Connexion of Unitarianism with pure Protestantism, with Natural Philosophy, and with the System of Locke—Its positive side— Its negative side —Final results.
I saw that the early Quakers acknowledged many of the doctrines which other Christians acknowledged, but that the sense in which they received them was determined by the nature of those tenets which were specifically theirs. It would be incorrect to apply precisely similar observation to the Reformers. The doctrines which were not characteristic of them, but which were professed by their Romanist opponents, and under certain important modifications by the Eastern as well as the Western Church—the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation—stood prominently forward in the Protestant confessions. Luther at least looked upon them as the primary doctrines of Christianity, and upon his own great principle as the link which connected them with the distinct personality of each man.
But what was not true, or but partially true, of the founders, was emphatically true of the successors, whether they belonged to the spiritual or the dogmatic school. The former uniformly spoke of Election, Justification by faith, the authority of the Written Word, as the vital, essential truths of Christianity those which belonged to personal religion. When they alluded to the doctrine of the Trinity it was in some such language as this—Every true Christian, they said, must needs recognise a Creator, a Redeemer, and a Sanctifier. These offices were necessary to the accomplishment of his salvation, and he must attribute them to distinct agents. Hence the necessity of admitting this principle. But the thought would present itself: “these offices are undoubtedly distinct; but does it follow necessarily that there is a distinction of persons? May not that notion be a mere effort to explain a diversity of operations, which is capable of being accounted for upon some less difficult hypothesis?” The suggestion might be repelled by the humble and pious, but bolder spirits would broach it, and that which was dreaded by the fathers as a temptation, would be welcomed by the sons as a discovery.
The Dogmatic school used a different language. They maintained that this doctrine was taught in Scripture; it formed part of the confessions, and was just as necessary as any other part. But here another kind of difficulty presented itself. Were the texts alleged in behalf of a doctrine so very strange and incomprehensible, adequate to the support of it? Had not the Romanists done something to keep alive the belief of it by their traditions? Was it quite consistent with Protestantism to own such help? These questions were asked, and the answers to them from the doctors of the Evangelical and of the Reformed Churches became daily more faint and incoherent.
I have shown already how in the Calvinistical bodies from the first, and in the Lutheran so far as they caught the purely Protestant complexion, the idea of the Incarnation was deposed from the place which it had occupied in the older divinity of the Church. The state and constitution of humanity was determined by the fall; it was only the pure, elect body, which had concern in the Redemption; that redemption therefore could only be contemplated as a means devised by God for delivering a certain portion of His creatures from the law of death, to which the race was subjected. In endeavours to explain the mode of this redemption, and to justify the limitation of it, consisted the divinity of the most purely Protestant writers, and for this end they resorted to those arguments from the schools, and illustrations from the market-place, of which I spoke in the last chapter.
Meantime a great change had been effected in men’s notions upon several subjects not obviously theological. The experimental philosophy in physics held out to students the hope of attaining an actual knowledge of things, by delivering them from the impressions of the senses, and from the notions which the understanding generalises out of those impressions. Already this philosophy had borne its noblest fruits, and the Astronomer had asserted a principle as true, which was the most contradictory to sense and to all conclusions from sense.
But if this experimental philosophy were the great means of leading to such discoveries, did it not follow that Experience was the one source of knowledge? The conviction became stronger and stronger, “There is no other, there can be no other.” Then clever men began to explain how many false schemes and systems had their origin in the notion that there was some other foundation of knowledge than this, and each fresh exposure drew from the enlightened and philosophical world a fresh peal of laughter at the absurdities of their forefathers. There were indeed various thoughtful men in different parts of Europe who were struck with the reflection, that the new doctrine, which seemed to have grown up side by side with the great experiments in natural philosophy, had led to exactly the opposite result. Physical science had advanced, or rather had been found to be possible, just so far as it had set itself free from sensible impressions, and the notions deduced out of them. Moral science was advancing, it was believed, to its perfection, by acknowledging these impressions and notions as the only standard of truth. But such suggestions were little heeded at the time. It became the first tenet of philosophical orthodoxy, which it was most dangerous to dispute, that sensible experience is the foundation of all belief and of all knowledge.
The rise of this philosophical theory is historically connected with that of a great political theory, which was also to displace all that had gone before it. In order, it was said, to make men tremble at certain doctrines or notions which contradicted their experience, it was necessary to make them tremble also at the authority by which these notions and doctrines were communicated. A mystery was supposed to attach to the origin of society as well as to the origin of knowledge. The one opinion was as fallacious as the other. As knowledge comes in the simplest and most obvious way through eyes and ears, so society grew up in the simplest way by compacts and conventions. Experience was the root of both. Men either felt the miseries of fighting, or dreamed of the blessings of government; they waived their privilege of being independent units, and either yielded themselves passively to one who was stronger than they, or else entered into stipulations with him to rule them till they should find his rule burdensome.
All these points must be taken into consideration, if we would understand the temper of the last age and the nature of the scheme which obtained so much secret or acknowledged prevalency in it. To suppose that there is nothing positive in Unitarianism, that it derives all the popularity it has ever enjoyed from its denials, is a plausible but a serious mistake. It has been embraced by a number of earnest minds, which never could have had any sympathy with a system merely because it rejected what other men believed. I do not say that they may not have felt a certain delight in that peculiarity of their doctrine; that the thought of being different from the vulgar mass may not have been flattering to them, as it is to the evil nature of all men; and that the positive and negative elements of their minds, being confounded by their opponents, may not at last have become hopelessly confounded by themselves. But I do maintain, that something deeper and more solid lay beneath their not-belief; that it is very important to know what that was, not only for their sakes but for our own; not only because the only way of extricating any man from a falsehood is to do justice to his truth; but because by this course the history of the Church and the plans of God, so far as we may be allowed to examine into them, become far more intelligible.
1. From the dogmatic tendencies which distinguished one class of Protestant theologians, and from the disposition to exalt and all but deify the modes and experiences of their own minds which belonged to another, the natural philosopher was equally free. But if he were a simple, humble man, if he had been trained in his youth to the habit of worship, if he had been taught to connect deep and holy thoughts with the idea of God’s presence, his vocation would certainly not diminish his awe and reverence. It would call such feelings forth; nay, he might easily believe that they were first given to him when the marvellous distinctions and inwoven harmonies of creation revealed themselves to him. At all events he was in a new world, a freer world—it would seem a more real world—than that of experiences and notions; one which bore a more immediate and naked witness of a Divine Being. It was only afterwards that this witness came forth in the guise of arguments and demonstrations (the mind of a scientific man naturally enough endeavouring to clothe all thoughts in the forms to which it was habituated, and recognising this idea of a God as one of those certainties to which such forms would be applicable); but the heart and conscience had spoken first; the testimony had been received already there where it was needed, before the slow machinery of proofs was constructed to justify the assumption, and the spirit had bowed and worshipped with a mixed fear and joy at hearing in the world without the echoes of a nearer and deeper voice.
Thus nature spoke to one brought up in a Christian atmosphere, as it was not impossible to suppose it might have spoken to some wondering sage of Greece or India. It seemed to bring the news of a simpler, earlier, more universal faith, which must belong to all, and which all might receive. Other testimonies might be added to this, to confirm it, or to restore it; but no true testimony could set it aside or contradict it. And, therefore, were our Scriptures to be prized to the utter rejection of all Shasters containing the mythologies of the old or new world. The first evidently were affirming and re-establishing this primary testimony; the others were outraging it. The belief of a Being not manifested in outward forms, but manifested in His works; not divided according to the diversity of His operations, but one, was the belief which lay at the root of all their teaching. And since the universality of Christianity had superseded the narrowness of Judaism, it was evident that this belief must be asserted with only greater clearness. It would be strange if the universal religion were more wrapped up in particular notions and opinions, were less expansive, than the ancient, which did, however, testify most strongly against idolatry as a limitation of the Divine Presence and a division of His essence; strange if the more perfect religion were to throw us back upon the very notions from which the imperfect had succeeded in emancipating all who faithfully received it. By such feelings and arguments did the idea of the unity of God gradually raise itself up in the last age against the faith which had been recognised in Christendom for seventeen centuries. Where lay the force of these feelings and arguments? Surely in the strong inward conviction which they expressed, that the unity of God is a deep, primary truth, which no words can explain away, no experiences of ten thousand minds make unreal, no dogmas of ten thousand generations turn into a nullity; that it has stood its ground and asserted itself in defiance of all such words, experiences, dogmas; that everything which is true in the teaching which men have received, has tended to bring it into clearer manifestation. With this conviction was associated another, less clearly brought out, but the stronger perhaps for being latent, that this idea of the unity of God must in some way or other be the ground of all unity among men; that if there be a universal religion, this idea must be at the root of it. With such convictions let no man dare to trifle; rather let him labour by all means to draw them forth into great strength and clearness, bringing so far as he can all history, and the history of Unitarianism in the last century most especially, to illustrate them.
2. A natural philosopher, trained to pious and reverent feelings, free from petty vanity, and keeping himself aloof from vulgar excitements, is more likely than most men to have a calm and cheerful temperament. His mind is not turned in upon itself; the evil which is there is not constantly reminding him of its presence; his circumstances do not oblige him to contemplate the sins of the world; he is habitually occupied with objects which are serene and unchangeable. To such a man the lessons which he has received in his childhood respecting a Being of perfect love and purity, will recur with particular delight; every new fact in nature will bring them home to him; the whole face of nature will seem to be beaming with them. But then the thought will occur to him of other lessons received in his childhood, which seemed to contradict these; lessons respecting justice, and vengeance, and schemes for removing or propitiating wrath. Of a Being possessing such attributes, and needing to be approached in such a manner, nature says nothing. There may be tempests and volcanoes, but all her operations, so far as we are able to penetrate them, are subject to fixed, unchangeable laws; these will at last be found to obey a law too, and He to whom we refer all creation and all laws, must needs have a mind perfectly at one with itself, subject to no vicissitudes, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. Here again, see how the pure, original testimony to God’s universal love has been darkened by human conceits and systems. But that testimony is reasserted in our Bible, distinguished by this characteristic as much as by its assertion of the divine unity, from all pretended revelations. The heathens are denounced in the Old Testament for setting it aside by their cruel inventions; Jesus Christ, by His words and acts, condemned the Jews because they were not honouring God as the God of mercy and love; His dispensation is one from which every other idea is banished; the beloved disciple affirms in words that God is love; all sacrifices and institutions interfering with that notion are expressly abolished. Such were the feelings and arguments by which thousands in the eighteenth century, either openly or secretly, were led to believe that the idea of Atonement, which had been assumed for seventeen centuries to be the radical idea of Christianity, was a wretched and inconsistent graft upon it from some other stock. Where lay the strength of them? In the conviction, it seems to me, that the idea of the love of God is an absolute primary idea which cannot be reduced under any other; which cannot be explained away by any other; which no records, experiences, dogmas, if they have lasted for a thousand generations, can weaken or contradict; which must be the foundation of all thought, all theology, all human life. With such a conviction I believe it is as dangerous to trifle as with that respecting the divine unity.
3. I have spoken of the natural philosopher as withdrawn from the observation of the evils in the world around him, and to a great extent of his own, and as disposed, by his circumstances, to a benignant view of things. How pleasant to such a man when he came from his closet and his problems, with a mind in a measure fixed and abstracted but not unharmonised, to look round upon his children, and to recollect what he had been told in his nursery, that He who created the sun and moon was their Father. How pleasant when he had time to think of all the generations which had looked upon the light of this sun and moon, to believe the same of them. But what jarring thoughts derived from the same nursery would intrude themselves! All these children of men, all these generations, have undergone a fall; they are the subjects of a curse! Of only a few, how few if the calculations of different divines are to be admitted, is it possible to think—“these are God’s children;” all the rest we can only speak of as doomed, and not it would seem by their own sin but by an inevitable necessity. Surely this too must be one of the wretched interpolations into the old and simple faith. Nature teaches no such lesson. The same sunshine and rain for all; the whole universe claimed for its Creator. And the Bible does mean this, must mean it, whatever divines may assert to the contrary. In some way or other it does reconcile the existence of man with its witness of God’s love; in this way it cannot. By such feelings and arguments was the doctrine of a Fall—admitted for seventeen centuries by all Christendom, recognised as the central doctrine of Christian divinity by the Protestant sects—driven out of the hearts of thousands in the eighteenth century.
Against these convictions, the orthodox of the day, especially those of the Calvinistical school, opposed many plausible arguments. A belief in the unity of God, they said, was no doubt in some way compatible with a belief in the Trinity, but we were not to trouble ourselves with efforts at a reconciliation. The subject was mysterious, profoundly mysterious: how could we hope for light upon it when there were so many subjects connected with our common life, of which we know next to nothing. The Bible required this belief; numerous texts might be adduced which could be explained upon no other hypothesis; abandon it, and you must abandon much more, even many of those truths which it had been the peculiar glory of Protestantism to assert.
The principles respecting the character of the Divine Being were disposed of in a similar manner, only with more of logical and metaphysical subtlety. It was questioned whether we are bound to consider the names given to the attributes of one wholly divine and incomprehensible, as having the same signification with those names when they describe qualities in us; it was said that we must depend wholly on revelation for our knowledge of God, and that if certain acts and feelings were ascribed to Him by the Bible, we must simply acknowledge them, and wait for the explanation of them in a future state; it was maintained that the attribute of justice was as essential to the perfection of God as that of mercy.
To the notions respecting the fall, various answers were given. First, the universality of human depravity was said to be asserted in many passages of Scripture; secondly, it was attested by experience; thirdly, it was not incompatible with the acknowledgment of a natural conscience in man; fourthly, it was the consequence of a wilful act on the part of the first man; and fifthly, the visitation of the consequences of that act on his posterity might be defended by many human analogies.
These arguments were produced in various forms, and with various degrees of ability; but there were two barriers against them which they were quite powerless to break down. The first was that strong feeling I have spoken of already, that these principles concerning God and man are great ultimate principles, which cannot be denied without denying everything that is true and solid, and which must receive the most distinct and solemn acknowledgment, unless we would have all the rest of our belief confused and false. To raise any specific argument, any set of texts, against them was propter vitam vivendi perdere causas—to set aside by reasoning the first witness of reason; by passages from the Bible, that which was its end and substance. This was the irresistible protection of the Unitarian system in the minds of earnest men who had embraced it. There was another equally secure defence to persons of the most opposite character. It consisted in the doctrine which Locke had proclaimed—not in a full, clear, steady contemplation of that doctrine, and all its results, for then Hume’s conclusion stared them in the face, then it was felt “There is no warrant for acknowledging any being, eternal, immaculate, invisible; for of no such being do the senses, or experience arising from the senses, furnish an indication;” but in a loose, popular impression about the doctrine—a feeling spread through society, that experience was in general the only root of knowledge, that you were not to believe much which you could not establish by its evidence. This philosophy, which was commonly recognised by those who assailed Unitarianism, as well as by those who defended it, gave to the arguments of the former the strangest appearance of inconsistency. They were simply affirming something to be revealed or made known to man, which according to his nature or constitution, as they understood it, could not be revealed to him. He was to learn and receive something which he could not learn and receive; a condition, the Unitarians rightly said, which even Papists had not exacted; for in the days when Popery had made its great demands on men’s faith this doctrine of experience was not understood. And this demand, they went on to say, you urge upon us at a time when the very idea of a body which can make it has been scattered to the winds. A Catholic Church, if there could be such a thing, a body having divine and mysterious endowments, might with some consistency claim an assent to a mysterious dogma. But your Confession of Augsburg has dispersed that dream. You have constituted societies which you may call churches, or what you will, but which do not and cannot pretend that they have any authority over the world. They may lay down what canons or maxims they please for their individual members; they have the same right of private legislation—of making rules for their own government, be they ever so absurd, which every other corporation possesses. But the only warrant for imposing an inexplicable creed upon mankind is gone. Each portion of mankind has its own habits, maxims, opinions; each man his own particular judgments, which he has a right to exercise and defend against the world; there are a few common principles, admitted alike by saint, by savage, and by sage, but these, so far from being identical with those incomprehensible doctrines, are the very reverse of them.
Never surely were more plausible opinions promulgated in the world than these; never any which seemed to carry with them a more natural and less painful demonstration. To divines, they seemed a deliverance from the strangest intellectual confusions; to easy and comfortable men, the removal of an inexplicable burden from their consciences; to those who desired to be philosophical, the satisfaction of their longing; to those who disliked extremes, a convenient refuge from the difficulties of belief, and the dreariness of infidelity. But the more such persons crowded into the ranks of Unitarianism—(not in general by an open renunciation of their former creeds, but by habitually and practically confessing a disbelief in them)—the more were those who had adopted it on the other more positive grounds, startled and confounded. With deep awe they had acknowledged the Unity of God, as the unfathomable foundation of thought, and faith, and being. Now they heard that unity asserted, not as mysterious and unfathomable, but as the escape from mystery. It was a purely material notion; all the arguments in its favour were deduced from the impossibility and contradiction which a Trinity presents when it is contemplated materially. But where they asked themselves is unity in matter? Is not matter infinitely divisible? Can this be the way of escaping from contradictions? Can this be the way to be rational? Throwing aside everything but materialism—dismissing every thought that lies beyond it—we are then called upon to recognise an idea, of which matter affords no realisation—scarcely the indication! Such thoughts brooded in their minds, and led them by very slow processes and through bitter conflicts to the conviction: “If the Unity of God is to be asserted it must be asserted on quite different grounds from those which the so-called Unitarians have chosen, and the true assertion of it may possibly be contained in those creeds which we have rejected.”
On the popular supporters of Unitarianism such arguments made no impression. They probably received them with indignation. What! they would have said, Do you suppose we meant a metaphysical unity? we meant to escape from all subtleties—the Bible is written for simple people. I have hinted already that this language was unfortunate; they appealed unto Cæsar—unto Cæsar they must go. They wished to be tried by simple people; it remained to be seen whether there was that in their scheme to which the hearts of simple people responded. But, before that experiment was made the more thoughtful disciples of Unitarianism began to be struck with another strange contradiction between the principles on which it rested and the system in which they are embodied. The Unitarians were the great assertors of the absolute unqualified love of God, in opposition to all mythologies and theologies which had preceded. And Unitarianism was the first of all theologies or mythologies which denied that the Almighty had, in His own person, by some act of condescension and sacrifice, interfered to redress the evils and miseries of His creatures! Every pagan religion had acknowledged the need of an incarnation; the modern Jew and Mahometan, nominally rejecting it, is yet continually dreaming of it and testifying of its necessity: it was reserved for this religion to make it the greatest evidence and proof of love in a Divine Being, that He merely pardons those who have filled the world with misery; that He has never shared in it; never wrestled with it; never devised any means, save that of sending a wise teacher, for delivering mankind out of it.
Again; to a man who really cherished with earnest affection the thought, “God is a universal Father, His creatures cannot be merely the subjects of a curse,” what a strange reflection it must have been—“And yet, according to those doctrines which I hold, He is not, and cannot be, a Father. The word means nothing. It is a lazy inappropriate synonym of Maker, for it is the very glory of my creed to do that which no other has done; first to deny that there is any human bond between men and God; secondly, to deny that they have in themselves any capacity, different from that which an animal has, of receiving impulses from God.”
Once more; to purify men of their false notions of morality, to establish religion on the basis of morality, and to reveal the existence of another world than the present, were, according to Unitarianism, the objects of Christ’s appearance in the world, and the objects which the reformers of His doctrine were to keep steadily in sight. For this end they were to desire the removal of all systems and institutions which had kept alive a false faith and a distorted notion of the character of God. “But who,” the disappointed disciple of this school inquired, “who are the great helpers in this work of reformation?—who show most longing that it should be accomplished? Are they men of deep thought and high devotion, who have been poring in sadness over the condition of society—in solitary chambers crying out, Usque quo, Domine? Are they even poor men, not aiming at some high standard, but feeling the burden and oppression of the universe, and believing that God could not have meant so many of His creatures to live and die, without comfort or hope?—or are they not rather men, who for the most part have preserved a quiet decent level tone of mind and character; who belong to the easy, respectable, prosperous classes, and who are actually impatient of anything which disturbs them with the recollection of an elevated supersensual morality, or of a society based upon self-sacrifice?”
Alas! he will have said, and is it for this only that I have parted with all the dreams of my childhood? I thought in my infancy that a kingdom of righteousness, peace, joy, had been set up in the world, and that I was to wait and hope, till that kingdom should rule over all. It has been the glorious discovery of my manhood, that there is no such kingdom here—nothing but a world, in which men are to observe certain rules of behaviour towards each other, to restrain themselves within certain rules of prudence for their own sakes, and to cheer themselves with the prospect of a future world—unknown and undefined—wherein they shall be rewarded if they have not transgressed social decorums, and be forgiven if they have.
Such a picture of the tendencies and ultimate results of the system, must often have presented itself to those who had embraced it with affection, as a deliverance from the dryness and narrowness of Calvinism, and as a witness for the unity and love of God. But these thoughts would only have stirred powerfully in a few minds if a series of strange movements had not taken place in European society, some of which must have seemed most promising to Unitarians, but which really destroyed the whole credit of their system, depriving it of the patronage of nobles and prelates, and supplying it with no substitute in the sympathies either of the thoughtful or of the poor.