This simplicity of mind may be almost said to be born with us. It is the bias of nature on our young minds; and our earliest instructions, as well as the first efforts of reason, strengthen and confirm it. But the impression lasts not long. We are scarcely entered into life, when we begin to treat it as one of those childish things, which it is beneath the dignity of our riper age to be amused with. The passions put forth and grow luxuriant; and why, we say to ourselves, should this tender apprehension of evil check their growth, and restrain their activity? We are now in the season of pleasure; and can there be any hurt in taking a little of it, out of that narrow path, which our early prejudices have prescribed to us?
Still, as we advance in years, fresh objects arise, and other passions engage us in the pursuit of them. Wealth and honour, or what we improperly call our interests, have now an ascendant over us; and the passion for each is rarely gratified but at the expence of some virtue. And thus it comes to pass, that, though we set out in the world with a warm sense of truth and honour, experience by degrees refines us out of these principles; and our hearts, instead of retaining that infant purity, the grace and ornament of our nature, and which Christ so especially requires[124] in the professors of his religion, are all over stained with fraud, dissimulation, and disingenuity. We are even proud of the acquisition, and call it a knowledge of life: so dextrous are we in giving a good name to our worst qualities!
But effects follow their causes; and the vice we are now considering is not the less operative, nor the less hurtful, for the specious terms in which we dress it up, and present it to each other.
Of its malignity I shall give two or three instances; and, to fit them the better for use, they shall be taken from very different quarters; from the cabinets of the wise, and the schools of the learned, as well as from the vulgar haunts of careless and licentious men. We shall learn, perhaps, to reverence the Apostle’s advice, when we find that the neglect of it has DEGRADED RELIGION; RELAXED MORALITY, and POLLUTED COMMON LIFE.
To begin with an instance which shews how dangerous it is to depart from this simplicity concerning evil, in the great concerns of RELIGION.
I. When the priest, the sage, and the politician joined together in the days of heathenism to propagate among the people a superstition, which themselves condemned and detested; when they did their utmost to support a senseless, an immoral, an irreligious worship; when they strove, by every seducing artifice, to keep up that strong delusion, which God, in his just indignation, had sent among them, to believe a lye, (for such in its whole fabric and constitution was the old Pagan idolatry) when these men, who knew the truth, were yet contented to hold it in unrighteousness; they believed, no doubt, nay, they made no scruple to boast, that they had acted with consummate prudence; and that, in sacrificing the interests of religious truth (a small matter in their estimation) they had most effectually provided for the public interest. But what sentence does the Scripture pass on these men of ancient and renowned wisdom? Why this severe and mortifying one, That professing themselves wise, they became fools. And how well they deserved this censure, we understand from their own history; where we read, That Pagan idolatry, thus countenanced and supported, teemed with all the vices, of which our depraved nature is capable; and that the several contrivances of its wise advocates to keep an impious and barefaced falshood in credit, served only to produce, first, a SUSPICION, and in the end, an open and avowed CONTEMPT, of all Religion.
However, the ends of divine wisdom were greatly promoted by this sad experience of human folly. For Christianity, which made its appearance at this juncture, found it an easier task to establish itself on the ruins of a fallen, or falling superstition. Truth, which had for so long a time been anxiously kept out of sight, was now the more welcome to those, who wished her appearance. And the detection of those prophane arts, which had been so manifestly employed in that service, disposed the most perverse or careless the more easily to reconcile themselves to her.
And it would have been happy if the sense of this advantage, which the simplicity of truth obtained, in the first pages of the Gospel, over all the frauds of imposture, had prevented Christians from copying afterwards what they had so successfully contended against and exposed. Then had a great dishonour of the Christian name been avoided. But that truth, whose virtues are here magnified, must not be dissembled. The practice of lying for the cause of God, too soon revived, and became too frequent in the Christian world. It is in vain to think of diverting your minds, more especially, from that great part of it, which has long since forgotten to be simple concerning evil. But true wisdom will ever be justified of her children. These dishonest arts, which could not support a bad cause, have been injurious and disgraceful to the best. They have corrupted the ingenuous spirit of the Gospel, they have adulterated the sincere word of God; and, in both ways, have produced innumerable mischiefs, in civil and religious life. They have helped to bring into discredit or disuse a true Christian temper; and have unhappily created in the minds of many an undeserved prejudice against the Christian faith.
II. But if these men have dishonoured Religion, others have defiled MORALITY; yet both assume to themselves the title of wise men; and for that very reason, because they have departed as far as possible from the virtue of simplicity.
And here your indignation cannot but rise more especially against a set of men, who, applying the subtleties of school-philosophy to the plain science of Ethics, have made as free with the precepts of the Gospel, as some others had done with its doctrines. These men, under the respectable name of Casuists, have presumed to wind up, or let down the obligation of moral duties to what pitch they please. Such as have taken the STRICTER side, deserve but small thanks for perplexing the minds of good men with needless scruples; and discouraging the rest with those austerities, which our Religion no where commands, and the condition of human life will not admit. But for that looser sort, who by a thousand studied evasions, qualifications, and distinctions, dissolve the force of every moral precept; and, as the Pharisees of old, make the word of God of none effect by their impious glosses, I know not what term of reproach you will think bitter enough for them. The sacred writers thought it sufficient to deliver the rules of life in general terms[125]; leaving it, as they well might, to common sense and common honesty, to make the application of them to particular cases, as they chanced to arise. But this officious sophistry intervening and perverting the ingenuous sense of the mind, instructs us how to transgress them all with impunity, and even innocence. By the help of this magic, we may extract the sting of guilt from every known sin; and, if we have but wit enough, may be as wicked as we please with a safe conscience.