Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 1

by Thomas De Quincey

It is this audacity of speculation, I apprehend, this etalage of bold results, rather than any success in their development, which has fixed the public attention. Development, indeed, applied to philosophic problems, or research applied to questions of erudition, was hardly possible within so small a compass as one hundred and seventeen pages, for that is the extent of the work, except as regards the notes, which amount to seventy-four pages more. Such brevity, on such a subject, is unseasonable, and almost culpable. On such a subject as the Philosophy of Protestantism—'satius erat silere, quam parcius, dicere.' Better were absolute silence, more respectful as regards the theme, less tantalizing as regards the reader, than a style of discussion so fragmentary and so rapid.

But, before we go farther, what are we to call this bold man? One must have some name for a man that one is reviewing; and, as he comes abroad incognito, it is difficult to see what name could have any propriety. Let me consider: there are three bishops in the field, Mr. H., and the Scotchman—that makes five. But every one of these, you say, is represented equally by the name in the title—Phileleutheros Anglicanus. True, but that's as long as a team of horses. If it had but Esquire at the end, it would measure against a Latin Hendecasyllable verse. I'm afraid that we must come at last to Phil. I've been seeking to avoid it, for it's painful to say 'Jack' or 'Dick' either to or of an ecclesiastical great gun. But if such big wigs will come abroad in disguise, and with names as long as Fielding's Hononchrononthononthologus, they must submit to be hustled by pickpockets and critics, and to have their names docked as well as profane authors.

Phil, then, be it—that's settled. Now, let us inquire what it is that Phil. has been saying, to cause such a sensation amongst the Gnostics. And, to begin at the beginning, what is Phil.'s capital object? Phil. shall state it himself—these are his opening words:—

'In the following pages we propose to vindicate the fundamental and inherent principles of Protestantism.'

Good; but what are the fundamental principles of Protestantism? 'They are,' says Phil., 'the sole sufficiency of Scripture,'[Footnote: This is much too elliptical a way of expressing the Protestant meaning. Sufficiency for what? 'Sufficiency for salvation' is the phrase of many, and I think elsewhere of Phil. But that is objectionable on more grounds than one; it is redundant, and it is aberrant from the true point contemplated. Sufficiency for itself, without alien helps, is the thing contemplated. The Greek autarkeia, self-sufficiency, or, because that phrase, in English, has received a deflexion towards a bad meaning, the word self- ufficingness might answer; sufficiency for the exposition of its own most secret meaning, out of fountains within itself; needing, therefore, neither the supplementary aids of tradition, on the one hand, nor the complementary aids on the other, (in the event of unprovided cases, or of dilemmas arising,) from the infallibility of a living expounder.] the right of private judgment in its interpretation, and the authority of individual conscience in matters of religion.' Errors of logic show themselves more often in a man's terminology, and his antithesis, and his subdivisions, than anywhere else. Phil. goes on to make this distinction, which brings out his imperfect conception. 'We,' says he (and, by the way, if Phil. is we, then it must he my duty to call him they), 'we do not propose to defend the varieties of doctrine held by the different communities of Protestants.' Why, no; that would be a sad task for the most skilful of funambulists or theological tumblers, seeing that many of these varieties stand related to each other as categorical affirmative and categorical negative: it's heavy work to make yes and no pull together in the same proposition. But this, fortunately for himself, Phil. declines. You are to understand that he will not undertake the defence of Protestantism in its doctrines, but only in its principles. That won't do; that antithesis is as hollow as a drum; and, if the objection were verbal only, I would not make it. But the contradistinction fails to convey the real meaning. It is not that he has falsely expressed his meaning, but that he has falsely developed that meaning to his own consciousness. Not the word only is wrong; but the wrong word is put forward for the sake of hiding the imperfect idea. What he calls principles might almost as well be called doctrines; and what he calls doctrines as well be called principles. Out of these terms, apart from the rectifications suggested by the context, no man could collect his drift, which is simply this. Protestantism, we must recollect, is not an absolute and self-dependent idea; it stands in relation to something antecedent, against which it protests, viz., Papal Rome. And under what phasis does it protest against Rome? Not against the Christianity of Rome, because every Protestant Church, though disapproving a great deal of that, disaproves also a great deal in its own sister churches of the protesting household; and because every Protestant Church holds a great deal of Christian truth, in common with Rome. But what furnishes the matter of protest is—the deduction of the title upon which Rome plants the right to be church at all. This deduction is so managed by Rome as to make herself, not merely a true church (which many Protestants grant), but the exclusive church. Now, what Phil. in effect undertakes to defend is not principles by preference to doctrines (for they are pretty nearly the same thing), but the question of title to teach at all, in preference to the question of what is the thing taught. There is the distinction, as I apprehend it. All these terms—'principle,' 'doctrine,' 'system,' 'theory,' 'hypothesis'—are used nearly always most licentiously, and as arbitrarily as a Newmarket jockey selects the colors for his riding-dress. It is true that one shadow of justification offers itself for Phil.'s distinction. All principles are doctrines, but all doctrines are not principles; which, then, in particular? Why, those properly are principles which contain the principia, the beginnings, or starting-points of evolution, out of which any system of truth is evolved. Now, it may seem that the very starting-point of our Protestant pretensions is, first of all, to argue our title or right to be a church sui juris; apparently we must begin by making good our locus standi, before we can be heard upon our doctrines. And upon this mode of approach, the pleadings about the title, or right to teach at all, taking precedency of the pleadings about the particular things taught, would be the principia, or beginning of the whole process, and so far would be entitled by preference to the name of principles. But such a mode of approach is merely an accident, and contingent upon our being engaged in a polemical discussion of Protestantism in relation to Popery. That, however, is a pure matter of choice; Protestantism may be discussed, 'as though Rome were not, in relation to its own absolute merits; and this treatment is the logical treatment, applying itself to what is permanent in the nature of the object; whereas the other treatment applies itself to what is casual and vanishing in the history (or the origin) of Protestantism. For, after all, it would be no great triumph to Protestantism that she should prove her birthright to revolve as a primary planet in the solar system; that she had the same original right as Rome to wheel about the great central orb, undegraded to the rank of satellite or secondary projection—if, in the meantime, telescopes should reveal the fact that she was pretty nearly a sandy desert. What a church teaches is true or not true, without reference to her independent right of teaching; and eventually, when the irritations of earthly feuds and political schisms shall be soothed by time, the philosophy of this whole question will take an inverse order. The credentials of a church will not be put in first, and the quality of her doctrine discussed as a secondary question. On the contrary, her credentials will be sought in her doctrine. The Protesting Church will say, I have the right to stand separate, because I stand; and from my holy teaching I deduce my title to teach. Jus est ibi summum docendi, ubi est fons purissimus doctrinae. That inversion of the Protestant plea with Rome is even now valid with many; and, when it becomes universally current, then the principles, or great beginnings of the controversy, will be transplanted from the locus, or centre, where Phil. places them, to the very locus which he neglects.

There is another expression of Phil.'s (I am afraid Phil. is getting angry by this time) to which I object. He describes the doctrines held by all the separate Protestant churches as doctrines of Protestantism. I would not delay either Phil. or myself for the sake of a trifle; but an impossibility is not a trifle. If from orthodox Turkey you pass to heretic Persia, if from the rigor of the _Sonnees to the laxity of the Sheeahs, you could not, in explaining those schisms, go on to say, 'And these are the doctrines _of Islamism;' for they destroy each other. Both are supported by earthly powers; but one only could be supported by central Islamism. So of Calvinism and Arminianism; you cannot call them doctrines of Protestantism, as if growing out of some reconciling Protestant principles; one of the two, though not manifested to human eyes in its falsehood, must secretly be false; and a falsehood cannot be a doctrine of Protestantism. It is more accurate to say that the separate creeds of Turkey and Persia are _within Mahommedanism; such, viz., as that neither excludes a man from the name of Mussulman; and, again, that Calvinism and Arminianism are doctrines within the Protestant Church—as a church of general toleration for all religious doctrines not de-monstrably hostile to any cardinal truth of Christianity.

Phil., then, we all understand, is not going to traverse the vast field of Protestant opinions as they are distributed through our many sects; that would be endless; and he illustrates the mazy character of the wilderness over which these sects are wandering,

—'ubi passim Palantes error recto de tramite pellit,'

by the four cases of—1, the Calvinist; 2, the Newmanite; 3, the Romanist;[Footnote: What, amongst Protestant sects? Ay, even so. It's Phil.'s mistake, not mine. He will endeavor to doctor the case, by pleading that he was speaking universally of Christian error; but the position of the clause forbids this plea. Not only in relation to what immediately precedes, the passage must be supposed to contemplate Protestant error; but the immediate inference from it, viz., that 'the world may well be excused for doubting whether there is, after all, so much to be gained by that liberty of private judgment, which is the essential characteristic of Protestantism; whether it be not, after all, merely a liberty to fall into error,' nails Phil. to that construction—argues too strongly that it is an oversight of indolence. Phil. was sleeping for the moment, which is excusable enough towards the end of a book, but hardly in section I. P.S.—I have since observed (which not to have observed is excused, perhaps, by the too complex machinery of hooks and eyes between the text and the notes involving a double reference—first, to the section; second, to the particular clause of the section) that Phil. has not here committed an inadvertency; or, if he has, is determined to fight himself through his inadvertency, rather than break up his quaternion of cases. 'In speaking of Romanism as arising from a misapplication of Protestant principles; we refer, not to those who were born, but to those who have become members of the Church of Rome.' What is the name of those people? And where do they live? I have heard of many who think (and there are cases in which most of us, that meddle with philosophy, are apt to think) occasional principles of Protestantism available for the defence of certain Roman Catholic mysteries too indiscriminately assaulted by the Protestant zealot; but, with this exception, I am not aware of any parties professing to derive their Popish learnings from Protestantism; it is in spite of Protestantism, as seeming to them not strong enough, or through principles omitted by Protestantism, which therefore seems to them not careful enough or not impartial enough, that Protestants have lapsed to Popery. Protestants have certainly been known to become Papists, not through Popish arguments, but simply through their own Protestant books; yet never, that I heard of, through an affirmative process, as though any Protestant argument involved the rudiments of Popery, but by a negative process, as fancying the Protestant reasons, though lying in the right direction, not going far enough; or, again, though right partially, yet defective as a whole. Phil. therefore, seems to me absolutely caught in a sort of Furcae Caudinae, unless he has a dodge in reserve to puzzle us all. In a different point, I, that hold myself a doctor seraphicus, and also inexpugnabilis upon quillets of logic, justify Phil., whilst also I blame him. He defends himself rightly for distinguishing between the Romanist and Newmanite on the one hand, between the Calvinist and the Evangelican man on the other, though perhaps a young gentleman, commencing his studies on the Organon, will fancy that here he has Phil. in a trap, for these distinctions, he will say, do not entirely exclude to each other as they ought to do. The class calling itself Evangelical, for instance, may also be Calvinistic; the Newmanite is not, therefore, anti-Romanish. True, says Phil.; I am quite aware of it. But to be aware of an objection is not to answer it. The fact seems to be, that the actual combinations of life, not conforming to the truth of abstractions, compel us to seeming breaches of logic. It would be right practically to distinguish the Radical from the Whig; and yet it might shock Duns or Lombardus, the magister sententiarum, when he came to understand that partially the principles of Radicals and Whigs coincide. But, for all that, the logic which distinguishes them is right; and the apparent error must be sought in the fact, that all cases (political or religious) being cases of life, are concretes, which never conform to the exquisite truth of abstractions. Practically, the Radical is opposed to the Whig, though casually the two are in conjunction continually; for, as acting partisans, they work from different centres, and finally, for different results.] 4, the Evangelical enthusiast—as holding systems of doctrine, 'no one of which is capable of recommending itself to the favorable opinion of an impartial judge.' Impartial! but what Christian can be impartial? To be free from all bias, and to begin his review of sects in that temper, he must begin by being an infidel. Vainly a man endeavors to reserve in a state of neutrality any preconceptions that he may have formed for himself, or prepossessions that he may have inherited from 'mamma;' he cannot do it any more than he can dismiss his own shadow. And it is strange to contemplate the weakness of strong minds in fancying that they can. Calvin, whilst amiably engaged in hunting Servetus to death, and writing daily letters to his friends, in which he expresses his hope that the executive power would not think of burning the poor man, since really justice would be quite satisfied by cutting his head off, meets with some correspondents who conceive (idiots that they were!) even that little amputation not indispensable. But Calvin soon settles their scruples. You don't perceive, he tells them, what this man has been about. When a writer attacks Popery, it's very wrong in the Papists to cut his head off; and why? Because he has only been attacking error. But here lies the difference in this case; Servetus had been attacking the TRUTH. Do you see the distinction, my friends? Consider it, and I am sure you will be sensible that this quite alters the case. It is shocking, it is perfectly ridiculous, that the Bishop of Rome should touch a hair of any man's head for contradicting him; and why? Because, do you see? he is wrong. On the other hand, it is evidently agreeable to philosophy, that I, John Calvin, should shave off the hair, and, indeed, the head itself (as I heartily hope[Footnote: The reader may imagine that, in thus abstracting Calvin's epistolary sentiments, I am a little improving them. Certainly they would bear improvement, but that is not my business. What the reader sees here is but the result of bringing scattered passages into closer juxtaposition; whilst, as to the strongest (viz., the most sanguinary) sentiments here ascribed to him, it will be a sufficient evidence of my fidelity to the literal truth, if I cite three separate sentences. Writing to Farrel, he says, 'Spero capitale saltern fore judicium.' Sentence of the court, he hopes, will, at any rate, reach the life of Servetus. Die he must, and die he shall. But why should he die a cruel death? "Paenoe vero atrocitatem remitti cupio." To the same purpose, when writing to Sultzer, he expresses his satisfaction in being able to assure him that a principal civic officer of Geneva was, in this case, entirely upright, and animated by the most virtuous sentiments. Indeed! what an interesting character! and in what way now might this good man show thia beautiful tenderness of conscience? Why; by a fixed resolve that Servetus should not in any case escape the catastrophe which I, John Calvin, am longing for, ('ut saltem exitum, quem optamus, noa fugiat.') Finally, writing to the same Sultzer, he remarks that—when we see the Papists such avenging champions of their own superstitious fables as not to falter in shedding innocent blood, 'pudeat Christianos magistratus [as if the Roman Catholic magistrates were not Christians] in tuenda certa veritate nihil prorsus habere animi'—'Christian magistrates ought to be ashamed of themselves for manifesting no energy at all in the vindication of truth undeniable;' yet really since these magistrates had at that time the full design, which design not many days after they executed, of maintaining truth by fire and faggot, one does not see the call upon them for blushes so very deep as Calvin requires. Hands so crimson with blood might compensate the absence of crimson cheeks.] will be done in this present case) of any man presumptuous enough to contradict me; but then, why? For a reason that makes all the difference in the world, and which, one would think, idiocy itself could not overlook, viz., that I, John Calvin, am right—right, through three degrees of comparison—right, righter, or more right, rightest, or most right. Calvin fancied that he could demonstrate his own impartiality.

The self-sufficingness of the Bible, and the right of private judgment—here, then, are the two great charters in which Protestantism commences; these are the bulwarks behind which it intrenches itself against Rome. And it is remarkable that these two great preliminary laws, which soon diverge into fields so different, at the first are virtually one and the same law. The refusal of an oracle alien to the Bible, extrinsic to the Bible, and claiming the sole interpretation of the Bible; the refusal of an oracle that reduced the Bible to a hollow masque, underneath which fraudulently introducing itself any earthly voice could mimic a heavenly voice, was in effect to refuse the coercion of this false oracle over each man's conscientious judgment; to make the Bible independent of the Pope, was to make man independent of all religious controllers. The self-sufficingness of Scripture, its independency of any external interpreter, passed in one moment into the other great Protestant doctrine of Toleration. It was but the same triumphal monument under a new angle of sight, the golden and silver faces of the same heraldic shield. The very same act which denies the right of interpretation to a mysterious Papal phoenix, renewed from generation to generation, having the antiquity and the incomprehensible omniscience of the Simorg in Southey, transferred this right of mere necessity to the individuals of the whole human race. For where else could it have been lodged? Any attempt in any other direction was but to restore the Papal power in a new impersonation. Every man, therefore, suddenly obtained the right of interpreting the Bible for himself. But the word 'right' obtained a new sense. Every man has the right, under the Queen's Bench, of publishing an unlimited number of metaphysical systems; and, under favor of the same indulgent Bench, we all enjoy the unlimited right of laughing at him. But not the whole race of man has a right to coerce, in the exercise of his intellectual rights, the humblest of individuals. The rights of men are thus unspeakably elevated; for, being now freed from all anxiety, being sacred as merely legal rights, they suddenly rise into a new mode of responsibility as intellectual rights. As a Protestant, every mature man has the same dignified right over his own opinions and profession of faith that he has over his own hearth. But his hearth can rarely be abused; whereas his religious system, being a vast kingdom, opening by immeasurable gates upon worlds of light and worlds of darkness, now brings him within a new amenability—called upon to answer new impeachments, and to seek for new assistances. Formerly another was answerable for his belief; if that were wrong, it was no fault of his. Now he has new rights, but these have burthened him with new obligations. Now he is crowned with the glory and the palms of an intellectual creature, but he is alarmed by the certainty of corresponding struggles. Protestantism it is that has created him into this child and heir of liberty; Protestantism it is that has invested him with these unbounded privileges of private judgment, giving him in one moment the sublime powers of a Pope within his own conscience; but Protestantism it is that has introduced him to the most dreadful of responsibilities.