Creeds are, further, at enmity with truth, because they resist its development, and embarrass its progression. The world could never have advanced beyond a fixed point, had it been governed by Churchmen, in the true Church spirit. For what is it that Creed-makers so insanely attempt? They attempt what is alike inconsistent with the glory of truth and the nature of man. Truth is infinite, like its author, and they would confine it within the limits of the Nicene and Athanasian formularies. Truth is eternal and progressive, but Creeds would swear us to the worst barbarisms of the worst ages. Truth is discovered and carried onward by the independent working of free and various minds, but Creeds would reduce all to an apathetic uniformity; and had not truth been greater than Creeds, all that has been done for religion and science, would now be in eternal silence. Creeds not only thus retard the progress of Truth, by the sanction of authority, by the influence of prejudice, by the tenacity of habit; but give errors all but immortality. Creeds are foes to whatever is most heavenly in our nature; to conscience, in its rectitude, and to charity in its gentleness; to conscience by an utter perversion of the moral sense, making that to be guilt which is not guilt, and giving merit to that which deserves none, making it righteous to believe one proposition, and sinful to doubt another, thus creating a factitious vice, and as often denying the evidence of real virtue; to charity, also, Creeds, I have said, are foes, and such they are by bitter exclusiveness, by wrong terms of communion and brotherhood, by dissension, by enmities and contentions, and by hatred in all its most odious shapes.
Creeds have failed in all the objects for which it is pretended they were made, and they have infinitely multiplied the evils against which it is pretended they are the guards. They are needful, it is said, for the preservation of the Faith, and instead of preserving the Faith, they have provoked the wildest unbelief; they are required, it is argued, as bonds of unity, and instead of this they have bred divisions and heresies without number; they are means, some will go so far as to say, of maintaining Christian peace, and instead of this they have rioted in wars and persecutions the most inhuman and the most sanguinary. The history of religion shows that unbelief is never so prevalent as when the Creed is most rigid. The countries and the times in which Theological ingenuity left least scope for the free play of intellect, have always been the country and times, when, under the outward guise of a uniform faith, there has been the most absolute contempt for the popular religion, as well as for Christianity in general. For the proof of this need I refer to the French Church, and the withering scepticism which it nurtured; the Spanish Church; the Italian Church; and to sustain the same principle we might likewise accumulate heaps of evidence from the Protestant Churches. As to heresies, the case is still more clear. One heresy may have called forth a Creed, but one Creed has produced a thousand heresies; and Creed-makers, when they imagined their work complete, to their sorrow have found it was but merely commenced. The history of heresies would be at once humiliating and instructive. In all varieties we have them on every point in religion, and on all that has connection with it; on the nature of God. Men not satisfied with a simple trust, must speculate on the Divine Being—must ascertain whether he was essentially one, or numerically divided; Churchmen must define, and after much labour we have such a document as the Athanasian Creed, and such a doctrine as the Athanasian Trinity. On the nature of Christ, we have the same subtleizing process; we are tossed between Arius and Athanasius, and having got clear of these, we are again to be bandied between Nestorius and Eutychus, and to determine whether Christ’s godhead and manhood were so united as to make one nature, or so divided as to constitute two natures; whether his divinity was not instead of a human soul, or in what relation his human soul stood to his divinity; whether he had one will or two wills; whether his death was a substitution or not; whether it was for the elect only, or for the whole race of man universally. On the Church; what its constitution, what its extent, what its authority; is it fallible or infallible; and if infallible, where does that infallibility rest; in the Pope, in a Council, in both together; in a congregation, or in every individual Christian? On the Sacraments; are there two or seven; what is their nature and efficacy; does baptism cleanse from original sin, or does it not; is it necessary to salvation or not? Roman Catholics affirm both, and so do the Oxford Tract writers. Is it to be consequent on personal belief or not; is it to be administered to infants, or to persons of mature years, and to be by immersion or by sprinkling? Again, we have a whole crowd of divisions and heresies on the Lord’s Supper; are the elements actually changed into the substance of Christ, or is Christ merely present along with them, or is he spiritually, but not personally, present; is it a rite mystically effective, or is it merely commemorative? All these questions have been sources of endless division of opinion; even at the present hour, the Oxford divines teach a doctrine concerning the Eucharist, which it requires marvellous perspicacity to distinguish from transubstantiation, while the Calvinistic evangelicals maintain views which might content the very lowest sacramentarian. But why speak of Creeds and Articles as means of religious unity, when the Church of England herself affords us the means of giving such assertion a flat denial? Within her pale, she has had men of all and opposite opinions—Arminian and Calvinist, Unitarian and Tritheist—every possible hue that orthodoxy could assume. Paley smiles at the idea, as one of most grotesque absurdity, that men should be thought to believe the articles they sign; they are, according to his morality, mere articles of peace, intended to exclude no one but Papists and Anabaptists. If this be true, a man might, as an able writer on non-conformity says, take a benefice with a good conscience from the Grand Turk. Nay, not to speak of believing the Articles, we have heard it asserted, in connection with the Universities, that the youthful subscribers are not supposed to understand them, or in some cases even to have read them. The Church of England is perhaps wise in not pushing matters too far, for in her former efforts to force uniformity, she lost the best of her sons by thousands; an event that she has cause to regret to the latest hour of her existence, and for which America should bless her for ever. The distinction between essentials and non-essentials, is one of the most quibbling of Theological vanities. Every one knows that each sect has its essentials and non-essentials, according to the compass of its Creed, some many and some few: with the Roman Catholic, Transubstantiation is as essential as the Trinity; he condemns the orthodox Protestant to perdition for not holding one as well as the other, whilst both combine to pass sentence on the unfortunate Unitarian who can receive neither. Again, I assert the distinction is petty and quibbling, for who is to fix it, where is it to stop; who is to decide it, and what are to be grounds of the decision? All things are important to us, as they bear relation to our conscience or our convictions; one man eateth only herbs, another eateth all things; one man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike: let every man be persuaded in his own mind; that is the Apostle’s view of the subject, and that is the true, the safe, the charitable one. Protestantism has not lessened or softened the number or the inveteracy of religious divisions infinitely more perplexed than Romanism in her views of religious authority, she has given importance to doctrines which the Church under that system scarcely noticed: such as grace, predestination, and other similar disputed theories: thus the sting of controversy has been added to topics that were before sufficiently repulsive in their dry and technical abstruseness. But it is pitiful, it is humiliating, not merely to our common Christianity, but to our common human nature, to see the arrogant assumption with which puny men decree what their brothers are to believe, now and in all future times, tying down the mind that should be free as heaven, as it is as progressive as it is eternal: putting themselves on the throne of God, and dealing judgment where he deals mercy. The minuteness of theological definition has surpassed all other efforts of human ingenuity, but it has not alone deadened the freedom of intellect, but also injured its honesty. On the Trinity, more especially, heresy has ever been treading closely on orthodoxy, “until, after revolving round the theological circle,” as Gibbon says, “we are surprised to find that the Sabellian ends where the Ebionite had began.” Each theological speculator has his own Trinity, his own exposition of the Athanasian mystery, until amidst the whirl of dogmatical contradictions, the mind grows giddy, and knows not where to rest. The Church of England, as I have observed before, has all systems between the extremes of Sherlock’s Tritheism and South’s Sabellianism: between the three infinite minds of the one, and the three somewhats of the other. The ancient Christians afforded full occasion for the caustic description which Gibbon gives of their disputes, and the modern Christians have not grown wiser, or learned better. “The Greek word” he says, “which was chosen to represent this mysterious resemblance, bears so close an affinity to the orthodox symbol, that the profane of every age derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoisians. As it frequently happens that sounds and characters which approach nearest each other, accidentally represent the most opposite ideas, the observation would be itself ridiculous, if it were possible to mark any sensible difference between the doctrine of the Semiarians, as they were improperly styled, and that of the Catholics themselves. The Bishop of Poictiers, who in his Phrygian exile, very wisely aimed at a coalition of parties, endeavours to prove, that by a pious and faithful interpretation, the Homoousian may be reduced to a consubstantial sense. Yet he confesses that the word has a dark and suspicious aspect; and, as if darkness were congenial to theological disputes, “the Semiarians who advanced to the doors of the Church, assailed them with the most unrelenting fury.” If it be said, that the Creeds are not the creators of divisions, but that divisions are the creators of Creeds, I admit that they act and react on each other. If they create not the differences which they make, they give them all their bitterness. If it be said, that independently of Creeds, there would still be endless variety of private opinions, I grant it; I go further, and say, it were most desirable there should be such divisions. It is Creeds that infuriate religion, and turns dissent into dissension. A man who felt he could form his opinion in freedom, and hold it in peace, would never persecute another; would never hate another; would never pretend authority over another; he would give the liberty he used. It is the authority which Creeds pretend, that constitute one of their greatest evils. The ancient Church then had Creeds in plenty, but no unity; the Reformed Churches are in the same position. If it be asserted they have agreement in essentials, I refer to what I have already said on this point; but if it be maintained that their difference is only in name, then, I say, the matter becomes worse, and plainly shows that Creeds, out of small disputes, can cause gigantic evils. Nothing could be more bitter than the Sacramentarian Controversy amongst the Reformers; nothing could be more vile than the language with which they assailed each other; nothing more furious than the invectives with which they pelted one another. Each would fix on his opponent what he did not believe himself; and yet there occasionally peeps out a glimmer, that they had some sense of their inconsistency. “It is of great importance,” says Calvin, in writing to Melancthon, ”that the least suspicion of the divisions that are among ourselves pass not to future ages; for it is ridiculous beyond all things that can be imagined, that after we have broken off from the whole world, we should so little agree among ourselves since the beginning of the Reformation.” The charity of Calvin was not equal to his discretion, as we may see by this extract.
“Honour, glory, and riches,” says he to the Marquis de Poët, “shall be the reward of your pains; but, above all, do not fail to rid the country of those zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus, the Spaniard.”
In the same spirit is the language of Austin, who was Calvin’s master, not only in his doctrine, but also in his zeal. “O, you Arian heretic,” he says, “the thief knew him when he hung upon the cross; the Jews feared him when he rose from the dead; and you treat him with contempt, now he is reigning in heaven. Take care, beloved, of the Arian pestilence!” (Quoted from Robinson’s Ecclesiastical Researches, pp. 348, and 181.)
Division and heresy are, in truth, innumerable, and the ideas of stemming them by Creeds, is to imitate the peasant standing on the river’s bank, and waiting until it should have all flowed by. “One doctor of the Lutheran Church,” says Robert Robinson, of Cambridge, “hath given a comment on heresy and schism, and hath inserted no less than six hundred and thirty-two sorts of heretics, heresiarchs, and schismatics, diversified as the birds of heaven, and agreeing only in one single point, the crime of not staying in what is called the Church.”
I have now shown that Creeds did not promote unity in the ancient Church; that they did not promote it in the Roman Church; that they did not promote it in the Reformed Church; that in the present day they do not promote it in any of the Protestant Churches; not to allude again to our own Establishment; to many in the Scotch Church, they are a dead letter; they are entirely so in the French and German Churches; and in the Genevese Church, the very school where blackest Calvinism was fabricated, the arena where the stern persecutor burned Servetus, Calvin’s spirit is extinct, and his creed repealed. I have shown, then, that they never produced unity, and I believe the most intrepid Ecclesiastic will not affirm they have been favourable to Christian peace. Turn to the page of history; look abroad over the face of the world, and you have lamentable evidence of the charge. Creeds have broken the peace of Christendom, and given unwonted fury to all its strifes; Controversies have arisen without number, and have been maintained with fanatic zeal, fury, and detestation. What shame should the opposite conduct of Philosophers flash in the face of theologians,—men, who in quietness pursued their own studies, and left their results for the progressive amelioration of their species—whilst the janglings of Churchmen, wringing through every age, have been empty of all things but their enmity. Why is it, that we in this hour are not more profitably engaged,—why is it, that we are not rather seeking out the woes that crush down humanity, and joining forces to remove them,—why is it with so much of what is positive to be done, so much of wretchedness to relieve, so much sin to remove, so many solemn claims on all sides of us, that when we think of it, we feel as if this were the veriest trifling; why are we thus in strife, when we might be in union; why are we compelled to say hard things, and to repel them? It is all to be charged to Creeds, which with the spirit of Cain, has risen the hand of brother against brother, and caused contention and an evil heart, where there ought to be charity and peace. It is all vain, it is not human nature, no matter how strongly disclaimed, to think, that polemical contention can be perfectly free from the wrong passions, and it is better not to pretend to meekness, when the opposite is frequently but too evident. The days of physical strife in religion, it is to be hoped, are gone; but upon the head of Creeds there is a blood-stain, a blood guiltiness, which the whole ocean could not wash out. Religion was made the watch-word for war; the cross was raised as the symbol of destruction, and the gathering of nations were around it, to carry ruin as a flood, ay, into those very scenes, where it once bore the dying form of him, who said, “I came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” War, in its simplest utterance, is a word of horror; but religious war leaves nothing darker to be imagined. In worldly enmities, when the contest is deadliest, there are touches of human compunction; in the most sanguinary strife, the voice of mercy is sometimes heard, and the hand of help is given; fiercest opponents will occasionally be generous—the oppressed, in the hour of triumph, can be magnanimous to the tyrant in his fall, but place men against each other with different religious sentiments, unsheath the sword of the orthodox against the heretic, the heart becomes steel, the bosom becomes ruthless, and the man is lost in the fiend. Demand you evidence of this? It is written in gore over the whole face of earth; call up the shades of the thousands that sunk in the valleys and the mountains of Judea, of those in the solitudes of the Alps, that fell under the sword of Romish and merciless extermination; of those with whose life-blood the fierce Spaniard dyed the soil of South America; of those who were laid low in the glens of Scotland by Episcopalian fury,—you would have army of witnesses which no man could number, the accusers of those who for different faith became the slayers of their brethren. Creeds are naturally allied to the spirit of persecution, for they establish the principle, and act on it, that belief may be a sin, and this is the very life of the persecuting spirit; it was this that built the Inquisition, which for so many ages spread its ruthless tempest in the Christianity of Europe; it was this that called forth the rack, and kindled every fire in which a heretic was ever sacrificed to the demon-god of bigotry: it was this created a Dominic. Protestants are fond of calling the Roman Catholic Church a persecuting Church, but that Church can retort the accusation. Every Church is in truth a persecuting Church which acts in the spirit of a Creed. The Reformers maintained the right of the civil magistrate to punish heretics. This, if it needed proof, is triumphantly made out by Bossuet. “There is no need here,” he says, “of explaining on that question, whether or no Christian princes have a right to use the sword against their subjects, enemies to sound doctrine and the Church, the Protestants being agreed with us in this point. Luther and Calvin have written books to make good the right and duty of the magistrate in this point. Calvin reduced it to practice, but against Severus and Valentine Gentili. Melancthon approved of this procedure by a letter he wrote him on the subject.” John Knox maintained the same doctrine, and even quoted the extermination of the Canaanites as a case which would justify like treatment of heretics. Nay, in the present day, one of the Oxford theologians asserts, “that we ought to anticipate the evils of error in the person of the heresiarch,” because he contends that it is better he should endure pain, than that his error should be propagated, and bring ruin on his infatuated but less guilty followers. This is the true inquisitorial religion. A man who holds sentiments like these is a persecutor in his heart, and it is only by accident that he is not a persecutor with his hand. A man who could send forth that expression, in other days might have been grand inquisitor or a familiar of the Holy Office, and would have dragged his victims to the stake, or gloated over their tortures on the rack. A heresiarch, he maintains, is unworthy of compassion; and in correspondence with this are some passages of Irenæus, quoted with approbation in the Tracts for the Times: “What prospect, then, of peace have we,” says this reverend and truculent Ecclesiastic, “who are foes to the brethren? What sacrifice do they think they celebrate, when they become rivals to the Priesthood? When gathered together beyond the pale of the Church, do they think that Christ is still in the midst of them? Though men like these were killed in the profession of their faith, not even by their blood would these spots be washed out. The offence of discord is a weighty offence, it includes no expiation, and is absolved by no suffering.” “They cannot remain with God,” he says, “who will not remain with one heart in God’s Church. Though they be cast to the flame, to the fire to be burnt, or lay down their lives by being a prey to wild beasts, they will gain not the crown of faith, but the penalty of perfidy; their end, not the glorious consummation of religious excellence, but the death-blow of despair. Such men may attain unto death, but can never attain unto the crown.” Creeds have sharpened the sword of persecution, though the civil arm was used, and if it now be idle in the sheath, it is more owing to the tolerance of civil governments, than to any change in the spirit of Churchmen. If Rome had her Inquisition, England had her Star Chamber; if Rome had her Dominic, England had her Laud. I wish not, however, to pass unmitigated censure: I am willing and glad to acknowledge that the Church of England has had many men who were the lights of their age, but they had minds which were not cast in the Athanasian mould. It is not Churches only that persecute, but also sects; not great Churches, but little ones equally; thus did the Genevese, whilst the spirit of Calvin ruled in it; thus did the Dutch Churches, while the Dort-decrees had power, and even Socinus himself persecuted Francis David: a Creed, however simple, can be made an instrument of unjust power, as well as the most complex one. The persecuting spirit is not extinct, but changed; it is now a social and a moral persecution. Long experience has shown that physical torture is useless, and if the principle remained, the power is gone. But never can we sum up the whole amount of evil which Creeds inflicted on the world, until we can count the sighs that have died unheard in the dungeon; until we know all the bitterness of heart which waits on hopeless captivity; until we count the pangs of torture which gave slow consuming death; until we can follow the course of merciless wars, unsoftened by a touch of pity; until we know all the friends that have been made enemies, and the griefs which have in many cases made life a martyrdom; until, in fact, we have all laid bare before us which that day alone will reveal, which reveals all the hidden works of darkness.
II. I have so far shown that Creeds are the enemies of truth, and disqualifying the mind to seek truth aright, by resisting and embarrassing its free development, by ensnaring conscience and destroying charity; I have shown their failure in their proposed objects, and their instrumentality in producing all the evils they pretend to avert, and I proceed in the remaining observations, to establish the second charge. It is one, however, which does not need much elaborate argumentation. It will be easy to discover their tendency, if we consider who are commonly the framers of Creeds, in what periods they are formed, and in what temper they are usually imposed. They are framed by Ecclesiastics, and for the main purpose of supporting Ecclesiastical supremacy. If we take a few names connected with Creed-making, or with furnishing the materials out of which Creeds are made, we can easily see the spirit in which they are conceived, and of which they are the expression. We have then an Athanasius, an intriguing and ambitious Ecclesiastic, not only the fomenter of spiritual strife in the Church, but by political intermedling, the fomenter of civil strife in the Empire: a Cyril, the opponent of Nestorius, and the hater of Origen; the composer of mighty tomes of divinity, which with much the same kind since, were equally massive, and equally oblivious; a popular preacher at first, and afterwards a most orthodox patriarch; at once the persecutor of the philosophic Pagans, and the heretical Christians: a Tertullian, that exulted in the prospective damnation of heretics, with a zeal that almost rivals some modern Calvinistic writers: a Dominic, that has left the memory of a sanguinary monk, and the name of a saint; who has been often commemorated in the flames of many an auto-de-fe, and has had a durable monument to his glory in the dark piles of the inquisition: a Calvin, the stern Theological tyrant of Geneva, and the slayer of Servetus: a Knox, who pleaded for the extermination of the heretical after the manner of the Canaanites: a Cranmer, who caused so many, both of Catholics and Protestants, to be led to the stake by laws which changed with the fickleness of a tyrant’s will, who at last himself blenched before the fate that had been so often prepared for others: a Laud, the pillar of a star-chamber, and the downfall of a throne. Such are some of the men concerned in the formation of Creeds—men of stern natures, of haughty minds, and of boundless spiritual ambition. And as to the periods in which Creeds are commonly made, we know they are in times of religious strife, when different parties are labouring for the ascendancy, when no pains are spared to gain it, when no acts however shameful or dishonest are thought too bad to use, if they assist to humble an opponent, or secure a victory; when passion is heated and malignant, and the judgment totally unfit for impartiality. The history of Councils and Theological cabal is the shame of Christianity. Yet, formularies thus fabricated are to be made the everlasting standards of truth, and men are to be punished here and hereafter because they do not receive as Divine Truth these shapeless abortions of Churchmen’s folly. And the temper in which they are imposed is quite in conformity with that in which they are conceived—oppressive, exclusive, unjust. With what a vindictive and grasping spirit have not the Clergy of the English Church laid hold on all they could monopolize of privilege and power; with what resistance to the last they have endeavoured to shut out Dissenters from all the rights of Christians and of citizens. To this hour, had it been in the power of Ecclesiastics, the Test and Corporation Acts had never been repealed, or the Catholic disabilities removed. That which is their power gives sufficient evidence how they would act if they had exclusive possession of more. I mean the Universities, which they keep closed against Dissenters with such an obstinate and gothic bigotry. Nor does the injustice end here: there is a silent, social injustice, which Dissenters suffer; every one feels it, though it is not easily defined. The Churchman, on the strength of signing a Creed which he does not always believe, assumes to be of a higher religious caste than the Dissenter. It is not sufficient that Dissenters contribute from their worldly good to support a system which has no alliance with their conscience, but they must still further undergo the humiliation of being regarded as spiritual and social inferiors. Creeds are the allies of worldly policy, and ever have been since Christianity had the misfortune to become a state religion, for they are the main ties of that unnatural union of Christ’s religion to human governments—a union injurious to both, making the government unjust and partial, and religion selfish and secular. They are worldly in their objects, and they are worldly in their instruments and means. They are made the stepping stones to wealth, rank, and power; for if the Establishment did not give wealth, rank, and power, numbers of expectants would be moderate enough as to the Articles and Creeds. It would seem anomalous if universal history did not make it evident, that a body of men in all ages, pledged to denounce covetousness and earthly passions, pledged to preach humility after the example of a crucified master, pledged to curb by heavenly motives the abuse of power, should be of all men themselves the most insatiate in their desires after gain, the most haughty in their elevation to station, the severest and the most grinding in the exercise of prerogative, the least willing to mitigate it, and the most determined not to share it. In every period of the Church, the worldliness of Ecclesiastics, their ambition, and their love of lucre, have been proverbial, the scandal of Christians, and the scorn of unbelievers. The covetousness of the Priest, has, in all periods, been outstripped by his pride alone; and under every change in society, the Priesthood have taken care to secure themselves so that their lines should fall in the most pleasant places. The struggle is a worldly one from beginning to end, it is all of the world and the things of the world; if the prize were not of earth, we should hear far less noise amongst the combatants. The struggle is a worldly one, the policy is a worldly one, the means and ends are worldly. For are there any means so evil, that Creeds, if there is a purpose to be gained, will not tempt to, or assist with force, if there be the power to use it; with fraud, if there is a necessity that demands it? Creeds and doctrines have been maintained by frauds the most barefaced, by every artifice and by every falsehood. But Creeds are indirectly the cause of dire immorality; of immorality the worst in its kind, and the most evil in its effects: they corrupt motive in its very source, they weaken that sense of inward sincerity necessary to all that is true and noble in human character, they punish honesty, and they bribe to hypocrisy. How many minds have been robbed of their truthfulness, how many consciences have been despoiled of their integrity, how many hearts sacrificed their purity on the altar of interest and expediency, it would be a long and dark catalogue to enumerate. And it is truly painful to think, that this result is prepared for in the brightest and the best period of life. What must be the effect on a young man who, at the very threshold of his College studies, must profess to believe dogmas that he has scarcely read, that he has never examined; how much worse if he has examined and disbelieves them: if he be honest, he is excluded; the fear of his family starts before him; if he spares them, he ruins his soul; if he speaks the truth, he wrecks, perhaps, all his worldly fortunes beyond redemption. When he sees then the most solemn interests made mere matters of form, religious declarations the tests of honours and of office, the confessions of grave Ecclesiastics but a pompous and solemn hypocrisy, the zeal for worldly gain killing the ardour of religion, the zeal for religion itself only a means to get wealth and power; when, I say, he beholds all this, he can have no other feeling than that of unmitigated contempt for the hollow show of orthodoxy; he must observe that it is only an instrument, a mere make believe, theatrical acting; and the chances are many, that, disgusted with the whole affair, he transfers his disgust to religion in general, and makes shipwreck both of faith and virtue. Creeds are the support of Priestly intolerance; these are the statutes of the Priest. He does not, it is true, require you to believe them, but he requires you to say you believe them; say but that and your peace is made. These are his statutes on which he condemns, or on which he acquits; by which he tries your allegiance to sacerdotal authority, and by which, if he can, he will enforce it. Creeds are instruments of worldly and of spiritual despotism. The relation of the Priesthood to the civil power, is changeful and capricious; one time its slave, another time its tyrant. Cunning Kings have always had the sagacity to see that the safest course was to flatter and enrich the Priesthood, giving them the shield of the temporal power, and receiving in return the support of the whole spiritual armoury either from heaven or hell; and both, thus agreed and united, have been enabled to enslave the people with a most hopeless bondage. Let the Prince but heap good things on the Church, hate her enemies, curse her opponents, patronise her friends, the Church gratefully in return submits to him with most obsequious obedience. But reverse the case, and suppose the Prince not only ventures to do without the Priests, but attempts to curtail some of their good things, then no epithet is too strong to mark his iniquity; he is then profane, heretical, infidel: and if the superstition of the people give them the power, they compel him to bend before spiritual prowess, and from being their master, reduce him to their slave. The spirit of a Creed-enforcing Clergy is also seen in this fact, that they dislike the civil power more and more as that power becomes liberal and enlightened; they oppose it, and abuse it in exact proportion as it deserves to be admired and praised: if there be but a symptom that their monopoly is likely to be broken, and that others are about to share blessings which they had so long kept to themselves as to think only their own, immediately the Monarch must be prepared to meet the fierceness of their enmity. It is a combat to which many a Monarch has been unequal, and to which many a one has fallen a victim. Tyranny on their side, and slavery on that of others, is the congenial element in which most established Priesthoods move, breathe, and have their being; the men themselves are the victims of their circumstances, circumstances which the influence of Creeds have made; for Creeds are the parents of Priestcraft, and Priestcraft is identical with religious despotism.
Creeds are the allies of worldly policy; Creeds are the creatures of the Church, and the Church is the creature of the state. A national Church with Creeds for its tests, and legal support and legal penalties, can be nothing else. And the English Establishment is peculiarly in this condition; are not her Bishops appointed by the government? Are we not all aware that every Prelate is virtually the selected of the minister for the time being? Are we not aware that her canons and constitution, her catechisms and articles, her rubrics and her ceremonies, are enforced and established by acts of parliament? Are we not especially aware that her wealthy revenues are derived from compulsory exaction, and that payment is wrenched from Dissenters by the strong arm of the law?—Whence, but from this source, can the Clergy claim their wealth? By what other power could they enforce it? Every one, who is not a simpleton, knows that the vast possessions in which the Church rejoices, are not free will offerings, and that they have stronger security in the Courts of Exchequer and Chancery, than in the consciences of those who pay them. They were at first endowments to the Church of Rome; it is by act of parliament that they enrich those who maintain the Thirty-nine Articles, instead of praying for souls in Purgatory. The Monarch, in this country, is acknowledged the supreme head of the Church on earth; and though that Monarch may be a girl of eighteen, a boy of eleven, an infant, or an idiot, it is exclusion from the established ministry to deny it, and was once high treason. To be persuaded of this fact, we have only to recollect that the law of the land deposed the Romish Priesthood, and that the Act of Uniformity excluded from the service of the altar two thousand non-conforming Ministers. “The second Canon excommunicates every one who shall endeavour to limit or extenuate the King’s authority in Ecclesiastical cases, as it is settled by the laws of the kingdom; and declares he shall not be restored until he has recanted such impious errors.” “The thirty-seventh Canon obliges all persons, to their utmost, to keep and observe all and every one of the statutes and laws made for restoring to the crown the ancient jurisdiction it had over the Ecclesiastical state.” “The twelfth of King James’s Canons declares, that whoever shall affirm that it is lawful for the order either of Ministers or Laics, to make canons, decrees, or constitutions, in Ecclesiastical matters, without the King’s authority, and submits himself to be governed by them, is, ipso facto, excommunicated, and is not to be absolved before he has publicly repented and renounced these Anabaptistical errors.” Queen Anne, in an angry letter to the Archbishop, made the convocation aware that “she was resolved to maintain her supremacy as a fundamental part of the constitution of the Church of England.” “Archbishop Bancroft, when at the head of all the Clergy of England, delivered articles to King James for increasing the Ecclesiastical courts, and for annexing all Ecclesiastical as well as Civil power to the Crown. This may be seen at large in Lord Coke’s third institute.” On such grounds as these, men claim authority to impose Creeds on their fellow-citizens, to proclaim themselves the commissioned messengers of heaven, to assert religious supremacy and to arrogate a divine right; to bind and loose, to condemn and to forgive. I heard a person lately well remark, that if you gave him the incomes of the Clergy, he would give you the social status of those from whom they were taken, and vice versa. At ordination, they solemnly affirm that they are moved by the Holy Ghost; but if the extreme stipend were two or three hundred a year, this inspiration would seldom be found to fall on the son of a Duke, or the brother of an Earl.
But, whatever be the abuses which Creeds occasion, or whatever be the evils they inflict, it may still be said the Church has authority to decree them; and what she has authority to decree, she has authority to enforce. To one of the strongest arguments on this point lately renewed, and more strenuously urged than it had ever been before, I shall here devote a few general observations.
The claim to dictate and enforce Creeds by the Clergy of our Establishment, is founded on another claim which, by a party of divines, is recently asserted with a zeal not inferior to that of the Romish Priesthood; I allude to the doctrine of Apostolic succession. It is pretended that the national Clergy by deriving a mission from the immediate disciples of Christ, have authority, by a mystical communication of divine energy transmitted to them from age to age, an authority to decide what is, and what is not, the true faith. On this ground the high Churchmen consistently deny to all other Ministers the power to teach or to preach, and with one fell stroke, cut off the whole of the Dissenters from the spiritual body of Christ. On this ground we may ask several questions which must receive very unsatisfactory, or very contradictory answers. First—where, in the gospel history, is it proposed, as an essential qualification of a religious teacher, that he shall have an uninterrupted succession from the Apostles? Paul, in his letters to Timothy and Titus, enumerates many qualities which should distinguish the Christian Minister; but Apostolical succession is not once mentioned amongst the number. In the early age of Christianity, we have abundant evidence, both from Evangelical and Ecclesiastical history, that many preached the gospel who had no such authority as Churchmen call Ordination or Holy orders. Secondly—is it possible that the Apostles could have any successors? The Apostles had powers to which no Priest in his highest pride, will dare to lay claim; the Apostles healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead; they proved their mission by miracles, and this gave a peculiarity to their office which, it will be admitted, was not transferable. Besides, between the office of an Apostle and that of a Bishop, there is no identity, and few analogies. An Apostle was a missionary, a Bishop is a temporal and spiritual peer: there is no more resemblance of one to the other, than of his grace of Canterbury amidst the sumptuous luxury of his palace, to a Moravian preacher in the snows of Lapland; than of the Bishop of Exeter declaiming politics in the senate, to Felix Neff proclaiming Christ amidst the Alps. An Apostle was a poor man, a Bishop is a rich one; an Apostle was a pilgrim and wanderer, a Bishop is a mitred prince; an Apostle was the object of contumely and scorn to a world which was not worthy of him, a Bishop is the praised and the applauded by a world of which he is worthy; an Apostle was the servant of the humble and the lowly, a Bishop is the companion of the exalted and the great; an Apostle was the object of state persecution, a Bishop is the favourite of state patronage: by what paradoxical mistake, therefore, one office came to be derived from the other, it is a puzzle to conjecture. Thirdly—by what sort of evidence is the succession to be proved; what are the conditions which render it true and genuine? By what signs am I to know that the Ecclesiastical concatenation is one whole unbroken chain, without a single heretical flaw? By what signs am I to know that the sacerdotal mystery is rightly given, that there is no spuriousness, no falsehood, and no forgery? Is every peasant, who hears a sermon from his Parson, to be in possession of that historic lore, which shall enable him to determine, by erudite tracing of age to age, that orthodox hands have been laid on orthodox heads, and that he to whom he commits the salvation of his soul has all the conditions of a true priesthood? Fourthly—Whence does the Church of England derive her succession?—That she derives it from the Church of Rome, all authentic ecclesiastical history confirms. The establishment of the English Church can be clearly traced no further than the mission of Austin the Romish Monk; and it is well known, indeed, there is no attempt at denial, that all which have since been called papal errors, were then proclaimed and adopted. The preacher came with the pope’s sanction, the English received the pope’s religion, and acknowledged the pope’s authority. It is vain beyond all vanities to argue for succession in the English Establishment, and assert its independence on the Church of Rome. Its origin is from a Roman Missionary; it admits the validity of Roman ordination; its liturgies and rituals are but garbled or abridged translations from Roman formularies. Whence then is the independence? If unbroken succession be the absolute condition of ecclesiastical authority, then the English establishment must either admit the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, or acknowledge itself guilty of rebellion, and confess that it is wanting in one of the prime essentials of a Christian Church. But our Establishment accuses the Romish system of all manner of errors and of evils, of idolatry, of tyranny, of persecution, of doing dishonour to the supremacy of God, and of undermining the merits of Christ,—of being an awful and fatal apostacy: surely then the purity of that descent may well be doubted, which comes from so corrupt a source. The Church of Rome is called by all our declamatory divines the “mother of harlots,”—if that of England be one of her daughters, it is a hard task for a controversialist to defend the legitimacy of her birth or the purity of her character. Moreover, that is a queer kind of unbroken succession, which could in a few years reflect so many hues of doctrine, which turned from reign to reign like the weathercock before the wind, as royal caprice determined, from the bigoted half popery of the Eighth Henry to the whole Protestantism of the Sixth Edward; from the violent Catholic Mary, to the equally violent reformed Elizabeth; from a Cranmer to a Gardiner, and from a Gardiner to a Laud. It is not, therefore, grateful or graceful in our Establishment to heap odium on her mother, her from whom she must date her existence, to whom she traces her clergy, and from whom she has received her creed.