Make up your mind then to be Tremayned in this chapter.
The benevolent reader will willingly do this, he I mean who is benevolent to himself as well as towards me. The so-called philosopher or man of liberal opinions, who cannot be so inimical in thought to me, as they are indeed to themselves, will frown at it; one such exclaims pshaw, or pish, according as he may affect the forté manner, or the fine, of interjecting his contemptuous displeasure; another already winces, feeling himself by anticipation touched upon a sore place. To such readers it were hopeless to say favete, “Numquid æger laudat medicum secantem?” But I shall say with the Roman Philosopher of old, who is well entitled to that then honourable designation, “tacete,—et præbete vos curationi: etiam si exclamaveritis, non aliter audiam, quam si ad tactum vitiorum vestrorum ingemiscatis.”2
2 SENECA.
My own observation has led me to believe with Mr. Miller, that some persons are brought by speculating upon a Plurality of Worlds to reason themselves out of their belief in Christianity: such Christianity indeed it is as has no root, because the soil on which it has fallen is shallow, and though the seed which has been sown there springs up, it soon withers away. Thus the first system of superstition, and the latest pretext for unbelief have both been derived from the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. The former was the far more pardonable error, being one to which men, in the first ages, among whom the patriarchal religion had not been carefully preserved, were led by natural piety. The latter is less imputable to the prevalence of unnatural impiety,—than to that weakness of mind and want of thought which renders men as easily the dupe of the infidel propagandist in one age, as of the juggling friar in another. These objectors proceed upon the gratuitous assumption that other worlds are inhabited by beings of the same kind as ourselves, and moreover in the same condition; that is having fallen, and being therefore in need of a Redeemer. Ask of them upon what grounds they assume this, and they can make no reply.
Too many alas there are who part with their heavenly birth-right at a viler price than Esau! It is humiliating to see by what poor sophistries they are deluded,—by what pitiable vanity they are led astray! And it is curious to note how the same evil effect is produced by causes the most opposite. The drunken pride of intellect makes one man deny his Saviour and his God: another under the humiliating sense of mortal insignificancy, feels as though he were “a worm and no man,” and therefore concludes that men are beneath the notice, still more beneath the care, of the Almighty. “When I consider thy Heavens, the work of thy fingers, the Moon and the Stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?” Of those who pursue this feeling to a consequence as false as it is unhappy, there is yet hope; for the same arguments (and they are all-sufficient) by which the existence of the Deity is proved, prove also his infinite goodness; and he who believes in that goodness, if he but feelingly believe, is not far from trusting in it,
—σύ δέ κεν ῥεα πάντ᾽ ἐσορήσαις
Ἄι κεν ἴδης αὐτόν.3
3 ORPHEUS.
It is a good remark of Mr. Riland's in his Estimate of the Religion of the Times, that men quarrel with the Decalogue rather than with the Creed. But the quarrel that begins with one, generally extends to the other; we may indeed often perceive how manifestly men have made their doctrines conform to their inclinations. Αἱ ἀκροάσεις κατὰ τὰ ἔθη συμβαίνουσιν· ὣς γὰρ εἰώθαμεν, οὕτως ἀξιοῦμεν λέγεσθαι.4 They listen only to what they like, as Aristotle has observed, and would be instructed to walk on those ways only which they choose for themselves. But if there be many who thus make their creed conform to their conduct, and are led by an immoral life into irreligious opinions, there are not a few whose error begins in the intellect and from thence proceeds to their practice in their domestic and daily concerns. Thus if unbelief begins not in the evil heart, it settles there. But perhaps it is not so difficult to deal with an infidel who is in either of these predicaments, as with one whose disposition is naturally good, whose course of life is in no other respect blameless, or meritorious, but who owing to unhappy circumstances has either been allowed to grow up carelessly in unbelief, or trained in it systematically, or driven to seek for shelter in it from the gross impostures of popery, or the revolting tenets of Calvinism, the cant of hypocrisy, or the crudities of cold Socinianism. Such persons supposing themselves whole conclude that they have no need of a physician, and are thus in the fearful condition of those righteous ones of whom our Lord said that he came not to call them to repentance! The sinner, brave it as he may, feels inwardly the want of a Saviour, and this is much, though not enough to say with the poet
Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit,5
nor with the philosopher, et hoc multum est velle servari: nor with the Father ὁ τὸ πρῶτον δοὺς καὶ το δεύτερον δώσει. For if this be rejected, then comes that “penal induration, as the consequent of voluntary and contracted induration,” which one of our own great Christian philosophers pronounces to be “the sorest judgement next to hell itself.” Nevertheless it is much to feel this self-condemnation and this want. But he who confides in the rectitude of his intentions, and in his good works, and in that confidence rejects so great salvation, is in a more aweful state, just as there is more hope of him who suffers under an acute disease, than of a patient stricken with the dead palsy.