I have perused this passage with great attention, and so far from discovering any thing to enable me to get easily along, it appears to be wholly inexplicable. I have examined it as a whole, and in its different divisions, without being able to arrive at any result. In this perplexity I recollected that I was, in my youth, in company with several ancient friends, when some discussion occurred respecting the true interpretation of a passage in a book which was the subject of conversation. An individual present, with some flippancy observed, that he had read it with great attention both backwards and forwards several times, and thought he was able to explain it; when he was interrupted by a venerable old man, who with admirable gravity of countenance and simplicity of manner, said "He wished the friend to inform the company, in which way of reading, he understood it best." But here even this novel experiment must fail, and had the ingenious expounder tried it on the passage I have quoted, I fear he must have confessed it was equally unintelligible in either way; and that, being contrary to all reason, it must, if examined by the severity of your own rule, be deemed the work of Antichrist.
If you had said that no revelation can be the suggestion of infinite wisdom, if contrary to right reason, it would have been intelligible and true: but if the divine light really discovers any thing to us, we want no test to confirm it. Again you say, that reason, if kept under the regulating influence of the divine law, will know everything that rises up at first sight; but that as free agents, we can reason ourselves into a belief that wrong is right. Now what kind of reason can this be? It does seem that reason is given to us because we are free agents, and that it would be a very useless gift were it otherwise: and we do know that this faculty is improved by observation and experience, and that so far from its enabling us to know every thing at first sight, it is by study and meditation that our knowledge is extended, and that at last, we know but little. But the reason of which you speak, is a reason that arrives at all knowledge without deduction, and can act and determine with unerring certainty, although contrary to that reason which is given to us as free agents. It must follow, that the faculty which you call reason, is an instinct never before known to exist; or that all this circumlocution ends in the production of one of those phantasms which are sometimes engendered by the imagination, and which has persuaded you that two inspirations are necessary to confirm our belief, that they are distinct in their nature, and that one of them is right reason.
When the sensations occasioned by the sonorous voice in which the pompous terms analogy of reason, rational souls, and recipients for truth are delivered, have passed away; and we seriously meditate the manner in which they are applied; low indeed must that man be in the scale of intellectual being, who does not discover that all "is but as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."
LETTER IV.
Every reader of your discourses, must be surprised at the extent to which you have carried the practice of allegorising the Scriptures: you declare your assent to them, and yet in practice, you seem to consider each part as a fable from which you can draw a moral to suit the purpose of the moment; and the belief which you profess in their divine origin, does not restrain you from indulging in all the licentiousness of fiction. "Sacred History, (says an eminent writer,) has always been read with submissive reverence, and an imagination over-awed and controlled. We have been accustomed to acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentic narrative, and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence, as suppresses curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion, seems not only useless, but is in some degree profane. Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of divine power, are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of Creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little diffusion of language: He spake the word and they were made."[[12]]
That an argument may sometimes be illustrated by a moral drawn from the events recorded in Scripture, I do not deny; but I think a pious mind must always indulge in the practice with great caution, and be careful not to make an allegory of the fact itself. Nor do I think that the passage of Scripture "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life"[[13]] which you so often quote, is at variance with this view of the subject, or can furnish any argument in excuse for the spirit of mysticism by which you involve every part of them in obscurity. It is true that this passage is in the figurative language generally used in the East, but the meaning appears so plain, that only those can mistake it, whose minds have been perverted by the habit of speculating in the airy regions of the imagination. The New Testament is a code of moral law and spiritual instruction, teaching man his duty to his neighbour, and the true way in which he can render acceptable worship to God. For the outward order of this worship, and the government of religious society, certain rules and ordinances must be necessary, and were found to be so, even in the days of the apostles; but as under the old covenant many had been led to consider the outward observance of the law as their only duty, and that "if they paid their tithe of mint and anise and cummin, they might omit the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith; although both ought to have been observed;"[[14]] so this exhortation is intended to caution the flock, not against the observance of the rules of discipline which had been established, but that they might not sink down into the belief that such observance was all that was required; and that they ought always to remember that "God is a Spirit;" and they that "worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth."
Now let us see the use you have made of this passage of Scripture, and to how many purposes your inventive fancy has applied it. In your discourse at the meeting house in Germantown,[[15]] you enter largely into this subject, but as the passage is too long to be transcribed, I shall endeavour to give the different inferences you draw from it.
First, That from the letter of the Scriptures, every thing suitable to deceive the people can be taken.
Secondly, That as every thing we read in the Scriptures must necessarily be received through our outward senses, they are only fit for the outward creature.
Thirdly, That it was the letter of the Scriptures that led men to the apostacy.