Part 16 (1/2)
Let us now review the evils attendant on subscription, and next consider the objections to its removal.
In the first place, the process of restraining discussion by penal tests is inherently untenable, absurd, and fallacious.
In support of this strong a.s.sertion, we have only to repeat, that every man has an interest in getting at the truth, and consequently in whatever promotes that end. We live by the truth; error is death. To stand between a man and the attainment of truth, is to inflict an injury of incalculable amount. The circ.u.mstances wherein the prohibition of truth is desirable, must be extraordinary and altogether exceptional.
The few may have a self-interest in withholding truth from the many; neither the few nor the many have an interest in its being withheld from themselves. Each one of us has the most direct concern in knowing on what plan this universe is const.i.tuted, what are its exact arrangements and laws. Whether for the present life, or for any other life, we must steer our course by our knowledge, and that knowledge needs to be true.
Obstruction to the truth recoils upon the obstructors. To flee to the refuge of lies is not the greatest happiness of anybody.
It has been maintained that there are illusions so beneficial as to be preferable to truth. Occasionally, in private life, we practise little deceptions upon individuals when the truth would cause some great temporary mischief. This case need not be discussed. The important instance is in reference to religious belief. A benevolent Deity and a future life are so cheering and consoling, it is said, that they should be secured against challenge or criticism; they ought not to be weakened by discussion. This, of course, a.s.sumes that these doctrines are unable to maintain themselves against opponents, that, with all their intrinsic charm (which n.o.body can be indifferent to), they would give way under a free handling. Such a confession is fatal. Men will go on cheris.h.i.+ng pleasing illusions, but not such as need to be _protected_ in order to exist. According to Plato, the belief in the goodness of the Deity was of so great importance that it was to be maintained by state penalties--about the worst way of making the belief efficacious for its end. What should we think of an Act pa.s.sed to imprison whoever disputed the goodness of King Alfred, the Man of Ross, or Howard?
Granting that certain illusions are highly beneficial, it does not follow that they are to be exempted from criticism. Their effect depends on the prestige of their truth. That is, they must have reasons on their side. But a doctrine is not supported by reasons, unless the objections are stated and answered; not sham objections, but the real difficulties of an enquiring mind. If the statement of such difficulties is forcibly suppressed, the rational foundations will sooner or later be sapped.
[FREEDOM ESSENTIAL TO THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH.]
If illusions are themselves good, freedom of thought will give us the best. Why should we protect inferior illusions against the discovery of the superior? The unfettered march of the intellect may improve the quality of our illusions as illusions, while also strengthening their foundations. If religion be a good thing, the best religion is the best thing; and we cannot be sure of having the best, if men are forbidden to make a search.
Supposing, then, truth is desirable, the means to the end are desirable.
Now one of the means is perfect liberty to call in question every opinion whatsoever. This is not all that is necessary; it is not even the princ.i.p.al condition of the discovery of new truth. It is, however, an indispensable adjunct, a negative condition. While laborious search for facts, care in comparing them, genius in detecting deep ident.i.ties, are the highways to knowledge,--the permission to promulgate new doctrines and to counter-argue the old is equally essential. Men cannot be expected to go through the toil of making discoveries at the hazard of persecution. If a few have done so, it is their glory and everybody else's shame.
That the torch of truth should be shaken till it s.h.i.+ne, is generally admitted. Still, exceptions are made; otherwise the present argument would be superfluous. On certain subjects there is a demand for protection against innovating views. The implication is that, in these subjects, truth is better arrived at by delegating the search to a few, and treating their judgment as final. I need not ask where we should have been, if this mode of arriving at truth had been followed universally. The monopoly of enquiry claimed for the higher subjects, if set up in the lower, would be treated as the empire of darkness.
Second. The subscription to articles, and the enforcement of a creed by penalties, are nugatory for their own purpose; they fail to secure uniformity of belief.
This is shown in various ways. For instance, to inculcate adhesion to a set of articles, is merely to ensure that none shall use words that formally deny one or other of the doctrines prescribed. It does not say, that the subscriber shall teach the whole round of doctrines, in their due order and proportion. A preacher may at pleasure omit from his pulpit discourses any single doctrine; so that, in so far as his ministrations are concerned, to the hearers such doctrine is non-existent; without being denied, it is ignored. Against omission, a prosecution for heresy would not hold. In this way, the clergy have always had a certain amount of liberty, and have freely used it. In so doing, they have altered the whole character of the prescribed creed, without being technically heterodox. Everyone of us has listened to preachers of this description. Some ignore the Trinity, some the Atonement; many nowadays, without denying future punishment, never mention h.e.l.l to ears polite. If the rigorous exclusion of a leading doctrine should excite misgivings, a very slight, formal, and pa.s.sing admission may be made, while the stress of exhortation is thrown upon quite different points.
[SUBSCRIPTION FAILS TO ATTAIN ITS END.]
To attain a conviction for heresy, involving deprivation of office, the forms of justice must be respected. It is only under peculiar circ.u.mstances, that the ecclesiastical authority can be content with saying, ”I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, or Dr. Smith, and I depose thee accordingly”. A regular trial, with proof of specific contradiction of specific articles, allowing the accused the full benefit of his explanations, must be the rule in every corporation that respects justice. In the Church of England, a man cannot be deprived unless he contradict the articles clearly and consistently; the smallest incoherence on his part, the slightest vacillation in the rigour of his denial, is enough to save him. We may easily imagine, therefore, how widely a clergyman may stray from the fair, ordinary, current rendering of the doctrines of the Church, without danger. The whole essence of Christianity may be perverted under a few cunning precautions and by observing a few verbal formalities.
It has been pointed out, many times over, that the legally imposed creeds were the creatures of accident and circ.u.mstances at the time of their enactment, and are wholly unsuitable to the conservation of the more permanent and essential articles of the Christian faith. The amount of heresy, as against the more truly representative doctrines, that may pa.s.s through their meshes is very great.
This weakness is aggravated by another--the want of any provision for amending the creed from time to time. If it were desirable to adopt measures for maintaining uniformity of opinions among the clergy, the creed should be excised, or added to, according to the needs of every age. That this is not done, shows that the machinery of tests is altogether abnormal; it is not within the type of regular legislation.
That any given creed should be regarded as out of keeping, as both redundant and defective, and yet that the ecclesiastical authority should shrink from applying a remedy to its most obvious defects, proves that the system itself is bad. All healthy legislation lends itself to perpetual improvement; that the enactments of articles of belief cannot be reconsidered, is a sign of rottenness.
A third objection to tests is, that mere dogmatic uniformity, if it were more complete than any tests can make it, is at best but a part of the religious character. It does nothing to secure or promote fervour, feeling, the emotional element in religion. It is by moral heat, far more than by its mould of doctrine, that religion influences mankind.
There is no means of censuring preachers for coldness or languid indifference; or rather, there is another and more legitimate means than penal prosecutions, namely, expressed dissatisfaction and the preference of those that excel in the quality. A warm, glowing manner, an unctuous delivery, commands hearers and conducts to popularity and importance.
The men of cold and unfeeling natures may get into office, but they are lightly esteemed. They are not had up to a public trial and deposed, but they are treated, and spoken of, in such a way as to discourage men of their type from becoming preachers, and to encourage the other sort.
There are many qualifications that go to forming a good preacher; the holding of the creed of the body is only one. Yet, with the exception of gross immorality or abandonment of duty, correctness of creed is the only one that is subjected to the extreme penalty of loss of office; the others are secured by different means. Is it too much to infer that, without the extreme penalty, a reasonable conformity to the prevailing creed might also be secured?
[ELEMENT OF FEELING NOT SECURED.]
The importance of the element of feeling has been most perceived in times when the religious current was strongest. At these times, its expression would not be hemmed in by rigorous formulas. The first communication of religious doctrines has always partaken of a broad and free rendering; apparent discrepancies were disregarded. To reduce all the utterances of the prophets and the apostles to definite forms and rigid dogmas, was to misconceive the situation. We may well suppose that the New Testament writers would have refused to subscribe the Athanasian Creed or the Westminster Confession; not because these were in flat contradiction to Scripture, but because the way of embodying the religious verities in these doc.u.ments would be repugnant to their ideas of form in such matters. The creed-builders may have been never so anxious to give exact equivalents of the original authorities; yet their fine distinctions and subtle logic would have, in all probability, been ranked by Paul and Peter among the latter-day perversions of the faith.
The very composition of a creed would have been as distasteful to the first century, as it is incongruous to the nineteenth.
The evil operation of religious tests, and of the accompanying intolerance of the public mind as shown towards any form of dissent from the stereotyped orthodoxy, admits of a very wide handling. It is of course the problem of religious liberty. Some parts of the argument need to be reproduced here, to help us in replying to the objections against an unconditional abolition of compulsory creeds.
In conversing, many years ago, with the late Jules Mohl, the great Oriental scholar, professor of Persian in the College de France, I was much struck with his account of the nature of his duties as an expounder of the modern Persian authors. These authors, for example the poet Sadi, were in creed adherents of the ancient Persian fire-wors.h.i.+p, notwithstanding the Mohammedan conquest of their country. They were, of course, forbidden to avow that creed directly; and in consequence, they had recourse to a form of composition by _doubles entendres_, veiling the ancient creed under Mohammedan forms. Mohl's business, as their expounder, was to strip off the disguise and show the true bearings of the writers, under their show of conformity to the established opinions.