III. In disputing against creeds, and churches which are the creatures of creeds, I do not deny that religion most genuine and pure, may exist in many forms—and may be as fervent amongst the adherents of Establishments as amongst the most zealous of dissenting churches. Religion, I consider, a necessity of the human heart; it may grovel in the dust or aspire to the skies—it may appeal to our fears or to our hopes—it may create hideous images or rejoice in beautiful picturings; it may decorate the altar with flowers, or bathe it in blood; but still it belongs to us, is of us, and that of which we cannot, if we would, divest ourselves. While man has within his soul admiration of greatness and power, unsatisfied desires and perishing pleasures; while he has many griefs and many tears; while there are those living whom he loves, and those departed whom he mourns; while his existence is thus bound to the past and to the future; while he has speculations that seek but find no limit, musings on his own and universal destiny,—he must have religion to destroy these, and you destroy religion, but you also destroy humanity. If the strongest excitements and the deepest contrasts could fill and satisfy the human soul, our age and country supply them; whatever would fix us to the material and the present we have in all possible varieties, both in their glory and their grossness. If the spirit is to be seen anxious with poverty we have but a few steps to walk from rejoicing splendour to pining misery. Civilization is amongst us with all its luxuries and with all its woes. Thousands toil for daily bread, and thousands more languish for daily pleasures. Yet nobler things have we than these. Our science, our philosophy, and our literature, are rich beyond expression. Our mechanism is akin to magic, and our industry is like the regularity of nature; the stir of many interests is abroad, and the struggle of many principles. The power of fresh life is in the social heart, and the courage of free speech upon the lips. The tide of thought and liberty moves onward with majestic swell, and no one can say “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be staid.” Whatever there be in wealth, in power, in glory, in ambition, that desires triumphant sway and secures all it desires; whatever there be in speculation of boundless enterprize or capacity of gigantic achievement, our times may boast, yet they remove not the need of religion, but the religion which the heart demands is not what creeds or churches can give either to a nation or an individual.
Creeds are the allies of establishments, and establishments are the friends of the world. Their whole history and tendency are evidence of this. But, far be it from me to say that this has no qualification. All old institutions more or less knit themselves into popular veneration, the religious as well as others. We cannot look back upon the church of our country, even in its Romish form, without some of the reverence with which our nature compels us to gaze on fallen greatness; and now that the mitre is worn by other heads, and the crosier passed into other hands, now that its good deeds reveal themselves in the calm of the past, we can regard its evil ones more in sorrow than in anger. Zealots, who would eternalize the darkest creeds that superstition ever shaped, who would build up the throne of proudest priesthood, declaim against Popery in the most popish spirit: but while national feelings have any power, while a single venerable structure stands upon our soil in which we hear the voices of our ancestors, and from which a thousand years look down upon us, the Roman church, with all its errors, is linked by sacred memories to our history. It laid the foundation of our civilized existence; it grew with our growth and it strengthened with our strength. When our country was yet divided amongst barbarian kings, the monk of Rome lifted up the cross of Christ, and the heart of the savage was subdued to the Prince of Peace. It accompanied our national independence, it trained our fathers’ spirits when living, and now they are dead it shelters their bones. Through all historic changes, and through most sanguinary struggles, it preserved alive the spirit of our common Christianity.
Within it arose many of our greatest men; it nurtured many of our purest and holiest characters; it reared the altar at which an Anselm ministered and before which an Alfred prayed. But wealth commonly brings worldliness, and as it is with laymen, so is it with ecclesiastics. The church was fed and fostered by Saxon piety, and when the conquest gave the island new masters it suffered nothing by the change. The progress of aggrandizement went forward with a quicker pace and a more grasping hand. Spiritual authority allied itself more firmly to temporal majesty; celestial vocation would have feudal titles; the coil would be transformed to the coronet; the humble robe to the princely purple; the voice of humility swelled into absolute command, monks took their places above barons, and the primate sat only below the throne.
But under that pomp and ostentation, we say not that all was hollow—that there was not much of genuine piety far beyond the reach of history. In the cells of these gorgeous abbeys there were many who did in reality leave the world and its wickedness behind them. There were some who wept and prayed in no feigned prostration, who worshipped, it may be with superstition, but still with sensibility and an upright conscience. In that stream of melody which pealed at solemn midnight through many a dome that now lies mouldering, there were some hallelujahs which reached the throne of God and mingled with the hymn of angels. The pavements over which we tread in many a secluded ruin may have been worn by kneeling martyrs that now sleep in peace beneath them: within these massive buildings so grey and time-wrecked, how often might be found at the evening hour, when the dim religious light melted through the painted windows, and the vesper song softened through the lofty vaults, scattered worshippers who were feeding their immortal life: how frequently within those temples may the serf in faith and prayer have forgotten his bonds, and only remembered that he was the brother of Jesus, and the son of God. And amongst that priesthood so often stigmatized unjustly by indiscriminate bigotry, many were worthy of their office; they were the poor man’s friends when poverty was hopeless; they were his brethren when to the worldly powers poverty was slavery; they were his supporters and consolers when he had many to oppress and few to cheer him; they were with him in joy and sorrow, in sickness and death, when his joy and sorrow, his sickness and death, were to the mass of his worldly superiors, a matter of contemptible indifference. In the times to which I refer, the Church was a most excellent antagonist against political assumption, a barrier against despotism, a shield for the people against the crown; but now it is an ally of the crown only when the crown is against the people: in either, the Crown and the Church struggle may have been only for supremacy, but whatever were their respective motives, the people were the gainers; the clergy might make them slaves for another world, but they saved them from being slaves in this. The power of the priest could curb the ambition of the ruler; and, in the ruler himself, the will of the monarch was held in check by the conscience of the devotee. Ecclesiastical institutions were then not wholly ineffective, but now the religious and social interests of man are better secured than by any struggle between the superstitious fears of the Prince, and the spiritual threatenings of the Priest. From these social changes, Church Establishments outliving the slaveries which they meliorated, become inflictors of slavery in return, and hang as millstones and dead weights on every effort for freedom and advancement. But if we are to have authority on conscience at all in the form of institutions, I would rather it should be absolute and unchangeable, uniform, solemn, and imposing; and if there is to be submission, I prefer it should be to that which is believed to be stedfast and infallible; for then, if we had not the freedom of thought, we might at least have the peace of piety; if we had not the independence of men, we might hope for the meekness of children.
We cannot say that the English Church in its Protestant state has lost all claims to traditional veneration. We may, however, safely assert, that in becoming protestant, it has not become less earthly, and that if transformed in anything, it is not from the Spirit of the world. We see very clearly, that it is not in any way distinguished for free or progressive amendment; and among the Reformed of European churches it is most the creature of the world, most the lover of the world, most dependent on the world, both in its origin and its continuance.
On the continent it commenced with the ecclesiastical powers; in ours it commenced with the civil; and the church in this country adopted the new doctrine rather as a matter of command than as a matter of conscience. Whatever have been the theological vibrations of the Establishment, or whatever its theological inconsistencies, we deny not that it has had within it right noble spirits, and that it has them still, and while we condemn such systems, we do not so much condemn, as lament the fine natures which they have misdirected. Numbers we are aware are now in its ranks, which are the ornaments of life and to whom the world is in many ways indebted; and if it were not so, there are those gone by who would fully dignify her. Amongst her members we recognise many of the great lights both of our nation and our nature; a Jeremy Taylor of rich eloquence and rare sweetness of spirit; a Barrow with a mind as lofty as it was simple and an oratory as prodigal in thought as it was massive in logic; a Chillingworth, the prince of reasoners, who never allowed his polemics to ruffle his meekness, to warp his candour, or to deaden his charity; a Berkeley, whose genius was only inferior to his sanctity, and whose subtle philosophy never disturbed the simplicity of his truly child-like nature; a Bedel, who was humble and generous when it was the fashion to oppress, who though the bishop of a foreign faith in the midst of a people whom his nation had aggrieved, made his way to their hearts, and was the object of their blessings; and in our own day there has been the good and sainted Heber, who combined piety with humanity, and who adorned practical virtue with all the beauty of the poet and the Christian.
Names like these might throw a lustre over any system; it is only to be regretted that any system has not been more fruitful in their production. In any system, we cannot expect that such men should be abundant, but observation compels us to confess that the Church has taken more pride in the reputation of her heroes, than in resembling them. If we are to judge results by her possessions and opportunities compared with her moral or spiritual achievements, her works of worldliness far surpass her works of godliness. Her earthly means have been unbounded, but where are her heavenly trophies? She has nothing in comparison to her opportunities to produce in justification of her moral and national stewardship. Wealth she has had even to fulness. Her lines have fallen in pleasant places; hers have been the green pastures and hers the still waters; the tenth of the nation’s produce has been reserved for her altars. Political power has likewise been hers. Her mitred ministers are amongst the state’s chief senators. Whether it be seemly or not, that preachers of the crucified should sit in courts of proud and worldly legislation, we here forbear to discuss; but once there, the spirit of the crucified, and of the citizen sanctified by that spirit, might have been nobly manifested; even there, Ministers of Christ might have done a glorious work. Men whose lives had been disciplined by severe and various study; men of chastened passions and solemn meditation; men who had gone through the humanizing duties of pastoral gradation from the village pulpit to the episcopal throne, might be thought a happy counterpoise to the hoary worldliness or youthful rashness of mere temporal Peers; they would rebuke, we might suppose, the assumptions of aristocracy, and be as the voice of God for the rights of the poor. Men who proclaimed that gospel which is full of mercy and compassion, would resist oppression to the last, and denounce sanguinary laws with the whole force of their authority; men who were followers of peace would arrest the blood-hand of war, and quell with all gentle suasion the horrid spirit of destruction; men appointed to be teachers of the ignorant, and lights to the blind, would be the friends of universal instruction; men who were the Priests of that God before whom all are equal, the Apostles of that Jesus who lived and died for all, would be ever the friends of liberty and brotherhood. But, I may ask, when have the Bishops, as a body, not been against the people, and with the wealthy and the noble? When have they been the first to come forward to denounce long existing, tolerated, but oppressive, abuses? When have they raised their voice, as Ministers of God, against Ministers of the Crown, to avert the horrid curse of war? When have they given their influence for a free and generous education, which should be full and boundless as the heart of charity? When, rather, have they not thrown their most inveterate opposition against it? When is it that a single effort of national liberty or religious has met their cordial support? To the moment of despair they stood against the Catholic and the Dissenter, to the last hour they will also resist the Jew. The defender of the wronged, the pleader for the weak, the opponent of sanctified prejudices, the enthusiast for human reforms, the advocate for peace, the apostle of general education, have never in their most hopeless hour raised their eyes towards the bench of Bishops with any expectations of support.
With wealth, with influence, with law, and with scholarship, the Church has done, and is doing no great spiritual work for her country, or for mankind, proportioned to her means. She makes a show of upholding her Creeds, but to many, even of her own members, they are but empty sounds or convenient mockeries. When we look for any permanent impression on the popular mind, we have yet to ask concerning the Church, what has she done? Has she Christianized any great tracts of Heathenism? The English Establishment, as a Church, has exhibited no missionary zeal, and can show no missionary triumphs. Individuals and bodies that belong to her communion, have undoubtedly been active in the great movements that distinguish modern times, but the impulse has been from outside the Church, and not from within it—from the zeal of the Sectaries, and not from the Creeds or Constitution of the Church. On the contrary, of those who never owned the Establishment, you might find proofs of Missionary zeal from Indus to the Pole, and from Andes to the Alps. But has she protestantized our own empire? Consult the writings of Doctor Baines, or those of Doctor Wiseman; nay, let the lamentations of Reformation Society itself, ever wailing over the increase of Popery, give the answer; look through the villages and the glens of England, where Roman Catholic Chapels are starting up as from the earth, and you will find the answer fully justified. Ask it in the cities and the mountains of Ireland, the shout of millions will proclaim what Established Protestantism has done with all her Creeds and Clergy after centuries of existence, and a countless expenditure. Three hundred years have nearly expired since the reformed standard has been planted on that soil, and after all the spoliation and persecution to which the country has been subjected, after all the blood and sorrow that have been expended in the work of compulsory proselytism, Popery has grown stronger, and Protestantism is expiring. The people pay with repugnance a priesthood in whom they have not faith, but no power can force them to the worship in which they have no heart, and they prefer to be taxed rather than be taught. They are repelled further and further from that system which commenced in a blunder, and has been continued by rapacity, which reverses the precepts of Christ, using the sword where he commands it to be sheathed—which reverses the course of the olden Israelites finding a land of milk and honey, but leaving it a wilderness, having the pillar of fire always before, and the pillar of cloud ever behind; the one kept in flame by hatred and strife, and the other continually dark with maledictions and tears. But admitting the difficulties of proselytism, examine the moral state of those over whom the Church has had undivided control—those with whom there has been least of foreign interference, and I may appeal to her most strenuous defenders, whether she has not allowed thousands of human souls to grow up around her for whom she provided no shelter, whose hearts and wants she made no effort to reach: they lived without her teaching, they mourned without her solace, they sickened without her prayer, and until she received the fees for their burial, she was ignorant of their existence. Yet, after all, by many she has been called “The poor man’s Church.” It is true that for some years past, and especially at present, there has been a species of excitement and activity in the church: but so far as these have moral life in them, so far as they concern the spiritual interests of the people, whence did they originate? Where were they before John Wesley and Whitfield raised their soul-piercing cries, and awoke the sense of immortality that was dormant in the minds of besotted multitudes? Did the church join with these men, or rather did it not persecute, calumniate, expel them—say and do all manner of evil against them? What at the present hour is the activity of the church? Much, it may be, is sincere and conscientious, but greatly more an emulation with dissenters in which the pregnant elements are jealousy and fear. Much, it may be, of disinterested action for the souls of men, but more it is to be feared for the order and the church. Great excitement there is in the Establishment, but little of calm and healthy action—a mighty stir of polemics that make few converts, and of societies that beat the air. The church has neither union within, nor peace without. Her hand is against all, and the hands of all are against her. She holds forth creeds as the symbols of unity, and yet within her own courts are all sorts of divisions, a chaos of voices that make her the very Babel of theology; here is one preaching the grace of Palagius, and there another that of Augustine; one arguing for the hell of Calvin, and another all but teaching the purgatory of the pope: one a Boanerges for the Bible, and another an apostle for tradition; with one, Rome is the mother of abominations, and with another she is the mistress of churches. Amidst the din, then, of polemics, politics, and theological contradictions, of inward confusion and outward strifes, how are we to catch the voice of moral power and of gospel truth? The truth must be told, there is no grand or concentrative energy of any sort in the church; neither faith nor freedom, neither bold speculation nor a mighty spiritual zeal; there is no room even for a gigantic fanaticism or a picturesque superstition; upon the whole the strife is of this world, and for it; a strife for wealth or place, in which the spiritual is swallowed in the earthly. With all her riches and honours; with all her show of dignities and pride of prelacy, she is yet poor in enlightened esteem, poorer still in general affection; without authority to sway the superstitious or liberality to attach the thinking, she has neither the submission of faith nor the approbation of reason. She has, considering her position and means, fulfilled no great Christian or Protestant mission; is she then in a humbler sphere, the friend of general education? Passing over the Universities, which with a heavy hand she has bolted against dissenters, is she favourable to the instruction of the youthful poor? No: except in connection with her ecclesiastical supremacy. Until recently she had no zeal whatever in the matter: but other parties becoming active, under the broad gaze of public observation, both her fears and her interest were awakened. Whilst others were toiling, she for very shame could not sit wholly idle, and she therefore adopted education, so far as it was an instrument to counteract her rivals or to preserve her authority. But to the last and to the death, she is the sworn enemy to any system of popular instruction which is comprehensive, liberal, and unsectarian. In this great country, where, thanks to law and not to creeds, each man may hold and speak his own opinion, she meets with defiance and resistance every movement towards a large and equal distribution of knowledge, for lack of which the people are literally perishing. In a country like this where sects are so many and so various, and where each has an equal claim on the blessings of civilized institutions, with a bigotry equalled only by its injustice, she would usurp the monopoly of national instruction. This is in the true spirit of creeds, and however repugnant to Christian equity is fully consistent with worldly policy.
When the church of England seceded from that of Rome, if she cut off some theological errors, she showed no such disposition respecting her earthly riches. It cannot be doubted that in the Reformed Establishment, a greed of lucre remained as deep as was ever in the Romish, less ideal in its form, and more selfish in its spirit. In our times men absorb the interests of their church in the interests of themselves, in olden times men lost themselves in the glory of their church; in that was centered every thing, even passion itself, as one great and mighty sentiment. From this it was arose the solemn structure of universal empire; from this sprung forth the vision of a glory that was to fill the universe. It was this called up a power before which monarchs bowed, which armed itself with the terrors of hell and crowned itself with the stars of heaven. It was this which gave genius the sublimity of religious inspiration, and which has left for a colder age the forms of beauty to which faith gave life; it was this which could speak to the world as to single audience with an eloquence that must live while language has existence. It may be called fanaticism and ambition, but it is a fanaticism and an ambition that had something unworldly to dignify them. The reformed church had preserved the creeds of the ancient one, but not its creativeness; it has not given conscience freedom, but it has stripped faith of poetry. Even the ceremonies and forms which it has preserved are without energy and inspiration—the mere mimicries of superstition unfraught with a single breath of its enthusiasm. Writings of no common eloquence have eulogized the cathedral service; it deserves all that can be said of it, and so do the temples themselves; no one can hear the one when it receives right expression without solemn emotion, and no one can behold the antique majesty of the other, but in silent veneration. The poetry of these things is beautiful, but what is the reality? A sad contrast—in general, a cold and heartless utterance of the service, unoccupied pews, a few listless hearers, feeble choirs, that seem rather to sing the requiem than the triumph of the church, ostentation without grandeur, and formality without grace. Here, as in every other department, we find the dominant spirit of worldliness. Though this service depends for much of its impression on ritual beauty, yet the higher clergy continually encroach on the revenues and means of sustaining it. “When we see,” says Dr. Wiseman, “the cathedral service shrunk into the choir originally designed for the private daily worship of God’s special ministers, or when we find the entire congregation scattered over a small portion of the repaired chancel, while the rest of the edifice is a majestic ruin, as I but lately witnessed, assuredly one must be more prone to weep than to exult at the change which has taken place, since these stately fabricks were erected.” I would not have the world hurled back into Popery; but if we are to have Romish creeds, rather than have them in repulsive nakedness, give them to us covered and adorned with the grace of Romish ceremonies; if we are to resign our liberty, give us at least grandeur and pageantry to amuse our slavery.
But creeds exist otherwise than in formal expression. A creed is the standard of a church, it may be the spirit of a sect. And from the antagonistic aspect which each sect bears to another, and the centralized organization which it has within itself, this spirit may have a fierce and powerful operation. The Church-creed is defined; the Sect-creed is vague, and may depend for interpretation on narrow and bitter prejudice: the Church-creed may possibly lie dormant, but there is no escape from the wakeful vigilance of a religious surveillance. What some sects do by enlarged and rigid co-operation, others effect by compact and separate unions. The smallness of the assemblies, or the gradations of dependency, puts one individual within the immediate ken of another, and thus, if by chance a free thought should be born, there is little hope that it shall live. Take methodism as an illustration; so gigantic and yet so minute: with its band-meetings, its class-meetings, its district assemblies, and its general conference—leaving not a spot where a heretic could hide himself. In such a system there is neither room nor a name for liberty, from the preacher who is under the brow of his conference to the member who lives in the eye of his class-leader. It is not that such a system creates a terror of expression, from the first it initiates a slavish intellect—and tends to all the vices of rancour, bigotry, hypocrisy, and subserviency, to which such an intellect is allied.