From the beginning of the movement, some who took part in it, betrayed a want of sympathy in those strong Gospel convictions, which are of supreme importance, and in connection with it there were entertained, at an early period of its history, curious speculations respecting the pre-existence of souls, the salvation of the heathen, and the state of the body at the resurrection. Though some of these speculations were only fanciful, and others were capable of an orthodox construction, they certainly indicated a mental tendency very apt to resent the restraints of the Church’s faith, and to run into devious, if not dangerous paths. It was more than possible for this habit of rational and free inquiry to slip from under the control of its better principles, and to assume forms of even a disastrous kind.
LATITUDINARIANISM.
We cannot help recognizing in the movement, one wave amongst many then foaming and breaking over the wide ocean of human thought. Resistance to the strict Calvinistic theory appeared and increased in the French Protestant Church. In the academy of Saumur speculations were rife, undermining the doctrines of imputation and original sin, and pointing to the idea of universal grace.[490] A similar tendency existed in Switzerland, not so manifest but yet operative; for the Formula Consensus adopted in 1675 to exclude Divines, who were not sound in the faith of Geneva, met with violent opposition, and had to be softened down, and explained away. Against orthodox Lutheranism, as expounded in its symbolical books, there had appeared in Germany, in the first half of the century, a scheme in support of union and toleration resting on the basis of the Apostles’ Creed, such a proposal being pronounced by opponents to be Syncretism or a “Lying medley;” and in the second half of the same century may be traced the rise of Pietism under Spener, who, although an orthodox believer, exalted spiritual life above theological belief.[491] Even the Roman Catholic Church throbbed with inquisitive impulses perilous to the blind rule which it upheld. The theology of Jansenism, whilst, under one aspect, it appears as an assertion of orthodox Augustinianism,—under another aspect reveals itself as a protest against authority; and the sentiment of Quietism, with its spiritual ardour, tended to the depreciation of what is dogmatical. The Port Royalists and Madame Guyon were, in fact, falling into a current which they did not comprehend. Biblical criticism was looking the same way. It carried in its bosom elements both of faith and scepticism. Inquiries into the state of the sacred text alarmed many of the learned and the good; and Hermeneutical Canons were being followed, which, while soundly Protestant, imperilled ideas venerable for their antiquity.[492] Historical criticism exposed ancient falsehoods. The spuriousness of the Isidorian Decretals, for ages the stronghold of Papal despotism, was demonstrated by the Protestant Controversialist Blondel, and was acknowledged even by the Catholic Canonist Contius. The abandonment of the scholastic method of reasoning, the triumph of modern philosophy in the Universities of Europe, the formation of a fresh secular literature, and the critical study of history in general, with the explosion of old fables and superstitions, were all signs of the times, conveying the impression that a new epoch was at hand in the history of human intelligence.
Philosophy abroad placed itself at the head of these tendencies. Even Descartes, the Christian, in seeking a basis for positive belief, started with a doubt; Spinoza, the Jew, his disciple in some respects, found his goal in pantheism.[493] The Malmesbury philosopher, Hobbes, and, still earlier, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in their free-thinking speculations, long before any great movement took place at Cambridge, not only laid religion open to the inroads of infidelity, but aided and abetted attacks upon its citadel: Herbert, by denying the necessity of a Scripture revelation, Hobbes by representing Christianity as resting on a foundation, which no reasonable man can tolerate for a moment. Thus widely, for good and for evil, free thought was at work in Europe. Some saw in it a rising storm, which would tear every vessel from its moorings; others believed it to be the breaking up of a winter’s frost, and the melting down of icebergs, which had long chilled the whole intellectual atmosphere. For my own part, I am convinced that there was both evil and good in all this activity, of which the effect may be traced in the history of intellectual inquiry ever since. It is felt in the controversies of the present day; and he is the wise man who strives to distinguish between the precious and the vile, to separate the one from the other, and in the noble service of truth to abstain from any alliance with error.
MILTON’S OPINIONS.
In this notice of the progress of free inquiry one great thinker should be mentioned, whose fame as a poet has so eclipsed the reputation of his genius in other respects, that he is rarely remembered in the character of a theologian, although he really was one. In that capacity he combined, perhaps, beyond any man of his age, peculiarities drawn from two schools, with neither of which could he be identified. In the very title of John Milton’s Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone, there is a Puritan-like renunciation of the Anglican doctrine of patristic authority: his inquiry touches only what the Bible teaches, and he professes, as many others have done, without allowing for educational and constitutional influences, to draw all his conclusions immediately and impartially from Holy Writ. He might free himself from Church trammels of all kinds; nevertheless even he could not deliver his mind from all predilections and prejudgments; and when in his old age he sat down to read the Bible, Milton, no more than other men, could bring to it a tabula rasa ready to receive nothing but unbiassed impressions from the Divine oracles.
The Latitudinarianism of Milton—how far influenced by the spirit of free thought existing at Cambridge I cannot say—appears in his doctrine of the Son of God; yet it modestly presents itself, and it by no means reaches a Socinian conclusion. In contradiction to the title of his Treatise he approaches this mysterious subject, through the medium of certain metaphysical postulates, and teaches that the Son, produced by generation, is neither co-eternal, nor co-essential, and that His existence “was no less owing to the decree and will of the Father, than His priesthood or kingly power, or His resuscitation from the dead.” Milton overlooks, or virtually denies, the distinction in the Nicene Creed, “begotten and not made;” when he says, “nothing can be more evident than that God, of His own will, created or generated, or produced the Son before all things;” and again, whilst professing to discard reason in such matters, and to follow the doctrine of Holy Scripture exclusively, he proceeds to insist metaphysically upon the unity of God, and to confine that unity to the nature of the Father. According to this idea, he interprets a number of texts, respecting the union of Christ with the Father, as meaning no more than that the Father and the Son are one in purpose. Milton examines, seriatim, the texts adduced in proof of the absolute Divinity of the Redeemer, and sets them aside one by one, with a calmness only now and then ruffled by a slight breeze of anger—in striking contrast with the Neptune-like storms of controversy which he raises in most of his polemical works. The negative side of his theory of the nature of the Son is sufficiently clear; not so the positive side. He is not a Trinitarian. He is not a Socinian. Is he an Arian? If so, he belongs to the class nearest to orthodoxy, for all which he denies is the co-eternity, and the co-existence of the Son, whilst he expressly attributes to Him, Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, and universal Authority, as well as Divine works, and Divine honours. His Editor, Dr. Sumner, remarks, that Milton ascribes to the Son as high a share of Divinity as was compatible with the denial of his self-existence, and eternal generation, his co-equality, and co-essentiality with the Father.[494]
Milton devotes a chapter to the doctrine of predestination, which he defines as being not particular but universal:—none are predestinated or elected irrespectively of character (e.g., Peter is not elected as Peter, or John as John, but inasmuch as they are believers, and continue in their belief); and thus, he says, the general decree of election becomes personally applicable to each particular believer, and is ratified to all who remain steadfast in the faith.
MILTON’S OPINIONS.
Milton’s sympathy with Puritanism appears in his views of redemption, regeneration, repentance, justification, and adoption. In his chapter on saving faith he describes it as a full persuasion produced in us through the gift of God, whereby we believe, on the sole authority of the promise itself, that all things are ours, whatsoever he has promised us in Christ, and especially the grace of eternal life.[495]