Part 4 (2/2)
The extracts that I am about to give, from the writings of two men of note, in that party, distinguished also for their genuine Christian feeling, will show that they saw the dangers I have pointed out, and were anxious to guard against them. The following extracts are given in Mr.
Sidney's ”Life of the Rev. Rowland Hill.” {122b}
”I hate dry doctrinal preaching, without warm, affectionate, and experimental applications. Oh! 'tis most pleasant to love one another with pure hearts fervently. Love is of G.o.d, for 'G.o.d is love.' The summit of our happiness must be the perfection of our holiness. By this blessed grace we have the brightest evidence that we are 'born of G.o.d.'
If we allow that little shades of difference may exist, we ought to 'love as brethren,' and where Christian candour and love are found to reign, the odious sin of schism, according to its general interpretation, cannot exist.” ”It is no sign that we value the blessings of G.o.d, if we can part with them” (i.e. dear friends) ”without regret. That mind is badly framed that prefers stoical indifference to Christian sensibility, and though the pain is abundantly more acute where those finer feelings of the mind are found to exist; yet who deserves the name of a human being who is without them?” ”While a soul within our reach is ignorant of a Saviour, we must endeavour to win it to Christ. How weary I am of a great deal of what is called the '_religious world_!' High and Low Church Sectarianism seems to be the order of the day; we are much more busy in contending for _parties_ than for _principles_. These evils are evidences of a lack of genuine Christianity. Oh! when shall that happy day dawn upon us, when real Christians and Christian ministers of all denominations shall come nearer to each other.”
The next extracts shall be from the writings of one who was scarcely appreciated by the world in general, but of whose excellencies I was enabled to judge, during my residence at Cambridge; Mr. Simeon.
”Religion appears in its true colours when it regulates our conduct in social life; your religion must be seen, not in the church, or in the closet only, but in the shop, the family, the field: it must mortify pride and every other evil pa.s.sion, and must bring faith into exercise.
Try yourselves by this standard: see what you are as husbands or wives, parents or children, masters or servants.” {124}
”The self-righteous, self-applauding moralist can spy out the failings and infirmities of those who profess a stricter system of religion; but let me ask such an one, 'Are there not in thee, even in thee, sins against the Lord thy G.o.d?' Verily if thou wouldst consult thy own conscience, thou wouldst see little reason, and feel little inclination too, to cast stones at others. Professors of religion also are but too guilty of this same fault, being filled with an overweening conceit of their own excellencies, and a contemptuous disregard of their less spiritual neighbours. But I would ask the professed follower of Christ, Are there not sins with thee too as well as with the pharisaic formalist?
Are there not great and crying evils in the religious world, which prove a stumbling block to those around them? Are there not often found among professors of religion the same covetous desires, the same fraudulent practices, the same deviations from truth and honour, as are found in persons who make no profession? Are there not many whose tempers are so unsubdued, that they make their whole families a scene of contention and misery? Yes! Though the accusations which are brought against the whole body of religious people as 'hypocrites,' are a gross calumny, there is but too much ground for them in the conduct of many.” ”Nothing is more common, and nothing more delusive than a noisy, talkative religion. True religion is a humble, silent, retired thing; not affecting public notice, but rather wis.h.i.+ng to approve itself to G.o.d. It is not in _saying_ 'Lord, Lord!' but in _doing_ the will of our heavenly Father, that we shall find acceptance at the last day. Happy would it be if many who place all their religion in running about and hearing sermons, and talking of the qualifications of ministers, would attend to this hint, and endeavour to acquire more of that wisdom which evinces its Divine origin by the excellence of its fruits.” {126}
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LETTER X.
ON ROMANISM AND CEREMONIAL RELIGION.
I promised that as the completion of my task, I would notice those differences which have occurred in the bosom of the church itself, even though they can scarcely be called _sects_; I therefore propose to conclude my correspondence with a short survey of the above-named, which I think should rather be viewed as the working out of great principles, than as parties distinguished by particular creeds or opinions on abstract subjects. I may run counter to some prejudices, perhaps, in so doing; but the truth is well worth running a tilt for:-you may sit by as umpire, and decide when I have done, whether I have carried my spear in a knightly fas.h.i.+on.
Though I shall not think it necessary, like Racine's advocate in Les Plaideurs, to go back to the a.s.syrians and the Babylonians to ill.u.s.trate my proposition, yet I must begin from a very distant period, in order to make my views thoroughly comprehensible. I must therefore beg you to notice that the tendency of man's mind always is, and always has been, towards the visible and the tangible. The pure abstraction of a Governing Will without any perceptible presence, has in it something too remote from the common habits, powers, and feelings of human nature, ever to be thoroughly embraced by the heart of man; and we find that the Deity has always condescended so far to the weakness of his creatures, as to give the imagination some resting place. Thus the patriarch had his altar of sacrifice, where the fire from heaven marked the present Deity-and the Israelite had first the pillar of the cloud, and then the tabernacle, where the mysterious Shechinah dwelt over the mercy seat.
Yet even this indistinct representation of an embodied Deity, did not satisfy the people: they required a _form_, tangible, visible, and Aaron yielded to the wish; because he thought it a prudent and allowable compliance with the weakness of human nature. He was wrong, and was punished for it; and this transaction we shall find the type and foreshadowing of every thing that has since happened in the world with regard to religion. The Almighty gives man just enough to rest his thoughts upon: it is the fire on the altar, the cloud, the temple, and last of all _the man_, in whom our devotion may find also an object of affection: but he requires that we shall not go beyond this. We must not return to earth, and make for ourselves a wors.h.i.+p less spiritual than he has inst.i.tuted; on the contrary, he requires us to pierce through the veil as we advance in knowledge, and discern the spiritual through the visible. Hence the perpetual denunciations of the prophets against the Jews for their adherence to forms, which latterly they did adhere to, instead of giving attention to the purification of their hearts.
Among all but the Israelites, the progress of the tangible was much more rapid: idolatry, with all its gross rites, had established itself among _the people_, at any rate, in Egypt, at a very early period; and spread from that old and luxurious empire, through the more simple states which sprang up around and from it. The Exodus was a warning from on high, that there was a Being, unseen and intangible, whose fiat governed all things: and this lesson was not wholly without fruit: yet still the human race reverted to the objects of the senses, till, in G.o.d's good time, he sent his Son: presented a tangible form on which the mind could dwell-then removed it from the earth, and said, ”You may now think on this, and give your imagination a resting place: this form you shall see again; but in mean time you must purify your hearts from earthly desires: that form will only greet your eyes when you have cast off the burthen of the flesh, and have entered upon a spiritual existence.” The first Christians remembered and loved the man; his precepts, his example, his smallest words or actions were recurred to with the fondness of personal friends.h.i.+p; and this carried Christianity through the first two centuries; but then this remembrance began to have a character of abstraction, and again the human heart called for tangibility. Then came, step by step, gorgeous ceremonies, pictures, representations of the personal presence and sufferings of the Saviour. The very requirements of those who quitted the splendid and sensual rites of heathenism for the faith of Christ, led the Christian doctors to endeavour to replace the festival of the idol by something a.n.a.logous in the Christian church: and thus without well knowing what they were tending to, the heads of the church yielded one point of spiritualism after another; sought to captivate and awe the people by impressive ceremonies; and finished by the sin of Aaron: they set up the image and said, ”These be thy G.o.ds, O Israel! that brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” {131a} For be it observed here, that Aaron set up this image merely as a tangible representation of the true Deity; _a help to the devotion of the people_, who could not wors.h.i.+p without seeing something.
This then is Romanism; it is not transubstantiation, nor the mediation of the Virgin and the Saints, {131b} nor the infallibility of popes and councils; these are natural consequences indeed, but the distinctive character of the Romish church is _tangibility_. ”There is the actual flesh,” it says, ”there is the representation of the actual human presence of saints and martyrs; there is the actual man enthroned, who represents the power of G.o.d:” but it might have fifty other ways of satisfying this restless craving of the human mind, and it would be equally pernicious in any of these forms. Man's great struggle has always been between the animal and the spiritual nature, and when religion goes one step farther towards tangibility than the Deity himself has allowed, the animal nature gains strength; and vice and licentiousness follow as naturally, among the ma.s.s of the people, as rain follows the cloud.
Observe, I do not here deny that many may profess a religion of sense, and remain spiritually-minded themselves: Heathenism had its Socrates, its Xenocrates, &c.-Romanism has its Pascal, its Fenelon, and a train of other great names: but look at the _people_ during that period, and the account will be very different. When an ignorant man imagines that he can remove the Divine anger by a sacrifice or a penance, he avoids the trouble of curbing his pa.s.sions, and compounds, as he thinks, for indulgence of the one, by the performance of the other; but when he is told that purity of life and thought is the only road to Divine favour, if he sins, he sins at least with some feelings of compunction, some dread that he may not have it in his power to remove the stain he is incurring. The preaching of Wesley reformed mult.i.tudes, all enthusiastic as it was; but it would be difficult to find a parallel in the annals of Romanism. As great a movement of the public mind was made by the preaching of Peter the Hermit; but how different was the object and the result! The personal pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, as a mode of wiping out sin, was undertaken by thousands, who perished miserably, or, if they lived, came back not better men than they went: under a system of less tangibility, and a preaching as effective, they might have staid in their homes, and glorified G.o.d by a life such as Christ came to teach and to exemplify.
It is so much easier to make a pilgrimage, or endure a long fast, than to subdue and tame the animal nature till it becomes obedient to the rational will, and seconds instead of resisting its wishes, that it is not surprising that in all ages a religion of outward observance should be more popular than one of inward purification. Those even which set off with the highest pretensions in this way have degenerated, and the outward and visible form is too often subst.i.tuted for the inward and spiritual grace, which it was intended to _represent_ not to _supersede_.
That religion therefore has the best chance of influencing the soul, which, as far as is possible, renounces outward demonstrations which human indolence is so glad to rely on, and preaches boldly and effectually the uselessness of ceremonies, farther than as they tend to preserve the remembrance of HIM who came to call the world back to HIMSELF, to trample on the sensual and the animal, and to raise man to his pristine, or rather, to what is to be his future state. A public acknowledgment of Christ as our Master and Lord, and a compliance with his own few and simple ordinances; are all that Christian duty requires, and nearly as much as Christian prudence will permit. The rest is a matter of worldly expediency, and should be so regarded.
No doubt rests on my own mind-I leave others to think as they may-that Episcopacy was the established form of the Church as soon as the Christian communities began to a.s.sume enough of regularity to admit of any settled order; and I think it a wise form. As far as any inst.i.tution can, it secures unity and decency in the church: and as far as any inst.i.tution can, that was not positively established by Christ himself, it possesses, in my mind, the sanction of antiquity. It gives the concentration of purpose and regularity of effort which is bestowed by the discipline of an army; for as in an army a detachment acts upon the same system of tactics, and obeys officers const.i.tuted by the same authority, and thus a.s.sists the efforts of the main body, and falls into rank with it when they meet; so the church, under such a form, may send detachments to the ends of the earth, who may meet after long years, as brothers of the same communion, and find that though the individuals have pa.s.sed away, others have stepped into their place in the ranks, and are teaching what their predecessors taught. The benefit of church discipline, therefore, in my mind is great; but I do not suppose that salvation depends on it, because G.o.d has repeatedly declared that Christ died _for all_, {135a} and that he is not willing that any should perish; {135b} consequently he can hardly have made our eternal state dependent on what no man can accomplish for himself. A person may not have it in his power to receive baptism from an ordained priest, but he may live as Christ taught; or, having never heard of Christ even, he may, like the gentiles, win glory and immortality, {135c} if, having not the law, he be a law unto himself. I would not receive Christ's ordinances from the hands of any but an ordained priest, myself, because if a doubt exist in my mind, I sin in doing the doubtful thing; but herein I speak only for myself; let every man do as he is ”persuaded in his mind” {136} in matters of secondary import, as all ceremonial matters must be.
You will now be prepared for my opinion with regard to the late movement made in the church by the Anglo-Catholics, as they term themselves; Puseyites, or Newmanites, as they have been termed by others. They have been thought to have introduced innovations-they have not:-there is not one of the ceremonies or practices which they have recommended, which was not very early practised in the church; but it was from the undue importance attached to these ceremonies, which came to be regarded with reverence from having been inst.i.tuted by apostles and martyrs, that the after growth of Roman superst.i.tion sprang up so rankly. I believe the first promoters of this movement were as remote from actual Romanism as I am, when they first began it; but when once reason is submitted to any human dictum, in matters of religion, there is no resting place till we arrive at the ”infallible” guide which the Romish church claims to be.
There alone can the soul which will not think for itself, find a ready and confident director. Accordingly, we find that some of those very men who but a few years back exposed the errors of Romanism, have now yielded themselves blindfold to the guidance of that very church, which, as long as they allowed themselves to reason, they acknowledged to have departed from the truth. Yet it is perhaps fortunate for the people generally, that this declension of its pastors has been as rapid and complete as it has been:-they were going back towards the sin of Aaron-they were insisting on ceremonies as necessary to salvation, thus rendering religion gross and tangible, and the people thus taught would soon have forgotten what those ceremonies were intended to represent, and have depended for salvation on what could not avail them in the hour of need: for the repet.i.tion of prayer is not necessarily praying, nor is the reception of the eucharist necessarily sanctification, though these may be the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace which is working in the heart. Once teach a man that _any_ ceremony is _requisite_ to salvation, and he will soon go a step further by himself, and think the outward ceremony sufficient without the inward grace. This indeed is but a necessary corollary; for if the ceremony be requisite to salvation, then the inward grace working purity of life, avails not without the ceremony; and thus purity of life is no longer a substantive virtue; it cannot stand alone; and the prop which it requires being so very strong, why should not the prop itself be all in all? This will be the course of ratiocination in the mind of the ma.s.s of mankind, whether avowed or not; and however the promoters of a ceremonial religion may shrink from such a consequence, it is so certain, as all experience shows, that they might as well throw a man who cannot swim into the water, and recommend him not to drown, as give a half instructed man a ceremony, which he is told is requisite to salvation, and expect that he will not cling to that, as the more convenient and least difficult observance; and whilst perfect in complying with every ordinance of the church, forget that he has overlooked the weightier matters of the law-judgment, justice, and mercy.
This may sound harsh, but it is true; and I appeal to the calm judgment even of the excellent Dr. Pusey himself, who has so unintentionally drawn many into a course from which, haply, he would now gladly draw them back, whether it be not so? His learning will show him how, through all ages, the spiritualism taught from heaven, has been counteracted by the visible and the tangible contrived by man; and in the step from the patriarchal religion, to the idolatry of Greece and Rome; from Christianity as preached by Christ and his Apostles, to the gross superst.i.tions of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, he may see a type of what would be the consequence of again enforcing a ceremonial religion.
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