Part 6 (1/2)
THE ATHANASIAN CREED
(1865.)
On Christmas day, as on all other chief holidays of the year, the ministers and congregations of our National Church have had the n.o.ble privilege and pleasure of standing up and reciting the creed commonly called of St. Athanasius. The question of the authors.h.i.+p does not concern us here, but a note of Gibbon (chapter 37) is so brief and comprehensive that we may as well cite it:-”But the three following truths, however strange they may seem, are _now_ universally acknowledged. 1. St. Athanasius is not the author of the creed which is so frequently read in our churches. 2. It does not appear to have existed within a century after his death. 3. It was originally composed in the Latin tongue, and consequently in the western provinces.
Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople, was so much amazed by this extraordinary composition, that he frankly p.r.o.nounced it to be the work of a drunken man.” (This Gennadius, by the bye, is the same whom Gibbon mentions two or three times afterwards in the account of the siege and conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, a.d. 1453).
Whoever elaborated the Creed, and whether he did it drunk or sober, the Church of England has made it thoroughly her own by adoption.
Yet it must be admitted that many good churchmen, and perhaps even a few churchwomen, have not loved this adopted child of their Holy Mother as warmly as their duty commanded. The intelligently pious
Tillotson wishes Mother Church well rid of the bantling; and poor George the Third himself, with all his immense genius for orthodoxy, could not take kindly to it. He was willing enough to repeat all its expressions of theological faith-in fact, their perfect nonsense, their obstinate irrationality, must have been exquisitely delightful to a brain such as his; but he was not without a sort of vulgar manhood, even when wors.h.i.+pping in the Chapel Royal, and so rather choked at its denunciations-”for it do curse dreadful.” He could keep the faith whole and undefiled by reason, yet did not like to a.s.sert that all who had been and were and should in future be in this particular less happy than himself, must without doubt perish everlastingly.
On the other hand one of our most liberal Churchmen, Mr. Maurice, has argued that this creed is essentially merciful, and that its retention in the Book of Common Prayer is a real benefit. Mr. Maurice, however, as we all know, interprets ”perish everlastingly” into a meaning very different from that which most members of the Church accept. And his opinions lose considerably in weight from the fact that no man save himself can infer any one of them from any other. For example, if you are cheered up a bit by his notions as to ”Eternal” and ”Everlasting,”
you are soon depressed again by his pervading woefulness. Of all the rulers we hear of-the ex-king of Naples, the king of Prussia, the Elector of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, Abraham Lincoln, and the Pope included-the poor G.o.d of Mr. Maurice is the most to be pitied: a G.o.d whose world is in so deplorable a state that the good man who owns Him lives in a perpetual fever of anxiety and misery in endeavoring to improve it for Him.
What part of this creed shocks the pious who are shocked at all by it?
Simply the comprehensive d.a.m.nation it deals out to unbelievers, half-believers, and all except whole believers. For we do not hear that the pious are shocked by the confession of theological or theoillogical faith itself. Their reverence bows and kisses the rod, which we cool outsiders might fairly have expected to be broken up and flung out of doors in a fury of indignation. Their sinful human nature is shocked on account of their fellow-men; their divine religious nature is not shocked on account of their G.o.d: yet does not the creed use G.o.d as badly as man?
A chemist secures some air, and a.n.a.lyses it into its ultimate const.i.tuents, and states with precise numerals the proportions of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid therein. Just so the author of this creed secures the Divinity and a.n.a.lyses it into Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and just as precisely he reports the relations of these. A mathematician makes you a problem of a certain number divided into three parts in certain ratios to each other and to the sum, from which ratios you are to deduce the sum and the parts. Just so the author of this creed makes a riddle of his G.o.d, dividing him into three persons, from whose inter-relations you are to deduce the Deity. An anatomist gets hold of a dead body and dissects it exposing the structure and functions of the brain, the lungs, the heart, etc. Just so the author of this creed gets possession of the corpse of G.o.d (He died of starvation doing slop-work for Abstraction and Company; and the dead body was purveyed by the well-known resurrectionist Priestcraft), and cuts it open and expounds the generation and functions of its three princ.i.p.al organs. But the chemist does not tell us that oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid are three gases and yet one gas, that each of them is and is not common air, that they have each peculiar and yet wholly identical properties; the mathematician does not tell us that each of the three parts of his whole number is equal to the whole, and equal to each of the others, and yet less than the whole and unequal to either of the others; the anatomist does not tell us that brain and lungs and heart are each distinct and yet all the same in substance, structure, and function, and that each is in itself the whole body and at the same time is not: while the author of this creed does tell us a.n.a.logous contradictions of the three members and the whole of his G.o.d. And the chemist, the mathematician, and the anatomist do not d.a.m.n us (except, perhaps, by way of expletive at our stupidity) if we fail to understand and believe their enunciations; but the author of this creed very seriously and solemnly d.a.m.ns to everlasting perdition all who cannot put faith in his.
In other words, the chemist, the mathematician and the anatomist try to be as reasonable and tolerant as human nature can hope to be; while the author of this creed aims at and manages to reach an almost superhuman unreason and intolerance.
Giving him the full benefit of this difference, the fact remains that in other respects he treats his subject just as they treat theirs. He, a pious Christian, professing unbounded adoration and awe of his Divinity, coolly a.n.a.lyses and makes riddles of and dissects this Divinity as if it were a sample of air, a certain number, a dead body. This humble-minded devotee, who knows so well that he is finite and that G.o.d is infinite, and that the finite cannot conceive, much less comprehend, much less express the infinite, yet expounds this Infinite with the most complete and complacent knowledge, turns it inside out and upside down, tells us all about it, cuts it up into three parts, and then glues it together again with a glue that has the tenacity of atrocious wrongheadeduess instead of the coherence of logic, puts his mark upon it, and says, ”This is the only genuine thing in the G.o.d line. If you are taken in by any other, why, go and be d.a.m.ned;” and having done all this, finishes by chanting ”Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost!” And the pious are not shocked by what they should abhor as horrible sacrilege and blasphemy; they are shocked only by the ”Go, and be d.a.m.ned,” which is the prologue and epilogue of the blasphemy. Were the d.a.m.natory clauses omitted, it appears that even the most devout wors.h.i.+ppers could comfortably chant the ”Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost” immediately after they had been thus degrading Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to the level and beneath the level of their low human understanding. And these very people are horrified by the lack of veneration in Atheists and infidels! What infidel ever dealt with G.o.d more contemptuously and blasphemously than this creed has dealt with him? Can it be expected that sane and sensible men, who have out-grown the prejudices sucked in with their mothers' milk, will be reconverted to reverence a Deity whom his votaries dare to treat in this fas.h.i.+on?
Ere we conclude, it may be as well to antic.i.p.ate a probable objection.
It may likely enough be urged that the author and reciters cf the creed do not pretend to know the Deity so thoroughly as we have a.s.sumed, since they avouch very early in the creed that the three persons of the G.o.dhead are one and all incomprehensible. If the word incomprehensible, thus used, means (what it apparently meant in the author's mind) unlimited as to extension, just as the word eternal means unlimited as to time, the objection is altogether wide of the mark.. But even if the word incomprehensible be taken to mean (what it apparently means in the minds of most people who use the creed) beyond the comprehension or capacity of the human intellect, still the objection is without force.
For in the same sense a tuft of gra.s.s, a stone, anything and everything in the world is beyond the capacity of the human intellect: the roots of a tuft of gra.s.s strike as deeply into the incomprehensible as the mysteries of the Deity. Relatively this creed tells us quite as much about G.o.d as ever the profoundest botanist can tell us about the gra.s.s; in fact, it tells relatively more, for it implies a knowledge of the _Final Cause_ of the subsistence of G.o.d, which no future botanist can tell or imply of the gra.s.s.
OUR OBSTRUCTIONS
(1877.)
Walking along the Strand and Fleet Street and through the heart of the City, noting the churches on the way-high St. Martin's, St.
Mary-le-Strand, St. Clement Danes, the Cathedral, and the many still left wedged in by offices in the narrowest and busiest streets, or lanes of London-I am always reminded of the old wooden s.h.i.+ps laid up ”in ordinary,” as one sees them at Plymouth and Portsmouth, and elsewhere.
The churches, like the s.h.i.+ps, though not so surely, may have done good service in their time; but their day is past, never to return. When we reflect on the subject, however, we find manifold differences between the state of the churches and that of the s.h.i.+ps. These are dismantled, unrigged and dismasted, pa.s.sive white hulls ghostly on the waters, as it were the phantoms of the old swift-winged and thunder-striking eagles of battle. But the churches remain in all their pride, complete in equipment from lowest vault to topmost spire, even those which are shut silent all the week, without the least pretence of use, and in which on Sunday the droning and drowsy wors.h.i.+p of a meagre congregation ”rattles like a withered kernel in a large sh.e.l.l.” Again, the crews of the s.h.i.+ps were discharged as soon as these were put out of commission, while the full crews of the churches, rectors, vicars, ushers, beadles, are kept on at full pay, and saunter through the old exercises and parades as if they were valiant effectives instead of dummies and shams. And this death-in-life of the churches is more dreary and doleful than the naked death of the s.h.i.+ps.
These churches officially and effetely represent what is called the English Reformation, the most ign.o.ble in Europe; which, as Macaulay remarks, merely transferred the full cup from the hand of the Pope to the hand of the King, spilling as little,as possible by the way. It is true that the State Church thus established, in spite of its illogical position, boasted great men in its early days, inspired by patriotism as against Rome, with abounding faith for the mysteries, with firm belief in the Bible, with full confidence in metaphysical divinity. But now Rome is formidable no longer, the mysteries are seen to be not only incomprehensible but self-contradictory, the Bible has been torn asunder by criticism, metaphysical divinity has been proved baseless; all the best thought of the age abandons the Church and disregards its dogmas; it has great men no more, nor ever again will have. Its general character is well hit off by Ruskin, himself a devoted Christian, in the phrase ”the smooth proprieties of lowland Protestantism.”' It may be worth while to quote a little more from him on this subject (”Modern Painters,” part v., chap. 20, ”The Mountain Glory”)-”But still the large aspect of the matter is always, among Protestants, that formalism, respectability, orthodoxy, caution and propriety, live by the slow stream that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral; and that enthusiasm, poverty, vital faith and audacity of conduct, characterise the pastor dwelling by the torrent side.” And again: ”Among the fair arable lands of England and Belgium extends an orthodox Protestantism or Catholicism-prosperous, creditable and drowsy; but it is among the purple moors of the highland border, the ravines of Mount Genevre, and the crags of the Tyrol, that we shall find the simplest evangelical faith and the purest Romanist practice.” In other words, in religion the highlander is enthusiastic and superst.i.tious, the low-lander lukewarm and worldly. Thus our fat English Church still keeps to the text, ”By grace ye are saved;” but its grace now is chiefly of deportment. It boasts that its clergy are gentlemen; and they may be, as a rule, in society, though we unbelievers seldom find them so in controversy; and it seems to be persuaded that we should continue to allow it several million pounds a year to keep up this supply of gentlemen, when every profession, every trade shows gentlemen quite as good, with the advantages of more intellect, more experience of life, more courage and more sincerity.
There is indeed a section of the clergy full of zeal-to restore the priesthood. How some of these gentlemen compound with their consciences in taking English pay and position for doing Romish work, is a standing puzzle to honest laymen untrained in casuistry. But as they do rank themselves among the parsons of our State Church, their ecclesiastical pretensions are even more ludicrous than they are outrageously arrogant.
For ever preaching up the authority and discipline of the Church, they are the first to rebel against it when it does not suit their whims.
Thus Mr. Tooth, of Hatcham, not only defies an Act of Parliament, but also defies his bishop, and has plenty of abettors in doing both. I read in the _Daily News_: ”Two of Mr. Tooth's supporters, whose letters we have published, insist that the Public Wors.h.i.+p Regulation Act is not law and is not binding on Churchmen, because it has never received the sanction of Convocation”-the said Convocation having about as much influence and authority in the country as a tavern discussion society.
Again: ”One writer talks of the Church having been declared to be free from all civil jurisdiction in spiritual affairs by many successive Sovereigns. We did not know that our Sovereigns had a right to make laws by Royal declarations, [and] not merely for their own time, but for all time. According to these principles of const.i.tutional government we have three rival law-making powers in England-the Parliament, with the Sovereign for one; the Declaration of the Sovereign for another; and Convocation for a third. Of these Parliament would seem to be the weakest, for it cannot negative the proceedings of the other two; but either of these two can declare invalid what it has done.” Can anything be more absurd? Here is a State Church established by Parliament with the sanction of the monarch, endowed with national endowments, liable to be disestablished and disendowed by Parliament with the sanction of the monarch; yet many of its ministers claim to be free from the authority of the State and Parliament to which it owes its existence and subsistence! If they really desire such freedom, they can easily obtain it. They have but to sever their adulterous connexion with the State, restoring to the nation the endowments they have so long misused, and they will then be emanc.i.p.ated from all control, at liberty to teach what doctrines and practise what ritual they please. But these super-spiritual clergy keep a desperate clutch on the revenues. If anything could be more absurd than the defiance of Parliament, it would be the defiance of their ecclesiastical superiors by these champions of absolute ecclesiastical subordination. His bishop inhibits Mr. Tooth, Mr. Tooth coolly disregards the inhibition, and one who sympathises with him calmly writes to the _Daily News_? ”Considering how bishops have been appointed since the Reformation, it is hard to see why Mr. Tooth and your correspondents should even pretend to obey them.” This is frightful, and may well make even the hardened sceptic shudder. What! a genuine successor of the Apostles (else the English Church has no genuine priesthood) chosen by the Holy Ghost itself (in obedience to the recommendation of the King or Queen) against his own humble wish (for he declared _Nolo Episcopari_); and English Churchmen need not even pretend to obey him! Such is the subordination of those who maintain the extreme authority of the Church!
Jesus has told us that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and the house of our State Church is divided against itself most savagely.