Observations on the Sermons of Elias Hicks / In Several Letters to Him; With Some Introductory Remarks, Addressed to the Junior Members of the Society of Friends.

by Robert Waln

Prop. I. We cannot believe any thing which the human understanding cannot comprehend.

Prop. II. Science and philosophy, and all the knowledge which man can derive from his natural faculties, can never bring him to comprehend or believe rightly in God.

Conclusion. As it is impossible for man to believe any thing which the human understanding cannot comprehend, and he not being able by the aid of these faculties to comprehend or believe rightly in God, it is impossible for him to comprehend or believe rightly in God.

Suppose, (and I think it actually the case,) that you do not perceive the extent to which your assertion leads, and that you intended to convey the idea that we are not to believe any thing above the limits of our natural capacities on the testimony of another, and only when the same is especially revealed to us; then I would ask why you waste so much time in descanting on them? According to your own rule, none but those who are favoured with the same especial revelations can believe you, and to them your preaching is useless.

These are the inconsistencies of those who bow the knee to the image of the Baal of the present day; who, neglecting the exhortation "not to think more highly of themselves than they ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith,"[^[70]] have become wise in their own conceits.

If indeed the doctrine is true, that nothing is to be believed as of divine origin, which cannot be accounted for by that faculty of comprehending and judging which we derive from nature, the number of religions must be nearly in proportion to the number of individuals. What will be clear and evident to the more discerning, will be unintelligible to the superficial and ignorant, and our unbelief will be increased in the same ratio in which our intellectual faculties are diminished.

Look from the hillock on which you stand, at the ascending and descending grades of human intellect, and contemplate the immeasurable distance between the minds of a Newton and a Hicks; of a Hicks and an Esquimaux: you will find the last unable to comprehend truths of which you possess indubitable evidence, and yourself unable to understand many of the laws by which the universe is governed, although you may have before you, the demonstrations by which the great philosopher has proved their truth.

Indeed after all this boast of regulating the conduct by those facts and circumstances only which we understand, every observer must perceive, that under the practical exercise of this principle, even the common affairs of life would stand still; that we all act on the moral certainty of the existence and operation of things, the cause or production of which is beyond our comprehension; and that it is from the evidence of their actual existence, and not the discovery of the means of it, that our belief in them is established. And such is the weakness of that understanding on which you so much rely, that even on subjects where it can with propriety be exercised, we every day see men believing and disbelieving propositions under the influence of their interests and inclinations, and sincerely changing their opinions, with their situations and circumstances.

"Reason," (says the author[^[71]] of a review of the internal evidence of the christian religion,) "is undoubtedly our surest guide in all matters which lie within the narrow circle of her intelligence. On the subject of revelation her province is only to examine its authority and when that is once proved, she has no more to do, but to acquiesce in its doctrines; and is therefore never so ill employed as when she pretends to accommodate them to her own ideas of rectitude and truth. God, says this self sufficient teacher, is perfectly wise, just, and good; and what is the inference? That all his dispensations must be conformable to our notions of perfect wisdom, justice, and goodness: but it should first be proved, that man is as perfect and as wise as his Creator, or this consequence will by no means follow; but rather the reverse, that is, that the dispensations of a perfect and all wise being, must probably, appear unreasonable, and perhaps unjust, to a being imperfect and ignorant." And in reply to the objections to the divine origin of the christian religion, from the apparent incredibility of some of its doctrines, particularly those concerning the trinity, and atonement for sin by the sufferings and death of Christ, one of which is asserted to be contrary to all the principles of human reason, and the other to all our ideas of divine justice, he says, "No arguments founded on principles which we cannot comprehend, can possibly disprove a proposition already proved on principles which we do understand: and therefore on this subject they ought not to be attended to: that three beings should be one being, is a proposition which certainly contradicts reason, that is our reason; but it does not from thence follow that it cannot be true; for there are many propositions which contradict our reason, and yet are demonstrably true: one is, the very first principle of all religion, the being of a God; for that any thing should exist without a cause, or that any thing should be the cause of its own existence, are propositions equally contradictory to our reason; yet one of them must be true, or nothing could ever have existed. In like manner the overruling grace of the Creator, and the free will of his creatures; his foreknowledge of future events, and the uncertain contingency of these events, are to our apprehensions absolute contradictions to each other; and yet the truth of every one of them is demonstrable from Scripture, reason, and experience. All these difficulties arise from our imagining that the mode of existence of all beings must be similar to our own, that is, that they must all exist in time and space; and hence proceeds our embarrassment on this subject. We know that no two beings, with whose mode of existence we are acquainted, can exist at the same point of time, in the same point of space, and that therefore they cannot be one: but how far beings whose mode of existence bears no relation to time or space, may be united, we cannot comprehend; and therefore the possibility of such an union we cannot positively deny." And to those who assert that even if these doctrines are true, it is inconsistent with the justice and goodness of the Creator to require from them the belief of propositions which contradict, or are above the understanding which he has bestowed on them, he says, "to this I answer, that christianity requires no such belief: it has discovered to us many important truths, with which we were before entirely unacquainted, and amongst them are these, that three beings are sometimes united in the divine essence, and that God will accept of the sufferings of Christ as an atonement for the sins of mankind. These, considered as declarations of facts only, neither contradict, nor are above the reach of human reason: the first is a proposition as plain, as that three equilateral lines compose one triangle; the other as intelligible as that one man should discharge the debts of another. In what manner this union is formed, or why God accepts these vicarious punishments, or to what purposes they may be subservient, it informs us not, because no information would enable us to comprehend these mysteries, and therefore it does not require that we should know or believe any thing about them. The truth of these doctrines must rest entirely on the authority of those who taught them; but then we should reflect that those were the same persons who taught us a system of religion more sublime, and of ethics more perfect, than any which our faculties were ever able to discover, but which, when discovered, are exactly consonant to our reason, and that therefore we should not hastily reject those informations which they have vouchsafed to give us, of which our reason is not a competent judge. If an able mathematician proves to us the truth of several propositions by demonstrations which we understand, we hesitate not on his authority to assent to others, the process of whose proofs we are not able to follow: why therefore should we refuse that credit to Christ and his apostles which we think reasonable to give to one another."

We know that the first preachers of the gospel were generally illiterate men, and that the first converts were among the unlearned and ignorant; and it was sufficiently intelligible to them because the practical parts were then taught; which, if not the only, are certainly the most essential portion of it. Its intrinsic excellence is perhaps the best evidence of its divine origin; yet it cannot be denied that proofs of its authority may sometimes be drawn from the speculative inquiries of learned and pious men. But a very little reflection must convince us how little the reasoning of uninformed men can be depended on; and that when they are so unwise as to habituate their minds to such speculations, their ignorance must continually involve them in error and contradictions: and it surely would be prudent in these to pause, before they reject a revelation which does not accord with their crude notions of reason and the fitness of things, when they recollect that the diligent and learned researches of the master minds of such men as Grotius, Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Paley, have ended in convincing them of its truth.