How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh of God only?
It has been thought unfair to charge unbelief, simply and indiscriminately, on the grosser passions. The observation, I believe, is just: and yet it may be true, notwithstanding, that unbelief is always owing to some or other of the passions. The evidences of revealed religion are so numerous, and upon the whole so convincing, that one cannot easily conceive how a reasonable man should reject them all, without the intervention of some secret prejudice, or predominant affection.
Of these prejudices and affections, one of the commonest, and the most seducing of any to the better sort of unbelievers, is that irregular love of praise and reputation, which our Lord condemns in the text—How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?
The question, we may observe, is so expressed, as if we could not receive honour from one another, and believe, at the same time; as if there was a physical, at least a moral impossibility, that these two things should subsist together. And we shall find, perhaps, the expression no stronger than the occasion required, if, besides other considerations, we attend to the following; which shew how inconsistent a true practical faith in the Gospel is with the sollicitous and undistinguishing pursuit of human glory.
For, I. The Gospel delivers many of its doctrines as inscrutable, and silences the busy curiosity of our understandings about them: but the honour of men is frequently obtained by indulging this curiosity, and pushing the researches of reason into those forbidden quarters.
II. The Gospel demands an humble and reverential awe in the discussion of all its doctrines; such of them, I mean, as it leaves most free to human inquiry: but this turn of mind is contrary to that high courage and daring intrepidity, which the world expects in those who are candidates for its honour.
III. The Gospel prescribes an uniform and unqualified assent to whatever it declares of divine things, whether we can or cannot apprehend the reason of such declaration: but this submission to authority, the world is ready to call ill-faith, and to consider the defiance of it, as a mark of superior honesty and virtue.
Thus we see, that WIT, COURAGE, and PROBITY, the three great qualities we most respect in ourselves, and for which we receive the highest honour from each other, appear many times to the world with less advantage in the Christian, than the unbeliever. Not, that Christianity strips us of these virtues: on the other hand, it requires and promotes them all, in the proper sense of the words; and they may really subsist in a higher degree in the believer, than any other: but they will often seem to be more triumphantly displayed by those who give themselves leave to disbelieve; and the prospect of honour, which that opinion opens to such men, is one of the commonest sources from which they derive their infidelity.
But to make good this charge against the unbelieving world, and to lay open the mysteries of that insidious self-love, which prompts them to aspire to fame, by the means of infidelity, it will be necessary to resume the THREE TOPICS before mentioned, and to enlarge something upon each of them.
I. First, then, I say, That He, who at all adventures resolves to obtain the honour of men, cannot believe, because the unrestrained exercise of his WIT, by which he would acquire that honour, is inconsistent with the genius and principles of our religion.