Owen wrote his defence of revelation in the year 1659, before the end of the Commonwealth;—at a still earlier period in 1655, when Oliver Cromwell was on the throne, before any of the authors now mentioned had published a word upon the subject, Richard Baxter produced his Unreasonableness of Infidelity. It is thrown into the form of the Spirit’s witness to the truth of Christianity, so far reminding us of John Owen’s later work. Baxter, however, assigns a much higher place to the evidential force of miracles than did his contemporary; and, instead of dwelling upon the Spirit’s influence, in and through the Holy Scriptures, he resolves the Spirit’s witness into the miraculous operations of the first age. Baxter proceeds to show that the evangelists did not deceive the world, but that they published undoubted truths,—and that we have received their writings without any considerable corruption. Having gone thus far in a path much trodden since, he strangely turns aside to insist upon the doctrine of everlasting punishment, and to explain the nature of the sin against the Holy Ghost. He then refers to tradition, to the creed, to church ordinances, to the succession of religion, to the preservation of MSS., to the writings of Divines, to the laws of the Roman Empire, and the like, as evidences of the history of the New Testament. He writes, in rather a vague and confused way, upon a subject afterwards elaborated by Lardner and Paley, but to him belongs the distinction of having first entered this new field. He grapples with the objection to miracles, but not as Campbell afterwards did. The ground he takes somewhat resembles that of Bishop Douglas, when the Bishop compares with the miracles of Scripture, those recorded by Augustine and other Fathers.
Baxter’s treatise did not satisfy its author; and, in 1667, he added Reasons for the Christian Religion. In this book, he treats of religion, both natural and supernatural, describing man as “a living wight having an active power, an understanding to guide it, and a will to command it,”—and pointing out the relations in which he stands to the Creator, as his Owner, his Governor, and his Benefactor. The difficulties of religious duty, a future life of retribution, the intrinsical evils and righteous penalties of sin, the present miserable state of the world, and the mercy of God, all come within the scope of Baxter’s observations, and are presented in the light of nature and of reason. In the second part the Author points out the need of Revelation, refers to the several religions existing in the world, illustrates the nature and “congruities” of Christianity, and proves the Divine mission of our Lord, by prophecy, by His character, by His miracles, and by His renovation of men. Confirmatory proofs, and collateral arguments follow, touching the historical grounds on which we believe in miracles, and unfolding certain curious considerations which tend to show that the world is not eternal.
The extrinsical and intrinsical difficulties of the Christian faith, altogether amounting to the number of forty, are resolved seriatim, and the refutation is extended over nearly one hundred pages, concluding with a long and devout address to the Deity—somewhat after the manner of Augustine’s confessions—in which the Puritan Presbyter pours out his soul in strains not less devout and eloquent than those of the patristic Bishop.
PURITAN WORKS ON EVIDENCES.
In 1672 Baxter returned to the subject, and published More Reasons for the Christian Religion and No Reason against it, in which he answers the De Veritate[516] of Lord Herbert, the first of our English deistical writers. The author dedicates his work to Sir Henry Herbert, a relative of the philosopher, and makes a graceful allusion to Sir Henry’s brother,—the “excellently holy, as well as learned and ingenious,” Mr. George Herbert. Baxter also wrote two treatises on the Immortality of man’s soul, the nature of it, and of other spirits. And also a most singular production, entitled, “The certainty of the world of spirits fully evinced by unquestionable histories of apparitions, and witchcraft’s operations, voices, &c.—proving the immortality of souls, the malice and misery of devils, and the damned, and the blessedness of the justified—written for the conviction of Sadducees and Infidels.” This treatise was not printed until the year 1691—a short time before Baxter’s death,—but its illustrations and arguments are akin to those which, forty years earlier, he had introduced into his incomparable Saint’s Everlasting Rest.
Baxter leads the van of the great army of our Christian Apologists as they have been infelicitously termed. The armour which the veteran wore was made after the fashion of the times—the weapons which he wielded, and which he had forged, are some of them not such as would be serviceable now, and all of them, as used by him, are unsuited to our methods of defence; his wisdom also, it must be admitted, was occasionally defective in his modes of attack, yet no small honour is due to the man who was the first to enter the lists in English literature against the infidelity of his day.
PURITAN THEOLOGY.
Turning to the doctrinal views of the Puritan school, I shall first notice certain points of resemblance between them and the opinions of Anglican Divines. The former, as well as the latter, insisted upon the doctrines of the Trinity, the Deity of our Lord, and the Divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit—nor could any disciple of the Nicene faith more firmly hold the eternal generation of the Son of God than did some of them.[517] Also, they firmly held the doctrine of original sin. At the same time, in common with the Low Church or Latitudinarian writers, they eschewed appeals to the Fathers as invested with any special authority, adopting more or less a spirit of free inquiry which gradually led some of them to relax a little their doctrinal strictness; and they went beyond their last-mentioned contemporaries in anti-sacerdotal and anti-sacramental views. They present marked characteristics of their own. They all appeal to the Scriptures, not only as the supreme, but as the exclusively accessible tribunal to which theological controversy could be brought; yet, it should be noticed in passing, that many of them studied patristic literature with great diligence, especially certain portions in harmony with their own opinions and tastes. There is also this peculiarity attaching to them as a class, that they do not, as Thorndike, work out a covenant of grace founded upon baptism,[518]—although they occasionally allude to that sacrament in a way which is surprising to some of their descendants; nor did they, as Jackson, as Heylyn, as Pearson, or as Barrow, follow the creeds of the Church in their theological inquiries. Baxter especially valued the Apostles’ Creed, but Puritan Divines did not adopt that, or any other of the ancient symbols, as a formula for the order of their own thoughts. Not that they broke away altogether from the habit of beginning with God the Great Cause, and descending to man His creature, subject, and fallen child; not that they adopted an à posteriori method, beginning with man as a degenerate and guilty being, and rising up to God whom man has offended, and who alone can be the Author of his salvation,—a method which is adopted by some theological thinkers of our own time. In commencing their systematic ideas of theology with God, and coming down to man, the Puritans followed the traditional order of studious thoughtfulness upon such high themes. Goodwin resolved all Divine knowledge into the knowledge of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; but still it was not to the Creed as a textual authority, it was not to its clauses, one by one, that he or any of his brethren referred, as direction posts along the sacred way. Their wont was to select some one principle as a centre, and then to cluster round it kindred theological ideas, the various parts being woven into one harmonious whole. In this respect, they differed both from Anglicans and from Latitudinarians, who were not accustomed to the use of such a graduated scale of doctrine, who did not attach to what are termed Evangelical truths, so much relative importance. Certainly, the themes which the Puritans most devoutly cherished, were not those to which either Anglicans or Latitudinarians chiefly turned. Puritan theology, because it is more experimental than Anglican theology,—because it deals more with the spiritual consciousness of Divine relations, with the position and acts of the human soul towards the Divine Lord and Redeemer,—is thought by some to be less dogmatic than Anglican theology; by which is meant, that it deals less with those Divine fundamental facts, which are distinctly recognized in the Creeds, and which, whether men believe them or not, are absolute and unchangeable realities. But this apprehension is a mistake. Puritanism, indeed, does insist much upon what is experimental and practical in theology; it looks at Divine persons, at their attributes and dispensations in reference to man’s wants, and character, and conduct; it treats revelation rather as a light to walk by, than as a light to look at,—which is wise—but it does not throw into a distance, it does not place on the remote horizon of its view the doctrines respecting Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, taught in the Scriptures, and upheld by the early Church.
PURITAN THEOLOGY.
The Puritans broke with the Anglicans—not upon the doctrines of the Creeds, but upon other points. They broke with them as Reformers had broken with Romanists on the question—What are the true means of grace? Clerical orders and sacraments, said the Church of Rome. Apostolical succession and sacraments, said the Anglican Church of England; but the Anglican Church of England controverted the doctrine of the Church of Rome as to the number, the nature, the form and the efficacy of the sacraments. The Puritans went much further than the Anglicans in this direction, and denied the Anglican views of the ministry and the sacraments. The Anglican watchwords were,—orders, sacraments, faith, grace. The Puritan watchwords were—the Bible, grace, truth, faith. Both parties believed that men are saved by grace through faith; but the one connected the salvation chiefly with sacraments, the other with truth.