II. His other assertion—That the natural man receiveth not the things of God, i. e. is indisposed to receive them—is more interesting to us, and will require a larger illustration. His reason for this assertion is, For they are foolishness unto him. The reason is very general, and therefore obscure: for you ask how or whence is it, that those things are foolishness unto him?
I answer then, 1. because, he could not discover them. It is argument enough, many times, with the natural man, to reject any doctrine, which his own sagacity was unable to find out. For, taking for granted the all-sufficiency of human reason, and that what is knowable of divine things is within the reach of his own faculties, he concludes at once that such doctrines as he could not have discovered are therefore false. If it be only in matters of human science, a discovery, which very much transcends the abilities of common inquirers, is for that reason ill-received and slighted by many persons. Much more may we suppose this prejudice to be entertained against discoveries which no human abilities whatever could possibly have made.
But 2. a further reason why such things are thought foolish by the natural man is, because they are widely different from his notions and apprehensions. He was not only unable to invent them himself; but, when proposed to him, he cannot see how they should merit his regard, being so little suited, as they are, to the previous conclusions of his own understanding. Now this prejudice is of great extent; and is almost natural to the pride of human reason.
For, supposing a divine Revelation to be given at all, men form to themselves certain notions of what it must needs be; and finding that it does not correspond to those notions, they receive it not, i. e. they conclude it to be unreasonable.
Thus, one man imagines that the Gospel could be only a republication of the law of nature. He finds it is much more; and therefore, without further search, infers its falshood. Another man admits that the Gospel might be an extraordinary scheme for the advancement of human virtue and happiness: but then he presumes that these ends could only, or would best, be answered by a complete system of moral truths, and by making the future happiness of man depend upon moral practice only. He understands that the Gospel proposes to reform mankind by faith, and holds out its rewards only to such as are actuated by that principle. He rejects then a scheme of religion which so little accords to his expectations. A third person allows that faith may be the proper object of reward, but a faith in God only: to his surprize he perceives that this faith is required to be in Jesus, the son of God indeed, but the son of man too, and in him crucified; that the Gospel supposes mankind to have been under the curse of mortality, and to be redeemed from it only in virtue of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This strange dispensation is nothing like that which he should have planned himself: it is therefore disbelieved by him.
Thus it appears how the natural man is disposed to think unfavourably of the Gospel, because its doctrines are not such as he should previously have expected. But another and more fatal prejudice misleads him. For
3. The things of the spirit seem foolishness to the natural man, because on the strictest inquiry he cannot perhaps find out the reasons of them; and must admit them, many times, upon trust, as we say, or, in the language of Scripture, on a principle of faith only. This experienced inability to search the deep things of God hurts his pride most of all. That the divine counsels are beyond his discovery, may be true; that they should be besides his first hasty expectations, may be digested: but that, when discovered and considered, they should yet elude his grasp, and not submit to be comprehended by his utmost capacity, this disgrace is insupportable to him. Yet such are the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Revelation. “The forfeiture of life and immortality, for all mankind, in consequence of one man’s disobedience,” implies a degree of rigour in the divine justice, of which he cannot understand the reason. On the other hand, “The restoration of that lost inheritance by the transcendent humiliation of the Son of God,” is an abyss of mercy which he can still less fathom. These two principles, on which the whole scheme of the Gospel turns, are not to be scanned by human wisdom, and must be admitted on the authority of the Revelation only. The natural man finds his reason so much discountenanced and abased by its fruitless efforts to penetrate these mysteries, that he has no disposition to receive, nay, he thinks the honour of his understanding concerned in rejecting, such doctrines.
4. The fourth and last reason I shall mention (and but in one word) for the natural man’s unfavourable sentiments of revealed religion, is, That the wisdom of this scheme, so far as it may be apprehended by us, can only appear from considering the harmony of its several parts, or, as St. Paul expresses it, by comparing spiritual things with spiritual[36]; a work of time and labour, which he is by no means forward to undertake. So that, as, in the former instances, his indisposition arose from the pride of reason, it here springs from its laziness and inapplication.
I omit other considerations, which indispose men for the reception of the Gospel; such I mean as arise from the perversity of the human will; because I confine myself at present to those only which respect the exercise of human Reason. Now it has been shewn, that this faculty, as it is commonly employed by those who pride themselves most in it, is unpropitious to Revelation—because, it cares not to admit what it could not discover—because, it willingly disbelieves what it did not expect—because, it is given to reject what it cannot at all, or cannot, at least, without much pains, comprehend. So good reason had the Apostle for asserting, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God!
Very much of what his been here observed of Unbelief, might be applied to what is so prevalent in our days, and is termed Socinianism: which, though it do not disown altogether the authority of revealed religion, yet takes leave to reduce it to a small matter, and to explain away its peculiar doctrines, by a forced and irreverend interpretation of Scripture. So that the difference is only this: the unbeliever rejects revelation in the gross, as wholly inconsistent with human reason; the Socinian admits so much of it as he can bend, or torture into some conformity with his own reason.