy and mental dependence, and this is fatal in the very outset. To a spirit of inquiry there is needed an impulsive intellectual activity, and to this activity there is needed a desire for the thing to be attained, and a sense of its importance. There is no labour without motive, and if in religious belief, the creed has defined before-hand all that is necessary for my salvation, I have no necessity to take any more trouble in the matter. If I am to rest on authority at last, it is just as well for me to be satisfied with it at first—if after toilsome inquiry, at the peril of my soul’s eternal peace, the dogmas of the creed are those to which my conclusions must return, I had better be at once content—if I must believe as the Church believes, if I must believe as the Creed says I should believe, if I must believe as the priest declares my hope of heaven requires, if after criticism and research, long and patient, I must arrive at but one exposition of the Bible, it is but wisdom to spare myself from such a pressure of useless labour. But indolence in this case is not merely allowable, it is, in fact, the safest. If to doubt be danger, and if to disbelieve be sin, then the curiosity which stimulates examination may lead me into ruin, whilst implicit submission, that receives all and questions nothing, is a condition of peaceful security. The incitements to mental labour are analogous to those to any other sort of labour; it is that one shall be the richer and the better for it, and that what he acquires he may justly possess. But, if by independent inquiry I may become morally poorer and spiritually worse, if I shall have no right to my own thoughts, and must be despoiled of my convictions, or punished for them, when I have worked them out with the struggle of every faculty, it is exceeding folly to risk the misery and irritation of being torn between my opinion and my creed, conscience forcing me to acquiesce, and reason compelling me to doubt. This view is no supposition; it is fact. Submission to Creeds and Churches, is the true cause of that wide spread moral torpor in every country where Creeds and Churches have dominion. There is nothing so rare as intelligent, independent religious conviction; and how can it be otherwise, when each leans upon his priest, and the priest gives him ready-made opinions, as they were formed a thousand years ago. There is a general and profound ignorance of the sources of opinion, the history of opinion, of the philosophy of opinion, and of the Bible, both in its letter and in its spirit. Speak to multitudes of religion, in any broad or liberal sense, and it seems to them as if it were an unknown tongue. To have any chance of attention, you must use terms which Creeds have sanctified, you must address them in traditionary phrases, which have the sectarian or sacerdotal currency. This never could have been had religion been recommended as a subject of individual and independent study, leaving the mind free, both in its pursuit and its conclusion. That I have stated nothing but what fact justifies, I may appeal to any one who has considered the religious condition of this country, or of Europe generally, and considered it in every rank of society. I speak not of the Spaniard, who has not yet rid himself from the palsy of the Inquisition, who can go from the prostration of the confessional to scenes of the wildest crime; I speak not of the Italian, that compound of profaneness and credulity, of sin and devotion, who can bow before an image, and with the same hand cross himself, by which a minute before he plunged his stiletto in his fellow-creature’s heart. I speak not of our own peasantry, who Sunday after Sunday, walk statedly to church or chapel, and know little more than that they went there and came back again; I speak not of the fashionable wealthy, who, on this point, are commonly as ignorant as the boor, and choose religion as they choose every thing else, as it happens to be the mode; I pass these by, because it may be said, that pleasure and gaiety leave them no time for study; but I will refer to multitudes who are esteemed devout and serious Christians, whose minds passively receive the mould of their teachers, and to whom religion never presents itself as a system of various thought and of independent examination. Now, this ignorant apathy has bad effects, which are not merely negative; and at the risk of anticipating, I will allude in a few words to one or two of them: it gives stability to every error and corruption, and holds to them with an obstinacy, against which wisdom has no power; it is the very soil in which priestcraft grows darkest and foulest; and the hierarchy in any age or country has never risen to its full stature of lordliness, until the people have lain lowest in torpid submission. And, in addition to this, there is no uncharitableness so inveterate, there is no bigotry so intolerant, as that which this species of character matures, for as it is unable to comprehend an opposite opinion, it is equally inadequate and unwilling to weigh the arguments in its favour, or to estimate the evidence on which it is maintained. Having no conception of independence itself, independence in another appears presumption, if not something worse, and never having imagined that other opinions could possibly be true except its own, to hold any different could only be explained by supposing a want of honesty or a want of grace.
I might dwell upon the fear by which Creeds paralyse the faculties of weak or sensitive natures, by which they deprive them of all power for calm and deliberate examination, by the fear of being excluded from their Church, by the fear of being discarded by their friends, by the fear of being cast into hell, above all these, by the fear of losing the favour of God, and the friendship of Jesus, and with right and true minds, this is the greatest of all fears. In the midst of so many terrors, it is too much to expect that our weak humanity could be calm,—that it could look with unmoved heart at the appalling indications of so many and dire threatenings, it is like examining a man on the terms of his faith, while the officials of persecution are arranging the faggots or putting screws in the rack. From this topic, disagreeable in any shape, I pass on, and assert, that Creeds are enemies to truth, because, by preconception and prejudice, they disqualify the mind to seek or apprehend it. This is my second, and in this section, my last position.
The statement of the Church of England respecting the three Creeds, is this: that they “ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.”[[540]] The Catholic doctrine, with equal decision, asserts that the Infallibility of the Romish Church may also be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture. Suppose then a Church of England Christian with the Bible before him; he has been previously indoctrinated in the three Creeds, and these ideas pre-occupying his mind will so far influence his interpretation. Suppose a Roman Catholic in a like position; he has ever present to his mind the Infallibility of his Church, and her decisions must be the limits of his conclusions. Intellectually or morally, no position can be conceived worse than this for the pursuit or discovery of truth. The mind is biassed from the first; its calmness and its candour are subverted, and it is no longer a judge, but a partizan; it is not to decide on evidence, but, (to use a legal term) to act on the instruction of its brief. That Creeds have the tendency to distort and fetter the intellectual workings of the mind, we know from the fact, too palpable to need proof, that Theologians have always been the most obstinate in resisting the discoveries of science, and ever the last to yield. Astronomy, in its glimmerings of scientific truth, was once Church heresy. A Father of the Church, as it is well known, had denounced that man as infidel and profane who should dare to assert that the earth moved round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. On the other side of this controversy, we have been told that the arts and sciences have their compendiums as well as religion. It was a most unfortunate analogy; for how would it have been now with art and science, had Astronomy been made a Creed at the Council of Nice, and a confession on Chemistry been compiled by the Westminster divines. Galileo was pronounced a heretic; and the early Chemists laboured under strong suspicion of witchcraft. Had we been bound in Astronomy as we are in Theology, Joshua should be our authority, decisive and irrevocable, and the calculations of Newton and Laplace should be placed in the index expurgatorius of Ecclesiastical dogmatism. Even Luther himself, the author of the greatest of moral revolutions since Christianity, smiled at the idea that the earth should move round the sun, and said, “that according to Holy Scripture, Joshua commanded the earth to stand still, and not the sun.”[[541]] Had not the progressive energy of human intellect been stronger, in what a position should we yet have been as to the true principles of the construction and motion of the universe? Geology as yet is a scientific heresy; and, to avoid the stigma, orthodox Geologists have been driven into all modes of eccentric explanation, some to disjoin the first verse of Genesis from all that follows, and others to the supposition that a day may mean a thousand years, or if the speculator needs it, ten thousand or a million. The intellectual immorality thus occasioned, it is not possible to estimate; for it is a coarse view of sin to place it altogether in the misdirection of the passions: certainly, the sins which ever afflicted mankind most, were the moral perversions of the intellect. And this may be at once conceived if we have read the history of the Church, and are able to take a calm and impartial review of its cabals and controversies. I will not mention here the loss of kindly affections, the loss of charity, the loss of peace; I merely allude to the immense intellectual waste which has been occasioned by men setting out on their inquiries with a foregone conclusion. I shall say nothing on the tomes, enough to make a library as great as that the Turkish soldier burned, which have been written to defend the Trinity—I take an example to Protestants more grateful—I mean, transubstantiation. What was it that for centuries perpetuated a false and absurd philosophy in Europe? What was it that made Aristotle the supreme ruler of the Christian Church—not Aristotle, as he was, the philosoper, but as Churchmen used him, a verbal quibbler—was it not for the purpose of constructing syllogisms with orthodox exactness, and by theories on essences, species, forms, and so forth, to make it evident that under the appearance of bread and wine, the very God who created the heavens and the earth, and the very man Christ Jesus who died on Calvary, were virtually present? Go into any great library, and on this subject alone you may find volumes of which the very names are too many for memory. Yet, in these there is abundance of talent, of subtlety, and of acuteness—all in the travail to sustain a theory. No one can deny, no one will, who knows how equally the Creator scatters his gifts, that minds of the very highest order were amongst the schoolmen; yet all these magnificent powers were expended to sustain one or two absurd positions, enslaving their own intellect, and by their authority and their influence, enslaving the intellect of Christendom; and, from the reformation to this hour, there have been the same waste and perversion of thought. Just consider what tortuous logic, what wire-drawing ingenuity have been exercised to defend guilt by imputation, and righteousness by imputation—absurdities as great morally, as transubstantiation is intellectually. This is the work of Creeds.
Dissenters are sometimes taunted with want of scholarship. The taunt may have foundation in fact; perhaps it has, but on what are we to place the blame? Dissenters, we presume, have a measure of intellect on the average of other men, and are gifted with as many mental faculties as those who subscribe the articles of our National Church. God does not distribute his blessings on the ground of subscription, however Universities may. The gifts of mind are equal and bountiful like the beneficence of creation. The same full hand that showers sunlight over hill and valley, that opens fountains in the rocks, and sows the wilderness with flowers, without reference to Sect or Church, impregnates all understandings with the elements of thought, and all fancies with the germs of beauty. The Dissenter, as the Churchman, hath eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections. If then this fair portion of our Maker’s mercy be equally given, whence are we to trace the want of its proper cultivation? If the orthodox close the Universities against us by Creeds, draw fast the iron bolt by an iron theology, take away the key of knowledge, and repulse those that with all their hearts would enter, place before us tests which, if stupid enough, we might subscribe without understanding, and if dishonest enough we might subscribe without believing, but, candidly confessing we neither understand them nor believe them, therefore refuse to sign them,—where then is the magnanimity or the generosity which throws in our teeth, though it were true, that we have not the science of Cambridge, or the classicality of Oxford. Yet, despite of all restrictions, Dissent has had a goodly number of noble and cultured minds—minds able and honest, which, in the hour of need, even the Church herself was not ashamed to acknowledge, or ashamed to use.
Creeds act as mighty temptations,—as the very Satans of theology;—and they are not temptations to the covetous and ambitious only, but also to the weak and good. When sects and Creeds are the standards of preferment, those with whom preferment is the great object, are made to add the sin of sanctimonious hypocrisy to that of Ecclesiastical covetousness and Ecclesiastical ambition. But there are others good in their own hearts, yet not mighty enough to be martyrs, whom Creeds keep in a whole life of agony. There are those who entered a religious community, believing its opinions most enthusiastically, who, by the further progress of intellect or judgment, may be brought to doubt or deny them. They are then driven to a desperate alternative, either to belie their conscience, or to do violence to their hearts. Take the case of many of the curates and incumbents of the Church of England. Suppose, that on receiving orders they assented to all the bishop or the Church prescribed, but that after years of thinking they were compelled to disbelieve the Athanasian Creed. They are then periodically reading, with the most serious tones, and from the most solemn place, a statement of doctrine which they conceive in their souls to be hideous and false, reading it as the conviction of their own judgments, and as that which ought to be the saving faith of all men. If the conscience is not utterly hacknied, if the religious sensibilities are not torn out from the heart, this must be continually as the torture of the rack. Like all human faculties, conscience has a limit; beyond a certain point it can endure no more, and so when bigoted exaction has stretched it to the last, it must revolt or expire. The alternative in the end is, moral apathy or theological rebellion—a quiescent hypocrisy, or an open opposition. But few can brave the contest, and they have no refuge except a tacit and unwilling submission. Honest men, it may be said, when they ceased to believe the doctrines they solemnly affirmed, would renounce them with a denial as public as their profession. It is easy to say this, but, even for honest men, it is sometimes hard to do it. In the clerical order especially there are numbers, whose position has been attained by long study and weary toil—whose very means of life—not to speak of their station and their friendships—hang upon adherence to the Creed of their Church. What are these men to do? To dig they are not able, and to beg they are ashamed. Yet I can easily conceive that many could abandon rank and friendship, and count them light, in comparison with their faith, to conscience, that they could take a cell in the wilderness for their dwelling, quench their thirst at the running stream, and seek their food on the briar and the bramble, sooner than be false to their convictions, and do dishonour to the integrity of their souls. But it may be, that others with themselves are to suffer,—those whose lives are bound up in their lives,—those to whom they are the only earthly support and refuge, the wife, the child, the aged father, or the widowed mother,—whom to cast on the friendless world, were worse than a thousand martyrdoms. Think, then, of the poor curate of the Church of England, or the humble incumbent, who has grown long into life, with claims most pressing multiplying around him—one who once out of his pulpit knows not where to turn for the bread which his children crave—and we cannot judge harshly or uncharitably, if the power of his affections is too strong for the stern demands of duty. I know there have been those who could commit father, and mother, and wife, and children, to that good Provider who feedeth the raven and sheltereth the nest of the sparrow; who could speak the truth and take the consequences;—I trust there are those yet in the world who could do the same; but in this or any other age, martyrs must be few, and the spirit of martyrdom rare. We blame not too severely those who have not the highest courage of religious heroism, but we may condemn with honest indignation those institutions that by fencing their position with Creeds and Articles, compel them to be hypocrites. I do not apply these assertions to members or ministers of the Church of England, or other Churches, individually, but any one who has studied the history of religion, or watched the tendency of institutions, knows that in the English Establishment, in the Romish, in all establishments that have been narrowly restrictive, the hypocrisy of ambition, or the hypocrisy of fear, has been deeply and abundantly nourished.
The Church does not deny a small amount of liberty—no Church can,—it will therefore allow you to read the Bible, if you desire it, but you must find nothing therein but what the Church proposes. In the study of the Sacred text, you must have always before your eyes the three Creeds and the thirty-nine Articles; find what these prescribe, and it is all the better for your peace and comfort; miss them, and you are open to social and spiritual condemnation. Churches which dictate creeds, use words without meaning, when they say, that you may read the Bible, for they tell you also, at the commencement, what you ought to find in the Bible. I shall give an illustration here of my meaning, by an extract from one of the Oxford Tract writers:—I know well that some object to these writers, but so far as I have been able to study the subject—and I have read, attentively or casually, the whole of what are called the Oxford Tracts,—I think their statements and their doctrines are entirely in the spirit of their system, and in most exact consistency with their asseverations and their Creed. There is no medium; we require an infallible tribunal, or we must have a free judgment; but the authorities of the English Establishment will give us neither; for with that we must encounter the twofold endurance of an erring Church and an enslaved understanding. I think, therefore, the Oxford doctors in most perfect consistency with their profession; and thus believing, I quote the following passage, illustrative of these writers, and of the spirit of Ecclesiastical authority in general. It is a portion of a dialogue between a minister and his parishioner. Not to spoil the dramatic effect of it, I shall give you a little more than absolutely belongs to my subject. Thus speaks the Parishioner to the Pastor:—“My good mother, said he, not long before her death, said to me very earnestly, My dear Richard, observe my words: never dare to trifle with God Almighty. By this I understood her to mean, that in all religious actions we ought to be very awful, and seek nothing but what is right and true. And I knew she had always disapproved of people’s saying, as they commonly do, that it little matters what a man’s religion is, if he is but sincere, and that one opinion, or one place of worship, is as good as another. To say, or think, or act so, she used to call ‘trifling with God’s truth;’ and do you not think so, (addressing himself to me,) that she was right?
“Indeed I do, said I.
“And, he said, I was very much confirmed in these opinions by constantly reading a very wise, and as I may say to you, a precious book, which a gentleman gave me some years ago, whom I met by chance as I was going to see my father, in the infirmary. It is called, ‘A Selection from Bishop Wilson’s Works,’ and there are many places which show what his opinions were on this subject, and I suppose, Sir, there can be no doubt, that Bishop Wilson was a man of extraordinary wisdom and piety. Then, after a slight remark from his interlocutor, he observes, And what Bishop Wilson says is this, or to this effect, that to reject the government of bishops is to reject the ordinance of God. Having mentioned some controversy he had with a Dissenter, he observes, it seemed to me (and I told the man so,) like going round and round in a wheel, to say, that if he is God’s minister, he preaches what is good, and if he preaches what is good, he is God’s minister; for still the question would be, what is right or good? And some would say one thing, and some another; and some would say, there is nothing good or right in itself, but only as it seems most expedient to every person for the time being. So, for my own satisfaction, and hoping for God’s blessing on my future endeavours, I resolved to search the matter out for myself, as well as I could. My plan was this: First to see what was said on the subject in the Church Prayer Book, and then to compare this with the Scriptures. If, after all, I could not satisfy myself, I should have taken the liberty of consulting you, Sir, &c. Yours, replied this Rev. instructor to his prudent catechuman, was a good plan.”
This passage contains the whole spirit of Creeds and Churches. Take the Prayer Book with you, keep the fear of the bishop before your eyes, and walk reverently in the way of the Articles. Then read the Scriptures if you will, but read them to show that all this is Holy Writ.