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 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Class 
 
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DISCUSSIONS 
 
 IN HISTOHY AND THEOLOGY 
 
 By GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., LL.D., ' 
 
 TITtrS STREET PROFESSOB OF ECCIiKSIASTICAIi HISTORY IN YAI-E COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway 
 
 . 1880 . 
 

 RFJ^SE 
 
 111 CO 
 
 CJOPTBIOHT BT 
 
 OHABLBS SCBIBNEB'S SONS. 
 
 TbOW'8 
 
 PfinmNO AND Bookbinding Compant, 
 ;«}l-ai3 East Twelfth Street, 
 
 MBW TOBK. 
 
/ 
 
 TO 
 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
 G. P. P. 
 
 187464 
 
■ OF THE ' 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The Essays which are collected in this volume, with a few 
 exceptions, may be classified under three heads. 
 
 The first group, beginning with the second Essay, com- 
 prises Papers which relate to the history, polity and dogmaS; 
 of the Eoman Catholic Church. The Church of Eome has 
 lately undergone two changes of great moment. The 
 principality which the Pontiffs had ruled for a thousand 
 years, has fallen from their grasp and been absorbed in the 
 new kingdom of Italy ; and the infallibility and supreme 
 " power of jurisdiction" of the Pope have been defined by^ 
 conciliar decree. These new aspects of the Roman Catho- 
 lic system, in their historical relations, and in their bearings 
 on religion and civil society, are among the topics here 
 considered. How the genius and religion of ancient Rome 
 reappear in characteristic features of Latin Christianity, 
 is the subject of one of the Discussions in this series. 
 
 The second group of Essays relates to 'New England 
 theology. Jonathan Edwards was the pioneer in a move- 
 ment which was carried forward by a succession of theo- 
 logical leaders after him, and involved important modifica-" 
 tions in the philosophy of Calvinism. The character of 
 this movement — the most original in the history of Ameri-; 
 
VI PEEFAOE. 
 
 can theology — and the peculiarities of the principal cory- 
 phaei of the Kew England school, I have attempted impar- 
 tially to describe. While Calvinism took this turn, out of 
 the old Arminianism — which withstood the revivalism of 
 Edwards and Whitefield — in conjunction with other in- 
 fluences, Unitarianism sprang up, in its various types and 
 with its different offshoots. This branch of the religious 
 history of New England is the subject of the Paper on 
 Channing. 
 
 The third division pertains to Theism and Christian 
 Evidences. In the Essay on Eationalism, the defining 
 characteristic of the rationalistic theory, and its radical as- 
 sumption, are pointed out, and a place is vindicated for the 
 principle of authority in religion. The discourse on Atheism 
 indicates, without elaborately developing, points of argu- 
 ment which appear to me to constitute valid grounds of 
 faith in the personality of God, In the Essay on the 
 Apostle Paul, the threads, intellectual and spiritual, which 
 connect the two portions of his career — separated from one 
 another by the crisis of his conversion — are brought to light, 
 and comments are made on observations of Penan and of 
 Matthew Arnold. The Eeview of Supernatural Heligion 
 examines the, most noteworthy reproduction, in English 
 literature, of the modern attack by the Tubingen criticism 
 upon the genuineness of the canonical Gospels. 
 
 Among the Essays not included in this classification, one 
 has for its object to trace to its origin the Massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew's Eve, and to sketch the rise and progress of 
 the civil wars in France, down to that epoch ; a second 
 aims to set forth the history of the doctrine of future pun- 
 ishment in the church — in particular, the opinions and 
 
prefaoeJ. vu 
 
 arguments of modem theologians on that subject ; a third 
 describes the position taken bj the Church of England in 
 reference to other Protestant Churches, in the age of the 
 Keformation and subsequently. In the dissertation last 
 mentioned, the relations of the Protestant leaders to one an- 
 other in the different European countries, in the sixteenth 
 century, are incidentally exhibited. 
 
 G. P. F. 
 ' Kbw Havbn, March so, 1880. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOX 
 
 The IVIassacre op St. Bartholomew 1 
 
 The Influence of the Old Roman Spirit and Religion on 
 
 Latin Christianity , 34 
 
 The Temporal Kingdom of the Popes 68 
 
 The Council of Constance and the Council of the Vatican.. 101 
 
 The Office of the Pope and how he is Chosen 141 
 
 The Relation of Protestantism and of Romanism to Modern 
 
 Civilization 161 
 
 The Relation op the Church of England to the other Pro- 
 testant Bodies 176 
 
 The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards 227 
 
 Channing as a Philosopher and Theologian 253 
 
 The System of Dr. N. W. Taylor in its Connection with 
 Prior New England Theology 285 
 
 The A.UGUSTINIAN and the Federal Doctrines op Original 
 Sin 355 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 A Sketch of the History op the Doctrine op Future Pun- 
 ishment 410 
 
 Bationalism. 439 
 
 The Unreasonableness op Atheism 468 
 
 The Apostle Paul 487 
 
 The Four Gospels : A Review of " Supernatural Religion." 512 
 
DISCUSSIONS. 
 
 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.* • 
 
 Frai^^ce, in the age when Protestantism was spreading in 
 Europe, found herself in a place where two seas met. If 
 the ship of state did not go to pieces, like the vessel which 
 threw St. Paul upon the coast of Malta, it had to struggle 
 through a long and frightful tempest from which it barely- 
 escaped. In the other European countries the situation was 
 different. There was intestine discord, but not to the same 
 extent ; or with consequences less ruinous. 
 
 In Germany, the central authority was too weak to coerce 
 the Lutheran states. The war undertaken by Charles Y. 
 for that purpose was brief, and comparatively bloodless. 
 The final issue was the freedom of the Protestants for a 
 long period, until imperial fanaticism, in the early part of 
 the seventeenth century, brought on the terrible Thirty 
 Years' War, which exhausted what was left of the vitality 
 of the German Empire, and ended in the establishment of 
 Protestant liberties at the Peace of Westphalia (1648). In 
 England, as late as Elizabeth's reign, not less than one-half 
 the population preferred the old Church ; but in the wars of 
 the Roses, the nobles had been decimated, and regal author- 
 ity strengthened ; and the iron will of the Tudor sovereigns, 
 Henry YIII. and Elizabeth, coupled with an inbred hatred 
 of foreign rule, ecclesiastical and secular, and supported by 
 
 * An Article in The New Englander for January, 1880. 
 
2S THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 the fervent love of a great party to the Protesant faith, kept 
 the nation on one path, and stifled various attempts at insur- 
 rection, which might otherwise have blazed up in civil war. 
 In Scotland, the league of the nobles with the reformers, aided 
 by the follies of Mary Stuart, proved strong enough to uphold 
 against the opposing faction the revolution which had made 
 Calvinism the legal religion of the country. In Sweden, 
 Protestantism speedily triumphed under the popular dynas- 
 ty erected by Gustavus Yasa. In the Netherlands, tliere 
 .was a fierce battle continued for the greater part of a cen- 
 tury; but the contest of Holland was against Spain, to 
 throw off the yoke that she was determined to fasten upon 
 that persecuted and unconquerable race. In Italy and in 
 the Spanish peninsula. Protestantism did not gain strength 
 enough to stand against the revived fanaticism of its adver- 
 sary, and was swept away, root and branch. 
 
 In general, it may be said that in the north, among the 
 peoples of the Teutonic stock, the preponderance was so 
 greatly on the side of the Protestants, that the shock occa- 
 sioned by the collision of opposing parties was weakened 
 and unity was preserved ; while in the south, among the 
 Eomanic peoples below the Alps and the Pyrenees, the 
 CathoKc cause had a like predominance in a much greater 
 degree, and overwhelmed all opposition. But, as for France, 
 she stood midway between the two mighty currents of opin- 
 ion. Her people belonged, in their lineage and tongue, to 
 the Latin race ; but they had somewhat more of German 
 blood in their veins than their brethren in the south, and — 
 what is much more important — ^by their geographical situ- 
 ation, previous history, and culture, they were made much 
 more sensitive to the influences of what was then modem 
 thought. 
 
 Yet, France was a powerful and compact monarchy, and 
 seemed better able than any other country to breast the 
 storm. On the 1st of July, 987, Hugh Capet, Count of 
 Paris, elected king by an assembly of nobles, superseded the 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 3 
 
 foreign Carlovingian line, and was crowned at Rlieims. 
 From him all the later kings of France — the Bonaparte 
 usurpers alone excepted — the direct Capetian line, the Yalois, 
 Bourbon, and Orleans monarchs, down to the abdication of 
 Louis Philippe, are spnmg.* Out of the dominion of Hugh 
 Capet, the small district known as the Isle of France, of 
 which Paris was the centre, there was built up in the course 
 of centuries, by the accretion of feudal territories, by lucky 
 marriages, by treaties or conquest, the modern kingdom of 
 France. The wars with England which went on, with many 
 intervals, for 250 years — from the end of the twelfth cen- 
 tury to the middle of the fifteenth — resulted at the end of 
 this period, largely through the heroic deeds of Joan of Arc, 
 in the expulsion of the English from every place except the 
 single town of Calais, l^ormandy, Guienne, and all the 
 other territories which had been held by the victors of 
 Creey, Poitiers and Agincourt, who were more than once 
 the almost undisputed masters of France, fell back to their 
 native and rightful owners. Toward the- close of the fif- 
 teenth century, the crafty policy of Louis XL effected the 
 downfall of Charles the Bold, and secured to France the 
 Duchy of Burgundy. From the King of Aragon he ac- 
 quired, on the south, the counties of E-oussillon and Cer- 
 dagne, the last of which was permanently incorporated in 
 France. Anjou, Maine, and Provence reverted to him 
 from the house of Anjou, together with the claims of that 
 family upon [N'aples. Charles YIIL, son of Louis XL, mar- 
 ried Anne, the heiress of Brittany, and so this fine province 
 was added to the jewels of the French Crown. 
 
 Francis I., who ascended the throne in 1515, two years 
 before the posting of Luther's theses, had a consolidated 
 kingdom powerful enough to enable him, a few years later, 
 to cope on equal terms with his rival, Charles Y. At home, 
 
 * The Valois line begins with Philip VI. (1328) ; the Bourbon with 
 Henry IV. (1589) ; the Orleans with Louis PhiUppe (1830). 
 
4 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 he could set at defiance the will of his parliaments, and aug- 
 ment his authority through the Concordat with Pope Leo 
 X., which secured to the king the power of filling bj nomi- 
 nation the great ecclesiastical benefices in his realm. Dur- 
 ing the thirty-two years of his reign, and the twelve years'* 
 reign of his son and successor, Henry II., the Protestants 
 could offer only a passive resistance to the persecution which 
 was instigated and managed by the Sorbonne — the Faculty 
 of Theology at Paris — and which found myriads of brutal 
 agents throughout the land. Francis, and Henry after him, 
 with one arm aided the German Lutherans in their contest 
 with Charles Y., and with the other crushed their French 
 brethren of the same faith. " One king, one law, one faith," 
 was the motto. There must be one and only one religion 
 tolerated in the realm. Yet Protestantism, notwithstand- 
 ing its long roll of martyrs, and partly by means of them, 
 had gained a firm foothold before the death of Henry H. 
 
 The revival of learning, which in other countries paved 
 the way for the reform in religion, was not without its natu- 
 ral fruit in France. Francis himself was proud of being 
 called the Father of Letters ; cherished the ideas of Erasmus ; 
 founded the college of the three languages at Paris, in spite 
 of the disgust and hostility of the doctors of theology, the 
 champions of mediaevalism ; drew to his side from beyond 
 the Alps men like Leonardo da Yinci, scholars and artists ; 
 protected his sister Margaret in her Protestant predilections ; 
 and contributed not a little, indirectly, notwithstanding his 
 occasional cruelties, to the diffusion of the new doctrine. 
 Henry 11. was more of a bigot ; but he followed his father's 
 policy of joining hands with the Protestant communities of 
 Germany, in opposition to Charles. 
 
 The first converts to the Reformation in France were 
 Lutherans ; but Lutheranism was supplanted by the other 
 principal type of Protestantism. Calvinism was more con- 
 genial to the French mind. Calvin was himself one of the 
 most acute and cultivated of the Frenchmen of that age. 
 
THE MASSACEE OF ST, BARTHOLOMEW. 5 
 
 Driven from his country, lie continued to act upon it from 
 Geneva with incalculable power. Geneva became to France 
 what Wittenberg was to Germany. The lucid, logical, con- 
 sistent character of the system of Calvin commended it to 
 the French mind. The intense moral earnestness and strict 
 ethical standard of that system attracted a multitude who 
 were shocked by the almost unexampled profligacy of the 
 age. Among the higher classes, and still more among the 
 industrious and intelligent middle classes, the Calvinistic 
 faith had numerous devoted adherents. In 1559 the Cal- 
 vinists held their first national synod at Paris. Their places 
 of worship, scattered over France, numbered at that time 
 two thousand ; and in their congregations were four hundred 
 thousand worshippers, all of whom met at the risk of their 
 lives. That same year, Heiiry II., who had just agreed with 
 Philip II., in the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, to exterminate 
 heresy, and to give his daughter in marriage to the Spanish 
 monarch, was accidentally killed by a splinter from the lance 
 of Montgomery, the captain of his guards, with whom he 
 was tilting at the festival in honor of the wedding. 
 
 The whole posture of affairs was now changed. His old- 
 est son, Francis II., was a boy of sixteen, feeble in mind and 
 body. He was not young enough to be made subject to a 
 regency ; and too yoimg, had he been possessed of talents 
 and character, to rule. Who should govern France ? Cath- 
 erine de Medici, the widow of Henry ; she to whom, more 
 than any other individual, as we shall see, the massacre of 
 St. Bartholomew was due, thought that the power for which 
 she had long waited was now within her grasp. The grand- 
 daughter of the great Lorenzo de Medici, and the daughter 
 of Lorenzo IL, she was left an orphan in her infancy, and 
 was placed in a convent. Her childhood was encompassed 
 with perils. When her uncle, Pope Clement YIL, was lay- 
 ing siege to Florence, in 1530, she being only twelve years 
 old, the council of the city proposed to hang her in a basket 
 over the wall, as a mark for the besiegers' cannon. About 
 
6 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 ten years after, she was married to Henry, the second son 
 of Francis I., in pursuance of an arrangement between the 
 Pope and the king, which grew mainly out of the king's 
 want of money. The death of the Dauphin placed her hus- 
 band within one step of the throne. She was obliged to pay 
 obsequious com-t to the mistresses of the king and of her 
 husband, the Duchess D'Etampes and Diana of Poitiers. 
 Henry regarded her with a feeling little short of repugnance. 
 Under this feeling, and disappointed that she bore him no 
 children, he entertained, at one time, the thought of sending 
 her back to Italy. This was prevented by her own submis- 
 sive demeanor, and by the favor of Francis I. Later, after 
 the birth of her children, her situation became more toler- 
 able. She professed to be utterly devoted to her husband, 
 mourned his death with real or affected grief, and would 
 never ride or drive near the spot where he received the fatal 
 wound. 
 
 Catherine de Medici is generally considered an execrable 
 character, an impersonation of the principle of wickedness 
 such as rarely appears on earth, especially in a female form. 
 History has pi^t her in the pillory among monsters of iniqui- 
 ty, like Domitian, Kero, Caesar Borgia, enemies and destroy- 
 ers of their kind. It is hardly possible to dispute the justice 
 of j:his verdict. Yet she was not destitute of attractive quali- 
 ties. On the ceiling of a room in the old Burgundian cha- 
 teau at Tanlay, Catherine is painted as Juno, with two faces, 
 one of which is described as " masculine and sinister," while 
 the other is full of " sweetness and dignity." She might 
 seem to have a dual nature. Her complexion was olive, be- 
 speaking her Italian birth. She had the large eyes peculiar 
 to the Medici family. Her hand and arm are said to have 
 been " the despair of the sculptor," so faultless was their 
 model. She was of medium height, large, but compactly 
 made. Her figure was admired even in middle life. She 
 required and was capable of the most vigorous out-of-door 
 exercise, in the chase she dashed on through stream and 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 7 
 
 thicket, keeping up with the boldest riders. Then she would 
 give herself up with a hearty appetite to the pleasures of the 
 table ; but she arose from it to apply herself with untiring 
 energy to business. Her manners were lively and gracious ; 
 her conversation full of spirit and intelligence. She has left 
 behind numerous monuments of her taste in architecture — 
 the palace of the Tuileries owed its beginning to her. Her 
 versatility and tact were equal to any emergency. Her let- 
 ters to her children are those of a sympathetic mother. She 
 was personally chaste, little as she valued chastity in others. 
 But at the core, as Milton says of Belial, all was false and 
 hollow. It was the grace of the leopard, serving as a veil 
 for its ferocity. Beneath exterior accomplishments, and 
 charms even^ was a nature devoid of moral sense. She was 
 swift to shed blood, when a selfish end required it. But 
 falsehood, and the treachery that springs from it, was her 
 most loathsome trait. 
 
 To comprehend the possibility of such a character, we 
 must remember the spirit of the age, and the atmosphere in 
 which she grew up. In the famous church of Santa Croce, 
 at Florence, where are the sepulchres of Michael Angelo, 
 Galileo, Alfieri, and the cenotaph of Dante, the attention of 
 the visitor is arrested by an impressive epitaph. High up on 
 the smooth face of a marble monument stands the name 
 ^NicoLAUs Machiavelli. Below, where the inscription would 
 naturally come, there is a broad space left untouched by the 
 chisel ; beneath which are carved the words : " Tanto nomi- 
 ni nullum par elogium'^'^ — " To so a great a name no eulogy 
 is adequate ; " as if the peu had been dropped in despair, for 
 want of words commensurate with the geniijs and merits of 
 the statesman, scholar, and historian, whose name had been 
 recorded. Yet the word " Machiavellian " has become a 
 current term to denote knavish intrigue, double-dealing, and 
 fraud. It would be unjust to Machiavelli to brand him as 
 the inventor of the ethical code which he has set forth in 
 " The Prince." This work, which was written for Lorenzo, 
 
8 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BAETHOLOMEW. 
 
 the father of Catherine, deliberately advises rulers to break 
 their word, whenever they find it convenient to do so. It 
 presents a fair picture of that base public morality of the 
 fifteenth century, which had grown up in the conflicts of the 
 Italian States, and under the eye of 'the Popes, some of 
 whom were its notorious exemplars. The Machiavellian 
 spirit tainted the public men of the sixteenth century ; in 
 some degree, the best of them, as William the Silent, and 
 the Regent Murray of Scotland. As for assassination — that 
 in Italy had been almost reduced to a fine art. The grand- 
 father of Catherine, Lorenzo I., barely escaped fi-om a mur- 
 derous attempt, which proved fatal to his brother Julian, 
 who fell under the dagger of an assassin before the high 
 altar of the cathedral of Florence, during the celebration of 
 mass — Pope Sixtus IV. being, probably, the chief contriver 
 of the plot. Catherine de Medici was an Italian woman, 
 born and nurtured under the influences that then prevailed, 
 constrained from childhood to cloak her thoughts and im- 
 pulses, and developing, under the unhappy circumstances in 
 which she was placed prior to the death of her husband, the 
 cleverness and cunning that belonged to her nature. She 
 was destined to be the mother of three kings of France, and 
 to play a conspicuous and baleful part in a most eventful 
 period of French history. 
 
 At the accession of Francis II., the Queen Mother natu- 
 rally felt that the hour for the gratification of her ambition 
 had arrived. But she was disappointed. She found that the 
 king and his government were completely under the sway 
 of the family of Guise, in the person of Duke Francis, and 
 of his brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine — the knight and 
 the priest, the lion and the fox united. Claude of Lorraine, 
 their father, was an opulent and influential noble, who had 
 distinguished himself in the wars against Charles Y. His 
 son Francis, who was now forty years of age, had acquired 
 brilliant fame by his defence of Metz against the Emperor, 
 whom he forced to raise the siege after a loss of 30,000 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 9 
 
 men, and also bj the recent capture of Calais from the Eng- 
 lish. The Cardinal had been the confessor and trusted coun- 
 sellor of Henry II. The power of the family had been in- 
 creased by matrimonial connections. Their brother had 
 married a daughter of Diana of Poitiers. Their niece, 
 Mary Stuart, the daughter of James Y. of Scotland, had, 
 in the preceding year, when she was sixteen years old, mar- 
 ried Francis 11., who was about a year younger than herself. 
 Her beauty, her tact, accomplishments, and energy, were 
 cast on the side of the Guise influence. With her aid, her 
 uncles found no difficulty in managing the boy-king. Cath- 
 erine was obliged to stand back, and yield up the station 
 that she had long coveted. The Constable Montmorenci, 
 who, with his numerous relatives, had shared power with 
 the Guises in the last reign, was civiUy dismissed from his 
 post. 
 
 The Guises, in whose hands everything was practically 
 left, set themselves up as the champions of the Roman 
 Catholic cause, and the enemies of the Protestant heresy. 
 But their path was not to be a smooth one. The princes of 
 the house of Bourbon — descendants of a younger son of 
 Louis IX., St. Louis of France — considered that they were 
 robbed of their legitimate post at the side of the throne. 
 Anthony of Yendome, the eldest, was the husband of that 
 noble Protestant woman, Jeanne D'Albret, the daughter of 
 Margaret, the sister of Francis I., and through his marriage 
 wore the title of King of Navarre. He proved a vacillating 
 and selfish adherent of the Protestant party, which he at 
 length was bribed to desert. His younger brother, Louis of 
 Conde, who had married a niece of the Constable, and a de- 
 voted Protestant, was a gallant soldier, but rash in counsel. 
 With the Bourbons stood the Chatillons, the sons of Louisa 
 of Montmorenci, the Constable's sister ; of whom the most 
 eminent was the Admiral, Gaspard de Coligny, one of the 
 greatest men of that or of any age. He was of middle 
 height, with his head slightly bent forward as if in deep 
 
10 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 thought. His spacious forehead reminds one of the por- 
 traits of William the Silent, to whom in character he had 
 many points of resemblance. He spoke little, and slowly. 
 In battle, his grave countenance lighted up, and he was ob- 
 served to chew the toothpick, which, to the disgust of a class 
 of courtiers, he habitually carried in his mouth. Frequent- 
 ly defeated, he reaped hardly less renown from defeats than 
 from victories. He rose from them with unabated vigor. 
 His constancy never wavered in the darkest hour. He em- 
 braced the Calvinistic faith ; and whether in the court, the 
 camp, or among his dependents on his own estate, his con- 
 duct was strictly governed by the principles of religion. 
 His reserve and gravity, in contrast with the vivacious tem- 
 per of his countrymen, commanded that respect which these 
 qualities, even when not united with remarkable powers of 
 intellect, usually inspire in them, as we see in the case of 
 Kapoleon III. 
 
 Here, then, in the middle of the sixteenth century, in 
 France, were all the materials of civil war. It was inevita- 
 ble that the Calvinists, harassed beyond endurance, should 
 league themselves with the disaffected nobles who offered 
 them the only chance of salvation from their persecutors, 
 and whose religious sympathies were on their side. Thus 
 the Huguenots became a political party. The nation was 
 divided into two bodies, with their passions inflamed. A 
 tempest was at hand, and there was only a boy at the helm. 
 
 The conspiracy of Amboise, which occurred in 1560, was 
 an abortive scheme, of which a Protestant gentleman named 
 La Renaudie was the chief author, for driving the Guises 
 from power. Conde was privy to it; Calvin disapproved 
 of it ; Coligny took no part in it. The next year the 
 Estates assembled at Orleans, and a trap was laid by the 
 Catholic leaders for the* destruction of all Protestants who 
 should refuse to abjure their religion. Conde had been ar- 
 rested and put under guard, when, just as the fatal blow was 
 ready to fall, the young king died. Charles IX., his 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 11 
 
 brother, was only ten years old, and it was no longer prac- 
 ticable to shut out his mother from the office of guardian 
 over him, and from a virtual regency. From this time she 
 comes to the front, and becomes a power in the State. 
 Mary Stuart returned to Scotland, and on another theatre 
 entered upon that tragic career which ended on the scaffold 
 at Fotheringay. The Queen Mother was now free from her 
 dangerous rival. Through her whole career, tortuous and 
 inconsistent as it often seemed, Catherine de Medici was 
 actuated by a single motive — the purpose to maintain the 
 authority of her sons and her own ascendancy over them. 
 To check and cast down whichever party threatened to ac- 
 quire a dangerous predominance and to supplant her, was 
 her incessant aim. Caring little or nothing for religious doc- 
 trines, she hated the restraints of religion, and hence could 
 regard Calvinism only with aversion. But how indifferent 
 she was to the controversy between the rival churches is 
 indicated by her jocose remark, when the mistaken report 
 reached her that the Protestants had gained the victory at 
 Dreux : " Then we shall say our prayers in French." She 
 believed in astrology, and that was about the lunit of her 
 faith. To rule her children, and to rule France through 
 them, was the one end which she always kept in view. 
 
 The civil wars began in 1562 with the massacre of Yassy, 
 where the troopers of Guise provoked a conflict with an un- 
 armed congregation of Protestant worshippers, many of 
 whom they slaughtered. Ten years intervened between this 
 event and the massacre of St. Bartholomew ; years of intes- 
 tine conflict, when France bled at every pore. ^Neither 
 party was strong enough to subjugate the other. The pa- 
 tience of the Protestants had been worn out by forty years 
 of sanguinary persecution. The battle on both sides was 
 waged with bitter animosity. The country was ravaged 
 from side to side. The Catholics found it impossible to 
 crush their antagonists, who revived from every disaster, 
 and extorted, in successive treaties, a measure of liberty for 
 
1S> THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 their worship. Among the events which it is necessary for 
 our purpose to mention is the assassination of the Duke of 
 Guise by a Huguenot nobleman in 1563, while the Duke 
 was laying siege to Orleans, then in the hands of the Prot- 
 estants. This act met with no countenance from the Prot- 
 estant leaders. It was condemned by Calvin. It was said 
 that the assassin, when stretched on the rack, avowed that 
 the deed was done with the connivance of Coligny. But he 
 was subjected to no fair examination, and there was no rea- 
 son to doubt the assertion of the Admiral that he had no 
 agency in it. He admitted that for six months, since he had 
 learned that Guise was plotting his own destruction and 
 that of his brothers, he had made no exertions to save that 
 nobleman's life. Innocent though Coligny was of aU parti- 
 cipation in this deed, it planted seeds of implacable hostility 
 in the minds of Guise's family, the fruits of which eventu- 
 ally appeared. Another event, which it specially concerns 
 us to notice, was the insurrection of the Huguenots which 
 they set on foot several years later, in anticipation of a pro- 
 jected attack upon them, and which resulted in their extort- 
 ing from Charles IX., in 1568, the Peace of Longjumeau. 
 The king was exasperated at being obliged to treat w^ith his 
 subjects in arms. This humiliating event was skilfully used 
 afterward to goad him on to a measure to which he was not 
 spontaneously inclined. 
 
 At this time the foundations of the Catholic League were 
 laid. The extreme Catholics began to band themselves 
 together, instigated by the spirit of the Catholic reaction 
 which, through its mouthpiece, the Pope, and its secular 
 head, Philip II., breathed out fire and slaughter against all 
 heretics. Between this bigoted faction, which became more 
 and more furious as time went on, and the Huguenots, were 
 the Moderates — the Politiques, as they were called — Catho- 
 lics who deplored the continuance of civil war, deprecated 
 the undue ascendancy of Spain, and were in favor of an ac- 
 commodation with the Protestants. The treachery of Cath- 
 
THE MASSACKE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 13 
 
 erine de Medici broke the treaty of Longjumeau ; but ber 
 plan to entrap and destroy the Huguenot leaders failed. 
 Tlieir defeat at Jarnac, wliere Conde perished, and at Mon- 
 contour, with the military triumph of her favorite son, the 
 Duke of Anjou, did not bring to her content. The defeated 
 forces of the Protestants, under the masterly lead of Coligny, 
 found a refuge within the walls of Rochelle, where the 
 Queen of Navarre established her court, and whence Co- 
 ligny, with his cavalry, and with the young princes, Henry 
 of Kavarre and Henry of Conde at his side, was soon able 
 to sally forth and take the offensive. The Queen Mother 
 was now eager for peace. The atmosphere of intrigue and 
 diplomacy was always more pleasing to her than the clash 
 of arms. The king's treasury was exhausted. He did not 
 relish the military successes of Anjou. The Huguenots 
 sprang up from their defeats with indomitable courage. 
 Moreover, Catherine, the king, the whole party of Moder- 
 ates, saw that the continuance of the strife could only re- 
 dound to the profit of Philip, who lent aid or withheld it, 
 with sole reference to his own ambitious projects. If the 
 war was to go on between the king and his Protestant sub- 
 jects, the latter would get help from England and Germany, 
 and the government, forced to fall back upon the support of 
 Spain, would come into practical subservience to Philip. 
 To this the Queen Mother was not at all inclined. At the 
 Conference of Bayonne in 1565, both she and Charles IX. 
 had disappointed Alva by refusing to enter into his plan for 
 a common crusade against the heretical subjects of France 
 and Spain. Thus, in 1570, the Peace of St. Germain was 
 concluded. The Huguenots, who could not longer be ex- 
 pected to trust the king's word, were put in possession of 
 four fortified towns for the space of two years: They were, 
 to be given up to Henry of Navarre, Henry of Conde, and 
 twenty Huguenot gentlemen. The Lorraine faction, the 
 Guises and their followers, acquiesced in the treaty. 
 
 Observe, now, the political situation. The policy of the 
 
14 THE MASSACEE OF ST. BAETHOLOMEW, 
 
 court was turned in the anti- Spanish direction. The power 
 of Philip was becoming too formidable. The Duke of Alva 
 had begun his bloody career in the Netherlands in 1567 with 
 the execution of Egmont and Horn, and numerous other judi- 
 cial murders. Now, his tyranny was at its height. Philip 
 had planned a marriage between his half-brother, Don John 
 of Austria, and Mary Stuart, which would give him, as he 
 hoped, control over Scotland and England both. He was 
 already supreme in Italy. His wish was to marry his sister 
 to Charles IX., and to unite with him in an anti-Protestant 
 coalition. Then all Europe would lie at his feet, and France 
 be practically a Spanish province. On the 25th of Febru- 
 ary, 1570, Pius Y., an untiring and unpitying instigator of 
 persecution, issued his bull of excommunication against 
 Elizabeth. A year after, the brilliant victory of Spain over 
 the Turks at Lepanto still further raised the jpu'estige of 
 Philip, and left him more free to pursue his ambitious 
 schemes in Western Europe. The Queen Mother loved 
 power too well for herself and her children, to fall into the 
 snare which Philip was setting. She entered warmly into 
 the project of a marriage between her second son, the Duke 
 of Anjou, and Elizabeth, which was first suggested by the 
 brother of Coligny. When Anjou, seduced by the Spanish 
 court, and by the offer of 100,000 crowns from the Pope's 
 Nuncio, drew back from a match with a heretic so much 
 older than himself, Catherine was eager to substitute for 
 him his younger brother Alen9on ; and indulged also the 
 chimerical hope that Anjou might secure the hand of Mary 
 Queen of Scots. This policy of the court could not be other- 
 wise than satisfactory to the Huguenots. War with Spain, 
 to be fought out in the Netherlands, in alliance with England 
 and G-ermany, but with due care for French interests, ap- 
 pealed at once to their patriotic feeling and their religious 
 enthusiasm. The government and the Huguenot party were 
 thus drawn toward ^ach other. A marriage between Henry 
 of Navarre and Margaret of Yalois, the daughter of Cath- 
 

 THE mASSACEE of ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 16 
 
 erine, had been spoken of long before, prior to the death of 
 Henry II., when both Navarre and Margaret were children. 
 The idea was now revived from the side of the Moderates, 
 by a son of Montmorenci. It was heartily favored by 
 Catherine, warmly supported by the king, who was person- 
 ally fond of Henry, and was struck with the expediency of 
 a marriage which would thus unite the contending parties ; 
 and it obtained at length the consent of the high-toned Queen 
 of Navarre, with whom worldly distinction for her son was 
 of far less account than honor and religious conviction. 
 Coligny and the other Huguenot leaders lent their cordial 
 approval to the plan. 
 
 Coligny was now urgently invited to come to the court. 
 The king and the Queen Mother were anxious to have the 
 benefit of his counsel. Despite the opposition of his friends, 
 including the Queen of Navarre, who were unwilling to see 
 him commit himself to the hands of those who had been, in 
 the past, his perfidious enemies, Coligny determined to com- 
 ply with the invitation. He confided in Charles, he said ; 
 he would rather die at once, than live a hundred years, sub- 
 ject to cowardly apprehensions. He earnestly desired to 
 bring the civil conflict to an end. He was full of ardor for 
 the enterprise against Philip, in the Netherlands, into which 
 he hoped to carry the king. It would give employment to 
 the numerous mercenaries and marauders whom the Cessa- 
 tion of the war at home had left idle. It would strike a 
 blow, alike honorable and useful to France, and damaging 
 to Spain. Coligny left Eochelle, escorted by fifty gentle- 
 men, and arrived at Blois, where the court was, on the 12th 
 of September, 15Y1. He was welcomed by Catherine, and 
 by the king, who greeted him with the title of " father," 
 and declared that day to be the happiest of his life. 
 
 Charles was twenty-one years of age. His natural talents 
 were above the ordinary level. He was fond of music, and 
 his poetical compositions were not without merit. But the 
 education which he had received was the worst possible. 
 
16 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 llis nature was unhealthy, and utterly unregulated. Though 
 not a debauchee, like his brother Anjou, his morbid impulses 
 raged without control : his anger, when excited, bordered on 
 frenzy. Yet there was in him a latent vein of generous 
 feeling. He met in Coligny, almost for the first time in his 
 life, a man whom he could revere. Coligny was fifty-four 
 years of age. He had been a man of war from his youth 
 up ; but he had drawn the sword from a stern sense of 
 duty ; and his lofty character could not fail to impress all 
 who were thrown in his company. He, in turn, seemed to 
 be charmed with his young sovereign. The jealousy of 
 Catherine was soon aroused. "He sees too much of the 
 Admiral," she said, " and too little of me." As the veteran 
 soldier painted the advantages that would result from going 
 to the rescue of William of Orange, and striking a blow at 
 Spain in the Low Countries, the sympathy of Charles was 
 awakened, and he expressed an e^ger deshe to enter person- 
 ally into the contest. 
 
 Meantime, the project of the marriage of Henry and Mar- 
 garet continued to be pushed. The Queen of Navarre was 
 persuaded herself to come to Blois, in March, 1572. While 
 there, in a letter to her son, she described the indecency of 
 the court, where even the women had cast off the show of 
 modesty, and did not blush to play the part of seducers. 
 The marriage of Henry and Margaret, the plan of a matri- 
 monial connection with Elizabeth, the scheme of an offensive 
 alliance with England, and of a war with Spain, to be waged 
 in Flanders, were all parts of a line of policy which the Hu- 
 guenots urged, and which Catherine for a while favored. 
 But she became more and more alarmed at the influence ac- 
 quired by Coligny. Elizabeth was cautious, and the negoti- 
 ations looking to a change of the defensive into an offensive 
 alliance, lagged. A war with Spain, Catherine felt, would 
 establish Coligny's ascendancy over the mind of Charles. 
 Such a war she more and more dreaded on its own account ; 
 and when the force secretly sent by Charles, under Ge^^s, 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 17 
 
 to the support of Orange, was defeated and cut np by Alva's 
 son, the Queen Mother declared herself vehemently agamst 
 the measure on which Coligny rested all his hopes for France, 
 and towards which the king, in his better moods, was 
 strongly inclined. In the council, the party opposed to the 
 war was led by Anjou. He, with Catherine, Retz, Tavan- 
 nes, and others to support him, was able to keep back the 
 king from an * absolute decision ; and thus, through the 
 spring and early summer of 1572, the question was warmly, 
 and sometimes angrily, debated. The death of the Queen 
 of IN^avarre at Paris, on the 9th of June, was one cause for 
 the postponement of the wedding of her son to the 18th of 
 August. The refusal of the Pope to grant a dispensation 
 was another hinderance. The king was resolved to effect 
 the marriage, with or without the Pope's consent. A forged 
 letter, purporting to come from Rome, announcing the con- 
 sent of Gregory XIII., the new Pope, to the nuptials, was 
 exhibited by Charles to the Cardinal of Bourbon, who had 
 refused to solemnize the marriage without the papal authori- 
 zation. 
 
 In subsequent years Henry TV., the Conqueror of Ivry 
 and the Restorer of Peace to France, looked back on the 8th 
 of July, 1572, as one of the brightest days in all his tempestu- 
 ous career. On that day he made his entry into Paris, riding 
 between the king's two brothers, and accompanied by Conde, 
 the Cardinal of Bourbon, the Admiral Coligny, and eight 
 hundred mounted gentlemen. The procession, however, was 
 greeted with little enthusiasm by the crowd that filled the 
 streets. Paris was the hot-bed of Catholic fanaticism. In 
 all the treaties which had given liberty to the reformed 
 worship, the capital had been excepted. Here the enmity 
 of the populace to the Huguenots was rancorous in the ex- 
 treme. All the pulpits in those days rang with fierce invec- 
 tives against the heretics. Guise, with his mother, the 
 Duchess of I^Temours, and with a great military following, 
 came to Paris also. The Huguenots had no protection but 
 
18 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BAETHOLOMEW. 
 
 their own vigilance, their swords, and, above all, the good 
 faith of the king, against the host of enemies by whom they 
 were surrounded. 
 
 On the 18th of August the long-expected marriage took 
 place. The splendid procession, composed of the royal 
 family and the nobility of France, moved along a covered 
 platform from the Bishop's palace to the pavilion erected in 
 front of Notre Dame, where the ceremony took place. The 
 bride, whose beauty and grace of person unhappily were not 
 associated with moral qualities equally winning — ^f or she was 
 untruthful and vain, if not something worse — describes her 
 own costume — her crown, her vest of ermine spotted with 
 black {couet d'hermine mouchetee\ all brilliant with pearls, 
 and the great blue mantle, whose train of four ells in length 
 was carried by three princesses.* Charles, Navarre and 
 Conde, in token of their mutual affection, were dressed 
 alike, in garments of light yellow satin, embroidered with 
 silver, and glittering with pearls and precious stones. Mi- 
 cheli, one of the Yenetian ambassadors — accurate reporters 
 — states that the cost of the king's bonnet, charger, and gar- 
 ments, wa§ half a million crowns ; while Anjou wore in his 
 hat thirty-two well-known pearls, purchased at a cost of 
 23,000 gold crowns. All this, when the royal treasury was 
 exhausted ! Navarre led his bride from the pavilion into 
 the church ; and then, during the celebration of mass, with 
 the Huguenot chiefs withdrew to the adjacent cloister. De 
 Thou, the French historian, who was then a youth of nine- 
 teen, after the mass was over, climbed over the barriers 
 errected to keep off the people, went into the choir, and heard 
 Coligny, pointing to the flags taken at Jarnac and Moncon- 
 tour, say to Damville that " soon these would be replaced by 
 others more agreeable to see ; " alluding to the war in Flan- 
 ders, on which his thoughts were bent. The next few days 
 were given up to festivities — " balls, banquets, masques and 
 
 * Memoiresde Marguerite de Valois, in Petitot's Collection, torn, xxxvii., 
 p. 48. . 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOACEW. 19 
 
 tourneys," into wliich IS'avarre entered with zest, but which 
 were equally offensive and tedious to the grave Coligny, who 
 longed to be away, and who vainly tried to draw the king's 
 attention to the business which lay nearest his heart. Charles 
 put him off. He must have a few days for pleasure ; then 
 the admiral should be gratified. 
 
 Five days after the wedding, on Friday, the 22d of Au- 
 gust, at a little past ten in the morning, as Coligny was 
 walking between two friends from the Louvre to his own 
 lodgings, an arquebus was discharged at him from a latticed 
 window of a house standing near the cloister of St. Germain 
 I'Auxerrois. At the moment he was in the act of reading a 
 petition. He was hit by a bullet on the first finger of the 
 right hand ; another bullet entered his left arm. With his 
 wounded hand he pointed out the window whence the shot 
 had come, and directed an attendant to inform the king. 
 He was then conducted to his lodgings. The king, vexed 
 and enraged, threatened vengeance upon the guilty parties. 
 His surgeon, Ambrose Pare, was sent, who amputated the 
 finger, and extracted the ball from the arm. Navarre, at- 
 tended by hundreds of Huguenot gentlemen, soon visited 
 the admiral. Conde and other Huguenot leaders waited 
 on the king, and demanded leave to retire from the court, 
 where their lives were not safe. Charles beo^^ed them to re- 
 main, and swore vengeance upon the perpetrators of the 
 deed. 
 
 The authors of the attempt to assassinate Coligny were 
 Catherine de Medici, and her son, the Duke of Anjou, in 
 conjunction with the Duke of Guise and his mother. The 
 house belonged to a dependant of Guise ; the weapon, which 
 was found in it, to one of Anjou's guards. The instrument 
 who was employed to do the work was Maurevel, who, a few 
 years before, had been hired to kill Coligny, at a time when 
 a price was set on his head, but had murdered one of his 
 lieutenants, Moiiy, in his stead. 
 
 In the year following the massacre of St. 'Bartholomew, 
 
2U THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 Anjou — afterward Henry III. — ^was elected king of Po- 
 land. In the narrative which he is said to have given ver- 
 bally to Miron, his physician, we are furnished with an ac- 
 count of the motives and causes of the transaction in which 
 he bore so guilty a part. The reporter, Miron, states that 
 when Henry III. was on his way to Poland, in the cities of 
 the Low Countries, wherever a crowd was assembled, he was 
 saluted with bitter execrations in German, French, and Latin, 
 for his agency in the massacre ; and that in apai-tments 
 where he was entertained and lodged, he found paintings 
 depicting scenes in that fearful tragedy, which had been ar- 
 ranged beforehand to meet his eye. Hence, two days after 
 his arrival in Cracow, he was kept awake in the night by the 
 recollection of the terrible occurrences which had thus been 
 brought to his mind. Restless and agitated, about three 
 hours after midnight, he summoned Miron from an adjacent 
 room to his bedside, and related to him there the story of 
 the origin of the massacre. According to this statement of 
 Henry IH., Charles, in the period just before the Navarre 
 marriage, was in frequent conference with Coligny ; and 
 after those long conferences, the king treated Anjou and his 
 mother in a very frigid and even rough manner. On one 
 occasion, as Anjou was entering the king's apartment, after 
 one of these interviews, Charles looked at him askance in a 
 fierce way, and laid his hand upon the hilt of his dagger, so 
 that he was glad to escape precipitately from the king's 
 presence. Convinced that Coligny was undermining the king's 
 regard for them, the Queen Mother and Anjou resolved to 
 destroy him ; and for this end called in the aid of the 
 Duchess of Nemours — the widow of Guise, and an Italian 
 by birth — whose vindictive hatred of the Huguenot leader 
 made her a willing coadjutor. Maurevel, who had abundant 
 cause to fear the Chatillons, was pitched upon to do the deed. 
 When the attempt had failed, the king after dinner — he 
 dined at eleven — went to visit the wounded admiral. Cath- 
 erine and Anjou took care to go with him. While they were 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BAERHOLOMEW. 21 
 
 in the Admiral's chamber, he signified his wish to speak with 
 the king privately. Anjou and his mother retired to another 
 part of the room. Alarmed at the way in which this pri- 
 vate conference was prolonged, and at the menacing de- 
 meanor of the throng of Huguenot gentlemen, who treated 
 them with less than usual respect, Catherine stepped to the 
 bedside, and, to the obvious disgust of the king, broke off the 
 conversation — saying that Coligny must not be wearied, that 
 there was danger of fever, and that a future time must be 
 chosen for finishing their talk. Whatever may be false in 
 this narrative of Henry III., or may be omitted from it, 
 the main circumstances of the interview are correctly given. 
 Coligny thought that the bullets might have been poisoned, 
 and he wished to give his dying counsel to the sovereign. On 
 the way back to the Louvre, Anjou proceeds to say, Catherine 
 by her importunity wrung from the king the avowal that the 
 admiral had warned him of the fatal consequences that 
 would follow from allowing the management of public affairs 
 to remain in her hands, and had advised him to hold her in 
 suspicion, and to guard against her. This the king uttered 
 with extreme passion, implying that he approved of Coligny's 
 advice. 
 
 There was good ground for the consternation of the Queen 
 Mother and of Anjou. A crisis had come for which they 
 were not prepared. The wrath of the Huguenots was ready 
 to burst forth in an armed attack upon the opposite faction. 
 They were restrained only by the king ; and even he was 
 resolved to punish to the full the assailants of Coligny. If 
 the Guises fell, the ascendancy of the Huguenot chief, who 
 would recover from his wounds, was assured. But the pun- 
 ishment which the king threatened might fall on Anjou, 
 also, if not on Catherine herself. Nothing was left to her 
 but to make another desperate effort, with the aid of coun- 
 sellors as unprincipled as herself, to win back the king, re- 
 sume the control over him which she had exercised from his 
 childhood, and to enlist him in the work of destroying the 
 
532 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 • 
 
 Admiral and of breaking down the Huguenots' power of re- 
 sistance. After noon on Saturday, she collected about her, in 
 anxious conclave in the Tuileries, besides Anjou, the Count 
 de Retz, the Chancellor Birogne, the Marshal de Tavannes, 
 and the Duke de Nevers ; three of whom were Italians like 
 herself, with no scruples about assassinating an enemy, and 
 with whom deceit and mystery lent an added fascination to 
 crime. With these men, the Queen Mother repaired to the 
 Louvre, to the cabinet of her son. There she made, with all 
 her energy and skill, her last and successful onset upon 
 him. She avowed her own agency, and that of Anjou, in 
 the attempt upon Coligny. But first she declared to him 
 that the Huguenots were everywhere arming to make them- 
 selves masters of the government ; that the Admiral was to 
 furnish 6,000 cavalry and 10,000 Swiss ; that the Catholics 
 in turn had lost all patience, and would instantly combine in 
 a league to supplant him and seize on power ; that there 
 was no deliverance but in the death of Coligny, without 
 whom the Huguenots would be left destitute of a leader. 
 She reminded Charles of the insurrection when, at Meaux, 
 they had nearly got possession of his person — a recollection 
 that always excited his anger. Wlien she saw that he did 
 not yield ; that he could not bring himself to give up Coli- 
 gny and his friends — La Eochef oucauld, Teligni, and others — 
 she begged — almost breathless, in her feigned despair — that 
 she and Anjou might have leave to withdraw from the ap- 
 proaching ruin — to retire from the court. To retire, as he 
 well understood, meant to join themselves to the Catholic 
 faction, soon to be in arms against him. At last she taunted 
 him with fear of the Huguenots. Then he gave up ; and 
 in the fury of his vexation, wild with excitement, bade them 
 kill not the Admiral alone, but all the Huguenots in France, 
 that none might be left to reproach him. Such is the state- 
 ment of Henry, who thus attributes the general massacre to 
 the suggestion of the king. But Tavannes — or the son in 
 the memoirs of his father — relates that the recommendation 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 23 
 
 of the council was to slay all the Huguenot leaders : he as- 
 serts that Navarre and Conde were spared by his own inter- 
 cession. Catherine must have foreseen that the murder of 
 Coligny, which could only be effected by open violence, 
 would lead to a general slaughter, or to a bloody encounter 
 between the forces of the two parties, resulting in a great 
 loss of life. If she did not first recommend the general 
 massacre, she consented to the plot, and joined in the execu- 
 tion of it. 
 
 The plan being formed, the requisite orders were promptly 
 given. Guise took it in hand to destroy the admiral. 
 Chanon, the Provost of Merchants, and with him Marcel 
 his predecessor, on whose influence and cruel disposition 
 more reliance was placed, were summoned, and commis- 
 sioned to shut the gates of the city so that none could go 
 out or come in, to arm the people, and have them in readi- 
 ness in their proper wards. The organized soldiery were 
 conveniently disposed under their commanders. A con- 
 spiracy and threatened rising of the Huguenots were the pre- 
 text for these arrangements ; but the soldiers and the leaders 
 of the mob needed no such inducement to reconcile them to 
 the task of putting to death the heretics. As the dawn ap- 
 proached. Guise, with the bastard Angouleme, a son of 
 Henry H., moved with a strong force silently through the 
 streets to the lodgings of the admiral, where the king's 
 guards, who had been stationed there for his protection, were 
 ready to side with the assassins. Coligny heard the tumult ; 
 divined its nature ; calmly commended his soul to Christ ; 
 told his friends that he was ready to die ; bade them es- 
 cape, and was pierced with the swords of the hired murder- 
 ers who flung his body from the window upon the pave- 
 ment, that Guise might be satisfied that the work was com- 
 pletely done, and trample on the lifeless hero whom he had 
 hated. Guise had ordered that every true Catholic should 
 tie a white band upon his arm, and fasten a white cross to 
 his hat. A distinguished painter, Millais, has depicted, in 
 
24: THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 " The Huguenot Lover," a scene that might naturally have 
 occurred. A maiden, in whose countenance tenderness is 
 mingled with terror, is gazing up into the face of her lover, 
 about whose arm she is trying to bind a white scarf — which 
 he gently but firmly resists. The houses of the Huguenots 
 were registered ; there was no difficulty in finding the vic- 
 tims. 
 
 At early dawn the great bell of Saint Germain 1' Auxer- 
 rois tolled out the signal, and the slaughter began. Even 
 the hard-hearted Marshal Tavannes, who superintended the 
 soldiery, says: "Blood and death fill the streets with such 
 horror that even their majesties, who were the authors of it, 
 within the Louvre cannot avoid fear ; all the Huguenots 
 are indiscriminately slain, making no defence ; many women 
 and children are slain by the furious populace ; two thou- 
 sand are massacred." Catherine de Medici and her two sons 
 had come to the front of the Louvre " to see the execution 
 commence." This same Tavannes, with savage ferocity, 
 cried to his men : " Kill, kill ! bleeding is as good in August 
 as in May ! " The Protestant noblemen who were near 
 Coligny, placed there for his defence, were murdered. La 
 Rochefoucauld, who had spent the previous evening with 
 the king until 11 o'clock, and whom Charles had tried to 
 detain for the night in order to save him, was stabbed to 
 the heart. Teligui, Coligny's son-in-law, a man beloved by 
 all, was butchered by a valet of Anjou. Brion, the white- 
 haired preceptor of the Marquis of Conti, the young brother 
 of Cond^, was massacred in the arms of the child, who 
 begged in vain that the life of his teacher might be spared. 
 Among the killed was Peter Ramus, a renowned scholar 
 and philosopher, who was detested as a Protestant and as an 
 opponent of Aristotle, and fell a victim to the jealousy of his 
 rival, Charpentier. Private revenge and avarice seized on 
 the occasion to strike down those who were hated, or whose 
 property was coveted. 
 
 Among the most revolting features of the massacre were 
 
THE MASSACKE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 25 
 
 the part taken by women and children m the work of death, 
 and the brutality with which the corpses of the dead were 
 mutilated, and dragged through the streets. The tumult, 
 as a writer has said, was like that " of hell. The clanging 
 bells, the crashing doors, the musket shots, the rush of armed 
 men, the shrieks of their victims, and high over all the yells 
 of the mob, fiercer and more pitiless than hungry wolves, 
 made such an uproar that the stoutest hearts shrank appalled, 
 and the sanest appear to have lost their reason." * On the 
 evening before, Margaret of Yalois had been bidden by her 
 mother to retire to her own room. Her sister Claude 
 caught her by the arm and begged her not to go, an inter- 
 ference which Catherine sharply rebuked. " I departed," 
 says Margaret, " alarmed and amazed, not knowing what I 
 had to dread." She found the King of JS'avarre's apart- 
 ments filled with Huguenot gentlemen, talking of the de- 
 mand which they would make of the king, the next day, for 
 the punishment of the Duke of Guise. At dawn, her hus- 
 band went out with them to the tennis-court, to wait for 
 Charles to rise. She fell asleep, but an hour later was 
 awakened by a man calling out, "iVW^T*/*^," '^ NavarreP 
 The nurse openedt he door, when a wounded gentleman, 
 pursued by four soldiers, rushed in and flung himself upon 
 her bed. She sprang up, followed by the man, who still 
 clung to her — as it soon appeared, for protection. The cap- 
 tain of the guards was fortunately at hand. He drove out 
 the soldiers, and the life of the wounded man was saved. 
 The friends, guards and servants of Navarre and Conde 
 were slain. Two hundred bodies lay under the windows of 
 the palace. They were inspected, at a later hour, by the 
 ladies of the court, who commented on them with a shame- 
 less indecency, that would be incredible were it not attested 
 by good evidence. The princes themselves had been sum- 
 moned to the king's chamber. Charles, excited to fury, de- 
 
 * Henry White : *' Massacre of St. Bartholomew," p. 413. 
 3 
 
26 THE MASSAOEE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 manded of them to abjure their heresy. " The mass, or 
 death ! " he cried. Navarre, politic though brave, reminded 
 him of his promises, and required time to consider. Conde 
 firmly refused. Three days were given them in which to 
 make their decision. They finally conformed, to save their 
 lives ; and these converts made in this way were graciously 
 accepted by the Pope. In the course of the massacre, there 
 were many who narrowly escaped death. A little boy, the 
 son of La Force, saw his brother and father killed, and lay, 
 pretending to be dead, all the day under their bodies, imtil 
 he heard from a bystander an expression of pity for the 
 slain, to whom he revealed himself, and was saved. Sully, 
 afterward prime minister of Henry IV., then in his twelfth 
 year, escaped almost by miracle. 
 
 The slaughter once begun, could not easily be stopped. 
 Several days passed before the scenes of robbery and mur- 
 der came to an end. Capilupi, who wrote his account im- 
 mediately after the massacre, under the direction of the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine, referring to Sunday, the principal day, 
 says: "It was a holiday, and therefore the people could 
 more conveniently find leisure to kill and plunder." Orders 
 were sent to the other principal towns of France, where the 
 massacre of the Huguenots was carried forward with like cir- 
 cumstances of cruelty. Not less than twenty thousand per- 
 sons of both sexes, and of every age, were killed in obedi- 
 ence to the command of the court. 
 
 On the first evening after the massacre, the king had sent 
 out messages, ascribing the whole to a conflict of the hostile 
 houses of Guise and Chatillon. Soon it was found neces- 
 sary, as well as expedient, to assume the responsibility for 
 the dreadful transaction, and to declare that the massacre 
 was made necessary by a dangerous conspiracy (;>f the Hugue- 
 nots against the king and government. To carry out this 
 false pretension, several of the Huguenot leaders, who had 
 escaped with their lives, were put through the forms of a 
 judicial process, convicted, and executed. Henry of Na- 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 27 
 
 varre was compelled to be one of the spectators of the death 
 of these innocent men. 
 
 In all Protestant countries, the report of the great mas- 
 sacre called out a feeling of unmixed reprobation and hor- 
 ror. Burghlej told La Mothe-Fenelon, the French ambassa- 
 dor, that " the Paris massacre was the most horrible crime 
 which had been committed since the crucifixion of Christ." 
 John Knox said to Du Croc, the French Minister in Scot- 
 land ; " Go, tell jour king, that God's vengeance shall never 
 depart from him nor from his house ; that his name shall 
 remain an execration to posterity ; and that none proceed- 
 ing from his loins shall enjoj the kingdom in peace unless 
 he repent." The Emperor Maximilian II., Catholic though 
 he was, expressed the strong condemnation which was felt 
 by aU whose hearts were not hardened by sectarian animos- 
 ity. On the contrary, in Rome and in Madrid, the seats of 
 the Catholic Reaction, there was joy and thanksgiving. 
 Philip II., who, it is said, laughed aloud for the first time in 
 his life, was profuse in his congratulations. The event was 
 celebrated at Rome by the ringing of bells, bonfires, and 
 solemn processions. An inscription over the church of St. 
 Louis, where a Te Deum was chanted, described Charles 
 IX. as an avenging angel, despatched from heaven to sweep 
 his kingdom of heretics. A medal was struck by Gregory 
 XIII. to commemorate the massacre — bearing on one face 
 the inscription ^' Ilugonotoi'urn Strages^'' — Slaughter of the 
 Huguenots — together with the figure of an avenging angel 
 engaged in destroying them. Three frescoes were painted 
 by Yasari in the Vatican, according to the Pope's order, de- 
 scribing the attack upon the Admiral, the king in his coun- 
 cil plotting the massacre, and the massacre itself. This 
 painting bears the inscription: Pontifex Colignii necem 
 jprobat — the Pope approves the killing of Coligny. It is 
 pretended by some that the authorities at Rome were de- 
 ceived by the story of a Huguenot conspiracy against the 
 
28 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 king's life, which the massacre prevented from being car- 
 ried out. But Charles did not bring foi-ward this story 
 until the 26th of August. On the 24th, he wrote to his 
 ambassador at Rome — Ferraz — that the slaughter resulted 
 from a conflict of the two families of Guise and Chatillon. 
 Salviati himself, the Nuncio of the Pope, said that no per- 
 son of sense believed the tale of a conspiracy. The Nun- 
 cio's despatches put the Court of Rome in immediate pos- 
 session of the real facts. The Cardinal of Lorraine claimed 
 at Rome that the massacre was the product of long deceit 
 and premeditation. The circumstance that Muretus, in his 
 inhuman panegyric of the murderers, delivered in Rome four 
 months after the event, charges a conspiracy upon the slain 
 Huguenots, does not prove that anybody believed it. It is 
 probable that few, if any, were deceived by the fiction of a 
 Huguenot plot — an afterthought of Catherine and the king. 
 The exultation at Rome and Madrid was over the destruc- 
 tion of heretics, and the downfall of the anti-Spanish party 
 in France. The rejoicings of the Yatican were kept up, 
 after the massacre at Paris, as the reports of the continua- 
 tion of the tragedy reached Rome from other parts of the 
 kingdom. It was simply a fanatical joy over the murder of 
 apostates from the Roman Catholic religion. 
 
 The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, like the whole course 
 of events in the sixteenth century, was due to a mingling of 
 political and religious motives. It was not political ambi- 
 tion and rivalry alone, nor was it religious fanaticism alone, 
 that gave rise to this terrible event, but both united. But 
 personal motives were, also, closely interwoven with these 
 agencies. The principal, most responsible author of the 
 crime, was Catherine de Medici. It sprang out of her jeal- 
 ously of Coligny's influence, and her fear of being sup- 
 planted. Anjou, her companion in guilt, was moved by the 
 same inducements. Their confederates, Henry of Guise and 
 his mother, were instigated by revenge, mingled with the 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 29 
 
 ambition and resentment of political aspirants who saw 
 themselves on the verge of a downfall. But the insti-ument 
 bj which these individuals accomplished their design was 
 the fanaticism which the reactionary Catholic movement had 
 kindled in the populace and soldieiy of Paris. It was reli- 
 ligious malignity that sharpened their daggers, and found 
 vent in the fiendish yells that resounded through Paris on 
 that fearful night. The slaying of heretics had never been 
 rebuked by their religious teachers, but only encouraged and 
 applauded. The thanksgivings at Rome were the proper 
 sequel of the exhortations which had been sent forth from 
 the same seat of authority. 
 
 "Was the Massacre of St. Bartholomew contrived long be- 
 forehand? So it was once thought. Davila, and other 
 Italian wi'iters, declared this to be the fact. To them, the 
 event would have been shorn of a great part of its interest, 
 if it did not occur as the result of a long and intricate plot. 
 Even the authors of the crime, to account for the sudden re- 
 versal of their attitude toward Spain and for their previous 
 acts of hostility against Philip, were willing to countenance 
 this interpretation of their conduct. The Huguenots, on 
 whom the blow fell like a thunderbolt, and who had a right 
 to consider those murderers of St. Bartholomew capable of 
 infinite falsehood, naturally took this view. The treaty of 
 St. Germain, the marriage of Navarre, the collecting of the 
 Huguenot leaders in Paris, the offensive demonstrations in 
 the Low Countries, were elements in a diabolical scheme for 
 their destruction. Yet this theory was undoubtedly errone- 
 ous. Philip and Alva had been right in expecting a war 
 with France. JS'ot only the Navarre marriage, but the ne- 
 gotiations with Elizabeth respecting marriages and an alli- 
 ance, were undertaken with a sincere intent on the part of 
 Charles IX. and Catherine. The theory of a long premedi- 
 tation of the great crime, and that all these transactions, 
 stretching over two years, were steps in a deep-laid plot, is 
 confuted by an irresistible amount of circumstantial evidence, 
 
30 
 
 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 and by the authentic testimony of Tavannes and Anjou, 
 chief actors in the tragedy. The spell which Coligny had 
 cast upon the mind of the king, whom he had impressed so 
 far as to persuade him to enter into war, was what deter- 
 mined Catherine de Medici to bring about the death of the 
 Admiral by the agency of the Guises. She probably antici- 
 pated that vengeance would be taken by the Huguenots upon 
 these leaders of the Catholic faction ; but for that she did 
 not care. The fall of the leaders on both sides would 
 strengthen her power. When the Admiral was wounded, 
 instead of being killed ; when she saw that he survived with 
 undiminished and even increased influence, and that her and 
 Anjou's complicity in the attempt could not be concealed, she 
 struck out another programme. 
 
 All this appears to be established by conclusive proofs. 
 And yet, on the other hand, there are facts going to show 
 that the thought of cutting off the Huguenot leaders had 
 long haunted Catherine's mind ; and that she even shaped 
 the course of events in such a way as to enable her, if she 
 found it expedient, to convert this thought into a definite 
 purpose, and to carry it out in the deed. 
 
 The destruction of the Huguenot chiefs, as a means of 
 paralyzing and crushing their party, had been recommended 
 to her by Philip as early as 1560. At Bayonne, Alva had 
 given her the same counsel. He had himself acted on his 
 theory in the treacherous seizure and execution of Egmont 
 and Horn. These things must have made the idea familiar 
 to Catherine. In 15Y0, the Yenetian Ambassador says that 
 it was generally thought that it would be enough to strike 
 off five or six heads. It is, at least, a curious coincidence, 
 that Catherine declared, after the massacre, that she took 
 on herself the guilt of the murder of only six. It was 
 Catherine who insisted that the wedding of Navarre should 
 be at Paris. Other points she was willing to waive ; but 
 not this. What was her motive, unless it was to collect the 
 Huguenots in a place where they would be in her power ? 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 81 
 
 In January, 1572, the Papal Legate wi-ote to Rome, that he 
 had failed in all his efforts ; yet there were some things, 
 which he conld only verbally report, which were not wholly 
 imfavorable. Cardinal Salviati, a Florentine, a relative of 
 the Medici, and intimate with Catherine, had informed Pius 
 Y. that there was a secret plan favorable to the Catholics. 
 After the massacre, Catherine reminded the Nuncio of the 
 word that she had sent to the Pope, that he would see how 
 she and her son would avenge themselves on the Huguenots. 
 Facts of this nature appear to contradict the conclusion to 
 which the general current of evidence leads us. They jus- 
 tify the inference, not that Catherine had resolved upon the 
 deed, but that she was glad, even while pursuing an oppo- 
 site policy, to provide herself with the means of doing it. 
 Other princes of that day — Queen Elizabeth, for example — 
 were fond of having two strings to their bow. While pur- 
 suing one policy, Elizabeth was fond of holding in her hand 
 the threads of another and opposite line of conduct. In 
 this double intent of Catherine de Medici, we are presented, 
 as Ranke has said, with a psychological problem, such as 
 one occasionally meets with in historical study. It is like 
 the question of Mary Stuart's participation in the murder of 
 Darnley. These are problems which the philosopher and 
 the poet are most competent to solve. They require, as the 
 same great historian has said, an insight into the deep and 
 complicated springs of action in the soul — the profound 
 "abysses where the storms of passion rage," and where 
 strange and appalling crimes have their birth. It would 
 seem as if, in the brain of this devilish woman, whose depth 
 of deceit she herself could hardly fathom, there were weav- 
 ing at once two plots. While she was moving on one path, 
 she was secretly making ready, should the occasion arise, 
 to spring to another. If all should go well in amity with 
 the Huguenots, she would be content ; but if not, they would 
 be helpless in her hands. Not only was she double-tongued, 
 but she was double-minded ; there was duplicity in her in- 
 
32 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
 most thoughts and designs. But this occult thought, which 
 finally developed into purpose and act, was confined to her- 
 self. The king had no share in it. Like Pilate, he gave 
 consent. His crime was that he yielded to the pressure 
 brought upon him by his inhuman mother and her confeder- 
 ates, and authorized a crime a parallel to which can be found 
 only by going back of all Christian ages, to the bloody pro- 
 scriptions of heathen Rome.* 
 
 It is interesting to glance at the fate of the authors of the 
 massacre. Less than two years after, on the 30th of May, 
 1574, Charles IX. died. On his death-bed, his brief inter- 
 vals of sleep were disturbed by horrible visions. He suffered 
 from violent hemorrhages, and sometimes awoke bathed in 
 blood, which recalled to his mind the torrents of blood shed 
 by his orders on that dreadful night. In his dreams he be- 
 held the bodies of the dead floating upon the Seine, and 
 heard their agonizing cries. Anjou — Henry III. — more 
 guilty than he, mounted the throne. But Guise, his rival, 
 the idol of the League, stole away the hearts of the people. 
 He enjoyed the reality of power, and there was danger that 
 he might get the crown too. On the 23d of September, 
 1588, in the chateau of Blois, where the Estates were assem- 
 bled, Henry of Guise was invited to the cabinet of the king. 
 As he crossed the threshold, by the order of Henry HI. he 
 was stabbed and thrown down by men belonging to the 
 king's body-guard, and after a short but desperate resistance, 
 was killed at the foot of the king's bed. The Cardinal of 
 
 * On the question whether the massacre had been planned long before, 
 there are three opinions. That it was so planned is maintained, among 
 others, in an elaborate argument by Sir James Mackintosh, in his History 
 of England^ vol. iii. That there was no such premeditation is, at pres- 
 ent, the more general opinion. It is clearly set forth by Professor Baird, 
 in his recent History of the Rise of the Huguenots. The middle view 
 which attributes to the Queen Mother a dual plot, is that maintained by 
 Ranke, and appears to me to match best the evidence, collectively taken. 
 Extracts from Salviati's despatches, as copied by Chateaubriand, are in 
 the Appendix of Mackintosh, vol. iiL 
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 33 
 
 Lorraine, the brother of Guise, was seized and executed. 
 The Cardinal of Bourbon was placed under arrest. Cathe- 
 rine de Medici was at this time laboring under a mortal ill- 
 ness. Her son had renounced her counsels, power had 
 slipped from her hands, and she had become an object of 
 general aversion and contempt. Her apartment was directly 
 under that in which Guise had been struck down, and the 
 sounds of the deadly struggle reached her ears. When she 
 learned what had occurred, she saw that the murder boded 
 no good to the king. She rallied her strength and visited 
 the Cardinal of Bourbon. He charged everything upon 
 her ; she could not rest, he told her, until she had brought 
 all to the slaughter. In this scene, pale and haggard — like 
 the wife of Macbeth, " troubled with thick-coming fancies 
 that keep her from her rest " — she appears on the stage for 
 the last time. In full view of the danger that impended 
 over her son, and of the ruin of her house, she expired. 
 Soon Henry III. w^as obliged to fly from the anathemas of 
 the Sorbonne, and the wrath of the League, to the camp of 
 Henry lY. There, on the 1st of August, 1589, a fanatical 
 Dominican priest, Clement, by name, came to him, pretend- 
 ing to have secrets of importance to communicate. The 
 king bent his ear to listen, but was immediately heard to 
 cry out : " Ah ! the villainous monk — he has killed me ! " 
 Clement had drawn a knife from his sleeve and buried it in 
 his body. Henry lingered for eighteen hours ; and then the 
 last of the four principal conspirators who planned the Mas- 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew, and the last king of the line of 
 Yalois, died. 
 
34: THE OLD KOMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION IN 
 LATIN CHRISTIANITY.* 
 
 Ancient Christianity passed through three consecutive 
 stages : it was first Jewish, then Greek, then Latin. Greek 
 Christianity and Latin Christianity each became permanent, 
 but diverged from one another, and grew at length to be 
 distinct. Each of these types of Christianity planted itself 
 among new nations, and imderwent a development of its 
 own — in the case of Latin Christianity, a development full 
 of vitality, and entering as a prime element into the growth 
 of European civilization. 
 
 Christianity was at first of necessity Jewish. Its founders 
 were of that nation. It had an organic connection with the 
 religion and life of the Hebrew people. Jerusalem was the 
 metropolis of the church in the apostolic age. It still re- 
 mained '^ the Holy City." Thither the apostles resorted as 
 to a common hearth-stone, and there one or more of them 
 almost constantly resided. To the church at Jerusalem per- 
 plexed and disputed questions, like that of the requirements 
 to be made of gentile converts, were naturally brought. 
 There was the mother-church, to which tile Christians scat- 
 tered abroad turned with somewhat of the samQ feeling with 
 which the Jewish diaspora had looked to their Judean 
 brethren. To that church the apostle to the gentiles, tena- 
 cious as he was of his independence, chose to carry reports 
 of his missionary labors, and to manifest his loyal regard by 
 bringing to it from afar contributions of money for the re- 
 lief of the poor. 
 
 * An Article in The Princeton Review for January, 1880. 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 35 
 
 But Christianity rapidly passed beyond the Jewish period. 
 An Asiatic religion in its origin, it was destined to find the 
 most hospital welcome and most secure abode in Europe. 
 The gentile converts rapidly preponderated in number over 
 the Jewish. The obsolescent character of the Old Testa- 
 ment rites was more and more clearly discerned. . Circum- 
 cision and sacrifice were seen to be things of the past, and 
 national privileges and distinctions melted away in propor- 
 tion as the spiritual and universal character of the Gospel — a 
 religion not for the Jew only, but for man — ^was distinctly 
 perceived. The crushing of the Jewish nationality by the 
 overwhelming powder of the Romans precipitated the com- 
 pletion of the great change. The soldier of Titus who, on 
 the 15th of July in the year 70, flung a blazing brand into 
 the Temple, was an unconscious instrument of Providence 
 for breaking up the Judaic centre of Christianity. That act 
 was a signal of a new order of things, marking the dissolu- 
 tion of the bond which held the church in a certain depen- 
 dent relation to Jewish Christianity. 
 
 For the century that followed the capture of Jerusalem 
 by Titus and the death of Paul and of Peter, Christianity 
 was everywhere predominantly Greek. The canonical gos- 
 pels, with the possible exception of the first, were written in 
 that language, and the Hebrew original of Matthew was 
 early superseded by a Greek edition of that gospel. The 
 apostles wrote their epistles in that cosmopolitan language, 
 the common vehicle of communication wherever they went. 
 Religious services, even among the Christians at Rome, were 
 in the Greek tongue. Tlieological discussion was canied 
 forward almost exclusively by Greeks. It was long before 
 any important writer of Latin extraction, or employing the 
 Latin in his works, appeared. I^ot only Clement of Alex- 
 andria, and Origen after him, but Justin Martyr, the most 
 conspicuous of the Apologists of the second century, and 
 Irenseus, who was born in Asia Minor, but was a bishop at 
 Lyons and the most eminent literary adversary of Gnostic 
 
 IVC ^ o^ 
 
 i4 » ».\ \ 
 
36 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 heresies in that period, were Greek writers. The first theo- 
 logical author of note who wrote in Latin was the North 
 African father, Tertullian, early in the third centuiy. His 
 style, though its peculiar roughness springs in part from his 
 impetuous fervor and the hru^querie of his temper, shows 
 how ill-adapted the Latin was to serve as a medium for 
 Christian thought and for theological debate, compared with 
 that flexible and subtle language in which the truths of the 
 Gospel had before been incorporated. Theological activity 
 in the early centuries continued predominantly on the Greek 
 side. The discussions of the Trinity and of the person of 
 Christ, which gave rise to the great councils of Nicea, Con- 
 stantinople, and Chalcedon, were carried forward in the East. 
 When Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, and the other cities of 
 the East resounded with the din of theological strife, the 
 West was, for the most part, little more than a passive spec- 
 tator of the conflict. All the while, however, Latin Chris- 
 tianity was growing up into distinct life, and the Koman 
 See was gathering to itself power. Whilst the East was 
 spending its energies in warfare upon the profound and in- 
 tricate themes of speculative theology, the West was cement- 
 ing its polity, and quietly accepted every opportunity to aug- 
 ment the authority of its chief bishop. One means of the 
 advancement of his power was the consideration with which 
 he was regarded by the discordant parties, who not unfre- 
 quently, from motives of policy, vied with one another in 
 efforts to win his countenance and support. 
 
 During this whole formative period, and down to the ex- 
 tinction of paganism, the church was exposed to heathen in- 
 fluences. Christianity, to be sure, was from the first aggres- 
 sive. There was a perpetual conflict between the new faith 
 and the devotees of the old religion. The Gospel was to act 
 as a leaven in the midst of pagan society, rejecting what was 
 evil, and permeating and preserving what was right and in- 
 nocent. But what security was there that the discrimination 
 would always be correctly made ? If there was asceticism 
 
IN LA'l'IN CHKISTIANITY. 37 
 
 on the one hand, might there not arise a lax liberalism, an 
 unwarrantable accommodation and indulgence, on the other ? 
 The disciples were not taken out of the world ; would they 
 be wholly kept from the evil that is in it? Would not 
 heathenism, which was entwined with every institution of 
 society, which in a thousand forms confronted the Christian 
 fi'om his infancy to old age, which had inwoven itself, so 
 to' speak, in the whole texture of life, succeed in silently in- 
 fusing something of its spirit, its beliefs, and its customs into 
 the Christian community ? Would the Christian creed be 
 maintained incorrupt ? Would Christian worship keep up 
 its pure, spiritual character ? Would Christian conduct be 
 kept free from the demoralizing effect of heathen education 
 and example ? If we find traces of paganism in ancient 
 Christianity, there is no occasion for wonder, and it is no 
 just ground of reproach against Christianity itself. Rather 
 does the Gospel show its intrinsic vitality in not being stifled 
 by doctrines and ceremonies heaped upon it, though alien to 
 its nature, and in eventually proving itself sufficient to 
 purify itself of these foreign, corrupt elements, thus regain- 
 ing its native purity. 
 
 The church was far more exposed to the infection of 
 heathen opinions and practices after it grew in numbers, and 
 especially after the conversion of Constantino, when it be- 
 came dominant, and remained, save during the brief period 
 of Julian's reign, the religion of the empire. In the first 
 three centuries, the martyr-age of the church, it stood forth 
 as a persecuted sect, and was far less likely to catch the spirit 
 or imitate the ways of the worshippers by whom it was sub- 
 jected to imprisonment, torture, and death, either by the in- 
 strumentality of magistrates, or because left by them a victim 
 to the violence of fanatical mobs. In the field of theology 
 the church had early roused itself against the swarm of he- 
 resiarchs and heretical sects which sought to amalgamate 
 Christianity with Greek speculation and the fantastic dreams 
 of Oriental philosophy. The battle with Gnosticism was 
 
38 THE OLD SOMAN SPIRIT AND BELIGION 
 
 fouglit and won. Judaizing Christianity had likewise re- 
 ceived its death-blow, and its pertinacious votaries, pushed 
 outside the pale of orthodoxy, had been left to prolong their 
 existence as isolated, heterodox parties. It must not be for- 
 gotten that heathenism was virtually overcome, the complete 
 triumph of Christianity was insured, before the faith and 
 worship of Christians had' undergone essential depravation 
 through the retroactive influence of paganism. Compara- 
 tively speaking the first three centuries were pure. The 
 victory of the Gospel was practically achieved by legitimate 
 means. It was a victory fairly won. It was not by incau- 
 tious compromise, it was not by timid surrender, that the 
 Christian religion gained that firm footing in the Roman 
 world from which it could not have been dislodged. The 
 old religion was put on the road to extinction in the better 
 and purer era which followed the first introduction and dis- 
 semination of the Gospel. The fourth and fifth centuries 
 are the period when the baleful influence of heathenism was 
 chiefly felt ; and it was during this period that tendencies 
 in the wrong direction, which, so far as they had existed 
 previously, were kept within bounds, attained to a rank de- 
 velopment. Constantine himself, in the mingling of Chris- 
 tian and heathen opinions, tempers, and practices — the ad- 
 mixture of gospel faith and pagan superstition — which be- 
 longed to his character, was no unfit type of the mixed sys- 
 tem which both his personal example and public policy 
 tended to foster. It was in the fourth and fifth centuries 
 that the rage for ecclesiastical miracles manifested itself. 
 Then these supposed miracles were multiplied far beyond 
 anything of the kind in the preceding period. This single 
 feature of these later centuries may be taken as one sign of 
 the altered temper of the church. After the emperors pro- 
 fessed Christianity, it became popular with the indifferent 
 and self-seeking, who found their profit in adopting the re- 
 ligion of the cross. The inducements held out to produce 
 conversion, in the shape of court patronage, offices, and 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 39 
 
 other mercenary appeals, brought into the church a multi- 
 tude of insincere or selfish proselytes. The ambition to 
 swell the ranks of the baptized, stimulated many to make 
 concessions to heathen tastes and preferences, and to pur- 
 chase a superficial adhesion by a toleration of pagan customs, 
 or by the introduction of usages not dissimilar to them. To 
 not a few an immediate, seeming success was more attrac- 
 tive than a slower but more thorough advance. As the 
 dread of heathen opposition passed away, the teachers of 
 Christianity grew less vigilant, and concessions were insensi- 
 bly made, such as threats and violence had not been able to 
 extort. It was far more easy to withstand a direct attack 
 than an infection. 
 
 In treating of the influence of heathenism upon the 
 church, several cautions are requisite : ' 
 
 1. It is to be observed that similitude in the case of reli- 
 gious phenomena does not always imply identity of origin. 
 Beliefs, ceremonies, may exhibit a striking resemblance 
 where there is no genetic connection. It is often rash to 
 infer that an opinion or rite is derived from a particular 
 quarter simply on the ground of likeness. The common 
 source may be in impulses of human nature itself. The 
 generic qualities of man being the same in all times and in 
 every latitude, it would be surprising if in the religious 
 sphere, as elsewhere, there should not frequently be a 
 marked likeness in the actions of the human mind, whether 
 the spring of them be sound or corrupt. The historical 
 student perpetually meets with similar religious phenomena, 
 with opinions, sects, and rites, in places and times remote 
 from one another, and under circumstances where no com- 
 munication can possibly be assumed. In the same commu- 
 nity such phenomena may arise independently. There may 
 be an epidemic where there is no contagion. No one famil- 
 iar with the history of religion can inspect a village of 
 Shakers, in Massachusetts, without being reminded of other 
 societies, such as the Jewish Essenes, the Egj^tian Thera- 
 
40 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 peutse, and numerous widely-scattered monastic communi- 
 ties which have existed under the shield of the church or in 
 the ancient ethnic religions of the East. Yet there is no 
 genetic bond between these modern sects in Kew England 
 and the various communities referred to. The same impulses 
 of human nature which generated any one of these commu- 
 nistic societies might give birth to any other. The Oxford 
 Tractarian movement of the present century — to take an- 
 other illustration — was Judaizing in its spirit. Dr. Arnold 
 saw in it the very thing which the Apostle Paul denounced in 
 the Epistles to the Galatians and Colossians. There was the 
 same misconception of the Gospel, the same attempt to amal- 
 gamate with it heterogeneous principles. Yet the leaders 
 of Puseyism stood in no direct line of connection with the 
 Judaizing party which gave Paul so much trouble. Those 
 leaders did not learn their lesson, they did not borrow their 
 distinguishing tenets, from their ancient prototypes. Ten- 
 dencies of the mind which were rife in the early days of 
 Christianity revived and bore their natural fruit indepen- 
 dently, and under circumstances quite different. Whately 
 wrote a book in which he traced, with his usual sagacity, 
 the corruptions of Pomanism to their origin in certain ap- 
 petencies of human nature. 
 
 2. The points in which the church in the patristic age 
 departed from the spirit of primitive Christianity result not 
 wholly from the influence of heathenism, but in an impor- 
 tant degree from the adoption of characteristic principles of 
 the ancient Jewish Church. Poman Catholicism is, in some 
 essential features, a return to the old dispensation. It is a 
 restoration of parts of the Old Testament religion which the 
 Gospel abolished. These discarded elements, outgrown in 
 the later stage of Pevelation, and giving way in the 'Gospel 
 to something better, insensibly came back and incorporated 
 themselves in the conceptions of Christian people and in the 
 institutions of the church. This is eminently true of the 
 prime corruption of Christianity, the doctrine of a special 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 4:1 
 
 mediatorial priesthood — a class of heaven-appointed inter- 
 cessors, and almoners of divine grace. Peter, in whom hier- 
 archical supremacy is supposed to have first inhered, and by 
 whom it is thought to have been transmitted to the succes- 
 sive bishops of Rome, himself styled his fellow-disciples 
 generally " a chosen generation, a royal po'iesthood, a pecu- 
 liar people," whose office and privilege it was to celebrate 
 the praises of God (1 Peter, ii. 9). This distinction of an 
 immediate access to God- which of old had belonged exclu- 
 sively to the priests who ministered in the Temple, was 
 made by Christ the prerogative of all believers. But more 
 and more, as the church receded from the apostolic age, and 
 the absolutely gratuitous character of forgiveness became 
 obscured, the instinctive craving for priestly mediation led 
 to a perversion of the Gospel, to the surrender of the exalted 
 distinction conferred on all Christians, and to the imputation 
 to the clergy of an ofiice analogous to that of the Aaronic 
 order. The ramifications of this erroneous idea, securing 
 thus a lodgement in the Christian mind, were far-reaching. 
 Its effects on the constitution of the church, on the preroga- 
 tives of the ministry, and on Christian worship and life, were 
 grave and enduring. Now this revolution, silently accom- 
 plished in the first centuries, was, as I have said. Judaic in 
 its character. Not that it was due to the conscious efforts 
 of a Judaizing party, existing by itself and deliberately pur- 
 suing this end. The Judaizers, whose explicit effort it was 
 to assimilate Christianity to the Old Testament system, had 
 been foiled. They had been vanquished. Pauline Chris- 
 tianity gained the ascendancy over its adversaries. The 
 authority of the Apostle Paul, in the second century as well 
 as in the third, was held in due respect by the churches, and 
 was disparaged only by sectaries and factions. But the 
 Judaic transformation of which we are speaking crept in 
 after this first great contest had been decided and the right 
 side had triumphed. It arose in connection with a grad- 
 ual transformation of theology in a legal direction, and as a 
 
4b:s THE OLD EOMAN SPIRIT AlTD RELIGION 
 
 consequence of tlie quiet but powerful operation of general 
 causes. The Old Testament Scriptures were in the hands of 
 the early Christians. They were read in the churches. They 
 were quoted — at first with more verbal accuracy than the 
 writings of the apostles. The * relation of Christ to Moses, 
 of the new dispensation to the old, was not accurately de- 
 fined. Even now Christian theologians do not always agree' 
 in formulating this relation. The Gnostics had assaulted 
 the Old Testament, and disparaged the ancient church and 
 religion with which the Gospel was known and felt to be 
 somehow organically connected. These circumstances, how- 
 ever, would have been quite insufficient to produce the revo- 
 lution to which we have adverted, had not the natural, 
 spontaneous desire of human, visible mediation rendered 
 the notion of a special priesthood congenial to the minds of 
 men.- The elevation of the ministry to the rank of a priest- 
 hood did not arise, then, from a formal usurpation on their 
 own part. It w^as due mainly to a willing descent of the 
 people to a lower plane of religion, which was guided and 
 accelerated by the example of the system that w^as present 
 to their eyes on the pages of the ancient Scriptures. The 
 classical heathenism, therefore, is only in a very limited de- 
 gree responsible for the intrusion of this idea, so portentous 
 in its bearing on the history of the Christian church. 
 
 3. It is not to be inferred forthwith that everything which 
 the church took up from the environment in which it was 
 placed was of the nature of corruption. The theory of de- 
 velopment, as it is expounded by Dr. Kewman, although it 
 requires much correction and qualification, contains in it a 
 kernel of valuable truth. Christianity and the church w^ere 
 not something absolutely fixed and immovable within limits 
 set about them at the start. Christianity was to unfold its 
 contents in contact with humanity, and to stamp wdth its 
 approval whatever was true and good in the thinking and life 
 of the communities into which it was to enter, and which it 
 was to leaven with its spirit. The church was not rigidly 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 43 
 
 shut lip to an inflexible method of polity or to an established 
 round of worship. It might lawfully adapt itself to nation- 
 al peculiarities ; it might conform itself to all the varying 
 circumstances in the midst of which it was to do its work. 
 That work was to regenerate, not to extinguish, humanity. 
 The truth on this subject seems to be that development must 
 take place, if it take place aright, on the lines sanctioned in 
 the New Testament, and also that on these lines nothing 
 must be pushed to excess. Mozley, in his acute review of 
 Newman's Essay, has shown that the natural tendency to ex- 
 aggeration and excess is sufficient of itself to engender cor- 
 ruption if this tendency is not held in check. It is not suffi- 
 cient that a particular sentiment is in itself innocent; it 
 becomes evil and dangerous the moment it is pushed into 
 undue prominence or allowed to expand itself beyond meas- 
 ure. There is a source of corruption which is distinct from 
 the mingling of false ideas — germs intrinsically pernicious. 
 For example, the worship of the Virgin, which we find in 
 the church of the fourth and fifth centuries, may be called, 
 and is called by Dr. Newman, the development of the senti- 
 ments entertained towards Mary by the early Christians, by 
 whom she was regarded as the most blessed of women. 
 But was it not an excessive, an unhealthy, a pernicious ex- 
 pansion of a feeling which was right and wholesome only 
 when kept within a definite limit ? Rashness may be caUed 
 a development of courage, foolhardiness and audacity the 
 offshoot of boldness, timidity the product of prudence, 
 stinginess of frugality, etc. There are many plants which 
 need to be trimmed, and whose growth must be kept down ; 
 otherwise their fruit is bad. The conclusion is that what- 
 ever in the theology, the polity, the ethics, or the ritual of 
 the church is at variance with the injunctions, or with the 
 more intangible genius and spirit of the New Testament, is 
 worthy of condemnation. Whatever is not thus antagonis- 
 tic to the standard, even though it may not be explicitly set 
 forth there, is amenable to criticism, to be sure, but is not 
 
4:4 THE OLD ROMAN SPIEIT AND EELIGION 
 
 of necessity to be discarded. Between things enjoined and 
 things forbidden there is a middle district, where, in the ab- 
 sence of written law, there is no guide but a wise Christian 
 judgment. 
 
 It was the whole church, the church in the East as well 
 as the West, that was modified by the influence of heathen- 
 ism in the early ages. We have to notice both the effects 
 which were due to the antique spirit in general, to which 
 Christians were everyw^here exposed, and which left its mark 
 upon Greek as well as Latin Christianity, and also, more 
 particularly, the effects upon Latin Christianity, owing to 
 the peculiar conditions in which it was placed. There was 
 a general heathen influence, and a peculiar Latin influence 
 superadded. The world in which the Gospel was dissemi- 
 nated was Graeco-Roman. I^otwithstanding all that tended 
 to' render " the monarchy of the Mediterranean " homoge- 
 neous, there was always an East and a West, separated, to 
 be sure, by a fluctuating line, but characterized distinctly by 
 the prevalence in the one of the Greek and in the other of 
 the Latin influence. The division of the empire into the 
 Eastern and Western, and later the corresponding division 
 of the church, was not merely geographical, but was based 
 on an essential diversity of character. Accordingly, the 
 bent of theology was different in the East from that which 
 was prevalent in the Western mind. Ecclesiastical organi- 
 zation and life shaped themselves differently in the countries 
 where the Latin tongue and the spirit of Rome had sway ; 
 so that the Latin Church is a fit designation of the church 
 of the West. So Latin Christianity is obviously diverse in 
 character from the German or Teutonic Christianity, which 
 finally broke loose from the tutelage of Rome, and at the 
 Reformation separated itself, by a line nearly coincident 
 with the race-division, from the Latin communion. To this 
 last contrast we shall soon advert again. There are several 
 points in which the distinctively Latin spirit transmitted it- 
 self to the Latin Church. 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 4:5 
 
 1. We see plainly in tlie Latin Cliiircli the Roman genius 
 for rule — tlie capacity and disposition to exercise authority. 
 This quality, which Yirgil attributes to his countrymen as a 
 native trait,* and which the growth of Roman power and its 
 long duration illustrate, appears to have passed over to the 
 Roman Church and its bishops. A recently-recovered pas- 
 sage of the earliest extant Christian writing after the apos- 
 tles — the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians — contains 
 an admonition, almost authoritative in its tone, addressed to 
 them by the Roman Church, in whose name Clement wrote. 
 To be sure, had not circumstances all conspired to favor the 
 upbuilding of the Roman ecclesiastical supremacy, no such 
 domination could have arisen. But with the same truth it 
 may be said that the talent and spirit of rule were an equal- 
 ly indispensable condition. The love of order, the will to 
 check insubordination wherever deference and obedience are 
 conceived of as obligatory, were tendencies of the Roman 
 mind which appeared in full vigor in the incumbents of the 
 chair of St. Peter. 
 
 For the papacy remained an Italian institution. It was 
 built up, and its policy was moulded, by men in whom the 
 old Latin spirit never .died out. Leo L, at the crisis when 
 the empire was falling in ruins about him, wielding the scep- 
 tre of spiritual supremacy over distant provinces ; interposing 
 to protect society from anarchy ; going forth to the camp of 
 Attila to save Rome from his destroying host, and endeavor- 
 ing, even though with but partial success, to shield the Ro- 
 mans from Genseric and his Yandal army ; Gregory L, ex- 
 ercising his pontifical rule in the midst of political tumult 
 and disorder, and sending forth missionaries for the con- 
 quest of new nations to the faith ; Hildebrand, insisting on 
 the right of the church to govern itself independently of 
 lay authority ; demanding of king as well as priest absolute 
 submission ; sitting for days in the castle of Canossa, while 
 
 • um. vi. 847-853. 
 
46 THE OLD ROMAN 8PIEIT AND RELIGION 
 
 an emperor stood without in the court-yard praying for ad- 
 mission ; Innocent III., giving away crowns, and despatch- 
 ing his legates to lay kingdoms under the Interdict — in these 
 great ecclesiastics, the leaders and rulers of men, the old 
 Roman dictators and proconsuls seem once more to have 
 clothed themselves in flesh. There can be no doubt that 
 from an early day the bishops of Eome found it more nat- 
 ural and easy to assume authority for the reason that Rome 
 was their abode. It had been a place of authority with 
 which no other seat of power, ancient or modern, can be 
 compared. It seemed to be only right and natural that 
 Rome should rule. It was an association that affected the 
 minds of the incumbents of the Roman See, as well as of 
 the peoples whose allegiance they claimed. 
 
 2. Closely allied to the quality just mentioned is what we 
 may call the idea of imperialism. How easy it was for the 
 Latin mind to associate this idea with the church ! To unify 
 the church by combining all its parts in a common subjec- 
 tion to Rome was a thought natural to Roman Christianity. 
 The empire and the church were conceived to be each the 
 counterpart of the other. In making Rome the capital of 
 the empire, God had intended that it should be the metrop- 
 olis of the church. Peter and his successors were to be to 
 the ecclesiastical commonwealth what the Caesars had been 
 to the civil. The emperors of the West in the fifth century 
 lent their aid to the propagation and practical realization 
 of this idea. When everything tended to disintegration, 
 the rulers of the state welcomed the unifying influence of 
 the Roman ecclesiastical supremacy. " Peace " — so runs a 
 law of Valentinian III., in 445 — " Peace can be universally 
 preserved only when the whole church acknowledges its 
 ruler." This was a policy directly contrary to that of the 
 Byzantine princes in relation to the Eastern church, whose 
 independence they destroyed. When the Western empire 
 was broken up, and while it was so curtailed in its bounda- 
 ries as to embrace only Germany and Italy, the outlying 
 
m LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 47 
 
 countries, long accustomed to tlie idea of imperial unity, saw 
 no substitute for it except the spiritual rule of the popes. 
 Koman, imperialism contributed, in a variety of ways, to en- 
 gender and sustain imperialism in the church. 
 
 3. The most conspicuous among the features of the Latin 
 Church which it inherited from old Rome was the legal 
 spirit. The comparative indifference with which the ancient 
 Latin Church looked on the controversies in speculative di- 
 vinity which convulsed the East, and the ardor with which 
 the same Latin Church, in the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 plunged into the discussions pertaining to the doctrines of 
 sin, of free-will, and of the operation of divine grace, have 
 often been pointed out. Mr. Maine thinks that the histo- 
 rians of the church have come near but have not quite hit 
 the solution, in referring this phenomenon to the " practi- 
 cal " character of the Roman mind. The reason he declares 
 to be that, " in passing from the East to the West, theologi- 
 cal speculation had passed from a climate of Greek meta- 
 physics to a climate of Roman law." Yes ; but what created 
 this diversity of climates ? Was it not an ingrained philo- 
 , sophical turn in the Greek mind — " the Greeks seek after 
 wisdom " — and an opposite bent of the Roman mind, which 
 is properly described by the epithet " practical " ? Roman 
 politics, Roman jurisprudence, were the fruit of that peculiar 
 temper of the people which created the atmosphere of which 
 Mr. Maine speaks, and which the historians of theology have 
 by no means overlooked. That the familiar principles and 
 problems of the Roman law affected Latin theology there is 
 no question. " Almost everybody who has knowledge enough 
 of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal system, the 
 Roman theory of the obligations established by contract or 
 delict, the Roman view of debts and of the modes of incur- 
 ring, extinguishing, and transmitting them, the Roman no- 
 tion of the continuance of individual existence by universal 
 succession, may be trusted to say whence arose the frame of 
 «nind to which the problems of Western theology proved so 
 
48 THE OLD ROIMAN" SPIEIT AND RELIGION 
 
 congenial, whence came the phraseology in which these 
 problems were stated, and whence the description of reason- 
 ing employed in their solution." * The lioman law which 
 " worked itself into Western thought " was not the modern 
 civil law, but the philosophy of jurisprudence which "may 
 be partially reproduced from the Pandects of Justinian," 
 As to legal phraseology, it is interesting to notice the recur- 
 rence of terms from this source in the first Latin theological 
 writer of prominence, Tertullian, who had been a student 
 of Roman law and forensic eloquence before he embraced 
 the ecclesiastical profession. He entitles one of his books 
 " De prsescriptione hsereticorum." The term prcBscrvptio was 
 a legal word signifying a demurrer, or something which shut 
 a litigant out of court and closed his mouth. The fact which 
 constitutes the prcBsorvptio, levelled by Tertullian at the per- 
 verters of the Gospel, is the tradition of the apostles' teach- 
 ing which is preserved in the churches. That the churches, 
 so recently founded by the apostles, knew nothing of these 
 heretical opinions was a bar to controversy, and determined 
 the case at once. Tertullian in two other treatises intro- 
 duces the legal word satuf actio (or the cognate verb), not 
 to denote the atonement of Christ, to which it was after- 
 wards applied, but rather as a description of penance, or of 
 the self-imposed manifestations of penitence. In fasting a 
 man " satisfies God " by denying himself food, in the im- 
 moderate partaking of which he has offended him. f It is 
 seemly for a woman to clothe herself in humble attire, that 
 by every garb of satisfaction (satisfactionis) she may expi- 
 ate the ignominy which she derives from Eve. % In follow- 
 ing down the stream of Latin theology, from Augustine to 
 the latest of the schoolmen, we might trace, in the handling 
 of such topics as sin, the atonement, penance, indulgences, 
 absolution, the silent influence of the conceptions which Ro- 
 man jurisprudence had made current. Augustine, it may 
 
 * Andmt Law^ p. 347. f De Jejun.^ c. 3. 
 
 X De Cult. Femm.^ I., i. 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 49 
 
 be added, was, in his whole genius and training, a Latin 
 theologian. It is true that he was fascinated with Plato- 
 nism. But he knew little Greek. He received his training 
 in the schools of rhetoric. His reading was mainly in the 
 Roman classics. The themes on which his mind was exer- 
 cised were those which we have pointed out as chiefly inter- 
 esting to the Latin mind. The word " Augustinism " denotes 
 certain tenets respecting the bondage of the will under sin, 
 and the operation of grace in delivering it. And Augus- 
 tine's influence was dominant for a thousand years in the 
 Western church. Apart from favorite inquiries in theology, 
 the Eoman Catholic Church is broadly contrasted with the 
 Greek, in that the one has aimed more at the regulation of 
 the life, at the management of the individual and of society, 
 while the other has been mainly absorbed in maintaining 
 orthodoxy of dogma. The epithet " orthodox," which the 
 Greeks proudly assume, is significant of the spirit of their 
 communion. To order the conduct of men as individuals, 
 to sway the action of political societies, has been ever a lead- 
 ing end of the Church of Rome. Herein it shows itself to 
 be Roman. 
 
 The contrast between Latin and Teutonic Christianity is 
 hardly less striking. The ideal of ancient life, Greek as 
 well as Roman, recognized everywhere restraint. Every- 
 thing must be within measure. "Xothing too much" — 
 nihil nimis — was the maxim which governed the creations 
 of classical literature and art. Character and manners were 
 subject to the same precept. There must be metes and 
 bounds to all products of the imagination. Conduct must 
 be shaped by rules. Especially did the Roman mind insist 
 upon rigidly defining what is to be done. The old Roman 
 religion was punctilious, formal, ritualistic. Salvation was 
 by works. Worship must be carried forward in a prescribed 
 manner. Each god must have his due, and was to be decor- 
 ously honored. The Teutonic mind is spiritual, full of as- 
 piration, chafing under the yoke of rules and forms. We 
 3 
 
50 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 see the Teutonic genius in the Gothic architecture, and in 
 Shakespeare. The principle of personal independence — 
 that element in European civilization — is ascribed by Guizot 
 g,nd other historians to the Germanic influence. The ideal, 
 spiritual tendency of the German mind appeared in the 
 mysticism of the latter part of the middle ages, which was 
 the soil from which the Reformation sprang up. Hegel as- 
 cribes the Reformation to the " alte und durch und durch 
 bewahrte Innigkeit des deutschen Yolkes," * which was not 
 satisfied to approach God by proxy, or put religion outside 
 of the soul, in sacraments and ceremonies, or make the vote 
 of a council of priests the criterion of truth. The Teutonic 
 mind revolted against the legalism which entered into the 
 warp and woof of the Latin theology, and it craved an im- 
 mediate access to the heavenly good offered in the Gospel. 
 Personal communion with God, founded on the free forgive- 
 ness of sin — the intimate communion of a child with a father 
 — could alone meet the deep want of the spirit. Hence, 
 when the banner of Protestantism was unfurled, the Ger- 
 manic peoples, one after another, with alacrity ranged them- 
 selves under it. 
 
 From these general characteristics of the Latin Church, in 
 which the old Roman leaven discovers itself, let us turn to 
 consider certain more definite traces of assimilation to that 
 ancient paganism which Christianity supplanted. 
 
 1. The sort of polytheism introduced through the cultus 
 of angels and of saints. Angelic beings, good and evil, were 
 a prominent element in the current Jewish theology when 
 the Gospel was first preached. Their existence and agency 
 are recognized in the New Testament. But in the early 
 church they came to hold a much more conspicuous place in 
 the thoughts of Christians. Individuals, as well as nations, 
 had each his tutelary angel, who watched over him. Some- 
 times it was held that each person is attended by two spirits, 
 
 * Phil, der Gesch., Werke^ b. ix. 499 seq. 
 
m LATEST CHEISTIANrrr. 61 
 
 one bad and the other good. The strict monotheism with 
 which Christians were so thoroughly imbued at first, and the 
 express prohibitions of the New Testament, long prevented 
 them from addressing supplications to those invisible guar- 
 dians. Ambrose, in the fourth century, is the first author 
 quoted as countenancing this practice. " Obsecrandi sunt an- 
 geli, qui nobis ad prsesidium dati sunt," are his words. The 
 meaning is simply that angels are to be invoked to intercede 
 for us. It was held that they carry the prayers of the disciple 
 up to God. Hence it was natural that they, being within hear- 
 ing, should be asked to intercede. But this perilous sort of 
 intercourse with supernatural companions not divine did not 
 stop at this point. Gradually angels came to be themselves 
 the objects of homage and of a species of worship which, 
 however, was theoretically distinguished fi'om that due to 
 God and to Christ. The custom spread of appealing to 
 them for other benefits than mere intercession. To this 
 host of \ secondary, inferior divinities, close at hand to hear 
 prayer and to bestow blessings, there were added a throng of 
 martyrs and saints. The sanctity of martyrs caused their 
 intercessory prayers, while they were alive, to be highly 
 prized. The practice of appealing to them after their death, 
 especially in the vicinity of their mortal remains, where it 
 was imagined that their spirits lingered, easily gained a foot- 
 hold. It was natural to look to these departed worthies for 
 other good offices ; and so martyr- worship grew up by the 
 side of angel- worship. Then there were eminent saints who 
 had died a natural death — ^holy monks, for example — and to 
 these supplications might with, equal reason, be directed. 
 The indefinite fraternal remembrance of departed saints in 
 the prayers connected with the Eucharist gradually trans- 
 formed itself into a species of worship of them. Prayers 
 were offered to them instead (A for them. 
 
 These beliefs and practices approximated Christianity to 
 the contemporaneous heathenism, which tended to the doc- 
 trine of the divine unity, and reduced the gods of the Pan- 
 
52 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 tlieon to the rank of subordinates and instruments of the 
 Supreme Power. Plutarch had ascribed much that was of- 
 fensive in the old mythology to demons — inferior beings. 
 The gods of the heathen were admitted even by Christians 
 really to exist, but were considered to be evil, to be demons 
 in the bad sense of the term. The worship of heroes and 
 the deification of the emperors furnished human objects of 
 heathen devotion. A heathen of the fourth or the fifth century 
 had only to substitute angels for the old subordinate divini- 
 ties, the worship of martyrs and saints for the adoration of 
 heroes, and of emperors whom, after they had abjured the 
 old paganism, it was awkward to deify. He had before be- 
 lieved in his protecting genius, who was honored on birth- 
 days and might be invoked in any emergency. The atten- 
 dant spirit he had only to christen as a guardian angel. Kot 
 that Christian worship sank down to the level of the former 
 idolatry. The Christian doctrine respecting God, his exalted 
 nature, and his holy attributes, might be obscured, and in a 
 degree imperilled ; yet that doctrine continued to be taught. 
 I^Tevertheless the heathen mind could find in the Christian 
 system the counterpart of what it had cherished. This 
 facilitated the transition from one system to another. And 
 this resemblance was due, to a considerable extent, to the 
 silent influence of paganism on the church. 
 
 2. The localizing of worship. The feeling that God 
 dwelleth not in temples made with hands, that neither to 
 Mt. Gerizim nor to the Sanctuary of Jerusalem is the wor- 
 shipper obliged to resort, but that the real temple is the 
 human soul, was very much qualified after the church 
 emerged from the age of persecution, came forth from the 
 catacombs, found it safe to erect costly edifices, and began to 
 vie with the heathen in seeking for pomp and impressive- 
 ness in the services of religion. Under the Christian em- 
 perors heathen temples in many instances were handed over 
 to Christians. In tlie interval between Valerian and Diocle- 
 tian, while there was rest from persecution, splendid edifices 
 
IN LATIN CHKI8TIANITY. 53 
 
 « 
 
 were built for Christian worship. The last great persecu- 
 tion, that under Diocletian, was signalized in its beginning 
 by the destruction of one of them, the church at Nicomedia. 
 A mysterious sanctity gradually attached itself to these 
 places of worship. In the fourth century the names of 
 saints came to be connected with them ; not at first under 
 the idea that the churches were consecrated to them, but the 
 saint whose name was afl&xed to the edifice was looked upon 
 as a special patron and protector. It was not very long, 
 however, before the church became a shrine for the chltus 
 of the saint whose name it bore, and before churches came 
 to be dedicated to these human objects of religious venera- 
 tion. The graves of martyrs collected about them assem- 
 blies for religious worship, especially on the anniversaries of 
 their death. Churches and altars were reared over their re- 
 mains. The bodies of departed saints were deposited in 
 churches. Special efiicacy was attributed to the devotions 
 practised in the neighborhood of these relics. It was an old 
 pagan tenet that cities and countries were blessed and pro- 
 tected by the relics of fallen heroes. Cities in Greece had 
 been built over the graves of their founders, and worship 
 had been rendered to them. The superstitious belief in the 
 continuance of miracles served to surround the hallowed 
 centres of worship with a constantly increasing sacredness. 
 
 3. In hardly any particular was the deviation of the Latin 
 from the primitive church more signal than in the introduc- 
 tipn of images and pictures as instruments and objects of de- 
 votion. An intense antipathy to everything of this sort had 
 been derived by the gentile converts to Christianity from 
 their Jewish brethren. As late as the close of the second 
 centuiy- Clement of Alexandria speaks in condemnation of 
 the art of painting altogether. TertuUian reproaches Her- 
 mogenes with being a painter. Whether Tertullian objected 
 to the art as being in itself deceptive, as the same zealous 
 father denounces the masks worn by actors for the reason 
 that they partake of fraud, or whether his objection is 
 
64 THE OLD ROMAN SPERIT AND RELIGION 
 
 grounded on the circumstance that the heretical artist made 
 pictures for heathen worship, is not clear. The dates when 
 pictorial representations of a religious sort were first intro- 
 duced among Christians it is not easy precisely to determine. 
 A very important source of knowledge on this whole sub- 
 ject is the catacombs. But here the dates are quite uncer- 
 tain. De Rossi and Mr. J. H. Parker differ very widely 
 from one another in their judgments on this point. Paint- 
 ings which De Rossi considers to be early Mr. Parker would 
 place at a much later date. The main difficulty grows out 
 of the fact that the pictures in these subterranean burial- 
 places were subjected to a process of restoration in the sixth 
 century and afterwards, by which the characteristics indica- 
 tive of the time of their origin were very much obliterated. 
 The first pictures were symbols — as the dove, the anchor, 
 the shepherd with a lamb on his shoulder — which were sub- 
 stituted on goblets and seal-rings, and on sepulchral inscrip- 
 tions, for mythological representations in vogue among the 
 heathen. At first the cross, though a common token 
 among Christians, by which both the Saviour's death and 
 the humility of the Christian profession were called to mind, 
 was seldom depicted. Following upon this class of paint- 
 ings were historical pictures of Scriptural events, such as 
 the sacrifice of Isaac, under which, beyond the interest in 
 the subject itself, was discerned a type of the suffering of 
 Jesus. Then followed the portraiture of apostles and saints. 
 It was long before any representation even of the man 
 Christ Jesus was permitted, and longer still before his pic- 
 ture was allowed in churches. Constantia, the sister of Con- 
 stantino, sent to Eusebius a request that she might have an 
 image of Jesus. In denying this request, Eusebius says : 
 " Hast thou ever seen such a thing in a church thyself, or 
 heard of it from another ? Have not such things been ban- 
 ished throughout the whole world, and driven far off out of 
 the churches ? " Constantia died in 354:. Images of Jesus, 
 whether pictorial or in sculpture, were first used by hereti- 
 
IN LATIN CHBISTIANITY. 55 
 
 cal sects like the Carpocratians. Under Leo I. (440-461) 
 the image of Christ is first heard of in a Koman church. 
 For several centuries church teachers forbade homage of 
 whatever kind to be offered to pictures. Augustine dis- 
 countenances the practice of worshipping an image, and of 
 praying with one's eyes fixed upon it. The Synod of Elvira 
 in 305 or 306, in the 36th canon, expressly forbids the in- 
 troduction of pictures into churches, and the paying of hom- 
 age to them. The language of the council excludes that 
 qualified sort of worship which the Latin Church afterwards 
 sanctioned. " Ne quod colitur et adoratur " is the phrase.^ 
 But after the fourth century the custom spread of depicting 
 apostles, martyrs, and other individuals of high repute for 
 their sanctity, or renowned for their beneficence, upon the 
 walls of churches. Augustine allows that they were often 
 worshipped by the illiterate. When paganism ceased to be 
 feared as a dangerous foe, the spirit of resistance to practi- 
 ces of this kind lost its force. Eoman Catholic scholars 
 apologize for this innovation on the very ground that when the 
 power of heathenism was broken, it was no longer needful 
 to exclude the visible auxiliaries of Christian worship. It 
 seems to be forgotten that these auxiliaries involved a revival 
 of paganism in another form. It should be added that, in 
 the fifth century, images of Christ and of the Madonna be- 
 came common. It was in the medteeval era of the Latin 
 Church, however, that the devotional use of images and pic- 
 tures reached its height and engendered the worst abuses. 
 
 It is a curious fact that the heathen were in the habit of 
 kissing the images of their objects of worship, as is now the 
 custom in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in South- 
 ern Europe. Cicero states that the mouth and chin of the 
 image of Hercules at Agrigentum were in this way worn 
 smooth by the lips of devotees. Lucretius adverts to the 
 
 * See Hefele's History of Councils, vol. i. Hefele evidently adopts the 
 interpretation given above. 
 
56 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 fact that the hands of pagan statues were worn down and 
 polished bj the kisses of those who passed bj. The same 
 effect was produced that we see now on the toe of the statue 
 of St. Peter. 
 
 4. The multiplying of festivals, including the substitution 
 of heathen for Christian celebrations. Under the old hea- 
 thenism, there were numerous festal days in honor of the 
 various deities whose gifts were to be acknowledged and 
 whose disfavor was to be deprecated. These, as we learn 
 from the Eoman writers, were a serious draught upon the 
 time of working people, and harmfully interrupted the 
 labors of agriculture. Among Christians, in the first three 
 centuries, there were but few festivals. Origen, in his book 
 against Celsus, written in the latter part of his life — ^he died 
 in 254 — makes mention of only three : the Parasceue (or 
 Preparation), the Passover, and the feast of Pentecost. 
 Clement of Alexandria, near the end of the second century, 
 speaks of Epiphany as a festival of the heretical Basilidians ; 
 and he clearly implies that there existed no commemoration 
 of the nativity of Jesus. Toward the end of the third cen- 
 tury, the feast of the Epiphany established itself in the 
 Eastern church, but not until the second half of the fourth 
 century did it spread in the West, where its significance 
 was changed. It is first heard of in the West in 360. 
 Christmas, on the contrary, a festival of Western origin, was 
 not celebrated as a festival separate from Epiphany, in An- 
 tioch, until the year 376. Chrysostom, in a sermon deliv- 
 ered on the 25th of December, 386, states that it had ex- 
 isted there for ten years. We find it fully established in 
 Rome in the middle of the fourth century, and its origin as 
 a distinct festival was probably not very long before. In 
 connection with the close of the year there had existed a 
 series of heathen festivals into which the Romans entered 
 with extreme delight. First were the Saturnalia, the jubilee 
 of Saturn or Kronos, which marked the close of farm-work 
 for the year, when the reins were given to merriment, when 
 
EST LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 57 
 
 slaves could put on the clothes of gentlemen, and wear the 
 badge of fi-eemen, and sit at a banquet, being waited on by 
 their masters. Then came the Sigillaria (on the 21st and 
 22d of December), when the streets were thronged, gifts in- 
 terchanged among friends, wax-tapers being given by the 
 humble to superiors, and when many sports were allowed 
 which resembled those of Christmas in our times or of a 
 Roman carnival. Miniature images of the gods and all 
 sorts of presents were given to the young. Then followed 
 the Brumalia — from Bruma, the shortest day — in honor of 
 the sun, and connected with the Persian sun-god, Mithras, 
 whose cultus had been brought to Rome imder Domitian 
 and Trajan. This festival — dies natalis invicti soils — after 
 the synchronous festival of Christmas was established, con- 
 tinued, as Augustine informs us, to tempt away Christians 
 to a participation in its heathen observances. Leo I. com- 
 plains that the custom of paying religious homage to the sun 
 still lingered among many Christians. Even among the 
 Greeks, as late as 691, a council — the second Trullan — ^f ound 
 it necessary to prohibit Christians from taking part in the 
 celebration of the Brumalia. It is not improbable that one 
 motive for fixing the Christmas festival just at that time was 
 to shield weak Christians from the seductive influence of 
 the pagan and often unseemly festivities to which they had 
 been accustomed. In justice to the church, it should be 
 said, however, that, generally speaking, where there were 
 heathen festivals which led to riotous excess, the season of 
 their occurrence would be set apart for prayer and penitence. 
 This was the case with the New Year's Festival of the hea- 
 then, the CalendcB Januarice^ which was a scene of revelry. 
 The festival of Christ's circumcision was transferred to the 
 New Year — a festival utterly diverse in its origin and spirit 
 from the boisterous heathen celebration occurring at the 
 same time. The principal abuses in the church arose from 
 the habit of commemorating martyrs and saints, the list of 
 whom grew into an extensive catalogue. The Romans re- 
 3* 
 
58 THE OLD EOMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 garded the manes of their ancestors as in some sense divine. 
 They presented to them not only sacrifices but other gifts, 
 such as wine, milk, and garlands of flowers. They carried 
 food to their sepulchres for the use of the dead. These 
 banquets the Christians imitated by preparing feasts at the 
 graves of the saints, of which these invisible beings were in- 
 vited to partake. The little burial-chapels in the catacombs 
 were places for the friends of the departed to meet in. 
 There was sometimes a close parody of heathen myths and 
 of the superstitions that grew out of them. On the 15th 
 of July the Roman Catholic Church pays honor to Phocas, 
 the patron-saint of sailors, who took the place of Castor and 
 Pollux in the Christian mythology. He was said to have 
 been a gardener at Sinope, and to have been put to death, 
 under Diocletian, in 303. He was made the guardian saint 
 of all who prosecuted voyages. Seamen sang songs in his 
 praise. A place was set for him as an invisible guest at the 
 table on shipboard, and on the safe arrival of the vessel in 
 port his portion of its earnings was given to the poor. In 
 this last act the benevolent spirit of the Gospel was mani- 
 fest, connected though it was with superstitious fancies. 
 Let the amount of direct heathen influence in giving rise to 
 the commemoratibns of the church be estimated as it may 
 be, there can be no doubt that the pagans found in the mul- 
 tiplied Christian festivals a welcome surrogate for those 
 which they were called upon to give up. 
 
 5. A great variety of customs and ceremonies, resembling 
 those familiar to the heathen, but not included under the 
 foregoing topics, were early adopted by the church. Votive 
 offerings are deserving of special mention. Heathen tem- 
 ples, especially the temples of ^Esculapius, were hung with 
 gifts, left as tokens of gratitude for deliverance from sick- 
 ness, accident, or some other kind of trouble. The Virgin 
 and the saints were honored in a similar way ; and Christian 
 churches exhibited, like the heathen sanctuaries, images of 
 fingers, legs, and other parts of the body, made of silver or 
 
IN LATIN CHEISTIANITT. 59 
 
 some other substance, in connection with other offerings be- 
 tokening thankfulness for rescue from suffering or danger. 
 There were shrines where each particular disorder was sup- 
 posed to be miraculously healed bj some special saint who 
 made the victims of it the objects of his benevolent care. 
 This was one of the occasions of the pilgrimages which, hav- 
 ing been a heathen, now became a Christian usage. The 
 pagans had been in the habit of resorting to the temples of 
 ^sculapius, or Isis, or Serapis, in order that the god might 
 teach them in their dreams in the night-time how to rid 
 themselves of their diseases. So Christians betook them- 
 selves to their churches, to the end that the saint whose 
 image was enshrined within thtoi might, in like manner, 
 inform them in their slumber how to regain their health. 
 The introduction of incense among the ceremonies of wor- 
 ship is a curious illustration of the incoming of heathen in- 
 novations. The fathers of the second century, Athenagoras, 
 Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, contrast the worship of 
 Christians in this particular with that of the heathen. 
 " The Creator," says Athenagoras, " does not require blood, 
 nor smoke^ nor the sweet smell of flowers, nor inceiiseP 
 Tertullian says : " We buy no frankincense ; '^ we offer " not 
 one pennyworth of the grains of frankincense." Clement 
 says that the perfume from the altar is " holy prayer." The 
 fathers of the third and fourth centuries give the same testi- 
 mony. Arnobius (a.d. 298) speaks of the use of incense 
 even among the heathen as a modern thing, and infers from 
 this circumstance alone that it is offered vainly and to no 
 purpose. In the same spirit write Lactantius (a.d. 303) and 
 even Augustine (a.d. 396). The great Latin father approves 
 of the statement which he quotes, that " frankincense and 
 other perfumes ought not to be offered at the sacrifice of God." 
 It was not imtil the sixth, or late in the fifth century, that 
 incense was used in the ritual. It was brought into the 
 church first merely as a disinfectant, to sweeten, and, as was 
 thought, to purify the air. Tertullian refers to this use of 
 
60 THE OLD EOMAN SPIKIT AND RELIGION 
 
 it. Pseudo-Dionjsius, early in the sixth century, is the first 
 writer who adverts to incense as a part of Christian worship. 
 He speaks of the priest censing the altar, and then going 
 over " the whole circuit of the sacred place." "^ Of course 
 the precedent of the ancient Jewish worship could be 
 pleaded in support of the new practice. Thus it was the 
 accident of the use of perfume for the homely practical end 
 of expelling bad odors, that brought it into Christian sanc- 
 tuaries as an instrument of worship. One is reminded of the 
 fact that, several centuries later, it was the frequent acci- 
 dental spilling of drops of wine at the Eucharist that first led 
 to the withholding of the cup from the laity. Circumstances 
 in themselves trifling have led to grave transformations in 
 the ritual, and indirectly in the doctrine, of the church. 
 After the censer was adopted as a utensil of devotion, the 
 Christian priest pacing before the altar, attended by the 
 thurifer with the swinging thurible in his hand, presented 
 an almost' exact image of what had been familiar to the eyes 
 of visitors to heathen temples. The spectacle was one wliicb 
 the early Christians, had they been present to witness it, 
 would have beheld with astonishment and reprobation, and 
 one which the heathen, on the other hand, of an earlier day 
 -^vould have recognized as closely resembling a rite of their 
 own. A heathen in the fifth century who should cross the 
 threshold of a Christian church would observe much in the 
 exterior arrangements of the building and of the service 
 that would tend to make him feel at home. He would find 
 much to remind him of the religion in which he had been 
 bred. The very edifice might have once been a temple of 
 pagan worship. Kow it wore the name of that one of the 
 host of invisible beings to whom it was specially sacred, and 
 to whom supplications might be addressed with marked 
 efficacy within its walls. All around there might not im- 
 
 • The pass^Gs on this subject are collected by Bingham (b. viii., c. 
 VL § 21) and in Smith's Diet, of Christ. Antiquities. 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 61 
 
 probably be seen votive gifts — donaria — like those which 
 the heathen had been wont to see in his own sanctuaries. 
 There was an altar with lamps burning near it, and with 
 priests, in their official garb, standing before it ; there were 
 genuflexions and processions, all stamped with a likeness to 
 familiar parts of the heathen ritual. It is true that there 
 were no bloody offerings, and that transubstantiation had 
 not come to be an article of Christian belief ; but the 
 Eucharist was called a sacrifice, and was invested with an at- 
 mosphere of awe and mystery. 
 
 It would be a rash, unauthorized inference that the church 
 in the last half of the patristic period, or that the mediaeval 
 church in which excrescences, like those referred to, in- 
 creased in number and volume, was nothing better than 
 heathen. In the constitution, creed, ceremonial, of the 
 church after Constantine, truth and error, good and evil, 
 were strangely, almost indissolubly, mixed. To call it a 
 mere baptized paganism is to ignore the principle of life 
 that ever inhered in it. The truth of redemption through 
 Christ, with the facts presupposed and included in it, how- 
 ever that truth may have been mingled with erroneous fan- 
 cies and overlaid with cumbrous ceremonies, still constituted 
 the life-blood of Christianity. 
 
 A question that may occur to the reader of the foregoing 
 pages is this : If Latin Christianity has thus proved itseK 
 congenial to the Latin nations, are they likely to be satisfied 
 with Protestantism in its present shape ? Is it to be expected 
 that the nations of Southern Europe will reconcile themselves 
 to the system of worship which has proved acceptable to the 
 peoples of German extraction ? This opens up the question 
 of symbolism in religion. No one can escape from symbol- 
 ism altogether. The strictest Puritan kneels in prayer, and 
 the act of kneeling not only expresses, but also facilitates, 
 the inward prostration of the spirit. It is the form, the visi- 
 ble embodiment, the material investiture, of the spiritual act. 
 Even the Quaker at his meeting, in his sober mien, his quiet. 
 
62 THE OLD ROMAN SPIEIT AND RELIGION 
 
 expectant attitude, expresses that waiting for the silent com- 
 ing of the Spirit which is the posture of his mind. Who- 
 ever bows or shakes hands with a friend, or embraces him, 
 indulges in symbolism. A gesture is a symbol. It expresses 
 an emotion, or a volition, or an intellectual act. It is the 
 living counterpart of the mental movement. Body and soul 
 are so intimately connected that a sympathetic physical action 
 spontaneously accompanies the action of the soul, and all the 
 more when the soul is deeply moved. There is a ritual of 
 etiquette, of friendship, of social intercourse, as well as of 
 religion. The manners of a gentleman or of a lady are sym- 
 bolical of refined feelings, of self-respect, and of regard for 
 others, even in little things. Manners are a language. The 
 feeling bodies itself forth instinctively in outward acts ; and 
 cultivation here, as elsewhere, is not artifice, but the perfect- 
 ing of nature. Symbolism is more natural and more grate- 
 ful, more of a necessity of the spirit, as one may say, to one 
 individual than to another. One person would feel himself 
 cramped if this mode of expj:eesing thought and emotion 
 were confined within the limits which another has no im- 
 pulse to overpass. In different stages of culture there is a 
 difference in the degree of satisfaction yielded by symbols. 
 The pageants of the middle ages no longer interest the Euro- 
 pean mind as they once did. Medigeval ceremonies, which 
 are still observed in connection with courts and royalty, strike 
 one as curious relics of a by-gone time. They may seem 
 puerile, and they may be in reality puerile — that is, they 
 may have been the offshoot of a time when there was a dis- 
 proportionate liveliness of emotion and fancy, such as be- 
 longs to children. It is true evidently of certain branches of 
 the human race that gesture, pantomime, all that falls under 
 the head of symbolical expression, form, and ceremony, are 
 far more congenial — we might say indispensable — than is 
 true of peoples of a more reserved temperament. The viva- 
 cious manners of the Frenchman, and the more stiff and 
 stolid ways of the Englishman, have always been to both the 
 
IN LATfN CHRISTIANITY. 63 
 
 source of mutual diversion. The southern European nations 
 are by nature more ritualistic than the northern. The brighter 
 skies, the sunny landscape, the peculiar fruits and flowers, 
 are not more characteristic of the south than is the love of 
 music and song, of painting and sculpture, of brilliant dress 
 and ceremony, and of expressive tones and gestures. Wor- 
 ship is naturally affected by this diversity of temperament. 
 A 'New England Puritan thinks it natural to clothe himself 
 in black in token of grief for a lost friend, and to march in 
 a procession on the fourth of July. But he finds it more 
 difficult to see how any one should be inclined to carry an 
 analogous symbolism into the services of religion. Now the 
 exact limits of that symbolism in worship which is allowable 
 under the Gospel do not admit of mathematical definition. 
 There is no prescribed, unbending code in the New Testa- 
 ment on this subject. The Saviour and the apostles preached 
 often in the open air. They wore no official garments. 
 Probably no one at present thinks that the cloak which Paul 
 left at Troas was a surplice ; or that, if it had been, he 
 would have suspended his work as a minister to wait for its 
 arrival. Everything in the services of the primitive church 
 was plain and simple. At the same time there was no law 
 laid down in reference to these matters. There are certain 
 principles, however, to which the church is bound to adhere 
 in all the arrangements of worship. First, the symbol must 
 be significant of a truth, and not of an error. The rite 
 speaks to the observer, and the language which it utters 
 must be true. An erroneous doctrine which has clothed it- 
 self in symbol can be subverted only by abolishing the 
 forms in which it is invested. Secondly, the symbol pust 
 be immediately intelligible. It must conform to the rules 
 of allegorical art. If it fail to do this, it is obnoxious from 
 an aesthetic point of view. Still more obnoxious is it from 
 a religious point of view ; for it becomes then an opaque 
 glass. It is a mirror in which nothing is reflected. It is a 
 fossil from which the life is gone. It is a word in an un- 
 
64 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 known tongue. The observance of unmeaning rites is a 
 mechanical sort of devotion, equally dishonorable to God, 
 who will be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and to the 
 soul, which is degraded by the exercise of a blind, stupid 
 homage, that is kept up in deference to authority or fi'om 
 mere force of habit. The symbolical act or object must tell 
 its own tale at once, and must continue to do so, or it is 
 worse than useless ; for a rational being is harmed by the 
 performance of irrational acts. Such acts are doubly mis- 
 chievous when they come to be regarded as meritorious, and 
 to be made a substitute, as to some extent they are very 
 likely to be, for faith, love, and charity, and for good deeds 
 springing from them. Formalism is the enthronement of 
 rites in the place that belongs to the feelings and purposes 
 of the heart. External observances are made by the formal- 
 ist an end and not a means. They are valued for their own 
 sake. If they do not supplant the dedication of the heart, 
 which is the " reasonable " — that is, the rational or spiritual 
 — service to be rendered to God by a Christian, they are 
 placed on a level with it, and thus deprive it of the supreme 
 place that of right belongs to it. " Obedience is better than 
 sacrifice." Kites that are devoid of meaning are an offence. 
 Formalism in religion is like artificial, affected manners in 
 social life. They tend to stifle true, cordial feeling. Hon- 
 est minds break through such barriers, and may be led by 
 the energy of their protest to fall into rude and blunt ways, 
 which are preferable to a hollow and unmeaning courtesy. 
 Thirdly, all visible representations of the invisible God are 
 irreverent in their nature. The law of the Old Testament 
 on this subject was given to prevent idolatry. It was one 
 great object, moreover, to educate the souls of men to the 
 exercise of faith in realities which belong to an order higlier 
 than that of the visible world. This design is defeated 
 when the Deity is depicted in human form, and the august 
 mystery of his being brought down to the level of his crea- 
 tures. In the ancient church, representations of God the 
 
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 65 
 
 Father, and any other than symbolical representations of the 
 Holy Ghost, were rigidly excluded. The inveterate tenden- 
 cy, especially of the uneducated mind, to identify the image 
 with the being whom it is intended to represent is a suffi- 
 cient reason why images of Jesus should not be used as aux- 
 iliaries in worship. It is legitimate for the arts of painting 
 and sculpture to give form to the ideals of Christ which the 
 study of his human life inspires. An elevating influence 
 may go forth from these creations of art. The Christ of 
 Leonardo da Yinci, the study for the painting of the Last 
 Supper, with the deep but patient sorrow that is stamped 
 upon the countenance, gives new vividness to our conception 
 of the " Man of sorrows." He must be an iconoclast indeed 
 who would blot out of existence the descent from the cross 
 as depicted in all its terrible reality by the pencil of Rubens. 
 But such creations of art are not to be made the objects of 
 worship, and worshippers cannot look to them in prayer 
 without the risk of confounding the unseen exalted One 
 with the imaginary portrait of him that is spread upon the 
 canvas. Fourthly, the multiplying of symbols beyond a 
 limit, which, of course, cannot be precisely defined, is evil in 
 its influence. Crutches are good to support the weak, but 
 are of no benefit if they supersede the natural use of the 
 muscles. Pictures are useful in teaching, but, if employed 
 beyond a certain limit, they keep the mind in a passive state 
 that interferes with the due development of its powers. An 
 elaborate ritual becomes a spectacle, in which, at the best, 
 the soul is acted upon, with little exertion on its own part. 
 There is a golden mean between a dazzling and distracting 
 symbolism, complex and wearisome to a thoughtful mind, 
 and a bald, frigid service, where no help is derived from the 
 senses, and where the didactic element, in the form of ab- 
 stract discussion, excludes every other. We may reject the 
 idea of Archbishop Laud and the ritualists as to what is meant 
 by worshipping God in " the beauty of holiness," but in fly- 
 ing from Scylla we should not wreck ourselves on Charybdis. 
 
Q6 THE OLD ROMAN SPIRIT AND RELIGION 
 
 Starting with these principles respecting the nature and 
 use of symbolism, we are prepared to allow to Protestant- 
 ism the liberty of conforming its ritual to the temperament, 
 taste, and national peculiarities of the several peoples among 
 whom it may be planted. There are many customs which 
 belong under the category of things indifferent, and which 
 it may be a duty to discard under one set of circumstances, 
 while they may be admitted without harm when the situa- 
 tion is altered. The great conflict of the Puritans against 
 sacerdotal usurpation led them to push their protest in cer- 
 tain directions further than is necessary at present, now that 
 the battle has been fought and won, and when in many com- 
 munities the danger which they dreaded has passed by. A 
 rigid adhesion to a particular method of worship, when there 
 are reasons for varying from it, is itself formalism, one of 
 the principal evils against which Puritanism contended. A 
 certain elasticity must be allowed in things external. The 
 criterion is to ascertain what conduces to the edification of 
 the flock, not in some foreign latitude, but in the place with 
 respect to which the question is raised. Should the Protes- 
 tant doctrines spread extensively in Latin countries, it is not 
 impossible that forms of worship may arise specially conso- 
 nant with the native characteristics of the inhabitants of 
 those lands. There may arise a Latin Protestantism differ- 
 ent in its external features from Germanic Protestantism. 
 There is no hurtful rupture of unity in such diversity. At 
 the Keformation, Protestantism in the southern countries 
 tended to a particular type not strictly accordant with the 
 German. The acceptance of the doctrine of justification by 
 faith alone was often accompanied by a less degree of dis- 
 affection towards important parts of the Eomish ritual, and 
 with a less degree of repugnance to the sacraments as for- 
 merly administered. In France, many who were inclined 
 to Protestant opinions, like Margaret, the sister of Francis 
 L, and the class in sympathy with her, occupied this posi- 
 tion. The phenomena of the Reformation in that age in 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 m LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 67 
 
 Italy and Spain indicate the natural bent of the Latin mind. 
 The Old Catholic movement in our day seemed at first to 
 hold out the pi-omise of issuing in a new type of Protestant- 
 ism which should be more satisfactory to such adherents of 
 the Church of Rome as were evangelical in their tendencies. 
 Pere Hyacinthe, disposed though he was to head a revolt 
 against the Pope and the popular type of Eomanism, did 
 not find himself at home in the midst of Protestantism, 
 with its absence of form and its churches locked up except 
 on Sunday. He was evidently feeling after a system which, 
 while it should be free from Komish abuses of doctrine and 
 practice, should make a warmer appeal to the sensibility and 
 aesthetic feeling than any of. the Protestant denominations 
 presented. He wanted a system that should bring religion, 
 more visibly and constantly, before the minds and close to the 
 hearts of men. It must be confessed, however, that his main 
 difficulty was that he did not see his way clear to lay the 
 axe at the root of the tree by distinctly renouncing the sacer- 
 dotal theory of the ministry. No effectual issue can be 
 made with Romanism by those who cling to the theory of a 
 mediatorial priesthood. The greatness of Luther is strik- 
 ingly manifest in the boldness with which he assaulted the 
 central dogmas of the opposing system, instead of expend- 
 ing his strength on the outworks. In one of his early publica- 
 tions, the Address to the Nobles of the German Nation^ 
 he struck a vigorous blow at the doctrine that the clergy are 
 a close corporation of priests on whom the laity are depend- 
 ent for the sacraments. It was because he laid a string 
 foundation in principles, that his war against the papacy was 
 something more than an irregufer, guerilla contest, and re- 
 sulted in a great and permanent conquest. The abortive 
 character of the Old Catholic movement is due Very much 
 to its failure to lay hold of the principles on which alone an 
 insurrection against the Church of Rome can maintain it- 
 self. 
 
68 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES * 
 
 The great Popes in the middle ages endeavored to realize 
 the splendid, but impracticable, conception of a theocratic 
 empire, which should embrace all Christian nations,^ and of 
 which the Pope was to be the head. The attempt was made 
 to establish an administration such as would require wisdom, 
 justice, and benevolence, as well as power, in a supei-human 
 measure. The Popes renounce no pretension that has once 
 been made ; but the extravagant claims of Hildebrand, In- 
 nocent III., and Boniface VIII., are silently dropped — the 
 claim to set up and pull down princes, and to settle inter- 
 national disputes — and the revival of such claims at the 
 present day would only excite ridicule. For several centu- 
 ries, national interests have been strong enough, in the poli- 
 tics of Europe, to override ecclesiastical and religious bonds 
 of association. The design of this Article is not to discuss 
 the obsolete claim of the papacy to a temporal supremacy 
 over Christendom, but to touch on the salient points in the 
 history of their own peculiar kingdom in Italy. 
 
 On Christmas Day, in the»year 800, in the old Basilica of 
 St. Peter at Rome, Pope Leo III. placed the imperial crown 
 on the head of Charlemagne. It was one of those particular 
 
 * A Keview, in The New Englander^ for January, 1867, of GeschicJite 
 der EnUtehung und Aushildung des Kirchenstaates. Von Samuel Sugen- 
 heim. Leipzig, 1854; U^glise etlaSodeU Ghretienne en 1861. Par M. 
 Guizot. Quatrieme edition. Paris, 1866. 
 
THE TEMPOEAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 69 
 
 events or scenes in which a great epoch is signalized and 
 pictured, as it were, to the eye. It is a landmark terminat- 
 ing the first period in the annals of the Popes' temporal 
 sovereignty. 
 
 During the first three centuries, while the church was a 
 persecuted, but rapidly growing, sect, the Bishop of Rome 
 was steadily acquiring moral infiuence and hierarchical au- 
 thority. After Constantino began to take the church under 
 his patronage — his edict of toleration was issued in 312 — 
 and after he and his successors not only granted to the 
 church the I'ight to receive legacies and hold property, but 
 also enriched it by their own offerings, the Roman bishops 
 were in a position to profit greatly by these new privileges. 
 Gradually they became possessed of extensive estates, not 
 only in Italy, but also in Sicily and Gaul, and even in Afri- 
 ca and Asia. In the time of Gregory the Great (590-604), 
 their annual income from the estates near Marseilles alone 
 amounted to fom- thousand pieces of gold. It is true that 
 this " patrimony of Peter," as even then it was called, was 
 held by the Pope as a private proprietor or trustee, and not 
 as a sovereign. For example, the Papal lands in Gaul were 
 subject to the king of the country, like the lands of any 
 other proprietor. Yet the control of the Pope over exten- 
 sive estates would border, in some particulars, upon that of 
 a sovereign, and the rudiments of a secular dominion are 
 properly discerned in this early relation. The downfall of 
 the empire left the Roman Pontiff the most important per- 
 sonage in all the West. But during the score of years (from 
 551 to 568) that followed the conquest of Italy by the gene- 
 rals of Justinian, and preceded the partial overthrow of the 
 Byzantine rule in that country by the Lombards, the coercion 
 exercised upon the Popes by the tyrants of Constantinople 
 serves to show how much the papacy was to be indebted for 
 its growth to the abse^ce of an overshadowing power in its 
 neighborhood. 
 
 To the Lombard conquest the Popes owed their secular 
 
70 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 dominion. That which infused into them the greatest terror 
 turned out ;providentially to be the greatest benefit. This bar- 
 barian people, partly Arian and partly pagan in their religion, 
 overran the larger portion of Italy. They left to the Byzantine 
 emperor, in middle and northern Italy, besides Rome, and a 
 few other fortified places, a strip of territory along the sea- 
 coast, in which were included Ravenna, the seat of the so- 
 called Exarch, or Governor-General, under the Eastern em- 
 pire, and the five cities (Pentapolis), Ancona, Sinigaglia, 
 Fano, Pesaro, and Rimini. The various cities outside of the 
 Exarchate, of which Rome was one, had been placed under 
 subordinate governors, called dukes. After the Lombard 
 invasion, the Byzantine rule over the places which had not 
 yielded to the conquerors was little more than a nominal 
 sovereignty. In this time of anarchy and distress, the Pope 
 was the natural leader and defender, as well as the benefac- 
 tor, of the people whom the emperor was unable to protect. 
 When the quarrel broke out between the Pope and Leo the 
 Isaurian, in regard to the worship of images, the Romans 
 warmly sided with their bishop against the iconoclastic em- 
 peror. They even drove out the Byzantine duke, who had 
 long possessed only the shadow of power, and they would 
 have proclaimed their independence and a republic, had not 
 the Pope withstood them, his motive being an intense 
 anxiety lest imperial power should fall into the hands of the 
 Lombard king. He naturally chose to keep up a nominal 
 connection with the Eastern empire, which brought no real 
 inconvenience, in preference to falling under the sway of his 
 aggressive, powerful, and heretical neighbor.* It was evi- 
 dent that the Lombard kings were determined to extend 
 their dominion over Italy. Yet Pope Zacharias, in return 
 for favors rendered to them, obtained from them the gift, 
 first of Sutri, and then of four other towns, which had been 
 
 * See, on this point, Sugenheim's work (the title of which is given 
 above), p. 68 seq. This very thorough monograph throws light on many 
 difficult questions connected with our subject. 
 
THE TE^IPOEAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. Tl 
 
 wrested by them from the Greek empire. The Pope, though 
 still the subject of that empire, set up the principle that 
 these places, being the property of the Lombards by right 
 of conquest, might be withheld from the emperor and 
 granted to him. In truth, this gift from the heretical enemy 
 was the beginning of the Papal kingdom. But when the 
 haughty Aistulph, in 749, mounted the throne of the Lom- 
 bards, and when, having seized upca Ravenna, the Exar- 
 chate, Pentapolis, and the Greek territory on the Adriatic 
 as far as Istria, he turned his arms against Rome, the Pope 
 saw no way of escape from the imminent peril into which he 
 was thrown, except by imploring the intervention of Pepin, 
 king of the Franks. Fortunately Pepin was obliged to the 
 Pope for lending a religious sanction to the usurpation by 
 which he had dethroned the Merovingian family, the f oim- 
 der of the new dynasty having been anointed, in 752, at 
 Soissons, by Boniface, according to the direction of Zacha- 
 rias, and having been absolved afterwards from his violated 
 oath of fealty to Childeric EI., the last representative of the 
 old line. In two campaigns (754-5), the Lombards were de- 
 feated, and expelled from their new conquests ; and Pepin 
 now gave to the Pope the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. 
 He had won these territories, he said, not for the Greek 
 emperor, but for St. Peter. 
 
 What was now the position and what were the rights of 
 the Pope, as a secular prince ? This is a nice and difl3.cult 
 question to determine. The Pope received, the name and 
 title of Patricius over the Exarchate, while Pepin became 
 Patricius of Rome. In regard to the donation of Pepin, it 
 is a controverted question whether it made over to the Pope 
 the rights of sovereignty, or only the property and incomes 
 which had formerly belonged to the Byzantine emperor. 
 The great German lawyer, Savigny, is decidedly of opinion 
 that the rights of sovereignty were included.* Sugenheim 
 
 * Savigny, Das Bomische Becht, vol. i. , p. 358. 
 
72 THE TEMPOEAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 holds that this was probably not the original idea, but rather 
 the interpretat'on successfully affixed to the donation by the 
 Popes.* The gift of Pepin was made to the Pope and the 
 Eoman Kepublic: and it is further declared by Savigny 
 that " the Roman Republic," as the representative of which 
 the Pope appears, " was not the city of Rome, still less the 
 Greek empire ; " "it was rather the old Western empire, 
 which in this small compass, though as yet without a visible 
 head, was again restored, the idea of its formal restoration, 
 which was soon to follow, being, perhaps, already present." f 
 It seems clear that Patricius was an honorary title which 
 carried with it no very definite prerogatives. It involved 
 the right and duty of affording protection. We may con- 
 clude, then, that by this transaction the Pope acquired, in 
 reference to the greater part of what was afterwards called 
 Romagna, a station similar to that held by the former Ex- 
 archs, with the difference that the superior to whom he 
 would be subordinate was an ideal personage, the future 
 head of the Western empire, which had not then been 
 reconstituted. In respect to Rome, it is remarkable that the 
 Pope still kept up the show of allegiance to the Eastern 
 empire, his motive being a jealous desire to prevent the Pa- 
 triciate of Pepin over the eternal city from passing into an 
 imperial function. 
 
 Such was the position of the Pope, as a temporal ruler, 
 up to the time of Charlemagne. The overthrow of the 
 Lombard kingdom by this monarch, in 773, was followed by 
 a confirmation of the gift of Pepin to the Pope, increased by 
 the addition of a few places in Tuscany. Charlemagne had 
 acquired a supremacy and a conceded authority which his 
 coronation by the Pope recognized rather than created. The 
 patriciate, by the course of events, had grown into the im- 
 perial office ; and the treaty of Charlemagne with the East- 
 em emperor, Nicephorus, in 803, formerly designated the 
 
 * Sugenheim, p. 27. f Savigny, p. 361. 
 
THE TEMPOKAL KINGDOM OB" THE POPES. 73 
 
 portions of Italy with wliicli we are concerned, among the 
 territories of the Western emperor. 
 
 n. 
 
 ^ Toward Charlemagne and his immediate successors the 
 ^ Popes stood in the relation of feudal dependence, analogous 
 to that held by other ecclesiastical nobles who were subjects 
 of the empire, although the Roman bishop, in point of eccle- 
 siastical and spiritual dignity, had, of course, the highest 
 rank. VTlie Popes were obliged to take an oath of fidelity to 
 the emperor, acknowledging him to be their lord and judge. 
 Xot only was their election incomplete without the imperial 
 s anctio n, but they were held to account when charges were 
 preferred against them. Thus an inquiry was instituted 
 against Leo III. for executing certain Pomans ; and at the 
 time when Lothaire I. was crowned at Pome, in 823, Pope 
 Paschal I., on the complaint of the abbot of the monastery 
 Farfa, was obliged to restore to the latter all the property 
 which had been unjustly taken from his monastery. 
 
 The Popes were constantly striving to release themselves 
 fi'om their subjection to the princes of the family of Charle- 
 magne. The end they had in view was to free themselves 
 from the need of procuring a ratification of their election 
 from the emperor ; and they even sought to give currency 
 to the idea that the imperial office was bestowed by them. 
 Occasionally, an able man like Nicholas I. (858-867), favored 
 by circumstances and strengthened by popular support, real- 
 ized in a measure the Papal aspirations after independence 
 and control. But, as a general rule, through nearly the 
 whole of the ninth century, the Poman bishops were foiled/ 
 in these attempts. They profited, however, by the conflicts 
 in which the Frank princes were engaged with one another, 
 and in which they were frequently induced by the interest 
 of the hour to appeal to ecclesiastical arbitration and to ad- 
 4 
 
74 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 vance their pretensions by obtaining episcopal unction. The 
 disorders and divisions in the Frank empire were rather 
 fomented than hindered bj the ambitious Popes, who, in the 
 turmoil that followed the downfall of that empire, gained 
 for a time their long-coveted independence.* 
 
 Their success proved their worst misfortune. The next 
 century and a half is the most disgraceful era in the whole 
 history of the papacy. The dangers to which the Popes 
 were exposed in the midst of the wild factions of contending 
 Italian nobles led them to parcel out a great part of their 
 territory outside of Eome among feudatories, as a rew^ard for 
 services rendered and expected. The same weakening of the 
 central authority, the same stniggles for independence on 
 the part of the vassals, and for ascendancy on the side of 
 their liege, ensued here as among the nations north of the 
 Alps. The easy subjection of the Popes to the Frank princes 
 was exchanged for a galling servitude under violent and ra- 
 pacious nobles. For a long series of years the Counts of 
 Tuscany, and aft.er them the Counts of Tusculum — two 
 branches of the same house — disposed of Rome and the Pa- 
 pal office at their will. Three prostitutes, Theodora, and her 
 daughters, Marozia and Theodora, made and deposed Popes, 
 even placing their paramours and bastard sons in the chair 
 of St. Peter. At length, in 933, Pope John XI., who was 
 perhaps a son of the vile Pope Sergius III. by Marozia, was 
 
 * It was in the ninth century that the Pseudo-Isi dorian Decretals ap. 
 peared — that collection of forged papers by which the prerogatives con- 
 ceded to the Pope in that age, and even higher prerogatives than were 
 generally conceded to him then, were ascribed to his predecessors in the 
 first three centuries. Among these spurious documents was the pretended 
 deed of Constantine, giving to Pope Sylvester his Western dominions. 
 The forgery is a clumsy one. For example, the author of it conceives of 
 the Western empire as it was in the eighth century — as comprising only 
 some provinces of Italy. The spurious character of this document is gen- 
 erally acknowledged. Yet Baronius, and some other Catholic writers, 
 seek, against all evidence, to maintain the fact of such a gift. See Gies- 
 eler, Church History y vol. ii., p. 118, n. 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 75 
 
 imprisoned by his own brother Alberich in the castle of St. 
 Angelo, and was forced to act, even in spiritual things, as 
 his passive instrument. Until the year 954, this Alberich, 
 under the title of Prince and First Senator of the Romans, 
 ruled with despotic authority over the city and the adjacent 
 territory ; and, after the death of John XI., set up in suc- 
 cession four Popes, w^hom he restricted to the exercise of 
 their spiritual functions. At his death all power fell into 
 the hands of his son Octavian, a vicious youth of less than 
 eighteen years of age, who, on assuming the tiara, set the 
 fashion, which has since been copied, of adopting a new 
 name, and called himself John XII. To protect liimseK 
 against Berengar II., King of Italy, this profligate wretch 
 invoked the aid of Otho I., the German emperor ; but the 
 interposition of Otho brought but a momentaiy relief from 
 the frightful disorder and degradation in the affairs of the 
 papacy. Finally, the German emperor, Henry III., ap- 
 peared to reestablish, with a strong hand, the imperial power 
 in Italy ; and at the Synod of Sutri, in 1046, he caused the 
 Papal chair to be declared vacant, and, the three rival claim- 
 ants havmg been summarily set aside, one of Henry's own 
 bishops was elected to the vacant place, under the name of 
 Clement II. From this time the influence of Ilildebrand 
 becomes predominant. The S^mod of Sutri marks an epoch 
 in the record of the Papal dominion. The imperial power 
 and influence are seen at their culminating pointj 
 
 m. 
 
 A notable event in the progress of the Papal dominion in 
 Italy was the famous bequest of Matilda, Countess of Tus- 
 cany, to the Papal See. This enterprising and gifted woman, 
 the fast friend and supporter of Ilildebrand, bequeathed her 
 territories, comprising a fourth part of the Peninsula, to the 
 Eoman Church. Whether this gift was intended to include 
 
76 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 anything more than her allodial property, and what portion 
 of her possessions was allodial and what held in fief, it is im- 
 possible to say. To dispose of territory held in fief would 
 be utterly contrary to law, and to all the ideas of the time. 
 But the ambiguous character of the bequest in these respects 
 opened the way for the assertion of a claim on the part of 
 the Popes to the whole, and contributed eventually to the 
 long and bitter strife with the emperors. Gieseler observes 
 that " because the feudal relations of these lands to the em- 
 peror were at that time much relaxed, the Pope was inclined 
 to regard them as allodial, while the emperor, by virtue of 
 his ancient right, laid claim to all landed possessions at least, 
 as fiefs of the empire." * Certain it is that the Popes were 
 determined to incorporate the fiefs in their own kingdom, es- 
 pecially the most valuable of them, Tuscany, Spoleto, and 
 Camerino. 
 
 In the early part of the twelfth century there appeared a 
 fresh element of disturbance in the Papal kingdom, of a 
 portentous character. This was the newly-awakened spirit 
 of the Koman people. Heretofore, the populace of Rome 
 had been of little account. Emperor, Pope, and nobles, in 
 all their conflicts with one another, had united in keeping 
 down the people, and reducing them to political insignifi- 
 cance. But now a new era had arisen. The aspirations of 
 the Lombard towns after municipal independence and free 
 government had spread southward. The popular feeling in 
 Rome found an organ and a leader in the disciple of Abe- 
 lard, Arnold of Brescia. He demanded that the clerical or- 
 der, from the Pope downwards, should give up their claim 
 to secular rule, and should possess no secular property. He 
 was heard with enthusiasm, and his doctrine spread like- a 
 contagion. After he had been driven out of Italy by the 
 anathema of the second Lateran Council, the Roman people 
 renoimced their allegiance to Innocent II., and, in 1143, set 
 
 * Gieseler, Church History (Prof. Smith's ed.), vol. i., p. 273. 
 
THE TElklPOEAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 77 
 
 up a government of their own, placing supreme power in the 
 hands of a senate. They were strengthened by the arrival 
 of Arnold with several thousand Swiss soldiers. In an un- 
 successful attack upon the new government in the capitol, 
 Pope Lucius II. was hit with a stone, and received a mortal 
 wound. The people wished to restore the old imperial con- 
 stitution, and accordingly invited Conrad III., and after- 
 wards Frederic I., to assume this imperial character and 
 make their abode in Eome. Pope Hadrian lY. persuaded 
 the Romans to banish Arnold, whose unpractical and imag- 
 inative spirit had hindered him fi'om succeeding in his 
 plans. By the Emperor Frederic, who was bitterly hostile 
 to republicanism, and was bent on humbling the Lombard 
 towns, as well as desirous to receive the imperial crown, 
 Arnold was delivered up to the Pope, who made such haste 
 to destroy him, that the Romans, who rushed to the Piazza 
 del Popolo to effect a rescue, found only his ashes. 
 
 We pass to the Pontifical reign of the ablest of the Popes, 
 a man of great virtues, shaded by serious faults, Innocent 
 III. All the circumstances, especially the minority of Fred- 
 eric 11. , and the disordered state of the empire, facilitated 
 the accomplishment of the ends which Innocent set before 
 him. He drove the vassals of the empire out of the terri- 
 tory of Matilda, taking possession of the March of Ancona, 
 the Dakedom of Spoleto, the Earldom of Agnisi, the Mar- 
 quisates of Tuscany, Radicofani, Aquapendente, Montefias- 
 cone, and the rest ; so that his admiring biographer, Hurter, 
 claims for him the honor of being the founder of the States 
 of the Church. More important .was the concession which 
 he extorted from Otho lY., one of the three competitors 
 for the imperial crown, as the condition of supporting his 
 cause, and of declaring in his favor. On the eighth of 
 June, 1201, Otho bound himself by a solemn engagement 
 to protect, to the best of his ability, all the possessions, rights, 
 and honors of the Apostolic See ; to leave the Pope in un- 
 disturbed possession of the territories which he had won 
 
78 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 back, and to help the Holy See both in defending them, 
 and reconquering those not yet gained. Under these pos- 
 sessions were embraced all the territory from Radicofani 
 to Ceperano, also the Exarchate of Ravenna, the former 
 Pentapolis, the March of Ancona, the Dukedom of Spoleto, 
 the allodial property of Matilda, the Earldom of Bertinaro, 
 together with the bordering territories which the Roman 
 bishops had acquired from the Western emperors since the 
 days of Louis the Pious. The provinces here enumerated 
 comprise the principal territories of the modern Papal 
 States. The violation of his agreement by Otho turned In- 
 nocent's friendship into bitter hostility, and ultimately led 
 him to bring forward the young Frederic of Sicily (Frederic 
 n.), and powerfully to support his pretensions to the em- 
 pire. This support was not given, however, until Frederic 
 had renewed and ratified the concessions previously made by 
 Otho. The equally perfidious violation of this treaty by 
 Frederic was a leading cause of that long and dreadful con- 
 flict with the Popes, which ended in the complete overthrow 
 of the house of Hohenstaufen. 
 
 In the progress of this conflict, the cities in the Papal 
 kingdom wrested concessions from the Popes, by which they 
 acquired for the time a large measure of municipal fi*eedom 
 and independence. It is remarkable that while the Lom- 
 bard towns followed the Popes in their contest against the 
 Ghibelline or imperial interest, the immediate subjects of 
 the Holy See were often found on the other side. This was 
 owing to the fact that, although the Popes, out of hostility 
 to the emperors, and the desire to gain the victory over 
 them, allied themselves to the freedom-loving cities, they 
 were still at heart inimical to republicanism, and were im- 
 politic enough to betray their real temper and policy to- 
 wards their own cities, in case no pressing emergency com- 
 pelled an opposite course. By the aid of Charles of Anjou, 
 to whom they had given the crown of Sicily, they succeed- 
 ed in recovering Rome from the imperial party, and destroy- 
 
THE te:mpoeal kingdom of the popes. 79 
 
 ing Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens. In 1275, they 
 had the satisfaction of receiving fi-om Rudolph of Hapsburg 
 a full and most explicit ratification of the deed of surrender, 
 which Otho lY/and Frederic 11. had given and disregarded. 
 This deed has been properly considered the Magna 
 Charta of the Pope's temporal dominion. 
 
 lY. 
 
 It was one thing to acquire a title to these rich posses- 
 sions, and quite another thing to get and to retain them. The 
 turbulent cities, accustomed now to a good measure of self- 
 government and strengthened by pi-ivileges granted by the 
 Popes in times of distress, could not easily be brought into 
 subjection. The factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines, raged 
 in them, and the result, as in other Italian towns, was the 
 elevation to power of certain noble and distinguished famil- 
 ies. Such were the houses of Polenta in Ravenna, of Mala- 
 testa in Rimini, of Yarano in Camerino and in other places 
 in the March of Ancona, and of Montef eltro in Urbino. 
 
 It was the repugnance of Boniface YIII. to the family of 
 Colonna, whose ovei'shadowing influence at Rome became 
 intolerable to him, that finally led to " the Babylonian cap- 
 tivity," or the residence of the Popes for about seventy years 
 at Avignon. Determined to get possession of their fortified 
 places, Boniface sought means of capturing the apparently 
 impregnable stronghold, Palestrina.* At length he applied 
 
 * The truth of the story relative to the transaction with G-uido di Mon- 
 tefeltro is denied by Cardinal Wiseman in his Article on Boniface VIII. 
 {Essays on Various Subjects^ vol. iii.). The story is given by many 
 authors, including Sismondi {Republiques Italiennes^ tome iii., p. 91). 
 Sismondi's authorities are Dante, his commentator, Benvenuto da Imola, 
 and two contemporary chroniclers, Feretto Vincentino and Pipino, in 
 Muratori {Script. Ital, tom. ix., pp. 731, 970). Dante {Inf., xxvii., 
 81) styles Boniface " Lo principe di nuovi farisei." It is represented that 
 Boniface had absolved Guido for his wicked counsel before it was given. 
 This did not save him from hell, since 
 
 " No power can the impenitent absolve." 
 
80 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF TH^ POPES. 
 
 for aid to a famous old soldier, Guido de Montefeltro, a for- 
 mer enemy of the Popes, but now reconciled and passing 
 
 Dante makes Guido, in the midst of the flames, relate circumstantially the 
 fatal seduction by which " the chief of the new Pharisees " misled him, 
 having given him the promise of impunity. Another not at all flattering 
 allusion to Boniface is in Parad.^ xxvii., 22; and elsewhere {Inf.^ xix. 
 52). Dante condemns him to hell. In the last passage, the spirit in hell 
 mistakes Dante for Boniface, who, at the date of the poet's vision, was not 
 dead. It is the same canto in which Pope Nicholas V. is doomed to a 
 like fate, and in which, in allusion to the pretended gift of Constantine 
 to Pope Sylvester, the poet exclaims : — 
 
 " Ah, Constantine ! to how much ill gave birth, 
 Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower 
 Which the first wealthy father gain'd from thee." 
 
 In regard to Ferreto, Muratori, as Wiseman truly states, adds a note to 
 Ferreto's account of Guido, in which the critic questions the truth of the 
 story. He observes : — " Probosi hujus facinoris narrationis fidem adjun- 
 gere nemo probus velit quod facile confinxerint Bonifacii aemuli," etc. 
 In the Annali d* Italia, vol. xi., p. 648, the same critic expresses his 
 doubt of the truth of the anecdote respecting Guido, though he quotes G. 
 Villani {Istor. Fiorent.^ lib. viii., c. 6) to the effect that Boniface was 
 troubled by no scruples when there was something to be gained. Mura- 
 tori also suggests that the story of the advice of Guido may have arisen 
 from the subsequent events — namely, the breach of faith with the Co- 
 lonnas. This last fact he appears not to reject. Although it is called in 
 question by Wiseman, it rests upon strong evidence. In the proceeding 
 before Clement VIL , after the death of Boniface, the Colonnas averred 
 that they had been cheated in the manner described. The proofs are 
 given in Sugenheim. p. 208. The circumstances are stated by G. Villani, 
 lib. viii., c. 64. Villani wrote soon after the event. See also, Fleury, 
 Hist. Ecclesiast, tom. xviii., p. 240. Considering the manner in which 
 the anecdote, as to the advice of Guido, is given by Dante, even though 
 his Ghibelline hostility to Boniface, as Muratori observes, impairs the 
 value of his testimony, — and considering, also, the other authorities in its 
 favor, we are hardly justified in rejecting it as false. It is believed by 
 Sugenheim, by Milman {Latin Chrifttianity , vol. vi., p. 228) by Schrockh 
 {Kirchengeschichte, vol. xxvi., p. 531) — who supports his opinion by an 
 argument — and by others. Schwab, in the Roman Catholic TJieologiscJie 
 Quartalselirift (No. 1, 1866), admits that Wiseman, as well as Toste, the 
 Catholic biographer of Boniface, in their attempted vindication of him, 
 are biased by excited feelings consequent on the injustice which they 
 suppose him to have suffered. 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 81 
 
 the evening of his days in a cloister. The veteran de- 
 clined to take the field, told Boniface that the place could 
 not be captured by force of arms, but advised him, as a 
 means of obtaining it, to promise much and perform little. 
 The Pope but too faithfully obeyed the iniquitous counsel. 
 This perfidy still further exasperated the great family which 
 he was seeking to extirpate. It was Sciarra Colonna who, 
 in connection with William of Nogaret, the emissary of 
 Philip the Fair, made an attack upon the person of the old 
 Pope, then staying in Anagni, and inflicted such injuries 
 that he died on the 11th of October, 1133. The papacy, 
 brought under French influence, was now transferred to 
 Avignon.* Contrary to a common idea, the residence of the 
 Popes in France did not result in the weakening, but rather 
 in the temporary restoration of their power as secular 
 princes. This unexpected result was due to several causes. 
 The local dynasties which had risen to power in Italy in the 
 com'se of the last half of the thirteenth century, were divi- 
 ded amongst themselves ; and the Pope could skilfully avail 
 himself of their mutual jealousies and conflicts to turn one 
 against another. Moreover, the close connection of the 
 Papal feudatories, the kings of Kaples of the house of An- 
 jou, with their liege, gave him a strong ally. And finally, 
 the Pontiffs in Avignon played anew the part of their 
 predecessors who, in the contest with the Ilohenstaufen 
 emperors, had taken the attitude of friends and protectors 
 of the Italian municipalities in their pursuit of freedom. 
 By means of Cardinal Albornoz, an able Spaniard, the Popes 
 succeeded, while personally absent from Italy, in recovering 
 and reimiting nearly the whole of their former cities and 
 territories. They even succeeded in using for their own 
 ends the eloquence and popularity of Cola di Rienzi. At a 
 
 * Avignon was afterwards, in 1348, bought by tbe Papal See of Joanna, 
 Queen of Naples and Countess of Provence. Venaissin was presented to 
 the Pope m 1273, by King Philip III. 
 4* 
 
82 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 time when Rome was filled with anarchy and violence, 
 through the agency of the nobles who sallied from the 
 strongholds which they had built in the city, to engage in 
 bloody fights in the streets, this political and religious en- 
 thusiast became .the author of a successful revolution, in 
 which he installed himself as tribime, compelling the nobles 
 to surrender their fortresses, and restoring order. Unhap- 
 pily he quickly betrayed an unbalanced character, and by 
 his costly pomps and shows disgusted the people, caused the 
 Pope to declare against him, and was at length driven from 
 Eome. Arrested a few years later by the Emperor Charles 
 lY., he was sent to Avignon, and having been detained for 
 a while in custody by the Pope, he returned to Home in 
 company with Albornoz, and materially aided the latter in 
 conciliating the popular favor. But his vanity and self -in- 
 dulgence excited renewed hostility against him, and in 1354 
 he was assassinated. 
 
 Hardly were the Popes back again in Rome, before they 
 threw away the great prize which the energy and sagacity 
 of Albornoz had won for them. They set about the busi- 
 ness of depriving the cities in their domain of the privi- 
 leges which had been wisely conceded to them by Albor- 
 noz ; and, in order to crush republicanism more effectually, 
 they even attempted to rob the Tuscan towns of their inde- 
 pendence. The result was that the Papal subjects anew 
 broke off their allegiance, which Albornoz had regained 
 with so much painstaking. If the Popes retained, and even 
 recovered, their temporal power during their residence in 
 Avignon, the effect of the great schism, lasting from 1378 
 to the Council of Constance in 1417, a period in which two 
 and sometimes three rival Popes were struggling to sup- 
 plant each other, was quite the opposite. In the cities of 
 the Papal kingdom the old dynasties revived and new ones 
 sprang up ; towns and territories were ceded to nobles in 
 fief, so that the exhausted Papal treasury might have a new 
 source of income ; to the old republics within their domain, 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 83 
 
 as Home, Perugia, and Bologna, the Popes found it neces- 
 sary to concede a degree of republican freedom, that almost 
 amounted to independence, and like privileges were even 
 granted to cities that had never before enjoyed them. In 
 short, the Papal kingdom was dissolved and broken up in 
 this eventful period which was equally detrimental to the 
 temporal and spiritual dominion of the Poman bishops. 
 The steps by which subsequent Pontiffs, beginning with 
 Nicholas Y., who became Pope in 1447, regained by de- 
 grees, through patient and prudent efforts, the inheritance 
 w^hich the folly of their predecessors had lost, we cannot at- 
 tempt, in this brief sketch, to relate. 
 
 Y. 
 
 As we approach the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
 we come to a period of moral degradation in the papacy, 
 having no parallel save in the tenth century, when harlots 
 disposed of the sacred office. "The governments of Eu- 
 rope," says Panke, " were stripping the Pope of a portion 
 of his privileges, while at the same time the latter began 
 to occupy himself exclusively with worldly concerns." * To 
 found an Italian kingdom for his own family, to carve out 
 principalities for his own relations, was the darling object of 
 his ambition. This shameful era may be said to begin with 
 Sixtus lY., Pope from 1471 to 1484. He conceived the 
 plan of founding a State in Pomagna for his nephew, or, 
 if we may believe MacchiaveUi's assertion, his natural son, 
 Jerome Riario. Opposed in his schemes by Florence, he 
 entered into the foul conspiracy for assassinating Lorenzo 
 and Julian de Medici, which was concocted by the Pazzi. 
 In the midst of the solemn service of the Mass, at the sig- 
 nal given by the elevation of the host, a fierce attack was 
 
 * Ranke, History of the Popes of Borne during the Sixteenth and 
 Seventeenth Centuries, vol. i., p. 45. 
 
84 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 made upon them ; but while Julian fell, Lorenzo escaped. 
 The speedy execution, without the forms of a trial before an 
 ecclesiastical tribunal, of the priests who had been engaged 
 in this murderous assault, afforded the Pope a pretext for 
 venting his chagrin at its failure by launching his spiritual 
 thunders against Florence and its ruler. He joined Ferdi- 
 nand of Naples in making war upon Lorenzo, whose con- 
 summate boldness and skill in drawing ofP Ferdinand from 
 the alliance saved him from ruin. Next, Jerome coveted 
 Ferrara, held in fief by 'th^ house of Este ; and the Pope, in 
 alliance with Venice, turned his arms in that direction ; but 
 the same Pope, seeing thaf they were to gain nothing, de- 
 serted Venice and excommunicated her. Vexation at his 
 inability to subdue this republic hastened his death. Inno- 
 cent VIII. " sought with a still more profligate vileness to 
 exalt and enrich his seven illegitimate children : " and for 
 this end carried on two wars against Ferdinand, King of 
 Naples. But the crimes of Sixtus and of Innocent, shock- 
 ing as they were, were less than the crimes committed by 
 the most flagitious of all the Pontiffs, Alexander VI. To 
 give riches and crowns to his five illegitimate children, and 
 especially to his favorite son, Csesar Borgia, he exerted all 
 his energies. His court afforded a spectacle of luxury and 
 unbounded sensuality. Alexander sided with Naples against 
 the invader, Charles VIII. of France, and then, for a price, 
 deserted his ally. In 1495, he joined the emperor and the 
 King of Spain, in order to drive the French out of Italy. 
 Not getting enough from Naples to satisfy him, he went 
 over to Louis XII. of France, granting to Louis a divorce 
 from his wife, and receiving, among other benefits, armed 
 assistance for Caesar Borgia, who made war upon the princi- 
 pal vassals of the church and carved for himself a domin- 
 ion out of their territories. To advance the interests of 
 this monster of cruelty and perfidy, Alexander was ready to 
 throw away even the show of truth and decency. At length 
 the poison which the Pope had mixed for a rich cardinal 
 
THE TEMPOKAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 86 
 
 whom he wanted to rob, he drank himseK by mistake, and 
 died on the 18th of August, 1503. 
 
 Julius II. differed from his immediate predecessors in be- 
 ing free from their personal vices and in not aiming to ag- 
 grandize his own relations. His aim was to build up and ex- 
 tend the States of the Church. In this he attained to great 
 success. He satisfied his family by obtaining for them, by 
 peaceful means, the patrimony of Urbino. He expelled 
 Csesar Borgia from his dominion and seized upon it. He 
 brought Perugia and Bologna under the direct rule of the 
 Papal See. Unable to induce the Venetians to retire from 
 the territories of the Holy See on the coast, he organized 
 the league of Cambray, and compelled them to surrender 
 this portion of the dominions of the church. He gained 
 possession of Parma, Piacenza, and Peggio, and of all the 
 region lying between Piacenza and Terracina. He had es- 
 tablished his sway over all the territories of the church and 
 consolidated them into a kingdom. He only failed in a sec- 
 ond great end which he had set before him — that of expell- 
 ing the foreigners, or, as he expressed it, of " driving out 
 the barbarians " from Italy. In truth, in reaching the ob- 
 ject of his ambition, he had been obliged to bring in for- 
 eign intervention, and had done his part in paving the way 
 for the train of evils which were destined to flow from it. 
 
 In their efforts to preserve the fair inheritance which 
 Julius II. had left to them, his successors were obliged to in- 
 volve themselves in the intrigues and conflicts of European 
 politics, and especially in the long contest between France 
 and Austria for power and predominance in Italy. In par- 
 ticular did the acquisitions made by Julius II. help forward 
 the Protestant Reformation. The Papal control over Par- 
 ma, Piacenza, and other Lombard towns, Charles Y. re- 
 garded as a usurpation ; and, at the critical time of the 
 Reformation, he was not disposed to strengthen his antago- 
 nist by stifling the Lutheran movement. In like manner, 
 the Popes were willing to use that movement as an element 
 
86 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 of discord and weakness in the empire of Charles. At the 
 moment when Charles was gaining his great success against 
 the Reformers, in the Smalcaldic war, about the time of the 
 battle of Miihlberg, Pope Paul III. sent a message to the 
 King of France " to support those who were not yet beaten," 
 that is, to aid the Protestants. Francis, the Pope, and the 
 Protestants were found, on occasions of vital importance, in 
 virtual alliance with each other. The Protestant cause was 
 saved by the mutual jealousies and the selfish rivalship of 
 its enemies. The separation of England from the Catholic 
 Church was occasioned by the refusal of Clement YII. to 
 grant the application of Henry YIII. for a divorce — a re- 
 fusal that w^as due to the political relations then subsisting 
 between the Pope and the emperor. 
 
 To Julius II. belongs the distinction of founding the 
 Papal kingdom as it has continued down to a recent day. It 
 was not, however, until 1598 that Ferrara was brought un- 
 der the immediate sovereignty of the Holy See, and not un- 
 til 1649 that the Dukedom of Urbino was in like manner 
 absorbed into the Papal kingdom. By the treaties of 1815, 
 Austria gained a small strip of Papal territory situated on 
 the left bank of the Po. 
 
 YI. 
 
 The Papal dominion in Italy felt the shock of the French 
 Revolution, which caused all thrones to tremble. In 1790 
 the French ISTational Assembly incorporated with the French 
 kingdom the Papal counties of Avignon and Yenaissin. As 
 the Pope joined in the war against France, I^apoleon, in 
 1797, conquered his states and obliged him, in the peace of 
 Tolentino, to renounce Avignon and Yenaissin forever, to 
 give up the Legations of Ferrara, Bologna, and Romagna to 
 the new Cisalpine Republic, to surrender the finest works 
 of art to be transported to Paris, and to pay the costs of the 
 war. The republican feeling spread as far as Rome, and in 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 87 
 
 1798, a Roman Kepublic was proclaimed by the insurgent 
 people. Pius YI. was carried from Rome as a prisoner and 
 died in Yalence, in France, in 1799. During the absence 
 of Bonaparte in Egypt, Italy was overrun by Suwarrow at 
 the head of the allied army. It is needless to recount here 
 the particulars of the prolonged conflict of Pius YII. with 
 Napoleon. In 1809, a decree of the French emperor united 
 the Papal States with his empire. In 1814, after the allies 
 had entered France, the Pope returned to Rome. The re- 
 actionary policy at once began to prevail, and the French 
 system of law and administration, which had proved so 
 beneficial to the Papal States, .was overthrown. At the 
 Congress of Yienna, the Pope entered a protest against the 
 cession of the little tract of territory on the Po to Austria, 
 as well as against the retention by France of Avignon and 
 Yenaissin, which, as we have said, had been formally given 
 up. The maladministration of the Papal government, espe- 
 cially the restoration of the confiscated ecclesiastical property, 
 brought the finances of the kingdom into irretrievable ruin. 
 Up to the accession of Pius IX., there was no sign of any 
 disposition to vary from a blind, stubborn, and liberty-hat- 
 ing conservatism. Efforts at rebellion — as those at Bologna 
 in 1831 — had been suppressed by Austrian soldiery. The 
 government of Gregory XYI. obstinately set itself against 
 every enterprise looking towards political and social improve- 
 ment, and evinced its hatred of freedom by incarcerating 
 thousands of political offenders. 
 
 The accession of Pius IX., in 1846, to the Papal chair, 
 inspired the warmest hopes. He set free six thousand po- 
 litical prisoners. He earnestly set about the work of im- 
 proving and liberalizing the system of government. He 
 was hailed as the chief of the liberal party in Italy. The 
 Revolution in France, in 1848, was followed by the grant, 
 from the Pope, of a Constitution embracing liberal provi- 
 sions. The insurrection in Lombardy, against the Austrian 
 rule, led to the breach between the Pope, who refused to 
 
88 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 engage in a war with the Austrians, and the radical party ; 
 and this party gaining the ascendancy, after the assassination 
 of Rossi, in 1848, the Pope was obhged to fly from Rome. 
 The Roman Republic was overthrown by French troops, and 
 the Pope, under their protection, returned to Rome, in 1850. 
 Of late, the progress of the new kingdom of Italy has 
 given promise that the yearning for Italian unity will be real- 
 ized, and that the temporal rule of the Pope must give way 
 to the demand of a nation. Upon the evacuation of the 
 States of the Church by the Austrian garrisons, immediately 
 after the victories of the French and Sardinians at Magenta 
 and Melagnano, in the summer of 1859, several of those states 
 at once revolted from the Pope and proclaimed Victor Imman- 
 uel king. The Papal government succeeded in reconquer- 
 ing them, with the exception of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, 
 and Forli. After the peace of Yillaf ranca, the French em- 
 peror denied the application of the Pope for aid in recover- 
 ing these legations ; and their formal annexation to the Sar- 
 dinian kingdom took place in 1860. The attempt of Lamori- 
 ciere, the French general in the service of the Pope, to re- 
 cover them, not only failed, but led to the further annexa- 
 tion of Umbria and the Marches of Ancona to the Italian 
 kingdom. Thus there was left to the Pope only the comar- 
 ca of Rome, Civita Yecchia, Yelletri, and Frosinone, hav- 
 ing an aggregate population of about half a million of in- 
 habitants. The Italian statesmen probably expect that the 
 retirement of the French garrison from Rome will be at- 
 tended with the same result that followed the evacuation of 
 the legations by the Austrians in 1859. The people will 
 rise, overturn the government, and invite Victor Immanuel 
 to incorporate them among his subjects and establish his 
 court at Rome. 
 
 After this historical survey we are prepared to consider 
 what have been the character and effect of the Pope's secu- 
 lar rule. And first, in respect to the States of the Church 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 89 
 
 themselves, there can be no doubt that the government of 
 the Popes has been, on the whole, an exceedingly bad govern- 
 ment. On this point there can be no serious question among 
 enlightened men. The exceptional periods, when there has 
 been an improved administration, have been short and far 
 between. Since the French Revolution, the great powers, 
 including such as are most loyal to the Catholic Church and 
 to the Supreme Bishop, have repeatedly used their endeav- 
 ors to procure reforms. But they have been met by a stiff 
 refusal to depart from the old system. It is supposed that 
 the election of Pius IX. was owing to the conviction that the 
 gross misgovernment at Rome could not long continue ; and 
 that his liberal measures at the outset of his reign were due 
 to this feeling. Now the vices of the Papal rule are not ac- 
 cidental ; but they appear to belong inseparably to a govern- 
 ment of priests like that which the Pope has been so long 
 endeavoring to prop up by foreign bayonets. The settled 
 disaffection and hostility of his subjects are well justified by 
 the inherent and ineradicable vices of a priestly administra- 
 tion. 
 
 The effect of the Popes' temporal sovereignty on Italy has 
 likewise been in the highest degree disastrous. The main- 
 tenance of their teniporal power has led them to bring in 
 foreign domination, the great curse of the peninsula, and to 
 keep Italy divided. Macchiavelli, who inscribed his History 
 of Florence to Clement YII., says that " all the wars which 
 were brought upon Italy by the barbarians " — that is, foreign- 
 ers — " were caused for the most part by the Popes, and all 
 the barbarians who overrun Italy were invited in by them. 
 This has kept Italy in a state of disunion and weakness." 
 At this moment, the Pope's temporal dominion is the one 
 great hindrance to the realization of Italian unity. 
 
 When we inquire as to the influence of his temporal rule 
 upon his character and influence as a spiritual ruler, it is an 
 open question whether his position as secular prince did not, 
 in the middle ages, protect and strengthen the papacy in 
 
90 THE TEMPOEAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 general. If it did, and if the papacy in these times is ac- 
 knowledged to have been, on the whole, a beneficial institu- 
 tion, being a counterpoise to the spirit of irreligion and law- 
 less barbarism, then we must admit that the temporal power 
 was relatively a good thing. However this question may be 
 answered, it is clear that the secular power of the Pope has 
 had a corrupting and pernicious influeuce upon the character 
 of his spiritual administration. Bellarmine, and other emi- 
 nent Catholic theologians and casuists, have explained the 
 consistency between the spiritual office of the Pope, and his 
 position as a secular prince ; and have held that, in entire con- 
 sistency with religion, a foreign prince or state may wage 
 war with him in his character as an earthly sovereign. But 
 as a matter of fact, as is w^ell known, the Pontiffs have never 
 refrained from using the spiritual weapons in their hands, 
 as the excommunication and the interdict, for the further- 
 ance of the temporal interest. They have turned the awful 
 powers of discipline, which are attributed to them, for the 
 furtherance of their political schemes. The inevitable efPect 
 must be, and has been, to degrade the spiritual function, and 
 rob it of no small portion of the reverence which it might 
 otherwise excite and maintain. Of the influence of the secu- 
 lar dominion exercised by the Popes, and of the court which 
 it creates, on their own personal character, history is an out- 
 spoken witness. The covetousness, the ambition, the lux- 
 ury, the open and shameless licentiousness, the atrocious 
 crimes, which are chargeable on too many of the Popes — 
 offenses which have moved the indignation of Catholic his- 
 torians like Baronius, and poets like Petrarch and Dante — 
 have commonly grown out of the temptations incident to the 
 temporal sovereignty. By the occupations and pleasures 
 which cluster about it. Pontiffs w4io are by no means to be 
 counted among the worst, have been drawn aside from the 
 proper work and character of Christian bishops. Father 
 Paul, after praising Leo X. for his erudition, his humanity, 
 his liberality, his love* of letters and arts, adds, with fine sa- 
 
THE TEIVIPOEAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 91 
 
 tire, that " he would have been a perfect Pope, if with these 
 qualities, he had united some knowledge of the affairs of re- 
 ligion, and a somewhat greater inclination to piety, for neither 
 of which he manifested much concern."* Dante's indig- 
 nant protest against the temporal power of the Roman 
 bishops, is familiar f : — 
 
 " Laws indeed there are 
 But who is he observes them ? None ; not he, 
 Who goes before, the shepherd of the flock, 
 Who chews the cud, but does not cleave the hoof,:|: 
 Therefore the multitude, who see their guide 
 Strike at the very good they covet most, 
 Feed there, and look no further. Thus the cause 
 Is not corrupted nature in yourselves, 
 But ill-conducting, that hath turn'd the world 
 To evil. Rome, that turn'd it unto good. 
 Was wont to boast two suns, § whose several beams 
 Cast light on either way, the world's and God's. 
 Once since hath quench'd the other ; and sword 
 Is grafted on the crook ; and so conjoin'd. 
 Each must perforce decline to worse, unawed 
 By fear of other." 
 
 But can the temporal power be given up, and the spiritual 
 power be left intact ? The affirmative is declared by some 
 Catholic writers and statesmen. It is proposed that the 
 Pope should surrender his temporal authority, but continue 
 at Home the exercise of his spiritual functions, receiving an 
 abundant revenue, together with an ample income for each 
 of the cardinals. On the other hand, the Pope and his 
 party stoutly contend that the temporal sovereignty is essen- 
 tial to the full exertion of his spiritual functions, and there- 
 fore cannot be given up. It must be allowed that cogent 
 
 * latoria del Condi. Trident, lib. !., p. 5. 
 f Purgatoi'io, xvi., 1. 100 — 115 (Gary's translation). 
 X The allusion is to an unclean beast in the Levitical Law. (See Levit 
 xi. 4.) 
 § The emperor and the Bishop of Rome. 
 
92 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 arguments may be brought forward on this side of the ques- 
 tion. In the first place, as the Pope declares in his recent 
 " Allocution," if he is not to be a ruler, he must be a sub- 
 ject of one of the Catholic powers ; and, if a subject, he is 
 constantly exposed to the suspicion of being warped or man- 
 aged, in his spiritual government, by the power to w^liich he 
 is thus, in a civil relation, subordinate. The experience of 
 the papacy at Avignon, and the immense loss of prestige 
 and influence consequent on the relation of the Popes, at 
 that time, to the French kings, is one of the facts which 
 lend a strong support to this plea put forth by Pius IX. 
 On the contrary, the force of his argument seems to be neu- 
 tralized by the consideration that, in the present state of the 
 world, the Pope, as a temporal ruler, is incapable of sustain- 
 ing himself, and is obliged to lean for support on a foreign 
 power. If it be said that the surrender of his States is to 
 compromise his independence, the reply is that his inde- 
 pendence is lost already. There is still more weight in an 
 additional argument, which is also touched upon by the 
 Pope in the late "Allocution," that on becoming a subject 
 he would at once be involved in a conflict of duties, or 
 would be fettered in the promulgation of doctrine and the 
 administration of discipline. The great question of mar- 
 riage, which is now a prominent subject of contention be- 
 tween the Pope and the Italian king, affords a fair illustra- 
 tion. In the kingdom of Italy, and wherever the French 
 law is in vogue, marriage by the civil contract alone is valid. 
 To this law and practice the Pope is, of course, vehemently 
 hostile. Marriage is a sacrament of the church, and the 
 sanction of the priest is held to be indispensable. The con- 
 trol which this doctrine gives to the priesthood is one of 
 their greatest prerogatives, and no wonder that it is prized 
 and defended to the last, l^ow, suppose the Pope to become 
 a subject of Victor Immanuel. It is easy to see that his 
 freedom to fulminate anathemas against the authors of the 
 statute which abolishes this high prerogative, and against 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 93 
 
 sucli as venture to take shelter under the law of the land, 
 might be inconveniently restricted ; and that conflict be- 
 tween the secular and ecclesiastical rulers would almost in- 
 evitably spring up. And this is only one of the subjects on 
 which variance and strife might easily arise. On a review 
 of the whole question, we are inclined to agree with the 
 Pope and his party in the opinion that the loss of the tem- 
 poral power carries with it a partial loss of the spiritual. If 
 the spiritual power could survive the surrender of the tem- 
 poral, in undiminished vigor, the former might be enhanced, 
 and the Catholic Church strengthened by the purifying in- 
 fluence flowing from the change. The Pope would stand 
 forth in the simple character of Supreme Bishop, fi^ee from 
 the entanglements of secular rule. But, as we have just in- 
 timated, it is doubtful whether his freedom, as a spiritual 
 prince, would not be seriously impaired by the loss of his 
 earthly kingdom. 
 
 Will the Pope be dethroned ? If we looked solely at the 
 past, we should give a negative answer to this question. We 
 should say that if he be driven from his kingdom, he will re- 
 gain it. Many times have the Popes been expelled from 
 Pome. They have seen their dominions pass into other 
 hands, and have wandered forth as fugitives and exiles. 
 Often have they witnessed emergencies which, in outward 
 appearance, were more threatening than the peril in which 
 they are just now involved. The bark of St. Peter, to bor- 
 row their own favorite simile, has frequently been tossed by 
 the tempest, but has never been submerged. It has floated 
 in safety in the midst of the rude blast, and at length the bil- 
 lows have been composed to rest. But times have changed. 
 There is, even in the Poman Catholic part of Christendom, 
 a decline of faith in the Papal pretensions. The main point 
 is that the papacy no longer enjoys in Europe the popular 
 sympathy which was once its firm support. In the middle 
 ages, the papacy was popular, sometimes even demagogical. 
 In modem times, it has attached itself with bHnd, unyield- 
 
94: THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 ing tenacity to the despotic principles and organs of the re- 
 actionary anti-republican party in Europe. It vainly strug- 
 gles to stem the tide of political sentiment which, notwith- 
 standing occasional fluctuations, has been steadily rising since 
 the commencement of the present century. The prospect, 
 therefore, is that the Pope will be forced to yield up what 
 remains to him of his Italian kingdom. If he could perma- 
 nently change his residence, the problem would admit of 
 another solution. He might become the master of some 
 other province, or establish himself on some island of the 
 Mediterranean. But it is only as bishop of the Roman 
 Church that he can pretend to episcopal supremacy. For- 
 saking that church by his own voluntary act, could he lon- 
 ger claim the prerogatives of Peter ? If a theory could be 
 devised for escaping from this difficulty, still the abandon- 
 ment of Rome for a long period would bring upon him a 
 great loss of consideration.* The peculiar glory that lin- 
 gers over the eternal city, and over the papacy as identified 
 with it, would be lost. 
 
 The separation of Italy or of France, or of both, from the 
 Papal See, would be an event which would be hailed by 
 Protestants with joy. Such an event would open to the se- 
 ceding kingdoms the possibility of religious reforms which 
 are now precluded. The policy of toleration is now too firm- 
 ly established, to render it possible, in either of the countries 
 just mentioned, for Protestantism to be suppressed by the 
 tyranny of an establishment, in case they were to break off 
 their connection with the Roman Church. Unhappily, in 
 
 * The Catholic theologians hold that the Bishop of Rome may reside 
 away from that city, if he chooses. As long as he is Bishop of Rome, he 
 is Supreme Pontiff. SaysPerrone : — " Fieri potest, ut suramus pontifex 
 resideat Viennge, Mediolani, Berolini, aut Petropoli, nunquam vero potest 
 fieri, ut simplex episcopus Viennensis aut Petropolitanua sit summus 
 Pontifex ; ubicunque idcirco resideat, semper erit pontifex maximus, 
 ut possit dici ac vere sit in primatu Petri successor." Perrone, t. 11., 
 § 604. (Quoted in Hase, Handbuch der Protestantischen Polemik, etc., p. 
 242, n.) 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 95 
 
 France, tlie ultramontane party is now in the ascendant. 
 The old principles of Galilean freedom, for which Bossuet, 
 and a body of great men before and after him, have con- 
 tended, have lost ground and find but few advocates. In 
 Italy, the prospect is more hopeful. It is not impossible 
 that the prolonged and irritating conflict there between Pope 
 and king will ultimately lead to an open renunciation of the 
 ecclesiastical, as well as civil, pretensions of the Pope. Since 
 the modern nations of Europe emerged into a distinct exis- 
 tence, the feeling of national rights and of national inde- 
 pendence, as opposed to foreign ecclesiastical control, has 
 been steadily growing. A regard for the interest of the na- 
 tion has outweighed the influence of religious affinities. 
 Since Philip the Fair summoned together the estates of his 
 realm to aid him in his opposition to the tyrannical meas- 
 ures of Boniface YIII., the nation has generally been the 
 uppermost thought, as compared with the church, in the 
 policy of European rulers. The hostility of France to the 
 Austrian house of Hapsburg brought the former to the as- 
 sistance of the Protestant cause in the thirty years' war. 
 Now we find Prussia and Italy in alliance against the same 
 Catholic empire. The papacy is not so strong that it can 
 afford to set itself against the national feeling and real wel- 
 fare of any Catholic people. 
 
 At the same time we have little confidence in the perma- 
 nence of any triumph that is achieved over the Papal sys- 
 tem, unless that triumph results from the power of enlight- 
 ened religious convictions. In the last century, in Europe, 
 the papacy — we speak of it as a system of spiritual rule — 
 was at a low ebb. It seemed as if there were none so poor 
 as to do it reverence. The Emperor Joseph 11. of Austria 
 introduced into his dominions reforms that feU little short 
 of an utter renunciation of Papal control. Everywhere the 
 bonds of hierarchical rule were loosened. But the motive 
 underlying these changes was, to a large extent, religious in- 
 differentism. When religion revived, religious feeling flowed 
 
96 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES.' 
 
 in the old channel. In France, the Catholic Church is 
 stronger than it was fifty years ago. It is on a believing, 
 and not on a free-thinking, Protestantism that we must de- 
 pend for a success that is to be enduring. It is requisite that 
 deep and enlightened convictions of Christian truth, and a 
 true love of the Gospel as understood by Protestants, should 
 spread among the people of Catholic countries. The church 
 is founded not on Peter as an individual, but on Peter as a 
 warm and sincere confessor of the faith that Jesus is the 
 Son of God and Saviour of the world. With the progress 
 of this faith, unencumbered by th^ traditions of men, the 
 decline and fall of the Papal system are linked. Political 
 changes may be valuable auxiliaries, but it is easy to overes- 
 timate their importance. 
 
 Most Protestant Christians sympathize with the progress 
 of the Italian kingdom, and hope to see the Pope lose his 
 temporal power. This is not true of all, however ; and 
 among the dissenters from the popular view is the illustrious 
 scholar and statesman, Guizot. The publication, during the 
 present year, of the fourth edition of his remarks on The 
 Christian Church and Christia7i Society in 1861, indicates 
 that his opinions on this question since that time have not 
 changed. At the foundation of his interesting discussion is 
 the proposition that every blow struck at one of the great 
 churches is a blow struck at all and at Christianity itself. 
 The Roman Catholic and the Protestant have adversaries in 
 common, who are far more distant from both than the Cath- 
 olic and Protestant are from one another. The Catholic and 
 Protestant profess the same Christian faith, important as 
 the points of disagreement are between them. The adver- 
 saries attack this faith, and their attacks at the present day 
 are mischievous and formidable. It is, therefore, suicidal, as 
 well as wrong, for Protestants to join hands with indifferent- 
 ism and irreligion, for the sake of weakening their ancient 
 theological antagonist. Guizot proceeds to argue that the 
 temporal kingdom of the Pope cannot be wrested from him 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 97 
 
 without a violation of international law and public morality. 
 He sees in the authority which it has become fashionable in 
 France to concede to " universal sufPrage " the rising of a new 
 despotism which is held to be stronger than the obligations 
 of treaties and the settled principles of international right. 
 Moreover, the attack on the Pope's temporal kingdom he 
 considers an infringement of religious liberty. The tem- 
 poral power is a condition of the exercise of the spiritual. 
 It is the guaranty of the independence of the Papal office. 
 The great body of Catholics so regard it. The temporal 
 power grew up in connection with the spiritual, as a part 
 and a fruit of the latter. Besides, he thinks that the policy 
 of the Italian kingdom is principally dictated by political 
 ambition. If the Pope be driven from Rome, Guizot thinks 
 that this event will not give more than a momentary success 
 to the Italian movement. The Roman Catholic population, 
 the world over, will be roused to a sense of the injury done 
 to their chief and thus indirectly to themselves. The con- 
 sequence will be that widespread and increasing agitation 
 will lead to positive measures for the restoration of the 
 Pope to his rightful throne. 
 
 Guizot does not confine himself to an expression of his 
 reasons for not approving the Sardinian movement. He in- 
 dicates w^hat he believes to be the real need of Italy, and the 
 way in which it should be met. Italy needs independence 
 and liberty — independence of foreign control and liberty 
 within. Both of these ends he holds it possible to secure 
 by peaceful means, apart from all revolutionary measures. 
 The abridgment of liberty in the Italian States he attributes, 
 to a considerable extent, to the revolutionary ferment. But 
 Italian unity, in the sense in which the phrase is taken gen- 
 erally, he believes to be at once unnecessary and impractica- 
 ble. His plan would be to establish a confederation, em- 
 bracing all the States of the Peninsula as they existed prior 
 to the revolutions which have so enlarged the borders of the 
 Sardinian kingdom. In a confederacy of this kind, he con- 
 5 
 
98 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 ceives that all tlie unity that is desirable or attainable could 
 be realized. To give strength to the various parts com- 
 posing such a body, he would wish that they should be near- 
 ly equal to one another, no one State being much beyond 
 any of the rest in power and resources. It is evident that 
 Guizot has little faith in political changes which are due to 
 revolutionary agencies. He uses strong language when con- 
 demning the action of the Italian Government in confiscat- 
 ing ecclesiastical property, and in reference generally to 
 their treatment of the Catholic Church. Yet he does not 
 omit to express satisfaction that he is a Protestant, and re- 
 gret that the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church do 
 not see the advantage, as well as duty, ot coming out in fa- 
 vor of full religious toleration. 
 
 We must confess ourselves not convinced by this reason- 
 ing. The fact is obvious that the Papal civil administration 
 is not only distasteful to the subjects of it, but is extremely 
 bad — inherently bad. It is a fact equally obvious that the 
 condition of Italy, partly in consequence of the Papal king- 
 dom, has been deplorable. The discontent of the people is 
 owing to misgovernment. So we cannot but think that their 
 desire to become a nation is legitimate and laudable. Nor 
 does Guizot's scheme of a confederation, even were it within 
 reach, seem to promise good. If it is to be united by no bond 
 «tronger than the bands which held the Greek states togeth- 
 er, or which lately connected the members of the Germanic 
 body, it would prove to be a rope of sand. If, on the con- 
 trary, it were a bond like that of the American Union, Italy 
 w^ould be, to all intents and purposes, a single nation, and that 
 member of the nation over which the Pope presides would 
 inevitably prove to be refractory and unmanageable. The 
 Pope, if he were to belong to such a confederacy, would be 
 bound to abide by its policy in respect to foreign nations, not 
 to speak of domestic affairs, and would be as far from a situ- 
 ation of independence as it is claimed he would be were he 
 a subject of the Italian king. 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 99 
 
 Our conclusion is that the "logic of events" is hurrying 
 the Pope to the coerced surrender of his temporal power, 
 and that a portion of his spiritual power must eventually go 
 with it. Whether this great change will take place speedily, 
 and in consequence of the progress of the new Italian king- 
 dom, it is impossible to say. The effect of an exile of the 
 Pope from Home, growing out of a refusal on his part to 
 acquiesce in the absorption of his territory in the new king- 
 dom, may be such as Guizot describes. Disturbances may 
 arise which will lead, as when the late Roman Republic was 
 overthrown, to the regaining of his throne. Even when 
 Victor Immanuel establishes himself at Rome, it will be too 
 early to say that the Pope's temporal power is gone forever. 
 So unsettled is the political condition of all Europe, that a 
 confident judgment on this point would be premature. 
 
 [At the beginning of the Franco- German war, IN^apoleon 
 m. withdrew the French troops from Italy. Shortly after, 
 on the 20th of September, 1870, Victor Emanuel took pos- 
 session of Rome. The relations of the Pope to the Italian 
 government were defined in the law of the Papal guaran- 
 tees, which was enacted on the 13th of May, 1871. By this 
 law it was provided that the person of the Pope should be 
 sacred and inviolable ; that attacks upon his person should 
 be punished in the same manner as like offences against the 
 king ; that he should have the honors of a sovereign, and 
 all the distinctions which Catholic monarchs had heretofore 
 accorded to him ; that 3,225,000 lire should be annually 
 granted him; that the Vatican and Lateran palaces, and 
 the Castel Gandolfo, with their appurtenances, should be 
 given up to him to use, and that they should be inalienable, 
 and with all their contents — libraries, museums, and the 
 like — should be exempt from taxation ; likewise that no gov- 
 ernment officials should enter these places, on official busi- 
 ness, without the Pope's permission ; that this rule should 
 also hold good of places where conclaves and councils are 
 
100 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM OF THE POPES. 
 
 assembled ; that the Pope's correspondence should be free, 
 and that he should have his own postal department and tele- 
 graph ; that all ecclesiastical institutions in Kome, and in the 
 suburban dioceses should be under his exclusive authority ; 
 but that no aid should be rendered by the secular power in 
 the execution of ecclesiastical sentences. If these should be at 
 variance with the law of the state, they would be null and void. 
 These liberal concessions went as far as it was practicable 
 to go without constituting the papacy an imperium in im- 
 jperio. Pius IX., in repeated protests, repudiated this law, 
 and he refused to receive the grant of money which it of- 
 fered him, or to yield to the enactment anything but a pas- 
 sive submission. Thus, in an encyclical to all patriarchs, 
 archbishops, etc., on the 15th of May, 1871, he declared that 
 he could not surrender his rights, " which are the rights of 
 God and of the Apostolic See," with which the Popes had 
 been invested, in the providence of God, for eleven hun- 
 dred years. He asserted the impossibility that a Pope of 
 Rome could be independent in his office, as long as he is 
 subject to a temporal sovereign who might be an infidel or a 
 heretic, or might be at war with other princes. The act of 
 guarantees of 1870 had left the ecclesiastical establishments 
 in Rome and its dioceses under the exclusive control of the 
 Pope. By a law passed on the 19th of July, 1873, the laws 
 in virtue of which such institutions in all the other parts of 
 the Italian kingdom had been obliged to give up their im- 
 movable property to the government, and to submit to the 
 regulations imposed by the civil authority, were made ap- 
 plicable to the province of Rome. Among the qualifications, 
 however, which were attached to the new enactment was 
 the important provision appropriating to the Pope 400,000 
 francs annually for the support of the generals of the re- 
 ligious orders."^] 
 
 * The various documents referred to above may be found in Von 
 Kremer-Auenrode u, Hirsch, Bos Staatsarchiv, I. Supplementband zu b. 
 xxiii., xxiv., Leipzig, 1877. 
 
COUNCILS OF CONSTANCE AND THE VATICAN. 101 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND THE COUN- 
 CIL OF THE VATICAN.* 
 
 The Coimcil of Constance, which was in session during 
 the interval between the years 1414 and 1418, was the most 
 brilliant and imposing of the ecclesiastical assemblies of the 
 middle ages. If the number of bishops present was not so 
 large as at some of the other gi-eat synods of the church, 
 this difference was more than made up by the multitude of 
 inferior clergy, of doctors and of jurists, and by the unex- 
 ampled array of sovereigns and nobles. Pope and emperor 
 were both present, each with a numerous and dazzling reti- 
 nue of officers and attendants. It has been pronoimced the 
 first example of a congress of princes in modern times, since 
 there was hardly a kingdom or principality of the catho- 
 lic world, however small or remote, that was not represented 
 by princes or other deputies. A throng of not less than fifty 
 thousand people, drawn by official obligation, curiosity, the 
 love of gain or of pleasure, flowed into the city of Constance, 
 to witness the doings of the council. It has been truly said 
 that a detailed description of the scenes that took place with- 
 in and without the assembly, would afford a complete as 
 well as vivid picture of the life and manners of the time. 
 The occasion that called the council together was of the 
 
 * An article from The New Englander for April, 1870, in review of Con- 
 ciliengescJiichte. Nach den Quellen bearbeitet von Dr. Carl Joseph 
 Hefele, o. 6 Professor an der Universitat Tubingen. Siebenter Band. I. 
 Abtb. Geschichte des ConcUs von Constam. Freiburg im Breisgau 1869 : 
 The Centenary of St. Peter and the General Council : A Pastoral Letter 
 to the Clergy, &c. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. 
 London : Longmans, Green & Co. , 1867. 
 
102 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 gravest character. The abuses in the administration of the 
 church had grown to be unbearable. In Bohemia there 
 was a formidable religious movement that threatened to 
 result' in the establishment of a new and powerful sect. 
 Above all, the long schism which the Council of Pisa had 
 unsuccessfully tried to terminate, demanded an instant and 
 effectual remedy, if Christendom and the Catholic Church 
 were to be saved from permanent division. It is to the 
 proceedings of this synod, that the new instalment of He- 
 fele's copious work on the History of Councils is devoted. 
 
 Hefele is one of the most learned and justly esteemed of 
 the Catholic theologians north of the Alps. His work is 
 one to which a Protestant, to be sure, must often take ex- 
 ception; yet, generally speaking, it is characterized by a 
 spirit of fairness, and it is not probable that it contains any 
 intentional perversion of facts or sophistry in argument. 
 Hefele is frequently called a liberal Catholic ; and so he is, 
 in comparison with the curialists or extreme ultramontanist 
 party. On the particular question whether the Pope is, by 
 himself and independently of the concurrence of a council, 
 infallible in matters of faith and morals, we do not find 
 that, in the work before us, he distinctly avows his opinion. 
 But he is far from being a Gallican, in the sense of the old 
 Paris theologians, who exerted a commanding influence in 
 the reforming councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, or 
 in the sense of Bossuet, who followed in their track. In 
 fact, he describes his own position as being a middle one, 
 between the Galileans on the one hand and the curialists 
 on the other. The Pope is neither ohove nor under the 
 council, but is the head of the church ; his relation being 
 analogous to that of the head to the members of the human 
 body. A council without the Pope is incomplete. It is not 
 an oecumenical council. His assent to the dogmatic decrees 
 of such an assembly is requisite, to give them infallible au- 
 thority. Yet Hefele holds, as indeed does Bellarmine, that 
 a council might depose a Pope for heresy, inasmuch as 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 103 
 
 a heretic is ipso facto disqualified from holding an ecclesias- 
 tical office, high or low.'^ But in such a proceeding the 
 council does not act as an oecumenical assembly. Being cut 
 off from the Pope, it cannot act in this capacity. We have 
 the singular doctrine, then, that an assembly of bishops, 
 which is incompetent, without the Pope's assent, to issue in- 
 fallible definitions of doctrine, is still competent to put the 
 Pope on trial for heresy, convict him, and degrade him 
 from his office. Hefele shows his conservatism, also, in 
 maintaining that a Pope cannot be deposed by a council for 
 personal misconduct. He may be a very bad man, but he 
 cannot for this reason be deprived of his office. John 
 XXIII., Hefele expressly says, could not have been lawfully 
 deposed for his crimes. It was only heresy on his part that 
 could authorize such a proceeding. The doubtful validity 
 of his election is brought in, as another sufficient cause for 
 removing him from his station. How far this theory is 
 from that of the Constance theologians and of hosts of able 
 and good Catholics in past ages, we need not stop to point 
 out. 
 
 In his History, Hefele is evidently biased by the theory 
 as to the relation of the Pope to the council, to which we 
 have just adverted. He supports, by feeble argimients, the 
 often refuted assertion that the Bishops of Eome convoked 
 and presided over the early oecumenical councils, including 
 that of Nicea. The proposition that the Roman bishop 
 convoked the Council of l^icea, rests on no proof that has 
 any weight, and is contrary to all the evidence and probabili- 
 ties in the case. It was Constantine who endeavored to 
 quell the disturbance raised by Arius at Alexandria. It 
 w^as through his fi*iend Hosius, the Spanish bishop whom 
 he held in so high esteem, that he sent his letter which was 
 designed to pacify the contending parties. ITot a syllable do 
 
 * Bellarraine, as will be explained hereafter, does not admit, for him- 
 self, that a Pope will ever be left to fall from the faith. 
 
104 THE COmrCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 we hear from the contemporary historians and witnesses, of 
 any connection of the Roman bishop with these preliminary 
 events. Constantino, in all his letters and missives that re- 
 late to the council, says nothing about the Pope. The as- 
 sertion that Hosius acted for the Pope and presided in his 
 name, is not only a pure conjecture, but is virtually contra- 
 dicted by Eusebius, who speaks of the Roman presbyters as 
 acting for the Roman prelate, and although Hosius is named 
 in the same sentence, no such representative cha;*acter is as- 
 cribed to him. That Hosius signs the decrees of the synod 
 first, is owing to the circumstance that he was a "world- 
 renowned " man, as Eusebius says of him ; to his personal 
 relations to the emperor ; and to the probable fact that he 
 was one of the presidents, not as standing in the Pope's 
 place, but through his own merits. It was he and Eusebius 
 of Csesarea, as Stanley justly thinks, who sat, one on each 
 side of the emperor, when that august personage took his 
 place in the midst of the council. The two Roman presby- 
 ters signed after Hosius — we assume that the authorities 
 which report the signatures in this order are correct — out 
 of respect to the Roman bishop, to whom a primacy of 
 dignity would probably have been conceded, had he been 
 present ; although, even in this case, it is not certain that 
 the name of Hosius would not have been first inscribed. 
 Now that the pseudo-Isidorian misconceptions and misrep- 
 resentations respecting the powers conceded to the Roman 
 bishops in the first centuries, have been so long exploded, 
 is it too much to hope that Roman Catholic writers will 
 cease to strain historical evidence for the sake of establishing 
 an indefensible position ? The sole authority which Hefele 
 cites for the pretended presidency of the Roman prelate at 
 Kicea, is Gelasius of Cyzicus, who wrote towards the end 
 of the fifth century — an utterly worthless witness, a mau- 
 vais comjpil-ateur^ as Dupin calls him. Gelasius interpolates, 
 in a quotation from Eusebius, the statement that the Pope 
 presided by representatives. But his whole narrative of the. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 105 
 
 council swarms with errors. He even gives an account of 
 discussions on the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, although, as 
 is well known, the subject was not touched at the council. 
 One may see how desperate the case is, when a scholar, like 
 Hefele, finding nothing in Eusebius or Socrates or Athana- 
 sius, to afford any aid to his position, falls back on Gela- 
 sius! 
 
 The two topics of most interest which are brought for- 
 ward in Hefele's recent volume on the proceedings at Con- 
 stance, are the decrees of the Ith and 5th Sessions, affirming 
 the subordination of Pope to council, and the trial and exe- 
 cution of Huss. Hefele dissents, of course, from the view 
 of the extreme curialists, who deny the oecumenicity of the 
 Constance council altogether. It requires, indeed, some 
 hardihood even in them to take such ground, in the face of 
 the distinct declaration of Martin Y., in the bull against the 
 Hussites. But Hefele allows an oecumenical character 
 only to those acts of the council which were done after the 
 election of the Pope and with his approval (the 41st to 45th 
 Sessions, inclusive), together with such other previous acts and 
 decrees as were ratified by him. All the ingenuity of the 
 Papal theologians has been exerted in the effort to show 
 that the famous doctrines of the 4th and 5th Sessions never 
 had Papal sanction. The decrees which had been agreed 
 upon in the meetings of the nations, were to be read in the 
 general session (the 4th) by Zabarella, Cardinal of Florence, 
 the anti-Gallican spokesman. But it was found that in his 
 hands they had undergone an alteration. One of the 
 changes was that in the 1st Article which declared the obli- 
 gation of all, the Pope included, to obey the council, the 
 words, " Reformation in head and members " — one of the 
 points in regard to which the obligation to submit to the 
 council was affirmed — ^were left out. This, Hefele states, was 
 by an arrangement between Sigismund and the cardinals. 
 Then the intelligence came that the Pope had fled again, 
 5* 
 
106 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 leaving Scliaffhausen. The council now insisted upon the 
 passage of the Articles as originally conceived, and as ap- 
 proved by the nations, and this took place at the 5th General 
 Session, at which Zabarella and seven other cardinals were 
 present. They made no protest, and the Articles were 
 passed in due form. We cannot admit, therefore, the plea 
 of Ilefele, that on account of their secret objections or pri- 
 vate declarations, supposing these to have been in opposition 
 to the decrees, they were rendered invalid. In two dis- 
 courses of Gerson, they were quoted before the council as 
 authoritative acts, and no voice was lifted up to dispute the 
 statement. They are to be regarded as the decrees of the 
 council, not less than the declarations of the preceding ses- 
 sion. But we do not see that Ilefele materially helps his 
 case, were he to succeed in showing that the proceedings of 
 the 5th Session were without the assent of the cardinals. 
 For the 1st Article, as read by Zabarella and passed in the 
 4th Session, is all that a Galilean can ask. It read thus : 
 " The Synod of Constance, regularly assembled in the Holy 
 Ghost, forming a universal council and representing the 
 militant church, has its authority immediately from God, 
 and every one, the Pope included, is bound to obey it in 
 wliat pertains to the faith and to the extirpation of 
 schism." * This is enough. The superiority of the coun- 
 cil to the Pope is unambiguously declared. And as to the 
 omitted clause — "the reformation of the church in head 
 and members " — the council practically vindicated its right 
 
 * " Et prirao declarat, quod ipsa in Spiritu Sancto, legitime congregata, 
 generale Concilium faciens, et Ecclesiam Catholicam miiitantem reprae- 
 sentans, potestatem a Christo immediate habet, cui quilibet, cujuscun- 
 que status, vel dignitatis, etiamsi papalis, existat, obedire tenetur in his, 
 qua pertinent ad fidem et exstirpationem dicti schismatis, ac generalem re- 
 foi^mationem ecclesim Dei in capite et in memhris,^'' etc. The council proceeds 
 to assert that disobedience to its behests and ordinances, come from 
 whatever quarter it may, even from a Pope, will subject the offender to 
 condign penance, and to punishment. Van d. Hardt, iv. p. 72. Gieseler, 
 III.,v. 1, §131, n. 8. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 107 
 
 on this point by deposing John XXIII., and by other meas- 
 ures equally significant. But how about the approval of 
 the Popes ? In the first place, John XXIII., before his de- 
 position, declared, over and over again, that the council was 
 "holy and could not err." Hefele himself quotes these 
 declarations. To be sure, Balthasar Cossa was one of the 
 most flagitious of men, although Hefele would mitigate 
 somewhat the verdict of execration that was pronounced 
 upon him by his contemporaries. But he was Pope, never- 
 theless, up to the time of his deposition. In the second 
 place, Martin Y. sanctioned the proceedings of the council, 
 in terms that cover the 4th and 5th Sessions. ]^o matter 
 what reluctance he may have felt in doing this. No matter 
 what counter expressions he may have uttered. In the 
 matter of Falkenberg, who had so grievously incensed the 
 Poles by his book, and whom the French, on account of the 
 affinity of his doctrines with those of Jean Petit, wished 
 also to condemn, the Pope declared that he maintained the 
 decrees of the council as to everything which had been 
 adopted in materiis fidei et conciliariter. The verdict 
 against Falkenberg had been passed in the nations, but not 
 in the general session. This is the sense of the term concili- 
 ariter. It is not opposed to tumultuariter^ as Hefele seemed 
 to think, in his first volume ; but to nationaliter. ISTow the 
 decrees of the 4th and 5th Sessions were adopted conciliari- 
 ter. Hefele objects, again, that they are not defide. That 
 is, they are not of a dogmatic character. They were ob- 
 viously so meant ; and this Hefele himself concedes.* If 
 the supremacy of Pope over council can be made into a 
 dogma, w^hy not the reverse proposition ? If the infallibility 
 of the Pope can be turned into an article of the creed, why 
 not the infallibility of the council ? But look at Martin's 
 bull against the Hussites. In this bull, it was provided that 
 every person suspected of holding the condemned heresies 
 
 ♦ P. 104. 
 
108 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 of "Wickliffe and Huss, should be required by bishop or in- 
 quisitor to say, among other things, whether he believes 
 that " what the Holy Council of Constance, representing the 
 universal church, has sanctioned and sanctions m fdvorem 
 fidei et salutem animarum is binding on all Christian be- 
 lievers, and also that what the synod has condemned as 
 contrary to the faith, must be held by all to deserve reproba- 
 tion." Hefele can do nothing with this passage except to 
 construe the terms, in fcmorem fidei et salutem animajrum^ 
 as restrictive ! As if Martin, in a bull for the suppression 
 of heresy, which aimed to accomplish its end by bringing 
 the authority of the council to bear heavily upon offenders, 
 would couple with the assertion of the oecumenical character 
 of the synod, a partial denial of the same ! As if he would 
 suggest to persons heretically inclined, that decrees not 
 judged to be in famorem fidei and for the health of souls, 
 need not be respected ! But Hefele is compelled to resort 
 to the hypothesis that Martin Y. pui-posely used ambiguous 
 language, such as might be understood by each party as 
 favoring its cause against the other. That is, he intended 
 that the supporters of the council should understand him to 
 approve of their doctrine, at the same time that he left a 
 loop-hole out of which he could escape ! We think more 
 charitably, in this instance, of Martin Y., and we interpret 
 him as giving a full and unqualified assent to the decrees 
 and declarations, passed in general session, of the Council of 
 Constance. In the third place, when the Council of Basle 
 had reafiirmed the Constance decrees on the point in ques- 
 tion, Eugene lY. gave them his express and unqualified 
 sanction. The pretence of the curialists, that this was done 
 imder stress, will not answer. There was the force of pub- 
 lic opinion and the pressure of circumstances, so that he did 
 what he would have preferred not to do ; but he acted freely, 
 without coercion. Moreover, his legates solemnly swore to 
 observe the decrees of the Council of Basle, before they 
 were permitted to preside. We might bring other evidence 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 109 
 
 to prove that Popes have sanctioned the Constance doc- 
 trine, upon the relative authority of councils. But the 
 great French historians and theologians have established 
 the fact long ago. It is only the fresh assertion of the 
 contrary proposition by Hefele, and his particular mode of 
 defending it, that has induced us to enter into the question 
 at all. 
 
 The subject of the trial and execution of Huss is treated 
 by Hefele, on the whole, with commendable fairness. There 
 are occasional criticisms on the character and on the state- 
 ments of Huss, to which we do not assent, but which are to 
 be expected from a Roman Catholic, even though his pro- 
 clivities are humane and liberal. Huss, though strongly in- 
 fluenced by the writings of Wickliffe, was quite a different 
 man in his intellectual cast. Huss did not carry out his 
 principles, as Wickliffe did, to their logical consequences ; 
 although, had he lived longer, he might have worked out a 
 more complete system. The council found it difficult to 
 fasten on propositions w^hich, in the sense in which they 
 were intended by him, could justly be declared heretical ; 
 and the impatience and passion of the assembly prevented 
 him from having a fair and attentive hearing. His occa- 
 sional paradoxes, which were in themselves innocent, were 
 perversely construed into an assault upon the foundations of 
 civil as well as ecclesiastical authority. But the council 
 were sagacious enough to discern that he disowned the au- 
 thority of the church, and placed himself on the Scriptures 
 as he understood them. He was, in truth, a Protestant in 
 this essential principle. He was ready to renounce errors, 
 if he could be convinced that his opinions were errors ; but 
 he would not abjure his opinions at the mere command of 
 the council. He presented thus, in the attitude which he 
 assumed before that body, a practical demonstration to their 
 eyes that he was a heretic. D'Ailly, Gerson, and the rest 
 of the eminent men who led in the council, and who were 
 
110 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 ready to pull the offending Pope down from liis throne, 
 were attached as firmly as possible to the doctrine of hier- 
 archical authority. They simply held the episcopal, aristo- 
 cratic theory that this authority inheres not in the Pope per- 
 sonally, but is diffused through the hierarchical body ; that 
 the centre of gravity is in the whole assembly of bishops, 
 and not in the primate.* They felt it the more necessary, 
 since they were effecting changes with a high hand, to mark 
 the limits of the reform which they aspired to achieve ; ancj 
 this limit, as one has said, they did mark with blood. Every 
 enlightened Protestant Christian who believes that the Scrip- 
 tures are the guide in doctrine and life, and that the disci- 
 ple has the right to intei-pret the Scriptures for himself, 
 looks up to Huss as a noble witness for the truth and an il- 
 lustrious martyr. It is evident that his uprightness, his sin- 
 cerity, his unfaltering courage, his spirit of forgiveness, so 
 like that of the Master, make a deep impression even upon 
 men like Hefele, who yet deem his doctrinal position an er- 
 roneous one. Luther said, in view of the words and con- 
 duct of Huss, that if he was not a good Christian, there 
 never was one. 
 
 Eespecting the execution of Huss, Hefele has interesting re- 
 marks, which are designed to soften the condemnation which 
 
 * The Gallicans distic^ished between the ecclesia universalis, on the 
 one hand, whose only head is Christ, and in which are included Pope, 
 cardinals and prelates, priests, kings and princes, and people (plebeii), 
 and in which there is salvation, even if there were no Pope to be found 
 in the world, and, on the other hand, the more restricted ecclesia apos- 
 tolica, composed of Pope, bishops, and other ecclesiastics, which is common- 
 ly called the Church of Rome, and of which the Pope is considered the 
 head. The Church Universal can never err ; the Church of Rome can 
 err and fall into heresy. "Et haec longe minoris auctoritatis videtur 
 esse universali ecclesia." (See the passages from Gerson, in Niedner's 
 Kirchengesch. , p. 560, n.) Some of the Galilean leaders held that even 
 a general council could err. This was affirmed by Peter d'Ailly at Con- 
 stance. (For the passages, see Gieseler, III., v. 1, § 131, n. 4.) But Gal- 
 licanism finally settled down upon the opinion that a general council is 
 infallible. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. Ill 
 
 is visited on the council for this act ; for it is the council, 
 and not IIuss, which, in modem days, is on trial. He urges 
 the fact that all civil punishments in those days were severe 
 and barbarous, even when judged by our standards and by 
 existing codes. He also shows that, according to the univer- 
 sal opinion of that age, a heretic, convicted by the proper 
 ecclesiastical authority, should and must be put to death by 
 the civil magistrate. Huss was adjudged a heretic by the 
 highest judicial body; and his opinions were, in fact, if 
 compared with the creed, heretical. The legislation, how- 
 ever, which inflicted such penalties upon heresy, Hefele 
 styles " Draconian," and he deplores the execution of Huss 
 the more, since great disadvantages have resulted to the 
 church from this iron legislation, and countless misunder- 
 standings and misconceptions have been occasioned by it. 
 
 Hefele brings up the burning of Servetus, as an illustra- 
 tion of the sentiments prevalent even a hundred years later 
 and among Protestants, respecting the right mode of deal- 
 ing with heretics. The feeble attempts which have been 
 made in times past to relieve Calvin from the responsibility 
 connected with the death of Servetus, are now, for the most 
 part, abandoned, as they ought to be. Calvin, seven years 
 before the arrest of Servetus, said that if he came to Geneva, 
 he should not, with his (Calvin's) consent, go away alive. 
 He approved and justified the execution. The "mild Me- 
 lancthon," as Hefele truly says, joined in this approval. 
 Protestants generally, at that time, held that civil magis- 
 trates should use the sword, which is entrusted to them, for 
 the extirpation of heresy. The theory of religious persecu- 
 tion is now given up, for two reasons. First, there is un- 
 doubtedly a different estimate of the criminality involved 
 in holding erroneous opinions in religion, and a disposition 
 to more charitable judgment. Along with this feeling, 
 there is a stronger sense of the difficulty of measuring the 
 guilt of false belief. Yet this is not the only, nor is it the 
 chief, influence whicli renders Protestants averse to the use of 
 
112 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 force against what they consider dangerous and mischievous 
 errors. J^or is the experience of the futility of forcible and 
 violent means for the defence of truth, the sole or the prin- 
 cipal cause of this change. We may hold that men are 
 morally responsible for their beliefs, inasmuch as they are 
 responsible for using those means of ascertaining the truth 
 which God has placed within their reach, and because 
 character cannot be dissevered from belief ; and, at the 
 same time, we may hold that it is utterly wrong to use force 
 for the propagation of truth or the extirpation of error. 
 The real ground of this view is, that it is not the function 
 of the church to use, directly or indirectly, any but moral 
 influences against religious error, and that it is not the f imc- 
 tion of the state to punish men for their opinions. This 
 radical alteration in the view that is taken of the proper 
 function of the state, and of the church as well, is the 
 ground of toleration; although the other motives to the 
 exercise of this spirit, which have been adverted to, are co- 
 gent auxiliary reasons. There are two important differences 
 between Protestants and Roman Catholics, in regard to this 
 subject. The first is, that the amount of persecution of 
 which Protestants have been guilty is far less than that for 
 which Catholics, in the same period of time, are account- 
 able. Thus, Protestants have never perpetrated such cruel- 
 ties as were perpetrated in the Netherlands by the Roman 
 Catholics under Philip of Spain and through the Inquisi- 
 tion. This difference is not an unimportant one ; since it 
 shows that the misgivings which spring from humane Chris- 
 tian feeling have had far more practical influence in neutral- 
 izing the power of wrong principles among Protestants 
 than among Roman Catholics. It took some time for 
 Protestants to emancipate themselves from the theory of 
 persecution, which was an heir-loom from the middle ages 
 and the Catholic hierarchy ; but even before this happy re- 
 sult was consummated, it was manifest that the old princi- 
 ple of suppressing error by force had relaxed its hold upon 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 113 
 
 the Protestant mind. The main difference between Protes- 
 tants and Catholics on this subject, however, is that while 
 we disown the theory of persecution, and lament that Prot- 
 estants should have been so mistaken as to be guilty of it ; 
 while, in short, we heartily repent, so far as one generation 
 can repent of the errors of another, of all the instances of re- 
 ligious persecution in which Protestants bore a part, the Cath- 
 olic Church makes no such confession and exercises no such 
 compunction. Hefele may deplore the severity of the sen- 
 tence against Huss, but even he does not commit himself to 
 an absolute rejection of the theory on which that sentence 
 was pronounced. To the attitude of the Catholic Church 
 generally on this point, we shall soon have occasion again 
 to refer. 
 
 The true force and intent of the safe-conduct which Sigis- 
 mund had given to Huss, is a topic of much interest to the 
 historical student. Did the safe-conduct, properly interpret- 
 ed, protect the bearer of it against the council, as well as 
 from attacks which might emanate from all other persons and 
 bodies ; or was it merely a passport ensuring his safety on 
 the journey to Constance, a hearing before the council, and 
 a safe return in case of acquittal ? This last interpretation 
 is strenuously advocated by Hefele. With him agrees Pa- 
 lacky, the learned and usually accm-ate historian of Bohemia.* 
 The same view is adopted by Leo, the German historian, al- 
 though his very lukewarm Protestantism should prevent him 
 from being quoted, as he sometimes is, as a Protestant 
 authority. On the other side are Hallam and most of the 
 other Protestant historians. Xeander speaks of the restrict- 
 ed interpretation of the safe-conduct as a device of modem 
 sophistical historians, and considers that Sigismund was 
 guilty of a perfidious violation of his promise. 
 
 How stands the evidence ? If we look at the terms of the 
 
 * QescMchte der Bohmen, III., ii., p. 357, n. 
 
114 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 safe-conduct, we find that Huss is taken nnder the protection 
 of Sigismund and of the empire, and that all lords and mag- 
 istrates are enjoined to permit him, without hindrance or mo- 
 lestation, to go and return — " transire, stare, morari, et redire 
 libere." Hefele concedes that his safe return was guaran- 
 teed, provided he should be acquitted ; but no exception or 
 proviso is found in the document itself. This exception 
 Hefele considers to be implied in the nature of the case. 
 Huss was going before a judicial body to be tried, and it is 
 not to be supposed that the emperor would undertake to 
 protect him against the very tribunal before which, as an ac- 
 cused person, he was to make answer. The reply to this is, 
 that Huss did not so regard the council. He often said that 
 he desired to bring his cause before the council ; but in 
 his expressions of this nature, there is always the avowed or 
 implied qualification, that unless he can be convinced of the 
 error of his opinions, he shall not abandon them. To give 
 up his alleged errors, provided they can be shown to be such, 
 he ever professes his readiness, but only on this condition. 
 In reality, he wished to vindicate himself before so great an 
 assembly, and in this public and conspicuous manner, against 
 aspersions that had been thrown out by his enemies, and he 
 wished to show what sort of a man he was by a free and 
 open declaration of his opinions and feelings. It was always 
 far from his design, as his whole conduct as well as words 
 prove, to surrender the convictions of his own mind, in con- 
 sequence of a mandate from any man or body of men. Ko 
 weight, therefore, is to be attached to this argument of Hefele, 
 especially as there is no evidence that Sigismund, prior to the 
 council, had a materially different idea respecting the design 
 of Huss's visit to Constance, from that of Huss himself. But 
 what was the interpretation which Huss himself gave to the 
 safe-conduct ? He considered that Sigismund had bound 
 himself to bring him back in safety to Bohemia. In one of 
 his last letters, he accuses Sigismund of breaking his engage- 
 ment, and says, that he ought to have told the council : "If 
 
THE COTTNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 115 
 
 he (Huss) does not choose to abide the decision of the coun- 
 cil, I will send him to the king of Bohemia, together with 
 your sentence and the documents in support of it, to the end 
 that he [the king] with his clergy may judge him." * Huss 
 adds that Sigismund had allowed Henry Lefi and others to 
 say to him, that he should be brought back imhurt, in case 
 he chose not to submit to the judgment of the council. 
 Peter von Mladenowicz, the friend of Huss, declares the 
 same thing. Hefele and Palacky say that nothing should 
 have been built by Huss and his friends on such declarations, 
 since they manifestly transcended the bounds of Sigismund's 
 lawful power. But this answer appears to us insufficient. 
 The veracity of Huss cannot be called in question ; and if 
 the official agents of Sigismund gave him this assurance, it 
 is probable that Sigismund expected to be able to verify it. 
 That Sigismund blushed when Huss fixed his eyes upon him, 
 at the moment when the sentence of the council was pro- 
 nounced, rests upon the testimony of a credible eye-witness. 
 That it was a fact widely reported, may be inferred from the 
 remark of Charles Y. at Worms, when, in reference to a 
 suggestion that he should avail himself of the opportunity 
 to lay hold of Luther, he said that he would not blush like 
 his predecessor Sigismund. Whether more or less impor- 
 tance is attached to this famous blush of Sigismund, the fact 
 seems to rest on pretty good authority. The only argument 
 of much weight on Hefele's side of the question, is derived 
 from a passage in one of the remonstrances addressed by the 
 Bohemian nobles to Sigismund, after Huss had been taken 
 into custody, and before he had been brought before the 
 council. The arrest of Huss, as is well known, was effected 
 by the cardinals on their ovm authority, with the consent of 
 John XXHI. — involuntary consent, as he declared to the 
 Bohemians. It is acknowledged on all hands that this im- 
 prisonment was considered, by the Bohemian friends of Huss, 
 
 * The language of Huss is given by Hefele, p. 226. 
 
116 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 and by Sigismiind himself, a flagrant violation of the terms 
 of the safe-conduct. Sigismund, having threatened to liber- 
 ate him hj force, actually went so far as to quit Constance 
 — so indignant was he that the council did not adopt effi- 
 cient means to relieve him from this disgrace. It was only 
 when it was strongly represented to him that if the council 
 was to be controlled in its action, all the hopes of reform 
 and of terminating the schism would be nipped in the bud, 
 that he consented to come back. When by the flight of his 
 custodians, Huss was released from the hands of the cardi- 
 nals, the Bohemians were confident in the expectation that 
 Sigismund would deliver him from his cruel confinement and 
 procure for him a hearing before the council. When this 
 did not follow, but Huss was still kept in prison, the Bohe- 
 mians were yet more aggrieved and exasperated. Among 
 the petitions and remonstrances with which they endeavored 
 to move the council and Sigismund to fulfill the obligations 
 under which he had placed himself, there is one in which 
 they say, that provided Huss is found guilty before the 
 council, and his false doctrine is shown to him, they do not 
 expect that he is to go away unpunished, but that the em- 
 peror may then do with him what he chooses. The phrase 
 is : — " Kec vero cupimus, ut convictus, falsaque doctrina ipsi 
 ostensa, impunitus abeat. Sed tum prout potest, cum ipso 
 agat, deque ipso quod vult f aciat." * Possibly they mean no 
 more than Huss meant himself in his professions of a will- 
 ingness to bow to the council, if they will show him — that 
 is, make him see — that he is in error. We must allow that 
 this is not the most natural interpretation of the phrase. It 
 is more naturally interpreted as implying a strong desire 
 that he should be delivered from his gaolers and be heard 
 before the council, with the judgment of which, even if un- 
 favorable to Huss, his friends would be content. If this be 
 the true meaning of the passage in the Bohemians' petition 
 
 * Van der Hardt, iii., 33. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 117 
 
 to Sigismnnd, we must conclude that the exact sense of the 
 safe-conduct was not definitely understood by all of the par- 
 ties concerned, and that a discussion and difference of opin- 
 ion as to its intent and scope sprung up, when the true mean- 
 ing of it became a matter of vital moment.* 
 
 In this place, we may notice an unjust criticism of Hefele 
 upon Gieseler. Says the former : " Finally, in reference to 
 the letter of safe-conduct, another still heavier offence has 
 been laid to the charge of the Council of Constance, which 
 Gieseler thus formulizes : * in order to justify the emperor 
 on account of his violated safe-conduct, the council put 
 forth the shameless decree, that no faith is to be kept with a 
 heretic ! ' For the sake of giving at least the semblance of 
 a proof, Gieseler cites two decrees of the Constance Sjmod, 
 which Yan der Hardt (t. iv., p. 521) and Mansi (t. xxvii., 
 pp. 791 and 799) have communicated. The first of them 
 says : ' if a prince, also, has given out a letter of safe-con- 
 duct, the Ecclesiastical Court is still authorized to bring the 
 person charged with heresy to an examination, and, if he shows 
 himself guilty and contumacious, to punishment ; neverthe- 
 less, he who has given the safe-conduct is bound, as far as 
 stands in his power, to labor to fulfil it.' I know not what 
 solid objection any one, from the stand-point of those times, 
 could bring to this. But against Gieseler it can be said with 
 the best reason, that he has grossly sinned against the synod 
 and against the truth, in just leaving out the conclusion of 
 the reprobated decree, viz. : ' that the giver of the safe-con- 
 duct must do his utmost to fulfil it.' " Gieseler combines 
 with an unsurpassed thoroughness of investigation an un- 
 equalled accuracy of statement. His frigid impartiality is 
 one of his leading characteristics. He is totally incapable 
 
 * The safe- conduct obtained for Jerome was differently drawn up ; but 
 this proceeded from the council. 
 
 Ferdinand, King of Aragon, exerted himself to persuade Sigismund 
 that he ought not, on account of the safe-conduct, to protect the heretic 
 from the penalty of death. 
 
118 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 of a wilful suppressio ve7'i. Looking into Yan der Ilardt, 
 we find that the decree referred to is abbreviated and imper- 
 fectly paraphrased by Hefele, in the passage just cited. 
 The decree declares that a safe-conduct issued to heretics or 
 persons charged with heresy, by kings or other princes, with 
 whatever bond they may have bound themselves — quocunque 
 vinculo se astrinxerint — can work no prejudice to the Catho- 
 lic faith and interpose no hindrance in the way of the ar- 
 raignment and punishment of such persons by the proper 
 ecclesiastical tribunal, even though they may have come to 
 the place of trial, trusting in the safe-conduct, and would 
 not have come without it. Then follows the concluding 
 sentence, omitted by Gieseler : " IS'or is the promisor, when 
 he has otherwise done what in him lies, any further obliged, 
 in consequence of his engagement." * Now, it is obvious that 
 this sentence does not affect materially the import of the de- 
 cree. But in the text of Yan der Hardt, it is given in 
 brackets (with a reference to two manuscripts in which it is 
 found) ; and it was probably a doubt as to its genuineness 
 that led Gieseler to leave it out. The second decree, assert- 
 ing that in the matter of a safe-conduct, faith need not be 
 kept by princes with heretics, Hefele declares not to have 
 been passed by the comicil, and to be found only in one co- 
 dex. But it is given as authentic by Yan der Hardt, and 
 although Hefele's view may, perhaps, be correct, that it was 
 a programme or original proposition for which the first 
 quoted decree was substituted — this decree being the one 
 that actually passed in the general session — there is not the 
 smallest ground for impugning the honesty and impartiality 
 of Gieseler. The decree, in the most offensive form of it, 
 asserts that the king had done what he lawfully could and 
 what it behoved him to do, in the matter of the safe-con- 
 duct, t The obnoxious clause affirms that Huss, by persist- 
 
 * Nee sic promittentem, cum alias fecerit quod in ipso est, ex hoc in 
 aliquo remansisse obligatum. 
 
 f " Ex debito fecisse quod licuit, et quod decuit Regiam Majestatem." 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 119 
 
 ently attacking the orthodox faith, has put himself beyond 
 the pale — reddiderit alienum — of every safe-conduct and 
 privilege ; " nor is any faith or promise to be kept with him, 
 by natural right, divine or human, to the prejudice of the 
 Catholic Church." The doctrine which both decrees were 
 framed to embody, was the same, namely, that a safe-con- 
 duct from a secular prince gives to a heretic no protection 
 against the lawful ecclesiastical tribunal. The decree which, 
 according to Hef ele, was passed, simply f ormulizes this doc- 
 trine. The other decree adds the reason that promises of 
 protection to one who tm-ns out to be an obstinate heretic 
 are ipso facto void. The theologians, from the first, en- 
 deavored to indoctrinate Sigismund with the idea that his 
 safe-conduct was limited and qualified by the absolute rights 
 of the ecclesiastical tribunal to try and convict heretics; 
 and there were not wanting those who put the doctrine in 
 the repulsive form in which it appears in the draft of the 
 second decree referred to by Gieseler. It is evident that 
 there was complaint and loud complaint that Sigismund had 
 broken his engagement ; otherwise, there would have been 
 no occasion for such a decree, in either form. The decree 
 which Hefele allows to have been passed, proves not less 
 clearly than the other, that an accusation of bad faith had 
 been brought against the emperor, which was founded on 
 his failure to protect Huss from the penalty imposed by the 
 council. 
 
 Huss was condemned. The old quarrel in the university 
 of Prague, which resulted in the desertion of the university 
 by the whole body of German teachers and students, had 
 some influence in increasing that spirit of hostility towards 
 the Bohemian innovators, which inflamed the comicil ; but 
 the influence of this circumstance was comparatively small. 
 The philosophical quarrel between nominalism, which was 
 now once more in the ascendancy at Paris and elsewhere, 
 and realism, to which in common with Ansel m and the 
 most orthodox of the schoolmen, Huss, like Wickliffe, ad- 
 
120 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 liered, sharpened the antagonism of Gerson. But the vio- 
 lent and mob-like deportment of the council, which con- 
 trasts so unfavorably with the noble serenity and self-pos- 
 session of their victim, w^as due to the vindictive hatred which 
 was felt towards what they called heresy. This sentiment 
 was sufficient to paralyze all wiser and more humane feel- 
 ings, even in the hearts of good men — for such, we doubt 
 not, were many of those who killed IIuss, and for whose 
 forgiveness he, remembering the words of his dying Master, 
 prayed. Say what one will of minor, incidental questions, 
 like this of the intent of the safe-conduct, and bring for- 
 ward what other examples one may of ecclesiastical tyranny 
 and cruelty, it remains true that a frightful tragedy was en- 
 acted at Constance, when a sincere, earnest preacher of the 
 Gospel, inspired with heroic courage and Christian gentle- 
 ness, and so elevated by faith and love that death had for 
 him no terrors, was killed for his opinions by men who 
 claimed to be acting in the name of Jesus and by his author- 
 ity. Luther published four of the impressive letters which 
 Iluss wrote while he was in prison and shortly before his 
 death, "^ and in the preface Luther gives an interesting remi- 
 niscence concerning himself. He says that when he was a 
 young theologue at Erfurt, he took down fi'om the convent 
 library a volume of IIuss's sermons. He was curious to see 
 for what heresies it was that Huss had been killed ; but, as 
 he read,' he was struck with astonishment that a man w^ho 
 wrote in so excellent and Christian a way should have been 
 burned to death for heresy. As he put back the volume, 
 he thought to himself — not knowing then the particulars of 
 the history — that Iluss must have become a heretic after 
 writing these seraions. 
 
 Bossuet wrote a book on the variations of Protestantism. 
 Quite as copious and telling a book might be written on the 
 
 * These letters are included in the edition of Huss's letters in prison, 
 published by Micowek. 
 
THE COrNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 121 
 
 variations of Roman Catholicism; and, we may add, in 
 snch a work the name of Bossuet himself would figure 
 largely. Bellarmine, an eminent exponent of the Papal, anti- 
 Gallican theology, and a great name in the estimation of all 
 parties, resorts to different subterfuges in order to escape 
 from the difficulty occasioned by the Constance decrees rela- 
 tive to the power of a council.* He brings forward the ut- 
 terly false position of Turrecremata, Campegius, and others, 
 that the Constance propositions were meant to apply only to 
 times of schism, when opinion is divided as to who is the 
 lawful Pope. He denies, of course, that Martin Y. opposed 
 the decrees in question, and makes the term conciliariter, or 
 concilialiter^ mean " after the manner of other councils, the 
 matter having been diligently examined ; " a totally differ- 
 ent definition from either of those given by Hef ele, and one 
 altogether unfounded. Equally unfounded is the assertion 
 that when Martin approved of the decrees which had been 
 adopted defids and concilialiter^ he referred solely to those 
 against the Wickliffites and Hussites. Bellarmine denies 
 that John XXIH. and Gregory IX. were deposed against 
 their will, and affirms that, admitting that they were, the 
 power to depose them does not involve the power to frame 
 new dogmas. His whole treatment of this question is ac- 
 cording to his usual method, which is to bring forward 
 everything that can be said, with any degree of plausibility, 
 against the antagonist, whether the considerations advanced 
 are consistent with one another or not. He is master of the 
 art of fencing ; a typical polemic. Bellarmine maintains the 
 opinion that the Pope is absolutely superior to a council, 
 and that he cannot be deposed.f In an earlier section of his 
 work, :|: he takes up the question whether a heretical Pope 
 can be deposed, and discusses it at length. He begins by 
 stating the opinion of Pighius that a Pope cannot be a here- 
 
 ♦ C. III., lib. ii., c. xix., p. 1222 seq. 
 f C. IV., 1. ii., c. xxii. seq. % C. HI-, "-, c- xxx. 
 
 6 
 
122 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 tic, and with this opinion he expresses his concurrence. 
 " Yet," he adds, " because it is not certain, aind the common 
 opinion is the ojyposite " — " communis opinio est in contra- 
 rium " — " it will be worth while to see what answer can be 
 given, provided it be allowed that the Pope can be a heretic." 
 It seems, by Bellarmine's own concession, that it was the 
 common opinion that a Pope could fall into heresy. Bellar- 
 mine, with the rest of the advocates of the indefectibility of 
 the Pope, is involved in extreme embarrassment by exam- 
 ples like those of Liberius, who cast off Athanasius, signed 
 the confession of the semi-Arians, and received them to his 
 fellowship, and of Honorius, who espoused the cause of the 
 Monothelites, and was anathematized as a heretic by the 6 th 
 General Council, as well as by several of his own successors. 
 The various evasions that have been sought out for the pur- 
 pose of avoiding these unwelcome facts, form a curious 
 chapter in polemical theology. Hefele, while he contends 
 that Liberius was not a heretic in his real opinion on the 
 Trinity, allows that his constancy so far broke down, that he 
 purchased his return from exile by deserting the orthodox 
 Athanasians, abjuring the term homoousion (and with it, of 
 course, giving up the Nicene creed), and by joining hands 
 with heretics. Xewman, in his edition of Athanasius, styles 
 Liberius " a renegade." * He speaks of that time as one 
 when " the Latins " were " committed to an anti-Catholic 
 creed, the Pope a renegade, Ilosius fallen and dead, Atha- 
 nasius wandering in the deserts, Arians in the sees of Chris- 
 tendom," etc. That Liberius gave up the Nicene formulary 
 and allied himself with the semi-Arians, is an im questiona- 
 ble fact. Athanasius, Jerome, and Hilary are strong wit- 
 nesses to his unfaithfulness. The instance of Honorius is 
 still more perplexing to the curialists. He expressed his 
 concurrence with the Monothelite, Sergius. All that Hefele 
 can claim in behalf of him is, that he was a Dyothelite at 
 
 * P. 127, N. c. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 123 
 
 hearty but not competent to handle the question, and was 
 therefore led to the avowal of opposite principles. That he 
 took the Monothelite position in his letters to Sergius, will 
 be clear to every unprejudiced person who is familiar with 
 the points that were under discussion. * But whether he 
 did or not, it is a fact that he w^as anathematized as a here- 
 tic by the 6th General Council, in repeated declarations. It 
 is a fact that this condemnation was approved by the Pope, 
 as well as by the emperor. It is a fact, moreover, that 
 Pope Leo II., who had succeeded Agatho, reiterated the 
 anathema of the council. " Pariter anathemitizamus novi 
 erroris inventores, id est, Theodorum Pharinitanum episco- 
 pum, Cyrum Alexandrinum, Sergium, Pyn-hum, Paulum, 
 Petrum, Constantinopolitanse ecclesise subsessores magis 
 quam prsesules, necnon et Honorium, qui hanc apostolicam 
 sedem non apostolicae traditionis doctrina lustravit, sed pro- 
 fana proditione immaculatam fidem subvertere conatus est 
 [or, according to the Greek, subverti permisit] et omnes, qui 
 in suo errore defuncti sunt." In a letter to the Spanish 
 bishops, and in another letter to King Erwig, Leo charged 
 Honorius with nourishing the flames of heretical doctrine 
 and defiling the spotless rule of apostolic tradition which he 
 liad received from his predecessors. The TruUan S^Tiod 
 (Concilium Quinisextum) repeated the condemnation of 
 Honorius, which the 6th Council had passed. The Tth 
 General Council did the same, and so did the 8th. Pope 
 Hadrian II. (867-872) wrote: " although the anathema was 
 pronounced upon Honorius after his death, yet it is to be 
 understood that it was because he was charged with heresy, 
 for which cause alone it is allowed to inferiors to resist the 
 movements of tlieir superiors." This declaration of Ha- 
 drian was read and approved in the 7th session of the 8th 
 General Council. Hefele shows fully and conclusively that 
 Honorius was condemned by the 6th General Council for 
 
 * See, on this point, Neander, HE., 179, n, 3. 
 
124: THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 heresy. He holds that the council was right in doing this, 
 since they con Id not look into his heart, but must judge his 
 declarations and avowals, which are reallj heretical. The 
 foolish, because desperately futile, endeavor of Baronius to 
 make out that the name of Honorius had been falsely in- 
 serted in the proceedings of the 6th General Council, is com- 
 pletely demolished in the third volume of Hefele, where 
 proofs of the foregoing statements may be found. Popes 
 and councils, then, have united in anathematizing Honorius 
 as a patron and supporter of heresy. Did they believe that 
 a Pope is indefectible ? When Popes acknowledged the 6th 
 General Council and anathematized Honorius, did they hold 
 the doctrine that a Pope cannot err from the faith ? When 
 all other subterfuges fail, the defenders of Papal infallibility 
 set up the plea that Honorius was uttering private opinions, 
 not public definitions of doctrine ! Letters, then, from the 
 Bishop of Pome to the Bishop of Constantinople on a doc- 
 trinal question that is agitating the whole church, are desti- 
 tute of authority ! 
 
 Since writing the foregoing remarks upon the case of 
 Honorius, we have received the pamphlet of M. Gratry,^ 
 priest of the Oratoire and member of the French Academy, 
 which relates to just this topic. M. Gratry is a distinguished 
 writer upon philosophy and theology. We recollect that 
 his able work on The Knowledge of God\ is preceded 
 by a commendatory letter from Pius IX. In the little 
 pamphlet before us, M. Gratry expresses his strong sense of 
 the wrong that is done to history by the attempts to falsify 
 the testimonies to the condemnation of Honorius for heresy. 
 He shows that Honorius was condemned for heresy " by 
 three oecumenical councils which were approved by the 
 Popes, by two Koman councils, which were presided over 
 
 *Mgr. L'Eveque D' Orleans et Mgr. L'Archeveque de Malines. Pre- 
 miere lettre a Mgr. Dechamps. Par A. Gratry, Pretre de Toratoire, mem- 
 bra de Pacademie Fran9aise. Paris : 1870. 
 
 f La Connaissance de Diea. 
 
THE COtTNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 125 
 
 by Popes, and by the pontifical profession of faith in use 
 for ages (plusieurs siecles). He exposes, with strong dis- 
 pleasure, the absurd pretense that the 6th Council meant 
 anything by hereby except that which the word imports. 
 He shows that Leo II. anathematized Honorius for some- 
 thing besides mere negligence. It was the neglect to ex- 
 tinguish an error which grew out of sympathy with it, and 
 a willingness that it should prevail. He reminds Arch- 
 bishop Manning that he exposes himself to the penalty of 
 excommunication threatened against all defenders of here- 
 tics, when, in the face of the verdict of three general coun- 
 cils, he assumes, in the exercise of his individual judgment, 
 to pronounce the offending letters of Honorius to be free 
 from heresy. But M. Gratry is especially earnest in his pro- 
 test against the changes that have been introduced into the 
 Koman breviary and the Liber Diurnus. In all the copies 
 of the former, up to the commencement of the sixteenth 
 century, the condemnation of Honorius is mentioned. The 
 name of Honorius has now been stricken out. The L'lber 
 Diurnus contains the ancient confession of faith of the 
 Popes. This included the condemnation of Honorius, but 
 the L%ber Diurnus^ containing the disagreeable passage, is 
 now suppressed. These things, together with the evasions 
 of the Papal apologists for Honorius, appear to M. Gratry 
 to be examples of intolerable duplicity and mendacity. He 
 inquires if the church and the Pope are to be helped by 
 lies ! In the last number of the quarterly journal of Hef ele,"^ 
 there is a brief Article by the learned editor on the Liher 
 Diurnus. He affirms that it is perfectly clear that at the 
 beginning of the eighth century it was held at Kome that a 
 Pope might be subjected to trial and condemnation, at the 
 hands of a general council, for heresy, and also for negli- 
 gence in his office. Hefele does not explicitly say, either in 
 this Article or in his History of Councils, whether or not 
 
 * Quartal-schrift. 1869, 4. 
 
126 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 Leo n. anathematized Honorius for heresy as well as for 
 criminal negligence. He does not conceal, however, the 
 fact that Leo 11. approved of the proceedings of the 6th 
 Coimcil, and the fact that by the council Honorius was 
 condemned for being himself a heretic. That Leo 11. and 
 the other Popes meant, in their reiterated anathemas, to 
 charge upon Honorius more than mere remissness, even real 
 participation in heresy, is made evident by M. Gratry. The 
 further plea that Honorius was not speaking ex cathedra^ 
 when responding to interrogatories of the Eastern primates 
 on a debated question of doctrine, is effectively disposed of 
 in this little pamphlet. 
 
 The Synod of the Vatican, which Pius IX. has convoked 
 to rebuke the errors of the times, is a much less imposing 
 assemblage than that which was gathered within the ancient 
 walls of Constance. The realistic or practical spirit of the 
 nineteenth century neither provides nor craves a pageant 
 such as gratified the taste of the fifteenth. The mediaeval 
 passion for symbols and shows has now, to a great extent, 
 passed away. Everything in the present council betokens 
 the altered condition of church and society. That the Pope 
 should gather a council at Rome, summon it into his own 
 court and camp, as it were ; also, that he should be suffered 
 to mark out and manage its proceedings, with little, if any, 
 audible remonstrance, indicates a great change, even since 
 the days of the Tridentine Synod, in the temper of the 
 bishops. The absence of the sovereigns and princes is 
 another notable feature, indicating that the policy of the 
 church is not coincident with that of the European states, 
 and that church and state move in different orbits. The 
 cabinets stand aloof, prepared, if it is thought expedient, to 
 withstand and thwart the determinations of the council. 
 The church, in turn, asks no advice from the civil rulers, 
 and is conscious how little practical authority she exercises 
 over their conduct and over the course of political affairs. 
 
 On one of the two great points which absorbed the at- 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 127 
 
 tention of the fathers at Constance, there is a remarkable 
 contrast between that body and the one now in session. 
 The prerogatives of the Pope are again a topic of discus- 
 sion ; but we find a powerful party in favor of declaring the 
 personal infallibility of the Pope. If a general council 
 could be brought to renounce the very prerogative which 
 liberal Catholics have claimed for it, that would be a 
 triumph for the papacy indeed. The monster which has 
 60 lone: lifted its head ao^ainst the chair of Peter would 
 strangle itself. The principles and aims of the ultramon- 
 tanist party are well set forth in the Pastoral Letter of 
 Archbishop Manning, one of their most prominent leaders. 
 He writes in vigorous English. It is almost a pleasure to 
 read invectives against one's self, when they are uttered in 
 the terse and polished style of this noted prelate. We find 
 in his pamphlet a distinct expression of the ultramontanist 
 theology, the very principles which Innocent III. proclaimed 
 when the papacy was at the summit of its power. The 
 Lord made Peter, and the successors of Peter, the fountain 
 both of doctrine and of jurisdiction. Episcopal authority, 
 therefore, is derived from the Pope and through him. He 
 is the bishop of bishops, and the doctor of the universal 
 church. We cannot praise Bossuet, "when his illustrious 
 name is under a cloud." " Ultramontanism is Catholic 
 Christianity." The object of greatest dislike to this repre- 
 sentative of the Papal party is " nationalism." It is a 
 Judaic notion that began to rise when the idea of Catholic 
 unity began to decline. It was the rise of modem nation- 
 alities, we are told, that caused the great Western schism and 
 Protestantism after it. This is the Archbishop's protest 
 against modern civilization, for modern civilization, as dis- 
 tinguished from medieeval, is inseparable from the rise of 
 nationalities to distinct and separate existence, and to a con- 
 sciousness of separate rights and obligations. What is Man- 
 ning's theory ? Does he think that the resistance to Boni- 
 face YIII. by France was all wrong ? Does he approve of 
 
128 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 the bulls of Boniface — derieis laicos and all? Does lie 
 think that the European nations and their governments 
 should have yielded humble submission to the lofty claims of 
 the Papal See to a dominion over them ? Does he think that 
 the Council of Constance committed a capital error in seek- 
 ing to curtail the Papal office? Should that council, in- 
 stead of voting by nations, have allowed John XXIII., with 
 his host of Italian ecclesiastics, to govern the Assembly by 
 their numerical force ? What would have been the condi- 
 tion of the Koman Catholic Church if this had happened ? 
 It would seem that the Archbishop is prepared to sanction 
 the doctrine which the most ambitious of the Popes for- 
 mulized and acted upon, that the state is to be subject to 
 the church, and that civil governments are to receive law 
 from the Pope. When one reads, in the light of history, 
 the Archbishop's fine phrases about the union of the two 
 jurisdictions, the church and state, and " the supreme direc- 
 tion of the supernatural over the natural law," coupled as 
 these phrases are vdth denunciations of the system that 
 subordinates the church to the state, or makes the latter in- 
 dependent of the former, and with a general disapproval of 
 the " nationalism " which is the prevailing characteristic of 
 the free civilization of the modern age, one is led to conclude 
 that it is the realization of the old and fallen assumptions 
 of Ilildebrand, Innocent III., and Boniface, that this entlm- 
 siastic prelate hopes to behold. 
 
 It is not strange that French ecclesiastics are affronted at 
 the supercilious and slighting tone in which Manning speaks 
 of Gallicanism. He affects to consider this a transient epi- 
 sode in the course of the history of the Church of France ; 
 a divergence from the orthodox faith, which never counted 
 in its favor more than a fraction of the French clergy. And 
 he identifies Gallicanism with the movement of Louis XIY. 
 and the Declaration of 1682. The Archbishop misreads 
 history. If we take Gallicanism, as Bossuet defines it, as 
 consisting of the three principles of the independence of 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 129 
 
 kings, as to temporalities, of ecclesiastical control, the deri- 
 vation of episcopal authority immediately from Christ, and 
 the authority of councils, we shall find the roots of this 
 type of Catholicism far back in French history. The pecu- 
 liarities of the French Church, as a national church, claim- 
 ing rights and privileges of its own, appear in full vigor in 
 the days of Charlemagne. They were maintained by Louis 
 IX. with persevering energy, against Papal encroachments. 
 In the eventful period before the Protestant movement, 
 when great but ineffectual efforts at reform were attempted, 
 it was French doctors and statesmen who were forward and 
 influential in the effort to restrict Papal prerogatives, as well 
 as to remedy Papal abuses. Gallicanism is not at aU the 
 transient and erratic phenomenon which Manning repre- 
 sents it to be. 
 
 In view of such declarations as are made in this pam- 
 phlet of Manning, and in other publications of the ultra- 
 montanist party, the question arises whether the council of 
 the Vatican is to reaffirm the principles on which John 
 Huss and Jerome of Prague were led to the stake. We 
 should be glad to have explicit information on this subject. 
 The question is not whether the form and degree of penalty 
 to be inflicted for opinions which are judged heretical, may 
 not be changed to suit modern ideas of the criminal code. It 
 is to be presumed that neither Pope nor bishops would wish 
 to have Protestants or other heretics burned at the stake. 
 But the question is, whether the principle that church and 
 state may rightfully combine, the one to adjudge the de- 
 gree of their guilt, and the other to inflict the penalty upon 
 persevering opposers of the Poman Catholic dogmas, is still 
 held ? Ought men to be punished criminally by the church, 
 or by the state executing the church's verdict, for hereti- 
 cal opinions ? If we seek for an answer to this question in 
 the Pope's Encyclical, we find that the old doctrine of per- 
 secution appears to be approved and asserted, and the mod- 
 em doctrine of toleration appears to be condemned and de- 
 
130 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 nounced. The liberty of conscience, which is conceded by 
 modem states, is set down among the damnable errors of the 
 times. What does the Pope mean ? If he does not mean 
 that civil governments ought to use force to punish persons 
 who teach doctrines which are pronounced by him or by the 
 Catholic Church heretical, what do these statements of the 
 Encyclical signify ? The " bloody tenet of persecution " is 
 not yet abandoned, but, it would seem, is again to be assert- 
 ed in audacious opposition to the humane and Christian 
 spirit of the age, and in obstinate derogation of the precepts 
 of the founder of Christianity. 
 
 The other point of the Pope's infallibility, in which, if 
 the new dogma is carried, the Council of Constance will be 
 flatly contradicted by the Vatican Synod, is one which an 
 enemy of the Catholic Church might wish to see adopted. 
 For ourselves, if the Roman Catholic Church is to act prac- 
 tically upon this dogma, as it has done in regard to the Im- 
 maculate Conception of the Virgin, we should prefer to have 
 it defined and declared ; for then it would be more likely to 
 awaken opposition. But we should prefer that the doctrine 
 should be neither practically nor theoretically received. "We 
 may desire that evil should be manifested, but not that evil 
 should be done, in order that good may come. And we have 
 no hostility to the Eoman Catholic Church except so far as 
 we deem its doctrines erroneous. 
 
 One of Manning's arguments iru favor of an authoritative 
 proclamation of the infallibility of the Pope is derived from 
 the need of such a doctrine. Protestants are told that the 
 church is infallible, but they taunt Catholics with the fact 
 of a division among themselves as to the place where infal- 
 libility resides. Persons in quest of a safe harbor into which 
 they can retreat from the agitations of doubt, are exhorted to 
 cast themselves upon the authority of the church ; but when 
 they comply with the counsel, they hear it said by some 
 that the Pope's definitions of doctrine are not irreformable. 
 We fear, however, that if the ultramontanists were to se- 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 131 
 
 cure their end, difficulties and perplexities would still re- 
 main. What are the bounds and limits of this Papal infal- 
 libility ? We are told by Perrone and the other Catholic 
 theologians of this school, that his infallibility relates only 
 to matters pertaining to faith and morals, and that on these 
 matters he is unerring only when he speaks to the whole 
 church in his character of universal bishop. The fine dis- 
 tinctions which are made by these theologians remind us 
 of a passage in the Rejpublic of Plato, where Socrates, in 
 one of his paradoxical speeches, argues that no physician 
 can err, since when he mistakes he is not in that mistake, 
 or so far as he makes it, a physician ; and that no pilot can 
 err, since, if he misleads a vessel, he is not in this act a pilot, 
 and so of the various trades and professions. A thousand 
 questions would immediately arise respecting the metes and 
 bounds of this supernatural prerogative of the Pope, if it 
 were to be authoritatively ascribed to him. Moreover, the 
 historical perplexities in which the champions of the Ro- 
 man Catholic system would be involved, already great enough 
 to task them to the utmost, would be much enhanced through 
 such a decree. 
 
 The Eoman Catholic hierarchy assumes to stand, with 
 priestly prerogatives, between the soul and God. This doc- 
 trine of a priesthood in the Christian church, all consistent 
 Protestants unite in rejecting. It is the first great corrup- 
 tion of Christianity. It is grateful to notice occasional 
 symptoms of a more true and spiritual conception of the 
 Gospel and the church. Father Hyacinthe, in one of his 
 sermons or addresses, remarks that he cannot look on these 
 great Protestant communities, with all the fruits of religion 
 which they exhibit, as disinherited of the Holy Ghost. The 
 expression is a very striking one. It shows how the very 
 warmth and honesty of Christian feeling may carry one be- 
 yond the narrow bounds of sect. It was just this recogni- 
 tion of the fi'uits or effects of the Spirit, that opened the 
 eyes of the Apostle Peter, and broke down his traditional 
 
132 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 prejudice. " Forasmuch," he said, " as God gave them the 
 like gift as he did unto^us, who believed on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, what was I that I could withstand God ? " (Acts xi. 
 IT.) A like argument brought all of the apostles to give 
 the right hand of fellowship to Paul and Barnabas. They 
 learned that the Spirit was not confined in the channel to 
 which they had limited His operations. A new dispensa- 
 tion had come, which was of a different character from the 
 old. The revival of Judaism in the Koman Catholic 
 Church obscured for ages an essential peculiarity of the 
 Gospel and the Gospel dispensation. Such words as these 
 of Father Hyacinthe, to which we have referred, indicate, in 
 our judgment, the way in which the Koman Catholic error 
 and all sectarian narrowness will ultimately disappear. 
 Good men will be compelled to acknowledge that a Chris- 
 tianity as genuine and as valuable, it may be, as their own, 
 is found outside of the borders in which they had siTpposed 
 it to be confined. 
 
 I^OTE.* Mr. Gladstone's Discussion of the Vatican 
 Decrees. — The Vatican Council defined the infallibility of 
 the Pope, as follows : " That the Koman Pontiff, when he 
 speaks ex cathedra^ that is, when in discharge of the office of 
 pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme 
 apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or 
 morals to be held by the Universal Church, by the divine 
 assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of 
 that infallibility with which the divine Kedeemer willed 
 that his church should be endowed for defining doctrine re- 
 garding faith or morals ; and that, therefore, such definitions 
 are irreformable of themselves, and not from consent of the 
 church." (C. iv.) That is to say, when the Pope puts forth 
 
 * This note is from contributions to the N. Y. Daily TimeSj of March 
 18, 1875, and The Christian Union, of April 7, 1875. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 133 
 
 a doctrinal or ethical proposition, which he inj;ends that the 
 whole church shall receive, he is infallible. As to the limit 
 of the province within which he cannot err, it is a just infer- 
 ence that he is the sole authoritative judge ; since the point 
 whether any proposition is fairly included in the depart- 
 ment of faith and morals, is itself a theological or ethical ques- 
 tion. But the Vatican Coimcil also accorded to the Pope 
 an equally unlimited jurisdiction as regards government and 
 discipline. The definitions on the topic conclude thus : "If, 
 then, any shall say that the Roman Pontiff has the ofiice 
 merely of inspection or direction, and not full and supreme 
 power over the universal church, not only in things which 
 belong to faith and morals, but also in those which relate 
 to the jurisdiction and government of the church spread 
 throughout the world; or assert that he possesses merely 
 the principal part, and not all the fulness of this supreme 
 power ; or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary 
 and immediate, but over each and all the churches, and over 
 each and all the pastors and the faithful — let him be anath- 
 ema." (C. iii.) 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on the Yatiean Decrees in 
 their Relation to Civil Allegiance^ is written in a grave and 
 elevated tone, and, from the character of its arguments, as 
 well as from the position of 'the author, could not fail to 
 make a profound impression. It is a powerful, and at the 
 same time, a temperate arraignment of the Vatican defini- 
 tions quoted above, as being subversive of the rights 
 of the state and the obligations of the subject. The most 
 noteworthy replies from the Poman Catholic side are those 
 of Archbishop Manning, Dr. IS^ewman, and Monsignor 
 Capel. Dr. l^ewman's tract is marked by his wonted felicity 
 in composition and ingenuity in argument. All his con- 
 troversial writings have the note of urbanity — a charm which 
 cannot be said to belong in the same degree to the produc- 
 tions of Manning. Mr. Gladstone's able and spirited rejoin- 
 der to his critics bears the title of Vaticanism, The f ol- 
 
134 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 lowing is a brief statement of the main points in this inter- 
 esting debate. 
 
 The chief allegation in Mr. Gladstone's first pamphlet 
 Was that the Yatican decrees are incompatible with the duty 
 of obedience to the civil authority. Incidentally his discus- 
 sion involved an examination of the powers accorded to the 
 papacy at present, as compared with the past, and of the 
 bearing of the new ecclesiastical measures upon the liberty 
 and personal responsibility of the individual who submits to 
 them. 
 
 1. Mr. Gladstone is at issue with his opponents on the 
 authority and meaning of the Syllabus. This document was 
 issued from Rome in 1864. It purports to be a brief state- 
 ment of the errors which the present Pope had condemned 
 in his various allocutions, and other letters and speeches. 
 Attached to each error in the list is a reference to the par- 
 ticular paper in which the more full and specific condemna- 
 tion may be found. The Syllabus was sent, at the direction 
 of the Pope, by Antonelli, to all bishops, and the reason 
 given for this proceeding in the accompanying letter was 
 that these might not have seen all of the documents of which 
 the Syllabus is an abridgment. Mr. Gladstone considered 
 the Syllabus an ex cathedra manifesto, and as such claiming 
 to be infallible. This was a natural view, and one taken 
 heretofore by many Catholic theologians. But this construc- 
 tion of the Syllabus Dr. Newman denies. He ventures to 
 attribute to it no more authority than pertained to the sev- 
 eral papers that gave rise to it. Dr. Fessler, the late Secre- 
 tary-General of the Yatican Council, cautiously takes a simi- 
 lar ground. Is this judgment an afterthought, occasioned^ 
 by the unpopularity of the Syllabus, and the inconveniences 
 arising from the position that all of its propositions are in- 
 fallible and of divine authority % So Mr. Gladstone evi- 
 dently thinks. Certainly it is a great advantage to be able 
 to say of Papal utterances, ancient or recent, that they are 
 not ex cathedra y especially when the Pope himself is the fi- 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 135 
 
 nal judge on the question. It is surely strange to find him 
 who claims to be the Yiear of Christ sending a series of 
 doctrinal propositions to every bishop in every quarter of the 
 globe — propositions which he may himself hereafter recall 
 and deny. That is to be considered ex cathedra teaching, ac- 
 cording to the Vatican Council, when, " in discharge of the 
 office of pastor and doctor of all Christians by virtue of his 
 supreme apostolic authority, he (the Pontiff) defines a doc- 
 trine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal 
 church." What belongs " to faith and morals " it is for the 
 Pope to judge. Under the circumstances, it was certainly 
 pardonable for Mr. Gladstone to regard the Syllabus as the 
 utterance of the infallible Oracle. 
 
 2. There is a difference between Mr. Gladstone and his 
 antagonists conceming the sense of the Syllabus. Both Dr. 
 Xewman and Archbishop Manning labor to pare away the 
 offensive parts of the Syllabus, and to reduce its denuncia- 
 tions to a series of harmless commonplaces. For example, 
 the rejection of the liberty of speech and of the press is con- 
 verted into a condemnation of blasphemous, seditious, and 
 obscene publications, which, it is asserted, all governments 
 proscribe. Mr. Gladstone's answer to this interpretation is 
 quite destructive. It is hardly probable that the Pope 
 would take pains to put among the errors of the times a 
 doctrine which nobody holds. Moreover, it happens that 
 Pius IX., as governor of his own kingdom, illustrated his 
 idea of the error in question, and that he denounced the 
 Austrian laws on this subject, which no Protestant would 
 consider to be over-liberal. Mr. Gladstone's indignation at 
 this and other like attempts to rob the propositions of the 
 Syllabus of their real intent and plain import is not mis- 
 placed. 
 
 3. Another point in the contest is the scope of the Vatican 
 definition which gives to the Roman Pontiff a " power of 
 jurisdiction" such as imposes upon his subjects " subordina- 
 tion and true obedience " not only in matters belonging to 
 
136 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 faith and morals, but also " in those that appertain to the 
 discipline and government of the church throughout the 
 world." This vast prerogative of " regimen and discipline " 
 makes the Pontiff, according to Mr. Gladstone, an absolute 
 monarch. Disobedience to his mandates, whatever they may 
 be, carries with it the perdition of the soul. In reply. Dr. 
 IsTewman affirms that " regimen and discipline " refer to the 
 rites of worship an(J the internal affairs of the church. The 
 supremacy of the Pope under this head is not absolute, or 
 exercised with infallible authority, as Mr. Gladstone imag- 
 ines. On the contrary, it is conceivable that the Pope should 
 misjudge, or otherwise err, in his prescriptions to individu- 
 als, and with respect to concrete cases. Moreover, it is a 
 mistake of Mr. Gladstone — so Dr. Newman asserts — to hold 
 that every act of disobedience to the Pope is accounted a 
 mortal sin. The phraseology of the Decree is as follows : 
 " This is the teaching of Catholic truth (Catholicae veritatis 
 doctrina), from which no one can deviate without loss of 
 faith and of salvation." It is the rejection of the doctrine 
 that the Pope is the supreme governor, not the single act of 
 disobedience, against which the penalty is set. Dr. New- 
 man is here technically right. But Mr. Gladstone perti- 
 nently suggests that the Vatican creed says nothing about 
 any exceptions to the duty of obedience. That such excep- 
 tions may arise we can believe only on Dr. Newman's author- 
 ity ; and this admission of so moderate and liberal a dispu- 
 tant is liable at any time to be condemned at Rome ; in 
 which case. Dr. Newman, on his own principles, would have 
 to renounce his concession. 
 
 4. The deposing power. Mr. Gladstone urges that the 
 assumed right of the Pope to excommunicate and depose 
 princes has never been given up. To this his opponents 
 answer that the moral conditions of the exercise of this pre- 
 rogative are absent, and that to exert it would, therefore, be 
 wrong. Among these moral conditions. Dr. Newman, ex- 
 plicitly, and Dr. Manning, more cautiously, include the con- 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 137 
 
 sent of nations. They try to make it out that the European 
 nations in former ages constituted the Pope an arbiter in 
 their affairs, domestic and international. From this view of 
 history Mr. Gladstone dissents. He considers it a very ex- 
 aggerated statement. The Papal government, in this par- 
 ticular, always encountered sharp resistance as a usurpation. 
 Besides, Queen Elizabeth was deposed, she being a Protes- 
 tant. The lame defence of Archbishop Manning is that she 
 was baptized a Catholic, which is not even true in fact. 
 Moreover, this lofty prerogative is not renounced by the 
 PontifP, or by his disciples for him. It is only, to use Mons. 
 Capel's phrase, "in abeyance." It maybe revived at any 
 time. Who can say that in the event of a war between ul- 
 tramontanism and Germany, the Pope might not resort to 
 the measure of absolving the Poman Catholic subjects of 
 the emperor from their allegiance to him ? The Pope has 
 claimed a dejure right to govern Protestants — Lutherans — 
 as being baptized persons. There is npthing in the creed to 
 forbid him to take the course in relation to William which 
 his predecessor, Pius Y., took towards Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 As to the question whether the power of the Pope over 
 kings and princes is direct or indirect, Mr. Gladstone justly 
 pronoimces the distinction unimportant. Archbishop Man- 
 ning holds that the Pope has not literally a temporal power 
 in this relation, but that he can only reach sovereigns and 
 governments indirectly, by his spiritual authority. But so 
 long as he is competent to forbid rulers to make or execute 
 laws which he does not approve ; so long as he claims the 
 right to annul all such legislation, and to excommunicate its 
 authors, as well as to prohibit their subjects from obeying 
 them, what boots it whether this tremendous authority is 
 called direct or indirect, spiritual or temporal ? 
 
 5. The use of force for the suppression of heresy. Even 
 Dr. Manning — ^we must style him " Cardinal Manning " now 
 — resents the imputation to the Pope and the church of a 
 disposition to make use of physical coercion, as in the days 
 
138 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND 
 
 of rack and fagot. Yet he does not disavow the right to do 
 so. He does not condemn the employment of these fierce 
 weapons in past ages. He founds his disinclination on the 
 altered circumstances of the times, and not on any deep 
 principle of right. 
 
 We have no disposition to speak harshly of the Roman 
 Catholic Church or of its prominent apologists. We must 
 say, however, that it is impossible for an educated Protes- 
 tant to read their defences, and note their fine distinctions 
 and carefully-guarded concessions, and not feel that they are 
 the champions of a flexible, evasive, slippery system, which 
 is this to-day and that to-morrow, but which at all times 
 pursues, with an unrelenting eye, an end which can be secured 
 only by robbing men, just as Mr. Gladstone maintains, not 
 only of their mental and moral liberty, but of their outward 
 and political liberty as well. Dr. J^ewman compares the 
 absolute control of the Pope to the authority exercised by a 
 physician ; as if the subjection of a patient to his medical 
 adviser were analogous to that of a subject of the Pope to 
 the ruler at Pome. The cases might be analogous if the 
 patient did not select his physician, and were not at liberty to 
 dismiss him and take another whenever he chooses to do so. 
 
 6. Mr. Gladstone alleges against the Papal Church of to- 
 day " a breach with history," in two particulars. One of 
 these has reference to the pledges of the Poman Catholic 
 clergy of Great Britain, on the faith of which the Emanci- 
 pation Act and other liberal measures were conceded by the 
 Parliament of Great Britain. It was then declared by the 
 representatives of the Catholic Church that they did not 
 hold the Pope to be infallible, and admitted no right on his 
 part to interfere, " directly or indirectly," w^ith the inde- 
 pendence, sovereignty, laws, constitution, or government of 
 the United Kingdom. H the Vatican decrees are accepted, 
 says Mr. Gladstone, there is a retreat from these solemn en- 
 gagements, a breach with history which is closely akin to a 
 breach of faith. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. 139 
 
 Again, whatever opinion may have been cherished by in- 
 dividuals or schools of opinion in the past in favor of ponti- 
 fical infallibility, Gallicanism has been, fi'om the days of the 
 Council of Constance — not to speak of earlier times — a per- 
 mitted and a powerful type of Catholicism. But Gallican- 
 ism is now put under the ban. Mr. Gladstone exposes the 
 misrepresentation of Manning, who, strangely enough, makes 
 Gallicanism have its origin in 1682, in the contest of Louis 
 XIY. with the papacy. 
 
 7. In answer to one of the main propositions of Arch- 
 bishop Manning, that Catholics do not differ from Protes- 
 tants on this matter of civil loyalty, since both acknowledge 
 the higher law of conscience, and the possible occurrence of 
 cases where allegiance to the moral law clashes with obedi- 
 ence to the civil magistrate, Mr. Gladstone points out a 
 marked and obvious distinction. The Protestant makes his 
 own conscience supreme ; he does not subject his conscience 
 to the conscience and will of another, and that other a for- 
 eign potentate. The state is not brought into peril by the 
 doctrine of the authority of conscience, provided the indi- 
 vidual acts for himself, but the state is endangered when a 
 body of citizens substitute for their own consciences the will 
 of a foreign ecclesiastic ; and this peril is not diminished by 
 the circumstance that in making this surrender they suppose 
 themselves to be impelled by the sense of right. The practi- 
 cal fact is that there is erected an hrvperium in iirvperio of 
 a formidable kind. 
 
 Wliat is the significance of this controversy ? It indicates 
 that the ecclesiastical conflict which disturbs the continent has 
 crossed the channel and reached England. TJltramontanism, 
 with its new dogma of Papal infallibility, with its rigid tenets 
 respecting civil marriage and secular education, and its revived 
 claim on behalf of the Pope to dehort the subjects of Chris- 
 tian states from their obedience to obnoxious laws, inevita- 
 bly clashes with the enlightened sentiment and established 
 policy of the European nations. TJltramontanism is a reac- 
 
140 THE COUNCILS OF CONSTANCE AND THE VATICAN. 
 
 tionarj movement, an endeavor to arrest the progress of 
 society in tlie direction of freedom and laical independence, 
 and to bring mankind once more under the dominion of the 
 priesthood. This controversy has political bearings of much 
 consequence. The ultramontanes do not give up the hope 
 of breaking up the kingdom of Italy and of restoring his old 
 principality to the Pope. In the event of an armed conflict 
 on this point, they would hope to rally to their cause the 
 sympathies of the whole Roman Catholic population of 
 Europe. Mr. Gladstone has not only sounded a note of 
 alarm in Protestant ears, but he has forewarned his Roman 
 Catholic countrymen of the possible use to which the Jesuit 
 leaders may eventually wish to put them. 
 
THE POPE AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 141 
 
 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE AND HOW HE IS 
 CHOSEN. * 
 
 The papacy has been stripped of the splendid preroga- 
 tives which inhered in it in the middle ages, when Western 
 Europe constituted a great and undivided ecclesiastical com- 
 monwealth which acknowledged the Pope as its head ; when 
 such was the force of his authority that his Interdict could 
 suspend all the public services of religion in a nation, silenc- 
 ing the bells upon the tower of every church and convent, 
 and compelling the disconsolate to bury their dead without 
 the soothing voice of prayer ; when the injunctions of the 
 Sovereign Pontiff were heard with awe to the farthest 
 limit of Christendom ; when monarchs were dethroned and 
 kingdoms given away at his bidding. But, although the 
 power of the Pope as regards political society is in abeyance, 
 and notwithstanding the fact that he has endured the bitter 
 humiliation of seeing his temporal principality wrested from 
 him, and a secular ruler enthroned at his side in the Holy 
 City itself, the spiritual authority of the Pope over many 
 millions of devoted subjects stiU remains intact, and has 
 even been augmented within the present generation. A 
 vast multitude of Christians still look up to him as the guide 
 of then' consciences, and the highest earthly authority in the 
 regulation of their conduct. His office is even now the most 
 august on earth. Nor is there any prospect that it will soon 
 pass out of being. As far as external perils are concerned, 
 it is in less danger than it was fourteen hundred years ago, 
 
 * Published in the If. Y. Examiner and Chronicle, January, 1878. 
 
 'c^FTTci 
 
142 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 when Leo the Great went forth from Rome to the camp of 
 Attila, and saved the city from pillage ; or twelve hundred 
 years ago, when Gregory III. and his successors besought 
 the help of the Franks against the Lombard invaders, who 
 had seized on the northern and central portions of Italy ; or 
 eight hundred years ago, when Hildebrand was driven out 
 of Rome by the troops of the Emperor Henry lY., and died 
 in exile ; or three hundred and fifty years ago, when Clem- 
 ent YII. was shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo by a 
 Lutheran army under Roman Catholic leaders ; or even 
 sixty-five years ago, when Pius YII. was the prisoner of 
 ]^apoleon, and when the French Revolution had apparently 
 well-nigh dispelled all reverence for the papacy in the rul- 
 ing classes of the nations nominally Catholic. The bark of 
 St. Peter, the Pontiffs have been accustomed to assert, may 
 be tossed upon the waves, but it does not go under ; and 
 after a time the Master awakes, and the waves are stilled. 
 The great change which the papacy has undergone in modem 
 times is in the loss of its influence in the political sphere. 
 The growth of religious skepticism in Italy and France has 
 made, to be sure, a serious inroad upon the spiritual domin- 
 ion of the Pontifical See. The separation of the Teutonic 
 nations at the Reformation was a staggering blow, yet it did 
 not prove a fatal blow, to the Roman hierarchical suprem- 
 acy. 
 
 Pope is derived iroviipapa (in the Greek Tlanra^), signify- 
 ing ^(a^zJA^r. As late as the fifth century, in the Western 
 churches, all bishops were styled Papce. Sidonius, who 
 was made bishop of Clermont in 472, calls the bishops of 
 Rheinis, Aries, Lyons and other places by this title. Jer- 
 ome, in his Epistle to Pammachius, styles Epiphanius, Bishop 
 of Constantia in Cyprus, Pojpe / and this is not a solitary 
 example, in his writings, of the same usage. The designa- 
 tion came to be appropriated, in the Eastern church, to pa- 
 triarchs and abbots, ecclesiastics of high rank. In the 
 West, Pope gradually became the specific and exclusive ap- 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 143 
 
 pellation of the Bishops of Rome, by a change in language 
 similar to that which had taken place in the use of the terms 
 " patriarch " and " bishop ; " for, as is well known, " bish- 
 op " and " presbyter," in the New Testament, are used in- 
 discriminately for the same class of church officers. 
 
 The nature of the Papal office is of more consequence 
 than the name. The Roman Catholics hold that the Bishop 
 of Rome is ex officio the inheritor of the primacy of St. 
 Peter ; and as such, is the representative or vicar of Christ, 
 the visible head of the visible church, the spiritual or in- 
 visible head of which is Christ himself. As primate, the 
 Pope is the high priest, the regent, and the doctor, or 
 teacher, of the church Catholic, and of all persons, lay and 
 ecclesiastical, of whatever rank, who are embraced in it. 
 First, it is maintained that Christ gave to Peter this supreme 
 pastoral superintendence and control over all his brethren. 
 The passages of Scripture relied upon to sustain this propo- 
 sition are chiefly these : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock 
 I will build my church " (Matt. 16 : 18) ; " I have prayed for 
 thee, that thy faith, fail not : and when thou art converted, 
 strengthen thy brethren " (Luke 22 : 32) ; and " Feed my 
 sheep " — the injunction thrice repeated (John 21 : 15 seq.). 
 Secondly, it is held that, Peter being the founder and first 
 bishop of the Church of Rome — this being properly his See 
 Apostolic — the primacy, by a divine ordinance, descends in 
 the line of the incumbents of this bishopric. The preroga- 
 tives of Peter, which have been enumerated above, are 
 transmitted to the persons duly elected to the episcopal 
 office in the Roman Church. One of the gravest of the con- 
 troverted questions in the .past has been whether other 
 bishops held the episcopal office directly from Christ or 
 mediately through the Pope, as His vicar. It is the common 
 view that none of them is the successor of any particular 
 apostle. This distinction belongs exclusively to the Bishop 
 of Rome, because the primacy devolves on him. But do 
 they, or do they not receive the episcopate directly from 
 
144 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 Christ? Those disposed to exalt the papacy have main- 
 tained that in the Pope is centred and included apostolic and 
 episcopal authority, which is said to flow out from him to 
 other bishops. But whatever diversity may have existed on 
 this point, the doctrine has prevailed that the Pope is the 
 centre of sacerdotal and ecclesiastical unity, so that without 
 him the church is dissolved, and hence fellowship with him 
 on the part of all Christian priests and people is indispensa- 
 ble. The most liberal Gallicans, as Gerson and D'Ailly, in 
 the fifteenth century, the era of the Reforming Councils, dared 
 not dispense with a Pope, or leave the office vacant. The 
 church without a Pope was considered a body without a 
 head. 
 
 Another of the great controverted questions of the past 
 has been whether an oecumenical council is an authority 
 paramount to the Pope, and whether its enunciations of doc- 
 trine are authoritative. That such is the fact was the theory 
 of the Gallicans, and this general view is assumed and 
 affirmed by the Councils of Basle and Constance. In former 
 times, the middle and moderate theory has had most cur- 
 rency, which makes the concurrence of council and Pope 
 necessary to the validity of a dogmatic definition. This was 
 the doctrine of Hefele, and of most of the Catholic theolo- 
 gians of Germany down to a recent date. The ultramon- 
 tane tendencies of the day have been potent enough, under 
 the auspices of the present Pontiff, to crush this opinion, 
 and the Vatican Council has pronounced for the infallibility 
 of the Pope, in the sense that no conciliar ratification of his 
 dogmatic decrees is requisite. The sense of the Vatican de- 
 finition, however, is often misunderstood and misstated. 
 Of course, it is not meant that the Popes are impeccable. 
 The Pope himself has a confessor, like the humblest of his 
 flock. Poman Catholic writers do not hesitate to admit that 
 there have been wicked Popes ; and Dante is far from being 
 alone in remanding some of them to perdition. Judas be- 
 trayed his Master, they say, and Peter denied him ; how 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 145 
 
 can we expect that the successors of the apostles should be 
 better than the apostles themselves ? Prophets in the Old 
 Testament were sometunes cowardly and unfaithful. The 
 Old Testament church passed through periods of darkness 
 and corruption ; why not the church of the New Covenant ? 
 If the Vatican definition does not mean that the Popes are 
 ex officio delivered from the moral infirmities of human 
 nature, no more does it signify that all of their doctrinal ut- 
 terances are necessarily void of error. But this is the im- 
 port of the dogma, that the Pope, speaking ex cathedra^ or 
 addressing the entire church upon any topic of religion or 
 ethics, is preserved supematurally from error. Speaking in 
 this character, not to an individual or a class alone, but to 
 the whole body of the faithful — ^not upon any subject, as 
 politics, or philology, or medicine — ^but upon theological and 
 ethical doctrine, he is infallible. This is, of course, a mo- 
 mentous dogma, and a very grave addition to the articles of 
 belief which loyal Catholics, on pain of perdition, are obliged 
 to accept. That the church cannot err was the old belief. 
 The Holy Spirit, it was held, abides perpetually in the 
 visible body, over which the Latin hierarchy presides ; and, 
 therefore, when the church collectively speaks, its utter- 
 ances are free from error. The new dogma substitutes for 
 the collected episcopate, with the Pope at their head, the 
 Pope alone, who is thus declared to be the organ of the 
 church and of the Spirit. 
 
 Besides the teaching function of the Pope, he is endued 
 with supreme legislative and judicial powers in the church. 
 No ecclesiastic can be appointed against his will, and he can 
 depose every ecclesiastic, from the highest to the lowest, by 
 his bare authority. The promise of obedience to him is 
 solemnly made by all ecclesiastics when they enter upon 
 their offices. 
 
 Protestants deny that the texts of Scripture to which we 
 have referred are correctly interpreted by Roman Catholics. 
 It is maintained by Protestants that the rock on which the 
 7 
 
146 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 church was founded was not Peter personally, but Peter as 
 confessing Christ, or the confession made by the fervent 
 apostle. They point to the fact that the authority to remit 
 sins was not conferred on Peter to the exclusion of the other 
 disciples (Matt. 18 : 18), and that Christ breathed on the 
 whole company of apostles, imparting to one as much as to an- 
 other the gift of the Holy Ghost (John 20 : 22). They find 
 no proof that, as a matter of fact, Peter governed the other 
 apostles or the church, or that he exercised any more actual 
 authority than the other apostles. They deny that he was 
 bishop of the Roman Church. They deny that there is 
 any evidence that his primacy, supposing that such a dis- 
 tinction belonged to him, was handed down to subsequent 
 bishops of that church. His precedence, if he had any, 
 died with him. They deny, likewise, that the bishops of 
 Rome in the first three centuries claimed for themselves, or 
 exerted, the prerogatives which are ascribed by the Roman 
 Catholic theory to Peter and to his successors. 
 
 The historical difficulty here suggested has been met in 
 two ways by Romish apologists. The more extreme school 
 endeavor to achieve the very difficult task of proving that 
 the early bishops of Rome were Popes in the later sense, 
 and were acknowledged as such by the church. More 
 plausible is the ground taken by theologians like De Mais- 
 tre and Mohler, who bring to their aid the theory of devel- 
 opment. The papacy, they say, was founded by Christ, 
 but it existed at first, like so many other features of Chris- 
 tian polity, doctrine, and life, in the germ. The idea — the 
 divine idea — ^was gradually realized. The papacy grew up, 
 but its growth was legitimate. It is the natural, normal, in- 
 tended outcome of the seed planted by the hand of Christ. 
 The precedence of Peter among the apostles, and the pre- 
 cedence of Rome among cities and communities, were the 
 divine preparations for an institution the foundations of 
 which rest on the express ordinances of Christ, although 
 the edifice arose only by degrees, and in the course of cen- 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 147 
 
 tiiries, to the full symmetry and splendor of its proportions. 
 In answer to this hypothesis, Protestants have to say, first, 
 that it allows that the papacy has no perfectly distinct war- 
 rant in tlie JS^ew Testament, and had no concrete existence 
 in the primitive church ; and secondly, that the papacy 
 arose historically through the introduction of the doctrine 
 of the mediatorial priesthood, a doctrine which has no right- 
 ful place in the Christian dispensation, but was a germ of 
 development borrowed from Judaism. 
 
 In the first centuries, the Bishop of Rome was chosen, like 
 bishops elsewhere, by the suffrages of the clergy and laity of 
 the church at Rome, with the cooperation of the neighbor- 
 ing bishops ; and the traces of this primitive arrangement 
 are even now not wholly obliterated. It is sometimes made 
 a subject of complaint that the primate of the whole church 
 should be created mainly by Italians ; but this objection, 
 like various other objections, implies an ignorance or forget- 
 fulness of the fact that it is as chief pastor of the Church 
 of Rome that the Pope holds his dignity and prerogatives. 
 It belongs to the Roman Church to create its own pastor. 
 Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, gives some particulars respect- 
 ing the choice of Cornelius (a.d. 251) to the Roman bish- 
 opric. He says (Ep. 55) that Cornelius was made bishop 
 " by the judgment of God and of his Christ" — that is, by a 
 divine call — " by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by 
 the suffrage of the people who were then present, and by the 
 assembly of ancient priests and of good men." The impor- 
 tance of the episcopal office in the metropolis led the Roman 
 emperors to intermeddle in the selection of the person to 
 fill it. This was done, also, to some extent, by the Gothic 
 king, Theodoric (a.d. 493-526). After the do^mfall of the 
 East Gothic kingdom in Italy, the Greek emperors (a.d. 
 553-754) were still more disposed to put checks upon the 
 unrestrained liberty of the Romans to make their own 
 bishop. The ratification of the emperor at Constantinople, 
 
148 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 either directly given, or through his viceroy, the Exarch at 
 Ravenna, was necessary to the validity of an election. Jus- 
 tinian (a.d. 553-565) was as arbitrary in his treatment of 
 the Eoman See, as in dealing with the Eastern patriarchs 
 and bishops who were under the shadow of his throne. 
 After the rescue of the papacy from the threatened supre- 
 macy of the Lombards, by Charlemagne (a.d. 774), this 
 monarch and his successors exercised the same sort of as- 
 cendancy over the Pope that they were accustomed to exer- 
 cise over the Frank bishops. The consent of the Frank ru- 
 lers was requisite before a Pope-elect could begin to exercise 
 his functions. In the anarchy that followed the ruin of 
 Charlemagne's empire, a period extending to the middle of 
 the eleventh century, the papacy succeeded, to be sure, in 
 liberating itself, for a long time, from this exterior control, 
 but only to become a prey to violent domestic factions, 
 which brought the papacy down to a lower depth of moral 
 degradation than it has ever reached before or since. From 
 this condition of helplessness and infamy, relieved only for 
 brief intervals by the German Othos, it was delivered by the 
 emperor, Henry III., who entered Italy at the head of an 
 army, and at the Synod of Sutri, in 1046, deposed the rival 
 incumbents of the sacred office, and himself elevated three 
 German bishops in succession to the Papal dignity. The 
 Hildebrandian or refonning party, as long as the Italian 
 factions were raging, were glad to avail themselves of im- 
 perial help ; but they lost no time in seizing the first oppor- 
 tunity that presented itself to shake off transalpine and secu- 
 lar interference and control in the great matter of filling the 
 chair of St. Peter. After the death of Henry III., and 
 when Henry TV. was a child, Pope Nicholas II. (in 1059), 
 by a decree, devolved the prerogative of electing the Pope 
 upon the cardinals. 
 
 In the first centuries the term cardinal (from cardo, a 
 hinge) might be applied to civil officers holding permanent 
 stations under the Poman government. It was applied, 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 149 
 
 also, to ecclesiastics having a permanent connection with a 
 church. The clergy of the Roman churches, which all stand 
 in close connection with the Lateran, the mother of churches, 
 were termed cardinals. The presbyters having charge of 
 the parishes — at first twenty-five, then twenty-eight in num- 
 ber — into which Rome was divided, and the deacons to 
 whose care the poor in the ecclesiastical districts of the city 
 — at first seven, then fourteen in number — were committed, 
 were "cardinals" of the Lateran Church. In the eighth 
 century, under Pope Stephen lY., the seven — now six — 
 suburbicarian bishops, or bishops in the ancient diocese of 
 Rome, were added to this body of priests and deacons. The 
 number of the college of cardinals, however, has varied from 
 time to time. At one time, in the thirteenth century, it 
 sank to seven. Pope Sixtus Y., in 1586, fiji:ed the number 
 at seventy, corresponding to the seventy elders of Israel. 
 The college, however, is seldom full. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the College of Cardinals, whether 
 they actually reside at Rome or not, by whom the Pope is 
 elected, are clergy of the Roman Church. They comprise 
 the suffragan bishops of the vicinity, with presbyters and 
 deacons of the Church of Rome ; and so are divided into 
 three classes, cardinal bishops, cardinal priests, and cardinal 
 deacons. The fifty cardinal priests are designated by the 
 names of fifty churches in Rome ; the fourteen cardinal 
 deacons, by the fourteen deaconries. The cardinal bishops 
 are of highest rank ; the cardinal priests and deacons are on 
 a level ; but all are practically equal as regards the choice of 
 a Pope. 
 
 The constant policy of the Popes has been to keep off 
 outside interference, and especially to defend this electoral 
 college from the undue influence or coercion of secular gov- 
 ernments. They have sought to make its action independ- 
 ent and final. Nicholas II., in the decree to which we have 
 referred, and which forms an epoch in the history of the 
 electoral system, recognized in very indefinite terms the im- 
 
150 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 perial pretensions. The cardinals — the cardinal bishops at 
 that time taking precedence — were to take the initiative, and 
 choose the Pope ; the next step was some indefinite consul- 
 tation with the emperor ; while " applause " of a choice al- 
 ready concluded was the only prerogative left to the people 
 of Rome. The Pope was to be selected from " the bosom 
 of the Roman Church," if it contained a fit person for the 
 place. Gregory XY., in 1621, laid down the rules for the 
 organization of the conclave, and for its proceedings, which, 
 with some modifications, have continued in force until the 
 present time. 
 
 The cardinals are appointed by the Pope. He is not 
 obliged, however, to divulge the names of persons raised to 
 this rank, at the time when they are appointed. When the 
 names are temporarily withheld they are styled cardinals in 
 petto, i. e., inpectore, or in the breast. That is to say, they 
 are hidden in the Pope's breast. Eligibleness to the cardin- 
 alate is attached to no definite age. In certain periods, as 
 is well known, by an abuse of the power of appointment, 
 persons in extreme youth have been raised to this office. 
 Leo X. was made cardinal at the age of fourteen, and in- 
 vested with the purple three years later. Leo X. made 
 Prince Alfred, of Portugal, cardinal when he was seven 
 years old, stipulating, however, that he should not assume 
 the dignity until seven years later. The qualifications ne- 
 cessary in a cardinal are those requisite in a bishop. It is 
 required that the candidate shall be a legitimate son. He 
 must have been in orders for at least a year. He must have 
 neither children nor grandchildren, and he must have no 
 relative within the second degree of canonical kinship in 
 the college before him. The cardinal-elect goes to the Vati- 
 can, and according to an elaborate form, receives the purple 
 cap. This may be sent to a cardinal residing abroad. At 
 a public session of the whole body, the new member is cere- 
 moniously received, and clothed with the red hat. Other 
 cm-ious forms, as that of closing and opening the mouth of 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 151 
 
 the cardinal-elect bj the Pope, attend his inauguration, to his 
 new dignity. 
 
 The cardinals are princes, as well as ecclesiastics, since the 
 right of electing the Pontiff vests in them. They are a kind 
 of council, the business of the Papal administration being 
 mainly distributed among them. The various congregations 
 at Rome are composed of them, or are under their presiden- 
 cy. But their principal distinction lies in the prerogative 
 which belongs to them, of choosing the Pope, who, it is sup- 
 posed, must be one of their own number. 
 
 What a departure is all this from the primitive method 
 of electing a pastor ! Clement of Pome, in his Epistle to 
 the Corinthians, which was written in a.d. 96 or 9Y, says 
 that the apostles put officers in the churches, and provided 
 that their places, on becoming vacant, should be filled by 
 approved men. The body of church members, in the case 
 of a vacancy, decided who should be appointed, the remain- 
 ing pastors giving their voice, but the power of acceptance 
 and of veto being always exercised by the body of the con- 
 gregation. This was the custom at Pome, as in other 
 chm-ches. In the room of this free action of the body of 
 church-members, we have substituted a corporation of eccle- 
 siastics, appointed by the chief pastor of the Poman Church, 
 and filling his place with no action on the part of the Chris- 
 tian laymen of Pome, except what is involved in shouting 
 for the individual whose election by the conclave of car- 
 dinals is announced to them. 
 
 The institution known as the conclave originated in a tur- 
 bulent period of the middle ages, when it was thought ex- 
 pedient, in repeated instances, to catch the cardinals and 
 shut them up, in order that they might be compelled to fill 
 a vacancy in the Papal office. Clement lY. died in 1269, at 
 Yiterbo. The strife between the French and the Italian 
 factions among the cardinals prevented the choice of a suc- 
 cessor for two years and nine months, the longest interreg- 
 
152 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 num that has existed in the whole history of the papacy. 
 During this interval, the citizens of Yiterbo, under the town 
 captain, Kanieri Gatti, not only imprisoned the cardinals in 
 a palace, but resorted to the bold expedient of unroofing the 
 edifice and leaving their eminences to the mercy of the ele- 
 ments, besides diminishing their supplies of food. It was 
 not, however, until a year after this irreverent proceeding 
 that an election was made. Gregory X., who was chosen, 
 was moved, in consequence of these disorders, at the Gen- 
 eral Council at Lyons, held in 1274, to establish fixed regula- 
 tions for the proceedings in the case of the death of a Pope ; 
 and he may be considered the founder of the conclave. 
 His rules have been in various particulars modified by his 
 successors. They are subject to modification at the will of 
 the Pontiffs. At the same time, they still form the basis of 
 the ecclesiastical law on the subject. 
 
 When the Pope dies, the cardinals wait for ten days only 
 for the absent members of their body to appear. 'No notifi- 
 cations are sent out to absentees. They must come, if they 
 come at all, of their own motion. At the end of this time, 
 the cardinals are to enter into conclave in the palace where 
 the Pope died. Each cardinal may now have two attend- 
 ants, who are lodged in two of the three small sleeping apart- 
 ments which, together with another little room, constitute 
 his " cell." The old restrictions as to the supply of food 
 are very much mitigated ; and communication with persons 
 from outside is not absolutely prohibited, except during the 
 time of actual voting, though such communication is not al- 
 lowed to be private. No other business is permitted in the 
 conclave except what pertains to the election of a Pope, un- 
 less measures have to be taken to defend his territory. Of 
 course, this last proviso is now rendered obsolete. A vote 
 of two-thirds is requisite for an election. Cardinals under 
 ecclesiastical censure, or even under excommunication, can- 
 not be excluded from taking part in the assembly. All 
 bargains and prior agreements are solemnly prohibited ; and 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 153 
 
 the electors are bound by stringent oaths to the olDservance 
 of all the regulations which the church has prescribed for 
 the performance of their function. 
 
 On the death of a Pope, the Cardinal Camerlingo (Cham- 
 berlain) is informed of it at once. He proceeds to the room 
 where the dead Pope lies, and strikes his forehead thrice 
 with a little hammer, addressing him, at the same time, by 
 his original name. Receiving no reply, he takes from his 
 finger " the ring of the fisherman," and breaks it. On the 
 tenth day, the cardinals enter into conclave in the chambers 
 which have been set apart for this purpose in the Vatican — 
 if the Pope dies in Rome — and which, in the interv^al, have 
 been walled in, the doors and the windows, with the excep- 
 tion of a narrow space at the top for the admission of light, 
 being closed up with brick and mortar. Within the con- 
 clave everything takes place by rule, under ofiicial supervi- 
 sion. The Pope may be chosen in either of three ways. 
 First, he may be elected by acclamation — also called " in- 
 spiration," or " adoration " — when all the cardinals, gath- 
 ered at the appointed time and place, with one voice desig- 
 nate some individual for this office. Such a mode of elec- 
 tion is of very rare occurrence. Secondly, he may be 
 chosen by direct vote. In this case, as was said above, a 
 candidate must have the suffrages of two-thirds of those who 
 participate in the election. Each cardinal must swear that 
 his ballot is cast for the one whom he deems most fit for the 
 office. The greatest precautions are taken to prevent fraud. 
 The ballot is secret ; the number and motto of each cardinal, 
 however, being recorded on the ballot, which is folded and 
 sealed so that this part of it is not seen, unless it becomes 
 necessary to ascertain by whom the vote was cast. In case 
 no candidate receives two-thirds of the ballots cast, any one 
 who has received a single vote may, nevertheless, be chosen, 
 if a sufficient number who have voted for other persons 
 " accede," to constitute the two-thirds. This is a choice by 
 " accession," and is not imfrequent. Thirdly, a Pope may 
 
164 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 be chosen by compromise. When it is found that the requi- 
 site number of votes cannot be obtained by any one — in 
 other words, when there is a" dead-lock" in the conclave — 
 the business of selection may be delegated to a committee of 
 the cardinals, by whose decision the rest are bound to abide. 
 In this way, the impossibility of an agreement among the 
 electors, and the calamities of a long interregnum have, in 
 noted instances, been avoided. 
 
 Formerly, each of the great Catholic powers have had the 
 privilege of exercising the " veto " upon any obnoxious can- 
 didate for the papacy. But this could be used but once 
 during the process of filling a vacancy by the conclave, and if 
 used at all, was necessarily exerted before the decisive vote 
 had been taken. In the present relation of the papacy to 
 the Catholic powers, it is understood that the exercise of 
 the veto, which is not considered by the Papal canonists as 
 a right, will not be conceded. 
 
 When the choice has been made, a window is opened, and 
 the announcement of the result of the election is made to 
 the throng of people without. The coronation of the Pope, 
 who usually receives the tiara from the oldest cardinal dea- 
 con, takes place on the next Sunday or next festal day after 
 his election. If a deacon, he must first be elevated to the 
 priesthood and the episcopate. During the procession in St. 
 Peter's, as a part of the coronation ceremonies, a little tow 
 is burned, to remind the Pontiff elect of the transitoriness of 
 worldly glory. The enthronement follows the coronation. 
 The Pope assumes another name on his induction into ofiice. 
 The first to do this was Octavianus, in a.d. 956, who adopted 
 the name of John XII. It has been suggested by Roman 
 CathoKc writers even, that his motive was to cover up, as 
 far as might be, the disgrace which his sins and crimes had 
 brought on his former name. 
 
 Yast results have sometimes turned on the action of the 
 conclave. A single illustration may be given. In the sum- 
 mer of 1197, Henry III., a powerful monarch, wore the im- 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 155 
 
 perial crown. His antagonist in the papacy was an old man 
 ninety years of age, Celestine III. So unequally were the 
 papacy and the empire matched. On the 28th of Septem- 
 ber of that year, the Emperor Henry died. A few months 
 later, on the 8th of January, 1198, Celestine also died. On 
 the same day the conclave assembled. A number of votes 
 were cast for one candidate and another ; but these candi- 
 dates themselves united in proposing that Giovanni Lotario 
 Conti should be the Pope, and he was forthwith chosen 
 unanimously, takifig the name of Innocent III. This great- 
 est of the Pontiffs was then in the vigor of life, being only 
 thirty-seven years old. Frederic II., who eventually suc- 
 ceeded to the empire, was at that time a child. In the Pa- 
 pal chair w^as a sagacious and energetic statesman, thoroughly 
 in earnest, and determined to carry the Papal prerogatives 
 to the greatest height. On the other side, there was divi- 
 sion and confusion. Such was the change in the posture of 
 affairs which a few months wrought. 
 
 Yet Innocent, like certain other great Pontiffs, was reluc- 
 tant to take on him the burdens and responsibilities of the 
 office. Gregory I. — Gregory the Great — when he learned 
 of his election, hid himself. He held out in his refusal of 
 the station allotted to him as long as he could. Gregory YII. 
 consented, not~ without an inward struggle, to take the part 
 of leader in the tremendous conflict with secular authority 
 which the Papal office, in his judgment, imposed upon him. 
 Like Calvin afterwards at Geneva, he knew what a struggle 
 awaited him. If Hildebrand was ambitious, it was no vul- 
 gar ambition that inspired him. Innocent II., as long as he 
 was able, withstood the cardinals who were resolved to make 
 him Pope ; and Eugene III. had to be dragged out of his 
 cell, and forced to assume the purple. If there have been 
 ambitious intriguers who have aspired to this lofty distinc- 
 tion, and have climbed to it by flagitious means, there have 
 been others who have sincerely desired to shun so harassing 
 and responsible a station. It is difficult to see how, in the 
 
166 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 present circumstances, any one who values his own ease and 
 comfort can wish to grasp the sceptre which the present 
 Pontiff must soon lay down. 
 
 The pontificate of Pius IX., who was elected Pope as the 
 successor of Gregory XYI., on the 16th of June, 1846, is 
 drawing to a close. Victor Emanuel is no more, and at 
 the death of the present Pontiff, when it shall occur, the two 
 most prominent actors in the drama of recent Italian history, 
 so fraught with momentous events, will have passed off the 
 stage. 
 
 There are two principal eras in the long reign of Pius 
 IX., and two principal sides to his activity. In the first 
 place, he has played a conspicuous part in political affairs. 
 The temporal principality which the Popes had held for a 
 thousand years has been torn from his grasp. Italy has be- 
 come a united kingdom under the house of Savoy, and Rome 
 has become its capital. There are many who recall the start- 
 ling impression made by the liberal measures of Pius IX., on 
 his first accession to power, and the enthusiasm among the 
 friends of Italian liberty which w^as kindled in those days of 
 hope. The intolerable misgovernment in the Papal States 
 imperatively required a radical change in the system of in- 
 ternal administration, and Pius IX. undertook to organize a 
 constitutional monarchy in which laymen should have a large 
 share of power. The reduction of taxes, the liberation of 
 political prisoners, the charters given to railway and tele- 
 graph companies, the improvement of agriculture, the pat- 
 ronage of education, the reform of ecclesiastical institu- 
 tions, the relaxation of restraints upon the press, and other 
 measures consonant in spirit with these, seemed to usher in 
 an utterly new period of liberty and prosperity in the Ro- 
 man kingdom. But the Pope had still larger aims. Italy 
 was groaning under the tyranny of Austria, and of the petty 
 sovereigns who were under Austrian influence. That Italy 
 should be emancipated from oppression, and combine into a 
 
AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 157 
 
 confederation of which the Pope should be the head — ^be- 
 coming thus once more a nation among the nations — ^was an- 
 other design which Pius IX. cherished, and which he hoped 
 to realize. All these fair dreams and bright beginnings were 
 shattered in pieces. The revolutions of 1848 were attended 
 with consequences which the Pope had not foreseen. A tem- 
 pest arose which he could neither quell nor control. On the 
 one hand, there was Austria, which had endeavored to pre- 
 vent his election to the papacy, which had done what it 
 could to baffle his projects of reform and his concessions to 
 liberalism, and which stood in mortal hostility to everything 
 that could be called Italian liberty. On the other hand, 
 there were the Radicals, the republicans of the Mazzini 
 type, who demanded a democratic system, and were deter- 
 mined to wrest all secular authority from ecclesiastics. The 
 Pope found himself in a place where two currents met. 
 The liberals were bent on driving him to a more advanced 
 position than he was prepared to take up, and to involve him 
 in an open war with Austria. The winds were let loose ; 
 
 "Una Eurusqne Notusque ruunt creberque procellia 
 Af ricus, et vastos volvunt ad libera fluctus. " 
 
 How a man of greater talents and sagacity might have suc- 
 ceeded in preserving himself and his cause in such a storm, 
 it is not for us to say. On the 24th of August he fled from 
 Rome to Gaeta. The French occupation of Rome followed. 
 Thenceforward, the idea of liberal and partly lay government 
 for Rome was abandoned by the Pope. The success of 
 France, in alliance with Sardinia, in the war with Austria, 
 paved the way for the extension of the rule of Piedmont 
 over all Italy. The Franco-German war disabled Napoleon 
 III. from longer hindering the consummation of the move- 
 ment which he had helped to initiate. The Papal States 
 were absorbed in the Italian kingdom, and Victor Emanuel 
 took possession of the Quirinal. 
 
 The restoration of the Italian nationality under the auspices 
 
158 THE OFFICE OF THE POPE 
 
 of a limited monarchy and a native dynasty, is one of the 
 most gratifying events which have occurred in our time. 
 The charm wliich Italy must always possess for the histori- 
 cal student is far from being the only source of the interest 
 which we cannot but feel in the fortunes of this beautiful 
 land. This charm is indeed great. What a part have Rome 
 and Italy played for the last twenty-five centuries in the his- 
 tory of mankind ! What a glory rests upon this birthplace 
 and hearthstone of the civilization of Western • Europe, 
 whence law, and literature, and culture have flowed out in a 
 quickening stream upon so many nations of Christendom ! 
 But this interest derived from memorable ages of history 
 Italy shares with other lands — especially with Greece and 
 with Palestine. Athens and Jerusalem are cities which, in 
 some relations, awaken a deeper feeling than Rome itself. 
 But the Italy of to-day is full of a vigorous life. The 
 Italians are a highly intellectual people, l^o statesman of 
 modern times has surpassed in ability, perhaps none has 
 equalled in ability. Count Cavour. The public men of Italy 
 are versed in political science and political economy. ]^o- 
 where else are there to be found persons more competent to 
 deal with great political and social problems. The reinstate- 
 ment of Italy as a power among the nations is adapted to 
 give the deepest satisfaction to thoughtful and good men. 
 If it has not taken place in the way which the Pope would 
 have chosen, if the loss of his temporalities has called out 
 from him bitter reproaches, still the unification of his coun- 
 try is really one of the most beneficent events which signal- 
 ize the annals of his pontificate. 
 
 Not less momentous have been the events of this pontificate 
 within the spiritual sphere. In 1854 Pius IX. invited the 
 Roman Catholic bishops in all the countries to resort to Rome, 
 and with their support and consent, though without the decree 
 of a council, he promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate 
 Conception of the Virgin Mary. This act was contrary to 
 the advice and judgment of many of the most discreet theo- 
 
AND now HE IS CHOSEN. 159 
 
 logians and ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church. It 
 decided authoritatively a point of divinity on which theo- 
 logical opinion from the days of Augustine had been di- 
 vided. Great names in the past could be appealed to in 
 opposition to the new definition. 'No doubt it was repug- 
 nant to the previous opinions and wishes of multitudes from 
 whom no public expression in opposition to it was heard. 
 Moreover, it was the making of a dogma by the Pope's bare 
 authority, with no concurrent action by the episcopate gath- 
 ered in an oecumenical body. In this light it was seen to 
 be a stretch of pontifical prerogatives of a highly portentous 
 character. The influence of the Jesuit Society over the 
 Papal mind was supposed to be further disclosed when, on 
 the 8th of December, 1864, the celebrated Syllabus appeared, 
 in which were condemned a long list of alleged errors, 
 which appeared to include the liberty of the press, secular 
 education, freedom of religious belief and worship, and 
 various other characteristic elements of popular liberty and 
 modern civilization. "Whether the propositions of the Syl- 
 labus were spoken ex cathedra, and addressed to the entire 
 church, or not, is a question on which Poman Catholic au- 
 thorities are not agreed. Dr. l^ewman, in his controversy 
 with Mr. Gladstone, maintained that they are not. Cer- 
 tainly, the assumption that they are absolutely binding on 
 the conscience of all Catholics seriously embarrasses the de- 
 fence of the Poman Catholic system in all free countries. 
 In 1869-70, there followed the great ecclesiastical event of 
 this pontificate, the Vatican Council, by which the infalli- 
 bility of the Pope was decreed. Another question of the 
 highest moment was then^ taken from the category of dis- 
 puted and disputable beliefs, and a decision of it was incor- 
 porated among the Articles of Faith. It is difficult to say 
 how far these extraordinary measures, which have modified 
 in important respects the Poman Catholic Church, and have 
 set up new barriers in the way of compromise and union 
 with opposing systems, emanated from the Pope's own 
 
160 THE POPE AND HOW HE IS CHOSEN. 
 
 natural proclivities, and how far they were inspired by the 
 peculiar influences by which he has been surrounded. At 
 the very moment when the temporal monarchy fell, and the 
 Papal influence in the civil affairs of nations was at the 
 lowest ebb, the spiritual monarchy was carried to the highest 
 pitch of exaltation. The Roman Catholic Church has gen- 
 erally acquiesced in this remarkable change. Men, like Bish- 
 op Hefele, who had just before demonstrated the fallibility 
 of Pope Honorius, accept the new definition. The Old 
 Catholic movement was not without a political importance ; 
 able and cultivated men were enlisted in it ; but apparently 
 it has no strength in the mass of the Catholic population 
 even in Germany. It has no deep root among the people. 
 Pere Hyacinthe stands by himself, refusing to sanction the 
 new dogma, and by an exercise of private judgment decid- 
 ing that the action of the Vatican Council is destitute of 
 03cumenical authority, at the same time that his dissatisfac- 
 tion with the Protestant system of belief and worship keeps 
 him from placing himself within the pale of any of the 
 Protestant religious bodies. 
 
161 
 
 THE RELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND OF 
 ROMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.* 
 
 In this discussion I shall take " civilization " in the broad 
 sense, and include under the term all that enters into the 
 improvement of the individual and of society — all the ele- 
 ments that unite to constitute an advanced stage of human 
 progress. Whenever we contemplate the growth of civili- 
 zation, we should not' confine our attention to the organized 
 institutions, political or ecclesiastical, which minister to the 
 welfare of mankind, but should take into view, also, what- 
 ever influences spring from the individual and contribute to 
 his well-being. In other words, the term " civilization " in- 
 cludes culture. .The inventions and discoveries that lighten 
 the burden of labor and conduce to material comfort, the 
 safeguards of law, refined sentiments, literature, art, and sci- 
 ence, the amenities of social intercourse — all that raises man 
 above the rude and narrow life of the barbarian is embraced 
 in this comprehensive term. In defining civilization, how- 
 ever, it has been justly said that no nation can be considered 
 highly civilized in which a small class is possessed of the 
 benefits of scholarship, the charm of polished manners, and 
 the conveniences and luxuries derived from wealth, at the 
 same time that the bulk of the population are sunk in pov- 
 erty and ignorance, perhaps degraded to a condition of serf- 
 dom. Nor can that nation be deemed civilized, in the fuU 
 idea of the word, where the fine arts flourish while agricul- 
 ture and the mechanic arts are in a low state. Civilization 
 
 * A Paper read at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, 
 October, 1873. 
 
162 THE RELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND 
 
 should involve something like an impartial or proportionate 
 development of the capacities of man and a fair distribution 
 of social advantages. It should likewise carry within it the 
 germ of further and indefinite progress. 
 
 We are absolved from inquiring, in this place, what sort 
 of a civilization could exist, and how long it were possible 
 for civilization to continue, without any aid from religion. 
 Whoever believes in the teachings of Christ needs no argu- 
 ment to convince him that Christianity is essential to the en- 
 during life of all that is excellent and lioble in the products 
 of human activity. " Ye are the salt of the earth." It is 
 clear that Christianity, from the moment when it first 
 gained a foothold in the Roman Empire down to the pres- 
 ent time, has never ceased to exert a profound influence up- 
 on society. Of the several agencies which have chiefly con- 
 spired to determine the course and the character of modem 
 history, Christianity and the church are first in importance. 
 Attribute whatever weight we may to the legacy that was 
 transmitted from the nations of antiquity, or to the pecu- 
 liar genius of their barbarian conquerors, every discerning 
 student must allow to Christianity the predominant part in 
 moulding the history of the European communities now on 
 the stage of action. 
 
 No enlightened Protestant, in our day, will be inclined to 
 disparage the wholesome influence which the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church may still exert in certain places and over certain 
 classes of people. We are not disposed to undervalue the 
 benefits which that church, in the middle ages, when it was 
 the only organized form of Christianity in Western Europe, 
 conferred on society. We are even quite willing to concede 
 that the papacy itself, the centralized system of rule, which 
 has been the fountain of incalculable evils, was providentially 
 made productive of important advantages during the period 
 when ignorance and brute force prevailed, and when anarchy 
 and violence constituted the main peril to which civilization 
 was exposed. Let us thankfully acknowledge the debt that 
 
OF EOMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 163 
 
 is due to the mediaeval church for preserving from utter de- 
 struction the remains of ancient literature and art, for train- 
 ing the minds of undisciplined men, and imparting to them 
 what knowledge had outlived the wreck of ancient power 
 and culture, and for curbing the passions and softening the 
 manners of rude peoples. Christianity in the mediaeval 
 church existed in a corrupt form, but its life was not extinct, 
 and it operated as a leaven, according to the promise of its 
 Author- Our attention is to be directed to more recent 
 times. We have to compare the influence of Komanism 
 with that of Protestantism, as that influence is seen in the 
 course of the last three centuries, and as it is deducible from 
 the nature of the respective systems. 
 
 There is one point of contrast between the two systems 
 which deserves to be placed in the foreground of our inquiry. 
 The Roman Catholic system is the rule of society by a sacer- 
 dotal class. This is a fundamental characteristic of that 
 system. The guidance of the conscience of individuals, and 
 of the policy of nations, so far as their policy may be thought 
 to touch the province of morals and religion, is relegated to 
 a body of priests, or, according to the recent Vatican Coun- 
 cil, to their head. The authority to decide upon the ques- 
 tions of highest moment resides in this body of ecclesiastics. 
 It is not, indeed, like those hereditary priesthoods which are 
 separated by an impassible barrier from other orders of men, 
 and which are found, as an established aristocracy, in certain 
 oriental religions. E^evertheless, it is a limited class, ad- 
 mitting to its ranks none whom it chooses to exclude, and 
 assuming the exalted prerogative of pronouncing infallibly 
 upon questions of truth and duty, and of conveying or with- 
 holding the blessings of salvation. Protestantism denied 
 this prerogative. It broke down the wall of separation be- 
 tween priest and layman. It accorded to the laity the full 
 right to determine for themselves those questions over which 
 the clergy had claimed an exclusive jurisdiction. It declared 
 that the heavenly good offered in the Gospel is accessible to 
 
164 THE RELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND 
 
 the humblest soul, without the intervention o£ a mediatorial 
 priesthood. The emancipation of the laitj from clerical rule 
 is one of the prime characteristics of the Reformation. 
 
 1. Protestantism, as compared with the opposite system, 
 sets free and stimulates the energy, intellectual and moral, 
 of the individual, and thus augments the forces of which 
 civilization is the product. The progress of civilization, in 
 the long course of history, is marked by the growing respect 
 paid to the rights of the individual, and the ampler room 
 afforded for the unfolding of his powers, and for the realiz- 
 ing of his aspirations. There was something imposing in 
 those huge despotisms — Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia — 
 in which a multitude of human beings were welded together 
 imder an absolute master. Such empires were an advance 
 upon a primitive state of things, where every man's hand 
 was against his neighbor. Yet they were a crude form of 
 crystallization ; and they were intrinsically weak. The little 
 cities of Greece, with their freer political life, and the larger 
 scope which they allowed for the activity and the culture of 
 the individual — communities of citizens — proved more than 
 a match for the colossal might of the East. Among the 
 Greeks and Romans, however, although governments of law 
 had supplanted naked force, the state was supreme, and to 
 the state the individual must yield an exclusive allegiance. 
 It was a great gain when the Christian church arose, and 
 when the individual became conscious of an allegiance of the 
 soul to a higher kingdom — an allegiance which did not sup- 
 ersede his loyalty to the civil authority, but limited while it 
 sanctioned this obligation. But the church itself at length 
 erected a supremacy over the individual, inconsistent with 
 the free action of reason and conscience, and even stretched 
 that supremacy so far as to dwarf and overshadow civil so- 
 ciety. It reared a theocracy, and subjected everything to its 
 unlimited sway. The Reformation gave back to the indi- 
 vidual his proper autonomy. The result is a self-respect, an 
 intellectual activity, a development of inventive capacity, 
 
OF KOMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 165 
 
 and of energy of character, which give rise to such achieve- 
 ments in science, in the field of political action, and in every 
 work where self-reliance and personal force are called for, as 
 would be impossible under the opposite system. In the 
 period immediately following the Reformation, signal proofs 
 were afforded of this truth. The little States of Holland, 
 for example, proved their ability to cope with the Spanish 
 Empire, to gain their independence, and to acquire an opu- 
 lence and a culture which recalled the best days of the 
 Grecian republics. They beat back their invaders from their 
 soil, and sent forth their victorious navies upon every sea, 
 while at home they were educating the common people, 
 fostering science and learning, and building up imiversities 
 famous throughout Europe. England, in the age of Eliza- 
 beth, proved that the native vigor of her people was re-en- 
 forced in a remarkable degree by the stimulus derived from 
 the peculiar genius of the Protestant religion. It was the 
 period when she was acquiring her naval ascendancy ; the 
 period, likewise, of Shakspeare, Bacon, and Raleigh. Who 
 can doubt that the United States of America are — not in- 
 deed wholly, but in great part — indebted to their position, 
 as contrasted with that of Mexico and the political communi- 
 ties of South America, to this expansion of the power of 
 the individual, which is the uniform and legitimate fruit of 
 Protestant principles ? 
 
 2. The spirit of Protestantism favors universal education. 
 The lay Christian, who is to read and interpret the Scrip- 
 tures, and to take part in the administration of government 
 in the church, must not be an illiterate person. Ivnowledge, 
 mental enlightenment, under the Protestant system, are in- 
 dispensable. The weight of personal responsibility for the 
 culture of his intellectual and spiritual nature, which rests 
 on every individual, makes education a matter of universal 
 concern. Far more has been done in Protestant than in 
 Roman Catholic countries for the instruction of the whole 
 people. It is enough to refer to the common-school system 
 
166 THE RELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND 
 
 of Holland, and of New England, and to Protestant Ger- 
 many, to show how natural it is for the disciples of the 
 Reformation to provide for this great interest of society. 
 
 The free circulation of the Bible in Protestant lands has 
 disseminated an instrument of intellectual, as well as of re- 
 ligious, improvement, the good effect of which is immeasura- 
 ble. As a repository of history, biography, poetry, ethics, as 
 well as a monitor to the conscience and a guide to heaven, 
 the Bible has exerted an influence on the common mind, in 
 all Protestant nations, which it would be difficult to exag- 
 gerate. The practice of interpreting the Bible and of ex- 
 ploring its pages for fresh truth affords a mental discipline 
 of a very high order. How often have the Scriptures car- 
 ried into the cottage of the peasant a breadth and refinement 
 of intellect which otherwise would never have existed, and 
 which no agency employed by the Poman Catholic system, 
 in relation to the same social class, has ever been able to 
 engender ! 
 
 3. That Protestantism should be more friendly to civil 
 and religious liberty than the Poman Catholic system would 
 seem to follow unavoidably from the nature of the two 
 forms of faith. Protestantism involves, as a vital element, 
 an assertion of personal rights with respect to religion, the 
 highest concern of man. Moreover, Protestantism casts off 
 the yoke of priestly rule, and puts ecclesiastical government, 
 in due measure, into the hands of the laity. As we have 
 already said, it is a revolt of the laity against a usurped 
 ecclesiastical authority. 
 
 The Church of Pome teaches men that their first and 
 most binding duty is to bow with unquestioning docility and ' 
 obedience to their Heaven-appointed superiors. How is it 
 possible that Protestantism should not foster a habit of mind 
 which is incompatible with a patient endurance of tyranny 
 at the hands of the civil power ? How can Protestantism, 
 inspiring a lively sense of personal rights, fail to bring with 
 it, eventually at least, a corresponding respect for the rights 
 
OF KOMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 167 
 
 of others, and a disposition to secure their rights in forms of 
 government and in legislation ? How can men who are ac- 
 customed to judge for themselves and act independently in 
 church affairs manifest a slavish spirit in the political 
 sphere? On the contrary, the habit of mind which the 
 Roman Catholic nurture tends to beget leads to servility in 
 the subject toward the ruler, as long as an alliance is kept 
 up between sovereign and priest. It is true that the Church 
 of Rome can accommodate itself to any of the various types 
 of political society. Her doctors have at times preached an 
 extreme theory of popular rights and of the sovereignty of 
 the people. While the state is subordinate to the church, 
 any form of government may be tolerated ; and there may 
 be an interest on the part of the priesthood in inculcating 
 political theories which operate, in their judgment, to weaken 
 the obligations of loyalty toward the civil magistrate, and to 
 exalt, by contrast, the divine authority of the church. When 
 the civil magistracy presumes to exercise prerogatives, or to 
 ordain measures, which are deemed hurtful to the ecclesias- 
 tical interest, a radical doctrine of revolution, even a doctrine 
 of tyrannicide, has been heard from the pulpits of the most 
 conservative of religious bodies. 
 
 Generally speaking, however, the Church of Rome is the 
 natural ally and supporter of arbitrary principles of govern- 
 ment. The prevailing sentiment, the instinctive feeling, in 
 that church, is that the body of the people are incapable of 
 self -guidance, and that to give them the reins in civil affairs 
 would imperil the stability of ecclesiastical control. To this 
 reasoning it is often replied by advocates of the Roman 
 Catholic system that Protestantism opens a door to bound- 
 less tyranny by leaving the temporal power without any check 
 from the ecclesiastical. The state, it is said, proves omni- 
 potent ; the civil magistrate is delivered from the whole- 
 some dread of ecclesiastical censure, and is left free to exer- 
 cise all kinds of tyranny, without the powerful restraint to 
 which he was subject under the mediaeval system. He may 
 
168 THE RELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND 
 
 even violate the rights of conscience with impunity. The 
 state, it is sometimes said, when released from its subordi- 
 nate relation to the church, is a godless institution. It be- 
 comes, like the pagan states of antiquity, absolute in the 
 •province of religion as in secular affairs, and an irresistible 
 engine of oppression. It must be admitted that Protestant 
 rulers have been guilty of tyranny ; that, in many instances, 
 they cannot be cleared of the charge of unwarrantably inter- 
 fering with the rights of conscience, and of attempting to gov- 
 ern the belief and regulate the forms of worship of their sub- 
 jects, in a manner destructive of true liberty. The question 
 is, whether these instances of misgovernment are the proper 
 fruit of the Protestant spirit, or something at variance with it, 
 and therefore an evil of a temporary and exceptional character. 
 
 The imputation that the state as constituted under Prot- 
 estantism is heathen depends on the false assumption that 
 the church, and the priesthood as established in the Roman 
 Catholic system, are identical, or so nearly identical that one 
 cannot subsist without the other. It is assumed that when 
 the supervision and control which the Church of Rome as- 
 pires to exercise over the civil authority is shaken off, noth- 
 ing is left but an unchristian or antichristian institution. 
 The«f act that a layman can be as good a Christian as a priest 
 is overlooked. The Christian laity who make up a common- 
 wealth, and the Christian magistrates who are set over 
 them, are quite as able to discern, and quite as likely to re- 
 spect personal rights, and to act for the common weal, as if 
 they were subject to an organized priesthood. 
 
 Since the Reformation, a layman has been the head of the 
 English Church and State, and civil magistrates in England 
 have borne a part in ecclesiastical government. Without 
 entering into the question of the righteousness or expediency 
 of establishments, or broaching any of the controverted 
 topics connected with this subject, we simply assert here 
 that the civil government of England is not to be branded 
 as unchristian or antichristian on account of this arrange- 
 
OF ROMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 169 
 
 ment. As far as the administration of pubKc affairs in that 
 country has been characterized by justice and by a regard 
 for the well-being of all orders of people, the government 
 has been Christian — as truly Christian, to say the least, as if 
 the supremacy had been virtually lodged with the Pope, or 
 with an aristocracy of priests. 
 
 History verifies the proposition that Protestantism is fav- 
 orable to civil and religious freedom, and thus promotes the 
 attainment of the multiplied advantages which freedom 
 brings in its train. The long and successful struggle for in- 
 dependence in the ^Netherlands, the conflict which estab- 
 lished English liberty against the despotic influence of the 
 House of Stuart, the growth and establishment of the Re- 
 public of the United States, are events so intimately con- 
 nected with Protestantism and so dependent upon it, that 
 we may point to them as monuments of the true spirit and 
 tendency of the reformed religion. That religious persecu- 
 tion has darkened the annals of the Protestant faith, and 
 that the earliest leaders in the Reformation failed to recog- 
 nize distinctly the principle of liberty of conscience, must be 
 admitted. But Protestantism, as is claimed, at the present 
 day, both by its friends and foes, was illogical, inconsistent 
 with its own genius and principles, whenever it attempted 
 to coerce conscience by punishing religious dissent with the 
 sword and the fagot. Protestants illustrate the real charac- 
 ter and tendency of their system by deploring whatever acts 
 of religious persecution the predecessors who bore their 
 name were guilty of, and by the open and sincere advocacy 
 of religious liberty. Liberty of thought, and freedom of 
 speech and of the press, however restricted they may have 
 been by Protestants in times past, it is the tendency of 
 Protestantism to uphold. It is more and more recognized 
 that freedom in the investigation of truth, and in the publi- 
 cation of opinions, is required by the true principles of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 On the other hand, the dogma of persecution has never 
 
170 THE BELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND 
 
 been authoritatively disavowed by the Church of Rome. 
 Who has ever done penance for St. Bartholomew's day and 
 the burning of IIuss ? Even at present this hateful dogma 
 is boldly professed by the organs of the ultramontane party, 
 which is now in the ascendant. It is difficult to see how 
 these doctrines can be given up by a church which attributes 
 to every one of the long line of Pontiffs infallibility on ques- 
 tions of morals. In recent times the doctrine of " liberty of 
 conscience " and of worship has been branded by Pius IX., 
 in an address to all bishops — branded, therefore, ex cathedra 
 — as an error to be abhorred and to be shunned as the con- 
 tagion of a pestilence. The recent dogma of the Council of 
 the Vatican involves a formidable attack upon civil liberty, 
 ^his new article of belief subjects all civil legislation to the 
 moral criticism of the Pope of Rome, and binds every mem- 
 ber of the Roman Catholic Church, whether ruler or sub- 
 ject, to submit to his decision. Xo limit is set to the power 
 of the priest to uitermeddle with the governments that ac- 
 knowledge his jurisdiction. 
 
 4. Protestantism has bestowed a great boon upon civili- 
 zation in supplanting the ascetic type of religion. Christi- 
 anity came not to destroy, but to fulfill. It was not to su- 
 persede any one of the normal activities, or to proscribe any 
 of the legitimate products of human exertion. It was to 
 mingle in the earthly pursuits of mankind, a renovating and 
 purifying influence. Family life, letters, art, science, amuse- 
 ment, trade, and' commerce were to suffer no blight, but 
 were rather to experience a quickening and, at the same 
 time, an elevating power from contact with the Gospel. 
 Christ bade his followers not to retreat from the world, but 
 to stay in it and transform it. The kingdom of God on 
 earth was to draw within it all that is pure and admirable 
 in the infinitely diversified works and achievements of the 
 natural man. It was not to be a ghostly realm of devotees, 
 but a society of men and women, not indifferent to the labors 
 and pleasures that pertain to this life, but infusing into all 
 
OF ROMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 171 
 
 things a spirit of religious consecration. The ascetic type of 
 religion interposes a gulf between religion and the business 
 of the world, between things natui-al and supernatural. The 
 creation of a separate priesthood, who are cut off from 
 family life and from the ordinary relations of society, exem- 
 plifies the ascetic tendency, which appears more or less dis- 
 tinctly throughout the Roman Catholic system. The effect 
 of the compulsory rule of celibacy is to attach a stigma to 
 the institution of marriage and to the domestic relations. 
 These relations are held to involve an inferior condition of 
 sanctity. Apart from all the other evils which are connected 
 with the law of celibacy, it strikes a blow at the sacredness 
 of an institution on which the interests of civilization essen- 
 tially depend. But the ascetic spirit, the unauthorized di- 
 vorce of things sacred and secular, penetrates much further. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact in history that the rise of com- 
 merce helped to midermine the authority of the clergy, and 
 was one of the potent instruments in educating the Euro- 
 pean mind for the revolt of Protestantism. Commerce, it 
 is true, produced a keenness and sagacity of intellect, and 
 led to an activity of social movement and intercourse, which 
 tended to break the yoke of superstition. Municipalities of 
 busy merchants soon began to chafe under the sway of ec- 
 clesiastics. Independently, however, of these peculiar ef- 
 fects of trade, there was a secret but growing consciousness 
 that great industrial enterprises and secular activity do not 
 find any link of connection with the ascetic type of religion. 
 They may get from it a bare toleration, but they must look 
 elsewhere for a sanction and a baptism. 
 
 5. The Protestant religion keeps alive in the nations that 
 adopt it the spirit of progress. There may exist a high de- 
 gree of civilization in certain respects, but a civilization 
 which has ceased to expand through forces inherent in itself. 
 China is an example. There may be a richer and more 
 complex development which yet culminates, and, thence- 
 forward, either remains stationary, or, which is more likely 
 
172 THE RELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND 
 
 to occur, becomes degenerate and goes backward. The civi- 
 lization of the ancient Roman empire is a signal case of 
 such an arrest of progress and of such a decadence. The 
 spirit of progress, the fresh and unexhausted energy and 
 hopefulness, with the consequent rapid growth in material 
 and intellectual achievements which distinguish the Protes- 
 tant nations, are due, not to characteristics of race alone, 
 nor to incidental advantages of any kind, but, in a great de- 
 gree, to their religion. There is a disposition to look for- 
 ward as well as backward, to expect a future greater than 
 the past, and to believe in the practicableness of carrying 
 improvement to heights heretofore unattained. France is 
 a prosperous and highly civilized nation ; but of all coun- 
 tries nominally Eoman Catholic, France is the one in which 
 the Church of Eome has had the feeblest sway, and the one 
 most alive to the influences wliich Protestantism and the 
 Protestant civilization of other European nations have set in 
 motion. The effect of the reactionary Catholicism that fol- 
 lowed the Reformation upon the nations of Southern Eu- 
 rope was deadening. In the decay of the Renaissance, 
 music, painting, and poetry revived, in the ferment of relig- 
 ious enthusiasm excited by the Catholic reaction ; but the 
 intellectual vigor of Italy and Spain beneath the iron tread 
 of the Inquisition was soon crushed. The history of these 
 naturally gifted peoples, subjected to the stifling atmosphere 
 of ecclesiastical tyranny, is a convincing illustration of the 
 fatal effect of such a system. The present aspect of South 
 America and Mexico, when compared with the American 
 communities which have been reared on Protestant founda- 
 tions, impressively exhibits the same thing. 
 
 Roman Catholic polemics maintain that Protestantism is 
 responsible for the skepticism and unbelief that prevail so 
 extensively among Christian nations. They assert that there 
 has arisen in the wake of Protestantism a spirit of irrelig- 
 ion which threatens to subvert the social fabric. The causes 
 
OF ROMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 173 
 
 of this evil, however, do not lie at the door of Protestant- 
 ism. The free inquiry that had developed in Europe in 
 connection with the revival of learning could not be smoth- 
 ered by mere authority. The earnest religious feeling which 
 the Reformation at the outset brought with it counteracted 
 the tendencies to unbelief, for a time, at least ; and it was 
 only w^hen Protestantism departed from its own principles, 
 and acted upon the maxims of its adversary, at the same time 
 losing the warmth of religious life so conspicuous at the be- 
 ginning, that infidelity had a free course. The ideas which 
 Plutarch long ago embodied in his treatise on superstition 
 and unbelief are well founded. They are two extremes, 
 each of which begets the other. Kot only may the artificial 
 faith which leads to superstitious practices, and drives its 
 devotees to fanaticism, at length spend its force, and move 
 the same devotees to cast off the restraints of religion ; but 
 the spectacle of superstition, also, repels more sober and 
 courageous minds from all faith and worship. Such has 
 been the notorious effect of the superstitious ceremonies and 
 austerities of the Poman Catholic system, both in the age 
 of the Renaissance and in our own day. Religion conies to 
 be identified, in the opinions of men, with tenets and ob- 
 servances which are repugnant; to reason and common sense ; 
 and hence truth and error are thrown overboard at once. 
 
 Disgusted with the follies which pass under the name of 
 religion, and attract the reverence of the ignorant, men 
 make shipwreck of faith altogether. The same baleful in- 
 fluence ensues upon the attempt to stretch the principle of 
 authority beyond the due limit. It is like the effect of ex- 
 cessive restraint in the family. A revolt is the consequence 
 wherever there is a failure to repress mental activity and to 
 enslave the will. The subjugation of the intelligence which 
 the Roman Catholic system carries with it as an essential 
 ingredient compels a mutiny which is very likely not to stop 
 with the rejection of usurped authority. There is a general 
 source of unbelief which is independent of the influence of 
 
174 THE RELATION OF PROTESTANTISM AND 
 
 any particular form of religion. Rationalism lias been cor- 
 rectly described as the fruit of the understanding stepping 
 beyond its sphere, and supplanting the normal action of 
 the moral and religious nature. It is due to a one-sided, 
 exclusive, and narrow activity of a single function of the 
 intellect, at the expense of conscience and the intuitive 
 power. 
 
 Such, for example, was the character of that skepticism 
 which the Sophists encouraged, and which Socrates, appeal- 
 ing directly to the immediate, ineradicable convictions of 
 the soul, did so much to overthrow. When the free and ac- 
 countable nature of the soul, and the aspirations and presenti- 
 ments, as profound as they are natural, of the spirit of man, 
 are flippantly set aside to make room for something called 
 " science," which is converted by its votaries into a fetich, 
 infidelity is the inevitable consequence. There is nothing 
 in Protestant principles, rightly understood, to warrant or 
 to induce such a procedure. Looking at the matter histori- 
 cally, we find that, in the age prior to the Reformation, un- 
 belief was most rife in Italy, the ancient centre of the Ro- 
 man Catholic hierarchy. In recent times, skepticism is no- 
 where more prevalent than among the higher, cultivated 
 classes in Roman Catholic countries, where the doctrines of 
 that religion have been perpetually taught, and where its 
 ritual has been celebrated vnth most pomp. 
 
 To the relation of Protestantism and Romanism to spe- 
 cial evils that afflict our modern civilization, it is hardly 
 possible within the space given to this Paper to allude. War 
 is still a terrible scourge of nations. It is obvious that the 
 power of the Church of Rome, as an organized body, to 
 avert war, even between countries owning its authority, 
 amounts to nothing. It has been reserved for two English- 
 speaking nations, professing the Protestant faith, to furnish, 
 as they have lately done, an impressive proof of what may 
 be accomplished by the peaceful method of arbitration. 
 The church of old favored the emancipation of slaves ; but 
 
OF ROMANISM TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 175 
 
 slavery was abolished in the United States with little or no 
 help from the ecclesiastics of the Roman Church. 
 
 In the disposition to minister to poverty and to the va- 
 rious forms of physical distress, Roman Catholics, be it said 
 to their honor, vie with Protestant Christians. But, this 
 may be claimed for Protestantism, that its disciples are 
 more zealous to devise the means of prevention, to explore 
 these great evils to their sources, and then to apply radical and 
 permanent remedies. Political economy and social science, 
 although still immature, flourish chiefly under the auspices of 
 Protestant Christianity. There are questions, of which the 
 " labor question," as it is called, is one of the most promi- 
 nent, with which neither church can be said to have fully 
 grappled. But Protestantism has a better promise of con- 
 tributing to the solution of these grave and portentous prob- 
 lems than the opposite system ; for the laborer has no real 
 quarrel with the Protestant religion. The hostility of the 
 laboring class to a priestly system may take the form of a 
 hatred to religion itself ; but better teaching and a true 
 spirit of philanthropy may give them the needed light. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church is at present engaged in the 
 hopeless struggle to uphold in the midst of modern society 
 the religious ideas and customs of the middle ages. A 
 dictatorial attitude toward the civil authority, the manage- 
 ment of education by ecclesiastics, an appeal to the senses 
 by a gorgeous ritual, an exorbitant demand upon the cred- 
 ulity of mankind by unverified miracles and prodigies, an 
 attempt to revive pilgrimages and other obsolete or obsoles- 
 cent superstitions, an increased devotion to the Virgin Mary, 
 which borders on idolatry — such are some of the character- 
 istics of this movement. It is the endeavor to reinstate or 
 maintain a type of civilization on which history has pro- 
 nounced a final verdict. 
 
176 THE RELATION OF THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES.* 
 
 Certain events connected with the recent conference of 
 the Evangelical Alliance in this country have brought up 
 anew for discussion the attitude of the Church of England, 
 at present and in the past, towards the other Protestant 
 churches. It is well known that there is now, and long has 
 been, a party in the Episcopal Church, who have refused to 
 hold communion with other Protestant bodies, for the rea- 
 son that these discard the episcopal polity, and that their 
 ministers are not ordained by bishops. This party, which 
 goes by the name of the High Church, is composed of two 
 subdivisions. The one class is made up of those who carry 
 their views of doctrine and their notions of worship to the 
 verge of Romanism, and look with more or less yearning 
 towards the Greek and Latin churches, whose doctrine of 
 transubstantiation is regarded with less aversion than is felt 
 towards the prevailing opinions of Protestants respecting 
 the sacrament. The other class are hostile to Rome, and to 
 the ritualism that copies her ceremonies, but maintain the 
 exclusive sanctity of episcopal ordination, and, therefore, 
 stand aloof from the other churches of the Reformation. 
 The Church of England, with its offshoots and branches, is, 
 in their system, the one true church, with which alone it is 
 lawful to have ecclesiastical communion. All other churches 
 are shut out of ecclesiastical fellowship, either as being non- 
 episcopal, or, like Rome, as being corrupt. 
 
 Now there is a class of writers of the High Church party 
 
 * An Article in The New-Englander for January, 1874. 
 
TO THE OTHEE PEOTESTANT CHUECHES. 177 
 
 who seek to convey the impression, sometimes by direct as- 
 sertion, and sometimes by more indirect means, that the 
 Churcli of England, in the first centmy after the Reforma- 
 tion, or in the period prior to Laud and to the act of uni- 
 formity under Charles II., professed the theories which they 
 now profess, and stood in the isolated and exclusive position 
 in which their party, since the middle of the seventeenth 
 century have striven to hold her. We do not mean to im- 
 pute this flagrant perversion of historical truth to all writers 
 of the High Church school. There are candid scholars 
 among them, like Keble, who discern and acknowledge facts, 
 even when they militate against a party interest. Much 
 less do we charge this kind of misrepresentation upon the 
 writers of the Episcopal Church generally. Historical stu- 
 dents who pursue these investigations without being warped 
 by theological prejudice, are generally well agreed on the 
 facts of the English Reformation. Hallam, Macaulay, and 
 the other standard historians, state with substantial correct- 
 ness the transformations which took place between the time 
 of Cranmer and the eras of Laud and Sheldon. Authors 
 who are strongly averse to Puritanism, and warmly attached 
 to the episcopal side in the controversy between Churchman 
 and Puritan, but who are too honest to be misled, or to mis- 
 lead their readers, through partisan feeling, are equally com- 
 mendable. The following passage from Lathbury's History 
 of English Episcopacy, the work of a writer of this stamp, 
 will illustrate our remark, and, at the same time, present 
 some of the facts, which we shall establish in the course of 
 this Article : — 
 
 "The Eng-lisli Reformers did not contend for any system of govern- 
 ment or discipline in the church, as being ^'wre divino ; things indifferent, 
 as ceremonies and clerical habits, were left to the civil magistrates. Nor 
 did they refuse to recognize the validity of ordination in those foreign 
 churches that had renounced episcopacy." "The question of church 
 government was vehemently agitated at this period [the reign of Eliza- 
 beth] . The Reformers were agreed that no precise form was laid down 
 in the New Testament ; but when the Puritans became divided into two 
 
178 THE EELATTON OF THE CnURCII OF ENGLAND 
 
 parties, the Presbyterian party advocated the divine right of their sys- 
 tem. Cranmer and all the Reformers asserted that the form of govern- 
 ment was left to the civil magistrate to determine, according to times 
 and circumstances. The prelates of this reign maintained the same views ; 
 but like the earlier Reformers, they considered episcopacy, as retained 
 in the English Church, to have been the apostolic practice. They did not, 
 however, consider any mode of government essential to the constitution 
 of the church ; hence the validity of ordination as exercised in those re- 
 formed churches where episcopacy was not retained, was admitted. By 
 an act passed in the thirteenth year of this reign, the ordinations of for- 
 eign reformed churches were declared valid, and their ministers were ca- 
 pable of enjoying preferment on receiving a license from the bishop.* 
 Many who had received ordination abroad were allowed to exercise their 
 ministry in the Church of England, provided they conformed. Travers, 
 Whittingham, Cartwright, and many others had received no other, and 
 their ordination was never questioned, f At a subsequent period this 
 practice was denounced ; and in 1662, it was ordered that no minister 
 should exercise his office in the Church of England who had not received 
 episcopal ordination. It appears that the Reformers did not contend for 
 the superiority of the office of bishop as a distinct order from the priest- 
 hood, but as different only in degree. Nor did any member of the Church of 
 England claim this distinction, till the year 1588, when Bancroft, in his 
 celebrated sermon at Paul's Cross, asserted it." "Laud's notions on the 
 subject of church government were at variance with those adopted by many 
 of his predecessors, who, until the time of Bancroft, never claimed a divine 
 right for the government of the English Church ; and even Bancroft ad- 
 mitted the validity of Presbyterian ordination ; for when it was suggested 
 in 1610, that the Scotch bishops elect should be ordained presbyters, he 
 opposed on the ground that ordination by presbyters was valid." X 
 
 We quote the passages, not because we approve every 
 sentence, but as, on the whole, a just exhibition of the facts, 
 and as showing how a fair-minded churchman, who is, also, 
 a thorough student, is capable of writing. 
 
 The following extract is from a writer of another type of 
 theology and of churchmanship, but an accomplished his- 
 torical scholar, Dean Stanley : — 
 
 " Whether from policy or necessity, the whole settlement of modern 
 Scottish Episcopacy was far more Presbyterian, far less Episcopal and 
 
 * Strype's Annals, 524. 
 
 f [That is, until the new spirit, described in the next sentence, arose.] 
 
 X Lathbury, History oftheEnylish Episcopacy^ pp. 19, 63, 170. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CFJURCUES. 179 
 
 Catholic, than in any country in Europe. Doubtless this was partly oc- 
 casioned by the fact, that in England itself the sentiment toward Presby- 
 terian churches was far more generous and comprehensive in the century 
 that followed the Reformation than it was in that which followed the 
 Kestoration. The English Articles are so expressed as to include the re- 
 recognition of Presbvterian ministers. The first English Act of Unifor- 
 mity was passed with the expressed view of securing their services to 
 the English Church. The first English Reformers, and the statesmen of 
 Elizabeth, would have been astonished at any claim of exclusive sanc- 
 tity for the Episcopal order." * " It was not Knox, but Andrew Melville, 
 who introduced into Scotland the divine right of Presbytery, the sister- 
 dogma of the divine right of Episcopacy, which Bancroft and Laud intro- 
 duced into England." " It is this (the Church of Scotland] for which 
 every English churchman is asked to pray, by the canons of the English 
 Convocation, which enjoins that prayers are to be offered up 'for Christ's 
 Holy Catholic Church, that is, for the whole congregation of Christians 
 dispersed throughout the whole world, especially for the Churches of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland.' * There can be no doubt,' says the can- 
 did and accurate annalist of Scottish Episcopacy, ' that the framers of 
 this have meant to acknowledge the northern ecclesiastical establishment 
 at that time Presbyterian, as a Christian Church-' "f " The very first 
 declaration which the sovereign makes — taking precedence even of the 
 recognition of the rights and liberties of the English Church and nation, 
 which are postponed till the day of the coronation — is that in which, on 
 the day of the accession, the sovereign declares that he or she will main- 
 tain inviolate and intact the Church of Scotland." '' In the Act of Union 
 itself, which prescribes this declaration, the same securities are through- 
 out exacted for the Church of Scotland as were exacted for the Church of 
 England ; and it is on record that, when that act was passed, and some 
 questions arose amongst the peers as to the propriety of so complete a 
 recognition of the Presbyterian Church, the then primate of all England, 
 the ' old rock,' as he was called, Archbishop Tenison, rose, and said with 
 a weight which carried all objections before it, * the iiarrow notions of all 
 churches have been their ruin. I believe that the Church of Scotland 
 though not so perfect as ours, is as true a Prot^tant church as the 
 Church of England.' " X 
 
 * See this well drawn out in Lord 3Iacaulay*8 correspondence with the 
 Bishop of Exeter ; and in Principal Tulloch's Article on the English and 
 Scottish Churches, in the Contemporary Review, December, 1871. 
 
 f See the discussions of the canons of 1603, in Grub [Ecd. Hist, of Scot- 
 land], ii,282. 
 
 J Carstairs' Stat€ Papers, 739, 760. [Stanley's Lectures on t7i€ Eigtory 
 of the Church of Scotland, pp. 47, 66, 67. (Am. ed. )] 
 
180 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 The drift of the representations of secular historians of 
 the highest credit, may be learned from the following pas- 
 sage from Hallam, himself a churchman, and an authority 
 of the first rank upon questions of legal and constitutional 
 history : — 
 
 * ' The system pursued by Bancroft and his imitators, Bishops Neyle and 
 Laud, with the approbation of the king, far opposed to the healing coun- 
 sels of Burleigh and Bacon, was just such as low-bom and little-minded 
 men, raised to power by fortune's caprice, are ever found to pursue." 
 ' ' They began by preaching the divine right, as it is called, or absolute 
 indispensability, of episcopacy ; a doctrine of which the first traces, as I 
 apprehend, are found about the end of Elizabeth's reign. They insisted 
 on the necessity of episcopal succession regularly derived from the apos- 
 tles. They drew an inference from this tenet, that ordinations by pres- 
 byters were in all cases null ; and as this affected all the Reformed churches 
 in Europe except their own, the Lutherans not having preserved the suc- 
 cession of their bishops, while the Calvinists had altogether abolished 
 that order, thej'^ began to speak of them, not as brethren of the same 
 faith, united in the same cause, and distinguished only by differences 
 little more material than those of political commonwealths (which had 
 been the language of the Church of England ever since the Reform atioYi), 
 but as aliens to whom they were not at all related, and schismatics with 
 whom they held no communion ; nay, as wanting the very essence of a 
 Christian society." In the foot-note, Hallam adds that ''it is evident, 
 by some passages in Strype, attentively considered, that natives regularly 
 ordained abroad, in the Presbyterian churches, were admitted to hold pre- 
 ferment in England ; the first bishop who objected to them seems to have 
 been Aylraer. Instances, however, of foreigners holding preferment 
 without any reordination may be found down to the civil wars." — Annals 
 of the Reformation, ii., 522, and Appendix, 116; Life of Grindal, 271 ; 
 Collier, ii., 594; Neal, i., 258.* 
 
 Since the late meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, Bishop 
 Cummins, in a letter to the ]}^ew York Tribune, referred to 
 tlie fact that Presbyterian ministers, in the period following 
 the Reformation, had been admitted to parishes in England 
 without reordination ; and he referred, among his authori- 
 ties, to Prof. Fisher's work on the Eef ormation. The state- 
 ment was denied by the Eev. Dr. Drumm, in communi- 
 
 ♦ Const History (Harpers' Am. ed.), p. 226. 
 
TO THE OTHKR PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 181 
 
 cations to the same journal. Prof. Fisher published two 
 letters in the Tribune in proof of the assertion ; and these 
 letters we propose to transfer to our pages, partly for the 
 purpose of giving them a more permanent form, and partly 
 in order to illustrate their contents by further proofs and 
 observations, such as could not well find place in the columns 
 of a daily newspaper. As several topics belonging to the 
 same general subject are handled in these letters, and will 
 be considered in the pages which follow, we set forth dis- 
 tinctly the main propositions, which we conceive to be as 
 capable of being established as any facts in the ecclesiastical 
 history of England : 
 
 1. The first and second generation of English Reformers, 
 Cranmer and his associates. Jewel and his contemporaries, 
 did not hold the^W^ divino^ or exclusive, theory of episco- 
 pacy. 
 
 2. The Church of England, in the sixteenth century, was 
 in full communion with the other Protestant churches of 
 Europe. 
 
 3. The greatest divines in the Church of England in the 
 seventeenth century agreed with Hooker in acknowledging 
 the validity of Presbyterian ordination, and in the recogni- 
 tion of the foreign Protestant churches. This was true of 
 Ussher, Hall, and Stillingfleet, and of others of hardly less 
 distinction. 
 
 4. The fellowship with the foreign churches on the part 
 of the English Reformers was not owing to forbearance in 
 them, but to the common opinion that each nation, or 
 church, could shape its own polity, and that episcopacy 
 might be adopted or rejected as each church or nation 
 should see fit to determine. 
 
 5. Notwithstanding the changes in the Prayer-Book and 
 in the law of England, at the Restoration, the Church of 
 England has never, by law or s^modal action, discredited the 
 validity of the ordination practiced in other Protestant 
 bodies. 
 
182 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 We print below the first letter, in the form in which it 
 was published in the Tribune^ but with the addition of a few 
 marginal notes. 
 
 Sir : In two communications which have lately appeared in your jour- 
 nal, I am mentioned among writers who have stated that, for a consider- 
 able period after the Reformation, persons who had only received non- 
 episcopal ordination were admitted to parishes in the English Church, no 
 objection being made to the validity of their orders. As the correctness 
 of this assertion is directly impugned by the Rev. Dr. Drumm, and as the 
 question is a historical one of some interest, and a question, too, that 
 need not provoke sectarian asperity, I beg leave to offer a vindication of 
 the truth of the statement which your correspondent has called in ques- 
 tion. 
 
 The statement is usually made as one illustration of the fact that the 
 founders of the Anglican Church in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward 
 VI., and Elizabeth — Cranmer and his associates, Jewel and the Eliza- 
 bethan bishops and divines of his time— did not hold to the j^^re divino 
 theory of episcopacy. That is to say, they did not consider bishops, 
 meaning a class elevated above presbyters, essential to the existence of a 
 church, and they did not regard Episcopal ordination as indispensable to 
 the exercise of the functions and prerogatives of the Christian ministry. 
 On the contrary, they looked upon the Protestant ministers on the Con- 
 tinent in the Lutheran Church, and in the Reformed Churches in Switzer- 
 land, France, and Holland, as on a perfect equality with themselves with 
 regard to clerical rights and qualifications. Differences arose among the 
 Protestant churches on the subject of the Eucharist, but as to contro- 
 versy about episcopacy, in that age there was none. When Cranmer 
 called eminent divines from the churches on the Continent to help him 
 compose the formularies of the Anglican Church, and to train the minis- 
 ters of England at Oxford and Cambridge, this was not an exceptional act, 
 but in keeping with his avowed principles and constant practice. No one 
 who is acquainted with Cranmer's opinions, can suppose that the circum- 
 stance that Martyr and Bucer had once taken orders in the Roman Church 
 had a feather's weight in determining him to invite them to England^ 
 any more than a like fact influenced him in the case of John Knox, who 
 was made Chaplain-in-ordinary to Edward VI., was commissioned for sev- 
 eral years as a preacher in the north of England, was offered the parish 
 of All-Hallows in London, and finally a bishopric. Fagius, who was the 
 companion of Bucer and Martyr, had been a minister in Germany, made 
 such, of course, without Episcopal consecration ; and it is not true that 
 he was called merely to teach the Hebrew language at Cambridge, as a 
 Jew might teach. He was to expound the Old Testament, beginning 
 with the prophet Isaiah, and he was welcomed from the beginning by 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTEST ANT CHURCHES. 183 
 
 Cranmer as an intimate counsellor and friend. That Fagius, a minister 
 of high standing in Germany, would have accepted such an appointment 
 from those who denied his right to exercise the ministry, is something 
 quite incredible. Cranmer went so far as to declare, in a written docu- 
 ment, in 1540, that no consecration of bishops or priests is necessary, 
 "for election or appointment thereto is sufficient." (Burnet, I., ii.. Col- 
 lection of Records, iii., 21.) That Cranmer referred to ordination, and not 
 to institution merely, is made perfectly clear by the same document. 
 The voluminous correspondence of the eminent English divines and re- 
 formers, which has been published principally from the archives of Zu- 
 rich, must convince every candid person who examines it, that no sus- 
 picion of a want of validity in the orders of the Helvetic ministers, whose 
 advice they so frequently sought, and whose hospitality they enjoyed, 
 ever entered their minds. No man who has read, for example, the nu- 
 merous letters of Bishop Cox, a warm defender of the English liturgy 
 against the Puritans, to Gualter, the son-in-law of Zwingle — his "beloved 
 Rodolph," as Cox styles him — will have the effrontery to affirm that the 
 English bishop looked on his Swiss friend and adviser as one who had no 
 right to exercise the functions of the ministry. In the last days of Ed- 
 ward VI., Cranmer was corresponding with Calvin, Bullinger, andMelanch- 
 thon, in order to bring together a general synod of the Protestants, where 
 a platform of doctrine might be made, in which their disagreement re- 
 specting the Lord's Supper — the only serious point of difference — might 
 be adjusted. There is no trace of the exclusive, or jure divinOy theory 
 of episcopacy, in the writings of Cranmer, Parker, Grindal, and Whit- 
 gift, the first four Protestant archbishops of Canterbury. Whether Ban- 
 croft broached it in his sermon at Paul's Cross, is still a controverted 
 point; Hallam maintains that he did not. That this theory, which, in 
 its logical consequences, would "unchurch" the other Protestant relig- 
 ious bodies, and discredit the orders of their ministry, does not appear 
 until about the time of Hooker, is granted by Keble in the elaborate es- 
 say prefixed to his edition of Hooker's writings. It certainly sounds 
 strange to hear Keble, all whose prepossessions were on the side of the 
 High Church doctrine, charged with error for conceding what, if the evi- 
 dence in the case had not required, he would surely have been very loth 
 to admit. But Keble had carefully and thoroughly explored the histori- 
 cal question, as his essay abundantly shows. 
 
 The opinion of Protestants of the English Church in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury on this subject was closely connected with two other facts which de- 
 serve special attention. The first was the prevailing doctrine at that time 
 that bishops do not constitute a distinct order in the ministry, but that 
 bishops and presbyters are different grades of the same office. This was 
 a common view in the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages, since 
 an ecclesiastical arrangement was thought to have the force of an institu- 
 tio divina. The miracle of the Eucharist being the highest act which the 
 
184 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 clergyman could perform, and this being open to the priest, it was plausi- 
 bly argued that there can be no order of ministers above him. This 
 ground was taken, even by a Pope, Urban II,, and is sanctioned by the 
 most orthodox of the schoolmen. Those who are curious to see the proofs 
 of this statement may be referred to Gieseler's Church llutory (Am. ed., 
 i. , p. 91, n.). The same fact respecting the mediseval opinion is proved 
 in a work which has always been held in high honor by Episcopalians, 
 Field's 'Treatise on the Church (b, iii. , p. 39),* Cranmer subscribes to 
 this old opinion of the original and essential identity of the office of bishop 
 and that of presbyter. He held that " in the New Testament there is no 
 mention made of any degrees or distinctions in orders, but only of deacons 
 or ministers, and of priests or bishops. " Thirteen bishops, with a great 
 number of other ecclesiastics, subscribed to this proposition. See Bur- 
 net's Collection of Records^ II., i. iii., 21.) Bishop Jewel, one of the great 
 lights of the English Reformation, in his celebrated "Defence" of the 
 Church of England, and in his " Apology," took no other ground. He 
 falls back on the doctrine that " bishops are greater than presbyters by 
 order and custom of the church, and not by the truth of God's ordi- 
 nance." (Jewel's Writings, Parker Soc. ed., 1., p. 379.) f This is the 
 
 * "These being the divers sorts and kinds of ecclesiastical power, it 
 will easily appear unto all that enter into the due consideration thereof, 
 that the power of ecclesiastical or sacred order, that is, the power and 
 authority to intermeddle with things pertaining to the service of God, 
 and to perform eminent acts of gracious efficiency, tending to the procur- 
 ing of the eternal good of the sons of men, is equal and the same in all 
 those whom we call presbyters, that is, fatherly guides of God's church 
 and people : and that only for order's sake and the preservation of peace 
 there is a limitation of the use and exercise of the same." Dean Field 
 states that the Romanists themselves concede this, and adds: " Whereby 
 it is most evident that that wherein a bishop excelleth a presbyter, is not 
 a distinct power of order, but an eminency and dignity only, specially 
 yielded to one above all the rest of the same rank, for order's sake, and to 
 preserve the unity and peace of the church." That Dean Field is here 
 stating his own opinion is made perfectly evident by the context. See, 
 also, b. v., c. 27, where the same doctrine is laid down. 
 
 f "St. Hierome saith generally of all bishops: noverint Episcopi se 
 magis consuetudine, quam dispositioni^ dominiccB Deritate, preshyteris esse 
 majores : ' let bishops understand that they be greater than the priests 
 by order and custom (of the church), and not by the truth of God's ordi- 
 nance,' If Christ, as St. Hierome saith, appointed not one priest above 
 another, how then is it likely he appointed one priest to be, as M, Hard- 
 ing saith, prince and ruler over all priests throughout the whole world ? " 
 In another place, Jewel says: "Is it so horrible an heresy as he [Hard- 
 
TO THE OTHER PEOTESTANT CHURCHES. 185 
 
 explicit doctrine of Dean Field, in the passage to which I have just re- 
 ferred. 
 
 The second circumstance which it is important to notice, is the preva- 
 lent belief in the system of national churches, and the adoption by many, 
 of the Erastian theory of the supremacy of the civil magistrate in eccle- 
 siastical affairs. The first Reformers in England were of this mind, and 
 the English Reformation was effected under this theory. Calvin opposed 
 it, and fought out the battle at Geneva in behalf of the right of the 
 church, by its own organs, to excommunicate unworthy members. Cal- 
 vinists generally resisted the Erastian doctrine in its extreme form ; yet 
 they conceded to the magistrates of each country a large measure of 
 power in matters of religion. The bishops of Elizabeth found it very 
 hard, however, to yield up to their imperious sovereign that extent of 
 control which she demanded ; as the suspension of Archbishop Grindal 
 and many other events of like cljaracter illustrate. The main point here 
 is that the Anglican divines paid a great respect to national churches and 
 to the right of each country to frame its own church institutions, and to 
 order its own church affairs. 
 
 ing] maketh it, to say that by the Scriptures of God a bishop and a priest 
 are all one." Then Jewel proceeds to quote Chrysostom, Jerome, and 
 other fathers in support of the doctrine that they are the same. P. iii,, 
 p, 439 {Defence of the Apology). Thomas Becon, chaplain to Cranmer, 
 and Prebendary of Canterbury, writes, in his Catechism: '"'' Fath&r. — 
 What difference is there between a bishop and a spiritual minister ? Son. 
 — None at all : their office is one, their authority and power is one. And, 
 therefore, St, Paul calleth the spiritual ministers sometime bishops, some- 
 time elders, sometime pastors, sometime teachers, etc." The same doc- 
 trine is in The Institution of a Christian Man, published by authority 
 in 1537, Pilkington, the first Protestant bishop of Durham, writes in 
 1561 : '' The privileges and'superiorities which bishops have above other 
 ministers, are rather granted by man for maintaining of better order and 
 quietness in commonwealths, than commanded by God in his Word. Min- 
 isters have better knowledge and utterance some than other, but their 
 ministry is of equal dignity," (Pilkington's Works^ Parker Soc. ed-, p. 
 493,) The same doctrine is taught by Fulke, Master of Pembroke Col- 
 lege. In Blunt's Annotated Prayer-Book^ the notes to which are from 
 the High Church point of view, it is said : " It was not until the close of 
 the sixteenth century that the distinction between the orders of bishops 
 and priests was asserted. On Feb. 9, 1589, Dr, Bancroft, in a sermon, 
 maintained the superiority of bishops /wre <Z^«^/^o / the doctrine was com- 
 pletely acknowledged during the primacy of Laud, and enforced by Bishop 
 Hall in a well-known treatise on the subject " (p. 5G6). Of Bishop Hall's 
 qualified form of t\iQJure divino doctrine, we shall speak hereafter. 
 
186 THE RELATION OF THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 The conflict with the Puritans, which began with the accession of Eliza- 
 beth, had become stern and bitter in the time of Wbitg-ift. But this in- 
 flexible enemy of Puritanism never calls in question the validity of the 
 method of ordination prevailing in the churches abroad. He conducts 
 his whole controversy with Cartwright, the Presbyterian champion, with- 
 out any assertion of the jure divino doctrine of episcopacy. Field, the 
 celebrated Dean of Gloucester, the warm friend of Hooker, also, as we 
 have said, defends the foreign churches, and maintains the sufiBciency of 
 their orders. Whether Hooker himself holds that the right to establish 
 or abolish episcopacy is included in that broad legislative jurisdiction 
 which he attributes to the church, is a question of interpretation on 
 which opinion is divided. In settling this question much depends on our 
 judgment respecting the integrity of the last three books of his treatise. 
 This is certain, however, that he recognized the validity of the ordina- 
 tion of the ministers of the Reformed churches on the Continent. He 
 finds in their circumstances an excuse for their practice. Hooker never 
 questioned, c^ thought of questioning, the right of a Huguenot or a Ger- 
 man minister to dispense the sacraments. 
 
 There was nothing, then, in the principles of the Church of England, 
 in the period of which we are speaking, that was incompatible with the 
 granting of a parish to a minister ordained through presbyters alone. 
 That is, there was no difficulty from any supposed defect in his ordina- 
 tion. The statute of the thirteenth of Elizabeth was a part of her coer- 
 cive measures for securing uniformity. It required all ministers who 
 had been ordained by any other method than that prescribed under 
 Edward YI., to present themselves before the bishop, and give their ap- 
 proval of the Articles of Religion. The terms of the act cover the case 
 of Roman Catholic priests, and also the case of Protestant ministers 
 who might have been ordained abroad, whether in Scotland, or on the 
 Continent, during the period of exile in the preceding reign. That the 
 law wa^ designed to refer to this second clas§, as well as to the other, has 
 been affirmed by English historians and theologians of every party. 
 Strype says that they were " undoubtedly " meant. It is now denied by 
 your correspondent that such cases ever existed. He sets aside the au- 
 thority of Hallam, who deliberately affirms that " instances of foreigners 
 holding preferment without any reordination may be found down to the 
 civil wars." {Const. Hist, Harper's Am. ed. , p. 226.) To contradict 
 Hallam on a matter of this sort one should be very sure of his ground. 
 Your correspondent dismisses Macaulay in an equally summary manner, 
 as one ''full of party prejudice." Macaulay is a somewhat rhetorical 
 writer : and in the multitude of details which crowd his history, a few 
 errors have been detected. But no man was more familiar with the 
 times of which he wrote, and he is not an inaccurate author. Your cor- 
 respondent likewise d'smisses Bishop Burnet with a disparagement which 
 I believe to be scarcely less unjust. Even Strype, he thinks, is not to be 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 187 
 
 tarusted. But here come Bishop Fleetwood and Bishop Cosin.* Both 
 are witnesses of unimpeached veracity. Bishop Cosin has personally 
 known of individuals who had taken English parishes with only Presbyte- 
 rian orders, and knew of many other cases before his time. This would 
 strike one as conclusive testimony. But as Bishop Cosin did not specify 
 the cases, his declaration is not to be accepted ! Fleetwood was born 
 sixteen years after 1641, the latest date at which instances of this sort 
 could have occurred, and therefore he is not to be believed ! As if per- 
 sons who took parishes before 1G41 might not have lived long enough for 
 Fleetwood to know them ; and as if a man cannot get credible informa- 
 tion respecting anything prior to his birth ! It would be instructive to 
 see what would become, on such principles of reasoning, of accepted ar- 
 guments from what Irenseus and other fathers say of the constitution of 
 the church before their time. 
 
 These witnesses, then, to whom your correspondent alludes, fully es- 
 tablish the fact which he seeks to disprove. But there are other proofs, 
 equally if not more decisive. Lord Bacon probably wrote his Adver- 
 tisement concerning Controversies of the Church of England, in 1589. In 
 the course of this tract he adverts to the gradual sharpening of the an- 
 tagonism between the two contestants, the Puritan and the Churchman. 
 He says that stiff defenders of episcopacy were beginning to condemn 
 their opponents as a "sect." "Yea," he adds, "and some indiscreet 
 persons have been bold in open preaching to use dishonorable and deroga- 
 tive speech and censure of the churches abroad ; and that so far as some 
 of our men, as I have heard, ordained in foreign parts, have been pro- 
 nounced to be no lawful ministers. Thus we see the beginnings were 
 modest, but the extremes were violent, so as there is almost as great a dis- 
 
 * Fleetwood became a bishop in 1708. He says: "During the reigns 
 of King James and King Charles I., and to the year 1661, we had many 
 ministers from Scotland, from France, and the Low Countries, who were 
 ordained by presbyters only, and not bishops, and they were instituted 
 into benefices with cure .... and yet were never reordained, but only 
 subscribed the Articles." Bishop Cosin says of the ministers of the 
 French Reformed Church, that in the event of " their receiving a 
 public charge or cure of souls among us (as I have known some of them 
 to have so done of late, and can instance in many others before my time) 
 our bishops did not ordain them." " Nor," he adds, "did our laws re- 
 quire more of such ministers than to declare their public consent to the 
 religion received amongst us, and to subscribe the Articles established.'* 
 (Letter to Mr. Cordel.) Bishop Cosin, a leader of the High Church party, 
 was born in 1594. He retired to France during the civil war, and at the 
 restoration was made a bishop. Bishop Hall's perfectly decisive testi- 
 mony we present on a later page. 
 
188 THE RELATION OF THE CHrECH OF ENGLAND 
 
 tance of either side from itself as was at the first of one from the other." 
 This he accounts for on the ground that the partisans of the High Church 
 Bide had become ''exasperate through contentions." I cannot imagine 
 how this piece of evidence can be invalidated, unless, indeed, it should 
 be said that Lord Bacon did not mention names ! There were ministers 
 — "our men," they are called —ministers in the English Church, who had 
 not been episcopally consecrated, and, hence, were denounced as having 
 no right to exercise the ministry. 
 
 The cases of Whittingham and Travers, to which your correspondent 
 appeals, so far from tending, when they are fairly stated, to support his 
 position, strongly tend to overthrow it. Whittingham had written a pre- 
 face to Goodman's book against the government of women, which was a 
 companion piece to Knox's famous Blast of the Trumpet, on the same 
 theme. * He was opposed to the imposition of the vestments, and wrote 
 against it. On the 19th of July, 1562, he had been made Dean of Dur- 
 ham. There was a kind of stajiding conflict between him and Sandys, 
 Archbishop of York, his Metropolitan. The Archbishop at length at- 
 tempted to depose him by denying that he had ever been ordained. A 
 Commission of Inquiry was appointed, which came to no result. In 1578, 
 a second commission was appointed. The Dean, who was powerfully 
 supported, died before the affair was terminated or a decision reached. 
 It is true, as your correspondent states, that he claimed to have been or- 
 dained at Geneva, according to the method of the Reformed Church 
 there. But there is another most material fact which your correspondent 
 leaves out. This statement of Whittingham was denied by Sandys, who 
 claimed that he had not been thus ordained, but had been ordained by a 
 few lay persons in a private house. The proceeding was looked upon by 
 many as a reflection upon the Church of Geneva. This was the feeling 
 of the Lord President, the Eari of Huntington, who wrote to Burleigh that 
 " his lordship could judge what flame this spark was likely to breed, if it 
 should kindle ; for it could not but be ill taken by all the godly learned, 
 both at home and in all the foreign churches abroad, that we should al- 
 low of the popish massing priests in our ministry, and disallow of the min- 
 isters made in a Reformed Church." On the other side, the Archbishop's 
 Chancellor reported that Whittingham had not proved that he had been 
 ordained "at Geneva according to the order of the Genevan [oflBce or 
 book], by public authority established there." (Strype, Annals, Oxford 
 
 * Whittingham was one of the leaders of the Anti-Liturgical party at 
 Frankfort, during the reign of Mary. He retired to Geneva, and took 
 part in the translation of the Geneva Bible, There is the best reason 
 for believing that if Whittingham and Travers had not been obnoxious on 
 account of their Puritanism, there would have been no proceedings against 
 them. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTEST ANT CHURCHES. 189 
 
 ed., II., ii., 170.) The Archbishop asserted that "neither in Geneva nor 
 in any Reformed church in Europe it could be proved that any such or- 
 ders were ever used or allowed of." In short, the attempt to depose 
 Whittingham was defended on the ground that he had not been ordained 
 according to the Geneva method ; and there is a pretty strong implica- 
 tion that, if he had been, there would be no ground for the proceeding 
 against him. Is it not a case of exceptio prohat regulam f 
 
 Travers was a candidate for the oflBce of Master of the Temple, where 
 he was a preacher at the time when Hooker was appointed to the place. 
 Travers was a strict Calvinist and a strenuous Puritan. On this last ground 
 he was peculiarly obnoxious to Whitgift. Whitgift resolved to silence 
 him, and alleged as a reason that he had not been properly ordained, 
 Travers replied that he had been ordained at Antwerp, after the method 
 of the Dutch churches ; and asserted that mahy others, who had been 
 ordained in Scotland and elsewhere abroad, had held offices in the Eng- 
 lish Church — a statement which, as he was a man of acknowledged ve- 
 racity, must be believed. He appealed to the statute of the 13th of 
 Elizabeth. Whitgift is careful not to deny the validity of Presbyterian 
 ordination, such as was practiced in the foreign churches. His ground 
 was that Travers had gone abroad out of dislike to the "order of his 
 own country " — the method of ordination in the English Church ; that 
 he had been ordained by such ''as had not authority to ordain him." 
 The charge was that Travers was a schismatic ; that, being in the Church 
 of England, he ran abroad — " gaddeth into other countries" — and there 
 got himself ordained, as was said, by Cartwright, and Villers, a Frenchman. 
 In this case, as in that of Whittingham, there is no impeachment of the 
 ordination of foreign ministers generally, but rather an implied admis- 
 sion of its validity. Travers urged that Christ's Church being one, every 
 person who has received ordination in one branch of it must be received 
 as a minister in every other. Whitgift, in his annotations upon Travers' 
 paper, refers to the fact that the French Church, when a minister comes 
 to them from abroad, require something more than proof of his ordina- 
 tion, and subject him to an additional " calling." When the Archbishop, 
 in his note, remarks that the churches which allowed of Presbytery " are 
 an exception to the rule," he refers to the rule to which Travers appealed, 
 viz. : that a minister in one place is a minister everywhere. The Presby- 
 terian churches, Whitgift means to say, did not sanction this rule. Whit- 
 gift, as we have said, in all his conflicts with the Puritans, never denies the 
 validity of Presbyterian ordination, as'established in the foreign Protes- 
 tant churches. Travers, notwithstanding his deposition, which was ac- 
 complished with difficulty, was called to Dublin by Archbishop Loftus, 
 and made Master of Trinity College, where he had for one of his pupils 
 Archbishop Ussher, then in his youth. 
 
 The act of the 13th of Elizabeth continued in force until the Restora- 
 tion of Charles II., when, in 1663, the statute for uniformity was passed. 
 
190 THE RELATION' OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 which forbade any person to hold any benefice, or to administer the sac- 
 rament of the Lord's Supper " before he be ordained a priest by Episco- 
 pal ordination." This statute took away the last protection which the 
 law afforded to clergymen who had not been ordained by a bishop. 
 
 The different attitude in relation to other Protestant bodies and to their 
 ministry, which the English Church assumed under Laud, as compared 
 with its position during the first three Protestant reigns, is a fact as well 
 attested by the consent of historical scholars of various and conflicting 
 schools as anything else in the ecclesiastical history of England. The 
 reign of James I. formed the transition to this new position. The participa- 
 tion of dignitaries of the English Church in the Synod of Dort, was one of 
 the last conspicuous acts of fellowship with the Reformed Churches of 
 the Continent. The Puritan controversy naturally led to this result. The 
 Puritans were at first treated as schismatics, mutineers against the Na- 
 tional Church established by public authority. It was natural that the 
 churches abroad, whose principles the Puritans espoused, should eventu- 
 ally be included in the same condemnation, and be pronounced destitute 
 of a duly ordained ministry. Especially was this natural when a great 
 part of the Puritans themselves claimed a, jure dioino sanction and an ex- 
 clusive right for their own favorite system of polity. 
 
 To enter into the merits of this great controversy, which rent English 
 Protestantism in twain, is no part of my present purpose. Even at this 
 late day it may not be perfectly easy to hold the scales of judgment even ; 
 but there ought to be no dispute about the facts. 
 
 To the list of witnesses to the fact of the admission of 
 ministers, not ordained by bishops, to spiritual preferment 
 in England, is to be added the name of Bishop Hall, who 
 was the most conspicnous defender of episcopacy just prior 
 to the civil war. In his Defence of the Ilmnhle JRemon- 
 strance^ which was written at that time, he says : " I know 
 those, more than one, that by virtue only of that ordination 
 which they have brought with them from other reformed 
 churches, have enjoyed spiritual promotions and livings, 
 without any exception against the lawfulness of their call- 
 ing." Such testimony would seem to be sufficient to con- 
 vince the most skeptical. The gravest objection which is 
 urged against proofs of this character is that the witnesses 
 5o not give names ! Then, when the Evangelists tell us 
 that many people went to hear John the Baptist, we must 
 discredit them because they do not mention names and 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 191 
 
 places of residence. As we have brought forward proofs 
 derived from Episcopal sources, we may certainly be per- 
 mitted, by way of corroboration, to add the statement of the 
 learned Puritan historian, Neal, whom it is too much the 
 fashion of the High Church school to disparage. Speaking 
 of the state of things about the year 1580, he says : " The 
 statute of the 13th Eliz., cap. xii., admits the ministration of 
 those who had only been ordained according to the manner of 
 the Scots, or other foreign churches : there were some scores, 
 if not hundreds, of them now in the church." * The case of 
 John Morrison, who was licensed by Archbishop Grindal, in 
 1582, to preach and administer the sacraments in the prov- 
 ince of Canterbury, has often been referred to. The license 
 was issued, with the assent of the Archbishop, by Dr. Aubrey, 
 the vicar-general; and it describes Morrison as one who 
 had been ordained according to the " laudable form and rite 
 of the Eef ormed Church of Scotland," which at that time was 
 essentially Presbyterian. There is no reason to doubt that 
 his ordination was by the synod of the County of Lothian. 
 
 The following is Professor Fisher's second letter to the 
 Tribune. 
 
 Sir : I have to acknowledge the courteous tone of the Rev. Dr. 
 Drumm's communication, in which he makes another attempt to dis- 
 prove the statement that Presbyterian ministers were once admitted to 
 parishes in the Church of England without reordination. But, after 
 having read his acute and learned argument, I miist still decline to com- 
 ply with his invitation to retract the assertion, for the reason that I am 
 fully convinced of its truth. The testimony of Lord Bacon, which Dr. 
 Drumm does not notice ; of Bishop Cosin — I know of no reason for ques- 
 tioning the genuineness of his letter — of Bishop Fleetwood, of Bishop 
 Burnet, and of Strype, not to speak of other proofs, appears to me quite 
 sufficient to establish the fact.f The circumstance that the witnesses do 
 not mention the names of persons and of parishes only shows the absence 
 of all anticipation that at some remote day their statement would be 
 called in question. I am confirmed in the opinion that they are correct, 
 
 * History of the Puritans^ P. I. , c. vi. 
 
 f For the conclusive testimony of Bishop Hall, see p. 190. 
 
192 THE RELATION OF THE CHUBCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 from the fact that the validity of Presbyterian ordination was not ques- 
 tioned in the Church of England at that time, and that the relations of 
 England with Scotland, and with the Continent, especially after the de- 
 feat of the Protestants in Germany by Charles V. , and during the Marian 
 period, were such as would naturally bring into England ministers who 
 had received ordination in the Protestant churches abroad. I am further 
 strengthened in this opinion by the authority of such historians as Hallam 
 and Macaulay, to say nothing of Lathbury and others of less note, and by 
 the concurrence of Episcopal theologians who have studied the subject, 
 likeKeble.* 
 
 I have no occasion to engage in a debate with Dr. Drumm about the 
 merits of English historical writers. I would only remind him that Hal- 
 lam published his last revision of the ConsUixdional History^ the best and 
 most thorough of all his works, in 1846. Dr. Drumm is mistaken in say- 
 ing that Hallam offers no evidence of his statement in regard to the ad- 
 mission of Presbyterian ministers to parishes. Dr. Drumm probably re- 
 ferred to the second passage in which Hallam makes this assertion, and 
 overlooked the first, with which the marginal references are connected. 
 Everybody knows that Macaulay paints in strong colors ; but a few in- 
 stances of error, as when he confounds George Penn the pardon-broker 
 with William Penn the Quaker, only set in relief the miraculous reten- 
 tiveness and almost unfailing accuracy of his memory. As to Burnet, I 
 think Macaulay right, who says of the charge of inaccuracy brought 
 against him : "I believe the charge to be altogether unjust. He appears 
 to be singularly inaccurate only because his narrative has been subjected 
 to scrutiny singularly severe and unfriendly." Burnet was born in Scot- 
 land about the beginning of the civil war in England ; he was personally 
 familiar with both countries, and with the churches abroad ; and he was 
 an honest man. When, therefore, in explaining the Act of Uniformity 
 of 1661, he says (in the History of Ms own Time) : "Another point was 
 fixed by the Act of Uniformity, which was more at large formerly ; those 
 who came to England f roin the foreign churches had not been required to 
 be ordained among us ; but now all that had not Episcopal ordination 
 were made incapable of holding any ecclesiastical benefice " — I believe 
 that he tells the truth. 
 
 * Keble says : "Nearly up to the time when he [Hooker] wrote, num- 
 bers had been admitted to the ministry of the Church in England, with 
 no better than Presbyterian ordination, and it appears by Travers's Suppli- 
 cation to the Council that such was the construction not uncommonly put 
 upon the statute of the 13th of Elizabeth, permitting those who had re- 
 ceived orders in any other form than that of the English Service Book, on 
 giving certain securities, to exercise their calling in England." — Preface to 
 Hookefs Works, vol. 1., xxvi. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 193 
 
 Dr. Drumm seems to differ from me in relation to the date when the 
 jure divino doctrine of episcopacy began to be promulgated in the Church 
 of England, He attributes this doctrine to Whitgift, Archbishop of Can- 
 terbuiy, in the closing years of Elizabeth's reign. In this Dr. Drumm is 
 surely wrong. If the passage which he quotes warranted the inference 
 which he draws from it, it would stand in flagrant contradiction to the 
 whole tenor of Whitgift' s writings, and to his explicit affirmations. By 
 the jiwe divino doctrine is meant not simply that episcopacy existed in 
 the apostolic age, under the sanction of the apostles, but that it is a per- 
 petual and indispensable form of polity. Whitgift believed in the apos- 
 tolic origin of episcopacy, and that it ought to be continued ; but he did 
 not deny that churches, with a lawful ministry, could exist without it. 
 In the letter to Beza, from which Dr. Drumm has quoted, which was 
 written as late as 1593, he says : " There is no mortal man more studious 
 of the peace of the church than myself ; nor one who, frora his soul, 
 more truly wisheth that every particular church would mind its own busi- 
 ness, and not prescribe the laws of rites and the manner of government 
 to others." This practice it is, he adds, '* which bringeth forth that un- 
 happy estrangement of souls among brethren," He agrees with Beza 
 that * ' liberty was to be left to every church, in rites and such externals, 
 so that they be made to edification." "I pray," he says, "that you 
 would go on, by your daily prayers poured forth to God, to help us and 
 the whole Church of England, which we do diligently for you and your 
 church settled there with you." In the same letter, Whitgift says tffat 
 Sutcliff's book (published in 1591) was the first attack that had been 
 made in England against the Presbyterian system as it existed abroad ; 
 and that this was provoked by the long- continued aspersions cast upon 
 the English system by the Puritans and by their foreign abettors. * In 
 the preface to the "Defense" against Cartwright, Whitgift says of "the 
 order of things external, touching the government of the church and ad- 
 ministration of the sacraments : " "We do not take upon us (as we are 
 slandered) either to blame or to condemn other churches, for such orders 
 as they have received most fit for their estates." Elsewhere he says : 
 " That any one kind of government is so necessary that without it the 
 church cannot be saved, or that it may not be altered into some other 
 kind thought to be more expedient, I utterly deny." He cites with ap- 
 proval the declaration of Calvin that "in ceremonies and external disci- 
 pline, He [GodJ hath not in Scripture particularly determined anything, 
 but left the same to His church, to make or to abrogate, to alter or con- 
 tinue, to add or to take away, as shall be thought from time to time most 
 convenient for the present state of the church," " Wherein," says Whit- 
 gift, " do we agree with the Papists ? or wherein do we dissent from the 
 Reformed Churches ? With these we have all points of doctrine and 
 
 f Strype, Life of Whitgift, b. iv., c. x. 
 
194 THE EELATION OF THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 
 
 substance common ; from the other we dissent, in the m6st part both of 
 doctrine and ceremonies." * The episcopacy which Whitgift advocates 
 is a superiority of one minister over other ministers in office or degree, as 
 an arrangement of government, for the sake of union and discipline. 
 Kome to him is still *' Antichrist," and the foreign churches of the Prot- 
 estants are recognized and honored as they were by Cranmer and Parker. 
 
 The jure dimno theory dates from the era of Laud. It is intimately 
 connected with the sacerdotal idea of episcopacy which, prior to that 
 date, however it may have been suggested, had not gained a foothold in 
 the Church of England, and had been repudiated in the teaching of her 
 greatest reformers and divines. It was one item in that accusation 
 against Laud which cost him his head, that, as a part of a scheme for 
 "Romanizing" the Church of England, he had broken ofiE communion 
 with the Protestant churches abroad, and had tried to lead Bishop Hall 
 to lay down a theory of episcopacy that would exclude them from fellow- 
 ship. Clarendon, describing the causes of the civil war, states how, a few 
 years before its commencement, the foreign churches in England, which 
 had before been cherished and protected, were broken up, on the osten- 
 sible ground that they lent aid and comfort, by their example and other- 
 wise, to the Puritans. This harsh measure of the government he explains 
 by the fact ' ' that the power of churchmen grew more transcendent, and, 
 indeed, the faculties of the lay-counsellors more dull, lazy, and inactive." 
 Then he relates how a new policy was adopted by the English ambassa- 
 dors abroad, which turned the foreign Protestants against the English 
 king :— 
 
 *' Whereas in all former times, the embassadors, and all foreign minis- 
 ters of state, employed from England into any parts where the reformed 
 religion was exercised, frequented their churches, gave all possible coun- 
 tenance to their profession, and held correspondence with the most active 
 and powerful persons of that relation, and especially the embassador 
 lieger at Paris, from the time of the Reformation, had diligently and 
 constantly frequented the church at Charenton," " some advertisements, 
 if not instructions, were given to the embassadors there ' to forbear any 
 extraordinary commerce with that tribe.'" Lord Soudamore, the Eng- 
 lish embassador. Clarendon further states, fitted up a chapel, in ritualistic 
 fashion, in his own house, and took pains to say " that the Church of 
 England looked not on the Huguenots as a part of their communion," 
 "which," adds Clarendon, "was too much and too industriously dis- 
 coursed at home." 
 
 Dr. Drumm concedes that, in the age following the Reformation, there 
 was an ecclesiastical fellowship between the Church of England and the 
 Protestant churches abroad. However it may suit the convenience of 
 certain writers to ignore or deny this fact, it is established by most cou- 
 
 * These passages are from Whitgif t's Writings^ Parker Soc. ed. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 195 
 
 vincing and multiplied proofs. One might as well deny that Edward VI. 
 and Elizabeth ever reigned, or that Cranmer, Ridley, Jewel, Parker, and 
 their cotemporaries ever lived, as to call in question the fact of an unin- 
 terrupted and cordial fellowship on their part with the Protestant, and 
 especially the Zwinglian and Calvinistic, Churches of the Continent, It is 
 high time that the attempt of a school of partisan writers to cover up 
 this fact should cease ; if, for no other reason, to save themselves from 
 the contempt of all well-informed students of English history. The invi- 
 tation given by Cranmer to foreign theologians, to take posts of high in- 
 fluence and honor in the English Church, is only one of a multitude of 
 circumstances which illustrate the ecclesiastical communion, as well as 
 the personal intimacy that subsisted between the Anglican and the Con- 
 tinental divines. If Bishop Potter now held in his diocese the station 
 which Cranmer held in England, and if he were to invite the Rev. Dr. 
 Schaff and the Rev. Dr. William Adams — or two Presbyterian ministers 
 of equal distinction from Europe — to take chairs in the General Theolo- 
 gical Seminary, where Episcopal clergymen are trained ; if he were, also, 
 to request them, as Cranmer requested Bucer and Fagius, to translate 
 the Bible into Latin, with * ' explanations of the diflQcult passages in 
 each chapter, and the addition of summaries and parallel places," the 
 whole to be subsequently rendered into English for the use of preachers 
 and people ; * if he were to ask them, further, to furnish criticisms of 
 the Prayer- Book with a view to the revision of it and to aid him in 
 drawing up a creed to which the clergy of his diocese should subscribe ; 
 if Bishop Potter were to do all this, he would surely be judged not to 
 have any decided repugnance to Presbyterian ordination. But Cranmer 
 and other leaders of the English Reformation have left on record direct 
 and conclusive evidence of their opinions on this subject. Their opinions, 
 it may be here remarked, are not ascertained by inference from a few 
 old phrases left standing in the Prayer-Book, but from their personal 
 declarations, supported and illustrated as these are by their uniform con- 
 duct. 
 
 Dr. Drumm concedes that the Church of England was in communion 
 with the other Protestant churches ; but he sets forth an hypothesis to 
 account for it, which I cannot but consider historically groundless. His 
 explanation is, in substance, that the Reformers generally believed in 
 episcopacy as the true and right form of church government, and that, 
 for this reason, the English kept up their connection with their Protes- 
 tant brethren, and maintained communion with them until forbearance 
 ceased to be a virtue. The real explanation is, that until the conflict 
 with Puritanism had reached its height, the English accorded with the 
 Continental Reformers in regarding episcopacy as among things indiffer- 
 ent, which a church might adopt or reject at its will. If there was tol- 
 
196 THE RELATION OF THE CHTJKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 eration or forbearance on either side, during the period to which I refer, 
 it was exercised toward the English more than by them, and was so un- 
 derstood by both parties. 
 
 At the outset of the Protestant movement, Luther in his Address to 
 the Nobles of the German Nation, struck at the root of the tree by deny- 
 ing the existence of a priestly class in the church, and hj asserting the uni- 
 versal priesthood of disciples. A company of pious laymen, in a desert, 
 could choose one of their number to be their minister, and ' ' the man so 
 chosen would be as truly a priest as if all the bishops in the world had 
 consecrated him." This" doctrine was the key-note to the Reformation. 
 It was professed in its essential principle by the Reformers in all countries, 
 and by none more emphatically than by Cranmer. With him it was mingled 
 with a very strong infusion of Erastianism. "If all the bishops and priests 
 in a region were dead," he says, it is not forbidden by the divine law that 
 *'the king of that region should make bishops and priests to supply the 
 same. " He declares that bishops and priests are originally and intrinsi- 
 cally the same class of ministers, and that ordination and consecration 
 are "comely ceremonies," but are not necessary. It is true that the 
 Lutheran Reformers had no objection to episcopacy as an ecclesiastical 
 arrangement, existing Jwre humano. Bishops were retained in Sweden, 
 and, in the form of superintendents, in Denmark. The Lutherans- ex- 
 pressed their view in the Smalcaldic Articles, where they affirm the parity 
 of the cl6rgy, declare episcopacy, or the precedence of one over others, a 
 human institution, and assert that when ordinary bishops become ene- 
 mies of the church, or refuse to ordain, the church can dispense with 
 them, since with the church rests the right to call, elect, and ordain her 
 ministers. Melanchthon wanted bishops, and Luther would not have ob- 
 jected to them, as a preventive of disorder and a counterpoise to the 
 apprehended tyranny of the civil authority. In England, generally speak- 
 ing, the same views prevailed ; and in the reign of Edward VI., bishops 
 frequently went by the name of superintendents. * The principles of 
 Calvin on this subject were in harmony with those of Luther, Melanchthon, 
 and Cranmer. I am acquainted with the story of the intercepted letter, 
 which Strype has taken up in his Life of Parker ; but I know of no evi- 
 dence to lead one to think that Calvin wished to have episcopacy intro- 
 duced into the Reformed Churches, which had given it up. But he 
 recommended the King of Poland to retain bishops, and he felt no repug- 
 nance to the exercise of a presidency, superintendence, or official superi- 
 ority by one minister, who should be appointed to such a duty by the 
 church. Such a station in reality, though not in name, he held himself 
 at Geneva. When Swiss divines came to England they generally found 
 many things which they wished to see reformed ; but to bishops, as such, 
 they had no repugnance. When English divines went to Strasburg, 
 
 * See Strype, Annals of the Meformation. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 197 
 
 Zurich, or Geneva, they felt not the slightest scruples on account of the 
 parity of the clerg-y which they found to be there established. 
 
 This was the state of things until the Puritan controversy grew warm. 
 This controversy grew up partly out of the fondness which English di- 
 vines acquired, during their exile, for the polity and worship of the Hel- 
 vetic churches. For a long period the advocates of the Anglican polity 
 acted on the defensive. This was not from any spirit of forbearance, 
 much less of condescension, toward the foreign churches, but because 
 they had no thought of claiming for their polity a jure divino sanction, 
 and never dreamed that the foreign churches were under any obligation 
 to adopt it. Xjure dmno theory of church polity was first broached on 
 the Puritan side. The Anglicans opposed it by denying that forms of 
 church government are prescribed by positive law. As the conflict waxed 
 hot, in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, a class of defenders of 
 episcopacy arose, of whom Hooker is the chief, who held that this polity 
 being, in their view, apostolic in its origin, having generally prevailed, 
 and being conducive to order, should be everywhere retained, unless pe- 
 culiar circumstances forbid its acceptance. These writers, however, do 
 not assert the jure dbGino theory, in the proper sen&e of the terms, since 
 they recognize the foreign Protestant churches as true churches, and their 
 ministry as lawfully ordained. Substantially this position is taken by sev- 
 eral of the foremost episcopal divines of the seventeenth century, as Arch- 
 bishop Ussher and Bishops Hall and Stillingfleet. Ussher thought that 
 the churches of Holland had less reason for dropping episcopacy than the 
 churches of France ; yet he says, " I do profess that with like affection 1 
 should receive the blessed sacrament at the hands of the Dutch ministers 
 if I were in Holland, as I should do at the hands of the French ministers 
 if I were at Charenton." Hall loves and reveres the Protestant churches 
 abroad as the " dear sisters " of the English Church. 
 
 Another element was requisite to constitute the full-blown doctrine of 
 jure divino episcopacy. This was the sacerdotal theory ; the doctrine of 
 a continued, particular priesthood, which the Reformers had unanimously 
 rejected. It began to be claimed that the clergy are, by virtue of the ex- 
 clusive right of the episcopal order to consecrate and ordain, a self-per- 
 petuating body, transmitting through an unbroken channel the grace 
 that qualifies the ministry for their office ; so that the church — the body 
 of the laity — have lost out of their hands the power to create and ordain 
 their ministers. This theory logically carried with it the rupture of com- 
 munion with the non-episcopal Protestant bodies, and as far as it was re- 
 ceived, it effected this result. 
 
 As to the alleged forbearance of the Anglican Church and of its divines, 
 nothing is more apparent in the history of the English Reformation than 
 the deference felt and expressed by the Anglican leaders towards the Re- 
 formers on the Continent, who led in the great revolt against Rome, and 
 were the guides of the Protestant religious communities abroad. The 
 
198 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 circumstances of England, in the long and doubtful struggle with the 
 Roman Catholic party, naturally led the English Reformers to seek the 
 counsel and lean upon the sympathy of their continental brethren. Cer- 
 tain it is that the former perpetually turned to the foreign divines for ad- 
 vice. When the troubles arose among the English exiles at Frankfort 
 between the adherents of the Liturgy, led by Cox, afterward Bishop of 
 Ely, and their opponents^^ led by Knox — the first manifestation of the dif- 
 ferences that led to the Puritan controversy — one minor point of dissen- 
 sion was on the question whether the ministers should be equal in power, 
 or whether precedence should be given to one of them. * Both factions, 
 by a common instinct, appealed to Calvin for advice. Afterward, when 
 the Puritan controversy broke forth in England, both parties applied for 
 encouragement and support to Zurich and Geneva. The personal influ- 
 ence of Calvin and Bullinger in England, especially after Ridley and 
 Cranmer adopted the Swiss doctrine of the sacrament, was for a long time 
 well-nigh authoritative. Their treatises were the text- books in theology, 
 recommended to the clergy, and everywhere in their hands. Their names 
 were spoken with reverence. We see in the writings of Hooker, at a time 
 when the contest with the Puritans was beginning to break up this old 
 habit of unqualified respect for Calvin, how much of this feeling still re- 
 mains. Hooker not only says that Calvin did the best he could in his 
 church arrangements at Geneva, but he pronounces an elaborate and 
 glowing eulogy upon him and his writings — an encomium which I fear 
 that many who are accustomed to praise Hooker without stint have never 
 read. If it be said that in the Puritan conflict the Anglican divines long 
 abstained from direct attacks on the Presbyterian system, and from ex- / 
 pressions disparaging to the foreign churches, this is true. Whitgift as- 
 serts this fact, and perhaps may be said to exemplify it. But this re- 
 serve, due in great part though it was to fraternal feeling, was partly con- 
 sequent on the old sentiment of respect for the Helvetic Reformers and 
 their churches. This it is which leads Whitgift to quote Calvin, Zwingle, 
 Bullinger, and the others, on almost every page, not simply because his 
 Puritan adversaries rested on their authority, but because he himself re- 
 garded them with profound respect and esteem. In the first three Prot-" 
 estant reigns we do not find the Anglican Church, nor any party in the j 
 Anglican Church, taking airs in reference to other Protestant bodies.^ 
 There was no temptation to this sort of arrogance ; and if it had shown 
 itself, it would have met with a swift rebuke from the great men who 
 were guiding the fortunes of Protestantism on the Continent. 
 
 The sacerdotal theory of the ministry is responsible for the separation, 
 as far as it exists, of the Church of England from the other Protestant 
 churches. In England, however, the Puritan churches were shut out, on 
 
 * A Brief Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankfort, etc., pp. cxxxv., 
 cxlvi. et aL 
 
TO THE OTPIER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 199 
 
 an independent ground, as being schismatical. The sacerdotal theory is 
 a contribution of the school of Laud. Germs of it may, perhaps, be found 
 earlier. It may be implied in isolated expressions of former Anglican 
 writers ; but it takes more than one swallow to make a spring. Thomas 
 Becon, the chaplain of Cranmer, earnestly contends, in his voluminous 
 Catechism, that " priest," in the Eucharistic service, is the equivalent, 
 not of " sacerdos" but of "presbyter," and that it means only ''minis- 
 ter," with which term it is there used interchangeably. Passing on to 
 Hooker, we find him saying that a minister may be called a priest, as 
 Paul calls fish flesh ; that sacrifice is ' ' now no part of the church minis- 
 t^," and that though the term " priest " is not inadmissible, yet the 
 word "presbyter" "doth seem more fit, and, in propriety of speech, 
 more agreeable than ' priest,' with the drift of the whole Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ." * I do not concur with all of Keble's interpretations of Hooker, 
 but I deem it a mark of candor in Keble to concede that there is a 
 marked distinction between Hooker's conception of episcopacy and of the 
 succession, and that of " Laud, Hammond, and Leslie in the two next 
 generations." Hooker's episcopacy is predominantly one of jurisdiction 
 and government ; the latter theory is a full retrogression to sacerdotal- 
 ism. 
 
 In concluding, I beg leave to say that I have written without any ref- 
 erence to any recent movements or controversies in the Episcopal Church. 
 In the evening service of the Prayer-Book, after the supplication for the 
 clergy and congregations of the Episcopal Church, there follows, in the 
 simple but majestic style of the Liturgy, an impressive prayer for the 
 "holy church universal," that "all who profess and call themselves 
 Christians " may be led aright. In this prayer, with its catholic idea of 
 the church, as well as in the supplication that precedes it, I can heartily 
 join. 
 
 In the foregoing letter, reference is made to the opinions 
 of Ussher, Hall, and Stillingfieet. The most learned de- 
 fender of episcopacy in the seventeenth century was James 
 Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland. 
 From early life he had an inextinguishable thirst for the 
 study of history and -antiquities. This taste was awakened 
 and stimulated by a passage in Cicero, where he says: 
 " Nescire quid cmtea quam natus sis acciderit id est serrvper 
 esse jmerum " — ^not to know what happened before you 
 were born is to be always a boy. The struggle that was go- 
 
 * Hooker (Keble's ed.), ii., 469, 470. 
 
200 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 ing on between Protestantism and Eomanism in the field of 
 argument, and especially Stapleton's Fortress of the Faith^ 
 2i Roman Catholic polemical book, in which the antiquity of 
 the E-omish creed was maintained, in opposition to the 
 alleged novelty of the Reformed Church, impelled Ussher to 
 undertake the reading of the entire body of patristic litera- 
 ture — a task which he is said to have accomplished in eigh- 
 teen years. By this means he armed himself for conflict 
 with the advocates of the Church of Rome, for the mo^ 
 learned of whom he was more than a match. ]^o one can 
 examine any of Ussher's works — his Antiquities of the 
 British Churches, for example — and not be struck with the 
 vast extent of his erudition. Truly there were giants in 
 those days. 
 
 Ussher first printed in 1641 two short essays on the Epis- 
 copal controversy. The first was entitled TJie Original 
 of Bishops and Metropolitans ; the second was The Judg- 
 Tnent of Dr. Bainoldes touching the Original of Epis- 
 copacy, more largely Confirmed out of Antiquity.'^ The 
 sort of episcopacy which Ussher set out to uphold may be 
 seen from this extract from The Judgment of Rainoldes, 
 which is given by Ussher himself at the outset of his sec- 
 ond essay : " When elders were ordained by the apostles in 
 every church to feed the flock of Christ, whereof the Holy 
 Ghost had made them overseers, they, to the intent they 
 might the better do it, by common counsel and consent, did 
 use to assemble themselves and meet together. In the 
 which meetings, for the more orderly handling and conclud- 
 ing of things pertaining to their charge, they chose one 
 amongst them to be the president of their company and mod- 
 erator of their actions." This arrangement for a presidency 
 in the board of elders or ministers in a church was counte- 
 nanced and sanctioned, Ussher maintains, by the apostles. 
 His great arguments are the angels of the Apocalypse, 
 
 * Ussher's Works, vol. vii. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 201 
 
 whom he takes for bishops or head pastors — contrary to the 
 prevailing view of the best critics now, inckiding Dr. Light- 
 foot : and tlie Ignatian Epistles, which were then fresh and 
 seem to have made a strong impression on Ussher's mind. 
 It is this mild sort of episcopacy, and nothing more — a su- 
 perintendence or presidency exercised by one presbyter over 
 his peers — that the archbishop tries to prove to have had an 
 apostolical origin. • But even for this system he does not 
 claim smyjus divinum ; that^ is, a church can exist without 
 it. He nowhere pretends that a church cannot exist with- 
 out it. It was this form of synodal episcopacy which was 
 drawn out by Ussher in writing, and which Baxter and his 
 associates proposed, at the time of the Savoy Conference, 
 as a basis for agreement between the Presbyterian and Epis- 
 copal parties. Apostolic succession, regarded in the light 
 of a vehicle for the transmission of grace and as indispensa- 
 ble to the existence of a lawful ministry, is something ut- 
 terly foreign to Ussher's whole theory and w^ay of thinking. 
 It is governmental, not sacerdotal episcopacy that he favors. 
 "The intrinsical power of ordaining," says Ussher, "pro- 
 ceedeth not from jurisdiction, but only from order. But a 
 presbyter hath the same order in specie with a bishop — ergo, 
 a presbyter hath equally an intrinsical power to give orders 
 and is equal to him in the power of order ; the bishop hav- 
 ing no higher degree in respect of intention or extension of 
 the character of order, though he hath a higher degree — 
 i. 6., a more eminent place in respect of authority and juris- 
 diction in spiritual regiment." 
 
 Baxter, in his Life, relates an interesting conversation 
 which he had with Ussher on this subject. "I asked him, 
 also, his judgment about the validity of presbyters' ordina- 
 tion. Which he asserted, and told me that the king 
 [Charles I.] asked him, in the Isle of Wight, wherever he 
 found in antiquity that presbyters alone ordained any ; and 
 that he answered, I can show your Majesty more, even 
 where presbyters alone successively ordained bishops, and 
 9* 
 
202 THE RELATION OF THE CIIUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 instanced in Hierom's [Jerome's] words of the presbyters of 
 Alexandria choosing and making their own bishops from the 
 days of Mark till Herodius and Dionysius." 
 
 Respecting the foreign Protestant churches Ussher writes 
 thus : " I have ever declared my opinion to be that J^jpisco- 
 jpus et Presbyter gradu tantum differunt, own or dine, and" 
 consequently that in places where bishops cannot be had the 
 ordination of presbyters standeth valid ; yet, on the other 
 side, holding, as I do, that a bishop hath a superiority in de- 
 gree over a presbyter, you may easily judge that the ordina- 
 tion made by such presbyters as have severed themselves 
 from those bishops, unto whom they have sworn canonical 
 obedience, cannot possibly by me be excused from being 
 schismatical. And howsoever I must needs think that the 
 churches which have no bishops are thereby become very 
 much defective in their government, and that the churches 
 in France, who, living under a Popish power, cannot do 
 what they would, are more excusable in this defect than the 
 Low Countries, that live under a free state, yet for testify- 
 ing my communion with these churches (which I do love and 
 honor as true members of the Church Universal), I do pro- 
 fess that with like affection I should receive the blessed 
 sacrament at the hands of the Dutch ministers, if I were in 
 Holland, as I should do at the hands of the French minis- 
 ters, if I were in Charenton." " The agreement or dis- 
 agreement in radical or fundamental doctrines, not the con- 
 sonancy or dissonancy in the particular points of ecclesiasti- 
 cal government, is with me (and I hope with every man 
 that mindeth peace) the rule of adhering to or receding from 
 the communion of any church." * Considering that Ussher 
 was a contemporary of Laud, and lived in the heat and fer- 
 ment of the Puritan controversy, these extracts do credit at 
 once to his learning and to the native liberality of his mind. 
 They show, first, that he considered the episcopate an ar- 
 
 * Works^ Appendix, vii. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 203 
 
 rangement of government, not a vehicle for the transmission 
 of grace ; secondly, that a polity that dispenses with the 
 episcopate he considered less desirable, but in given circum- 
 stances admissible; thirdly, that he had no disposition to 
 break off communion with the other Protestant bodies 
 abroad. The distinction which Ussher makes between Dis- 
 senters or Separatists in England and the foreign churches 
 is worthy of special attention. His objection to the Puri- 
 tans was founded not on their polity in itself considered, but 
 on what he considered the schismatical character of their 
 movement. They had no just ground, as he thought, for 
 renouncing the government of the Church of England. The 
 Dutch and French Churches he honored and loved. The 
 Puritans, under substantially the same polity, he could not 
 approve and recognize. It required another step (and a 
 very long one) to be taken before the High Church ground 
 could be reached, where the absolute necessity of Episcopal 
 ordination is affirmed and all the Protestant churches of 
 Europe are cast out of fellowship. As the Puritans and 
 the Dutch were alike among the first settlers in this country, 
 and as we have no national church, it must be somewhat 
 difficult, on Ussher's principles, to make out a case of schism 
 against the churches which they here established. 
 
 Bishop Hall, being then Dean of l^orwich, had sat, as 
 one of the deputies sent by James I. from the Church of 
 England, in the Synod of Dort. In various writings— for 
 example, in his Apology against the Brownists — he had ex- 
 pressed his affection and veneration for the Protestant 
 churches abroad, the '* sisters " of the Church of England, 
 as he repeatedly styles them. The expulsion of episcopacy 
 from Scotland, and the formation of the Solenm League and 
 Covenant, in 1638, sharpened his polemical feeling against 
 the opponents of the Episcopal polity. At the request of 
 Laud, he wrote his work on the Divine Right of Episcopacy. 
 Laud, at the outset, was dissatisfied with the positions which 
 he proposed to take ; for he was careful to avoid all con- 
 
204 THE EELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 demnation of the churches abroad.* How far Hall fell 
 short of the jure dwino doctrine, in the proper sense, may 
 be seen from the following passage in his subsequent De- 
 feiwe of the Hamble Eemomtrance for Liturgy and Episco- 
 jpacy : 
 
 " The imputation pretended to be cast upon all the Reformed churches 
 which want this government, I endeavored so to satisfy, that I might 
 justly decline the envy which is intended thereby to be raised against 
 us : for which cause I professed that we do ' love and honor those our 
 sister churches as the dear spouse of Christ,' and give zealous testimonies 
 of our well-wishing to them. Your uncharitableness offers to choke me 
 with these scandalous censures and disgraceful terms, which some of 
 ours have let fall upon those churches and their eminent professors; 
 which I confess it is more easy to be sorry for than on some hands to ex- 
 cuse. The error of a few may not be imputed to all. 
 
 " My just defence is that no such consequent can be drawn from our 
 opinion ; forasmuch as the divine or apostolical right, which we hold, 
 goes not so high as if there were an express command, that upon an ab- 
 solute necessity there must be either episcopacy or no church ; but so far 
 only, that it both may and ought to be. How fain would you here find 
 me in a contradiction ! while I onewhere reckon episcopacy among mat- 
 ters essential to the church ; anotherwhere deny it to be of the essence 
 thereof ! Wherein you willingly hide your eyes, that you may not see 
 the distinction that I make expressly betwixt the being and the well-being 
 of a church ; affirming that those churches to whom this power and fac- 
 ulty is denied lose nothing of the true essence of a church, though they 
 miss something of their glory and perfection. No, brethren; it is enough 
 for some of your friends to hold their discipline altogether essential to the 
 very being of a church ; we dare not be so zealous." 
 
 ' ' The question which you ask concerning the reason of the different 
 entertainment given in our church to priests converted to us from Rome, 
 and to ministers who in Queen Mary's days had received imposition of 
 hands in Reformed churches abroad, is merely personal, neither can 
 challenge my decision. Only I give you these two answers. That what 
 fault soever may be in the easy admittance of those who have received 
 Romish orders, the sticking at the admission of our brethren returning 
 from Reformed Churches, was not in case of ordination, but of institution: 
 they had been acknowledged ministers of Christy without any other hands 
 laid upon them ; but, according to the laws of our land, they were not 
 
 * See the correspondence, in Hall's Works ^ vol. x. Also, Lawson's Life 
 of Laud, ii. , 334 seq. 
 
TO THE OTHER PKOTESTANT CHUECHES. 205 
 
 perhaps capable of institution to a benefice unless tbey were so qualified 
 as the statutes of this realm do require. And, secondly, I know those, 
 more than one, that by virtue only of that ordination which they have 
 brought with them from other Reformed churches, have enjoyed spiritual 
 promotions and livings, without any exception against the lawfulness of 
 their calling." * 
 
 Bishop Hall wrote his Humble Hemonstrance in 1640-41, 
 and the defence of it, from which this extract is taken, after- 
 wards. Nothing can be more definite and satisfactory than 
 the proof which it affords that the ordination of the foreign 
 churches was then allowed to be lawful and sufficient. Dif- 
 ficulties were • sometimes raised about their institution ; but, 
 notwithstanding these difficulties, Hall knew of instances in 
 which they were admitted to benefices. 
 
 Few of the divines of England in the seventeenth century, 
 that golden age of English theology, equal in vigor of rea- 
 soning powers and in extent of erudition, not to speak of 
 perspicuity and force of style, Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop 
 of Xorwich. His Orlgines Sacrce may be somewhat anti- 
 quated in respect to its learning, through the wider reach of 
 oriental studies in modern days ; but in power of argument 
 and in the mtellectual mastery of the* theme, it remains a 
 noble defence of the Christian faith and a worthy memorial 
 of the genius and attainments of its author. Stillingfleet 
 did not fear to measure swords with Locke on questions of 
 metaphysics ; and it was the letter of the Bishop of Norwich 
 that drew from the philosopher the nearest approach to an 
 explicit assertion of an a priori source of knowledge, which 
 really goes beyond the function of sensation and reflection. 
 
 When Stillingfleet was only twenty-four years of age and 
 Rector of Sutton, he published The Irenicum, a Weapon- 
 saJ/ve for the ChurcNs Wounds. The second edition ap- 
 peared in 1662, the memorable year when tho Act of Uni- 
 formity was passed, by which two thousand of the ministers 
 
 ♦Hall's Works, ix., 355, 356. 
 
206 THE RELATION OF THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 of England, and tliose among the best for knowledge, piety, 
 eloquence, and pastoral fidelity, were driven from tlieir par- 
 ishes, and thrown into the ranks of non-conformity. The 
 Irenicum is directed against the assumed divine right of 
 particular forms of church government. Among the mot- 
 toes on the title-page is a sentence of Casaubon, in which it 
 is asserted that if a proper discrimination were made be- 
 tween " divine right ^^—jus divinmn — and positive or eccle- 
 siastical law, controversy among good men would cease to be 
 bitter or of long duration. This sentence is followed by an- 
 other from Grotius of the same purport. Stillingfleet aims 
 to win non-conformists over to the established church by 
 demonstrating that there is no definite form of government 
 prescribed to the church ; that neither the Episcopal nor the 
 Presbyterian system can claim divine, or exclusive, authority ; 
 and that, therefore, there is np reason w^hy a dissenter should 
 not reconcile himself to the system of the English diurch, 
 whatever may be his preference in the matter. He seeks to 
 make good his thesis, first by an inquiry into the dictates of 
 the law of nature, and, secondly, by an examination of posi- 
 tive or revealed law ; his aim being under each head to dis- 
 prove the claim to a sanction from either source for the ex- 
 clusive pretensions of the episcopal or the non-episcopal 
 method of organization. Later in life, Stillingfleet thought 
 that, from a desire for peace, he had conceded too much to 
 dissenters ; but there is no reason to think that he ever re- 
 nounced the main principles of his work, or came to question 
 the justice of its principal arguments. Taken as a whole, it 
 is one of the finest pieces of historical and theological rea- 
 soning w^ithin the compass of English theological literature. 
 We advert to Stillingfleet's famous Irenicum, in this 
 place, chiefly in order to call attention to his excellent state- 
 ment of the position of the Anglican Reformers and di- 
 vines before his time, and to the absence in them of the 
 jure divino theory of episcopacy — the theory that bishops 
 are indispensable to the constitution of a church, and to the 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 207 
 
 validity of orders. This lucid and correct statement is given 
 in chapter viii. of Part II. He does not confine himseH to 
 English divines, but shows " that the most eminent divines 
 of the Eeformation," at home and abroad, " did never con- 
 ceive any one form of church government necessary." He 
 proves his proposition ; first, by referring " to those who 
 make the form of church government mutable, and to de- 
 pend upon the wisdom of the magistrate and of the church." 
 This he declares has been the opinion of most divines of the 
 Church of England since the Eeformation. He quotes, in 
 fuU, Cranmer's Erastian declarations, which go so far as to 
 dispense with the necessity of ordination altogether. Arch- 
 bishop Whitgift, Bishop Bridges, Hooker, and others it is 
 shown, advocated the same general view. Secondly, he re- 
 fers to the divines who had believed in the original parity 
 of the clergy, yet considered episcopacy lawful. Here are 
 placed Calvin, Beza, Melanchthon, and others. Thirdly, he 
 enumerates those who judge episcopacy to be the primitive 
 form, yet look not on it as necessary. Here come Bishop 
 Jewel, Fulke, Field, and many more. All these men who 
 are named under the three heads, whatever were their views 
 respecting the origin and antiquity of episcopacy, considered 
 it neither necessary on the one hand, nor wrong and intol- 
 erable on the other. They held it to be one of various ad- 
 missible systems of polity, neither of which is necessary to 
 the existence of a church, and either of which is of such a 
 character that a Christian may live under it and submit to 
 it with a good conscience. There are slight errors in Stil- 
 lingfleet's classification. Jewel does not maintain the apos- 
 tolic institution of episcopacy, as distinct from the office of 
 presbyters, but intimates that the distinction rests on human 
 authority alone. Generally speaking, however, StiUing- 
 fleet's historical statements are correct, and they present a 
 most conclusive refutation of the High Church assumption 
 that the fathers of the Anglican Protestant Church denied 
 the validity of the orders of non-episcopal churches. The 
 
208 THE RELATION OF THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 
 
 whole treatise of Stillingfleet contains wholesome reading 
 for partisans of whatever stripe. 
 
 A part of another letter to the Tribune^ in reply to criti- 
 cisms of an Episcopal clergyman, is reproduced here, for 
 the reason that it handles a special theory, brought forward 
 to account for the ecclesiastical sympathy between England 
 and the Continent in the period following the Reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 Your correspondent dwells on the fact that the first generation of 
 preachers in the Protestant churches were mostly ordained in the Roman 
 Catholic Church— as if the question about the necessity of Episcopal or- 
 dination was not a practical one. "Their orders," he says, "were all 
 alike to begin with." Were not hundreds of new preachers going forth 
 from Wittenberg, and afterward from Geneva ? But, apart from this 
 fact, the difficulty in the way of all such pleas as your correspondent 
 makes on this point is that the English Reformers do express themselves 
 explicitly on these questions. They declare their opinions without am- 
 biguity. They knew, taoreover, perfectly well the constitution of the 
 Lutheran Churches, and of the Churches of Geneva, Zurich, Holland, 
 France, and other Protestant countries, and they make their constitution 
 no barrier in the way of fraternal recognition and church fellowship. I 
 have not been so heedless as to confound personal friendship with eccle- 
 siastical fellowship ; but, apart from the direct evidence in the case, the 
 personal intimacy of the English and the foreign divines involves, under the 
 circumstances, convincing proof of such ecclesiastical fellowship. Your 
 correspondent criticises my statement of the opinion of Jewel. If he 
 will turn to the seventh book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, he will 
 find a reference to Jewel's belief on the origin of bishops. Hooker speaks 
 of that opinion "which many have thought good to follow, and which 
 myself did sometimes judge a great deal more probable than now I do, 
 merely that after the apostles were deceased, churches did agree among 
 themselves, for preservation of peace and order, to make one presbyter 
 in each city chief over the rest." In the margin Hooker refers to Jewel 
 among those who held this theory, and to his reply to Harding, It is 
 probable that Hooker knew the opinions of his revered master, and the 
 proper interpretation of the reply to Harding quite as well as anybody at 
 the present day. 
 
 The insinuation, by whomsoever made, that the recognition of the 
 foreign Protestant churches and of their ministry, by the bishops and 
 divines of the Church of England, was owing to the excitement or dis- 
 order of the times, or to the immature form of the polity of the various 
 Protestant bodies, is in violation of historical truth. The contest with 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 209 
 
 the Roman Catholics caused all the questions connected with ordination 
 to be freely and fully discussed. This recognition was far from being 
 confined to the first three Protestant reigns. There is no more honored 
 name among the prelates of the seventeenth century than that of Bishop 
 Hall, the author of The Contemplations. In his Apology against 
 Brownists (fol. ed., p. 498), Bishop Hall says: '*I reverence from my 
 soul (so doth our church, their dear sister) those worthy foreign churches 
 which have chosen and followed those forms of outward government that 
 are every way fittest for their own condition." In another place, after 
 referring to the recognition of the English Church by the foreign di- 
 vines, and to the fact that Laski " was the allowed bishop of our first Re- 
 formed strangers in this land" — that is, pastor of one of the foreign 
 churches in England * — Bishop Hall says : " These sisters have learned 
 to differ, and yet to love and reverence each other ; and in these cases to 
 enjoy their own forms without prescription of necessity or censure." 
 Hall, as is well known, was employed by Laud, at a later time, to de- 
 fend episcopacy against the Puritans ; and Laud was dissatisfied with 
 the concessions which even at that day he proposed to make in favor of 
 the foreign churches. It would be interesting to trace the rise and prog- 
 ress of the sacerdotal theory of episcopacy in the English Church, and 
 to show how it gradually supplanted, in the minds of a large part of that 
 church, the old governmental theory which was held by the Reformers, 
 and, in the seventeenth century, by such men as Ussher and Stillingfleefc. 
 But even the hospitable Tiibune would hardly find room for a full treat- 
 ment of this theme. Episcopacy was first advocated in the English 
 Church as a tolerable, expedient, a very ancient, and, by some, as the 
 most ancient form of polity. Then it came to be defended as decidedly 
 the best form, and the only legitimate one where circumstances will per- 
 mit it to be adopted. This is the doctrine of Hooker. Then followed, 
 in the era of Laud, the High Church or sacerdotal theory. These facts 
 are notorious ; they are familiar to students of English history. They 
 are conceded by writers of the Anglican Church of the highest repute for 
 knowledge and impartiality. 
 
 Why not frankly and honestly admit them, as Keble does, instead of 
 resorting to various and incongruous methods of evading them ? It was 
 the contest with the Puritans that developed among their opponents the 
 jure divino doctrine. The Puritans first set up this exclusive claim for 
 their own system. f The leading antagonists of the Puritans, for a long 
 
 * Laski was superintendent of the Churches of the German, Italian, 
 and French Protestants, residing in London. 
 
 f It should be said, however, that Presbyterians did not generally ques- 
 tion the validity of ordination by bishops, or deny that Episcopal minis- 
 ters may lawfully administer the sacraments. The Episcopal system they 
 asserted to be inconsistent with Scripture. 
 
210 THE RELATION OF THE CHUKOH OF ENGLAND 
 
 period, fought them by asserting- that there is no particular form of polity 
 prescribed in the Bible for all time, and therefore of perpetual obligation. 
 They took substantially the ground which Stillingfleet assumed in his 
 Irenicum. Even Hooker makes room for the foreign churches, and 
 founds his whole discussion on the distinction between eternal and posi- 
 tive laws. He distinctly aflBrms (in b. vii. Keble's ed., vol. iii., p. 165) 
 that the church, for urgent cause, by general consent, is competent to 
 take government away from the hands of her bishops. By degrees de- 
 fenders of episcopacy imitated their opponents, and asserted for their 
 own system a jure divino sanction and an exclusive right. The Puritans, 
 thrown on the defensive, generally retreated to the old position of their 
 adversaries, and contended that no form of polity is binding on Christians 
 forever. In this long combat, Hamlet and Laertes have exchanged rapiers — 
 an event that not unfrequently occurs in political and theological warfare. 
 Your correspondent calls for the proof of a recognition, by conciliar or 
 formal synodal action of the Church of England, of any orders but Epis- 
 copal. In view of the known action of the Church of England, in the 
 past, and the avowed opinions of her — I had almost said "founders" 
 — Reformers and noblest divines, one may well inquire whether the bur- 
 den of proof is not on the other side. By what conciliar or synodal ac- 
 tion have the orders of other Protestant churches been discredited ? It 
 may be said that ministers who have not been ordained by bishops, are 
 reordained when they pass over to the Episcopal Church. But this pro- 
 ceeding may perhaps be defended by some on the Low Church ground, 
 taken by Archbishop Leighton, when he was ordained a second time as 
 presbyter^ viz. : that ordination is merely a ceremony of induction to the 
 ministry and service of a particular church, and may, therefore, be re- 
 peated. These are questions, however, with which I have nothing to do. 
 
 A student derives from converse with the documentary 
 sources of various kinds, which pertain to any period of his- 
 tory, impressions respecting the state of things, which may 
 be verified by adducing special proofs, but which no single 
 items of evidence, however convincing, can transfer to the 
 reader in their full force. 
 
 In illustrating the intimate relations of the Church of 
 England with the Helvetic Churches, in the seventeenth 
 century, we have more than once referred to the correspond- 
 ence of the Eeformers.* There are a multitude of letters 
 
 * Two volumes, published by the Parker Soc. , contain letters during 
 the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary. Two additional vol- 
 umes, united in one in the second edition, cover the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
TO THE OTFIEK PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 211 
 
 written by Cranmer, Coverdale, Hooper, Cox, Horn, Pilk- 
 ington, Sampson, Sandys, Jewel, Foxe, Parkhurst, Grindal, 
 Humphrey, and other reformers, bishops, and leading di- 
 vines, of the Church of England, to Calvin, Melanchthon, 
 Bucer, BuUinger, Gualter, Martyr, and other continental 
 divines, with their letters in return. This correspondence 
 stretches over an interval extending from the establishment 
 of Protestantism in England to the closing part of Elizabeth's 
 reign. Yet in all these free, unreserved communications, 
 in which the differences among Protestants, as on the doc- 
 trine of the Lord's Supper, are fi*equently considered, there 
 is no hint of any trouble, alienation, or want of sympathy, 
 on account of the difference of the English polity from that 
 of the continental churches. The authors are engaged in a 
 common cause, fighting under a common banner, and the 
 question of episcopacy does not excite a ripple of discontent 
 with one another. This silence, under the peculiar circum- 
 stances, is a more impressive proof of ecclesiastical sympathy 
 than any overt declaration would be. Why, as late as 1573, 
 Sandys, then Bishop of London and, afterwards. Archbishop 
 of York, reports to Bullinger, the pastor of Zurich, the plat- 
 form of the party which was aiming at the destruction of 
 episcopacy, and says : " I anxiously desire, most learned sir, 
 to hear your opinion, and those of masters Gualter, Simler, 
 and the rest of the brethren, respecting these things ; which 
 for my own part I shall willingly follow, as being sound and 
 agreeable to the Word of God. For if the whole matter in 
 controversy were left to your arbitration, it would doubtless 
 much contribute to the peace of our church. These good 
 men are crying out that they have all the reformed churches 
 on their side." * 
 
 In 1580, a prayer was issued, by public authority, to be 
 used on Fridays in the churches of England, in which, after 
 a prayer for the church, we read : " And herein (good Lord) 
 
 * Zurich Letters^ p. 440. 
 
212 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 by special name we beseech Thee for the churches of 
 France, Flanders, and of sucli other places." Then follows 
 a supplication for " this church of England." In the pray- 
 ers to be used by the English armies, who are fighting by 
 the side of the Huguenots in France, and in the prayers to 
 be offered at home for their success, the Protestants of 
 France are spoken of as the members and representatives of 
 the true church, in arms against Antichrist. We "most 
 heartily beseech Thee, through the merits of Jesus Christ, 
 our Saviour, to protect and strengthen thy servants, our 
 brethren in France, that are now ready to fight for the 
 glory of thy name." " Go before them, fight the battles of 
 thy children, and subdue their enemies : so shall that proud 
 generation have no cause to exult over thy true church, and 
 over thy servants," etc.* 
 
 The churches of the foreigners, which were established in 
 London, under the auspices of Edward I., furnish an illustra- 
 tion of the sentiments of the English reformers towards 
 their foreign brethren. The foreigners in London were to 
 have four ministers, under the superintendence of John a 
 Lasco. In the letters patent which were granted, in the 
 fourth year of Edward, to these ministers, and constituting 
 them a coi-poration, the motive assigned for the act is the 
 duty of kings to care for the diffusion " of pure and uncor- 
 rupted religion," and for the preservation of a church " con- 
 stituted in truly Christian and apostolic doctrines and rites." 
 The grant is made with the intent that the gospel may be 
 preached, and the sacraments administered " according to the 
 Word of God and apostolical observance, by the ministers of 
 the Germans and of the other foreigners." f Lasco states, 
 in a letter to the Iving of Poland, that Edward, his council, 
 and Cranmer were zealously favorable to his enterprise. 
 The king hoped, through the influence of these foreign 
 
 * Liturgical Services, etc., in the reign of Elizabeth, p. 578. 
 t Ibid., p. 649. J. a Lasco, Opera, ii., 280, 281. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 213 
 
 churches, to be aided in carrying forward the work of reform 
 in England. * At Glastonbury, the weavers from Strasburg 
 were organized into a church. They ordained their minis- 
 ters by a method similar to that of the French churches. 
 The ordination of the ministers of the churches of Lasco 
 was, also, Presbyterian. If this reception of the foreigners 
 and incorporation of them into churches had been merely an 
 act of toleration extended to strangers, it would not have 
 taken place in that age, had there not been an ecclesiastical 
 recognition of them and sympathy with them. But there 
 was more than bare toleration ; there was efficient encour- 
 agement and patronage. An edifice was given them in 
 London, in which to meet for worship, and their ministers 
 were treated with marked respect and fraternal confidence. 
 
 The Articles of the Church of England exhibit no trace of 
 the theory which gives an exclusive sanctity to episcopacy. 
 They are obviously drawn up according to the idea which 
 prevailed when they were composed under Edward, and re- 
 vised under Elizabeth, that each national church is to deter- 
 mine its own polity and ceremonies. In Art. XIX., the visible 
 church of Christ is defined to be a congregation of faithful 
 men in which the Gospel is preached in its purity, and the 
 sacraments administered in conformity, as to essentials, with 
 Christ's ordinance. Here are the notes of the church, as they 
 are given usually in Protestant creeds. Episcopacy is not 
 among them. In Art. XXIII., the choice and call of min- 
 isters is declared to be in the hands of men " who have pub- 
 lic authority given unto them in the congregation " for this 
 purpose. In Art. XXXIY., we read : " It is not necessary 
 that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one and utterly 
 like, for at all times they have been diverse and may be 
 changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and 
 men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's 
 Word." Then the wrong of breaking from ceremonies " not 
 
 * Letters of Lasco to the King of Poland., Opera^ ii., 10. 
 
214: THE RELATION OF THE CHTJKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 repugnant to God's Word," and approved by authority, is 
 asserted. The most that is claimed by implication is that 
 the rites of the church of England are not inconsistent with 
 Scripture, nor forbidden by the Word of God. This was 
 the old ground taken in the contest with the Puritans. The 
 same Article ends with ascribing to "every particular or 
 national church " the authority, " to ordain, change, and abol- 
 ish ceremonies and rites of the church," so far as they are 
 of human authority. There is a fact respecting this Article 
 which bears on the interpretation of it. There is a close re- 
 semblance in its language to the 11th Article in the thirteen 
 which were drawn up as the basis of an agreement between 
 the English and German divines, at their conference in Lon- 
 don, in 1538.* It was a platform on which Lutherans and 
 Anglicans could alike stand. The XXXIY th Article relates 
 to the " consecration of bishops and ministers." Here, if 
 anywhere, we should look for the exclusive theory ; but there 
 is not a word of it. The Ordinal of the Prayer-Book is de- 
 clared " to contain all things necessary to such consecration 
 and ordering ; " " neither hath it anything that of itself is 
 superstitious and ungodly." All who are consecrated or or- 
 dered according to that form, are said to be '' rightly, orderly, 
 and lawfully consecrated and ordered." The Article is, so 
 to speak, merely defensive. That there is no other lawful 
 method of ordination is not in the faintest manner implied. 
 That any one should suppose himself able to draw any sanc- 
 tion for the exclusive theory from the articles would occa- 
 sion astonishment, if we did not know that a class of theolo- 
 gians have professed to find in them an assertion of Armin- 
 ianism. After such a feat of interpretation, nothing in this 
 line is surprising. 
 
 We turn now to the Ordinal ; for this is the last refuge of 
 the defenders of the jure dwino construction of Anglican 
 
 * See Cranmer's Miscellaneous Writings (Parker Soc. ed.), p. 477, 
 Compare the Latin Articles of the English Church, in Niemeyer, Collectio 
 Confessionum, p. 608. 
 
TO THE OTHER PKOTESTANT CHUECHES. 215 
 
 law. We are far from asserting that the Anglo-Catholic 
 party has nothing to found itself upon. Such a party has 
 existed from the beginning. The Prayer-Book contains vari- 
 ous features which bear witness to the desire of its compilers 
 to conciliate old prejudices and opinions, or to their inability 
 to overcome them. But that party was comparatively weak 
 when the formularies of the church of England took their 
 shape, in the period of the Reformation. Had Edward YI. 
 lived longer, or had Elizabeth been less conservative and 
 less domineering, other changes would have taken place ; for 
 the Reformers averred that they considered their work far 
 from complete. However, the party to which we refer did 
 not succeed in incorporating their shibboleth into the law of 
 the church. The preface to the Ordinal is the principal 
 source of argument for the advocates of the exclusive inter- 
 pretation of the Anglican system. We print in brackets the 
 words that were added in 1661, after the Restoration: 
 
 It is evident unto all men diligently reading the holy Scripture and 
 ancient authors, that from the apostles' time there have been these or- 
 ders of ministers in Christ's church ; bishops, priests, and deacons, which 
 offices were evermore had in such reverend estimation, that no man might 
 presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, tried, exam- 
 ined, and known to have such qualities as are requisite for the same ; 
 and, also, by public prayer, with imposition of hands, were approved and 
 admitted thereunto by lawful authority. And therefore, to the intent 
 that these orders may be continued, and reverently used and esteemed in 
 the Church of England ; no man shall be accounted or taken a lawful 
 bishop, priest, or deacon in the Church of England, or suffered to execute 
 any of said functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted 
 thereunto, according to the form hereafter following [or hath formerly 
 had episcopal consecration, or ordination.] 
 
 On this document we have several remarks to make. 
 
 1. The preamble simply asserts that from the apostolic 
 age there have been in the church these orders of ministers. 
 It does not affirm, or imply, that this arrangement is pre- 
 scribed by the divine law ; much less, that a church cannot 
 exist without it, or that where there is a modification of this 
 
216 THE RELATION OF THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 
 
 system, the validity of ordination is destroyed. The intent 
 is only to preserve this system in the Church of England — 
 " this Church of England," as the phrase ran, in the Revi- 
 sion of 1552 — not to impose it, as a condition of ecclesiastical 
 communion, on other churches. 
 
 2. The form of ordination is presented exclusively as a 
 condition of holding office in the Church of England. 
 
 3. The invalidity of the ordination of Roman Catholic 
 priests was never asserted, although they were not ordained 
 by the Anglican form. How, then, can the invalidity of 
 Presbyterian ordination be inferred from this injunction of 
 the preface ? Moreover, the statute of the loth of Eliza- 
 beth opened the way for the institution of Roman Catholic 
 converts, and, as we have shown, of Protestant ministers or- 
 dained abroad. 
 
 4. The validity of the ordination of the other Protestant 
 churches was admitted by those who framed the Ordinal, 
 and has been admitted by a numerous body of the most 
 eminent doctors of the English Church. This fact ought to 
 settle the interpretation of this document. 
 
 5. If the term " orders " was meant to be taken in the 
 strict, technical sense, then the preface says that bishops 
 have existed as a distinct order in the church since the apos- 
 tolic age. Under this view of the term, a fact is asserted, 
 and nothing more ; and this assertion was allowed to enter 
 into the preamble, without being challenged by such as 
 held bishops and presbyters to be of the same order. But, 
 in point of fact, the term " order " was not unf requently 
 used in a loose and general sense by those who held that the 
 difference between the two classes of ministers is one of de- 
 gree only. We will give a marked instance. Jewel, in his 
 Apologia^ says : " Credimus .... varios in ecclesia esse 
 ordines ministrorum ; alios esse diaconos, alios presbyteros, 
 alios episcopos," etc. In the edition of the same work in 
 English (1563), the passage reads : " Furthermore, that 
 there be divers degrees of ministers in the church, whereof 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHUKCHES. 217 
 
 some be deacons," etc. * The word ordines is rendered de- 
 grees. We know that Cranmer, who is supposed to have had 
 a leading part in shaping the Ordinal of 1549, held bishops 
 and presbyters to be different degrees of the same order. 
 The revision of 1551, which resulted in Edward's second book, 
 of 1552, was made under the direct or indirect influence 
 of men like Peter Martyr, John a Lasco, Bucer, and Cal- 
 vin, f The next revision, on the accession of Elizabeth, was 
 accomplished by Parker, Cox, Pilkington, Grindal, Sandys, 
 and others. Of those who were actually concerned in form- 
 ing and revising the Ordinal, some of the most prominent 
 are known to have held that bishops and presbyters differ 
 only in degree. We know that many of the bishops of the 
 Episcopal Church, of the highest repute, from Cranmer to 
 Ussher, and since Ussher's time, have entertained this 
 opinion. The High Church editors of the Prayer-Book 
 say : X " The distinction of the order of bishops from that of 
 priests was definitely asserted for the first time in 1661," 
 although they maintain that it was previously implied in the 
 preface to the Ordinal. " It was not," they add, " until the 
 close of the sixteenth century that the distinction between 
 the orders of bishops and priests was asserted." Yery little 
 can be made from the mere use of the word " orders " in 
 this preface. 
 
 6. The changes made in the Ordinal in 1661 are very sig- 
 nificant as to its original character. To the , preface were 
 added the words : " or hath formerly had Episcopal conse- 
 cration or ordination." Why this addition, if the preface 
 without it wholly excludes non-episcopal ministers from ser- 
 vice in the Church of England ? But the alterations of 1661 
 are obviously with a view to make a distinction between 
 bishops and presbyter, such as the Ordinal had not recog- 
 nized. The phrases, " Episcopal consecration or ordination,''^ 
 
 * Jewel's Works (Parker Soc. ed.), iiL, 10. 
 f Blunt's Annotated Pray&r-Book, p. 536. 
 X Ibid., 566. 
 10 
 
218 THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 " ordaiiied or consecrated a bisliop," " form of ordaining or 
 consecrating a bishop," for the first time definitely asserted 
 the distinction of order between bishop and presbyter. "^ In 
 the ordination of a priest, after the words " Receive the 
 Holy Ghost," there were added the words : '' for the office 
 and work of a priest in the church of God now committed 
 to thee by the imposition of hands." Analogous phraseol- 
 ogy was added in the service for the ordination of a bishop. 
 Thus the distinction of the two offices was affirmed by im- 
 plication, in a way in which it had not been affirmed before. 
 Various other minor changes in the revision of 1661 indicate 
 plainly the same design. But there was one alteration 
 which deserves special attention. Prior to 1661, Acts xx., 
 which describes the meeting of the Ephesian elders with 
 Paul, and 1 Tim. iii., were read both at the ordaining of a 
 priest and at the consecration of a bishop. Both these por- 
 tions of Scripture were now assigned to the service for the 
 consecration of bishops exclusively. The latter passage — 1 
 Tim. iii., 1-8 — relates to the character and work of a 
 "bishop." Before 1661, this chapter was deemed appropri- 
 ate for the ordination of a presbyter ; then it was not. No 
 one can look at the alterations effected in the Ordinal by the 
 reactionary party of the Restoration, and not see that they 
 spring from different ideas of the Episcopal office from those 
 which the original framers of the Ordinal entertained. 
 
 It is sometimes said that, when the Ordinal was composed, 
 Cranmer had changed the opinions which he had expressed 
 at an earlier day respecting episcopacy. The extreme Eras- 
 tianism which led him to consider the king a proper foun- 
 tain of episcopal 'authority, so that even ordination from any 
 other source might be dispensed with, is certainly not recog- 
 nized in any formal action of the English Church or State, 
 unless the commission granted by Henry YIII. to Bonner, 
 and that taken out by Cranmer after Henry's death are 
 
 ♦ Annotated Prayer-Book^ p. 566. 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 219 
 
 counted as exceptions.* Certainly the " Institution of a 
 Christian Man " (1536), and the " Necessary Doctrine and 
 Erudition of a Christian Man'''' (1543) give to the secular 
 authority no such function, but reserve it to the church and 
 to its ministers. The king's authority enables them to per- 
 form acts within his realm, for which the church has pre- 
 viously empowered and qualified them. A declaration, 
 which defined the relation of the clergy to the civil authority 
 in a similar way, was made in 1538, and was signed by 
 Cranmer, Cromwell, and many others. The opinion of 
 Cranmer, which attributes to the king this extraordinary 
 power, bears the date of 1540. "Whatever may have been 
 his final conviction on this matter, whether he had any set- 
 tled view or not, there is no evidence of any modification of 
 his ideas upon the relation of bishops to presbyters. The 
 essential equality of the two classes of ministers is assumed 
 in all the documents to which we have just referred. Just 
 before the death of Edward, Cranmer was busy in trying to 
 procure a general assembly of representatives of the various 
 Protestant churches, for the formation of a common creed. 
 He was WTiting to Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Calvin on the 
 subject. In his letter to Calvin (March 20, 1552), he says : 
 " Shall we neglect to call together a godly synod, for the 
 refutation of error, and for restoring and propagating the 
 truth ? " He is very anxious to procure an agreement on 
 the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. If he had suddenly be- 
 come convinced of the necessity of episcopacy to the being 
 of a church, or if he had attached much importance to the 
 differences in polity among the Protestant bodies, it is hardly 
 possible that he would not have made some allusion to the 
 subject, on such an occasion. The representation that he 
 
 * This matter is discussed in the Correspondence of Lord Macaulay with 
 the Bishop of Exeter (2d. ed., 1861). We have observed a note of Henry 
 VIII. to " the Institution of a Christian Man^'' which appears to suggest 
 this lofty notion of his prerogative. Cranmer, MisceUaneous Writings^ 
 p. 97. 
 
220 THE RELATION OF THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 had changed his opinions when the Ordinal was composed, 
 is a pure myth. Lasco informs iis that he had special en- 
 couragement in the formation of his foreign churches in 
 England from Cranmer, as well as from the king's council. 
 " The Archbishop of Canterbury," he says, " promoted it 
 with all his might." Lasco was urged to organize his 
 churches according " to the divine Word," and not to fol- 
 low "the rites of other churches." * 
 
 A modern writer of the Church of England, who is quite 
 removed from all sympathy with Puritanism, remarks that, 
 " till the passing of the Act of Uniformity in the reign of 
 Charles II. the ordination conveyed by presbyters, though 
 resisted by the governors of the church, had never been dis- 
 owned by the legislature." However theologians of the 
 school of Laud might have exerted their power to exclude 
 all ministers not ordained by bishops, the law of England 
 could not be used as an instrument for their purpose. But 
 the legislation at this epoch was shaped by the extreme par- 
 tisans of episcopacy. "The substitution," says the same 
 writer,f " in the Prayer-Book, of ' church ' for ' congregation,' 
 the specific mention of bishops, priests, and deacons, instead 
 of a more general designation, the reintroduction of Bel and 
 the Dragon into the Calendar, and other similar alterations, 
 though none of them new in principle, seemed designed to 
 convince the non-conformists that instead of any wish to ad- 
 mit them to further power or privilege within the church, 
 there was a distinct and settled desire to restrain or exclude 
 them." :]: This writer would not have erred if he had attrib- 
 uted these measures to the bitter resentment of a formerly 
 depressed, but now victorious party. 
 
 The Revolution of 1688 offered a splendid opportunity for 
 undoing this bad work, and for a new measure of compre- 
 hension, such as justice and policy alike called for. The 
 
 * See the Works of Lasco, ii., 10, 278 seq. 
 
 ■j- Card well, History of Conferences^ etc., p. 419. 
 
 i Ibid., p. 389. 
 
TO THE OTHER PK0TE8TANT CHURCHES. 221 
 
 king and court favored such a measure. The churchmen 
 of noblest gifts, of whom Tillotson was one of the chiefs, 
 strove to accomplish it. Among the concessions which Til- 
 lotson proposed, and which are recorded as having been sent 
 by him, through Stillingfleet, to the Earl of Portland, stands 
 the following : " That for the future those who have been 
 ordained in any of the foreign reformed churches, be not 
 required to be reordained here, to render them capable of 
 preferment in this church." At first, Tillotson and his as- 
 sociates expected to carry the measure which they proposed. 
 But it failed. One reason of its failure was the recent for- 
 cible expulsion of episcopacy from Scotland, where, as Card- 
 well observes, there was " no stated liturgy in general use," 
 and where " they allowed the validity of Presbyterian or- 
 ders." * Another reason was the fear that the Jacobite 
 non-jurors, in case the Liturgy should be altered, would or- 
 ganize a formidable schism under the name of the old and 
 true Church of England. These considerations lent their 
 aid to the party which, on theological grounds, were hostile 
 to the offering of any concessions to the dissenters. 
 
 It is, therefore, the misfortune of the Episcopal Church 
 that it inherits, not the constitution that was given to it by 
 the reforaiers, but the same as amended for the worse, in 
 the middle of the seventeenth century, by the controlling 
 faction at the restoration of the Stuarts. But, even in this 
 form, although it shuts out from service in the Church of 
 England all ministers not ordained by a bishop, it pronounces 
 no condemnation upon the orders of non-episcopal churches.' 
 In an opinion which was given not long ago by three emi- 
 nent ecclesiastical lawyers, not only is the liberal interpreta- 
 tion of the statute of the 13th of Elizabeth sanctioned, and 
 this statute, in connection with the XXIIId Article, and with 
 the practice of the Church of England, prior to the Act of 
 Uniformity, declared to preclude the seeming exclusiveness 
 
 * History of Conferences^ p. 421. 
 
THE RELATION OF THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 
 
 of the preface to the Ordinal, but these lawyers express 
 doubts whether even now, since the Act of Uniformity, it is 
 illegal for non-episcopal ministers to preach occasional ser- 
 mons in any church of England, with the permission of the 
 incumbent.* 
 
 When a clergyman of the Church of England, like the 
 Dean of Canterbury on a late occasion, finds himself in a 
 foreign country, there is nothing in the law of England, or 
 of the Church of England, to prevent him from performing 
 acts of ecclesiastical communion with the churches and min- 
 isters of non-episcopal bodies. The Episcopal Church in 
 
 * This legal opinion is referred to by Principal Tulloch, Contemporary 
 Beview, December, 1871. 
 
 [A writer in The Qaarterly Review for October, 1878, after proving- that 
 the English Church was in complete communion and sympathy with the 
 foreign Protestant churches up to the eve of the Restoration, shows that 
 even then the requirement of the Act of Uniformity that ministers should 
 be episcopally ordained, carried in it no denial of the validity of Presby- 
 terian ordination. " At the very moment of insisting on this qualification 
 as a general rule, the Act makes an exception in favor of the members of 
 foreign Protestant bodies. Immediately after the clauses which, in Eng- 
 land, Wales, and Berwick-upon-Tweed, require Episcopal ordination as a 
 preliminary condition to the tenure of a benefice, and to the administra- 
 tion of the Lord's Supper, the Act proceeds : — ' Provided that the penal- 
 ties in this Act shall not extend to the foreigners or aliens of the foreign 
 Reformed churches — allowed, or to be allowed, by the king's majesty, his 
 heirs and successors in England. ' " The rule of Episcopal ordination was 
 established for Englishmen ; but the defenders of the Act of Uniformity 
 disowned the intention of pronouncing judgment adverse to the orders of 
 the foreign churches. Archbishop Bramhall, immediately after the Act 
 'of Uniformity, required conditional or hypothetical reordination on this 
 ground alone, that "we are now to consider ourselves as a national 
 church, limited by law." " Non annihilantes priores ordines (si quos 
 habuit) nee validitatem aut invaliditatem determinantes " — is his lan- 
 guage. The bishops who were consecrated for Scotland in 1661, received 
 Episcopal ordination and consecration, but there is no evidence that they 
 required Episcopal reordination of the Scottish clergy. The bishops 
 •vsent into Scotland in 1610, had been sent to preside over Presbyterian 
 clergy. The Bishops of Winchester, whose diocese embraces the Channel 
 Islands, recognized, from the days of the Reformation, as parish priests, 
 the ministers of the French Protestant churches.] 
 
TO THE OTHEK PROTESTANT OHUECHES. 223 
 
 this country is not a national clmrcli. It is only one among 
 various denominations of Christians, which are equal before 
 the law. The first settlers of this country, in establishing 
 new political communities, availed themselves of the right, 
 universally conceded by Protestants to every people, to 
 shape their church polity to suit themselves. Some of them 
 were from the Church of Holland ; some were Huguenots ; 
 and some were English non-conformists. These Christian 
 non-episcopal denominations are not dissenters or schismatics, 
 in any proper or intelligible sense of the terms. They stand 
 on the same footing in relation to the Church of England as 
 do the Lutheran Churches of Germany and Sweden, or the 
 Protestant Church of France. Whoever raises an objection 
 to such an act as that of the Dean of Canterbury in taking 
 part in the communion service with a Presbyterian clergy- 
 man, has a right to his notions as to the law of the Church 
 of England, but he has no moral right to condemn others, 
 who do not share in them, for obeying their own convictions. 
 Certain it is that the great divines of the Church of Eng- 
 land, for more than a century after the Reformation, would 
 have lifted up their hands in amazement on hearing any- 
 body object to such an act of fellowship with foreign non- 
 episcopal churches as Dean Alford performed at Berlin, or 
 Dean Smith in Kew York. The circumstance that the law 
 of England requires certain formalities before an Episcopal 
 clergyman from abroad can officiate in a pulpit of the nation- 
 al church, is not apposite to the case in hand. Apart from 
 the difference, that here there is no national church, whose 
 clergymen are bound by civil regulations, the analogous case 
 would be that of an American Episcopal minister officiating 
 in a Methodist or Independent chapel in England. Mere 
 questions of ecclesiastical etiquette we must leave for experts 
 to determine. Moral obligation, however, is higher than 
 conventionalities. A liberal-minded Anglican clergyman, 
 visiting America, is not bound to submit himself to the su- 
 pervision and control of local bishops who hold that aU 
 
224: THE RELATION OF THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Protestant denominations, except their own, are destitute of 
 an authorized ministry and of the sacraments, and whose 
 conceptions of episcopacy are derived, not from divines like 
 Cranmer, Jewel, Ussher, and Whately, but from the inter- 
 pretations and theories of Laud and Sheldon. John Wesley 
 was complained of for preaching in parishes, not in the 
 church but in the open air, and without an invitation from 
 the incumbent. lie answered that, being excluded from the 
 parish churches, if he preached nowhere else, he would be 
 silenced. If he had complied with current notions of regu- 
 larity and etiquette, where would Methodism have been ? 
 And what would the Church of England have been, without 
 the reactionary influence of that Reformation ? So now, 
 the demands of Christian catholicity may justly override the 
 prescriptions of a punctilious etiquette ; especially when 
 these are acknowledged by only one of the parties con- 
 cerned. 
 
 The Church of England, notwithstanding all its defects, 
 is a great and noble institution. We wish it no evil. But 
 it is now tasting the fruit of errors in the past. On three 
 great occasions at least, golden opportunities for a larger 
 comprehension were presented, and those opportunities were 
 cast away. The first was at the accession of James I. when 
 the millenary petition was offered, and when, at the Hamp- 
 ton Court Conference, to the unspeakable delight of a knot 
 of partisan and sycophantic bishops, that " Solomon of the 
 age " bullied the Puritans. The second was at the restora- 
 tion of the throne, at the accession of Charles 11., when his 
 most solemn pledges were violated, and when the Savoy 
 Conference was attended by another victory of a ' bigoted 
 faction. The third was at the Pevolution, when the same 
 faction, aided by peculiar circumstances to wliich we have 
 adverted, gained another triumph. At both of these last 
 epochs, the noblest and wisest men of the clergy and laity 
 were the advocates of a liberal policy. Now, nearly half of 
 the English nation is arrayed in hostility to the national 
 
TO THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 225 
 
 church. If the Church of England should be disestab- 
 lished, it would most probably be divided. It is hardly pos- 
 sible that the party which cleaves to that Judaizing type of 
 religion, which is an heirloom from Pharisaism, and is an eter- 
 nal foe of the Gospel — as truly so to-day as it was when Paul 
 denounced it without stint, in the Epistle to the Galatians — 
 should abide in the same communion with the adherents 
 of the principles of the Reformation. The extreme Pitu- 
 alists, with their candles, " their flexions and genuflexions," 
 their elevation of ceremonies above truth and godliness, will 
 form a church by themselves, or go back to the Pope, where 
 they belong. Under the present circumstances, the signs of 
 the times being what they are, and when the Pomanizing 
 faction are active, it is not strange that enlightened men of 
 the Low Church and Broad Church parties should be in- 
 clined to draw closer to the other Protestant bodies, which 
 hold the same faith, and should desire to see the Church of 
 England abandon the habit of seclusion, which is not re- 
 quired by her constitution, but which was forced upon her 
 in the servile days of the Stuarts, and resume her old posi- 
 tion by the side of her sisters of the Peformation. Such 
 men feel that the contests of the seventeenth century are 
 over, and that the passions engendered by them should die 
 out, and that the barriers that were erected by partisan feel- 
 ing should be levelled. In each of the branches of the 
 High Church party, there are good men. But with the 
 principles of this party it is impossible for a genuine Prot- 
 estantism to feel any sympathy. The astronomers tell us 
 that any star, however diminutive it might be, on which we 
 should place ourselves, would appear to be the centre of the 
 universe, and that the whole creation would seem to re- 
 volve around the particular spot where we stand. It must 
 be through some similar delusion that this party of the An- 
 glican Church, a party which constitutes but an insignificant 
 fraction of the Christian world, while it turns its back on 
 the Protestant churches, and, in turn, is spumed by the 
 10* 
 
226 THE KELATION OF THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND, ETC. 
 
 Church of Rome, yet imagines itself the centre and embodi- 
 ment of catholic unity. Archbishop Whately was not a 
 man of genius, but he was a man of remarkable good sense. 
 In his work on the Kingdom of Christ, he shows that the 
 Articles of the Church of England "rest the claims of 
 ministers, not on some supposed sacramental virtue, trans- 
 mitted from hand to hand in unbroken succession from the 
 apostles, in a chain, of which if any one link be ever doubt- 
 ful, a distressing uncertainty is thrown over all Christian 
 ordinances, sacramentis, and church-privileges forever ; but, 
 on the fact of those ministers being the regularly-appointed 
 officers of a regular Christian community." Those, he says, 
 who seek to take what they call higher ground, " are in fact 
 subverting the principles both of our own church in particu- 
 lar, and of every Christian Church that claims the inherent 
 rights belonging to a community, and confirmed by the sanc- 
 tion of God's Word as contained in the Holy Scriptures." 
 " It is curious," adds Whately, " how very common it is for 
 any sect or party to assume a title indicative of the very ex- 
 cellence in which they are especially deficient, or strongly 
 condemnatory of the very errors with which they are espe- 
 cially chargeable .... The phrase 'Catholic' religion 
 {i. 6., * Universal '), is the most commonly in the mouths of 
 those who are the most limited and exclusive in their views, 
 and who seek to shut out the largest number of Christian 
 communities from the Gospel covenant. ' Schism,' again, is 
 by none more loudly reprobated than by those who are not 
 only the immediate authors of schism, but the advocates of 
 principles tending to generate and perpetuate schisms with- 
 out end." ^ It would be well for the party, which Whately 
 here delineates in language not more caustic than it is just, 
 to learn, that to take a part for the whole is the very es- 
 sence of a sect. 
 
 * Kingdom of Christ (Am. ed.), pp. 126, 127, 128. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAKDS. 227 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS.* 
 
 It was pretty clearly implied in a remark of Dugald Stew- 
 art that up to his time Jonathan Edwards was the only 
 philosopher of note that America had produced. " He," it 
 is added, " in logical acuteness and subtilty, does not yield 
 to any disputant bred in the imiversities of Europe." f 
 This was said more than a half century ago ; but all will 
 agree that Edwards even now is incomparably the foremost 
 among those who have cultivated metaphysical studies on 
 this side of the Atlantic. He was the pioneer in this de- 
 partment, and the same might also be said of his relation to 
 our literature generally. " The foundation of the literature 
 of independent America," writes F. D. Maurice, speaking of 
 the treatise on the Will, " was laid in a book which was 
 published while it was a subject of the British crown.":]: 
 Edwards is an example of that rare mingling of intellectual 
 subtilty and spiritual insight, of logical acumen with mysti- 
 cal fervor, which make up together the largest mental en- 
 dowment, and qualify their possessor for the highest achieve- 
 ments in the field of thought. Augustine is an instance of 
 this remarkable blending of the rational with the mystical, 
 this union of light and heat. In his Confessions, in the 
 midst of glowing utterances of adoration, transporting visions 
 of a glory unseen, he turns off into a speculation upon the 
 nature of time, or an argument upon the infinitude of the 
 divine attributes. In the typical men of the scholastic age, 
 Anselm and Aquinas, there is found the same combination 
 
 ♦ An Article in The North American Review for March, 1879. 
 f Stewart's Works (Hamilton's ed.), voL i., p. 424. 
 X Modern Philosophy^ p. 469. 
 
228 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 of intellect and feeling. The understanding follows out its 
 problems, being quickened and illuminated, yet not in the 
 least blinded, from a deeper source of light. The lack of 
 the one element, that of devout sensibility, was the weak- 
 ness of Abelard ; a degree of deficiency in the other, that of 
 dialectic enterprise and keenness, lessened the greatness of 
 Bernard. A like conjunction of diverse qualities appears in 
 the most subtile, the most powerful, the most interesting of 
 living English theologians, John Henry Newman. Let any 
 competent student take up Edwards's treatise on the Will, 
 and mark the sharp, unrelenting logic with which he pur- 
 sues his opponents through all the intricate windings of that 
 perplexed controversy, and then turn to the same author's 
 sermon on the Nature and Reality of Bjpiritnjbal Light. 
 It is like passing from the pages of Aristotle to a sermon of 
 John Tauler ; only that, unlike most of the mystics, Edwards 
 knows how to analyze the experiences of the heart, and to 
 use them as data for scientific conclusions. He has left a 
 record of meditations on "the beauty and sweetness" of 
 divine things, when even the whole face of nature was trans- 
 figured to his vision. We see this keen dialectician, whose , 
 power of subtile argument Sir James Mackintosh pronoun- 
 ces to have been " perhaps unmatched, certainly unsur- 
 passed, among men," "^ melted in an ecstasy of emotion. 
 We shall have occasion to point out the effect of this 
 characteristic upon his ethical and religious philosophy. 
 
 Edwards was only thirteen when he entered Yale Col- 
 lege ; and it was while he was a member of college that he 
 committed to writing philosophical remarks that would do 
 credit to the ablest and maturest mind. He is one of the 
 most astonishing examples of precocious mental develop- 
 ment of which we have any record. Pascal is in some re- 
 spects a parallel instance. He was only twelve years old 
 when he framed, from his own ingenious observations, a dis- 
 
 * Progress of Ethical Philosophy^ p. 108 (Philadelphia ed., 1833). 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 229 
 
 sertation upon sound, and when he discovered anew, without 
 aid, the truths of geometry as far as the thirty-second propo- 
 sition of the first book of Euclid. It was chiefly as a 
 mathematical prodigy that Pascal was distinguished in his 
 boyhood. Edwards, at the age of twelve, wrote a letter, 
 which is really a well-reasoned scientific paper, on the habits 
 of the spider, as ascertained from his own singularly accu- 
 rate observations.* His copious Notes on physics and 
 natural science, which afford a striking proof of his intellec- 
 tual grasp and versatility, were written, at least in great 
 part, before he left college. But prior to the composition 
 of these, he set down, under the head of Mind, a series 
 of metaphysical definitions and discussions, which, as emana- 
 ting from a boy of sixteen or seventeen, are truly marvellous. 
 In them may be found the germs of much that is developed 
 afterwards in his theological writings. 
 
 Edwards was a Berkeleian. A large part of these juvenile 
 papers are devoted to the elucidation and defence of the 
 doctrine that the percepts of sense have no existence inde- 
 pendently of mind ; that, although they are not originated 
 by us, but by a power without, that power is not a material 
 substance or substratum, but the will of God acting in a 
 uniform method. Sensations are the divine ideas, commu- 
 nicated to creaturely minds by the will of Him in whom 
 these ideas inhere, and by whom they aU consist. " The 
 world is an ideal one ; and the law of creating and the succes- 
 sion of these ideas is constant and regular." f If we suppose 
 that the world is mental in the sense explained, natural 
 philosophy is not in the least affected. X The common ques- 
 tions which are brouglit forward by way of objection — as, 
 "What becomes of material things when we do not see 
 them ? " — he ingeniously answers, and in a tone that renders 
 his own belief in their nullity plain. He quotes from Cud- 
 
 * In Dvdght's Life of Edwa/rds^ chap. ii. 
 flbid., p. 669. 
 X Ibid. 
 
230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 worth Plato's famous passage about the cave, to illustrate his 
 doctrine that material things are shadows and not substan- 
 ces. The substance of all bodies is declared to be " the in- 
 finitely exact and precise divine idea, together with an 
 answerable, perfectly exact, precise, and stable will, with re- 
 spect to corresponding communications to created minds, 
 and effects on their minds."* The objection that the 
 ideal theory is contradicted by common-sense, he confutes 
 by showing how erroneous, on any theory, is the vulgar im- 
 pression as to the character of our perception of distant ob- 
 jects, and by exhibiting the Berkeleian discovery, which 
 Professor Bowen calls the one great psychological discovery 
 of later times, f that our impression of objects of sense 
 from visual perception is totally diverse from that given 
 through the sense of touch. Take away color, take away 
 the secondary qualities of matter which are confessed to be 
 relative — view matter as one who is born blind would re- 
 gard it — and we have only resistance, with the connected 
 ideas of, place and of space. Matter is thus known to be 
 something quite different from what the vulgar imagine it 
 to be. So the way is opened for a more just appreciation 
 of the ideal theory, and for the conclusion, which Edwards 
 considers to be the truth, that there are only spiritual beings 
 or substances in the universe. 
 
 It is important to decide whether Edwards adhered to the 
 Berkeleian doctrine in after-life. It is found in the Notes 
 on Natural PhilosojpJiy^ as well as in the manuscript entitled 
 Mmd. These, however, were nearly contemporaneous. 
 But in the last-mentioned manuscript there are passages 
 inserted of a somewhat later date ; and in these the same 
 doctrine is defended. % Moreover, I find in the treatise on 
 Original Sim,, one of his latest compositions and a posthu- 
 mous publication, this remark : " The course of nature is 
 
 ♦ Dwight's Life, p. 674 
 
 f Modern Philosophy ^ p. 141. 
 
 % See Dwight's Life^ p. 674. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 231 
 
 demonstrated bj late improvements in philosophy to be in- 
 deed what om* author himseK says it is, viz., nothing but the 
 established order of the agency and operation of the Author 
 of nature." * Here it is altogether probable that the refer- 
 ence is to the philosophy of Berkeley. With this passage 
 may be compared incidental statements on perception, in the 
 treatise on the will, which, however, do not go so far as nec- 
 essarily to imply the Berkeleian theory, f 
 
 A less important yet interesting question relates to the 
 particular source from which Edwards derived his acquaint- 
 ance with Berkeley. Professor Fraser, in his very thorough 
 and instructive biography of this philosopher, conjectures 
 that it may have been through the influence of Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson, who was a personal friend of the philosopher, and 
 adopted his system. Johnson was a tutor at Yale from 1716 
 to 1719, when Edwards. was a student. But, from 1717 to 
 1719, a portion of the students, of whom Edwards was one, 
 were taught at Wethersfield, Johnson remaining in ^ew 
 Haven. The seceding students who went to Wethersfield 
 did not regard Tutor Johnson with favor. E^or is it certain 
 that he had himself espoused the Berkeleian theory at that 
 time. But the Thecrry of Vision was given to the world in 
 1709, and the Principles of Iluma/n Knowledge in 1710 ; so 
 that it is not improbable that copies of these works had 
 come into the hands of Edwards, independently of Johnson. 
 They found in him an eager and congenial disciple. 
 
 Locke is the author whose stimulating influence on Ed- 
 wards is most obvious. He read Locke when he was four- 
 teen years old, with a delight greater, to use his own words, 
 " than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up hand- 
 fuls of silver and gold from some newly discovered treas- 
 ure." if Deeply affected as Edwards was by this great 
 writer, he read Locke with independence, and not only pur- 
 
 * Dwight's edition, vol. ii, p. 540. 
 t Ibid., pp. 206, 207. 
 % Dwight's Ufe^ p. 30. 
 
232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 sued a theological direction quite opposite to that of his 
 master, but also criticises not unfrequentlj his doctrines and 
 arguments. For example, he exposes the fallacy of the il- 
 lustration by which Locke would support his distinction be- 
 tween preference and choice ; and he likewise shows that 
 Locke does not rightly define the difference between desire 
 and will. "^ In this last point, Locke goes counter to the 
 description which he gives of the will in the context, accord- 
 ing to which it cannot be at variance with predominant de- 
 sire. Edwards could easily detect the inconsistency of 
 Locke in postulating a power to suspend the prosecution of 
 a desire ; since this act of suspension must itself be a choice, 
 determined, like every other, on Locke's principles, by the 
 strongest motive. It is to Locke's chapter on Power that 
 Edwards was most indebted for quickening suggestions. 
 This discussion, as we are explicitly informed, caused him to 
 perceive that an evil man may properly be said to have a 
 natural or physical ability to be good. Locke anticipates 
 Edwards in combating the proposition that choice springs 
 from a previous state of indifference, an absolute neutrality 
 of feeling, either preceding the act of judgment or inter- 
 posed between that act and the act of will. Locke's con- 
 ception of liberty as relating exclusively to the effects of 
 choice, or events consecutive to volition, and not to the origi- 
 nation of choice itself, is precisely coincident with that of 
 Edwards. " Freedom," says Locke, " consists in the de- 
 pendence of the existence, or non-existence, of any action 
 upon our volition of it." Locke asserts that the question 
 whether the will itseK be free or not is unreasonable and 
 unintelligible ; and he precedes Edwards in seeking to fasten 
 upon one who asks whether a man is free to choose in a 
 particular way rather than in the opposite, the absurdity of 
 assuming the possibility of an infinite series of choices, or of 
 inquiring whether an identical proposition is true. " To 
 
 * Vol. ii, pp. 16, 17. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 233 
 
 choose as one pleases," if it does not mean " to choose as one 
 chooses to choose " — ^which involves the absurdity of a series 
 of choices ad infinitum — can only mean " to choose as one 
 actually chooses," a futile identical proposition. In the 
 psychology of the act of choice there is no essential differ- 
 ence between Locke and Edwards. Both represent the 
 mind as perpetually moved by the desire of good. Locke's 
 invariable antecedent of choice, "uneasiness of desire," or 
 last dictate of the understanding as to good or happiness, 
 does not differ from Edwards's " view of the mind as to the 
 greatest apparent good." In one grand peculiarity they 
 coincide : will and sensibility are confounded. The twofold n 
 division of the powers of the mind still prevailed in philoso- 
 phy. We are endued with understanding and will ; and 
 mental phenomena which do not belong to the understand- 
 ing are relegated to the will. It is impossible to ignore 
 wholly the existence of a third department of our nature ; 
 and the principal inconsistency of Edwards in his discussions 
 of this subject, in his various writings, is the failure per- 
 sistently to identify or persistently to distinguish voluntary 
 and involuntary inclinations. Inclination and choice are 
 treated as indistinguishable,* and yet the one is spoken of 
 as the antecedent and cause of the other. The ambiguity of 
 " inclination " and of its synonyms has been a fruitful source 
 of confusion. It was reserved for the metaphysicians of the 
 present century to establish the bounds between sensibility, 
 . an involuntary function, and will. It is important, however, 
 not to overlook the distinction ^between those choices which 
 are permanent states of the will, and constitute the abiding 
 principles of character and motives of action, and the sub- 
 sidiary purposes and volitions which they dictate. It is 
 right to add that, however Edwards may have owed to 
 Locke pregnant hints on the subject of the will, these fell 
 into the richest soil ; and the doctrine of philosophical ne- 
 
 * See, e. g., toI. v., pp. 10, 11. 
 
2E4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 
 
 cessity was elaborated and fortified by the younger writer 
 with a much more rigid logic and a far wider sweep of ar- 
 gument than can be claimed for Locke's discussion. Locke 
 modified liis opinions from one edition to another ; and his 
 correspondence with Limborch discloses the fact that he was 
 himself not satisfied with the views of the subject which he 
 had presented in his work. The conviction of Edwards, on 
 the other hand, was attended by no misgivings, and stayed 
 with him to the end of life. 
 
 The resemblance of Edwards's treatise on the Will to the 
 treatises of Hobbes and Collins on the same subject is another 
 topic that merits attention. As to Hobbes, Edwards has oc- 
 casion to observe that he had never read him. There is no 
 probability that he had ever seen a copy of Collins's Lxquiry, 
 Edwards was not the man to conceal a real obligation. His 
 intellectual resources were too large to make it requisite for 
 him to borrow, and no one has ever questioned his thorough 
 honesty. Whatever similarity is found to exist between 
 him and the authors referred to is accidental. Hobbes, 
 like Edwards, holds that " he \s,free to do a thing, that he 
 may do if he have the will to do it, and may forbear if he * 
 have the will to forbear " * — that is, freedom is concerned 
 not with the genesis, but with the event, of the choice. 
 " The last dictate of the judgment concerning the good or 
 bad that may follow on any action," in agreement with Ed- 
 wards, " is made the proximate efficient cause of the will's 
 determination on one side or the other." f The objection 
 that coimsels, admonitions, commands, and the like, are vain 
 and useless on the necessitarian doctrine, is met by Hobbes 
 with the retort that, on no other doctrine, can they have any 
 effect at all. This is precisely in the manner of Edwards. 
 The argument for necessity from the principle of causation, 
 applied to the determinations of the will, is substantially the 
 
 * Works (Molesworth's edition), vol ii., p. 410. 
 t Ibid., p. 247. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 235 
 
 same in both writers. Collins brings forward the same 
 definition of liberty as " a power in man to do as he wills, 
 or pleases." * He applies, also, the reductio ad dbsurdum to 
 the statement that a man can choose as he pleases : it is an 
 identical proposition, f He seeks to prove the necessity of 
 volitions by bringing them under the law of cause and effect, 
 and by driving his antagonists into the admission that the 
 mind is determined by causal agency to choose so and not 
 otherwise, the alternative being atheism. % This corresponds 
 closely to the reasoning of Edwards. Their argiiments from 
 the divine foreknowledge are in substance the same. § 
 Things must be certain in order to be foreseen, and they are 
 not certain unless antecedent causes render them certain. 
 Persuasions, appeals, and laws, are addressed to men only on 
 the supposition that they tend to produce effects, or contain 
 within them causal energy. These coincidences between 
 Edwards and the authors above named are really not re- 
 markable. The defenders of the doctrine of necessity nat- 
 urally take one path. They demand an explanation of the 
 determination of the will, so far as it involves the election 
 of one thing in preference to another. They deny that the 
 mere power of willing accounts for the specification of the 
 choice, by which one thing is taken and another rejected. 
 Taking this weapon, the axiom of cause and effect, they 
 chase their opponents out of every place of refuge. Edwards 
 is peculiar only in the surpassing keenness and unsparing 
 persistency with which he carries on the combat, even an- 
 ticipating defences against his logic which had not been as 
 yet set up. He was anxious to demolish forts even before they 
 were erected. His habit of taking up all conceivable objec- 
 tions to the proposition which he advocates, in advance of the 
 opponent, is one main source of his strength as a disputant. 
 He not only fires his own gun, but spikes that of the enemy. ' 
 It is far from being true that Edwards was the first to 
 
 * Inquiry (London, 1717), p. 2. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 41. % Ibid., pp. 58, 59. § Ibid., p. 83 seq. 
 
236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 assert the impropriety of the term " necessary " as a predi- 
 cate of acts of will, on the ground that necessity presup- 
 poses an opposition of the will, which, of course, is precluded 
 when the occurrence in question is itself a choice. I am 
 constrained to . that to which my will is opposed, but which 
 nevertheless occurs. That is necessary " which choice can- 
 not prevent." * The same objection is made to the terms 
 " irresistible," " unavoidable," " inevitable," " unable," and 
 their synonyms, as descriptive of the determinations of the 
 will. I do not find in Augustine this criticism of the above- 
 mentioned terms in any explicit form ; yet there lurks con- 
 tinually under his statements the feeling that underlies this 
 criticism ; as, for instance, when he speaks of " the most 
 blessed necessity " of not sinning, under which the Deity is 
 placed, " if necessity it is to be called " — " si necessitas dicenda 
 est."t But the objection to all terms implying coercion, 
 especially to the word " necessity," is set forth by Thomas 
 Aquinas as clearly as by Edwards. " That which is moved 
 by another," writes Thomas, " is said to be constrained 
 (cogi), if it is moved against its ovm inclination (contra in- 
 clinationem propriam) ; but if it be moved by another which 
 gives to it its own inclination (quod sibi dat propriam incli- 
 
 nationem), it is not said to be constrained So God 
 
 in moving the will does not constrain it, because he gives to 
 it its own inclination. To be moved voluntarily is to be 
 moved of one's self, that is, from an internal principle ; but 
 that intrinsic principle can be moved by another principle 
 extrinsic ; and so to he moved of one^s self is not inconsistent 
 with being moved hy another. ^"^ % 
 
 It is the doctrine of Edwards, then, that the will is de- 
 termined by " that view of the mind which has the greatest 
 degree of previous tendency to excite volition." § This an- 
 
 * Edwards's Works, vol. ii., p. 84. 
 
 f Op. imp., i., 103. 
 
 X Summa^ Part I. , Question 5, Article 4. 
 
 %Works^ vol. ii., p. 25. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHT OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 237 
 
 tecedent mental state secures the result by a strictly causal 
 efficiency. Moral necessity is distinguished from the natural 
 necessity that prevails in material nature, in that the former 
 is concerned with mental phenomena, with motives and the 
 volitions which they produce ; but the difference " does not 
 lie so much in the nature of the connection^ as in the two 
 terms connected.''''^ It is cause and effect in both cases. 
 To the objection that morality and responsibility are sub- 
 verted by this doctrine, Edwards replies that men are re- 
 sponsible for their choices, no matter what the causes of 
 them may be ; that moral quality inheres in the choices 
 themselves, and not in their causes. As liberty " does not 
 consider anything of the cause of the choice," f so it is with 
 moral accountableness, with merit and ill-desert. Sufficient 
 that the choice exists in the man as an operation of will. X 
 On no other hypothesis than the necessitarian did Edwards 
 think it possible to hold to the omniscience of God and his 
 universal providence and government. Principles which 
 freethinkers maintained for other ends, he defended as the 
 indispensable foundations of religion. 
 
 Edwards came forward as the champion of Calvinism 
 against Whitby and its other English assailants. He in- 
 tended "to bring the late objections and outcries against 
 Calvinistic divinity to the test of the strictest reasoning." § 
 He scattered to the winds the loosely defined notions of 
 free-will which made it include the choosing of choices, and 
 choice from a previous indifference, or apart from all influ- 
 ence of motives. It is not true that, out of various possible 
 choices, the mind decides upon, i. e., chooses one. Kor is 
 it true that the act of choice starts into being independently 
 of inducements. Although his adversaries must have felt 
 that he took advantage of the infirmities of language, and 
 confuted what they said rather than what they meant, yet it 
 
 * Works, vol. ii., p. 34. f Ibid., p. 39, of. p. 191. 
 
 Jlbid., p. 185 seq. (Part IV., § 1). 
 
 § Letter to Erskine. Dwight's Lifey p. 497. 
 
238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 
 
 is quite untnie tliat he was guilty of any conscious unfairness. 
 He was not the man purposely to surround himself with 
 
 . . . . " mist, the common gloss 
 Of theologians." 
 
 He had no faith in their conception of freedom, however 
 it might be formulated. But, in prosecuting his purpose, 
 Edwards set up a philosophy of the will which is not conso- 
 nant with the doctrine that had been held by the main body 
 of Augustinian theologians. It is true that the Wittenberg 
 Eeformers, at the outset, and Calvin, in his earlier writings, 
 especially the Institutes, pushed predestination to the supra- 
 lapsarian extreme. The doctrine of Augustine, however, 
 and the more general doctrine even of Calvinistic theolo- 
 gians, the doctrine of Calvin himself and of the Westmin- 
 ster Assembly's creeds, is that a certain liberty of will ad 
 utrunwis, or the power of contrary choice, had belonged to 
 the first man, but had disappeared in the act of transgression, 
 which brought his will into bondage to evil. It was the 
 common doctrine, too, that in mankind now, while the wiU 
 is enslaved as regards religious obedience, it remains free 
 outside of this province, in all civil and secular concerns. In 
 this wide domain the power of contrary choice still subsists. 
 But Edwards's conception of the will admits of no such dis- 
 tinction. Freedom is as predicable of men now as of Adam 
 before he sinned ; of religious morality as of the affairs of 
 worldly business ; of man as of God. He asserts most em- 
 phatically that he holds men to be possessed now of all 
 the liberty which it is possible to imagine, or which it ever 
 entered into the heart of any man to conceive.* Of course, 
 there can have been no loss of liberty, no forfeiture of a 
 prerogative once possessed. Philosophical necessity belongs 
 to the very nature of the will. Therefore it binds all 
 spiritual beings alike. This is not the philosophy of Augus- 
 
 ♦ Letter to Erskine, vol. ii., p. 293. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 239 
 
 tine or of the Westminster divines. They held to a muta- 
 bility of will once belonging to man, but now lost ; to a 
 freedom pertaining at present to men in one sphere of ac- 
 tion, but not in another. 
 
 Kefraining, for the present, from comments on the drift 
 of this philosophical creed, we follow this acute and power- 
 ful thinker into another but adjacent field. IS'ot satisfied 
 with the timid, half-hearted way in which Watts, Doddridge, 
 and other English Calvinists of that day, had attenuated the 
 doctrine of original sin, in deference to the attacks of the 
 Arminians, Edwards undertook to reclaim the ground which 
 had been surrendered, and to put to rout the confident as- 
 sailants. For their " glorying and insults " he believed 
 there was no foundation.* He took up a great theme, be- 
 longing alike to philosophy and theology, the dominion of 
 moral evil in the race of mankind. It cannot be said that 
 he does not squarely grapple with his adversaries. He fully 
 understood himself, and had the courage which comes from 
 undoubting conviction. He invited for his arguments the 
 closest scrutiny, and only deprecated the objection that they 
 were " metaphysical," as vague and impertinent. " The ques- 
 tion is not," he on one occasion remarks, " whether what is 
 said be metaphysics, physics, logic, or mathematics, Latin, 
 English, French, or Mohawk, but whether the reasoning be 
 good and the arguments truly conclusive." f His ardor is a 
 white heat which never moves him to substitute declamation 
 for reasoning. In this treatise on " Original Sin," he blinks 
 no difficulties ; but, having established by cogent reasoning 
 and by Scripture, with appeals to heathen as well as Chris- 
 tian authority, the tremendous fact of sin, as a universal 
 characteristic of mankind, he endeavors to prove that men 
 are truly, and not by any legal fiction, judged to be sinful 
 from the start, and literally guilty of the primal transgres- 
 sion. To this end, he seeks to bring the continuance of sin 
 
 * D wight's Life^ p. 569. f Works, vol. ii., p. 474. 
 
240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 
 
 in the individuals of the race, onward from the beginning of 
 their personal life, under the familiar law of habit. It is 
 analogous to the self -perpetuation of any habit which arises 
 from an initial act. To prove that Adam's act was our act, 
 he launches out into a bold speculation on the nature of 
 identity. Personal identity, he asserts, is the effect of the 
 divine will and ordinance. If it consists in the sameness of 
 consciousness, that is kept up by divine acts from m9ment to 
 moment. If it be thought to consist in the sameness of sub- 
 stance, even this is due to the perpetual divine preservation ; 
 and preservation is not to be distinguished from constantly 
 repeated acts of creation. Our identity is a constituted 
 identity, dependent upon the creative will, and in this sense 
 arbitrary, yet conformed to an idea of order. So the indi- 
 viduals of the human race are the continuation of Adam ; 
 they truly — that is, by the wiU and appointment of God — 
 constitute one moral whole. It is strictly true that all par- 
 ticipated in the act by which "the species first rebelled 
 against God." * We are not condemned for another's evil 
 choice, but for our own, and the principle of sin within us is 
 only the natural consequence of that original act. Time 
 counts for nothing : the first rising of evil inclination in us 
 is one and the same with the first rising of evil inclination 
 in Adam ; it is the members participating in, and consent- 
 ing to, the act of the head. The habit of sinning follows 
 upon this first rising of evil inclination, in us as in Adam. 
 Such is the constitution of things ; and on the divine con- 
 stitution, the persistence of individuality, of personal con- 
 sciousness and identity, equally depends. It is to be noticed 
 that, in defence of his realistic theory, Edwards does not lay 
 hold of the traducian h}^othesis of the evolution of souls. 
 He admits that souls are created ; but so are consciousness 
 and the substance of our individual being at every succes- 
 sive instant of time. Like Anselm, and the schoolmen gen- 
 
 * Vol. il., p. 543. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS, 241 
 
 erally, he is a creationist. It is evident tliat Locke's cnrioua 
 chapter on Identity and Diversity * put Edwards on the 
 track on which he advanced to these novel opinions. Locke 
 there attempts to prove that sameness of consciousness is the 
 sole bond of identity, and that identity would remain were 
 consciousness disjoined from one substance and connected 
 with another. Edwards's opinion is peculiar 'to himself, but 
 there is no reason to doubt that the initial impulse to the re- 
 flections that issued in it was imparted by the discussion of 
 Locke.f 
 
 We now turn to the ethical theory of Edwards. In his 
 masterly treatise on the Nature of True Yirtue, he does 
 not content himself, as philosophers before him had so often 
 done, with the inquiry. What is the abstract quality of vir- 
 tue, or the foundation of moral obligation ? but he sets forth 
 the nature of virtue in the concrete, or the principle of 
 goodness. This he finds to be benevolence, or love to intel- 
 ligent being. It is love to the entire society of intelligent 
 beings according to their rank, or, to use his phrase, " the 
 amount of being " which belongs to them. It is thus a pro- 
 portionate love; supreme and absolute as regards God, 
 limited as regards inferior beings. Under this conception, 
 ethics and religion are inseparately connected. True love 
 to man is love to him as being, or as having being in him- 
 self, and is indissolubly connected, if it be real and genuine, 
 with a proportionately greater love to God. This benevo- 
 lence, which embraces in itself all goodness, is the fountain 
 and essence of specific virtues. It is described as a propen- 
 sity to being, a union of heart to intelligent being, a con- 
 sent to being, which prompts one to seek the welfare of the 
 objects loved. It is not synonymous with delight in the 
 happiness of others, but is the spring of that delight. Now, 
 
 * Locke's Essay ^ book ii., c. 27. 
 
 [f The influence of Berkeley as well as Locke is seen in Edwards's spec- 
 ulation. It is really the application of the Berkeleian idea to the mind — 
 a step which Berkeley himself had not taken.] 
 11 
 
242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 
 
 he who actually exercises this love delights in the same love 
 when it is seen in others ; and this delight induces and in- 
 volves an additional love to them, the love of complacency. 
 Tliere is a spiritual beauty in benevolence which is perceived 
 only through experience. The relish which this beauty ex- 
 cites and gratifies is possible only to him who is himself be- 
 nevolent. There is a rectitude in benevolence, a fitness to 
 the nature of the soul and the nature of things ; and the 
 perception of this rectitude awakens the sense of obligation, 
 and binds all men to be benevolent. The natural conscience 
 makes a man uneasy " in the consciousness of doing that to 
 others which he should be angry with them for doing to 
 him, if they were in his case, and he in theirs." This feel- 
 ing may be resolved into a consciousness of being inconsis- 
 tent with himself, of a disagreement with his own nature. 
 With the feeling of approbation and disapprobation, there 
 is joined a sense of desert, which consists in a natural agree- 
 ment, proportion, and harmony between malevolence or in- 
 jury and resentment and punishment. An essential ele- 
 ment in Edwards's whole theory is this double excellence of 
 universal love : first, a rightness recognized by all men, 
 whether they be good or bad ; and a peculiar, transcendent 
 beauty revealed only to the good, or on the condition of the 
 exercise of love as a practical principle. Of the natural con- 
 science in its relation to love he says : " Although it sees 
 not, or rather does not taste its primary and essential beauty, 
 i. €., it tastes no sweetness in benevolence to being in gen- 
 eral, simply considered, for nothing but general benevolence 
 itself can do that ; yet this natural conscience, common to 
 mankind, may a^rove it from that uniformity, equality, 
 and justice, which there is in it ; and the demerit which is 
 seen in the contrary, consisting in the natural agreement be- 
 tween the contrary, and being hated of being-in-general." * 
 The moral sense which is common to all men, and the spir- 
 
 • Vol. iii., p. 132. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 243 
 
 itual sense which belongs to the benevolent, may be called 
 sentiments ; but not with the idea that they are merely sub- 
 jective or arbitrary, and not correspondent to the objective 
 reality. The quality of Tightness and the quality of spirit- 
 ual beauty inhere in love as intrinsic attributes. By means 
 of this distinction between the intrinsic rectitude and the 
 spiritual beauty of the virtuous principle, Edwards built up 
 a foundation for his doctrine of spiritual light, or for that 
 mystical side which has been pointed out in his character 
 and in his conception of religion. The reaction of benevo- 
 lence against its opposite as being unrighteous and offensive 
 to the sense of spiritual beauty, and as an injury to the 
 beings on whom benevolence fixes its regard, is a form of 
 hatred. This hatred on the part of God and of all benevo- 
 lent beings toward " the statedly and irreclaimably evil" in- 
 spires a feeling of satisfaction in their punishment. Those 
 descriptions in Edwards of the sufferings of incorrigible 
 evil-doers in the future world, ^and of the contentment of 
 the righteous at beholding them, which grate on the sensi- 
 bility of most of the present generation, he felt no difficulty 
 in reconciling with the doctrine that impartial and univer- 
 sal love is the essence of virtue. 
 
 The disinterested love which is identical with virtue is the 
 antipode of self-love. If self-love signifies nothing but a 
 man's loving what is pleasing to him, this is only to say that 
 he loves what he loves ; since, with Edwards, loving an ob- 
 ject is synonymous with being pleased with it. It is " the 
 same thing as a man's having a faculty of will." * But the 
 proper meaning of self-love is regard to self in distinction 
 from others, or regard to some private interest. Edwards 
 undertakes to resolve all particular affections which do not 
 involve a regard to universal being, and a willingness that 
 the subordinate interest should give way whenever it com- 
 petes with the rights and the interests of the whole, into 
 
 * Vol. iii., p. 118. 
 
244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAKDS. 
 
 self-love. This is true of habits of feeling and actions that 
 are done at the dictate of natural conscience, which may be 
 looked upon " as in some sort arising from self-love, or self- 
 union," or the uneasy consciousness of being inconsistent 
 with one's self. The most questionable feature in Edwards's 
 whole theory is the position to which the natural perception 
 of right and sense of moral obligation are reduced, in order 
 to exalt the sense of spiritual beauty as the one necessary at- 
 tendant of true virtue. But he is not justly chargeable with 
 displacing the particular affections — love of family, patriot- 
 ism, and the like — although Robert Hall thinks that God- 
 win built up his ethical notions on the reasoning of Ed- 
 wards, as Godwin avowedly leaned upon Edwards in his ex- 
 position of liberty and necessity. * 
 
 In the dissertation on God)s Chief End in Creation^ 
 which, like the essay on the Nature of True Virtue, was 
 posthumous, Edwards " o'erleaped these earthy bounds," and 
 sought to unveil the motive of the Deity in calling the uni- 
 verse into being. He rejects every notion of an indigence, 
 insufficiency, and mutability in God, or any dependence of 
 the Creator on the creature for any part of his perfection or 
 happiness. Every pantheistic hypothesis of this nature he 
 repels. God must be conceived of as estimating the sum 
 total of his own excellence at its real worth. This regard 
 for his glory, or his glorious perfections, not because they 
 are his, but for their own sake, is not an unworthy feeling 
 or motive to action. The disposition to communicate the 
 infinite fulness of good which inheres eternally in himself, 
 ad extra, is an original property of his nature. This incited 
 him to create the world. That his attributes should be ex- 
 erted and should be known and esteemed, and become a 
 source of joy to other beings, is fit and proper. His delight 
 in his creatures does not militate against his independence, 
 
 * Compare Hall's Works (Bolin's edition), p. 284 j Godwin's Political 
 Justice, vol. i., p. 279 (Dublin, 1793). 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 245 
 
 since the creation emanates from himself, and this delight 
 may be resolved into a delight in himself. In God, the love 
 of himself and the love of the public are not to be distin- 
 guished as in man, " because God's being, as it were, com- 
 prehends all." Nor is it selfish in him to seek for the holi- 
 ness and happiness of the creature, out of supreme regard 
 to himself, or from the esteem which he has for that excel- 
 lence, a portion of which he imparts to them, and which he 
 reasonably desires to see an object of honor, and the source 
 of a joy like his o\vn. " For it is the necessary consequence 
 of true esteem and love, that we value others' esteem of the 
 same object, and dislike the contrary. For the same reason, 
 God approves of others' esteem and love of himself." The 
 (Creature is intended for an eternally increasing nearness and 
 union to God. Under this idea, his " interest must be viewed 
 as one with God's interest," and is therefore not regarded by 
 God as a thing distinct and separate from himself. Thus, 
 all the activities of God return to himself as the final goal. 
 
 Edwards was acquainted with Hutcheson. "The calm, 
 stable, universal good-will to all, or the most extensive be- 
 nevolence," and " the relish and reputation of it," or " the 
 esteem and good- will of a higher kind to all in whom it is 
 found," are phrases of this writer * which remind us of the 
 American philosopher. But the scientific construction of 
 the theory of virtue, especially in the place which love to 
 God finds in it, is original with Edwards. It is gratifying 
 to notice the admiration which the younger Fichte expresses 
 for this essay, which is only known to him through the brief 
 sketch of Mackintosh. " What he reports of it," says Fichte, 
 " appears to me excellent." f He speaks of the bold and 
 profound thought that God, as the source of love in all crea- 
 tures, on the same ground loves himself infinitely more than 
 any finite being ; and therefore in the creation of the world 
 
 * Moral Philosophy, vol. i., p. 69. 
 
 f '*Was dieser vonihm berichtet finden wir votreflaich." System der 
 Eihik, i, 544. 
 
246 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 can have no other end than the revelation of his own perfec- 
 tion, which, it is to be observed, consists in love. * " So," 
 concludes Fichte, " has this solitary thinker of North Amer- 
 ica risen to the deepest and loftiest ground which can under- 
 lie the principle of morals : universal benevolence which in 
 us, as it were, is potentially latent, and in morality is to 
 emerge into full consciousness and activity, is only the ef- 
 fect of the bond of love, which encloses us all in God." The 
 degree or amount of being is a somewhat obscure idea; 
 nevertheless the German critic considers it a true and pro- 
 found thought that the degree of the perfection of a being 
 is to determine the degree of love to him. Mackintosh, to 
 whom Fichte owed his knowledge of Edwards, apparently 
 fails, in one passage, to apprehend Edwards's distinction be- 
 tween love and esteem, or benevolence and moral compla- 
 cency. 
 
 In the interesting letter which Edwards wrote to the 
 trustees of Princeton College, he gives reasons for his re- 
 luctance to assume the office of president of that institution, 
 which he afterward accepted. He explains that he had al- 
 ways been accustomed to study with pen in hand, recording 
 his best thoughts on innumerable subjects for his own bene- 
 fit. Among the results of this practice there had grown up 
 in his hands an unfinished work, " a body of divinity in an 
 entire new method, being thrown into the form of a history." 
 This was nothing less than a philosophy of the history of 
 mankind, contemplated with reference to the redemption of 
 the world by Christ, the centre toward which the whole cur- 
 rent of anterior events converged, and from which all sub- 
 sequent events radiate. There were to be interwoven in the 
 work " all parts of divinity," in such a method as to exhibit 
 to the best advantage their " admirable contexture and har- 
 mony." The conception was a grand one, resembling that 
 of Augustine in the De dmtate Dei. The treatise, in its 
 
 * Ibid,, pp. 544, 545. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 247 
 
 unfinished state, was published after the author's death, un- 
 der the title, A History of tJie Work of Bedemjption, coti- 
 taining the Outlines of a Body of Divinity ^ including a 
 View of Chtcrch History in a Method entirely new. In its 
 incomplete form, and notwithstanding the greater disadvan- 
 tage of the author's limited leisure and opportunity for the 
 prosecution of historical investigation, it remains an impres- 
 sive monument of the variety of his powers and of the broad 
 range of his studies and reflections. He proposed to unfold 
 the course of Divine Providence in all its successive stages, 
 from the decree of creation to the end of the world. The 
 preparation of redemption, the accomplishment of it through 
 the life and death of Christ, and its effects, are the three 
 divisions into which the book is cast. He compares the 
 work of redemption, which he undertakes to delineate in its 
 orderly progress, to " a temple that is building : first the 
 workmen are sent forth, then the materials are gathered, 
 the ground is fitted, and the foundation laid ; then the su- 
 perstructure is erected, one part after another, J;ill at length 
 the top stone is laid and all finished." ^ Of course the acts 
 of the drama, which are still in the future, have to be learned 
 from prophecy. 
 
 We have seen that Edwards believed in predestination in 
 the extreme or supralapsarian form. He encloses in the 
 iron network of philosophical necessity all intelligent beings. 
 Yerbal objections to the term " necessity," and the ascription 
 of "a natural ability " to voluntary agents, do not subtract 
 an iota from the real significance of the dogma. The sov- 
 ereignty of God in the realm of choices, as in the realm of 
 matter, and his omnipresent agency, are fundamental in his 
 creed. To the charge that their principles are destructive 
 of morality, the theological advocates of predestination have 
 triumphantly appealed to facts. Where have the obliga- 
 tions of morality been felt more than among the Calvinists 
 
 * Vol. iii., p. 171. 
 
248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 
 
 of Geneva and of Holland, the Huguenots of France, the 
 Scottish Covenanters, and the Puritans of England and of 
 New England ? If the doctrine of necessity has borne bad 
 fruits in the lives of free-thinkers who have espoused it, 
 such is not the case as regards the professors of the Calvin - 
 istic creed. It must be observed, however, that it is not 
 from their favorite dogma that extreme Calvinists have 
 drawn their ethics. Their morah sense has been invigorated 
 from other sources. The Stoics believed in fate, but were 
 personally upright and conscientious. They borrowed their 
 ethics from earlier philosophers, and their morals stood in 
 no genetic relation to their metaphysics. With Calvinists, 
 predestination stands as the correlate of the sense of absolute 
 dependence, of faith in the control of Divine Providence, 
 and of gratitude for grace as the source of all that is good 
 within them. Predestination is an inference rather than a 
 premise. Macaulay says of William III. : " The tenet of 
 predestination was the keystone of his religion. He even 
 declared that, if he were to abandon that tenet, he must 
 abandon with it all belief in a superintending Providence, 
 and must become a mere Epicurean." * Calvinists have not 
 piled up tome upon tome of theological controversy, they 
 have not pined in dungeons and faced death on the battle- 
 field, for the sake of a merely speculative notion. It is the 
 moral truth for which it stands in their minds as the logical 
 equivalent, that has made them so strenuous in the mainte- 
 nance of it. 
 
 Julius Miiller, one of the ablest of recent theologians, has 
 well remarked that, while the supralapsarian conception, 
 by which the will is held to be determined to good or to 
 evil, in the first man as in all others, by exterior causes, 
 might have been held, and was held, at a former day, in 
 conjunction with a sincere theism ; such a union of opposites 
 at present would not be possible. Pantheism would now be 
 
 * History of England^ vol. ii., p. 149 (New York, 1849). 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 249 
 
 connected with such a philosophical tenet. The power of 
 God, acting in man through the machinery of motives, 
 would be held to be the sole efficient. IS^aj, all things 
 would be traced to impersonal agency. Personality would 
 be considered merely phenomenal. The idea of creative 
 action would be supplanted by that of emanation. 
 
 The doctrine of Edwards, apart from all theological 
 prejudice, fails to satisfy the generality of mankind, when 
 it is set up as a complete and exclusive solution of the 
 problem of liberty and necessity. He labors hard to prove 
 that common sense is with him, but he labors in vara. 
 It is one thing, however, to utter a moral protest, and 
 another to fui-nish a logical answer or a valid rectifica- 
 tion. 
 
 Certain eminent theologians of ]^ew England In later 
 times have asserted the power of contrary choice as existing 
 ever in connection with a previous certainty of the determi- 
 nation of the will being what it actually is. They have 
 maintained that motives, the internal antecedents of choice, 
 constitute a special order of causes, which are distinguished 
 from all others by giving the certainty, but not the neces- 
 sity, of the action which follows them. On this theory they 
 claim that a foundation is laid for the practical truth rela- 
 tive to God's providence and human dependence, at the 
 same time that freedom and responsibility are left untouched. 
 Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his Remarks on CoUins's book, pre- 
 sents the leading points of this theory. Clarke asserts that 
 there exists a principle of self-motion in man, a power of 
 initiating motion, or of voluntary self-determination. This 
 power is not determined as to the mode of its exertion by 
 anything but itself ; that would involve a contradiction. It 
 is self -moving. It is absurd to attribute efficiency to the 
 mental states which are called motives. If they had effi- 
 ciency, man would be like a clock, or a pair of scales, endowed 
 with sensation or perception. He would not be an agent. 
 What we call motives are bare antecedents, or occasional 
 11* 
 
250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 causes.* Clarke sliows that the opposite supposition in- 
 volves an infinite regress of effects with no cause at all. 
 Moreover, uniformity of action does not imply a necessity in 
 the connection of the act with its antecedents. " The expe- 
 rience of a man's ever doing what he judges reasonable to 
 do, is not at all an experience of his being under any neces- 
 sity so to do. For concomitancy in this case is no evidence 
 at all of physical connection." f The argument for necessity 
 from God's prescience, Clarke seeks to confute by maintain- 
 ing the previous certainty of acts, even on the supposition 
 that they are free, and claiming for God " an infallible judg- 
 ment concerning contingent truths," which is only a power 
 that we ourselves possess, carried to perfection. This power 
 of judging, however, Clarke subjects to no searching analy- 
 sis ; arid his reasoning is hardly sufficient to meet the objec- 
 tions to the possibility of foreknowing contingent actions, 
 which are advanced by Edwards.ij: The later ]^ew Eng- 
 land philosophy postulates, however, a certainty which is 
 produced by the antecedent causes, taken in the aggregate. 
 Can we conceive of a causal influence which makes an event 
 infallibly certain, and yet not necessary ? On this question 
 the validity of the later New England theorem seems to 
 hinge. 
 
 The Scottish philosophy of Sir William Hamilton solves 
 the problem by affirming the inconceivability of both free- 
 dom and necessity, on the ground that the first implies a 
 beginning of motion, and the other an infinite regress of ef- 
 fects ; and it accepts the truth of free-will on the basis of 
 our moral feelings, the feelings of self-approbation and re- 
 morse, praise and blame, which presuppose moral liberty. 
 
 A middle position is that taken by able philosophers and 
 tlieologians, of whom the late Dr. Mozley is a leading repre- 
 sentative. We have an apprehension of two truths which 
 
 * Remarks, etc., p. 9 (London, 1717). 
 
 f Ibid., p. 25. 
 
 X Treatise on the Will, Part II., § 12. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 251 
 
 appear irreconcilable with one another ; but on this ground 
 solely, that our idea or apprehension, in either case, is ob- 
 scure, imperfect, an incipient and not a completed concep- 
 tion. These truths are therefore mysterious. They are 
 not a zero in our apprehension, nor are they fully compre- 
 hended. Hence our deductions from them are subject to a 
 corresponding imperfection. They may serve us, up to a 
 certain point, as the groundwork of moral truth ; but neither 
 can be used to subvert that moral truth which is related to 
 the other. When moral truth is contradicted by logic, there 
 is a flaw in the logic ; and this is traceable to the imperfect 
 character of the notions which enter into the premises. 
 Mozley would probably sanction the dictum of Coleridge 
 that, when logic seems to clash with moral intuitions, the 
 superior authority belongs to conscience. It need hardly be 
 said that the problem belongs not exclusively to theology — 
 it belongs to philosophy as well. The perplexities that per- 
 tain to it are not escaped by those who renounce the Chris- 
 tian faith. 
 
 It is a growing conviction of students of Scripture and of 
 philosophy that, on the subject before us, there is more than 
 one hemisphere of truth. That which both the Calvinist 
 and Arminian chiefly prized was truth, not error. What 
 each contended against was the supposed implications of a 
 proposition which was valued by his opponent from its re- 
 lation to a set of implications of a different sort. Each con- 
 nected with his antagonist's thesis inferences which that 
 antagonist repudiated. One hemisphere of truth Jonathan 
 Edwards saw with clearness, and upheld with a strength of 
 argument and a subdued but intense fervency which have 
 never been surpassed. 
 
 Edwards died at the age of fifty-four, three months after 
 he had entered upon the duties of president at Princeton. 
 He was an indefatigable student, working often for thirteen 
 hours in the day, A biographer says of him that perhaps 
 
262 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 there never was a man more constantly retired from the 
 world. lie was never physically strong. Not at all morose, 
 but courteous and gentle in his ways, he was yet taciturn, 
 and he himself refers to what he calls " the disagreeable 
 dulness and stiffness of his demeanor, unfitting him for con- 
 versation and contact with the world."* His countenance 
 is not such as we should expect a polemical theologian to 
 wear, but is more like that given by the painters to St. John, 
 according thus with the deep mystical vein of which we have 
 spoken. He is the doctor angelicus among our theologians, 
 and, had he lived in the thirteenth century instead of the 
 eighteenth, he would have been decorated by admiring pupils 
 with such a title. If it be true that, in the last century, 
 Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, are the three great names in 
 philosophy, there might have been added to the brief cata- 
 logue, had he chosen to devote himself exclusively to meta- 
 physics, the name of Jonathan Edwards. On the memorial 
 window in honor of him, in the chapel of Yale College, of 
 which he is the most illustrious graduate, stands the just in- 
 scription: "lonathan Edwards summi in ecclesia ordinis 
 vates fuit, rerum sacrarum philosophus qui saeculorum ad- 
 mirationem movet, Dei cultor mystice amantissimus : hie 
 studebat, docebat." 
 
 * Dwight's UJe, p. 568. 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHEK AND THEOLOGIAN. 253 
 
 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEO- 
 LOGIAN.* 
 
 Channtng is regarded by common consent as the most 
 eminent representative of the Unitarian movement in this 
 country. It is true that others among the gifted men who 
 have been conspicuous in that school have equalled or sur- 
 passed him in some of the titles to distinction. There have 
 been in their number more eloquent preachers. The young- 
 er Buckminster was one, of whom Edward Everett declared 
 that he had the most melodious voice " that ever passed the 
 lips of man ; " f of whom, also, one of the ablest of the early 
 Unitarian preachers, who has since rendered most honorable 
 service in literature and in public life — Dr. Palfrey — has 
 said that his pulpit utterances approached near " to what 
 we imagine of' a prophet's or an angel's inspiration." J 
 Li the graces of style and delivery, according to the 
 taste of that time, Channing was outdone by the youth- 
 ful Everett himself, in the short time in which the latter 
 served as the successor of Buckminster in the Brattle Street 
 church. No doubt, Channing's manner was marked by a 
 glow of chastened earnestness, indicating deep emotions 
 held under restraint, and thus had a peculiar fascination of 
 its own. Sometimes, though rarely, he broke out in a more 
 impassioned strain. Of a sermon preached by him in New 
 York, in 1826, an admiring listener writes : " The man was 
 full of fire, and his body seemed, under some of his tre- 
 
 '* An Article in The International Review for July, 1879. 
 f Memoirs of the BuckminaterSf p. 396. 
 X Ibid., p. 481. 
 
 -" OF THE r 
 
 IVERSITY 
 
254 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 mendous sentences, to expand into that of a giant ; . . . . 
 his face was, if any thing, more meaning than his words." * 
 If there were others who had more of the qnalifications 
 considered to be characteristic of the clerical orator than 
 were possessed by Channing, it is also the fact that, as a 
 theological scholar, he was much surpassed by Andrews Nor- 
 ton; in familiarity with philosophical and general litera- 
 ture, by George Ripley ; and in a certain cautious accuracy 
 and weight of reasoning in moral science, by James Walker. 
 ~Nor in devoutness of spirit does he excel the younger Henry 
 "Ware and Ephraim Peabody. Those who knew Channing 
 remarked in him something delicate, fastidious, patrician, 
 notwithstanding his humane sympathy ; and hence in the 
 aptitude to reach directly the common mind he was out- 
 stripped by Theodore Parker, whose robust energy and racy 
 dialect better fitted him for contact with the multitude. 
 But Channing unites in himself various characteristics 
 which conspire to give him pre-eminence. A clear mind, 
 not wanting in imaginative warmth, a transparent, natural 
 style, neither slovenly nor overwrought, the sympathies and 
 attainments of a man of letters, even though he was not 
 widely read — are manifest in his writings. Superadded to 
 these qualities, there was a sanctity of spirit which was felt 
 by those who heard him in the pulpit, or met him even casual- 
 ly in conversation. It was not simply that he was sincere, and 
 that he spoke in the accents of conviction. It was not only 
 that he was above the influence of personal motives, like 
 the love of praise and the dread of censure, and that he had 
 a courage corresponding to his convictions — a necessary at- 
 tribute in a popular leader — ^which he exemplified in an in- 
 spiriting letter to Henry Ware, Jr., when the latter was de- 
 sponding over the poor outlook for their cause in New 
 York, and in other more serious emergencies.f Channing's 
 
 * Life of Henry Ware^ Jr.^ vol. i., p. 219. 
 f Ibid., p. 133. 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 255 
 
 eminence is chiefly due, first, to the elevated fervor which 
 inspired his teaching, and which was of inestimable advan- 
 tage in a movement in which the intellectual factor stood in 
 so high a ratio to the religious ; and, secondly, to the cir- 
 cumstance that he embodied in himself so fully the ethical 
 and philanthropic impulse which principally constituted the 
 positive living force of the Unitarian cause. Following out 
 the humanitarian tendency, he acquired, at home and 
 abroad, a high and, in the main, a deserved fame as the 
 champion of justice in opposition to slavery and other social 
 evils. But I am to speak of him chiefly as a theologian. 
 
 Eeally to do justice to the subject, it would be requisite 
 to review the history of religious thought in l^ew England 
 from the beginning. But this broad theme can be only 
 briefly touched upon. How the Congregationalists, the de- 
 scendants of the first settlers and proprietors of the soil, 
 forming a united, enlightened body, having in their hands 
 the great seats of education, Harvard and Yale, at length 
 divided into hostile camps, existing side by side in a state 
 of ecclesiastical non-intercourse, is a topic too large to be 
 satisfactorily treated here. In England and in New Eng- 
 land the eighteenth century was signalized by a reaction 
 against the theological tenets of the seventeenth. In the 
 Church of England, Calvinism had given way to the creed 
 of Arminius. Among dissenters the Calvinistic doctrines 
 were feebly and apologetically defended by men of mod- 
 erate theological ability, like Watts and Doddridge. The 
 obnoxious points of the Genevan creed were, softened down, 
 in a deprecatory spirit, to accommodate its adversaries. 
 Watts, though inimical to Socinians, himself abandoned the 
 orthodox formulas of the Trinity, and broached on that 
 subject a peculiar notion of his own devising. The chief 
 metaphysician of the day. Dr. Samuel Clarke, was an Ar- 
 minian and an Arian. Locke's writings acquired more and 
 more influence, and these were antagonistic to the main 
 points of what had been counted the Evangelical theology. 
 
256 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 In l^ew England, the closing part of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury — the era of the Mathers, who, whatever may have 
 been their virtues, were not equal in mental stature to the 
 Cottons and Hookers of the earlier age — ^was lamentably 
 distinguished by the outbreaking of the witchcraft delusion. 
 When we pass into the eighteenth century, the atmosphere 
 rapidly changes. Old opinions gradually relax their hold 
 upon the faith of many. The English contemporary writ- 
 ers are imported and read. The characteristic points of 
 Calvinism are less frequently and more vaguely inculcated. 
 Whitby, Dr. John Taylor, and radical anti-Trinitarians like 
 Emlyn and Priestley, are brought in, and some of them find 
 so many readers that they are reprinted. What was called 
 Arminianism, which was often more a silent ignoring than 
 an explicit rejection of the Calvinistic opinions — which in- 
 volved an impatience of creeds, a proclamation of the rights 
 of free thought and of the duty of toleration for wide di- 
 versities of religious opinion, and which laid more stress in 
 pulpit teaching on moral precepts than on theological doc- 
 trines — prevailed widely among the ministers of Kew Eng- 
 land, and was the seed-plot out of which Unitarianism was 
 developed. In Boston Mayhew and, later in the century, 
 Freeman, the minister of King's Chapel, were outspoken 
 anti-Trinitarians ; and they did not stand alone. 
 
 Meantime there was a rally of the defenders of the old 
 system, under the lead of Jonathan Edwards and his theolo- 
 gical disciples, and through the instrumentality of the great 
 revival of 1740, when the persuasive eloquence of White- 
 field reinforced the teaching of the IS'ew England ministers 
 who were strongly averse to the Arminian way of thinking. 
 But the revival was extensively opposed as well as be- 
 friended. By emboldening the zeal of the Calvinists, by 
 putting new weapons of defence into their hands — especially 
 through the Avritings of Edwards and his followers — and by 
 giving them in this way renewed confidence in their cause, 
 the Edwardean movement probably accelerated rather than 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 257 
 
 hindered the rupture of the Congregational brotherhood of 
 ministers and churches. This effect was produced hj the 
 sharpening of the antagonism which existed between the 
 two diverse types of religious belief. One of them could 
 not crystallize without a like effect on the other. The tra- 
 ditional Calvinism roused itself from slumber, buckled on 
 its new armor, and took the offensive. It had assumed a 
 more clearly defined position, w^hich it felt itself perfectly 
 competent to maintain against assailants. Moreover, in the 
 practical administration of the gospel, the revival method 
 was introduced, so that the more zealous tone of preaching, 
 and the more active measures adopted for making converts 
 — changes which the Moderates discountenanced as " enthusi- 
 asm " — widened the breach between the two sections of the 
 I^ew England Church. 
 
 Another influence that tended to precipitate a conflict was 
 the spread in Eastern 'New England of the Hopkinsian 
 theology, one of the later fruits of the theological activity 
 of Jonathan Edwards. This, in some of its features — as, 
 for example, in its doctrine of a general in opposition to a 
 limited Atonement — was a mitigated form of Calvinism, 
 and was so characterized by Channing himself. But the 
 cardinal peculiarity of the Calvinistic system — the idea of 
 divine sovereignty — it presented in extreme forms of state- 
 ment, with no attempt to qualify it by clothing it in mys- 
 tery, by connecting it with any supposed counter truth, or 
 by cloaking it under conciliatory phrases. Edwards, in 
 maintaining the doctrine of Original Sin, had ventured to 
 apply the Berkeleian idea to the mind, which the founder 
 of that philosophy never had thought of doing. This exal- 
 tation of God's power at the expense of man's agency, if 
 consistently carried out, would issue in a form of Pantheism 
 — that form which merges human personality in the divine. 
 It is the opinion of most philosophical critics of Edwards, 
 that the real drift of his treatise on the Will is in the same 
 direction. It is doubtful whether any of the Hopkinsian 
 
258 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 leaders were actual adherents of the Berkeleian theory ; still 
 less probable that they consciously carried it so far beyond the 
 intention of it& author — although Berkeley's theory of per- 
 ception had a decided influence on some of the 'New England 
 divines. But the ideas of Edwards — even his scattered 
 hints — were subsequently very fruitful in the minds of his 
 disciples. The Hopkinsians attributed the moral choices of 
 men — evil choices as well as good — to " divine efficiency." 
 President Dwight wrote against Emmons a sermon to show 
 that the mind is not " a chain of exercises," and significantly 
 spoke of theology in certain quarters as verging towards 
 Pantheism. Whatever was the real intent of the Hopkin- 
 sian writers, however much we are to set down to the credit 
 (or discredit) of ill-chosen phraseology, they made on the 
 public, notwithstanding their verbal assertions of human 
 power or " natural ability," the impression of teaching that 
 moral choices, bad and good, are literally produced by a cre- 
 ative act of God. Coupled with these extravagant views 
 was naturally connected the idea of " submission to God " 
 as the first and supreme act of human duty, preceding faith 
 in the Pedeemer ; and this submission, it was held, must 
 take the form of a willingness to be cast off for ever, if the 
 glory of God should require it. Man is condemned by the 
 divine law, they said : he must condemn himself, therefore ; 
 and since he deserves the full penalty, he must be willing to 
 endure it : otherwise, he is not in full s}Tnpathy with the 
 divine justice and government. But the moment that he 
 reaches this acme of submission he becomes a fit subject of 
 mercy. Perhaps for the first time in the history of the 
 church, it was made by Christian pastors a necessary condi- 
 tion of being saved that one should be "willing to be 
 damned." There can be no doubt that the exaggeration of 
 Calvinism in the direction of divine power and sovereignty, 
 the sharp, relentless formulating of these obnoxious dogmas^ 
 and the obtrusion of them in season and out of season, had 
 something to do in provoking the doctrinal reaction and re- 
 
• CHANNING AS A PniLOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 259 
 
 volt, although the main cause was deeper and of a more 
 general nature. 
 
 It is remarkable that the Unitarian movement was con- 
 fined chiefly to Eastern Xew England, and did not extend 
 into Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. In Connecti- 
 cut there were never more than two or three Unitarian 
 churches, and these in obscure towns. One ground of this 
 fact is, that in that State the Episcopal Church struck a 
 deeper root than in Massachusetts. For all who might dis- 
 like the style of preaching and the peculiar measures which 
 characterize what is called " revivalism," with its exciting 
 appeals and its prying interrogation of individuals as to their 
 religious experience, and for all who recoiled from rigorous 
 metaphj^sical definitions of religious truth, the door of the 
 Episcopal Church in Connecticut stood open. Here was a 
 church with an evangelical creed and evangelical w^orship, 
 where those who were disafPected with Puritan ways, old or 
 new, could find a quiet harbor. Another reason for the dif- 
 ference of which I speak, lay in the circumstances which 
 gave to the Edwardeans a complete ascendancy in Connecti- 
 cut. The old Arminianism was not so strong or so strongly 
 intrenched there as in Eastern Massachusetts. The Calvin- 
 ists of the older school, from their greater fear of Arminian 
 doctuine, were inclined to coalesce with the followers of 
 Edwards, as is seen in the case of President Clap, of Yale 
 College (1739-1766). President Stiles, of the same college 
 (1777-1795), was more of a latitudinarian in his opinions 
 and affiliations ; he looked back on the Pevival " as the late 
 period of enthusiasm." But he was succeeded by Dwight, 
 whose accession^ to the presidency secured the complete as- 
 cendancy of the school of Edwards. The moderation of 
 Dwight in his theological statements, his strenuous opposi- 
 tion to Hopkinsian extravagances, and, more than all, his 
 commanding influence as a preacher and an instructor of 
 theological students, contributed much towards keeping the 
 Congregational churches and ministers in the old path. This 
 
260 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 result, however, might not have occurred had there been 
 that deep and varied preparation for a doctrinal revolution 
 which had been going forward in Boston and its neighbor- 
 hood through the greater part of the eighteenth century. 
 
 If we would understand the Unitarian schism, we must 
 take into account the fact that there were not only two in- 
 terpretations of the Bible which came into collision, but that 
 there were, at the same time, two types of culture. Unita- 
 rianism, as it has appeared in history, has been conjoined 
 with no single form of church polity. It has sprung up in 
 the midst of Anglican Episcopacy. It has sprung up at 
 Geneva, in connection with Presbyterianism, and close by 
 Calvin's grave. But it has frequently gone hand in hand 
 with literary criticism and belles-lettres cultivation. This was 
 the case in the Italian Unitarianism of the sixteenth (fentury, 
 which arose out of the Renaissance culture, and in the Uni- 
 tarianism that spread so widely among the gentry of Poland. 
 The same was conspicuously true of the Unitarian party in 
 IN'ew England. There grew up about Boston and Cambridge 
 a method of biblical criticism which was nourished by the 
 study of Griesbach, and of the Arminian scholars of an ear- 
 lier date. In connection with these studies there was a new 
 and wider range of literary activity, and an altered style and 
 standard of literary and aesthetic training. Dwight and the 
 elder Buckminster had been fellow-students and tutors to- 
 gether at Yale College, in the latter part of the last century. 
 They broke loose from the metaphysical style of discussion 
 which had been in vogue before in the pulpit, and fos- 
 tered the reading of the contemporary English classics. But 
 they still exhibit a stiff and somewhat tumid quality of style. 
 In the sermons of the younger Buckminster we find that 
 these faults have been outgrown ; although even he expresses 
 himself with a certain formality, and with an avoidance of 
 the vocabulary of common life. From these remaining fet- 
 ters Channing escaped, thereby evincing the continued ad- 
 vance of literary taste. He speaks somewhere of the habit 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 261 
 
 that had prevailed of shunning familiar words as if they had 
 been soiled by common use. In his own style there is noth- 
 ing artificial and nothing slovenly. As the Unitarian move- 
 ment went forward to later stages, the changes in the t}^e 
 of literary culture became very decided and very inliuential. 
 But at the outset, at the epoch when Channing began his 
 career, one feels, in looking at the writers on the Unitarian 
 side, that they have passed beyond the point of bending en- 
 tranced over the pages of Sir Charles Grandison, and are 
 likely soon to become quite insensible to the attractions of 
 Miss Hannah More. Theodore Parker says of Unitarian- 
 ism : " The protest began among a class of cultivated men 
 in the most cultivated part of America ; with men who had 
 not the religious element developed in proportion to the in- 
 tellectual or the aesthetic element." * Of this there can be 
 no doubt — that, along with a real interest in theolog}^ and 
 religion, there was a very decided taste and aptitude for lit- 
 erary pursuits. Among those who have left the Unitarian 
 pulpit to devote themselves to literature or politics are Mr. 
 Sparks, Mr. Everett, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Eip- 
 ley, Dr. Palfrey, Mr. Upham. If an equal number of lead- 
 ing minds had withdrawn themselves from the pulpit in the 
 Methodist denomination — supposing that, in its early days, 
 it had possessed so many able and learned men — or from 
 any other religious body not more numerous than the Uni- 
 tarians were, the fact would be considered very remarkable. 
 I refer to this matter merely as an indication of the general 
 change of atmosphere, so to speak, in the places where Uni- 
 tarianism appeared. The old Puritan, training with its alto- 
 gether predominant devotion to religious and theological 
 writers, its austere jealousy of imaginative literature, and 
 its rigid metaphysical habit, was fast giving way to a 
 different and more diversified type of culture. In the 
 circle of students to which Channing belonged at Cam- 
 
 * Weiss's Life of Parker^ vol. i. p. 270. 
 
264 CHANGING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 pear that perplexities of doctrine or metaphysical problems, 
 such as we might look for in a Xew Englander sprung from 
 the Puritan stock, disturbed his thoughts in the least at 
 that critical time. In truth, at all times moral and spiritual 
 relations were uppermost in his mind. He is spoken of in 
 the title of this article as a " philosopher ; " but if philoso- 
 phy is used in its limited sense, to denote metaphysics, or the 
 metaphysics of theology, there is little more to be said 
 under this rubric than is contained in the noted chapter on 
 Snakes, in the Natural History of Ireland: " There are 
 no snakes in Ireland." His strongest objection to the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity is the practical perplexities which he 
 supposed it to occasion in worship ; his objections to Calvin- 
 ism are not so much logical, but lie principally in what he 
 terms the moral argument against it. He was never fond 
 of Priestley. In this case, to be sure, the materialistic and 
 necessarian theories of this author were repugnant to his 
 convictions. Much as he honored Locke as a man, and fre- 
 quently as he refers to him as an example of anti-Trinitarian 
 belief in conjunction with high intellectual endowments, 
 Locke's philosophical tenets were not congenial to him. He 
 was delivered from them by his favorite writer. Price, whose 
 dissertations won him over to the intuitive school, and who 
 contributed essentially to the formation of his philosophical 
 and theological opinions. This author is really a lucid as 
 well as an animated expositor of the spiritual, in opposition 
 to the empirical, philosophy. He vindicates the reality of 
 a priori truth in the spirit of Cud worth. The genial tone 
 of Price and his anti-Trinitarian opinions, also recommended 
 him to Channing's favor. 
 
 There is one link of connection between Channing and 
 the earlier New England theologians. This is through 
 Hopkins, who was a minister at Newport in the youth of 
 Channing, and had not a little personal intercourse with 
 him. A notice of his relation with Hopkins brings us 
 naturally to one of the cardinal features of Channing's re- 
 
OHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 265 
 
 ligious system. He says : "I was attached to Dr. Hopkins 
 chiefly by his theory of disinterestedness. I had studied 
 with great delight during my college life the philosophy 
 of Hutcheson and the stoical morality, and these had pre- 
 pared me for the noble, self-sacrificing doctrines of Dr. Hop- 
 kins." * The theory of virtue to which Channing alludes was 
 unfolded in its essential points by Jonathan Edwards. Holi- 
 ness, goodness, virtue — moral excellence, by whatever name 
 it may be called — consists in Love. It is love towards the 
 universal society of intelligent beings, of which God is the 
 head. This love is impartial ; it goes out to every being, 
 and gives to each his due portion. God, the infinite One, is 
 entitled to love without limit. Every one who is of the 
 same order of being as myself I am to love equally with 
 myself. Love is disinterested. I am to love myself not as 
 my self, but only as one member of this universal society — 
 a member whose welfare is a proper object of pursuit, not 
 less and not more than is the welfare of any other human 
 being, every other one being of equal worth or value. Self 
 is merged in the sum total of being, as a drop in the ocean. 
 It is obvious that Love, as thus defined, has two directions : 
 one upward to God, and the other outward towards our fel- 
 lG\v-men. Not that piety and philanthropy, in their true 
 ai i perfect form, are really separable from one another ; 
 yt*^ it is quite possible for the feelings of adoration, devotion, 
 submission, and the whole religious side of love to engross 
 as it were the mind, so that the interests of man and of 
 human life in this mundane sphere, except so far as man is 
 to be prevented from inflicting dishonor on God and ruin 
 upon himself by that means, should be left in the back- 
 ground. God is to be exalted and glorified — this is the 
 main thought. Such was the tendency of Calvinism ; of 
 Calvinism in New England as elsewhere. All such state- 
 ments are, indeed, subject to much qualification. Calvinists 
 
 * Memoir, vol. i., p. 137. 
 12 
 
264 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 pear that perplexities of doctrine or metaphysical problems, 
 such as we might look for in a Xew Englander sprung from 
 the Puritan stock, disturbed his thoughts in the least at 
 that critical time. In truth, at all times moral and spiritual 
 relations were uppermost in his mind. He is spoken of in 
 the title of this article as a " philosopher ; " but if philoso- 
 phy is used in its limited sense, to denote metaphysics, or the 
 metaphysics of theology, there is little more to be said 
 under this rubric than is contained in the noted chapter on 
 Snakes, in the Natural History of Ireland: "There are 
 no snakes in Ireland." His strongest objection to the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity is the practical perplexities which he 
 supposed it to occasion in worship ; his objections to Calvin- 
 ism are not so much logical, but lie principally in what he 
 terms the moral argument against it. He was never fond 
 of Priestley. In this case, to be sure, the materialistic and 
 necessarian theories of this author were repugnant to his 
 convictions. Much as he honored Locke as a man, and fre- 
 quently as he refers to him as an example of anti-Trinitarian 
 belief in conjunction with high intellectual endowments, 
 Locke's philosophical tenets were not congenial to him. He 
 was delivered from them by his favorite writer. Price, whose 
 dissertations won him over to the intuitive school, and who 
 contributed essentially to the formation of his philosophical 
 and theological opinions. This author is really a lucid as 
 well as an animated expositor of the spiritual, in opposition 
 to the empirical, philosophy. He vindicates the reality of 
 a priori truth in the spirit of Cudworth. The genial tone 
 of Price and his anti-Trinitarian opinions, also recommended 
 him to Channing's favor. 
 
 There is one link of connection between Channing and 
 the earlier New England theologians. This is through 
 Hopkins, who was a minister at Newport in the youth of 
 Channing, and had not a little personal intercourse with 
 him. A notice of his relation with Hopkins brings us 
 naturally to one of the cardinal features of Channing's re- 
 
OHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 265 
 
 ligious system. He says : " I was attached to Dr. Hopkins 
 chiefly by his theory of disinterestedness. I had studied 
 with great delight during my college life the philosophy 
 of Hutcheson and the stoical morality, and these had pre- 
 pared me for the noble, self-sacrificing doctrines of Dr. Hop- 
 kins." * The theory of virtue to which Channing alludes was 
 unfolded in its essential points by Jonathan Edwards. Holi- 
 ness, goodness, virtue — moral excellence, by whatever name 
 it may be called — consists in Love. It is love towards the 
 universal society of intelligent beings, of which God is the 
 head. This love is impartial ; it goes out to every being, 
 and gives to each his due portion. God, the infinite One, is 
 entitled to love without limit. Every one who is of the 
 same order of being as myself I am to love equally with 
 myself. Love is disinterested. I am to love myself not as 
 my self, but only as one member of this universal society — 
 a member whose welfare is a proper object of pursuit, not 
 less and not more than is the welfare of any other human 
 being, every other one being of equal worth or value. Self 
 is merged in the sum total of being, as a drop in the ocean. 
 It is obvious that Love, as thus defined, has two directions : 
 one upward to God, and the other outward towards our fel- 
 low-men. Not that piety and philanthropy, in their true 
 ai 1 perfect form, are really separable from one another ; 
 yt^ it is quite possible for the feelings of adoration, devotion, 
 submission, and the whole religious side of love to engross 
 as it were the mind, so that the interests of man and of 
 human life in this mundane sphere, except so far as man is 
 to be prevented from inflicting dishonor on God and ruin 
 upon himself by that means, should be left in the back- 
 ground. God is to be exalted and glorified — this is the 
 main thought. Such was the tendency of Calvinism ; of 
 Calvinism in New England as elsewhere. All such state- 
 ments are, indeed, subject to much qualification. Calvinists 
 
 ♦ Memoir, vol. i., p. 137. 
 12 
 
266 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHEK AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 demanded righteousness of conduct. Channing was taught 
 by Hopkins to hate slavery. This intrepid old man lifted 
 his voice against slavery and the slave-trade in Newport, 
 when that tow^i was a principal mart of this iniquitous 
 traffic. But, speaking generally, it was the first and great 
 commandment, and the feelings directly involved in it, that 
 mainly absorbed the attention. It was not absolutely for- 
 gotten that the second commandment is "like unto it." 
 The duties of man to his neighbor were placed on the 
 ground of religious obligation. But an active, warm-hearted, 
 many-sided philanthropy, which looks after the temporal as 
 well as the eternal interests of mankind, and goes out with 
 tender sympathy to minister to suffering of every kind ; 
 which raises hospitals, builds comfortable habitations for 
 the honest poor, visits those who are sick and in prison, 
 cherishes a conception of education as comprehensive as the 
 faculties of the mind — such a spirit of philanthropy was 
 not characteristic of the religion of JS^ew England, and 
 Channing and Unitarianism have done much to promote it. 
 The disinterested benevolence of Edwards and Hopkins now 
 turned from lofty and sometimes almost ecstatic meditations 
 upon the sovereignty and perfection of God, and the itera- 
 tion of the solemn demand to submit to his authority and 
 to live to His glory, to the man- ward side of this principle. 
 Edwards was transported by visions of the sweetness of 
 Christ and of the sublime attributes of God ; Channing, by 
 the exalted nature and infinite possibilities of man. 
 
 The dignity of human iiature^ then, was a fundamental 
 article in Channing's creed. In every human being there is 
 the germ of .an unbounded progress. An imspeakable value 
 belongs to him. His nature is not to be vilified. A wrong 
 done to him is like violence offered to an angel. 
 
 This idea of the dignity of man is a great Christian truth. 
 No one can doubt that it was a living conviction in Chan- 
 ning's mind. It imparted to him that " enthusiasm of hu- 
 manity " which became the passion of his soul. But there is 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 267 
 
 another side to the picture. " It is dangerous," says Pascal, 
 " to make man see how he is on a level with the brutes, 
 without showing him his greatness. It is dangerous, again, 
 to make him see his greatness without seeing his baseness. 
 .... Let man estimate himseH at his real value. Let him 
 love himself, if he has in him a nature capable of good ; but 
 let him not love on this account the vilenesses that belong to 
 it. Let him despise himself, because this capacity is waste ; 
 but let him not on this account despise this natural capacity. 
 Let him hate himself ; let him love himself." Channing 
 avowed himself an opponent of w^hat may properly enough 
 be termed the Catholic theology. He considered the church 
 in all past ages to have been immersed in error on religious 
 themes of capital importance. This was his judgment re- 
 specting the churches of the Keformation, as well as the 
 church of the middle ages. On these topics, which stand 
 in the forefront of Christian theology, he frankly and boldly, 
 but always without bitterness or malignity, declared that the 
 leading Reformers were the victims of superstition. The 
 movement of which he was an advocate was represented as 
 a new instauration of Christianity. The light which had 
 been obscured by dismal clouds had at last broken forth in 
 its full illuminating power. He openly, though without the 
 least arrogance, claims the character of an innovator and a 
 dissentient. It is not amiss, therefore, to attempt to account 
 for his rejection of the general creed. What has the Cath- 
 olic theology to say in justification of itself ? It has to say 
 simply that Channing had a view — that is, an adequate, pen- 
 etrating view — of only one side of the truth. Kot but that 
 he had a mournful perception of the evils wTOught by sin in 
 defacing God's image in man, and in inflicting misery upon 
 individuals and communities. Xot that he was incapable of 
 moral indignation in view of atrocities done by man against 
 his neighbor. But the Catholic theology, if I may venture 
 to interpret its verdict, does not find in him and in his teach- 
 ing, as a whole, that discernment of the guilt of sin, of that 
 
268 OHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 particular quality of evil-doing, which may blanch the cheek 
 and strike terror to the heart of even the prosperous crim- 
 inal; which moved the publican to beat upon his breast, 
 which makes the strong man bow his head in shame and 
 trembling, and which pierced as a sharp arrow the souls of 
 Augustine, Luther, Edwards, and the Apostle Paul. I have 
 no wish to bring an accusation against Channing, or to mag- 
 nify a defect. I simply seek to account for an antagonism 
 which he himself, and everybody else, admits to exist. The 
 Catholic theology, once more, fails to discover in Channing 
 a sufficiently strong grasp of sin as a principle, revealing it- 
 self in multiform expressions or phenomena, entering into 
 numberless phases of manifestation, exercising sway in man- 
 kind, and holding fast the will in a kind of bondage. The 
 diversified forms of selfish and unrighteous action are not 
 habitually traced back by him to the Jhns et origo malorum 
 — the mysterious alienation of men from the fellowship of 
 God. The moral malady is not explored to its sources ; and 
 hence the tendency is to treat it with palliatives. He is too 
 much inclined to rely on education to do the work of regen- 
 eration. The forces requisite for the redemption of the cap- 
 tive from servitude are underrated : as John Randolph said 
 of Watts and Beattie, given bim as an antidote to Hume, 
 " Milk-and-water for the bite of a rattlesnake ! " This ten- 
 dency was not fully carried out by Channing. He belongs 
 to a transition. But he shows plainly the drift of the 
 stream ; and he speaks of customary accusations of sin 
 brought against mankind as exaggerated. If this is not the 
 right clew to the explanation of Channing's dissent, we 
 know not where to look for it. 
 
 It may be deemed a palliation of what the Catholic theol- 
 ogy must consider a grave error in Channing, that current 
 expositions of the mystery of sin were so justly open to 
 criticism. The Ilopkinsians, to be sure, made the \\dll the 
 seat of moral evil, but they did not distinguish with any 
 steadiness between voluntary and involuntary inclinations, 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 269 
 
 between choice and constitutional sensibility ; and, worse still, 
 they referred the beginning of sin in each individual of the 
 race to a sovereign decree, and did not scruple to ascribe it 
 to a creative act, or, as they termed it, to divine efficiency. 
 Such was their usual phraseology, that it was hard for those 
 who heard it to find any firm ground of human responsi- 
 bility for character thus originated. The rest of the JS^ew 
 England Calvinists, on the other hand, made sin a physical 
 inheritance, a taint or contamination, which is entailed like 
 the color of the eyes, or, rather, like a disease of the lungs. 
 In this abject condition was orthodox theology, in this 
 branch of it, when the Unitarian polemics opened their 
 guns upon it. And here is the place to say, that the real 
 point of controversy between the two parties was the doc- 
 trine of Sin and the correlated doctrine of Conversion^ 
 The field of debate was Anthropology. The New England 
 mind was not speculative ; and Jonathan Edwards was al- 
 most the only one of our divines who showed an extraordi- 
 nary talent or relish for speculative divinity. It was the 
 practical side of theology, sin and regeneration in their re- 
 lation to the conditions of human responsibility, that inter- 
 ested his successors. They wanted to make Calvinism self- 
 consistent, and to parry objections that arose in the minds 
 of their own hearers, or were disseminated by the English 
 Arminian writers. It is remarkable, although the Trinity 
 and the person of Christ were nominally the subject of con- 
 tention in the Unitarian controversy, how little of impor- 
 tance was contributed on either side to the elucidation of 
 these topics. Even Norton and Stuart, the best-equipped 
 disputants, say little that had not been said before. 
 
 On the doctrine of Man, then, as I humbly conceive, the 
 defect of Channing was that he was captivated by an ideal. 
 He saw what man might be, what man ought to be ; but he 
 did not thoroughly see what man really is. The obstacle to 
 be overcome in the redemption of man he imperfectly ap- 
 prehended. In other words — not applying the term in any 
 
270 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 offensive meaning — lie was a sentimentalist. He liad never 
 experienced in himself any flagi-ant outbreaking of sin ; lie 
 had never wrestled in mortal agony with any sensnal pro- 
 pensity. In these particulars he resembled Pelagius rather 
 than Augustine. JS^or did his associations in life bring him 
 very much in contact with gross manifestations of wickedness. 
 
 It may be added to these remarks that the Catholic theol- 
 ogy does not degrade human nature, but exalts it, by the 
 emphasis which it lays on guilt. It is only an exalted being 
 that can make himself an object of moral indignation to 
 the infinite Creator. The consciousness of guilt forbids 
 man to think lightly of himself, to conceive of himself as 
 beneath the notice of God, or to count upon the indulgence 
 to which feeble and imperfect orders of being may reason- 
 ably lay claim. Sin, when we seek to comprehend its in- 
 ception and spread through mankind, is enveloped in mys- 
 tery ; but, as Coleridge has said, it is the one mystery which 
 makes all things else clear. 
 
 The next of the leading ideas of Channing was that of 
 the Fatherhood of God. Against the Calvinistic assertion 
 of the sovereignty of God, he was never tired of proclaiming 
 God's paternal character. In the Scriptures, God is spoken 
 of as a King, and He is denominated a Father. That 
 there is an administration of the world by moral laws, and 
 that these laws are enforced by penal sanctions, is a matter 
 of experience as well as of revelation. In other words, 
 there is a moral government over mankind. How are we 
 to conceive the deepest, the essential, relation of God to 
 human beings whom he has created in his image ? Is it 
 best typified by the relation of a parent to his children ? It 
 must not be overlooked that almost uniformly in the Xew 
 Testament it is believers in Christ, his disciples, and they 
 exclusively, who are designated the children of God. " As 
 many as received him, to them gave he power to become the 
 sons of God, even to them that believe on his name " (John 
 1 : 12). This is the point of view of all the New Testament 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 271 
 
 writers. Sonsliip is a privilege of tnie followers of Christ, 
 and is referred to as an exalted and a new relation. The 
 Lord's prayer was given to the disciples. Thev constitute a 
 family ; a line of demarcation is drawn about them. A 
 sound exegesis cannot fail to recognize this. At the same 
 time, it is not to be supposed that the constitution of man 
 is altered, or that new faculties are imparted to men, or that 
 a relation totally new and foreign to the nature of things is 
 introduced by their recovery to God. Eather does man find 
 himself ; he comes back to his true nature, and is reinstated 
 in his normal relation to his Creator. This is implied in 
 the parable of the prodigal son, and in the quotation which 
 Paul made at Athens from a heathen poet, who said that 
 we are the offspring of God. He is the Father of our 
 spirits. Channing meant and professed to follow the Scrip- 
 tures ; but he would have followed them more strictly if he 
 had dwelt less on the paternal relation of God to mankind 
 in their present state, and had insisted more on the fact that 
 a relation which is practically subverted by their disloyalty 
 can be restored only by their return to filial allegiance. We 
 are commanded in the 'New Testament to behold the good- 
 ness a7id the severity of God. The severe side, the side of 
 judgment and penalty, which is adapted to produce fear, 
 had been held up to view, sometimes disproportionately. 
 Both Edwards and Hopkins had stated in the boldest lan- 
 guage that the righteous in heaven would derive satisfaction 
 from contemplating the torments of the lost. This conclu- 
 sion they supposed to follow by an irresistible logic from the 
 justice of the appointed penalty — as if a due sympathy with 
 the righteous administration of law required that we shall 
 attend and enjoy public executions. In the powerful reac- 
 tion against representations of this character, against the 
 corresponding portraiture of God, against sensuous pictures 
 of retributive torment, and the predominant appeals to fear, 
 the Unitarians tended towards the other extreme of emas- 
 culating religion by divesting it of those elements which 
 
272 CUANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 awaken dread in the guilty — elements which are just as 
 prominently set forth in the Bible as are the paternal feel- 
 ings of God, and can never safely be left out of the teach- 
 ing of Christianity. Channing, when he was a boy, not 
 only never killed a bird, and avoided crushing an insect, 
 but he let rats out of a trap to save them from being 
 drowned.* 
 
 To bring men back to God as penitent children is recog- 
 nized also by the Catholic theology as the end of the Gospel. 
 But how ? Through the Son. The sonship of Christ is the 
 power and the pattern of sonship in those who have fallen 
 away from God. In the church doctrine, fatherhood is an 
 eternal characteristic of God. It does not begin to be with 
 the human race, or with redemption. The Son is sent to 
 bring back in himself the fallen race. His sonship is eter- 
 nal ; the mode of his derivation and dependence elevates him 
 above the rank of a creature. But he is sent ; and his com- 
 ing is thus the highest conceivable evidence of the love of 
 God to mankind, and of his pity towards them, and of self- 
 sacijiiice on the part of him who voluntarily becomes a par- 
 taker of human nature with all its burdens and exposures. 
 It is in the fellow^ship of the Son — according to St. John 
 and St. Paul — that we attain to the realization of the filial 
 relation to God. But what was Channing's conception of 
 Christ ? According to Channing, Christ was a pre-existent 
 rational creature, an angel or spirit of some sort, who had 
 entered into a human body. He was not even a man except 
 so far as his corporeal part is concerned, but was a creature 
 from some upper spliere. Now we can see some plausibility 
 in the theory that Christ was merely a man ; was human 
 just as Moses and Paul were human ; and that this is a com- 
 plete account of his person — although we believe this theory 
 to be unscriptural and untrue. But one must be excused 
 for saying — and this is said without the least polemical acri- 
 
 * Memoir^ vol. i., p. 40. 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 273 
 
 mony — that the particular conception which Channing set 
 up in the room of the church doctrine of the Incarnation is 
 one of the crudest notions which the history of speculation 
 on this subject has ever presented. The transitional charac- 
 ter of Channing's t}^e of theology is strikingly indicated in 
 this indefinite, unphilosophical sort of Arianism, to which it 
 would seem that he adhered to the end. 
 
 Here, again, we are obliged to trace error in part to the 
 particular conception of the Trinity which had come to pre- 
 vail in New England. Hopkins was the last to hold to the 
 Nicene doctrine of the primacy of the Father and the eter- 
 nal sonship of Christ. The whole philosophy of the Trinity, 
 as that doctrine was conceived by its great defenders in the 
 age of Athanasius, when the doctrine was formulated, had 
 been set aside. It was even derided ; and this chiefly for 
 the reason that it was not studied. Professor Stuart had no 
 sympathy with, or just appreciation of, the Nicene doctrine 
 of the generation of the Son. His conscious need of a phi- 
 losophy on the subject was shown in the warm, though 
 cautious and qualified, welcome which he gave to the Sabel- 
 lianismof Schleiermacher. What he defended against Chan- 
 ning, though with vigor and learning, was the notion of 
 three distinctions to which personal pronouns can be ap- 
 plied — a mode of defining the Trinity which the Nicen9 
 Fathers who framed the orthodox creed would have re- 
 garded with some astonishment. The eternal fatherhood of 
 God, the precedence of the Father, is as much a part of the 
 orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as is the divinity of the 
 Son. 
 
 What, according to Channing, is the purpose of the mis- 
 sion of Christ ? What work does he perform ? Here he 
 agrees with the church in the general proposition that he 
 came to deliver men from sin and its consequences.* The 
 accepted doctrine, and what has always been considered the 
 
 * Sermon at Mr, Sparks's Ordination : Worhij vol. iii., p. 88. 
 12* 
 
274 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 doctrine of the Scriptures, is that an expiatory effect is ac- 
 complished by Christ ; that although he reveals the Father's 
 love, and is sent by the Father out of compassion to the sin- 
 ful race, there is yet in the conscience of God a demand to 
 which the consciences of men respond, for something of the 
 nature of compensation in the moral order violated by sin ; 
 that this compensation being made, the foundation is laid 
 for a forgiveness which brings honor to the divine character 
 on all sides, and is consistent with a righteous moral admin- 
 istration. Thus a new relation is established between God 
 and men — a reconciliation. This doctrine of the mediation 
 of Christ is purposely stated here in the most general terms, 
 in order that none of the special theories in which it has 
 been embodied may be confounded with the essential idea. 
 Now Channing did not absolutely renounce the orthodox 
 opinion. Having referred to the opposite view, he says : 
 " Many of us are dissatisfied with this explanation, and think 
 that the Scriptures ascribe the remission of sins to Christ's 
 death, with an emphasis so peculiar that we ought to con- 
 sider this event as having a special influence in removing 
 punishment, though the Scriptures may not reveal the way 
 in which it contributes to this end." But, in keeping with 
 his transitional position, he lays no stress on this truth. On 
 the contrary, he is misparing, though never intentionally un- 
 fair or extravagant, in his denunciation of the current ex- 
 pressions in which it is set forth. Either from a want of 
 familiarity with the history of doctrine, or from not being 
 addicted to patient intellectual analysis, he is content with 
 giving expression to his revolted feeling. He does not stop 
 to inquire whether a profound truth may not be contained in 
 a statement which, if literally taken, is obnoxious. He 
 sticks in the phraseology. Nor does he attempt to separate 
 a particular representation of some school in theology from 
 the deep, underlying truth which theology, with varying de- 
 grees of success, has been endeavoring to formulate. There 
 is a contrast between the clearness, and evident honesty of 
 
CHAINING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 275 
 
 purpose, with which he describes the position of his adver- 
 saries, and the inability profoundly to appreciate that posi- 
 tion. Pl-opositions, the terms of which are capable of more 
 than one interpretation (as that 'the atonement appeases 
 God ' ), are taken in one sense — an admissible sense, indeed, 
 if the words only are considered, but yet not the sense which 
 these words suggest to the minds of those who utter them 
 — and then a variety of inferences are deduced, repugnant 
 to sound Christian feeling and to a portion of the teaching 
 of Scripture. 
 
 Apart from his criticism of adverse views, Channing's 
 positive idea is that Christ does his work of reclaiming men 
 from sin by teaching truth, which is recommended by his 
 spotless character and by his death, and confirmed as having 
 authority by his miracles, especially his resurrection from 
 the dead. Of the teaching of Christ, especially of his ethi- 
 cal teaching, and of the unapproachable beauty and perfec- 
 tion of his character, it is well known that Channing has 
 written much that is admirable. When we inquire specifi- 
 cally what the capital points of that doctrine are which Christ 
 was sent into the world to announce, we find them to be the 
 doctrine of God the Father, and of the immortality of the 
 soul. This last truth is brought home to men's belief by the 
 resurrection of Jesus. These two truths are suigled out by 
 Channing, in writing on Christian Evidences, as most im- 
 portant points of the Saviour's teaching. The paternal char- 
 acter of God is declared and evinced, and thereby supersti- 
 tions and gloomy fears growing out of them are dispelled ; 
 and the soul's destiny to survive death is vividly exhibited, 
 and is also proved, by the raising of Jesus from the dead. 
 The Christian revelation is reduced in its contents substan- 
 tially to these two articles of faith. 
 
 It might have been predicted, from the analogies of expe- 
 rience, that the Liberal movement would not stop with the 
 abandonment of the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atone- 
 ment, and with the resolution of Christianity into the incul- 
 
276 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 cation of an elevated monotheism, coupled with the truth of 
 immortality, and verified by miracles.* A ferment like that 
 which Channing and his associates excited could not stop 
 where it began. In such an atmosphere changes occur fast. 
 The revolution of thought, like political revolutions, could 
 not halt where its authors might wish it to stop, but must 
 move on to more advanced stages. The first remarkable 
 phenomenon was the development of the Intuitional Theory, 
 if so it may be styled. Schleiermacher, and the French and 
 German philosophers, were read by some. The thoughts of 
 these writers fell into a genial soil. Heligious truth, which 
 the older Unitarians, after the manner of Locke and Paley, 
 received on the ground of miraculous proof, was now af- 
 firmed to be evident to the soul independently of that spe- 
 cies of evidence, which was pronounced to be of secondary 
 value. This view of things involved a carrying of mental 
 freedom further than had been anticipated. It was sup- 
 posed to threaten the basis of supernaturalism. It awakened 
 alarm. Professor I^orton, learned in 'New Testament criti- 
 cism and in the early patristic literature, in an address to the 
 Cambridge Divinity School, uttered a warning against the 
 new doctrine of a light within the €Oul as the latest form of 
 infidelity. Spinoza, Schleiermacher, De Wette, and kindred 
 spirits, were put under the ban, and their followers excom- 
 municated with bell and candle. His position was that " no 
 proof of the divine commission of Christ could be afforded 
 save through miraculous displays of God's power." "No 
 rational man," he said, " can suppose that God has miracu- 
 lously revealed facts which the very constitution of our na- 
 ture enables us to perceive." To this address, Mr. George 
 Ripley responded in a scholarly and trenchant pamphlet, in 
 
 * Among the works which throw light on the history of Unitarianism in 
 New England, in its successive phases, are the Memoirs of Br. Buckmin- 
 ster and of J. 8. Buckminster, Channing' s Memoirs (by W. H. Channing), 
 the Life of Br. Gannett (by his son), the hiograpJdes of Parker (by Weiss 
 and by Frothingham), Frothingham's Transcendentalism^ and the Memoir 
 of Margaret Fuller. 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 277 
 
 which he earnestly vindicated Schleiermacher and others 
 from the charge of infidelity, and proved by citations from 
 eminent theologians that the internal proof of the Gospel 
 had been considered by tl:^ deepest thinkers of various 
 schools the principal evidence of its divine origin. It is 
 needless to trace the progress of this interesting discussion. 
 The Transcendental school at length emerged into a distinct, 
 flourishing life. Inspiration is not limited to men of the 
 Bible ; the soul has voices within it which reveal eternal 
 truth : let the individual hearken for these utterances of the 
 universal spirit, and no longer lean on the crutches of author- 
 ity. The maxim, " Every man his own prophet," seemed to 
 some to need no further verification when Mr. Emerson, pro- 
 fessing a carelessness of logic, as with the insight though 
 with none of the assumption of an oracle, and with the sub- 
 tile, exquisite charm of his peculiar genius, began to impro- 
 vise in the hearing of sympathetic listeners of both sexes. 
 A crisis was produced, however, by Parker's relegating 
 miracles to the transient in Christianity, and by his classifi- 
 cation of Christianity with the ethnic religions as a purely 
 natural product. Without renouncing theism, he affirmed 
 that its doctrine issues from the progress of religion on the 
 plane of nature, and is not derived fi-om supernatural teach- 
 ing. The truths which the Unitarians had made the sum 
 and substance of the Gospel he asserted that we know intu- 
 itively. What need, then, to use Paley's phrase, of "the 
 splendid apparatus of miracles," to prove what we already 
 know by the light of Nature ? The immortality of the soul, 
 it had been said, is established by the resurrection of Jesus. 
 But it is easier, Parker declared, to prove that we are im- 
 mortal than to prove the resurrection. In short, he pro- 
 nounced the evidence of miracles superfluous : tiiere was no 
 dignuB vindice nodus. If there was nothing to prove, why 
 should there be any proof ? The essentials of Christianity 
 had been reduced to a minimum / that minimum Parker 
 conveyed over to natural theology. 
 
278 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 As between the older Unitarians and the orthodox, so 
 now between the conservative Unitarians and the Radicals, 
 there was a striking difference in the type of culture. The 
 intuitional partj had given a hospitable and eager welcome 
 to the continental literature, not only to the metaphysicians 
 and theologians, like Cousin, Schleiermacher, and De Wette, 
 but also to the poets and critics — to such as Herder and 
 Schiller, and especially to Goethe. Carlyle's critical essays, 
 before and after he began to pour out the powerful jargon 
 which became the characteristic of his style, were eagerly 
 read, and the new evangel of sincerity, unconscious genius, 
 and hero-worship mingled its stream in the current already 
 swollen by its Teutonic tributaries. The memoir of that 
 woman of rare intellectual gifts, Margaret Fuller, gives one 
 a lively impression of the enthusiasm awakened by the Eu- 
 ropean authors. To men like Professor Norton, a student 
 of German,' but who had derived no very agreeable concep- 
 tion of the German mind from the earlier Kationalistic 
 writers whom he had been called upon to confute — ^to men 
 like him, highly cultivated, according to the older standard, 
 by the perusal of Locke and the English classics, and whose 
 favorite poet was not Goethe but Mrs. Hemans, this influx 
 of continental speculative mysticism and poetry was odious 
 in the extreme. Some of the devotees of the new culture 
 cherished ardent visions of an improved organization of 
 society, in which existing abuses and hindrances to intellec- 
 tual progress should be swept away. The Brook Farm As- 
 sociation, with its highly educated circle of members, was 
 one fruit of this class of ideas. 
 
 Mr. Parker was not the man to hide his light under a 
 bushel. The open avowal in the pulpit of opinions which 
 had commonly been considered infidel, made it necessary to 
 draw lines. This, on several accounts, was awkward. There 
 was, to be sure, a real difference between those who admitted 
 and those who denied a miraculous element in Christianity. 
 But the promoters of the Unitarian movement had made 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 279 
 
 large professions of liberality. They had called for an un- 
 restricted mental freedom. They had uttered a constant 
 protest against " the system of exclusion," which thrusts 
 men out of the pale of the church for their opinions. They 
 had made it a merit to cast off the yoke of creeds. Now it 
 seemed requisite to construct a creed, to define Christianity, 
 to separate between liberality and license, and practically to 
 excommunicate ministers, not for an alleged want of the 
 Christian spirit, but for their doctrines. It is always embar- 
 rassing for a party of freedom and of progress to have to 
 change front, and take the role of conservatives. It is easy 
 to taunt them with inconsistency, to contrast their former 
 professions with then* present conduct, to make it seem at 
 least that they are apostates from their principles, or that 
 they have contended only for that precise measure of free- 
 dom which was fitted to their own need. How far these 
 reproaches were just or unjust, there is no need that we 
 should inquire here. No one will doubt that the appear- 
 ance of Parkerism was a highly unwelcome phenomenon, 
 and a rather unmanageable one, to the leading representa- 
 tives of the liberal theology. What added to the difficulty 
 was, that there might not be that amount of agreement 
 among themselves which would appear requisite if a creed 
 were to be framed that should embrace even so much as a 
 tolerably precise definition of the authority to be ascribed 
 to the Scriptures and to Christ. 
 
 We are concerned now with the view taken of Parker's 
 position by Channing. He naturally leaned strongly to an 
 intuitional philosophy. We have seen how he was drawn 
 away from Locke by the influence of Price. He had made 
 much of the moral and spiritual faculties of man, and of 
 the spontaneous response which the contents of the Gospel 
 call forth from human nature. There were not wanting, 
 then, affinities to draw him towards the new school of Lib- 
 erals. On the other hand, however, he was deeply attached 
 to historical Christianity. His biography contains a num- 
 
280 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 ber of memorable and beautiful letters in which he expresses 
 himself respecting Parkerism temperately but frankly. In 
 their whole tone they manifest, in the most attractive way, 
 the loveliness of his Christian spirit. He felt that a rejec- 
 tion of the miracles was a rejection of Christ. The miracles, 
 he says, are so interwoven with his history, that, if they are 
 torn away, nothing is left ; that history is turned into fable ; 
 the historical Christ is gone. But why not let him go ? 
 First, the soul craves not only the idea, but the existence, of 
 perfection. Christian truth without Christ and his character 
 loses a great portion of its quickening power. The mira- 
 cles are among the manifestations of Christ's character ; 
 they are symbolical of his spiritual influence — for these rea- 
 sons they cannot be spared. The miracles are credible. 
 God could not approach a darkened, sensual world by mere 
 abstract teaching. The inward perfection of Christ is itself 
 a miracle, which renders the outward acts of superhuman 
 power easy of belief. Channing recoils from Pantheism, 
 which he sees to be latent in the mind of the new school of 
 " true spiritualists." Speaking of a sermon which he had 
 heard on " the loneliness of Christ," he says : " I claim lit- 
 tle resemblance to my divine Friend and Saviour, but I 
 seem doomed to drink of this cup with him to the last. I 
 see and feel the harm done by this crude speculation, while 
 I also see much nobleness to bind me to its advocates. In 
 
 its opinions generally I see nothing to give me hope 
 
 The immense distance of us all from Christ " in character 
 is a fact so obvious that not to recognize it implies such 
 a degree of self-ignorance, and of ignorance of human his- 
 tory, " that one wonders how it can have entered a soimd 
 mind."* In these letters there is no unseemly denuncia- 
 tion, but there is genuine, manly sorrow at the promulgation 
 of opinions that are regarded as undermining historical 
 Christianity. Had Channing gone a step further, and dis- 
 
 * Memoir^ vol. ii., p. 448. 
 
CHANNLNG AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 281 
 
 tinctly perceived the necessity of a present, abiding relation 
 of the soul to the living Christ, he would naturally have 
 advanced to a view of his person not dissonant in substance 
 from that of the Catholic theology, and would have per- 
 ceived at the same time how indispensable to Christian piety 
 is the assumption of the reality of the Gospel history. He 
 cannot desert the old anchorage, but his reasons for not 
 doing so are less convincing than if he could have pointed 
 out plainly how a shipwreck is the necessary and immediate 
 consequence. Christ was really, if not theoretically, more 
 to him than a teacher and an example. 
 
 From the consideration of the theology of Channing we 
 turn to his ethical writings. The two great subjects with 
 regard to which he produced a powerful and lasting impres- 
 sion upon public opinion are War and Slavery. It is not 
 these gigantic evils in their economical bearings that engage 
 his interest. The predominant thought is the wrong which 
 they involve, and the suffering which they inflict. His 
 strong sense of the dignity of human nature excites in him 
 a reprobation of whatever degrades man. His discourse on 
 War is for the most part a well-guarded statement. He 
 does not weaken the impression which is made by his de- 
 scription of the horrors of war by taking up an extravagant 
 position as to its wrongfulness — as Mr. Sumner afterwards 
 did in his oration on " The True Grandeur of Nations," the 
 main points of which, so far as they are sound, are suggested 
 in Channing's discussion, where they are presented without 
 the pedantry, magniloquence, and tincture of egotism which 
 were the common blemishes of Mr. Sumner's otherwise im- 
 pressive discourses. Mr. Sumner laid down the false propo- 
 sition that in the present age there is no peace that is not 
 honorable, and no war that is not dishonorable. He made 
 no exceptions to the assertion of the moral unlawfulness of 
 war. He advocated arbitration as a substitute for the strug- 
 gle of arms, without intimating that there are cases, like our 
 late contest for the Union, where the party that deems itself 
 
282 CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 wrong or invaded will never, and ought never, to refer tlie 
 adjudication of the controversy to a third power. Channing 
 justifies defensive warfare. His principle does not go so 
 far as to require him "to condemn Greece for repelling the 
 armies of Xerxes, Washington for fighting the troops of 
 George III., or Germany for driving back the late French 
 invasion. It is not true that strict self-defence is the only 
 lawful ground for taking up arms. There are wars under- 
 taken for purposes of humanity, and there will continue to 
 be such so long as Bulgarian massacres are perpetrated on 
 earth. Canon Mozley, in an instructive sermon on War, 
 has shown how wars necessarily arise from the very exis- 
 tence of nations as coi-porate unities, there being no com- 
 mon tribunal for the settlement of international disputes, 
 and no tribunal, so far as we can see at present, being possi- 
 ble, to which every instance of grave national aggression 
 could be referred. Force is the defender of justice and 
 right within the limits of each nation, and so likewise as 
 between peoples. Christianity, in recognizing nations as a 
 part of the divine economy and the obligations of civil obedi- 
 ence, has sanctioned war as an ultimate resort against flagrant 
 and destructive injustice, just as it has sanctioned force 
 when wielded by the magistrate for the ends of public order 
 within the bounds of each civil community. Channing 
 might well have placed the right of war on a somewhat 
 broader philosophical ground. He has not done full justice 
 to the noble qualities of human nature, such as courage and 
 self-sacrifice, which war may call into exerAse ; although 
 he has words of praise for " the soldier of principle, who 
 exposes his life for a cause which his conscience approves, 
 and who mingles clemency and mercy with the joy of 
 triumph." These, however, are slight criticisms upon a 
 production which breathes in every line the noblest spirit of 
 Christian love, and, without any admixture of false rhetoric, 
 paints truly as well as vividly the criminality and misery 
 which wars occasion. ' 
 
CHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 283 
 
 The papers which Channing wrote on the slavery question 
 are among the most meritorious of his writings. He never 
 forgets his aim, which is to impress upon the consciences 
 of men at the South as well as the Korth the injustice of 
 slave-holding, and to extricate the national authority from 
 complicity with it. lie does not allow himself to be tempted 
 into passionate declamation. On the other hand, there is 
 nothing tame or timid in the condemnation which he ex- 
 presses. Channing, as is well known, did not connect himself 
 with the Anti-slavery Society, and objected to the unmeas- 
 ured vituperation in which Anti-slavery leaders were prone 
 to indulge. JS^o one should wish to pluck from the brows of 
 Mr. Garrison and his associates any laurels which they 
 fairly earned by their long and unflinching warfare against 
 the slave-power. It is a fact, however, that they were dis- 
 unionists ; and that the great political opposition to slavery 
 which set in with full vigor at the epoch of the Missouri Com- 
 promise, and which went forward with fluctuating, indeed, 
 but on the whole with increasing energy, untU it triumphed 
 in the election of Mr. Lincoln and in the emancipation of 
 the slaves through the victory over the Rebellion, — it is a 
 fact that this political opposition moved on to its complete 
 success without the sympathy or aid of the Anti-slavery agi- 
 tators to whom we have referred. It is another fact that 
 numbers of sound and earnest antagonists of slavery, includ- 
 ing numerous ministers, broke off their co-operation with 
 Mr. Garrison from unwillingness to identify themselves with 
 other heterogeneous reforms, as they were called, of which 
 he made himselE the champion. Dr. Channing understood 
 the value of the American Union as weU as the wrong of 
 slavery. He wished to preserve the one and to destroy the 
 other. It is true that he considered the annexation of 
 Texas, for the purpose for which it was desired, to be so 
 grave and mischievous a departure from the design of the 
 national Union, as to furnish a sufiicient reason for its disso- 
 lution. But of the importance of one united government 
 
284 OHANNING AS A PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 he had the deepest conviction. There were times when the 
 frequent threats of dissolution at the South, and the en- 
 croachments of slavery, led many at the Korth to speak 
 lightly of the American Union. All whose opinion is worth 
 anything can now see that this was a mistake ; and that the 
 interests of civiMzation, and the interests of philanthropy, 
 would have suffered a terrible blow if the Union had been 
 broken up, either as the result of the labors of Abolitionists 
 at the North, or of slave-extensionists at the South. Chan- 
 ning had to endure the censure of zealous men for what 
 they considered his excessive moderation in the use of the 
 vocabulary of invective. But this quality will redound to his 
 lasting honor. No one doubted his courage. No one be- 
 lieved that he was restrained by the fear of unpopularity. 
 It was the spirit of truth and the spirit of love united, which 
 held him back from unwise and intemperate speech, and from 
 measures which might be dictated by an honest zeal, but 
 which did not tend to secure the end for which they were 
 devised. His philanthropic zeal was not tainted with fanati- 
 cism. It was not a fault, that, while uttering his protest 
 plainly and earnestly, he shunned exaggeration. The agita- 
 tion which was kept up by the disunionist Anti-slavery 
 leaders had its effect on the conscience of the people ; but 
 such an effect was produced, to say the least, in an equal 
 measure, and in a way to provoke far less of irritation and 
 disgust, by the arguments of Channing. 
 
 On the whole, while Channing cannot be said to have had 
 a very deep comprehension of the evangelical creed, or to 
 have contributed to the advancement of scientific theology, 
 those who reject his theological opinions may be glad to see 
 him — to quote the language of his epitaph — "honored 
 throughout Christendom for his eloquence and courage in 
 maintaining and advancing the great cause of truth, religion, 
 and human freedom." 
 
THE SYSTEM OF DR. N. W. TAYLOR. 285 
 
 THE SYSTEM OF DR. N. W. TAYLOR IN ITS CON- 
 NECTION WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THE- 
 OLOGY.* 
 
 Philip Melanchthon, a few days before he died, wrote on 
 a loose sheet of paper a memorandum of reasons why death 
 should be less unwelcome to him. Among them was the 
 prospect of escaping " from the fury of theologians."f The 
 outcry against him, that began before Luther's death, in- 
 creased afterwards ; and men who copied in excess the faults 
 of Luther, without a grain of his nobleness, were barking and 
 howling round the great scholar — the Preceptor of Germany, 
 the St. John of the Reformation — ^for presuming to deviate 
 
 * [This Essay (from the New Englanderiox 1868), was occasioned by an 
 article on "Presbyterian Reunion," from the pen of the late Dr. Charles 
 Hodge, of Princeton. One of the objections made by Dr. Hodge to re- 
 union was the circumstance that ministers in accord with the theological 
 opinions of Dr. Taylor were received into the pulpits of the "New-School " 
 Presbyterian Church. This objection "he fortified by alleging objections 
 to Dr. Taylor's theology. In reprinting this essay, it has been abridged 
 by leaving out some passages of no permanent interest. It was impracti- 
 cable to omit all polemical references with respect to the interpretation 
 of Dr. Taylor's system, as these, in a few cases, are so interwoven with 
 the text of the article that they could not well be eliminated. The 
 Outlines of Theology, to which reference'is made, is the work of Dr. A. A. 
 Hodge, based partly on the lectures of the senior Dr Hodge. This able 
 work has since been rewritten and much expanded. (R. Carter and 
 Brothers, 1879.)] 
 
 f The whole memorandum is pathetic : — " Discedes a peccatis ; libera- 
 beris ab seruranis efc a rabie theologorum ; venies in lucem ; intueberis 
 Filium Dei ; disces ilia mira arcana, quas in hac vita intelligere non potu- 
 isti— cur sic simus conditi, qualis sit copulatio duarum naturarum in 
 Christo." ^ 
 
286 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOE IN CONNECTION 
 
 in some particulars from Luther's doctrine. He could not 
 help agreeing with Calvin on the Lord's Supper ; he could 
 not admit the slavery of the will as Luther had proclaimed 
 it ; he would go, perhaps, too far in retaining old forms of 
 worship for the sake of peace. For these conscientious opin- 
 ions, the author of the Augsburg Confession was pursued 
 with unrelenting hostility ; so that a half century after he 
 died, the leading professor of theology at Wittenberg was 
 so enraged at hearing him referred to by a student as an 
 authority for some doctrinal statement, that, before the eyes 
 of all, he tore his portrait from the wall and trampled on it. 
 
 There is such a thing, then, as rabies iheologoruw,. Of 
 course we do not mean to imply that Dr. Taylor was ever in 
 the same degree the object of it. Yet, it was well that even 
 he was made of sterner stuff than poor Melanchthon. He 
 never complained of a manly, courteous opposition to his 
 opinions. He who brings forward new ideas has no right to 
 claim exemption from unfavorable criticism. But he did 
 feel that there was far more effort to make him out heretical, 
 to rob him of his good name among orthodox Christians, and 
 to stir up prejudice against him, than to judge fairly, or even 
 to hear candidly, his teaching. It did not diminish his sense 
 of wrong that in some cases the stabs upon his reputation 
 were inflicted with a bland and unctuous manner, with pro- 
 fessions of personal regard, and under the guise of a holy 
 zeal for the truth. Dr. Taylor was himself an honest, mag- 
 nanimous, open-hearted man ; and he knew well who, among 
 his opponents, were moved by a conscientious dissent from 
 his opinions, and who of them were instigated by self-inter- 
 est or by resentment for imagined slights. 
 
 Dr. Taylor w^as a metaphysician ; he was a philosopher, 
 who has had no equal in this department, on our side of the 
 ocean, since President Edwards. It was in some respects a 
 misfortune that his philosophical views and reasonings were 
 brought forward in the form of theological discussions. In 
 this country, not only every minister, but most laymen, sup- 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 287 
 
 pose themselves to be adepts in tlie science of theology. 
 They expect tliat everything shall be made perfectly easy of 
 comprehension to everybody. Hence, so clear, common- 
 sense a thinker as Dr. Taylor, who- hated all mysticism, was 
 constantly complained of as too " metaphysical," as obscure 
 and unintelligible. Itinerant preachers, who had no train- 
 ing in mental science, and little capacity for receiving one, 
 felt that there must be something dreadful under that cloud 
 which their eyes could not penetrate. They felt sure that it 
 was not " the simplicity of the Gospel." So President Ed- 
 wards, in his day, frequently alludes to the reproach that was 
 cast upon him because he reasoned metaphysically. More- 
 over, bringing forward his philosophical opinions exclusively 
 in their bearing on theological questions of present interest, 
 Dr. Taylor would be liable to excite the opposition of exist- 
 ing theological parties. Calm discussion would be inter- 
 rupted by ecclesiastical interference. Had he brought the 
 results of his thinking into the forum of philosophy, where 
 they might be examined, as are the tenets of Leibnitz, or 
 Locke, or Dugald Stewart, who supposes that all of those 
 who actually took up arms against him would have deemed 
 themselves qualified by nature or education for this work of 
 assault ? 
 
 In our judgment, it is a grand merit of our New England 
 theologians, that while holding the past in due reverence, 
 they have not bowed down before it, but have expected prog- 
 ress. They have seen that the denial of the hope of progress 
 ill theology — that is, in the understanding and expression of 
 the truths of the Bible — would have shut out the Protestant 
 Reformation, as well as every other access of light since 
 theology began to be a science. Smalley, while engaged in 
 combating theories of Emmons which he earnestly rejected, 
 is careful to add : 
 
 " It has doubtless been perceived by every attentive reader, that the 
 sentiments remarked upon, are not objected against merely, if at all, be- 
 
288 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 cause of their being innovations ; there may be danger no doubt, of hold- 
 ing over tenaciously the traditions of the elders, as well as of departing 
 too hastily from the long received opinions of our ancestors. There have 
 been many innovations in Christian theology, which were doubtless real 
 improvements. Calvin himself was a great innovator in his day ; and it 
 cannot reasonably be supposed, that either he, or any of the other first 
 reformers, just emerging from the darkness of popery, had all the light 
 that was ever to come into the world." * 
 
 To our mind there is something noble in this willing, 
 hopeful spirit of progress and emancipation from slavish 
 deference to human authority. They mark a truly scienti- 
 fic, as well as a truly Christian temper. There is no con- 
 tempt for the past ; there is no rash and flighty desertion of 
 received doctrine ; but there is a readiness to learn, to modi- 
 fy traditional tenets at the coming of new light, and a dis- 
 position to confront the errors of good men by dispassionate 
 argument instead of church anathemas. How much better 
 is 'New England to-day, and the Christianity of the country 
 too, for the line of theologians from Edwards to Taylor — 
 not to speak of the living — ^who, whatever may have been 
 their eccentricities or mistakes, have dared to think for 
 themselves and have endeavored to present the truths of the 
 Gospel in more reasonable as well as defensible forms of 
 statement. This freedom is an invaluable possession. Where- 
 ever it may be lightly esteemed, let it be still cherished in 
 'New England ! 
 
 The present seems a favorable opportunity for setting 
 forth the theological system of Dr. Taylor, in itself and in 
 its historical relations. This we undertake more as an ex- 
 positor than as a critic, and shall therefore in this place ab- 
 stain, generally speaking, from either vindicating or opposing 
 his distinctive tenets. 
 
 Everybody who is much acquainted with New England 
 theology knows that the elder Edwards set out to clear the 
 
 * Smalley, Works^ ii., 431 
 
WITH PKIOE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 289 
 
 CaMnistic system of difficulties and objections that were felt 
 both by its advocates and opponents ; an attempt which was 
 continued by subsequent theologians. "The Calvinists," 
 writes the younger Edwards, describing the state of things 
 when his father commenced his work, " themselves began to 
 be ashamed of their own cause, and to give it up, so far at 
 least as relates to liberty and necessity. This was true, es- 
 pecially of Drs. Watts and Doddridge, who in their day 
 were accounted leaders of the Calvinists." * The full justice 
 of this remark will be evident to any one who will examine 
 the theological writings of these two eminent men. We 
 know not where to look for more striking specimens of 
 weak and inconsequent reasoning than they present ; and 
 this impression is heightened in the case of Doddi-idge, by 
 the quasi mathematical form in which his lectures are cast. 
 The sum of the charge brought against the Calvinists was 
 that " the sense in which they interpreted the sacred writ- 
 ings was inconsistent with human liberty, moral agency, ac- 
 countableness, praise, and blame." " How absurd, it was 
 urged, that a man totally dead should be called upon to arise 
 and perform the duties of the living and sound — ^that we 
 should need a divine influence to give us a new heart, and 
 yet be commanded to make a new heart and a right spirit — 
 that a man has no power to come to Christ, and yet be com- 
 manded to come to him on pain of damnation ! " f 
 
 The fundamental points in the indictment preferred by 
 the Arminian writers, Edwards took up in his two treatises, 
 that on the Will and that on Original Sin. It had been the 
 Augustinian, mediaeval, and old Protestant doctrine, that 
 the posterity of Adam are answerable for Adam's sin, and 
 therefore both sinful and condemned at birth, because they 
 really participated in it. They are condemned and punished 
 for their own deed in Adam. After the notion of a covenant 
 with Adam — the so-called Federal theology, which is now 
 
 ♦ Wi/i'ks, L, 482. t Ibid., p. 483. 
 
290 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOK IN CONNECTION 
 
 maintained at Princeton — was superimposed, in the course 
 of the seventeenth century, on the realistic conception, still 
 theologians, when they were pressed by objections, fell back 
 on the old idea of a true and real participation on the part 
 of mankind in their progenitor's act. But the inconsistency 
 of this doctrine with other accepted beliefs — ^for example, 
 with Creationism, or the doctrine that each soul is created 
 by itself, in opposition to the Traducian theory, and more 
 than all with the Lockian philosophy, in which philosophical 
 realism found no countenance, broke down this prop. Par- 
 ticipation in Adam's sin did not cohere with nominalism. 
 The opponents of Calvinism now demanded with one voice 
 some explanation of the imputation of a sin to the descen- 
 dants of Adam, which it was confessed they had no agency in 
 committing. They inquired how the infliction of an infinite 
 penalty upon them, for an act that was done by an individual 
 long before they were created, is consistent with those intui- 
 tive principles of justice which are written on the heart and 
 sanctioned, directly or indirectly, everywhere in the Bible. 
 
 In the latter part of his treatise on original sin, President 
 Edwards endeavors to meet "that great objection," as he 
 styles it, " against the imputation of Adam's sin to his pos- 
 terity, that such imputation is unjust and unreasonable, in- 
 asmuch as Adam and his posterity are not one and the 
 same." * His whole tone implies that he considers this a 
 grave and formidable objection, and his great powers are 
 tasked to the utmost in meeting it. He meets it by denying 
 the fact which it assumes, that Adam and his posterity are 
 distinct agents. The guilt of a man at his birth is declared 
 to be " the guilt of the sin by which the species first re- 
 belled against God."t " The sin of apostasy is not theirs, 
 merely because God imjmtes it to them, but it is truly and 
 properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it to 
 
 * Works (Dwight's ed.), vol. ii., p. 343. 
 t Ibid., p. 543. 
 
"V\TTH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 291 
 
 them." * His curious speculations upon the nature of iden- 
 tity are to demonstrate that the sin of the posterity of Adam 
 is one and the same — identically, numerically the same— 
 with his. The first rising of a sinful inclination in any and 
 every individual since Adam is that consent to the first sin 
 which they really gave in him, and which, in the individuali- 
 zation of the species, appears in the soul of every person at 
 birth. In short, he answers the objection that we did not 
 commit the first sin, by affirming that we did. 
 
 The second great objection of the Arminians, that accord- 
 ing to Calvinism men are required to do what they are said 
 to have no power to do — that the freedom of the will is de- 
 nied, and fatalism substituted for it — Edwards particularly 
 considers in the treatise on the Will. He endeavors to con- 
 fute them on this point by his doctrine of natural ability 
 coupled with moral inability. The germs of this treatise 
 are in Locke's chapter on " Power." f Locke there main- 
 tains that " freedom consists in the dependence of the exist- 
 ence, or non-existence, of any action upon our volition of 
 it ; " J that liberty relates to events consecutive to volition. 
 Given the volition, will the thing chosen follow in accord- 
 ance with it ? If so, we are to that extent free. This is 
 the proper, and the only proper, use of the terms freedom 
 and liberty in their application to personal agents. Hence, 
 Locke declares that the " question whether a man be at lib- 
 erty to will which of the two he pleases," is absurd ; for 
 this, he adds, is to ask " whether a man can will what he 
 wills, or be pleased with what he is pleased with. A ques- 
 tion which, I think, needs no answer ; and they who can 
 make a question of it, must suppose one will to determine 
 the acts of another, and another to determine that, and so 
 on in infinitum.'''^ §• Here is Edwards's refutation of the 
 Arminian objections, in a nutshell. He defines one's lib- 
 
 * Ibid., p. 559. t Ibid., chap. xxi. 
 
 X " Univ. Ed.," p. 159. § Ibid., p. 158. 
 
292 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 erty to be freedom " from hindrance or impediment in the 
 way of doing or conducting in any respect as he wills." * 
 Necessity, constraint, coercion, and all similar terms are in- 
 applicable to the will, for the reason that they all presup- 
 pose an opposition of the will, which in the case of a choice 
 is by the supposition excluded.f That only is necessary 
 which choice cannot prevent, ij: 
 
 Casting out these terms, he then, by a remorseless appli- 
 cation of the maxim — every event must have a cause — to 
 the specifiGation of choice — to the choice of one thing rather 
 than another — established his doctrine of determinism, and 
 drove the Arminians to the wall. There was full liberty, 
 there was no necessity, and yet there was an absolute cer- 
 tainty given by the antecedents ; and on this foreordained 
 certainty, the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination might 
 have a sure foundation. 
 
 What did Edwards mean, then, by his " natural ability " ? 
 He meant that nothing but a right choice or inclination is 
 needed by a wicked man in order to repent and turn from 
 his ways. " There are faculties of mind, and a capacity of 
 nature, and everything else sufficient ; nothing is wanting 
 but a will." § But coexisting with this natural ability, is a 
 moral inability, by which is meant a fixed and habitual in- 
 clination such as renders a perseverance in evil — a persever- 
 ance of the will in its evil choice — perfectly certain. 
 
 It is, therefore, according to Edwards, an impropriety of 
 speech to say that a sinner cannot repent and be holy. We 
 say that a man cannot accomplish an event, when the event 
 will not take place in consequence of, or on the supposition 
 of, his choice. But here the event is itself a choice ; it is a 
 case where doing is choosing. || For a like reason, Edwards 
 
 * Works, ii., 38. t Ibid., ii., 26 et passim. 
 
 t Ibid., li., 84. § Ibid., ii., 38. 
 
 I It is nothing new for Necessitarians to deny the propriety of apply- 
 ing the terms "necessity," *' coaction," "inability," and the like, to acta 
 of the will. Their argument on this point is concisely put by Thomas 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 293 
 
 continually treats the question whether a man can choose 
 otherwise than he does, as absurd. For what does it sig- 
 nify? It signifies, when reduced to a proposition, either 
 that if he chooses in a particular way, he chooses in that 
 way — an identical proposition, or that he will choose in a 
 particular way, if he chooses to choose in that way — which 
 leads to an infinite series. Thus he rules out the question 
 of the power of contrary choice, in the ordinary understand- 
 ing of the phrase, by his definitions. To ask if a man can 
 repent, or if he can repent if he choose, or if he can repent 
 if he will, is either mere tautology, or involves the blunder 
 of supposing an infinite series of choices. He silences the 
 objector by depriving him of the power to put his question, 
 or by pronouncing that question an absurdity. Man is re- 
 sponsible because he is naturally able ; he is helpless because 
 he is morally unable.* 
 
 Aquinas. " lllud quod movetur ab altero, dicitur cogi, si moveaimr con- 
 tra inclinationem propriam, eed si moveatur ab alio, quod sibi dat pro- 
 priam inclinationem, non dicitur cogi," " Sic igitur Deus naovendo vo- 
 luntatem non cogit ipsam, quia dat ei ejus propriam inclinationem." 
 "Sic moveri ex se non repugnat ei, quod movetur ab alio." P. i. Qu. 
 105, Art. 4. 
 
 There is great similarity between the definitions and arguments of Ed- 
 wards and those of Hobbes and Collins. He says that he had not read 
 Hobbes, and although Dugald Stewart implies that he had read Collias, 
 this is not at all probable. Sir William Hamilton once made a remark 
 to us, which implied that he considered Edwards a borrower from Col- 
 lins. On repeating Hamilton's observation to Dr. Taylor, he said that 
 probably Edwards had never seen a copy of Collins. 
 
 * Sometimes Edwards appears to leave the beaten track, and really to 
 take up the question of the power of contrary choice. One instance is 
 in Part iii, § iv. (ii. 160), where he says that "the inclination," in 
 the case of the original determination or act of the will, "is unable to 
 change itself ; and that for this plain reason, that it is unable to incline to 
 change itself." But the context shows that the unable is only a moral 
 inability, or certainty ; and the reason alleged is still the incompatibility 
 of oppodte choices (or inclinations) at the same time. " Present choice 
 cannot at present choose to be otherwise: iox thsA, wonldi he at present 
 to choose something diverse from what is at present chosen." The italics 
 belong to Edwards. 
 
294 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 Unquestionablj the statements of President Edwards on 
 this subject are verbally at variance with the Calvinistic 
 symbols and standard writers. The old form of doctrine 
 was that men since the fall are free to sin, but have no other 
 freedom. But the frequent assertion of Edwards is that 
 men now have all the liberty that ever existed or that could 
 ever possibly enter into the heart of any man to conceive.* 
 This, however, is a verbal incongruity, due to his peculiar 
 use of terms. Yet his theory of the will differs from that 
 of the old Calvinists, if we except the high supralapsarian 
 view, in that they, like Augustine, explicitly gave to Adam 
 in his act of apostasy the power of contrary choice.f And 
 that " mutability " of will that was ascribed to him prior to 
 transgression can find no place in President Edwards's notion 
 of liberty.:]: 
 
 The solution which Edwards offered of the problem of 
 
 The nearest approach to a perfectly distinct and unequivocal assertion 
 of properly necessitarian doctrine, which we remember in Edwards, is in 
 the remark that the difference between natural and moral necessity 
 " does not lie so much in the nature of the connection, as in the two terms 
 connected ; " the cause and effect in the case of moral necessity being of 
 a moral kind. P. i., § 4. 
 
 * Letter to a Minister of the Church of Scotland^ vol. ii. 
 
 f Comp. West. Confession, chap, ix., iii. Man "hath wholly lost all 
 ability of will to any spiritual good," etc. 
 
 X It is remarkable that the Jansenists, in striving to make a distinction 
 between their doctrine and that of Calvin, use phraseology very similar 
 to that of Edwards. Men can resist grace if they will. Calvin is quite 
 wrong, says Pascal, in the seventeenth of the Provincial Letters, in hold- 
 ing that the sinner cannot resist grace — even " la grace efficace et victo- 
 rieuse." " Ce n'est pas quMl ne puisse toujours s'en eloigner, et qu'il ne 
 s'en eloigndt effectivement, e'il le voulait." But what does he mean by 
 can — by power. It is the Augustinian potestas si wilt, as Mozley has 
 pointed out in his Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 427. Cal- 
 vin would have admitted all that Pascal says, for he did not hold, as was 
 represented by the Jansenists, that the wiU is moved like an inanimate 
 thing. See (e. g.) hist, ii., iii., 14. The Dominicans endeavored to dis- 
 tinguish their doctrine from that of the Jansenists, as the latter professed 
 to reject the doctriae of Calvin. But the difference in both cases was 
 merely verbal. 
 
WITH PEIOE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 295 
 
 original sin failed to satisfy his successors. Hopkins, in cer- 
 tain passages, seems to adopt the realistic propositions of his 
 teacher. Of Adam it is said that " being bj divine con- 
 stitution the natural head and father of the whole race, they 
 were all included and created in him as one whole which 
 could not be separated ; and, therefore, he is treated as the 
 whole in this transaction."* But looking at all that he 
 says on the subject, we find his doctrine to be that men are 
 sinners from birth through a divine constitution establish- 
 ing an infallible connection between Adam's sin and their 
 sin. If he sins, it is certain that they will begin their ex- 
 istence as sinners. But all sin consists in exercise or act. 
 And " the children of Adam are not guilty of his sin, are 
 not punished, and do not suffer for that, any further than 
 they implicitly or expressly approve of his transgression by 
 sinning as he did ; their total moral corruption and sinful- 
 ness is as much their own sin, as it could be if it were not 
 in consequence of the sin of the first father of the human 
 race, or if Adam had not first sinned." f It is explicitly 
 held that men do not become sinners as a penalty of the 
 law for Adam's sin. Their sin is at once a consequence or 
 effect of Adam's sin by the divine constitution, and their 
 own free act. Yet they begin to sin at the beginning of 
 their existence. " As soon as children are capable of the 
 least motion and exercise of the heart which is contrary to 
 the law of God, such motions and exercises are sin in them, 
 though they are ignorant of it." " Persons may be moral 
 agents, and sin without knowing what the law of God is, of 
 what nature their exercises are, and while they have no con- 
 sciousness that they are wrong." 
 
 Hopkins brought in the doctrine of divine efficiency in the 
 production of sin. He considered this a legitimate deduc- 
 tion from the teachings of Edwards. It had been held that 
 sinful choices, not less than holy, result with infallible cer- 
 
 * W(/rk% (Boston ed., 1853), i., 199. \ Ibid., i, 235. 
 
296 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR m CONNECTION 
 
 taintj from causes which God had set in operation. He is, 
 then, the first cause to whose power the effect must be at- 
 tributed. The efficiency that issues in the origination of a 
 sinful choice emanates from him.^ His agency is universal. 
 In Emmons, Hopkinsianism is seen in full flower. All 
 men become sinners by Adam. He did not make them sin- 
 ners by causing them to commit his first offence. " We could 
 no more eat of the forbidden fruit before we were born, than 
 Adam could have eaten of it before he was created." Nor 
 did he make men sinners by transferring to them the guilt 
 of his first transgression. " The guilt of any action can no 
 more be transferred from the agent to another person, than 
 the action itself." E'or did Adam make men sinners by con- 
 veying to them a morally corrupted nature. " There is no 
 morally corrupt nature distinct from free, voluntary, sinful 
 exercises." Adam had no such nature. Supposing that he 
 had such a nature, he could not convey it to his descend- 
 ants ; for " the soul is not transmitted from father to son 
 by natural generation.f The soul is spiritual ; and what is 
 spiritual is indivisible ; and what is indivisible is incapable 
 of propagation." Adam's sin caused our sin only as God 
 determined that in case Adam should sin, we should be 
 brought into existence morally depraved. 
 
 " Accordingly, in consequence of Adam's first transgression, God now 
 brings his posterity into the world in a state of moral depravity. But 
 how ? The answer is easy. When God forms the souls of infants, he 
 forms them with moral powers, and makes them men in miniature. And 
 being men in miniature, he works in them as he does in other men, both 
 to will and to do of his good pleasure ; or produces those moral exercises 
 in their hearts in which moral depravity properly and essentially consists. 
 Moral depravity can take place nowhere but in moral agents ; and moral 
 agents can never act but only as they are acted on by a divine operation. 
 It is just as easy, therefore, to account for moral depravity in infancy, as 
 in any other period of life. " X^ 
 
 Works f i., 233. f Works, iv., Sermon xxxy. 
 
 X Ibid., iv., Sermon xxvi., p. 357. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 297 
 
 The objection that God is made the author of sin, is an- 
 fewered bj the assertion that sin pertains to the nature of 
 actions and not to their cause. He who creates the poison 
 of rattlesnakes has not in himself the quality to which he 
 gives existence. Edwards had suggested this answer in his 
 doctrine that " the essence of the virtue and vice of the dis- 
 positions of the heart and acts of will, lies not in their cause, 
 but their nature.*" * 
 
 On one point in the doctrine as to the conditions of re- 
 sponsible agency, Emmons went a step beyond Hopkins. 
 Emmons maintains that a knowledge or perception of law is 
 a prerequisite of moral, accountable action. He contends 
 that infants have this consciousness of duty. Without it, he 
 says, they would be mere agents, but not moral agents ; and 
 if mere agents he maintains that they never would become 
 moral agents.f 
 
 The question was, how are men responsible for sin which 
 they could not have prevented and for continuing to sin when 
 they cannot stop ? Theology, in the Hopkinsian line, had 
 reached the propositions that no individual is accountable 
 for any sin which he does not personally commit by violating 
 known law ; that sin begins with the personal life of each 
 man in this world, and is. not the penalty of the offence of 
 Adam, but only consequent upon it in the divine plan and 
 appointment. But with these doctrines there was coupled a 
 more bald determinism than Christian theology had ever 
 tolerated. A divine efficiency was made the cause of sinful 
 choices, and sin, not less than holiness, was declared to be the 
 product of divine agency. 
 
 Among the adversaries of the Hopkinsian peculiarities is 
 Dr. Sm alley. He discards the notion of a federal represen- 
 tation in Adam, one individual acting for the rest, and com- 
 pares it to " a draught in a lottery." J He rejects likewise 
 
 * Works^ vol. ii., 186 seq. f Ibid., iv.,- Sermon xL ' 
 
 XWorks (Hartford, 1803), i., 180, Serm. xi. 
 
THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 Edwards's theory of our identity with Adam, which, he says, 
 is " diving into metaphysics below the bottom of things or 
 quite beyond tlie fathom of common-sense." * Denying all 
 imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, he holds that his 
 sin occasio7i8 our sin from our birth ; but this sin is ours and 
 not his, and cis ours it is condemned. So far he coincides 
 with Emmons. But he differs in holding to a sinful propen- 
 sity or " disposition back of exercises " — "• prior to knowl- 
 edge and prior to actual sin." f How shall he escape from 
 the conclusion that God is the author of sin, as being the 
 creator of the soul ? " Perhaps," he replies, the creation of 
 sin by God " need not be supposed. Perhaps the depravity 
 of a sinner may consist, primarily, in mere privation, or in the 
 w^ant of holy principles, and if so, it need not be created." % 
 In this last hypothesis of the privative character of sin, 
 whether he knew it or not, he followed a long line of think- 
 ers, including Augustine and Aquinas, who struggled to 
 avoid an inference to which their logic appeared irresistibly 
 to carry them. He combats the theory of divine efficiency 
 in the production of sin and in the hardening of men's 
 hearts. He holds, too, that regeneration is the imparting 
 of a new taste, relish, or disposition anterior to holy voli- 
 tions, to which it gives rise. It is obvious that, on Smalley's 
 own premises, this privation, which constitutes sm, is due to 
 the make of the soul and occurs by necessary consequence 
 from the act of the Creator. It is difficult to see the advan- 
 tage of his theory, in this aspect of it, over that of Emmons. 
 In more direct relation to Dr. Taylor's system is the 
 theology of Dr. D wight. D wight rejects imputation. 
 " Moral actions are not, so far as I can see, transferable 
 from one being to another. The personal act of any agent 
 is, in its very nature, the act of that agent solely ; and inca- 
 pable of being participated by any other agent. Of com-se, 
 the guilt of such a personal act is equally incapable of being 
 
 * Works, i., p. 180. f Ibid., p. 188. X Ibid., p. 189. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 299 
 
 transferred or participated. The guilt is inherent in the 
 action ; and is attributable, therefore, to the agent only." * 
 " Xor are the descendants of Adam punished for his trans- 
 gression." f The Bible explicitly affirms that no man shall 
 be punished for the sin of another. We become sinners in 
 consequence of Adam's sin, but how we cannot explain. 
 Inability is disinclination. " The words can and ccmnot are 
 used in the Scriptures, just as they are used in the common 
 intercourse of mankind, to express willingness or unwilling- 
 ness." X The general expressions of Dwight on the nature 
 of moral agency would lead one to conclude that he must hold 
 all sin to consist in the wilful transgression of known law. 
 In the course of his sermon on the Temptation and Fall, he 
 comes to the question, Why did God permit Adam to sin ? 
 He observes of this question that it affects not the sin of 
 Adam only, but all sin. He then states the distinction 
 between the permission of sin, which he accepts, and the 
 creating of it. " In the former case one man is the actor of 
 his own sin. His sin, therefore, is wholly his own ; charge- 
 able only to himself ; chosen by him unnecessarily, while 
 possessed of a power to choose otherwise ; avoidable by 
 him ; and of course guilty and righteously punishable." § 
 He declares that " sin, universally, is no other than selfish- 
 ness, or a preference of one's self to all other beings, and of 
 one's private interests and gratifications to the well-being 
 of the universe, of God, and the intelligent creation." || 
 "This," he says in another place, " is sin and all that in the 
 Scriptures is meant by sin." ^ In his sermon on the be- 
 nevolence of God, he speaks of sin, the opposite principle, 
 as " that disposition in us, which God, by the dictates of his 
 infinite benevolence is in a sense compelled to hate and punish, 
 because it is a voluntary ojpjposition to his own perfect char- 
 acter, and a fixed enmity to the weU-being of his crea- 
 
 * Works, Serm. xxxii. (ii., 2). f Ibid., p. 4. 
 
 X Ibid., Serm. cxxxiii. (iv., 467) . § Ibid., Serm. xxvii. (vi., 460). 
 
 I Ibid., Serm. c. (iii., 464). 1 Ibid., Serm. Ixxx. (iii., 162). 
 
300 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 tures." * How zealously Dr. Dwight controverts the theory 
 of divine efficiency, as making God the author of sin, all 
 of his readers are aware. In his sermon to prove that the 
 soul is not a series of ideas and exercises, he says : "A finite 
 agent has been supposed to exist, possessed of understand- 
 ing to perceive, and ability to choose, that which was good 
 or evil ; that which was conformed, or not conformed to 
 the law under which it was placed. Whenever he was un- 
 possessed of such an ability, it has been further supposed, 
 that he was incapable of either virtue or vice. According 
 to this view of common sense, the scheme of the Scriptures 
 seems everywhere to be formed." f But in his discourse on 
 the "Derivation of Human Depravity from Adam," he argues 
 that death must be considered an indubitable proof of the 
 existence of depravity in every moral being who is subject 
 to death. That infants "are contaminated in their moral 
 nature, and born in the likeness of apostate Adam " he 
 holds to be a fact " inevitably proved, so far as the most 
 unexceptionable analogy can prove anything, by the depraved 
 moral conduct of every infant who lives so long as to be 
 capable of moral action." :j: In interpreting Dr. Dwight, it 
 is important to ascertain in what sense he used the terms 
 taste, relish, disposition, propensity, principle. He speaks 
 of these words as descriptive of an unknown and inexplica- 
 ble cause of holy or sinful volitions. 
 
 " I do not deny," he says, " on the contrary I readily admit that there 
 is a cause of moral action in intelligent beings, frequently indicated by 
 the words principle, affections^ 7iaMts^ nature, tendency, propensity, and 
 several others. In this case, however, as well as in many others, it is 
 carefully to be observed, that these terms indicate a cause which to us is 
 wholly unknown ; except that its existence is proved by its effects," 
 " When we use these kinds of phraseology, we intend that a reason really 
 exists, although undefinable and unintelligible by ourselves, why one 
 mind will, either usually or uniformly, be the subject of holy volitions 
 
 * Works^ Serm. ix. (i., 157). f Ibid., Serm. xxiv. (i., 406). 
 
 X Ibid., Serm. xxxii. (ii., 13). 
 
WITH PEIOE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 301 
 
 and another of sinful ones. " ' ' We mean to indicate a state of mind, 
 generally existing, out of which holy volitions may, in one case, be fairly 
 expected to arise, and sinful ones in another." " This state is the cause^ 
 which I have mentioned ; a cause the existence of which must be ad- 
 mitted, unless we acknowledge it to be a perfect casualty, that any voli- 
 tion is sinful rather than holy." " This cause is what is so often men- 
 tioned in the Scriptures under the name of the hearV " I have already 
 remarked, that this cause is unknown except by its effects." " It is not 
 80 powerful, nor so unchangeable, as to incline the mind in which it ex- 
 ists, so strongly to holiness, as to prevent it absolutely from sinning, nor 
 so strongly to sin, as to prevent it absolutely from acting in a holy man- 
 ner." To account for sin in a holy being, we have to suppose " that a 
 temptation, actually presented to the mind, is disproportioned in its 
 power to the inclination of that mind towards resistance." * 
 
 JS'ow what is really meant by this unknown, mysterious 
 disposition ? Regeneration is defined to be the communica- 
 tion by God of a relish for spiritual objects, which leads to 
 holy choices — such a relish as He communicated to Adam 
 prior to his holy acts. Dr. Taylor considered himself justi- 
 fied in interpreting these ambiguous terms in conformity 
 with the expressions of Dr. Dwight relative to the nature of 
 sin and of agency, which have been cited ; that is, as imply- 
 ing voluntary action. By volitions. Dr. Dwight undoubtedly 
 means imperative acts of will. He styles the " new dispo- 
 sition" in regenerated souls, " disinterestedness, love, good- 
 wiU, benevolence." f He says that "the influence which 
 God exerts on them by His Spirit is of such a nature, that 
 their wills, instead of attempting any resistance to it, coin- 
 cide wdth it readily and cheerfully, without any force or 
 constraint on his part, or any opposition on their own." % 
 But if a " disposition " is voluntary, then Dr. Dwight must 
 have held with Hopkins and Emmons that infants are vol- 
 untary trangressors of law from their birth. Moreover, he 
 sometimes speaks of holy love as one of the fruits or conse- 
 quences of the new relish, instead of strictly identifying tho 
 
 * Works, Serm. xxvii. (i., 456). See, also, Serm. Ixxiv. (iii., 63). 
 f Ibid., Serm. Ixxxix. (iii., 280). % Ibid-, Serm. Ixxii (iii., 40). 
 
3021 TIIE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 two. And why does he speak of this " disposition " as of 
 something so mysterious and inexplicable, as when he says : 
 " of the metaphysical nature of this cause, I am igno- 
 rant"?* 
 
 In interpreting a philosophical or theological writer, we 
 are not at liberty to say that he niust have meant this or 
 that, because otherwise we cannot make him consistent with 
 himself. Rather is it true that out of what is left obscure or 
 self -contradictory in a writer, comes the spur to further in- 
 vestigation and progress on the part of those who follow. 
 In this case, it is reasonable to conclude that Dr. Dwight 
 had not arrived at a clear view of the nature of the holy or 
 sinful " disposition " at the root of special or imperative 
 volitions, or brought this element into a consistent relation 
 to other features of his doctrinal system. 
 
 One of the most industrious and influential of the adver- 
 saries of Dr. Taylor was Dr. Leonard Woods, Professor at 
 Andover. He had expounded his opinions respecting the 
 doctrine of sin in his Letters to Unita/ricms^ and in his con- 
 troversy with Dr. Ware. He had expressed himself in ac- 
 cordance with the Hopkinsian views. He rejects imputa- 
 tion, and refuses unqualifled assent to the statements of the 
 Westminster Assembly in regard to original sin. 
 
 "In Scripture," he said, "the word impiite^ when used in its proper 
 sense, certainly in relation to sin, uniformly signifies charging or reckon- 
 ing to a man that which is his own attribute or act. Every attempt 
 which has been made to prove that God ever imputes to man any sinful 
 disposition or act which is not strictly Jiis owriy has failed of success. As 
 it is one object of these letters to make you acquainted with the real 
 opinions of the orthodox in New England, I would here say, with the ut- 
 most frankness, that we are not entirely satisfied with the language used 
 on this subject in the Assembly's Catechism. Though we hold that cate- 
 chism, taken as a whole, in the highest estimation, we could not with a 
 good conscience subscribe to every expression it contains, in relation to the 
 doctrine of original sin. Hence it is common for us, when we declare 
 our assent to the catechism, to do it with an express or implied restric- 
 
 * Works^ Serm. Ixxiv. (ill., 63). 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 303 
 
 tion. We receive the catechism generally as containing a summary of 
 the principles of Christianity. We are not accountable for Adam's sin, 
 but our personal sinfulness is in consequence of his sin. " * 
 
 He had defined moral agency as involving a knowledge of 
 duty and a natural power of performing it. " As accounta- 
 ble beings, we h/me cr conscience and a jpower of knowing 
 a/iid 2>erforming our duty. Our zeal in defence of this prin- 
 ciple has been such, as to occasion no small umbrage to 
 some, who are attached to every feature and every phrase- 
 ology of Calvinism. On this subject there is, in fact, a well 
 known difference between our views, and those of some 
 modern, as well as more ancient divines, who rank high on 
 the side of orthodoxy." f All sin consists in the exercise of 
 a disposition contrary to what the law requires." :|: " Sin in 
 its highest sense is sin in the heart, that is wrong affection, 
 corrupt inclination." § As to the time when sin begins, Dr. 
 Woods remarks : 
 
 ** I make it no part of my object in this discussion to determine pre- 
 cisely the time when moral agency begins. There are diflaculties in the 
 way of such a determination, which I feel myself wholly unable to sur- 
 mount. My position is, that as soon as men are moral agents, they are 
 sinners." ''It seems to me as unreasonable and absurd to say, that 
 human beings are really sinners before they are moral agents, as to say 
 that birds or fishes are sinners." | 
 
 But, notwithstanding his caution in defining the date of 
 incipient moral agency, he labors to disprove the negative 
 position that sin cannot begin with the beginning of the 
 soul's life. There is no difficulty in supposing them to sin 
 from birth, and such he plainly indicates to be his opinion. T" 
 
 In 1835, Dr. Woods published an essay on native de- 
 pravity. Through a considerable part of this essay, he ad- 
 
 * Letters, etc. (Boston, 1822), p. 32. We quote from the controversial 
 papers of Dr. Woods in the original editions, and not in the altered form 
 in which they appear in his collected works. 
 
 t Letters, etc. (Boston, 1822), p. 95. % Ibid., p. 141. 
 
 § Ibid., p. 305. i Ibid., p. 183. If Ibid., p. 305 et 
 
304 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 vocates the opinions which have just been described. He 
 argues that infants may be capable of " moral emotions " of 
 a sinful character from the start, inasmuch as the divine law 
 is written on the hearty and therefore no instruction from 
 without is requisite to render them accountable agents."^* 
 He explains that he means bj their having the law written 
 on their hearts, that they have " moral faculties and moral 
 perceptions. " f They have fi'om the first " some feeble 
 degree of moral affection " — some degree of " personal de- 
 pravity." X " Children are in some small degree moral 
 agents from the first." § 
 
 Having pursued this line of argument, he makes one of 
 the most remarkable transitions which we have ever met 
 with in the course of our theological reading. He proposes 
 a different hypothesis which he at first suggests as plausible 
 and entitled to consideration, but which he proceeds to de- 
 fend and avow as his own belief. Stated in his own words, 
 it is that the depravity of man "consists originally in a 
 wrong disposition or a comijpt nature, which is antecedent to 
 any sinful emotions, and from w^hich, as an inward source, 
 all sinful emotions and actions proceed." || There is an in- 
 clination, disposition, propensity, or tendency to sin, existing 
 prior to all m\iu[ feelings even, and out of that hidden foun- 
 tain all such feelings, and all sinful choices and actions flow. 
 This propensity to sin is itself sinful — the verj/ofis et origo 
 malorum. Br. Woods quietly ignores his doctrine as to the 
 nature of moral agency, and the nature of sin, and assumes the 
 existence, back of all exercises, of a constitutional, innate, in- 
 herited, and propagated propensity of which sin is the object. 
 
 Turning back now to his controversy with Ware, we find 
 the same doctrine less plainly suggested, and standing side 
 by side with the Hopkinsian propositions which have been 
 already noticed as making up the main part of that earlier 
 discussion. There are passages in which he traces sin to 
 
 * Essay, p. 147. f Il>id., p. 150. % Ibid., p. 155. 
 
 § Ibid., p. 154 J Ibid., p. 158. 
 
WITH PRIOK NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 306 
 
 what is "original or native in our moral constitution^'''*' "a 
 uniformly operating cause or law of nature," passing from 
 father to son like " the serpent's bite, the lion's fierceness," 
 or " intelligence, gratitude, sympathy, or kindness," in the 
 human soul, f This propensity is something distinct from 
 the "natural appetites, affections, and passions," and is 
 " itself sinful ; yea, it is what every one must consider as 
 the very essence of sin." :j: 
 
 In his essay, after advocating both these diverse forms of 
 doctrine, in the manner stated above, he makes an attempt 
 to unite them ; but it is unnecessary to trace his path in this 
 unsuccessful enterprise. 
 
 Besides the questions which have been specially noticed 
 above, there is another great topic which could not escape the 
 attention of the ]N^ew England divines. We refer to the 
 permission of sin and the kindred questions which belong 
 to the theodicy. This subject, as all know, was debated in 
 the ancient heathen schools. It was elaborately handled by 
 the scholastic writers, and by Thomas Aquinas in particu- 
 lar. Differing from Scot us, who, like Anselm and Abelard, 
 held that the present is the best possible system, Aquinas 
 maintained, though in doubtful consistency with some of 
 his own principles, § that we can conceive of the present 
 system of things as amplified and extended, whence, indeed, 
 a system in this sense better would result ; but within the 
 present system we can conceive of no change that would 
 not be an evil. Sin, in itself considered, is an evil, but, as 
 related to the whole order of things in which it has a place, 
 this is not the fact. Sin is not the direct means of the 
 greatest good ; its proper tendencies are not good, but evil; 
 yet, indirectly, as an indispensable condition, it is the neces- 
 sary means of the greatest good. It follows from the per- 
 
 * Letters and Reply, p. 159. 
 
 t Ibid., pp. 158, 162. % Ibid., pp. 334, 335. 
 
 § See, on the relation of this doctrine to the system of Aquinas, Rit- 
 ter, Qesch, d. Christ, Phil, iv., 383. 
 
306 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOE IN CONNECTION 
 
 fections of God, from his omnipotence and benevolence, 
 that it is good that evil exists. If sin did not exist when 
 and where it does, the system would be damaged in other 
 respects. Sometimes the schoolmen appealed to the princi- 
 ple of variety^ and argued that virtue is set off advanta- 
 geously by the contrast of moral evil, or that sin is useful 
 as a test and purifier of the good, or that, without sin, forms 
 of excellence — patience, for example — could never exist. 
 Commonly they supported their denial of the divine author- 
 ship of sin by the fallacious position which was borrowed 
 from Augustine, that sin is a mere defect — is nihil. But 
 their real doctrine is that sin is the necessary means of the 
 greatest good. The old Protestant theology came to a like 
 conclusion. It is the conviction of Calvin that because sin 
 exists under the divine administration, in the system of 
 which God is the author, we must suppose it preferable that 
 sin should exist rather than not. It is this conviction in 
 great part that leads him to deny that sin is barely permit- 
 ted, and to maintain a volitive permission, and, in this sense, 
 an ordination of sin on the part of God. Hence he has 
 often been thought a supralapsarian, as if he held even the 
 first sin to be an object of an efficient decree. But this is 
 not his doctrine, as a careful study of the Consensus Gene- 
 vensis, as well as of his writings generally, will demonstrate. 
 He constantly falls back on the statement of Augustine, 
 who is acknowledged to be sublapsarian, that God not only 
 permits, but wills to permit, sin ; and he puts his whole 
 theory into this sentence. Calvin's principles respecting 
 the divine justice, as underlying all decrees and providen- 
 tial action, clash with the supralapsarian scheme. He labors 
 to repel the imputation that he holds God to be the author 
 of moral evil ; yet, as we have said, he could not escape, 
 as he thought, from the doctrine that it is good that evil 
 exists.* This doctrine, that the existence of sin is to be 
 
 * Not a few distinguished scholars, and among them, Gieseler, Julius 
 Mtiller, Neander, and Baur, have supposed Calvin to go beyond Angus- 
 
WITH PEIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 307 
 
 preferred to its non-existence — ^that sin is the necessary 
 means of the greatest good, passed into the ]^ew England 
 theology. Hopkins is full of it. Bellamy advocates it in 
 an elaborate treatise. He holds that this is the best of all 
 possible systems ; it will be more holy and happy than if sin 
 and misery had never entered it ; God could have kept all 
 his creatures holy without infringing on their free agency, 
 but the result would have involved a greater loss than gain."* 
 Sin, " in itself and in all its natural tendencies," is " infi- 
 nitely evil ; " t yet every sin is overruled " to a greater good 
 on the whole." He says, and quotes Augustine to the same 
 effect, that it is good that evil should exist. 
 
 Dr. Woods in his controversy with Ware, had argued in a 
 similar strain ; maintaining that the system is better than it 
 would be if sin were not in it. 
 
 When Dr. Taylor began his investigations, New England 
 theology asserted a doctrine of natural ability, as the condi- 
 tion of responsible agency ; it rejected imputation in every 
 form ; but outside of the Hopkinsian school, it associated 
 with this denial a vague theory of an hereditary sinful taint, 
 or a sinful propensity to sin, propagated with the race — what 
 Dr. Taylor termed " physical depravity ; " — and it vindicated 
 
 tine in connecting the first sin with divine agency. Strong expressions 
 seeming to favor this view, are in the Inst, iii., xxiii., 6, 8, and in the 
 Respons. ad Calvm. Neb. {Works., Amst. ed,, torn, viii., p. 634). Bat 
 this last tract is the work of Beza, for which Calvin is not responsible. 
 Judging by the passages in the Institutes, without reference to other ex- 
 pressions of Calvin, we should unhesitatingly agree with the interpre- 
 ters above named. But, in other writings, as we have said, he plants 
 himself on the Augustinian formula. His doctrine is that of a volitive 
 permission. See, for example, Cons. Oenev. (Niemeyer's ed.), p. 230. 
 That justice lies back of all acts of the divine will, is emphatically as- 
 serted. See tom. viii. , p. 638. He says : ' ' Quanquam mihi Dei volun- 
 tas summa est causa, ubique tamen doceo, ubi in ejus consiliis vel operi- 
 bus causa non apparet; apud eum esse absconditam, et nihil nisi juste et 
 sapienter decreverit," " Clare affirmo nihil decernere sine optima causa: 
 quae si hodie nobis incognita est, ultimo die patefiet." 
 
 * Works^ ii., p. 01 seq. f Ibid., p. 145. 
 
308 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 the introduction, or permission, of sin, by affirming that sin 
 is the necessary means of the greatest good, and that the 
 system of things is better with sin than without it. 
 
 The aim of Dr. Taylor was to relieve New England theo- 
 logy of remaining difficulties on the side of human responsi- 
 bility. He could not regard the prevailing theology as con- 
 sistent with itself or as successful in solving the problems 
 which it professed to solve.* 
 
 The fundamental question was that of liberty and neces- 
 sity. There must be, on the one hand, a firm foundation for 
 the doctrine of decrees, and universal providential govern- 
 ment, and for the exercise of resignation, submission, and 
 confidence on the part of men in view of all events ; other- 
 wise, the Calvinistic system is given up. There must be, on 
 the other hand, a full power in men to avoid sin and perform 
 their duty ; otherwise, the foundation of accountability is 
 gone, and the commands and entreaties of the Bible are a 
 mockery. 
 
 The true solution of the problem, in Dr. Taylor's view, is 
 in the union of the doctrine of the previous certainty of 
 every act of the will — a certainty given by its antecedents, 
 collectively taken — with the power of contrary choice. Free- 
 dom is exemption from something ; it is exemption from the 
 constraining operation of that law of cause and effect which 
 brings events to pass in the material world. If the antece- 
 dents of choice produce the consequent according to that 
 law, without qualification, there is no liberty. Yet Dr. Tay- 
 lor did not hold to the liberty of indifference or of contin- 
 gence, which had been charged upon the Arminians, and 
 had been denied by his predecessors. He held to a connec- 
 tion between choice and its antecedents, of such a character 
 as to give in every case a previous certainty that the former 
 will be what it actually is. The ground, or reason of this 
 
 * See the letter of Dr. Taylor to Dr. Beecher (Jan. 14tli, 1819), written 
 before Dr. Taylor became professor, and describing what was needed in 
 theology. — Life of Beecher , i., 384. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 309 
 
 certainty lies in the constitution of the agent and the motives 
 under which he acts ; that is to say, in the antecedents taken 
 together. The infallible connection of these with the conse- 
 quent, the divine mind perceives ; though we may not dog- 
 matize on the exact mode of his perception. The precise 
 nature of the connection between the antecedents and conse- 
 quent, Dr. Taylor did not profess to explain ; but he held 
 that the same antecedents will uniformly be followed by the 
 same consequent. In short, he asserted that choice is a 
 phenomenon sui generis^ not taking place after the analogy 
 of physical events, but involving the power to the contrary. 
 There is another species of causation, another category of 
 causes, besides that with which we are made acquainted in 
 the realm of physical phenomena. There are causes which 
 do not necessitate their effect, but simply and solely give the 
 certainty of it. Now, all admit that every event is pre- 
 viously certain. It is a true proposition that what is to oc- 
 cur to-morrow, will thus occur. No matter, then, what may 
 be the ground of this certainty ; as long as the events in 
 question are not necessitated, there is no interference with 
 moral liberty. 
 
 Augustinians and Calvinists, except the supralapsarians, 
 had admitted the power of contrary choice in the case of the 
 first sin, as well as in the case of the previous moral actions 
 of Adam.* They erred, according to Dr. Taylor, in assum- 
 ing that this power was lost, and that the continuance of it 
 is incompatible with the actual permanence of character. 
 
 * It is plain that Augnstinians are cut off from the use of three very 
 common arguments against Dr. Taylor, The first is that the supposition 
 of a power of contrary choice admits the possibility of an event without a 
 cause. But they themselves make this supposition in the case of Adam. 
 The second is that a choice, in case there is a power to the contrary, can- 
 not be foreseen. The third is that the supposition of such a power would 
 make holiness self-originated, or the product of creaturely activity. But 
 is not this inference equally necessary in the case of Adam ? 
 
 It will be understood that we are not engaged in expounding views of 
 our own, but in explaining those of Dr. Taylor. 
 
310 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOE Ei CONNECTION 
 
 Rather, as he believed, is this power involved in the con- 
 sciousness of freedom, and recognized as real in the Scrip- 
 tures, as well as bj the common sense of mankind. 
 
 The leading principles of Dr. Taylor's system may now be 
 stated in an intelligible manner. 
 
 1. All sin is the voluntary action of the sinner, in diso- 
 bedience to a known law. The doctrine of a " physical," or 
 hereditary, sin, which had lingered in the New England the- 
 ology, though inconsistent with its principles, and was de- 
 fended by Dr. Woods and Dr. Tyler, was discarded by Dr. 
 Taylor. In his doctrine of the voluntariness of all moral 
 action, he agreed with the Hopkinsians. This, in truth, is 
 the ancient, orthodox opinion, coming down from the days 
 of Augustine. On this point we shall speak in another part 
 of this Essay. 
 
 2. Sin, however, is a permanent principle, or state of the 
 will, a governing pui^ose, underlying all subordinate voli- 
 tions and acts. Stated in theological language, it is the 
 elective preference of the world to God, as the soul's chief 
 good. It may be resolved into selfishness. An avaricious 
 man makes money the object of his abiding preference. He 
 acts perpetually under the influence of this active, voluntary, 
 continuous, principle. He lays plans, undertakes enterprises, 
 encounters hazard and toil, under its silent dictation. A like 
 thing is true of an ambitious man, a voluptuary, and of 
 every other sinner. Each shapes his conduct in conformity 
 with the dictates of an immanent, deep-lying, yet voluntary 
 or elective preference — choice — of some form of earthly 
 good. In its generic fonn, sin is supreme love to the world, 
 or the preference of the world to God. It is a single princi- 
 ple, however varied its expressions, and is totally evil. It is 
 the " evil treasure of the heart." It excludes moral excel- 
 lence, since no man can serve two masters. 
 
 This profound conception of the nature of character is in 
 its spirit Augustinian. Dr. Taylor held that character is 
 simple in its essence. It is a principle, seated in the will, 
 
WITH PKIOK NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 311 
 
 existing and continuing, by the will's consent, knowingly 
 cherished, yet a fountain of action so deep that it rarely 
 comes into the foreground of consciousness. Only in an 
 hour of earnest reflection is a man's attention turned back 
 to this governing purpose of his life. 
 
 We regard this feature of Dr. Taylor's system as an im- 
 portant contribution to theological science. That " disposi- 
 tion," " propensity," " inclination," which had so puzzled his 
 predecessors in New England, he defined accurately, and in 
 accordance with the conceptions of moral agency which they 
 had themselves laid down. 
 
 3. Though sin belongs to the individual and consists in sin- 
 ning, yet the fact that every man sins from the beginning 
 of responsible agency is in consequence of the sin of Adam. 
 It is certain that every man will sin from the moment when 
 he is capable of moral action, and will continue to be sinful, 
 until he is regenerated ; and this certainty, which is abso- 
 lute though it is no necessity and coexists with power to 
 the opposite action, is somehow due to Adam's sin. In this 
 sense, Adam was placed on trial for the whole human race.* 
 On the relation of the sinfulness of men to the sin of Adam, 
 Dr. Taylor agreed with the New England divines generally 
 after the first Edwards. As to when responsible agency, as 
 a matter of fact, begins. Dr. Taylor did not profess to state. 
 He was not concerned to combat the doctrine of a sin from 
 birth, though he did not hold it : if sin was correctly defined 
 and the right doctrine as to the conditions of responsibility 
 was held fast, he was satisfied. 
 
 There is in men, according to Dr. Taylor, a bias, or ten- 
 dency, — sometimes called a propensity, or disposition — to 
 sin ; but this is not itself sinful ; it is the cause or occasion 
 of sin. Kor is it to be conceived of as a separate desire of 
 the soul, having respect to sin as an object. Such a pro- 
 pensity as this does not exist in human nature. But this 
 
 ♦ Repealed Theology^ p. 259. 
 
312 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR ESf CONNECTION 
 
 "bias results from the condition of our propensities to natural 
 good, as related to the higher powers of the soul and to the 
 circumstances in which we are placed. As a consequence of 
 this tendency or bias, there is a sinful disposition, or the 
 wrong governing purpose before described, which is the cause 
 of all other sins, ^'i^^^Z/^ excepted.* 
 
 It is proper to say that men are sinners by nature, since, 
 in all the appropriate circumstances of their being, they sin 
 from the first. If a change of circumstances, as by trans- 
 ferring them from one place on the earth to another, or 
 from one set of circumstances to a more favorable one, 
 would alter the fact and render them, or any of them, holy 
 from the start, then their sin might properly be attributed 
 to circumstances and not to nature. The certainty of their 
 sin as soon as they are capable of sinning is the conse- 
 quence of two factors, the constitution and condition of the 
 soul (subjective), and the situation (objective). These 
 together constitute nature in the statement, ^' we are sinners 
 by nature." 
 
 4. Man is the proximate efficient cause of all his volun- 
 tary states and actions. The Hopkinsian theory of divine 
 efficiency is rejected. No man is necessitated to choose as 
 he does. There is ever a power to the contrary. A sinner 
 can cease to love the world supremely and can choose God 
 for his portion. He not only can if he will ; but Dr. Taylor 
 uttered his protest against what he considered a necessita- 
 rian evasion, by affirming that " he can if he wonbtP He 
 did not admit that the possible meanings of the question, 
 Can a man choose otherwise than he does, are exhausted in 
 the senseless tautology and the infinite series, into one or the 
 other of which Edwards and his followers insisted on resolv- 
 ing it. He did not admit that a man could properly be 
 called fi*ee and responsible, merely because he wills to sin, 
 provided it is assumed that his will is determined in its 
 
 * Ibid., p. 194. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 313 
 
 action by laws like those which govern the association of 
 ideas, or by a positive exertion of divine efficiency. 
 
 5. Inseparable from the foregoing assertion of a power to 
 the contrary choice, however, is the doctrine of a moral in- 
 ability on the part of the sinner to repent and convert him- 
 self. He can, but it is certain he will not. His repentance 
 without the help of the Spirit is therefore just as hopeless 
 as if it were completely out of his power. To expect him 
 to repent by his own unaided powers is not less vain, and 
 so far not less irrational, than if he were destitute of these 
 powers. " Certainty with power to the contrary " is a con- 
 densed statement of the truth on both sides. Thus the sin- 
 ner is both responsible and dependent — perfectly responsi- 
 ble, yet absolutely dependent. It is just to require him to 
 repent ; it is just to punish his impenitence ; yet his only 
 hope is in the merciful and gi»acious help of God. 
 
 6. I^atural ability being a real power and not an incapa- 
 ble faculty, there must be something in a sinner's mind to 
 which right motives can appeal — some point of attachment 
 for the influences of the law and the Gospel. Hence, the 
 importance of the distinction between the sensibility and 
 will, or of the threefold classification of mental powers, 
 which Dr. Taylor was among the first to introduce. The 
 writers before him had commonly followed the old division 
 of the mind into understanding and will. By failing to 
 distinguish carefully the involuntary part of our nature fi'om 
 the will proper — the elective faculty — they had often fallen 
 into a confusing ambiguity.* It is doubtful whether the 
 doctrine of divine efficiency, or of a creation of sinful as 
 well as holy volitions, would have come in, if the threefold 
 classification had been sharply made. Such terms as incli- 
 
 [*Dr. Ide subjoins to one of the Sermons of Emmons this note : " The 
 terms will, choice, and volition, are generally used by Dr. Emmons as 
 they are by President Edwards, in a general sense, including the affec- 
 tions, desires, etc., as well as the executive acts of the mind." Emmons's 
 Works^ new ed., vol. ii., p. 449.] 
 14 
 
314 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOE IN CONNECTION 
 
 nation, disposition, propensity, are used now of a choice and 
 now of an impulse or tendency anterior to clioice. But a 
 sinful man can be made to feel the force of truth, and this, 
 too, without supposing him to be thereby in any degree 
 holy ; for there -is a neutral part of his nature which truth 
 can move. Hence, too, when he is commanded in the Bible 
 to consider.his ways, he does not of necessity sin in doing 
 go. This neutral part is the region of the sensibilities.* 
 
 What is the particular feeling which may thus be ad- 
 dressed ? According to Dr. Taylor, it is the love of happi- 
 ness, or self-love. 
 
 We are thus brought to the consideration of what has 
 been deemed one of the most obnoxious features in his sys- 
 tem — " the self-love theory." It has been so often misun- 
 derstood that we shall give some space to explaining it. 
 
 Dr. Taylor never held that love to God, or Ipenevolence, 
 or moral excellence, however it may be designated, is a 
 subordinate or executive volition dictated by the predomi- 
 nant choice of one's own happiness. He never held that a 
 man is first to choose his own highest happiness, and then 
 choose the highest happiness of the universe subordinately. 
 
 In the first place, Dr. Taylor believed, with a great com- 
 pany of philosophers, from Aristotle to the present time, that 
 the involuntary love or desire of personal happiness is the sub- 
 jective, psychological spring of all choices.f Says Locke : 
 
 * The existence of a neutral part of our nature, to which motives can 
 appeal, is admitted by opponents of Dr. Taylor, in the case of holy Adam. 
 See Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 237. 
 
 f Says Augustine : " oranes istae et alias tales voluntates suos proprios 
 fines habent, qui referuntur ad finem illius voluntatis qua volumus beate 
 vivere, et ad earn pervenire vitani quae non referitur ad aliud, sed amanti 
 per se ipsam sufl&ciat." De Trin., xi. 6. See also, De Lib. Arbit, I. , xiii. 
 (Conf., X., xxi.) etc. It is the scholastic maxim, " quidquid appetitur, 
 appetitur sub specie boni." But the doctrine is older than Augustine. It 
 is the groundwork of Aristotle's Ethical discussion. See Nic. Eth., I., vii., 
 and the whole first book of this treatise, Calvin calls it the common 
 doctrine of philosophers, to which he gives his assent. Inst. , II. , ii. , 26. 
 
WITH PEIOE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 315 
 
 " That which in the train of our voluntary actions determines the will 
 to any change of operation, is some present uneasiness ; which is, or at 
 least is always accompanied with that of desire. Desire is always moved 
 by evil, to fly it ; because a total freedom from pain always makes a 
 necessary part of our happiness ; but every good, nay, every greater good 
 does not constantly move desire, because it may not make, or may not 
 be taken to make, any necessary part of our happiness ; for all that we 
 desire is only to be happy." " All other good, however great in reality 
 or appearance, excites not a man's desires, who looks not on it to make 
 a part of that happiness wherewith he, in his present thoughts, can sat- 
 isfy himself. Happiness under this view, every one constantly pursues, 
 and desires what makes any part of it : other things acknowledged to be 
 good, he can look upon without desire, pass by, and be content without. " 
 
 He develops and defends this view at length, in his chap- 
 ter on "Power," from which the preceding passages are 
 quoted. President Edwards adopts the doctrine tliat the 
 " will is as the greatest apparent good." " Whatever is 
 perceived or apprehended by an intelligent and voluntary 
 agent, which has the nature and influence of a motive to 
 volition or choice, is considered or perceived as good; nor 
 has it any tendency to engage the election of the soul in any 
 further degree than it appears such." " To appear good to 
 the mind as I use the phrase, is the same as to appear agree- 
 able, or seem pleasing to the mind." Explicitly and many 
 times, in connection wdtli these passages, he uses " pleasure," 
 " enjoyment," " happiness," as synonyms of " good." * Even 
 Bishop Butler says : 
 
 * " In some sense, the most benevolent, generous person in the world, 
 seeks his own happiness in doing good to others ; because he places his 
 happiness in their good." Edwards's God's Chief End in Creation {iii., 
 38). He expounds this view more fully and emphatically in his Charity 
 and its Fruits, pp. 232, 233. 
 
 ' ' There 9,re two kinds of original good ; enjoyment and deliverance from 
 Buffering ; or as the case may be, from the danger of suffering. These 
 two are the only objects of desire to percipient beings ; and to intelligent 
 beings, as truly as any others. When virtue itself is desired, it is desired 
 only for the enjoyment it furnishes. Were there no such things in the 
 universe there would be no such thing as desire ; and consequently no 
 such thing as volition, or action." "A moral government is entirely 
 
316 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOR IN C0N1!TE0TI0N 
 
 " Every particular affection, even the love of our neig-hbor, is as really 
 our own affection as self-love ; and the pleasure arising from its gratifica- 
 tion is as much my own pleasure, as the pleasure self-love would have 
 from knowing I myself should be happy some time hence, would be my 
 own pleasure. And if, because every particular affection is a man's own, 
 and the pleasure arising from its gratification his own pleasure, or pleas- 
 ure to himself, such particular affection must be called self-love ; accord- 
 ing to this way of speaking, no creature can possibly act but merely from 
 self-love ; and every action and every affection whatever is to be resolved 
 up into this one principle." "All particular affections, resentment, be- 
 nevolence, love of arts, equally lead to a course of action for their own 
 gratification, i. e., the gratification of ourselves; and the gratification of 
 each gives delight. So far then it is manifest they have ail the same re- 
 spect to private interest." 
 
 In claiming that choice universally proceeds from a con- 
 stitutional love of happiness, Dr. Taylor considered himself 
 in agreement with writers on mental science generally, and 
 he regarded the outcry against him on account of this doc- 
 trine as mostly the offspring of ignorance. 
 
 Dr. Taylor held that the object of choice is either happi- 
 ness of some kind or degree, or the means of happiness. In 
 the language of President Edwards, " volition itself is al- 
 ways determined by that in or about the mind's view of the 
 object, which causes it to appear most agreeable." But a 
 broad distinction is to be made between the direct and the 
 indirect means of happiness. That which is chosen as the 
 direct means of happiness to the subject of the choice, is 
 chosen for its own sake. If I love knowledge and pursue it, 
 in order to gain money or distinction, I do not love knowl- 
 edge for its own sake ; that is, I am after the happiness de- 
 rived from wealth or fame, and not after the happiness di- 
 rectly imparted by knowledge and by the pursuit of it. I 
 love knowledge for its own sake, when it yields me delight 
 immediately and independently of any relation of it to an 
 ulterior end. 
 
 founded on motives. All motives are included in the two kinds of good, 
 mentioned above." — Dwight, Serm. Ixxx. (iii., 166). 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 317 
 
 Universal happiness, or the highest happiness of the uni- 
 verse, is one mode of stating the object of a holy or benevo- 
 lent choice. Isow the highest happiness of every individual 
 is indissolubly linked with the choice of this object and the 
 pursuit of it as the chief end of living. That is to say, in 
 the exercise of this choice there is a joy superior to that de- 
 rived from anything else. From the object itself and the 
 choice of it, as an immanent, voluntary preference, comes 
 the highest happiness of which the soul is capable. Benevo- 
 lence is the choice of the highest good of the universe, in 
 preference to everything that can come into competition 
 with it. But one's own highest happiness can never thus 
 come into competition with it. Bather are the two — one's 
 own highest happiness and that of the universe — in the 
 nature of things inseparably connected. So that in the 
 choice of the highest good of the whole, the choice of one's 
 own highest happiness is blended. Virtuous self-love and 
 virtuous benevolence denote one and the same complex state ; 
 and one or the other term is employed, as the speaker has in 
 view one or the other of its relations, viz., to one's own high- 
 est happiness as depending on the highest happiness of the 
 universe, or to the highest happiness of the universe as pro- 
 ducing his own highest happiness. 
 
 We are not vindicating Dr. Taylor's position, we are 
 simply explaining it ; and without doubt a great part of the 
 reproach heaped on him for his theory on this subject is due 
 to the mistaken supposition that he considered benevolence, 
 or love to God, a subordinate choice. * 
 
 We may add that Dr. Taylor's unfortunate choice of the 
 term " self-love," as an expression of his doctrine, was partly 
 owing to a like use of this term in Dugald Stewart's Active 
 and Jloral Powers. Hopkins's doctrine of disinterested be- 
 
 * It is needless to add that Dr. Taylor considered the moral excellence 
 of virtue — or the virtuousness of benevolence — to consist in its tendency 
 to promote the highest happiness of the universe. In this he agreed with 
 the younger Edwards (ii., 541), and with Dwight (Serm. xcix., iii., 439). 
 
318 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 nevolence, also, had led Dwight and other Anti-Hopkinsians 
 to distinguish between uninterested and disinterested, and to 
 call the innocent love of happiness self-love, in distinction 
 from selfishness. 
 
 It may serve to illustrate the comparative impunity from 
 theological odium which is enjoyed by writers on philosophy, 
 if we call attention to the doctrine, on the topic before us, 
 contained in the recent able work on moral science by Presi- 
 dent Hopkins, of Williams College. This doctrine is the 
 same as that of Dr. Taylor. Dr. Hopkins holds that the de- 
 sire of happiness has the same relation to the other desires 
 as "that of consciousness to the several specific faculties of 
 cognition." 
 
 *' In this way it is that a desire of good enters into every specific form 
 of desire, and that, as consciousness is the generic form of cognition, so 
 the desire of good or of happiness is the generic form of all the desires."* 
 '^A third peculiarity of moral good is that in seeking it for ourselves 
 we necessarily promote the good of others." " By some it has been held 
 that all virtue has its origin in a regard to the good of others. The true 
 system is found in the coincidence of the two ; and that becomes possible 
 only from the peculiarity of moral good now mentioned." f "It has al- 
 ready been seen to be the characteristic of a rational being to act with 
 reference to an end. But an end can be sought rationally only as there 
 is in it an apprehended good,'' J But what is meant by a good? "As 
 there is, then, no good without consciousness, which involves activity, it 
 would seem that the good must be found in the activity itself, or in its 
 results. 
 
 But activity in itself cannot be a good. If it had no results, it would 
 be good for nothing, and those results may be evil and wretchedness, as 
 well as blessing. 
 
 We turn then, in this search, to the results, in consciousness, of activ- 
 ity. We are so constituted that any form of normal activity, physical or 
 mental, produces satisfaction, enjoyment, blessedness, according to the 
 faculties that act. Of these the conception is simple and indefinable, ex- 
 cept by synonymous terms." " We say then that in the satisfaction at- 
 tached by God to the normal activity of our powers, we find a good^ an 
 end that is wholly for its own sake. We say, too, that it is only in and 
 from such activity that we can have the notion of any satisfaction, enjoy- 
 
 * Love as a Law, etc., p. 95. f Ibid., p. 188. X Ibid., p. 199. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 319 
 
 ment, blessedness, either for ourselves or others ; and that that form and 
 proportion of activity which would result in our perfect blessedness would 
 be right."* 
 
 This doctrine is identical with that of Dr. Taylor. This 
 agreement does not extend to all points in the ethical theory 
 of the latter ; but on " self-love " and its relation to benevo- 
 lence and selfishness, there is a perfect agreement. 
 
 We may add that on the nature of moral agency, Presi- 
 dent Hopkins expresses himself in entire harmony with the 
 familiar principles of Dr. Taylor. The former says : 
 
 " Man is responsible for his preferences, his choices, the acts of his will 
 generally — for these and their results — and for nothing else." Responsi- 
 bility cannot attach to spontaneous affections, but only to the choice of 
 an end. ' ' There is a broad distinction between what is called, sometimes 
 an immanent preference, sometimes a governing purpose, sometimes an 
 ultimate intention, and those volitions which are merely executive, and 
 prescribe specific acts under such a purpose." f " Character is as the 
 governing preference or purpose — it consists in an original and thorough 
 determination by a man of himself with reference to some end chosen by 
 himself as supreme." X " The choice of a supreme end is generic. It is 
 made once, in a sense only once. In a sense, too, it is made always, con- 
 stantly repeated, since it is only under this that other choices are made. 
 It is like the light of consciousness, and would naturally be the last thing 
 investigated. Indeed, as consciousness is the generic form of intelligence, 
 and the desire of happiness that of the desires, and love that of affec- 
 tions, so the choice of a supreme end is the generic form of volition. It 
 enters into all others ; they are made in its light and partake of its char- 
 acter." § 
 
 These are familiar propositions in Dr. Taylor's system. 
 In pointing out this coincidence, however, we do not mean 
 to detract in the slighest degree from the reputation of Dr. 
 Hopkins as a fresh and independent thinker. 
 
 7. The exposition of Dr. Taylor's conception of the ele- 
 ments of moral agency renders it easy to set forth his view 
 of Kegeneration. The author of regeneration is the Holy 
 
 * Love as a Law, pp. 51, 52. See, also, pp. 131, 190, 191. 
 
 t Ibid, , p. 170. t Ibid., pp. 168, 169. § Ibid., p. 218. 
 
320 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 Spirit. The change that takes place in the soul is due to 
 His influence so exerted as to effect that change in the sense 
 of rendering it infallibly certain. It is a change of charac- 
 ter. It is the production of love to God as the supreme ob- 
 ject of choice, in the room of love to the world. But the 
 change takes place within the soul ; and it is the man him- 
 self who repents and believes, and chooses God for his portion. 
 Hence, it takes place in the use of his natural powers, and in 
 conformity with the laws of the mind. As a psychological 
 change, it can be analyzed and described. To do this was a 
 part of Dr. Taylor's design in his noted Review of Spring 
 on the " Means of Regeneration." * He held that the at- 
 tention of a sinner might be excited and directed to his duty, 
 that the motives of the Gospel appeal to the instinctive de- 
 sire of happiness, which underlies all choosing, that impelled 
 by this movement of a part of his nature which is neither 
 holy or sinful, but simply constitutional, a sinner could sus- 
 pend the choice of the world as his chief good, which forms 
 the essence of sinful character, and could give his heart to 
 God. Dr. Taylor thus draws out analytically the steps of a 
 mental change, giving them in the order of nature rather 
 than that of chronological succession. 'Now a sinner is 
 naturally able to make this revolution in the ruling princi- 
 ple of his life. There is adequate power, and there is no ab- 
 surdity in supposing that power exerted. But there is a 
 moral inability, which constitutes practically an insuperable 
 obstacle ; and this is overcome only by the agency of the 
 Spirit who moves upon the powers of the soul, and induces, 
 without coercing, them to comply with the requirements of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 8. Dr. Taylor's doctrine on the relation of the introduc- 
 tion of sin and its continuance to the divine administration, 
 accords with the general spirit of his theology. Theolo- 
 gians from Calvin to Bellamy had discussed the question as 
 
 * Christian Spectator^ 1829. 
 
WITH PBIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 321 
 
 if there were only this alternative, the existence of sin or 
 the prevention of it by the poicer of God. Holding that 
 God was able to exclude sin from the system, and knowing 
 that he has not done so, they proceeded to the inference 
 that the system is better for having sin in it — that the ex- 
 istence of sin, wherever it is found, is better, all things con- 
 sidered, than its non-existence would be — that sin is the 
 necessary means of the greatest good. 
 
 In the first place. Dr. Taylor held that we are not shut up 
 to the alternative just stated. There is a third way in 
 which sin might have been prevented, and that is by the 
 free act of the beings who commit it. To say that it was 
 better for them to commit than to avoid sin, is, in Dr. Tay- 
 lor's judgment, an unwarranted and false proposition. To 
 say that it is better for them to be permitted to sin, as they 
 do, rather than for them to be prevented from sinning by 
 such a positive exertion of divine power as would be requi- 
 site to effect this result, is another and quite a different 
 proposition, which carries with it no dangerous conse- 
 quences. It is not true, then, that sin is ever better than 
 holiness in its stead would be, or that sin, all things consid- 
 ered, is a good thing. But it may be true that the non-pre- 
 vention of sin by the act of God is in certain cases better 
 than its forcible prevention by his act. 
 
 It is a question as old as philosophy, "Why did not God 
 prevent the occurrence of moral evil ? Hume revived the ar- 
 gument of Epicurus : Either God can prevent it and will not, 
 in which case he is not benevolent ; or he will and cannot, 
 in which case he is not omnipotent ; or he neither can nor will, 
 in which case he is neither omnipotent nor benevolent. The 
 Kew England theologians and other Calvinistic theologians 
 had assumed that he can prevent sin, and had sought to 
 vindicate his benevolence by assuming that it is good that 
 evil exists. Dr. Taylor took up the question in answering 
 skeptical objections to the benevolence of the Creator. The 
 ground that he took in reply was this, that it may be im- 
 14* 
 
322 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 possible for sin to be excluded by the act of God from the 
 best possible system. He did not deem it necessary to his 
 purpose, which was to ward off an objection, to affirm that 
 it is thus impossible ; but he modestly said that it may he. 
 He did not say that it may be that God cannot exclude sin 
 from every moral system, but only from the best — from 
 that which will secure the largest amount of good on the 
 whole.* He did not say that it may be impossible for sin to 
 be excluded from such a system ; for he held that free 
 agents might exclude it by abstaining from sin. He only 
 said that for" aught that can be shown, it may be inconsis- 
 tent with the nature of things for God, by His intervention, 
 to exclude sin from that system which of all possible sys- 
 tems is the most eligible for the good that it will secure. 
 
 * [A more accurate statement would be that he did not deem it <ibso- 
 lutely essential to say that God cannot, etc. That is, it is not necessary 
 to say this, in order to silence the skeptic. Dr. Taylor was in the habit 
 of affirming that it cannot be proved a priori that Grod can prevent sin 
 in any moral system. Of course he must have held that it may be that 
 God cannot do this. And this proposition he does maintain in his vol- 
 umes on Moral Oov&)mment (i., 303 seq., ii., 441 seq.). 
 
 There has been a general impression that he held that there is no 
 ground for tJie opinion that God can exclude sin from any moral system. 
 But he distinctly stated to us, in reply to an inquiry, that this impres- 
 sion is erroneous, and that his meaning was as we have given it above. 
 On a close examination of the passages referred to in the published Lec- 
 tures, it will be seen that he says nothing inconsistent with this. He 
 maintains that it cannot be demonstrated that God can exclude sin from 
 a moral system, /7'o/w the nature of agency ; nor can it be proved (that is, 
 demonstrated) from facts — since wherever sin is actually prevented, its 
 prevention may he due to the system with which all the sin that does ex- 
 ist is certainly connected. 
 
 The possible incompatibility of the prevention of sin by the divine 
 power, with the best system, is the doctrine on which he finally rested 
 his refutation of the skeptical objection to the benevolence of God. That 
 is to say, he usually discussed the question with reference to the actual 
 state of things — the existing system. At the same time he contended 
 that there can be no demonstrative proof that a moral being who can sin, 
 will not sin, and hence no complete, decisive proof, that sin can be kept 
 out of any moral system by the act of God.] 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 323 
 
 The system would be better without sin, if this result were 
 secured by the free action of the creatures comprising it, 
 with no other alteration of its characteristics. It might not 
 be so good, if the same result were reached by divine inter- 
 vention. We are too little acquainted with the relations of 
 divine power to free agency to declare confidently to what 
 extent the exertion of such power is beneficial, when the 
 universal system is taken into view. It is wiser and more 
 modest to judge of what is best by what we actually see done. 
 
 Dr. Taylor was warmly censured for abridging the divine 
 power ; and this by theologians who afiirmed that sin is the 
 necessary means of the greatest good ; that is, that the di- 
 vine Being is shut ujp to this means of attaining the ends of 
 his benevolence ! 
 
 The student of philosophy will be at once reminded of the 
 theodicy of Leibnitz. This great writer advocates a scheme 
 of optimism. Out of all ideal systems present to the omni- 
 scient mind of God, he chooses the best possible ; that is 
 the best that can be realized by him, consistently with the 
 nature of things. This theory, as Leibnitz abundantly shows, 
 involves no limitation of God's power.* Sin is not chosen 
 by him as an end or a direct means to an end, but as a con- 
 ditio sine qua non of the best system. Interference of God 
 to prevent sin would derange the system, and thus produce 
 more evil than good. He can thus interfere, but not wisely 
 or benevolently ; and power in God is never dissociated from 
 wisdom and benevolence. So far, there is accord between 
 the system of Dr. Taylor and that of Leibnitz. But we 
 have not found in Leibnitz any consideration of the hypothe- 
 sis of sin being excluded from the existing system by the free 
 choice of the creature, nor any discussion of the question 
 
 * " Adseutior principio Baelii, quod etiam meum est, omne, quod con- 
 tradictionem non iraplicat, esse possibile." 224. He says that his theory- 
 no more abridges the divine power than does the assertion that God can- 
 not draw a shorter than a straight line between two points. Among nu- 
 merous passages to the same effect, see 130, 158, 165, 216 (ed. Dutens). 
 
324: THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOE IN CONNECTION 
 
 whether, supposing this hypothesis realized, the system 
 would not be better for the change. And in assigning the 
 reasons why divine interference to exclude sin would be un- 
 wise, Leibnitz mingles two very diverse grounds. He con- 
 nects the possibility of sin with the large spiiitual endow- 
 ments of moral creatures ; but he also speaks of sin as af- 
 fording a beneficial contrast with virtue, and thus indirectly 
 contributing to the beauty and harmony of the whole system. 
 He compares moral evil in the system to the shading in a 
 picture, which is essential to its proper effect and highest 
 beauty. This is the old principle of the need of variety, to 
 which the schoolmen appealed. In passages, he even verges 
 on the theory of the necessity of sin, as well as of its possi- 
 bility, in consequence of the metaphysical imperfection, or 
 finite constitution of the beings who fall into sin. But this 
 last doctrine is at war with his prevailing view. It would 
 seem, therefore, that the Is^ew Haven divines carried the 
 general theory on which the masterly work of Leibnitz is 
 constructed, a single step, but a very important step, beyond 
 him. Their discussions, however, were not at all connected 
 with his speculations, but were a growth upon the preceding 
 Kew England discussions of the same high themes.* 
 
 * A theory respecting the permission of sin, identical with that of the 
 New Haven divines, is suggested in one or two passages of Thomas 
 Aquinas, but is not consistently carried out. He says : *' Sicut igitur 
 perfectio universitatis rerum requirit, ut non solum sint entia incorrupti- 
 bilia sed etiam corruptibilia : ita perfectio universi requirit ut sint quaB- 
 dam qugB bonitate deficere possint, ad quod sequitur ea interdum deficere." 
 " Ipsum autem totum quod est universitas creaturarum melius et perfec- 
 tius est, si in eo sint qusedam quge a bono deficere possunt ; qu£e interdum 
 deficiunt, Deo hoc non impediente." Summa, I., ii., xlviii. , A. ii. But 
 Aquinas goes on immediately to argue that much good would be lost, if 
 it were not for sin ; for example, that there would be no vindicative jus- 
 tice and no patience, if there were no sin. He takes refuge in the doc- 
 trine that sin is merely privaLive, like blindness in the eye, and so, being 
 nothing^ has not G-od for its author ! Another passage, still more plainly 
 suggesting the main idea of the New Haven theory, has been cited from 
 Aquinas's Com. in Pet. Lomb. (I., i., Dist. 39, Q. 3, A. 2.) But this work 
 we have not now at hand. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 325 
 
 9. Dr. Taylor's conception of election is conformed to his 
 doctrine respecting the divine permission of sin. Regenera- 
 tion is the act of God. Since the renewal of the soul is his 
 work, he must have purposed beforehand to do it. He has 
 determined to exert such a degree of influence upon a cer- 
 tain part of the race who are sinful by their own act, and 
 justly condemned, as will result with infallible certainty in 
 their conversion. He is not bound to give such influence in 
 equal measure to all. Rather does he establish a system of 
 influence which his omniscient mind foresees to be most pro- 
 ductive of holiness in his kingdom as a whole. It is not the 
 act or merit of individuals that earns or procures this effec- 
 tual influence, but that large expediency which has respect 
 to the entire kingdom and the holiness to be produced with- 
 in it. 
 
 Election is a part of a vast and complex system of admin- 
 istration, extending over a universe of intelligent beings. 
 The material^ so to speak, to be dealt with in this moral 
 kingdom, is free agency ; just as matter is the material in the 
 outward kingdom of nature. To what extent it is desirable 
 to exert power to control the actions of free agents at any 
 given time or place, only the omniscient mind, who surveys 
 the whole system and knows its laws, can judge. When, 
 where, and to what extent, it is desirable to exert the extra- 
 ordinary influence of his Spirit to regenerate and sanctify 
 souls. He alone can determine. He organizes a plan, not in 
 an arbitrary way, but in order to secure the best results that 
 are attainable consistently with the wise and benevolent laws 
 that underlie his whole administration. Under the opera- 
 tion of this plan, the Gospel call goes to one land sooner 
 than another. Antioch hears the good news at once ; other 
 cities and countries must wait for ages. Not that God loves 
 Antioch better than the cities of Eastern Asia ; but his ben- 
 eficent plan involves this selection of Antioch. So of indi- 
 viduals. The system of influence is adapted to sweep into 
 the kingdom of heaven a certain number, and those alone ; 
 
326 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 not from any partiality to them, not because they deserve 
 more than others, but because the system that secures their 
 salvation is the wisest and most beneficent. The effectual 
 call is addressed, for example, to Paul, not because he has 
 claims superior to those of his associates in travel, but be- 
 cause the same benevolent plan involves his conversion. His 
 conversion vras purposed, as the certain futurition of the 
 event was secured by the plan. 
 
 Dr. Taylor believed that his doctrines, on the points con- 
 sidered under this and the preceding head, must be admitted 
 in order to give their full, natural sense to the numerous pas- 
 sages of Scripture in which the unwillingness of God that 
 sinners should continue impenitent, and his earnest desire 
 that they should turn to him and be saved, are emphatically 
 expressed. Theology was embarrassed by the supposition of 
 two contrary wills in the divine Being, both having respect 
 to the same object, namely, the repentance of the sinner. 
 There was a difficulty in reconciling the merciful declara- 
 tions and invitations of the Bible, with an unwillingness, 
 all things considered, on the part of their Author that the 
 latter should be complied with. Can he sincerely say that 
 he prefers all men to abandon sin, if, on the whole, he pre- 
 fers that they should not ? The old Protestant theologians 
 adopted the distinction of the revealed and secret will of 
 God, which had come down from the Schoolmen — the vol- 
 untas signi and the voluntas henejplaeiti, Calvin was too 
 fair-minded an exegete -not to betray his perplexity in the 
 presence of some of the passages to which we have referred. 
 Thus, in his comment on Matthew xxiii. 27 (the Saviour's 
 lament over Jerusalem), he says of the will of Jesus to gath- 
 er its inhabitants to himself, that it is the will of God ex 
 verbi natura — that is, the revealed will. Yet, he adds, the 
 will of God is one and simple, and the representation of it 
 as twofold is anthropopathic. He admits that God wills to 
 gather all. Standing face to face with the " Iwould^'' " hut 
 ye would not,^^ he says : " est autem inter velle Dei et ipso- 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 327 
 
 rum nolle emphatica oppositio." Tlie secret will of God is 
 to him an ineffable, unfathomable mystery. On this sub- 
 ject he says that nothing is better than a learned ignorance. 
 Dr. Taylor considered that all this perplexity is removed, 
 and full credit given to the universal offers of grace and invi- 
 tations of mercy, if it is only understood that while God pre- 
 fers that every one should repent under the recovering influ- 
 ences to which he is subject. He at the same time cannot 
 wisely alter this system of influences ; and rather than do 
 this, he prefers that the sinner should perish.* In itself con- 
 sidered, and all things considered. He prefers his repentance 
 to his continued and fatal impenitence ; but He prefers the 
 latter — that is. He prefers to permit the latter — sooner than 
 to do more than He is doing (which is all that He wisely 
 can do) for his conversion. Christ most earnestly desired 
 that the inhabitants of Jerusalem should receive him and 
 
 * In harmony with Dr. Taylor's ideas on this subject is the letter (to 
 Boyle) of John Howe, the great Puritan divine, on The Reconcileahleness of 
 God's Fresdence of the Sins of Men with the Wisdom and Sincerity of His 
 Counsels, Exhortations, and whatsoever Means He uses to Preifent Them. 
 Howe dislikes the contrasted terms secret will and revealed will. • * The truth 
 is," he says, " that God doth really and complacentially will (and therefore 
 doth with most unexceptionable sincerity declare himself to will) that to 
 be done and enjoyed by many men, which he doth not, universally, will to 
 make them do, or irresistibly procure that they shall enjoy." " Methinks 
 it should not be difficult for us to acknowledge that God doth truly, and 
 with complacency, will whatsoever is the holy, righteous matter of his 
 own laws." That he does not actually procure the obedience of all, "is 
 upon so much more valuable reasons, as that, not to do it was more eligi- 
 ble, with the higher complacency of a determinative will." Although he 
 foresees that many will not be moved by his exhortations, promises, and 
 threats, but persist in sin, " he at the same time sees that they might do 
 otherwise, and that if they would comply with his methods, things would 
 otherwise issue with them." " For they do it not because he foreknew 
 it, but he only foreknew it because they would do so." That he does 
 not reclaim them from sin " proceeds not from the imperfection of his 
 power, but from the concurrence of all other perfections in him." "His 
 wisdom doth as much limit the exercise of his power, as his righteousness 
 or his truth doth." See, also, Howe on The Redeemer's Tears Wept over 
 Lost Souls, where are sentiments to the same effect 
 
328 THE SrSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 be saved. " How often would I . . . . but ye would not." 
 But he preferred to leave tliem to that dreadful lot which 
 they were bringing on themselves, rather than to bring a dif- 
 ferent kind, or an increased amount of influence to recover 
 them. There is no contradiction in his will, for the objects 
 of choice in the two cases are different.* 
 
 Under the New Haven theory, there is room not only for 
 the hardening of heart under a law of character, which is 
 certain in its operation, but also for the judicial withdrawal 
 of the influences of grace, on which all hope depends. 
 
 How earnestly Dr. Taylor upheld the doctrine of Special 
 Grace, and of sovereignty in the bestowal of it, may be 
 learned from the following extracts from his Review of 
 Spring on " The Means of Regeneration " ; — 
 
 " According to the principle which we have advanced, there is no 
 ground of certainty that the renewing grace, or the grace which secures 
 the performance, w'dl attend any call to duty, addressed to any individual 
 sinner. Here, as we shall now attempt to show, lies the practical power 
 of the doctrine of dependence, viz. , in the fearful uncertainty, which it 
 imparts to the great question of the sinner's regeneration." This doc- 
 trine ' ' was taught with great plainness, and pressed in all its pungency, 
 and all its mysteriousness, upon the wondering Nicodemus by the Saviour 
 himself." " Why is the high and uncontrollable sovereignty of God in 
 the gifts of his grace, so clearly announced and so formally and trium- 
 
 * It would seem to be felt by many opponents of Dr. Taylor that the 
 very supposition of a successful withstanding of the Spirit of God by the 
 human will cannot be entertained without impiety. But they must read 
 their New Testaments with little attention, or they would not argue in 
 this strain, " Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost," says Peter (Acts viii. 
 51) ; where the word for resist {avTimirroa) in its primary import signifies 
 *' to fall upon,"— as an enemy. There is an exertion of the Spirit, a real 
 exertion, which yet does not prevail over the will. Only a perfectly so- 
 phistical exegesis can shut this fact out of the New Testament. Granted, 
 that in the case of the elect, grace is effectual, unresivsted — is of a kind 
 and degree to secure the f uturition of the event. This does not affect the 
 truth stated before. " Grieve not the Spirit," writes Paul (Eph. iv. 30) ; 
 representing the Spirit in the light of a loving friend, who is troubled or 
 hurt by neglect and opposition. How different is this conception of the 
 Spirit's influence from that which makes it a mere exertion of power ! 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 329 
 
 phantly defended against the murmurings of the ungodly? " " Have we 
 no evidence that this is an unwelcome truth, and unwelcome because it 
 is terrible, and terrible because it shows man's eternal destiny to depend 
 on the unknown counsels of an offended God ? " "" What is better fitted 
 to confirm this confidence " — the delusive confidence of the sinner that 
 he shall escape future misery— ''than the assurance, or even a high 
 probability, that the grace of God is, and ever will be, ready to renew 
 the heart." " They believe in their dependence on God ; but they also 
 believe that the necessary grace is, and will be, ready for their use, when 
 they shall be ready to use it. This is the grand opiate of the adversary 
 by which he holds enthralled multitudes, under the light of salvation, in 
 their guilty sleep of moral death." But " his salvation, by his own per- 
 verseness, is forfeited into the hands of a sovereign and offended God. 
 Point then the thoughtless man to God's high counsels, and show him 
 that God will save or destroy, ' as seemeth good in his sight.'" "Ac- 
 cording to the principles which we have advanced, the gift of renewing 
 grace cannot be inferred from the nature, tendency, or relations of any 
 prior acts of the sinner. It cannot be inferred from any divine promise, 
 but is thrown into fearful uncertainty by the divine tbreatenings." 
 " Whether, therefore, this blessing be given or withheld iy respect to in- 
 dividual sinners, is an inquiry which, according to the views we have 
 maintained in the previous discussion, as well as according to the scrip- 
 tural doctrine of dependence, must be left with the sovereignty of God, 
 whose secret counsels no eye can penetrate." * 
 
 "Now, we ask any candid person who knows enough about 
 the subject to form an intelligent judgment, if the system 
 which we have sketched above, is Pelagian. The Pelagian 
 system is a tolerably coherent one, and is well imderstood. 
 Underlying Pelagianism, is the assumption that an act of 
 sin has little or no tendency to self -perpetuation. It may 
 be repeated, or may not, but it does not, of course, result in 
 a character — a permanently sinful state of the will. In 
 fact, there is no character in the sense of a single, central, 
 all-governing principle, at the root of special virtues or 
 special forms of sin. Hence there is rather a graduation 
 from the worst to the best men, than a radical difference 
 between the good and evil. Consistently with this funda- 
 mental assumption is the doctrine that Adam's sin did not 
 
 * Christian Spectator^ 1829, pp. 706, 708, 710. 
 
330 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 affect his posterity, except in tlie way of example — an ex- 
 ample which is not universally followed. There have been 
 sinless men, many of whom can be named. The world grew 
 worse, but this was owing to the multiplying of evil exam- 
 ples and the power of education. But the virtues of the 
 heathen are such as to entitle them to reward. The Re- 
 vealed Law was given as a moral influence to deter men 
 from committing sin ; the Gospel was added as an additional 
 influence tending to the same end. Men need grace, but 
 grace in the view of the Pelagian leaders, principally, if not 
 exclusively, consists in the giving of truth, precepts, admoni- 
 tions, and the like ; not in an inward operation of the 
 Spirit. Free-will itself, with the other native powers of the 
 mind, is reckoned under the term grace. There are two 
 states of blessedness, corresponding to the lower and higher 
 type of salvable character, the vita sterna and regnum coelo- 
 7mm. This is in keeping with the legal spirit and quantita- 
 tive estimate of excellence, that characterize Pelagianism.* 
 
 * For the correctness of this statement of the tenets of the Pelagians, 
 we only need refer to the ordinary histories of doctrine. We here call 
 special attention to two particulars, viz., the Pelagian conception of grace^ 
 which excludes the operation of the Spirit, and the '•'• atomical view^^ of 
 character. 1, After Pelagius was acquitted at Diospolis, Augustine at- 
 tached no blame to the bishops, but considered that they had been misled 
 by ambiguities ; and he expressly says that Pelagius really resolved grace 
 into law and teaching. " Quid manifestius, nihil aliud eumdicere gratiam, 
 qua Deus in nobis operatur velle quod bonum est, quam legem atque doc- 
 trinam." Be Grat. Christ, x. See, also, De Gest. Pel. x., De Umr., 88. 
 Whether Augustine was altogether right in his interpretation of Pelagius, 
 is for the present purpose immaterial. What was condemned as Pelagian- 
 ism was the doctrine thus ascribed to him. 2. It is the well-known phil- 
 osophy of Pelagianism that an act of sin does not result in a sinful charac- 
 ter. The act passes by and leaves the will in equilihrio. We are aware 
 of what Pelagius says {Ad. Demetriad., 8) respecting the " longa consue- 
 tude vitiorum" and its corrupting influence. Niedner infers that he 
 must have differed from Coelestius and Julian on this point, and have 
 been less a Pelagian than they. But " the custom" of sinning is a vague 
 conception in Pelagius. " Pelagius and Julian," says Julius Miiller 
 {Lehre. v., d. SUnde, ii., 50), "content themselves here with a notion 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 331 
 
 Kow, there is not one of these essential tenets of the 
 Pelagians which Dr. Taylor does not deny. Vital points of 
 their system, as, for example, their superficial notion of 
 character and of what is morally excellent and acceptable to 
 God, Dr. Taylor was most earnest in opposing. He spared 
 no effort to inculcate a profounder view of the essence of 
 character and to show that so-called virtuous acts or virtuous 
 habits, when they do not emanate from love to God, are 
 destitute of that quality of holiness which alone meets with 
 his approbation. That true excellence consists in a conge- 
 ries of virtues is a proposition which he continually com- 
 bated. 
 
 In fact, the great aim of Dr. Taylor was to answer Pela- 
 gian objections and to maintain the substantial, practical 
 features of Calvinism against them. This he supposed him- 
 self able to do by showing that the power of contrary choice 
 which they claimed as an inherent attribute of the will, and 
 a condition of moral responsibility, involves no such conclu- 
 sions as they drew from it. So far from this. Dr. Taylor in- 
 sisted that one act of sin carries with it, uniformly and infalli- 
 bly, an established principle of sin, which nothing but the 
 inward operation of the Spirit of God will ever overcome. 
 The Pelagians, with their power to the contrary, had seized 
 on a half-truth, and thus fallen into gross error. Men may 
 hold that the power to the contrary involves the Pelagian 
 
 which, had they gone deeper into its nature and scope, would have suf- 
 ficed to disturb their confidence in their doctrine of freedom ; but which, 
 as it was taken up by them unwillingly and in an external and superficial 
 way, was necessarily without any deep influence on their system." 
 '• The single act," adds Miiller, " is thought of as completely isolated. 
 There is no insight into the law, according to which it must bring forth 
 a moral state," etc. Exactly what Pelagius believed, it may not be 
 easy, on all points, to determine. The question is, what was the under- 
 standing of his doctrine — what was the Pelagianism which was con- 
 demned. That the Gospel only renders less difficult what was not only 
 possible but practicable to be accomplished by human agency without it, 
 was unquestionably the teaching of the Pelagian leaders. 
 
332 THE SYSTEM OF DK. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 notion of the mutableness of character ; but Dr. Taylor does 
 not admit this, and they have no moral right to charge upon 
 him an inference of their own which he spent half of his 
 life in confuting. 
 
 Pelagianism is a superficial philosophy, taking no earnest 
 account of the self -propagating power of sin ; acceptable 
 sometimes to acute, but never to deep- thinking minds ; making 
 so little of the need of redemption as to threaten the founda- 
 tions of the Gospel system. Such was not the spirit of the 
 New Haven theology. 
 
 Having stated in general Dr. Hodge's unfair representa- 
 tion of Dr. Taylor's theology, we specify some particulars. 
 
 1. Dr. Hodge gives great prominence to Dr. Taylor's doc- 
 trine of Natural Ability, but scarcely mentions his doctrine 
 of Moral Inability. An ordinary reader of his Article 
 would hardly be aware that Dr. Taylor held this last doc- 
 trine. That it had any importance in his system, such read- 
 ers would never dream. In the July number of the Prince- 
 ton Remew^'^ Dr. Hodge expressly ascribes to Dr. Taylor 
 the doctrine that " absolute certainty is inconsistent with 
 free agency " — a proposition which Dr. Taylor constantly 
 denied and incessantly opposed. 
 
 In the Article under consideration, Dr. Hodge expatiates 
 (pp. 62, 63, 64) on Dr. Taylor's " Pelagian doctrine " of 
 plenary ability, involving the power of contrary choice, and 
 then dwells on four corollaries from this doctrine, which he 
 also attributes to Dr. Taylor. Under the second of these 
 corollaries, he does admit that Dr. Taylor held to moral in- 
 ability ; but he alludes to this doctrine as if it were of 
 slight consequence in weighing the orthodoxy of Dr. Tay- 
 lor's system. " It is true," he says, " that Dr. Taylor ad- 
 mits that men are depraved by nature ; that is, that such is 
 their nature that they will certainly sin. But this was 
 
 * Pp. 517, 518. As the incorrect statements on these pages are repeated 
 in the later Article, we have no occasion to say more respecting them. 
 
WITH PEIOE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 333 
 
 admitted by Pelagius, except in a case here and there 
 among millions." * We do not know what authority there 
 is for this last statement. But we do know that Pelagius did 
 not hold the doctrine of moral inability as President Ed- 
 wards, and Dr. Taylor with him, held .it. Dr. Hodge 
 speaks of Pelagius and Dr. Taylor as separated on this 
 great point by " a shadowy difference." f He can prove the 
 same thing just as well and no better of President Edwards. 
 Dr. Hodge says, X that Christians, and especially Calvinists, 
 have maintained that " God commands what man cannot 
 perform ; " " that man by the fall lost all ability of will to 
 anything spiritually good ; " and he contrasts these proposi- 
 tions with Dr. Taylors denial of them. But President Ed- 
 wards denies these same propositions, in what he considers 
 the proper sense of their terms, and holds that men are en- 
 dowed " with the utmost liberty that can be desired, or that 
 can possibly exist or be conceived of." It is President Ed- 
 wards's doctrine of moral inability that saves his essential 
 Calvinism ; and on this subject Dr. Taylor agrees with him. 
 They both held that the sinner's unwillingness to repent is 
 the sole dbstaxile in the way of his salvation, and is such an 
 ohstade that nothing hut regenerating grace will ever remove 
 it. President Edwards rested man's need of grace on this 
 certainty alone, and so did Dr. Taylor. 
 
 2. Dr. Taylor did not hold, as Dr. Hodge represents that 
 he did, that God " cannot prevent sin, or the present amount 
 of sin, in a moral system." He taught, as we have ex- 
 plained above, that it may he (for aught that can be shown 
 to the contrary) that God cannot prevent sin in the hest 
 moral system. He said in the Condo ad Clerum that it 
 cannot he proved — that is, proved ajpriori, or demonstrated 
 — that God can prevent sin in a moral system. This was 
 the sense in which he used the term proved, as he himself 
 explained. He held that it can be proved by probable reas- 
 
 ♦ Princetcm Renew, Jan., 1868, p. 67. \ Ibid., p. 64. % Ibid., p. 64. 
 
334: THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 oning that God can prevent sin in a moral system. Hence 
 the unqualified proposition that "God cannot effectually 
 control free agents, without destroying their nature," is in- 
 correctly ascribed to the Is^ew Haven divines by Dr. 
 Hodge.* 
 
 3. Dr. Hodge reiterates the utterly erroneous statement 
 that, according to Dr. Taylor, God " brings all the influence 
 that he can to secure the conversion of every man." f He 
 represents him as holding that " a free agent can, and multi- 
 tudes do, effectually resist the utmost efforts of the Spirit 
 of God to secure 'their salvation" (p. 71); "that God does 
 all he can to convert every man, and elects those whom he . 
 succeeds in inducing to repent " (p. 74) ; that " He does all 
 he can to convert every sinner, consistent with his moral 
 agency (p. 76)." Dr. Taylor did not hold the doctrine that 
 is here attributed to him. Dr. Taylor says, illustrating the 
 feeling and action of God, by reference to a human father : 
 " it by no means follows that he will, or that he ought to, 
 do all that he can, and all that may be necessary, to secure 
 the return of the prodigal." :j: Dr. Hodge himself, in 
 another place, presents Dr. Taylor's real view in a quotation 
 from the Spectator, w^here it is said of God that he " brings 
 all those kinds, and all that degree of moral influence in 
 favor of it \i„ e., the sinner's compliance with the Gospel in- 
 vitation], which a system of measures best arranged for the 
 success of grace in a world of rebellion allows." Can Dr. 
 Hodge fail to see the difference between this proposition 
 and the one he imputes to Dr. Taylor ? Among the various 
 conjectural reasons which the latter gives why God sancti- 
 fies a part and not the whole, one is that those elected " may 
 be more useful than others for promoting his designs." § 
 " The general interest, the public good, may forbid that he 
 should do any more than he does for the lost sinner." || Dr. 
 
 * p. 71. t P- 71. X Revealed Theology, p. 378. 
 
 § Ibid., p. 417. \ Ibid., p. 418. 
 
WITH PEIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 336 
 
 Taylor states his doctrine in these words : " God does all 
 that he can wisely to bring every sinner to repentance." * 
 Would Dr. Hodge deny this ? Would he say that God does 
 not do all he can wisely to bring every man to repentance ? 
 
 Dr. Hodge (on p. 73) endeavors to fasten on the ^N^ew 
 Haven theology the doctrine of scientia viedia^ as it was 
 held by Jesuit theologians. "This distinction," he says, 
 " was introduced with the conscious and avowed intention of 
 getting rid of the Augustinian doctrine, held by the Jansen- 
 ists, of predestination and sovereign election." Molina, who 
 first gave notoriety to this distinction, died in 1600, when 
 Jansenius was only fifteen years old ; and his avowed motive 
 in introducing it was to recoTicile the Augustinian and semi- 
 Pelagian view. But this is unimportant ; it is true that the 
 Molinist theory was warmly debated by the Jansenists and 
 their opponents. Dr. Hodge proceeds to define the scientia 
 media, in its bearing on election : " God foresees who will, 
 and who will not, submit to tho plan of salvation. Those 
 whom he foresees will submit, he elects to eternal life ; those 
 whom he foresees will not submit, he predestinates to eternal 
 death. The New Haven divines adopt the same distinction, 
 and apply it to the same purpose." Dr. Hodge then quotes 
 a paragraph from Dr. Fitch, in the Christian Spectator, 1831, 
 in which it is said, " it was to he believers, and not a^ be- 
 lievers, that he chose them under the guidance of his (scien- 
 tia media) foreknowledge." 
 
 Dr. Hodge has mistaken Dr. Fitch's position. Dr. Fitch 
 introduces the term scientia media in replying f to the ob- 
 jection of Dr. Fisk, that the Calvinistic doctrine makes God 
 form his decrees blindly — without knowledge— by -an imin- 
 telligent act of will. Dr. Fitch replies that God consults 
 his omniscience in forming his decrees. He knows what 
 free agents, under given circumstances, will voluntarily do. 
 
 * Remaled Theology^ p. 378. See, also, infra, p. 327. 
 f Christian Spectator, 1831, p. 609. 
 
336 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 But Dr. Fitch holds that in the case of the elect, it is God 
 who by his grace produces their repentance and faith, and 
 that he purposed to do this. There is not only foresight on 
 his part, but a distinct purpose to secure the result, and a 
 providing of means to this end. And there is an inherent 
 efficacy in the means to secure the end. He does not fore- 
 see the end independently of the means ; yet both end and 
 means are predetermined. 
 
 This is a different theory from that of the Molinists and 
 the Arminians. According to both, " sufficient grace " is 
 given to all, and it is called "efficacious" or effectual, in the 
 cases where it is complied with. That is, it is called effica- 
 cious, only ex eventu. God decrees that all who he foresees 
 will believe shall be saved ; but their faith results from no 
 special measures on his part. It is the object of a 2^^'^'^Jpose^ 
 in no proper sense of the term. God dispenses his gifts of 
 grace universally, and lets the result be what it will ; 
 although, of course, being omniscient, he foresees what it 
 will be. The Socinians even denied this foresight ; and 
 some of the Arminians came near doing the same. Suarez 
 and the other Jesuit theologians explicitly taught that the 
 difference between gratia sufficiens and gratia efficax is not 
 in jpTimo actu, or in God, but in secundo actu, or the deport- 
 ment of the will. * 
 
 * Molina says: "Deus sine uUa intermisslone ad ostium cordis nostri 
 stat, paratus semper conatus nostros adjuvare, desideransque ingressum.'* 
 Of the will in relation to " sufficient grace," his doctrine is : — "Si con- 
 sentiat et cooperetur ut potest, efficiat illud efficax ; si vero non consentiat, 
 neque cooperetur — reddat illud inefficax," Gieseler, K. G, iii. 2. 614 n. 
 
 The Molinists held, moreover, that God saves or condemns men, accord- 
 ing as he foresees that under any and all circumstances they will be holy, 
 or under any and all circumstances resist his grace. 
 
 " Gratia efficax vocatur ex eventu." Conf. Rem.^ 17, 5. " Sufficiens 
 vocatio, quando per cooperationem liberi arbitrii sortitur suum effectum, 
 vocatur efficax." Liraborch, 4, 12, 8. This whole distinction between 
 " sufficient " grace and "efficacious" grace, which belongs alike to the 
 Arminians and the Congruists, has no more place in the New Haven sys- 
 tem than in that of Calvinists generally. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 387 
 
 The IN'ew Haven doctrine was essentially dissimilar from 
 this. The New Haven divines did not teach that grace is 
 given in equal measure to all individuals ; nor did they teach 
 that the number of the elect is made up of those who were 
 foreseen to be most pliable under recovering influences, and 
 vice versa. It is true that they only are saved who it was 
 foreseen would repent and believe. But their repentance 
 and faith are not only foreseen ; they result from a peculiar, 
 sovereign distribution of the gifts of grace.* What Dr. Fitch 
 teaches in the Article referred to may be seen from such 
 declarations as the following : — " It is true that God's fore- 
 knowledge of what would be the results of his present works 
 of grace, jpreceded in the order of nature the purpose to pur- 
 sue those works, and presented the grounds of that purpose " 
 (p. 622) ; but " why do given sinners repent ? Is there no 
 ground of certainty, but what lies in i}ie\Yjpowers of agency ? " 
 " Does God use no influences and means to induce sinners to 
 come to him with vohmtary submission, and accept of life ? 
 
 * The sdentia media, in some proper sense of the term, everybody who 
 believes that God has a plan of providential government, must admit. 
 The principle is involved in 1 Sam. xxiii. 9-12, Matt. xi. 23, 23. Tyre 
 and Sid on would have repented, had their situation in one respect been 
 like that of Bethsaida and Chorazin, These passages, says Dr. A. A. 
 Hodge, are not cases of sdentia media, they "simply teach that God, 
 knowing all causes, free and necessary, knows how they would act under 
 any proposed condition" {Outlines of Theology, p. 114). What is this but 
 sdentia media ? In fact, Fonseca, who devised the term sdentia media, 
 divides it into two parts, the second of which {sdentia pure conditionata) 
 is the knowledge of acts which would have come to pass under certain 
 conditions never actually realized. And he refers to this very case of 
 Tyre and Sidon. (Hamilton's Supplementary Notes on Rdd, p. 982.) 
 This form of knowledge some may think best to include in the knowledge 
 of simple intelligence ; but this is an objection not to the thing, but to the 
 name. Dr. A. A. Hodge resolves the foreordination of sin into sdentia 
 media. " God knowing certainly that the man in question would in the 
 given circumstances so act, did place that very man in precisely those 
 circumstances that he should so act " {Outlines, etc., p. 170). This agrees 
 entirely with the remark respecting the occurrence of sin, with which Dr. 
 Fitch first connects the term sdentia media. {/Spectator, 1831, p. 609.) 
 15 
 
338 THE SYSTEM OF DE. TAYLOE IN CONNECTION 
 
 Are these influences brought to bear alike on all nations and 
 on all individuals ? " * Election always includes in it " the 
 jmrpose of God which secures the repentance and faith of 
 those particular persons who are saved and adopted." f 
 
 That Dr. Fitch uses the phrase scientia media — a phrase 
 quite unexceptionable in reference to the foreordination of 
 sinful voluntary actions — is of no consequence. The ques- 
 tion is whether he regarded the faith of the believer as due 
 to an efficacy residing in the means which God employs for 
 his conversion. He says : — 
 
 "Dr. Fisk overlooks the distinction made by Calvinists, between an 
 election to holiness, and an election to salvation. The latter all admit to 
 be conditional — to have a ' reference to character.' God has elected none 
 to be saved, except on the condition that they voluntarily embrace the 
 Gospel, and persevere unto the end. But the question is, How comes 
 any man to comply with this condition — to have the character in ques- 
 tion? Does not God secure that compliance; does he not elect the indi- 
 viduals, who shall thus voluntarily obey and persevere ? Calvinists af- 
 firm that he does. The election unto holiness is the turning-point of 
 their system. They never speak of an election unto salvation, except as 
 founded upon it — as presupposing God's purpose to secure the condition 
 
 Dr. Fitch does not, indeed, teach that grace is, properly 
 speaking, irresistible ; neither does Dr. Hodge. But both 
 agree that it is unresisted and effectual. 
 
 Dr. Taylor illustrates his idea of election as follows : — 
 " Suppose a father can wisely do more to secure the repent- 
 ance of one child than he can wisely do to secure the repent- 
 ance of another ; suppose that a higher influence in one case 
 would be safe and even salutary in respect to the conduct of 
 his other children, while in the other case it would in this 
 respect prove fatal ; suppose him for these reasons to use the 
 higher influence with a design to secure the obedience of one 
 child, and to use it with success ; — is not this election — is not 
 this making one to differ from another — is not this hoAiing 
 
 * Spectator, p. 631. f Ibid., p. 619. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 3 3^9 
 
 mercy on whom he will ha/ce Tnercy — and doing more for 
 one than for another, and with good reason too ? " Dr. Tay- 
 lor declares that the probability of success to be held out 
 to sinners, as an encouragement to present effort and ac- 
 tion, '' must be lowered down to what the Apostle calls a 
 peradventure that God will give them repentance; and 
 that delay and procrastination are ever lessening this prob- 
 ability." * 
 
 In short, the New Haven theologians taught that God does 
 all the good he wisely can ; he produces among his fallen 
 creatures the largest amount of holiness in the aggregate 
 which the nature of things, or the essential requisites of the 
 best system, admit of ; they did not teach that the sole or 
 the principal of the considerations regulating the distribu- 
 tion of his recovering influences among the individuals of 
 the race, is the greater or less degree of obstinacy in sin 
 which they are severally foreseen or perceived to have. 
 
 Among Calvinists no one is more emphatic in asserting 
 that God has good and wise reasons for all his decrees, than 
 Calvin himself. He is a sovereign ; he takes counsel with 
 no one, and reveals the reasons of his determinations and ac- 
 tions no further than he deems best. But there are the best 
 reasons, and one day they will be made known. Dr. Taylor 
 and his associates believed that the reasons why he does not 
 choose to recover all from sin, may lie not in any limitation 
 of his benevolence, or, properly speaking, of his power, but 
 in limitations in the nature of things — in the essential 
 characteristics of the best system. Omnipotence lays cer- 
 tain restraints upon itself in governing a universe of free 
 agents ; just as God, to quote the pithy expression of Lyman 
 Beecher, does not govern the stars by the ten command- 
 ments. 
 
 The New Haven doctrine, then, did recognize an elec- 
 
 * Reply to Br. Tyler's Examination^ p. 18. Bevealed Theology^ p. 434. 
 See, also, m/ra, p. 334. 
 
340 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 tion and a sovereignty in election, which are not found in 
 the Arminian system. There is no claim, of any sort, on the 
 part of an individual who is elected ; but his salvation — his 
 repentance not less than the blessings that follow it — is the 
 certain consequence of the operation of a plan which has in 
 view the highest attainable good ; and in effecting his re- 
 pentance, the determining influence is with God, so that all 
 the glory of the change is due to him. 
 
 At the same time, the New Haven doctrine differed from 
 the old Calvinism in explicitly admitting that the universal 
 recovery of sinners by grace, may be inconsistent with that 
 system in which free agency is to play so essential a part, 
 and which God has freely chosen as being the best. 
 
 On the whole it seems fair to describe the New Haven 
 type of doctrine as moderate Calvinism.* 
 
 4. Dr. Hodge gives a very erroneous view of Dr. Taylor's 
 doctrine of regeneration. Proposing to give the doctrine of 
 " the New Haven divines," the former says : " Regeneration 
 is defined to be not an act of God, but an act of the sinner 
 himself." What reader of this sentence would suppose that 
 Dr. Taylor, when treating, in his published Lectures, of this 
 very subjeqt, uses the following language : " The Spirit of 
 God is the author of the change in Regeneration. I cannot 
 suppose it necessary to dwell on this fact in opposition to 
 Pelagian error, or the proud self-sufficiency of the human 
 heart. The fa/^t of divine influence in the production of 
 holiness in the heart of man, meets us, as it were, on almost 
 
 * If the New Haven theology is so objectionable, what is to be thought 
 of the theology of Baxter ? He holds that sufficient grace is g-iven to all 
 " to enable them to seek salvation, and God will not forsake them until 
 they forsake him ; " that " it is the wise design of the Redeemer not to 
 give to men the same degrees of aid ; but to vary the degree, sometimes 
 according to the preparation and receptivity of men, and sometimes only 
 according to his good pleasure ; " and that the divine working is not such 
 as "takes away the simultaneous power to the contrary (simultatem po- 
 tentisB ad contrarium." Meth. I'heol.^ P. iii., c. 25, Cath. Theol, B. ii,, 
 p. 133. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 341 
 
 every page of the sacred record ; " and Dr. Taylor adds, 
 quoting from the Synod of Dort : " This divine grace of re- 
 generation does not act upon men like stocks and trees, nor 
 take away the properties of the will, or violently compel it 
 while unwilling ; but it spiritually vivifies, heals, corrects, 
 and sweetly, and at the same time, powerfully inclines it : " 
 and Dr. Taylor says still further, that " this influence of the 
 Spirit is distinct from the natural influence of the truth ; and 
 though not miraculous, is supernatural." He says, indeed, 
 that " the change in regeneration is the sinner's own act ; " 
 because " the thing produced by the power of God is their 
 own act — the act of putting on the new man." * He cites, 
 with approbation, the sentence of President Edwards respect- 
 ing this change : " God produces all, and we act all. For 
 that is what he produces, viz., our own acts.^'' f 
 
 Why not say that President Edwards believes that regen- 
 eration " is not an act of God," because he says that " we act 
 all?" 
 
 5. Dr. Hodge, in seeking to identify Dr. Taylor's doctrine 
 on the office of grace in the recovery of the sinner, with that 
 of Pelagius, has made a very misleading statement of the 
 latter's position. Having quoted from Dr. Taylor the re- 
 mark that " the error of Pelagius is, not that he attained 
 man's ability without grace, but that man does actually obey 
 God without grace," Dr. Hodge observes : " It is a mistake 
 to say that Pelagius held that ' men do actually obey God 
 without grace,' so that this shadowy difference between him 
 and Dr. Taylor on this point vanishes." Does not Dr. 
 Hodge know that Pelagius and Dr. Taylor use the term 
 " grace " in a very different signification ? That Dr. Taylor 
 means here by " grace " the inward, supernatural operation 
 of the Holy Spirit ? that in this sense Pelagius did hold that 
 men sometimes " actually obey God without grace ? " Pe- 
 
 * Revealed Theology, pp. 390, 391. 
 f Outlines of Tlieology, pp. 290, 361. 
 
34:2 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 lagius, as we have explained before, called the law of the 
 Old Testament, providential dispensations, the precepts of 
 Christ and various other things, by the name " grace," whilst 
 he made little or nothing of the inward operation of the 
 Divine Spirit.* 
 
 Let us now sum up Dr. Hodge's charges against Dr. Tay- 
 lor's system. His generic charge is that plenary ability, or 
 the power of contrary choice, is made to belong inseparably 
 to the will ; but he keeps out of sight, as far as practical im- 
 pression is concerned. Dr. Taylor's associated doctrine of 
 moral inability. In the formula, " certainty with power to 
 the contrary " — " certainty " is uttered sotto voce. 
 
 Of the heretical corollaries charged on the system, the first 
 is " that all sin consists in the voluntary transgression of 
 known law." That all sin is voluntary, is the common asser- 
 tion of orthodox theology. It is the doctrine of Augustine, 
 as well as of Dr. Taylor.f It is the doctrine of Dr. Hodge 
 
 * Dr. A. A. Hodge defines the Pelagian Conception of grace, as exclud- 
 ing the internal operation of the Spirit. {Outlines of Theology^ p. 335.) 
 Pelagians hold, he says, ''That the Holy Spirit produces no internal 
 change in the heart of the subject, except as he is the author of the 
 Scriptures, and as the Scriptures present moral truths and motives, which 
 of their own nature exert a moral influence upon the soul." 
 
 f The doctrine of Augustine on the nature of sin is frequently miscon- 
 ceived. This is chiefly owing to the fact that he uses the term toluntas 
 in so various meanings, and often does this in the same paragrg,ph. His 
 precise conception of the concupiscentia with which the descendants of 
 Adam are bom, must be ascertained. 1. Concupiscence, which is inordi- 
 nate desire for the inferior good — in particular, fleshly desire — belongs to 
 all men from birth, and gives rise to a conflict in the soul and to a disor- 
 dered condition not belonging to man's original nature. 2. In the case 
 of the baptized and i-egenerated, concupiscence remains as a principle, 
 but brings guilt only so far as its impulses are obeyed. ' ' Quamdiu ergo 
 manet lex concupiscentialiter in membris, manente ipsa reatus ejus solvi- 
 tur ; sed ei solvitur, qui sacramentum regenerationis accepit renovarique 
 jam coepit." {De Pec. Mer. et Remis., II,, xxviii.) "Nam ipsa quidem 
 concupiscentia jam non est peccatum in regeneratis, quando illi ad illici- 
 ta opera non consentitur." (Be Nupt. et Gonc.^ I., xiii.) The same thing 
 is said in a multitude of other passages. 3. That native concupiscentia 
 is sin, is not only implied in the passages above, but is explicitly asserted 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 343 
 
 himself.* And Dr. Taylor does not mean that sin is in 
 
 in many places. It is at once sin and the punishment of sin. " Sed per- 
 tinet originale peccatum ad hoc genus tertium, ubi sic peccatum est, ut 
 ipsum sit et poena peccati. " ( Op. Imp. Cont. Jul. , I. , xlvii. ) Dr. Emer- 
 son, in a note to his translation of Wiggers on Augustinism and Pelagian- 
 ism, supposes Augustine to teach that concupiscence is not ' ' really sin ; " 
 but he inadvertently applies what Augustine says of the regenerate or bap- 
 tized, to all. The very passage which Dr. Emerson quotes (p. 128) in 
 proof of his position, speaks of the guilt of concupiscence as pardoned in 
 baptism — ' * cujus jam reatus lavacro regenerationis absumtus est. " ( Cont. 
 Duas Epistt. Pel.^ I., xiii.) 
 
 4. But Augustine regarded concupiscence as voluntary. In the long 
 passage of the Opus Imp. C. Jul. (I., xliv. seq.), where he discusses the 
 question whether native sin is in the will, and in the Betractationes (I., 
 cxv. ) where he explains the previous statement which he had made in the 
 treatise De libero Arbitrio^ on this subject, he goes no further than to say 
 that sin is ''ex voluntate " and is not " sine voluntate "—J. e. it is conse- 
 quent on the sin of Adam. In these places, however, he has in mind 
 voluntariness involving power to the contrary ; as he elsewhere says : — 
 "cum autem de libera voluntate recte faciendi loquimur, de ilia scilicet 
 in qua homo factus est, loquimur." {De Lib. Arb.., III., xviii.) But that 
 native concupiscence involves the consent of the will, he clearly teaches. 
 " Nam quid est cupiditas et laetitia, nisi voluntas in eorum consensionem 
 quae volumus ? " " Cum consentimus appetendo ea quse volumus, cupidi- 
 tas." "Voluntas est quippe in omnibus : imo omnes nihil aliud quam 
 voluntates sunt." (De Oiv. Dei, XIV., c. vii.) "Si quisquam etiara di- 
 cit ipsam cupiditatera nihil aliud esse quam voluntatem, sed vitiosam 
 peccatoque servientem, non resistendum est : nee de verbis, cum res con- 
 stet, controversia facienda." (Betractt.,!., c. xv.) " Cupiditas porro im- 
 proba voluntas est. Ergo improba voluntas malorum omnium causa est." 
 (De Lib. Arbit., III., xvii.) Native sin belongs to the will, but to a will 
 enslaved. Voluntas is, also, frequently used by Augustine for the voli- 
 tive function, by which executive acts of choice are put forth ; and in 
 this meaning he frequently speaks of sin as involuntary, or existing 
 against the will. Under this head, he is never tired of referring the Pela- 
 gians to Rom. vii. 18. 
 
 Thus Voluntas is used by Augustine (1 ) for the free-will in Adam, 
 which included the power to the contrary ; (3) for the spontaneous sinful 
 affections consequent on the first sin, in him and his posterity, or the will 
 in servitude ; and (3) for the volitionary faculty, or the faculty which 
 puts forth imperative choices. 
 
 * This is the view given by Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, pp. 
 223, 234, 257. 
 
344 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTIOK 
 
 volitions merely, or superficial, imperative choices. He 
 would agree with Dr. Shedd, in the following statements : 
 
 "It seems to us that by the will is meant a voluntary power that lies 
 at the very centre of the soul, and whose movements consist, not so much 
 in choosing or refusing-, in reference to particular circumstances, as in de- 
 termining the whole man with reference to some great and ultimate end 
 of living. The characteristic of the will proper, as distinguished from 
 the volitionary faculty, is determination of the whole being to an ulti- 
 mate end, rather than selection of means for attaining that end in a par- 
 ticular case." " The will, as thus defined, we affirm to be the responsible 
 and guilty author of the sinful nature. Indeed this sinful nature is noth- 
 ing more nor less than the state of the will ; nothing more nor less than 
 its constant and total determination to self, as the ultimate end of 
 living." * 
 
 In short. Dr. Taylor held that sin is a profound, imma- 
 nent, permanent preference of the will, whereby a man 
 lives to self, instead of living to God ; a preference at the 
 root of all subordinate action. Dr. Taylor held that this is 
 an elective preference ; the soul sets hefore it this end of 
 living ; and by this distinction, he removed a great source of 
 ambiguity and confusion from theology. There are invol- 
 untary, strictly constitutional dispositions, inclinations ; but 
 this is voluntary, flowing from an elective act, yet central, 
 permanent, and controlling. 
 
 But Dr. Taylor holds that sin is the transgression of 
 hnown law. Dr. Hodge, in his definitions of moral agency, 
 says the same thing, though inconsistently with other parts 
 of his own teaching, f Dr. Taylor held that consciousness 
 
 * Essays, pp. 240, 243. 
 
 •f Dr. A. A. Hodge says that to be morally responsible, *' a man must 
 be a free, rational, moral agent." " 1st. He must be in present possession 
 of his reason to distinguish truth from falsehood. 2d. He must liave in 
 exercise a moral sense to distinguish right from wrong." — Outlines of 
 Theology^ p. 221. *' Only a moral agent, or one endowed with intelligence, 
 conscience, and free will can sin." Ibid., p. 225. " All sin has its root 
 in the perverted dispositions, desires, and affections which constitute the 
 depraved state of the will. P. 234. If Dr. Hodge would distinguish will 
 from desire — that which is purely spontaneous from that which is elective 
 — he would clear his system of one prolific source of confusion. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 345 
 
 is a tiling of degrees ; men commonly sin without reflec- 
 tion ; there are sins which may be called thoughtless, and 
 there are those which maybe called sins of ignorance. The 
 " awakening " of a sinner is the deepening of consciousness 
 or the passing of consciousness into reflection ; the coming 
 of a man to himself. 
 
 But let it be granted that while Dr. Hodge holds that 
 during a certain undefined period of infantile existence, sin 
 is committed, or there is sin when there is no knowledge, 
 and no possibility of the knowledge, of law, while Dr. Tay- 
 lor supposes that during this period there is either no sin, or 
 there is some degree of consciousness of duty. Shall this 
 difference cast Dr. Taylor beyond the pale of " all organized 
 churches ? " Let it be noticed that Augustinians who hold 
 to sin in infants prior to choice, believe that their guilt is 
 washed away by the easy remedy of baptism ; and at the 
 present day the universal salvation of those who die in in- 
 fancy is generally held. 
 
 And here it would be interesting to ascertain how Dr. 
 Hodge reconciles his own opinion on this last topic with the 
 creeds. We have been led to believe that he holds to the 
 salvation of all persons dying in infancy. The Augustinian 
 system holds to the perdition of unbaptized and non-elect 
 infants. This is the doctrine of Augustine himself. So 
 Jansenius teaches. Moreover, the Westminster Confession 
 declares : " Elect infants dying in infancy, are regenerated 
 and saved by Christ, through the Spirit." This plainly implies 
 that non-elect infants are not saved. It is nonsense to speak 
 of elect infants as saved, if all infants are meant. Besides the 
 added clause, in the same paragraph, about the salvation of 
 " all other elect persons, who are incapable of being out- 
 wardly called by the ministry of the word," settles the mean- 
 ing of the passage ; for, of course, not all of the heathen are 
 here declared to be among the saved. Moreover it is im- 
 mediately declared that " others not elected " " cannot be 
 saved." The framers of the confession held that dejure all 
 15* 
 
346 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 infants are lost ; that de facto there are two and only two 
 ways in which they can be saved — through the Abrahamic 
 covenant w^hich saves the baptized among them, and sover- 
 eign election which is not limited by the covenant. The 
 Augustinians believed with Dr. Hodge, that new-born in- 
 fants have in them that sin which is the parent of all sins ; 
 they believed with him that they are hell-deserving ; and 
 they believed that only the baptized and elected ones among 
 them will be saved. Does Dr. Hodge agree to this last 
 proposition ? If not, does he accept the confession in its 
 fair import ? * 
 
 One ground of complaint against the New Haven theology 
 is, that it leaves no room for infant regeneration. But it is 
 entirely consistent with Dr. Taylor's system to suppose that 
 even those who die in infancy, need the sanctifying influ- 
 ence of the Spirit to prevent them from beginning their 
 moral life sinfully, and thus that they owe their salvation 
 to Christ.f 
 
 In regard to the second of the special errors of the New 
 Haven theology — the denial of hereditary sin, it is enough 
 to answer that Augustinian theology holds to no hereditary 
 sin which is not also voluntary. Whatever is peculiar to 
 Dr. Taylor on this point results from his disbelief in our 
 legal responsibility for Adam's sin. Men will differ in their 
 estimate of the importance of this opinion. But it must be 
 remembered that Dr. Taylor believed that all men are to- 
 tally depraved from the beginning of moral agency, and 
 until they are regenerated by the Spirit of God ; and that 
 this depravity is connected, as a certain consequence, with 
 the first sin of Adam. 
 
 The other points in Dr. Hodge's indictment refer to the 
 
 * We are not so ignorant as to suppose that the old C'alvinists all be- 
 lieved in the de facto perdition of infants. Yet not only supralapsarians, 
 but some infralapsarians, <?i^ maintain this dogma; and the language ot 
 the Westminster Confession, in its fair import, implies it. 
 
 f Christian Spectatoi; vol. v., p. 661 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 347 
 
 power of God in relation to tlie control of free agents, and 
 rest, to a considerable extent, as we have shown, on a mis- 
 apprehension of Dr. Taylor's teaching. 
 
 We may state now in a few words the relation of the New 
 Haven divinity to Old Calvinism. 
 
 The peculiarity of the New Haven system is in its view 
 respecting the non-prevention of sin — of sin in its begin- 
 ning and in its continuance in the non-elect. 
 
 Supralapsarian Calvinism held that the fall is divinely 
 ordained as a means to an end — that end being the furnish- 
 ing of sinful subjects, on whom God could illustrate both 
 his compassion and his punitive justice. The election of 
 the one class and the reprobation of the other, is the decree 
 first in order. This system in reality traces all sin to the 
 efficient agency of the First Cause. " The sixteenth cen- 
 tury," says Julius Miiller, " might carry out such thoughts, 
 and the most energetic Christian piety was compatible with 
 them. To-day, with the clearer consciousness of the prem- 
 ises and consequences of that view, it could not be scientifi- 
 cally developed without leading to Pantheism." * 
 
 The infralapsarian Calvinism made election have respect 
 to the race already fallen. Sin is permitted for inscrutable 
 reasons, and from the race of sinners the elect are chosen. 
 The decree of election follows the decree permitting the in- 
 troduction of sin. 
 
 The infralapsarian system left room for supposing other 
 reasons for the permission of sin than that assigned by the 
 supralapsarians.f 
 
 The Xew Haven divines suggested as a possible explana- 
 tion, that to the eye of 'infinite wisdom it may be better for 
 this universe of free agents, io permit sin to exist when and 
 where it does exist, than to exert the positive influence 
 requisite to prevent it ; 'that such a voluntary limitation, on 
 
 * Lehre v. d. Silnde, i. , 364, 
 
 f So says Alexander Schweizer, Central- dogmen der Ref. Kirche, 
 
348 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 tlie part of God, of his agency, alone comports with the 
 characteristics of that moral system which he has chosen to 
 establish, and which is the best. A like limitation, for the 
 same general reason, takes place in reference to the non- 
 elect. 
 
 To the objection that this theory derogates from the 
 divine power, it is replied that every theodicy is a scheme of 
 optimism ; that the opposite theory of sin being the indis- 
 pensable instrument of accomplishing the greatest good, pal- 
 pably implies a limitation of the divine power. The dogma 
 that God could prevent all sin without detriment to the 
 system, clashes with his benevolence. 
 
 These advantages were claimed for the theory suggested 
 by the I^ew Haven divines : (1.) that it silences the infidel 
 objection to the benevolence of God ; (2.) renders the de- 
 nunciation of sin as an unqualified evil, consistent with 
 truth ; (3.) vindicates the perfect sincerity of the invitations 
 and enti-eaties addressed in the Gospel to sinners ; (4.) di- 
 rectly connects the dispensation of the Spirit with the divine 
 benevolence, acting with a view to accomplish the greatest 
 good in the aggregate. 
 
 It had been objected to Calvinism that in representing the 
 compassion of God as fastening on particular persons to the 
 exclusion of others, whose case equally appeals to compas- 
 sion, the very idea of compassion, as a benevolent feeling, 
 is violated. That is to say, it is not from compassion that 
 even the elect are saved. It was claimed for the IS^ew 
 Haven doctrine that it took from election this arbitrary 
 quality by identifying it with a benevolent plan, in the for- 
 mation of which, while compassion is felt equally for all, 
 there is no respect of persons, but only an eye to the largest 
 good which impartial love, under the guidance of wisdom, 
 can attain. 
 
 In a word, the Kew Haven theology carried the inf ralap- 
 sarian scheme another step, by directly connecting the de- 
 crees of God respecting the fall and recovery of man, with 
 
WITH PKIOK NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 349 
 
 his henevoUnce • in such a way, however, as to exclude the 
 idea that sin, either in itself considered or all things consid- 
 ered, is ever preferred by him to holiness in its stead. God 
 gives mankind a probation under law ; foreseeing the fact 
 of universal sin, he provides a salvation which is sufficient 
 for all and is sincerely urged upon the acceptance of all; 
 foreseeing the universal rejection of the Saviour, he adds a 
 peculiar supernatural influence to convert the soul, but this 
 influence is not dispensed indiscriminately, and without stint, 
 but in accordance with a wise plan which will effect the ac- 
 tual conversion of only a part of a race, all of whom are alike 
 guilty. 
 
 On the subject of human agency in conversion, there have 
 been, as all students of history know, two generic types of 
 opinion — two great streams of doctrine, taking their rise far 
 back in the ancient church. According to one of these 
 types of opinion, there belongs to man a cooperative agency 
 in relation to the grace of the Spirit. According to the 
 other, the Spirit is the sole Efficient, and the human will is 
 merely the theatre of His operation. The Greek Church, 
 from the earliest times, has cherished the first form of doc- 
 trine. Her great fathers, Origen, Athanasius, the two Gre- 
 gories, Basil, Chrysostom, and her theologians generally, let 
 them differ on other points as they may, are unanimous in 
 ascribing to man some remaining power to good. This, too, 
 was the Latin theology down to Augustine. It was the 
 earlier theology of Augustine himself, after his conversion. 
 He at first rejected unconditional election and irresistible 
 grace; and his earlier views unquestionably correspond to 
 the current type of thinking at and before that time. While 
 the church was fighting Stoics^ Gnostics, and Manichaeans, 
 stress was laid upon the liberty of the will. Augustine, 
 carrying out half-developed suggestions of Latin theolo- 
 gians before him, brought forward views respecting the 
 power of sin over the will, which induced a revolution in 
 
350 THE SYSTEM OF DK. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 anthropology, and have exerted the most extensive and last- 
 ing influence. But before Augustine died, the rise of the 
 semi-Pelagian party showed how many there were whom 
 his opinions failed to satisfy. Henceforward, in the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church, the two types of doctrine are found 
 side by side. They are severally represented in the middle 
 ages by the two great schools, the Thomists and the Scotists, 
 coincident with the two great monastic orders, the Domini- 
 cans and Franciscans. The Reformers followed Augustine ; 
 but soon, on the Lutheran side, Melanchthon set up the 
 synergistic doctrine, and among the Lutherans, even where 
 the Philippist view was in form disavowed, the prevailing 
 doctrine has been that of conditional election. In the Re- 
 formed branch of the Protestant Church, Arminius was 
 persuaded of the error of the doctrine which he w^as set to 
 defend, and began a most influential movement, the essen- 
 tial feature of which is the denial of unconditional election 
 and irresistible grace. The Church of England, at first in 
 sympathy with Calvinism, became mostly Arminian. With- 
 in that church, there sprang up the "Wesleyan movement, 
 the most zealous, aggressive, and successful religious move- 
 ment on the Protestant side, since the age of the Reforma- 
 tion — which had for one of its main characteristics an ener- 
 getic, not to say passionate, protest against the doctrine of 
 unconditional, personal election. Glancing back to the 
 Catholic Church, we find, in the sixteenth century, the 
 Molinists in conflict with the Dominicans, and the Congre- 
 gatio de auxiliis adjourning, after years of fruitless effort, 
 without adjusting the dispute ; the Council of Trent, unable 
 to harmonize the two great parties, and taking refuge in 
 ambiguities ; the Jansenists, in the sixteenth century reviv- 
 ing the Augustinian doctrine, only to kindle anew the 
 flames of an unending controversy. The marvellous subtlety 
 of the great Catholic theologians from Bellarmine to Per- 
 rone, has been exercised in defining the tenets of the various 
 contending schools, on the relation of free-will to grace. 
 
WITH PRIOR NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 351 
 
 The advocates of each of the two types of doctrine have 
 supposed themselves to be standing in defence of practical 
 truth of the highest consequence. On the one hand, the 
 full responsibility of man is kept prominently in view ; on 
 the other, his full dependence on God. On the one hand 
 there is a purpose to take from the sinner every excuse for 
 his rejection of Christ ; on the other there is a purpose to 
 ascribe to God all the praise of his conversion. Man's need 
 of redemption, and his capacity of redemption, are both to 
 be saved. A moral government over free and accountable 
 beings, the authors of their own actions, and therefore 
 proper subjects of punishment and reward, and a providen- 
 tial government, laying a foundation for implicit submission, 
 resignation, and confidence under all events, and for unre- 
 served gratitude for the restoration of the soul from sin, 
 must both be recognized in a just and comprehensive system 
 of theology. 
 
 ^ow there have been individuals who, while seeing that 
 the Calvinistic doctrine not only has a place in Scripture, 
 but also in Christian experience, have not felt that the ob- 
 jections which have been brought forward age after age by 
 able and pious men, and by powei-ful sections of the church, 
 are the mere offspring of " carnal reason." They have felt 
 that a certain force belongs to these objections ; that they 
 embody real difficulties. Under this conviction, they have 
 endeavored to solve them, without parting with • the essen- 
 tial principles and practical interests inseparable from the 
 system against which those objections are directed. Such a 
 man, among the English Puritans, was Richard Baxter. 
 Another of the same class was Dr. Taylor. Both were 
 charged with deserting the cause which they wished to de- 
 fend and to recommend to serious men who regarded it 
 with aversion. 
 
 It is a curious fact that men who are loud in their denun- 
 ciation of Dr. Taylor's system, profess themselves willing 
 to tolerate the extreme Hopkinsians. They are shocked at 
 
352 THE SYSTEM OF DR. TAYLOR IN CONNECTION 
 
 the assertion of a power of contrary choice, but they can 
 put up with the doctrine that God is the creator of sin ! 
 They can freely tolerate propositions w^hich are not only de- 
 nounced by all the creeds of Christendom, but, if logically 
 carried out, would banish all religion from the earth. But 
 these, it is said, are errors " in the right direction." In the 
 right direction ! That is, in the direction of Spinoza and 
 Hegel — in the direction of an all-devouring Pantheism ! 
 J^obody at the present day denies predestination. Buckle, 
 Mill, et id omne genus, outdo Calvin in asserting predesti- 
 nation. But the truth which is denied in these days is the 
 free and responsible nature of man and the Tnoral govern- 
 ment of God — a government of law, and of rewards and 
 punishments, over free agents ; the truth which Dr. Taylor 
 was so concerned to rescue from all assaults. Theologians, 
 before they cast their anathemas among their brethren, 
 would do well to attend to the times in which they live, and 
 to the peculiar dangers of the present generation. 
 
 The union of the two dissevered branches of the Presby- 
 terian church will be a good thing or an evil thing, accord- 
 ing to its effect in promoting or weakening the intolerant 
 spirit which forced the separation. If it bring with it a 
 catholic temper, and if it do not tend to stifle theological 
 inquiry, it will be a great good. But if it result in build- 
 ing up sectarian walls to greater height and strength and in 
 reinforcing the party of intolerance, it will bring no advan- 
 tage. The danger is that the fear of exciting discord, min- 
 gled with the fear of church censure, will lead to at least 
 a tacit compliance with the wishes of the more exacting 
 section. Division is better than stagnation, and is far less 
 to be dreaded than the tyranny of an illiberal dogmatism. 
 In our age and country, evangelical Christianity is called 
 upon to cling to the fundamental contents of the Gospel, 
 but it must also tolerate differences in non-essential points, 
 and freely concede that measure of freedom of opinion, 
 without which a healthy life and progress are impossible. 
 
WITH PBIOE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY. 353 
 
 A church which could not find room in its ministry for men 
 like Moses Stuai-t, Lyman Beecher, and Albert Barnes, 
 would be, however big in numbers, about the meanest and 
 narrowest sect in America. A sect that would cast Zwin- 
 gle, the first founder of the Reformed Church, out of its 
 ministry ! * 
 
 Every man who can read the signs of the times must see 
 that the Protestant world is growing tired of sectarian 
 Christianity, and is yearning for a more catholic and frater- 
 nal connection among the disciples of Christ. If the union 
 of the two branches of the Presbyterian Church can be ef- 
 fected on a truly catholic basis, we shall hail it with warm 
 satisfaction. It will be an event in consonance with the 
 prevailing tendency of Christian minds. It will be a blow 
 at that sect-system, which is the scandal of our Protestant 
 Christianity. We shall regret the reunion, only in case it 
 
 * Zwingle, as is well known, denied that native vitiosifcy is properly 
 sin, though it be the uniform occasion of sin : " Non enim f acinus con- 
 tra legem. Morbus igitur est proprie et conditio," etc. {Ratio Fidei, 
 Niemeyer's ed. ,pp. 20, 21.) It is true that the old Protestant creeds 
 emphatically asserted the opposite doctrine. The question here is not 
 whether they were right or wrong in this. Nor is the question what the 
 feelings of men were in regard to such a difference, in an age when, for 
 differences no greater than those which divided Calvinists from Luther- 
 ans, men were ready to bite and devour one another. But the question 
 is whether at the present day, which has the credit of being less swayed 
 by the spirit of exclusion, a man who believes in total and universal de- 
 pravity, and the truths of redemption, is to be cast out for holding an 
 opinion like that of Zwingle. Az that time even, and in his case, it 
 formed, as far as we know, no barrier to fellowship with him on the part 
 of those, whether Lutheran or Reformed, who held the contrary doctrine. 
 
 Objection had been made to Zwingle's expressions on the subject of 
 original sin ; and this led him, in 1524, to write his De Peccato Onginali 
 Declaration in the form of a letter, to Rhegius {Works, t. iii.). But, 
 with some inconsistencies, his doctrine is here substantially what it had 
 been before. The conference at Marburg was in 1529 ; so that the Ratio 
 Fidei, to which we refer above, which was presented at Augsburg in 
 1530, represents his mature opinions. He died the next year. 
 
354 THE SYSTEM OF DR. N. W. TAYLOE. 
 
 serves to give a little longer respite to that over-dogmatic, 
 intolerant, seventeenth-century tone of Protestantism, which 
 exaggerated minor differences, left an open way for the 
 great Papal reaction, provoked the spirit of scepticism in 
 all Protestant countries, and stands in perpetual contradic- 
 tion to the precepts and spirit of the Testament. 
 
 "We have written the foregoing pages, not because we 
 are able to accept all the solutions of the high problems of 
 theology, which the New Haven divines incorporated in 
 their system ; for we are not. We have written as exposi- 
 tors, not as advocates. But we regard the persistent effort 
 to stigmatize the New Haven system by affixing to it the 
 epithet Pelagian^ as utterly groundless and unjustifiable. 
 And we hold in high honor the originators of this theologi- 
 cal system.. Drs. Taylor, Fitch, and Goodrich formed to- 
 gether a corps of theologians of whom it is not too much to 
 say that any university in Christendom might well be proud. 
 The rare and admirable ability which they displayed in the 
 discussion of theological questions was mingled with an un- 
 tiring zeal in promoting practical religion. In the pulpit 
 or the conference room, as religious teachers or counsellors, 
 their labors were abundant, and were attended with unsur- 
 passed success. They investigated theology, not so much to 
 gratify an intellectual curiosity, as to arm themselves for 
 the practical work of persuading men to turn to God. One 
 of this group of eminent men still survives ; * one in whom 
 philosophical power, rhetorical felicity, and poetic feeling 
 are equally mingled, and whose modest, unambitious charac- 
 ter serves to set in stronger relief his almost unrivalled 
 genius as a theologian and preacher. 
 
 * [Dr. E. T. Fitch. He died Jan. 31, 1871.] 
 
AUGUSXmiAN AND FEDERAL THEORIES COMPARED. 355 
 
 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL THEORIES 
 OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED.* 
 
 The one word which expresses both the nature and the 
 end or aim of Christianity, is redemption. The correlate of 
 redemption is sin. Parallel, therefore, in importance with 
 the doctrine of redemption in the Christian system is the 
 doctrine of sin. The two doctrines, like the facts which 
 they represent, are mutually inseparable. If it be true just 
 now that the person and work of the Redeemer engross at- 
 tention, to the comparative exclusion of other topics of the- 
 ology, it is equally true that no adequate discussion, and much 
 more no adequate solution, of the questions belonging to this 
 theme, are practicable, apart from right views of sin. The 
 disease must be known and admitted before you can com- 
 prehend the remedy. "They that are whole need not a 
 physician, but they that are sick." The Gospel is unintelli- 
 gible or is a folly to him who is blind to the vast disorder 
 which the Gospel comes to rectify. Either as a theoretical 
 or as a practical system, he can make nothing of it. 
 
 We deem it to be of the highest consequence to distin- 
 guish, so to speak, great doctrinal facts from philosophical 
 theories attached to them. The truths of Christianity in- 
 volve and suggest problems, which, in some cases, the Scrip- 
 tures do not profess to explain. Explanations of human in- 
 vention may be of more or less value ; but it is hurtful not 
 only to theology as a science, but also to the cause of practi- 
 cal religion, when these explanations are elevated to the rank 
 
 • From T?ie New Englander for July, 1868. 
 
356 THE AFGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 of dogmas, and the inculcation of them is made part and 
 parcel of the teaching of the Gospel. 
 
 It is partly this conviction which has led us to undertake 
 the present discussion. We believe that a great, unquestion- 
 able, universal fact, like that of sin, deserves to be admitted 
 in full earnest by everybody. At the same time, we believe 
 that there are theories of human device, which have been in- 
 vented to clear up difficulties, but which, in truth, create 
 vastly more embarrassment than they remove. We do not 
 here assert this equally of all the theories which theology 
 has broached concerning this great matter. The limits and 
 applications of our remark, the progress of the discussion — 
 especially if we should pursue it beyond the present essay — 
 will make clear. . 
 
 There are three theories respecting original sin which we 
 shall have occasion specially to consider in this Article. The 
 first is the Augustinian ; the second may be called the Au- 
 gustino-federal or the semi-federal ; and the, third the fed- 
 eral theory. 
 
 The fundamental idea of the Augustinian theory is that of 
 a participation on the part of the descendants of Adam in 
 his first sin ; in consequence of which they are born both 
 guilty and morall^^ depraved. The fundamental idea of the 
 federal theory is that of a vicarious representation on the 
 part of Adam, in virtue of a covenant between God and him, 
 whereby the legal responsibility for his first sinful act is en- 
 tailed upon all his descendants ; participation being excluded, 
 but the propriety of his appointment to this vicarious office 
 being founded on our relation to him as the common father 
 of men. The Augustino-federal or semi-federal theory is a 
 combination of the two, the covenant relation of Adam be- 
 ing prominent, but participation being also, with more or 
 less emphasis, asserted. 
 
 Besides these theories, some have held to hereditary sin, 
 but rejected both participation and the covenant. Others 
 
THEOKIES OF OKIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 357 
 
 Lave embraced the doctrine of an individual pre-existence 
 and fall — a pre-existence either transcendental and timeless, 
 or in time. Others still have denied the existence of native 
 sin, or of any sin prior to a personal act of choice in the 
 present life. Spinoza and all other Pantheists deny, of course, 
 the essential antagonism of moral good and moral evil, so that 
 to them the problem loses its proper significance. But these 
 last theories of Christian theology, as well as this antichris- 
 tian, necessitarian hypothesis, we have no particular occasion 
 to discuss in this place. 
 
 The federal doctrine is the offspring of the seventeenth 
 century. In fact it may almost be said of it, in the form in 
 which it is now held, that it is the offspring of the eighteenth 
 century ; since, in the preceding age, the great majority of the 
 theologians who adopted the theory of a covenant coupled 
 with it the Augustinian principle. That is to say, they 
 maintained the Augustino-federal or semi-federal doctrine 
 as above defined. 
 
 The federal theory has of late been defended chiefly by 
 Scottish theologians and by the Princeton school in this 
 country. It supposes a contract or covenant of the Creator 
 with the first man, to the effect that he should stand a moral 
 probation on behalf of mankind, so that his act, whether sin- 
 ful or holy, should be judicially imputed to them, or ac- 
 counted theirs in law; and the legal penalty, in case he 
 sinned, be duly inflicted on them as well as on him. Adam's 
 relation to us in this matter is compared to that of a guar- 
 dian to his wards, an envoy plenipotentiary to his sovereign, 
 or, generally speaking, of an agent to his principal, it being 
 understood that the agent keeps within the legal bounds of 
 his commission. Adam sinned, his act is imputed to us, 
 and the penalty is inflicted. We are condemned to begin 
 our existence destitute of righteousness and positively sinful, 
 and under a sentence of temporal and eternal death. Notice 
 certain particulars of this theory : 
 
 (1.) In distinction fi-om ordinary covenants, in the cove- 
 
358 THE ATJQXJSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 nant with Adam tiie conditions are not mntnally imposed, 
 but it is a sovereign constitution imposed by the Creator 
 upon the creature. * 
 
 (2.) The representative element, in virtue of which Adam 
 stood for his posterity, depends on the special and sovereign 
 ordination of God, in distinction from the principles of 
 natural and universal justice. In other words, it is not the 
 natural union of men with Adam, but the " federal union 
 which is the legal ground of the imputation of his sin to 
 them." f The kinship of Adam and his descendants is a 
 reason why he, and not another, is appointed their represen- 
 tative ; but the justice of imputation depends exclusively 
 upon the covenant or the federal relation in which he is 
 placed. 
 
 (3.) Our "guilt" for Adam's sin is simply and solely a 
 legal responsibility. As we had no real agency of any sort 
 in committing that sin, there is no ground for self-reproach 
 on account of it ; we are not called upon to repent of it ; nor 
 can God, for that act of Adam, look upon us with moral dis- 
 approbation. There is no more propriety in regarding our- 
 selves with moral displeasure on account of that transgres- 
 sion, than there would be in taking credit to ourselves for 
 the righteousness of Christ. 
 
 (4.) It is said that our inborn moral depravity is the pen- 
 alty of that imputed sin, and eternal death the penalty of 
 this inborn depravity. But it is also said that for imputed 
 sin alone, apart from this inherent depravity, which is its 
 penalty, eternal death would not be inflicted. 
 
 Augustine's theory rests on the idea that human nature as 
 a whole was deposited in the first man. This nature, as it 
 came from the hands of God, was pure. The long battle 
 which Augustine fought with Manichsean philosophy, both 
 in his own personal experience and after his conversion, 
 
 * Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of TJieohgy, 
 flbid., pp. 328, 240. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 359 
 
 made him sedulous to avoid their peculiar tenet. But 
 human nature, existing in its totality in* Adam, was cor- 
 rupted in the first act of transgression, and as such is trans- 
 mitted to his descendants. The instrument of this trans- 
 mission is the sexual appetite. This appetite is itself the 
 fruit of the first sin, as well as the means whereby the sin- 
 ful nature is communicated from father to son. The race 
 was embodied in its first representative, and the qualities 
 which it acquired in his act, which was both generic and in- 
 dividual, appear, when the race is unfolded or developed, as 
 the personal possession of each individual at birth. As a 
 personal act, the first sin was not our act but the act of 
 another ; yet it was truly the common act of mankind in 
 their collective or undistributed form of existence. For the 
 consequences of this act all are therefore responsible ; and 
 as soon as they exist as individuals, they exhibit in them- 
 selves the same corruption of nature — the same inordinate 
 appetites (concupiscence), and slavery of the will to sin — 
 which resulted to Adam. " This theory," says E^eander, * 
 " would easily blend with Augustine's speculative form of 
 thought, as he had appropriated to himself the Platonico- 
 Aristotelian realism in the doctrine of general conceptions, 
 and conceived of general conceptions as the original types of 
 the kind realized in individual things." Into this particular 
 topic connected with Augustine's philosophy, we do not care 
 to enter here. It is a fact that realism, either in, the extreme 
 Platonic form or in the more moderate Aristotelian type, 
 prevailed from Augustine down through the middle ages, 
 being embraced by the orthodox schoolmen, and ruling both 
 the great schools during the productive, golden era of 
 scholastic theology. That the realistic mode of thought ex- 
 tensively influenced Protestant theology at the Reformation 
 and afterwards, admits of no question. But since it is far 
 from being true that all Augustinians have been avowed, 
 
 * Church HiaUyry, u., 609. 
 
360 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 much less, self-consistent, realists, it is better when we 
 speak of them as a class, to saj that they are swayed by a 
 realistic mode of thought than that they are the advocates 
 of an explicit realism. It should be added that realism, as 
 far as it affected Augustine, was rather a prop than a source 
 of his doctrine. The fact of innate sin was so deeply lodged 
 in his convictions that he was ready to welcome any plausi- 
 ble support or defence of it that lay within his reach. 
 
 There is no need of citing from Augustine passages in 
 which his doctrine of a generic sin in Adam is set forth. 
 They are familiar to scholars. Indeed, after he became es- 
 tablished in this opinion, and through all of his numerous 
 treatises relating to the Pelagian controversy, there is a great 
 uniformity in his expressions on this subject. The same set 
 of propositions and arguments appears and reappears. In 
 that great sin of the first man, our nature was deteriorated, 
 and not only became sinful, but generates sinners.* We 
 were all in Adam and sinned when he sinned. In his inter- 
 pretation of Romans v. 12, he first sets aside the supposition 
 that the in quo of the Yulgate refers to " sin " or to " death," 
 and infers that it must refer to A(Jam himself. " ISTothing 
 remains," he says, " but to conclude that in that first man all 
 are understood to have sinned, because all were in him when 
 he sinned ; whereby sin is brought in with birth and not re- 
 moved save by the new birth." He then quotes approvingly 
 the sentence ascribed to Hilary, the Roman deacon : " it is 
 manifest that in Adam all sinned, so to speak, en masse.'^'' f 
 By that sin we became a corrupt mass — massa perditionis. 
 
 So important was this hypothesis, in his view, that his de- 
 fence of the doctrine of original sin turned upon it. With- 
 out it, he knew of no refuge against the sharp and merciless 
 logic of his adversaries. Pelagias himself was a man of no 
 mean ability ; but in Julian of Eclanum, Augustine found his 
 
 * Be Nupt. et Concup., II., xxxiv. 
 
 f Cont. dnaa Epp. Pelag,, iv., 7; Conf. Op. Imp., II., Ixiii ; De Pec. 
 Mer. et Mcmis., III., vii. 
 
THEOEIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 361 
 
 full match in dialectic ability. Julian was an acute and vig- 
 orous, as well as an honest and fearless antagonist. He 
 seized on the vulnerable points in Augustine's theory, and 
 pursued him with questions and objections, which the latter 
 was utterly unable to parry except by his realistic hypoth- 
 esis. This is strikingly shown in the Ojpus ImjperfeGtmn or 
 rejoinder to the second response of Julian. The Pelagian 
 makes his appeal to the sense of justice which God has im- 
 planted in every human breast, and which utters a firm and 
 indignant protest against the doctrine that we are blamed, 
 condemned, and punished for what we could not have pre- 
 vented. He lays hold of passages which Augustine had 
 written in favor of the voluntariness of sin, whilst he was 
 bent on controverting the Manichseans. To all this Augus- 
 tine could only reply that sin began in an act of the human 
 will — the will of Adam ; that in him was the very nature 
 with which we are born ; that we thus participated in that 
 act, and justly partake of the corruption that ensued upon 
 it. He constantly falls back, first on the authority of Paul, 
 in the fifth of Romans, and hardly less often on the author- 
 ity of Ambrose, whose assertion of our community of being 
 with Adam and agency in his transgression, had the greatest 
 weight with his admiring and reverential pupil. 
 
 But how vital the hypothesis of sinning in Adam was in 
 Augustine's theology is perhaps most manifest in the way in 
 which he treats the litigated question of the origin of souls. 
 We may say here that a great mistake is made by those who 
 imagine that creationists — that is, those who believe that each 
 soul is separately created — cannot be realists. Whether 
 they can be consistent and logical realists may, to be sure, 
 be doubted. At the present day traducianism — the theory 
 that souls result from procreation — is accepted by theologi- 
 ans who believe, with Augustine, that we sinned in Adam. 
 But this is very far from being the uniform fact in the past. 
 Even Anselm, like the schoolmen generally, was a creation- 
 ist. He, with a host of theologians before and after him, 
 16 
 
362 THE ATJGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 held firmly to our real, responsible participation in Adam's 
 fall, and to the corruption of our nature in that act, and jet 
 refused to count himself among the traducians. We must 
 take histoiy as it is and not seek to read into it our reason- 
 ings and inferences. If we do not find philosophers self -con- 
 sistent, we must let them remain self-inconsistent, instead of 
 altering their systems to suit our ideas of logical harmony. 
 
 In respect to the question of the origin of souls, the letter 
 of Augustine to Jerome is a most interesting document, and 
 one, the importance of which, we are inclined to think, has 
 not been duly recognized.* He had previously expressed 
 himself as doubtful on the question, though obviously lean- 
 ing towards the traducian side.f But the fear of material- 
 istic notions, enhanced as it was by the opposition of the 
 church to the refined materialism of Tertullian, deterred 
 Augustine then, as always, from espousing the traducian 
 theory. This fear, it may be here observed, together with 
 the feeling that this theory gives too much agency to second 
 causes in the production of the soul, operated in subsequent 
 times to dissuade theologians from giving sanction to the 
 same hypothesis. The letter to Jerome is a candid and 
 memorable expression of the difficulties in w^hicli the writer 
 found himself involved on the subject to which it relates. 
 To him Augustine resorts for light. He begins by saying 
 that he has prayed and still prays God to grant that his ap- 
 plication may be successful. The question of the origin of 
 souls is one of deep concern to him. Of the soul's immor- 
 tality he has no doubt, though it be not immortal as if it 
 were a part of God, and in the same mode in which he is 
 immortal. Of the immateriality of the soul, he is equally 
 certain ; and his arguments to show the absurdity of sup- 
 posing the soul to occupy space, are convincingly stated. He 
 is certain, moreover, that the soul is fallen into sin by no 
 necessity, whether imposed by its own nature or by God. 
 
 * Bpistollj Classis III., clxv. f ^^ ^^' ^^ -^*^-> ^' ^- 
 
THEOKIES OF OEIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 363 
 
 Yet the soul is sinful, and without baptism will perish. How 
 can this be ? He entreats Jerome to solve the problem. 
 "Where did the soul contract the guilt by which it is 
 brought into condemnation ? " In his book De Libero Ar- 
 hitrio, he had made mention of four opinions in regard to 
 the origin of souls — ^first, that souls are propagated, the soul 
 of Adam alone having been created ; secondly, that for every 
 individual a new soul is created ; thirdly, that the soul pre- 
 exists in each case, and is sent by God into the body at 
 birth ; fourthly, that the soul pre-exists, but comes into the 
 body of its own will. A fifth supposition that the soul is a 
 part of Deity, he had not had occasion to consider. But he 
 had gained no satisfactory answer to the problem. Beset by 
 inquirers, he had been unable to solve their queries. ]^ei- 
 ther by prayer, reading, reflection, or reasoning, had he been 
 able to find his way out of his perplexity.* 
 
 " Teach me, therefore, I beg you, what I should teach, what I should 
 hold ; and tell me, if it be true that souls are made now and separately 
 with each separate birth, where in little children they sin, that they 
 should need in the sacrament of Christ the remission of sin ; " " or if 
 they do not sin, with what justice they are so bound by another's sin, 
 when they are inserted in the mortal, propagated members, that damna- 
 tion follows them, unless it is prevented by the church [through baptism] ; 
 since it is not in their power to cause the grace of baptism to be brought 
 to them. So many thousands of souls, then, which depart from their 
 bodies without having received Christian baptism — with what justice are 
 they condemned, in case they are newly created, with no preceding sin, 
 but, on the contrary, by the will of the Creator, each of these souls was 
 given to each new-born child, for animating whom he created and gave 
 it — by the will of the Creator, who knew that each of them, through no 
 fault of his own, would go out of the body without Christian baptism ? 
 Since, then, we can neither say of God that he compels souls to become 
 sinful, or punishes the innocent, and since likewise it is not right to assert 
 that those who depart from the body without the sacrament, even little 
 children, escape from damnation ; " i beseech you to say 7iow this opinion is 
 defended which assumes that souls come into being ^ not all from that one soul 
 
 * IV. — *' et ea neque orando, neque legendo, neque cogitando et ratio- 
 cinando invenire potuimus. " 
 
364 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 of the first man, but for ever?/ man a separate soul, like that one for 
 Adam ? " 
 
 Other objections to creationism, Augustine feels competent 
 easily to meet ; but when it comes to the penalties inflicted 
 on little children, he begs Jerome to believe that he is in a 
 strait and knows not what to think or to say. " Magnis, 
 mihi, crede, coarctor angustiis, nee quid respondeam prorsus 
 invenio." What he had written in his book on Free- Will of 
 the imaginary benefits of suffering even to infants, will not 
 suffice to explain even the sufferings of the unbaptized in 
 this life. " I require, therefore, the ground of this condem- 
 nation of little children, hecause, in case souls are separately 
 created, I do not see that any of them sin at that age, nor do 
 I helieve that any one is condemned hy God, whoin He sees to 
 have no sinP He repeats again and again this pressing in- 
 quiry. " Something perfectly strong and invincible is re- 
 quired, which will not force us to believe that God condemns 
 any soul without any fault." He fervently desires from Je- 
 rome the means of escaping from this great perplexity ; he 
 would prefer to embrace the Creationist theory ; but on this 
 theory, he sees no possible mode in which native, inherent 
 depravity and the destruction of the unbaptized can be held, 
 consistently with the justice of God. 
 
 Such was the theology of Augustine. ISTo one can be 
 charged with sin but the sinner. He knows nothing of guilt 
 without fault. If there is no real participation in Adam's 
 transgression on our part, he can see no justice in making 
 us partakers of its penalty, or in attributing to us a sinful 
 nature from birth. " Persona corrumpit naturam ; natura 
 corrumpit personam." So the doctrine was summarily stated. 
 In Adam human nature, by his act, was vitiated. That 
 corrupted nature is transmitted, through physical generation, 
 to his descendants. They acted in him — in another — and 
 are, therefore, truly counted sinners, being sinfully corrupt 
 from the beginning of individual life. 
 
 This became the orthodox theology of the Western 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 365 
 
 Church. Where there were deviations from it in the 
 Catholic Chm'ch, in the middle ages or subsequently, the 
 attempt was always made to cover up the difference and to 
 maintain a seeming conformity to the teaching of the au- 
 thoritative Latin Father. As Augustine, more than any 
 other human teacher, inspired the Reformers, so his doctrine 
 on this subject was generally accepted without dispute. 
 The pages of .the leading Reformers swarm with citations 
 from him on this as on various other topics, l^or is this 
 agreement with Augustine confined to them. Through the 
 seventeenth century, after the doctrine of original sin, in a 
 gi-eat portion of the Protestant Church, had taken on a new 
 phase, still it was to Augustine that all appealed. There is 
 hardly a Calvinistic WTiter of distinction in that age who 
 does not fall back on his characteristic definitions, and seek 
 by means of them to fortify the doctrine of innate guilt and 
 depravity. Having pointed out the essential features of the 
 Augustinian view, we might spare ourselves the trouble of 
 showing in detail, by historical inquiry, that every theory at 
 variance with it is modem and an innovation. Who does 
 not know that the old Protestant, as well as the orthodox 
 Catholic theology, was Augustinian ? But as our main 
 design is to explain the origin of certain departures from 
 this ancient and long- prevailing doctrine, we shall, as briefly 
 as possible, follow down the course of its history. 
 
 Anselm, from his mingled devoutness and intellectual 
 subtlety, not less than from his chronological position, may 
 be called the father of the schoolmen. As a theologian, 
 until we come to the Angelic Doctor, he stands without a 
 rival. In his able and ingenious treatise on original sin, 
 which forms a kind of sequel to the Cur Deus Homo, he 
 says, in agreement with the Augustinian theory, that when 
 Adam and Eve sinned 
 
 "The whole, which they were, was debilitated and corrupted;" not 
 only the body, but through the body, the soul ; and " because the whole 
 
366 THE AT7GUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 human nature was in them, and outside of them there was nothing of it, 
 the whole was weakened and corrupted. There remained, therefore, in 
 that nature the debt of complete justice " — that is the obligation to be 
 perfectly righteous — '' which it received, and the obligation to make 
 satisfaction, because it forsook this justice, together with the very cor- 
 ruption which sin induced. Hence, as in case it had not sinned, it would 
 be propagated just as it was made by God ; so, after sin, it would be propa- 
 gated just as it made itself by sinning. " Thus it follows ' ' that this nature 
 is bom in infants with the obligation upon it to satisfy for the first sin, 
 which it always could have avoided, and with the obligation upon it to 
 have original righteousness, which it always was able to preserve. Nor 
 does impotence excuse it " — that is, this nature — " even in infants, since 
 in them it does not render what it owes, and inasmuch as it made itself 
 what it is, by forsaking righteousness in the first parents, in whom it was 
 as a whole — in quibus tota erat — and it is always bound to have power 
 which it received to the end that it might continually preserve its right- 
 
 That sin pertains exclusively to the rational will is a 
 proposition which Anselm clearly defines and maintains; 
 and on this branch of the subject he gives to the Augustinian 
 theology a precision which it had not previously attained. 
 Augustine holds that native concupiscence, or the disorder 
 and inordinate excitableness of the lower appetites, is sin- 
 ful ; but he also holds it to be voluntary, in the large sense 
 of the term. In the regenerate, the guilt (reatus) of con- 
 cupiscence is pardoned ; but the principle is not extirpated. 
 It does not bring new guilt, however, upon the soul, unless 
 its impulses are complied with, or consented to, by the will. 
 To these opinions the strict Augustinians in the Catholic 
 Church have adhered ; but, laying hold of that distinction 
 between concupiscence and the voluntary consent to it, 
 which Augustine assumes in respect to the baptized, the 
 semi-Pelagians, as they have been generally styled by their 
 opponents, have afiirmed that native concupiscence is not 
 itself sinful, but only becomes such by the will's compliance 
 with it. At the first view, it would seem as if Anselm 
 adopted this theory, and so far deviated from Augustine. 
 
 * De Concept. Yirg. et Orig. Pec., ii. 
 
THEOKIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 367 
 
 Anselm declares that ^s sin belongs to the will, and to the 
 will alone, no individual is a sinner until he is possessed of 
 a will, and with it inwardly consents to the evil desire. 
 " The appetites themselves," he says, " are neither just nor 
 unjust in themselves considered. They do not make a man 
 just or unjust, simply because he feels them within him ; 
 but just or unjust, only as he consents to them with the 
 will, when he ought not." The animals have these appe- 
 tites, but are rendered neither holy nor unholy on account of 
 them. "Wherefore there is no injustice (or unrighteous- 
 ness) in their essence, but in the rational will following 
 them." * This certainly sounds like " new-school " theol- 
 ogy. But we find that Anselm holds fully to the propaga- 
 tion of sin through seminal or spermatic corruption, after 
 the manner of Augustine. He asserts, as we have seen, 
 the existence of a properly sinful nature which is trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation. His real theory 
 would appear to be, that a wrongly-determined will, or a 
 will already determined to evil, is a part of our inheritance. 
 But he sticks to his sharply-defined proposition that sin is 
 predicable of the will alone ; and hence he denies that sper- 
 matic corruption is sinful. Sin is not in semine, but simply 
 the necessity that there shall be sin when the individual 
 comes to exist and to be possessed of a rational soul, f This 
 whole theory turns upon the distinction of nature and per- 
 son. The descendants of Adam were not in him as indi- 
 viduals ; yet what he did as a person he did not do sine 
 natura / and this nature is ours as well as his.ij: Thus, no 
 fman is condemned except for his own sin. " Therefore, 
 'when the infant is condemned for original sin, he is con- 
 demned not for the sin of Adam, but for his own. For if 
 he had not sin of his own, he would not be condemned." 
 This sin originated in Adam, " but this ground which lay in 
 Adam, why infants are born sinners, is not in other parents, 
 
 ♦ De Concept, Virg. et Orig. Pee.^ c. iv. f It>id-> ^-^^ X Ibid. , c. rriii 
 
368 THE AUGTJSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 since in them human nature has not the power, that right- 
 eous children should be propagated from it.* This matter 
 was decided and irreversibly so far as more immediate par- 
 ents are concerned, in Adam. It is Anselm's opinion, we 
 may add, that original sin in infants is less guilty than if 
 they had personally committed the first sin, as Adam did. 
 The quantity of guilt in them is less. In this he does not 
 differ from Augustine, who thought that the perdition of 
 infants would be milder and easier to bear than that of 
 adult sinners. 
 
 The most popular text-book of theology in the middle 
 ages was the Sentences of Peter Lombard. It held its place 
 for centuries in the European universities, and there were 
 few of the foremost schoolmen who did not produce a com- 
 mentary upon it. It presents the doctrine of Augustine in 
 its essential parts, with abundant citations from his writings. 
 Sin did not spread in the world, it affirms, by imitation of a 
 bad example, but by propagation, and appears in every one 
 at birth.f Original sin is not mere liability to punishment 
 for the first sin, but involves sin and guilt. That first sin 
 not only ruined Adam, but the whole race likewise ; since 
 from him we derive at once condemnation and sin. That 
 original sin in us is concupiscence. Our nature was vitiated 
 in Adam ; " since all were that one man ; that is, were in 
 him TnaterialiteTP We were in him " materialiter, causaK- 
 ter," or seminally. The body is wholly derived from him. 
 It is the doctrine of the Lombard that each soul is created 
 by itself, but is corrupted by contact with the material part 
 which is vitiated in Adam. % He gives this explicit answer 
 to the problem which Augustine declines to solve. The 
 law of propagation, says Peter Lombard, is not suspended 
 in consequence of the entrance of sin into the world ; and 
 the corruption of the soul in each case is an inevitable re- 
 
 ♦ Be Concept Virg. et OHg. Pec, c. xxxi. 
 f Lib. ii., Dist. zxx. (Cologne, 1576). % ^i^* ^^'t ^^^' 2^^^.) xxxii. 
 
THEOEIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 
 
 suit of its conjunction with the body. Augustine, in the 
 Encheiridion^ had admitted that the sins of more imme- 
 diate parents as far back as the third or fourth generation, 
 may be imputed to the child, but had not positively sanc- 
 tioned this view. The Lombard argues that he could not have 
 entertained it without inconsistency, since it would be in- 
 compatible with his doctrine that the sin and punishment 
 of infants are comparatively light.* He does not deny the 
 position of Anselm that sin belongs to the will ; f yet he is 
 careful to say that the soul on uniting with the body be- 
 comes ipso facto corrupt ; since if an act of self-determina- 
 tion be supposed to intervene, it would be actual, and not 
 original sin. On the whole, his representations accord with 
 what we have explained to be the idea of Anselm. 
 
 We pass now to the prince of the scholastic theologians, 
 Thomas Aquinas. This most acute and profoimd writer 
 manifests caution in handling so difficult a theme ; but his 
 conclusions, as might be expected, coincide with the dogma 
 of Augustine. Aquinas says that " although the soul is not 
 transmitted, since the virtus serninis cannot cause a rational 
 soul," yet by this means " human nature is transmitted from 
 parent to offspring, and with it, at the same time, the infec- 
 tion of nature." :j: Hence the newborn child is made par- 
 taker of the sin of the first parent, since from him he re- 
 ceives his nature through the agency of the generative func- 
 tion. No man is punished except for his own sin. We are 
 punished for the sins of near ancestors only so far as we fol- 
 low them in their transgressions. § The main point in the 
 explication of original sin is the nature of our union with 
 Adam. This Aquinas sets forth by an analogy. The will, 
 by an imperative volition, bids a limb, or member of the 
 body, commit a sin. Now an act of homicide is not imputed 
 to the hand considered as distinct from the body, but is im- 
 puted to it as far as it belongs to the man as part of him, 
 
 * Lib. ii., Dist. xxiii, f Ibid., Diet. xlii. 
 
 X Sum. Theol, I., ii. Q. Ixxxi., Art. i. § Ibid., Q. Ixxx., Art. viii. 
 16* 
 
370 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 and is moved by the first principle of motion in him — that 
 is, the will. Being thus related, the hand, were it possessed 
 of a nature cajpahle of sin, would be guilty. So all who are 
 born of Adam are to be considered as one man. They are 
 as the many members of one body. 
 
 " Thus the disorder (inordinatio) which is in that man who sprang 
 from Adam, is not voluntary by the act of his own will, but by the will 
 of the first parent, who moves ' motione generationis,' all who derive 
 their origin from him, just as the soul's will moves all the limbs to an 
 act ; whence the sin which is derived from the first parent to his posterity 
 is called original : in the same way that the sin which is derived from the 
 soul to the members of the body, is called actual ; and as the actual sin 
 which is committed by a bodily member is the sin of that member, only 
 so far as that member pertains to the man himself (est aliquid ipsius 
 hominis), so original sin belongs to an individual, only so far as he receives 
 his nature from the first parent." * 
 
 Cajetan, the renowned commentator of Aquinas, under- 
 takes to explain and defend the analogy. The descendant 
 of Adam belongs to Adam, as a hand to the body ; and from 
 Adam, through natural generation, he at once receives his 
 nature and becomes a partaker of sin. 
 
 The realistic character of Aquinas's doctrine appears 
 strongly in the argument by which he attempts to prove 
 that no sins but the first sin of the first man are imputed to 
 us. t He sharply distinguishes between nature and person. 
 Those things which directly pertain to an individual, like 
 personal acts, are not transmitted by natural generation. 
 The grammarian does not thus communicate to his offspring 
 the science of grammar. Accidental properties of the indi- 
 vidual may, indeed, in some cases, descend from father to 
 son, as, for example, swiftness of body. But qualities, 
 which are purely personal, are not propagated. As the per- 
 son has his own native properties- and the qualities given by 
 grace, so the nature has both. Original righteousness was a 
 gracious gift to the nature at the outset, and was lost in 
 
 * 8u,m. Theol., I., ii. Q. Ixxxi., Art. i. f Ibid., Art. ii 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGLNAL SIN COMPARED. 371 
 
 Adam in the first sin. " Just as original righteousness 
 would have been transmitted to his posterity at the same 
 time with the nature, so also is the opposite disorder 
 (inordinatio). But other actual sins of the fii-st parent, or 
 of other later parents, do not corrupt the nature, as concerns 
 its qualities {quantum ad id quod naturcB est), but only as 
 concerns the qualities of the person." * 
 
 Original righteousness was principally and primarily in 
 the subjection of the will to God. From the alienation of 
 the will from God, disorder has arisen in all the other 
 powers of the soul. Hence the deprivation of original 
 righteousness, through which the will was subject to God, is 
 the first or formal element in original sin, while concupis- 
 cence or "inordinatio" is the second, or material element. 
 Thus original sin affects the will, in the first instance. Its 
 first effect is the wrong bent of the will. Aquinas's analy- 
 sis of native, inherent depravity is substantially accordant 
 with that of Anselm. 
 
 The Reformers, as we have said, were Augustinians. As 
 the imputation of Adam's sin was conceded generally by 
 their Catholic opponents, as Pighius and Catharinus, at the 
 same time that innate depravity, in the strict sense, was fre- 
 quently denied, it was on this last element in the doctrine of 
 original sin that the first Protestant theologians chiefly in- 
 sisted. But the same realistic mode of thought — the same 
 theory of a common nature corrupted in Adam — ^pervades 
 their writings. In Calvin's representation of the doctrine, two 
 propositions are constantly asserted. One is, that we are not 
 condemned or punished for Adam's sin, apart from our own 
 inherent depravity which is derived from him. The sin 
 for which we are condemned is our own sin ; and were it 
 not for this, we should not be condemned. The other propo- 
 sition is, that this sin is ours, for the reason that our nature 
 
 * Ibid., II., Q. Ixxx., Art. iii., iv. 
 
372 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 was vitiated in Adam, and we receive it in the condition in 
 which it was put by the first transgression. 
 
 These propositions are so clearly set forth, both in the 
 Institutes and the Commentaries, that it is hardly requisite 
 to prove that he held them. But to remove all doubt on 
 this point, and for another purpose which will appear later, 
 we translate the following passages : 
 
 " Observe the order here, for Paul says that sin preceded ; that from it 
 death followed. For there are some who contend that we are so ruined 
 by the sin of Adam, as if we perisJied by no iniquity {culpa) of our own, in 
 the sense that he only as it were sinned for us. But the apostle expressly 
 afl&rms that sin is propagated to all who suffer its punishment. And he 
 urges this especially when he assigns the reason shortly after, why aU the 
 posterity of Adam are subject to the dominion of death. The reason is, 
 he says, that all have sinned. That sinning of which he speaks, is being 
 corrupted and vitiated. For that natural depravity which we bring from 
 our mother's womb, although it does not at once bring forth its fruits, 
 yet it is sin before the Lord and deserves the penalty. And this is the sin 
 which is called original. For as Adam at his first creation had received 
 gifts of divine grace as well for himself as for his posterity ; so, separa- 
 ting from God, he depraved, corrupted, vitiated, ruined, our nature in 
 himself ; for having lost the image of God, he could only bring forth seed 
 like himself. Therefore we have all sinned, as we are all imbued with 
 natural corruption, and so are iniquitous and perverse." * 
 
 Calvin renders his doctrine perfectly clear by the distinc- 
 tion which he makes, in his note on ver. 17, between Christ 
 and Adam. " The first difference," he says, " is that we are 
 condemned for the sin of Adam not by imputation alone, as 
 if the jpunishment of the sin of another were exacted of us: 
 but we bear its punishment because we are guilty of the sin 
 (culpae) also, in so far as our nature, vitiated in him, is held 
 bound (obstringitur) with the guilt of iniquity." 
 
 To the same effect are his remarks on Ephesians ii. 3 
 (" we are by nature children of wrath"). The passage, he 
 says, confutes those who deny original sin ; " for that which 
 naturally is in all, is surely original : Paul teaches that we 
 
 * Com. on Roman, v. 12. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 373 
 
 are all naturally exposed to damnation : therefore sin is in- 
 herent in us, hecause God does not condemn the innoeenty 
 " God," he adds, " is not angry with innocent men, but with 
 sin. Nor is it a cause for wonder if the depravity which is 
 born (ingenita) in us from our parents is deemed sin before 
 God, because the seed which is. thus far latent, he discerns 
 and judges." 
 
 In full coincidence with these statements, is the chapter 
 on Original Sin, in the Institutes : 
 
 These two things are to be distinctly observed ; first, that being thus 
 vitiated and perverse in all the parts of our nature, we are, on account 
 of this corruption, deservedly held as condemned and convicted before 
 God, to whom nothing is acceptable but justice, innocence and purity; 
 for this is not liability to punishment for another'' s crime ; for when it is 
 said that by this sin of Adam we become exposed to the judgment of God, 
 it is not to be understood as if, being ourselves innocent and undeserving 
 of punishment we had to bear the sin (culpam) of another ; but because 
 by his transgression we all incur a curse, he is said to have involved us 
 in guilt (obstrinxisse). Nevertheless, not only has punishment passed 
 from him upon us, but pollution instilled from him is inherent in us, to 
 which punishment is justly due. Wherefore Augustine, although he 
 often calls it another's sin (that he may the more clearly show that it is 
 derived to us by propagation), at the same time asserts it to belong to 
 each individual. And the apostle himself most expressly declares (Rom, 
 V. 12) that ' death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned '—that 
 is are involved in original sin and defiled with its stains. And so also in- 
 fants themselves, as they bring their condemnation with them from their 
 mother's womb, are exposed to punishment, not for another's sin but for 
 their own. For though they have not yet produced the fruits of their ini- 
 quity, they have still the seed mclosed in them ; even their whole nature 
 is as it were a seed of sin, and cannot be otherwise than odious and abom- 
 inable to God. Whence it follows that it is properly accounted sin in the 
 eye of God, hecause there could not he guilt {reatus) without fault (culpa). 
 The other thing to be remarked is that this depravity never ceases in us, 
 but is perpetually producing new fruits, etc." * 
 
 That sin has its seat in the will and that the wrong bent 
 of the will is the sole obstacle in the way of the sinner's re- 
 pentance, Calvin distinctly affirms. 
 
 * Inst., I., I, S. 
 
374 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 Turning to the Lutheran side, we find that Melanchthon 
 defines original sin to be the corruption with which we are 
 born, and which is consequent on the fall of Adam.* He 
 says further : " If any one wishes to add that we are born 
 guilty on account of the fall of Adam, I make no objection 
 (non impedio)." f But he strongly objects to the imputation 
 of the first sin, independently of our native, inherited de- 
 pravity. Original sin, he says, is, in it?> formal aspect, guilt, 
 or the condemnation of the person who is guilty ; but this 
 relation pertains to some sin. The question, therefore, is, 
 what is the proximate foundation of this relation, or as they 
 call it, the proximate matter — materiale propinquum. The 
 foundation of this guilt is the vice in man which is bom 
 with us, which is called defects, or evil inclinations, or con- 
 cupiscence." The imputation of the first sin is conditioned 
 on — in the order of nature, consequent upon — this innate de- 
 pravity. :j: 
 
 Both elements, imputation of the first sin and inherent 
 depravity are distinctly brought out in the Augsburg Con- 
 fession, as issued by Melanchthon in 1540. 
 
 Brentius, another leading name, among the early Lutheran 
 theologians, exemplifies the prevalent realistic mode of rep- 
 resentation upon this subject. " Inasmuch as all the pos- 
 terity of Adam were in his loins, not for himself alone was 
 he made an idolater in his own person, but he propagated 
 idolatry to all his posterity, so that as many men as descend 
 from him, are idolaters." " He drew with him the whole 
 human race, which was then in his loins and was to be pro- 
 pagated from him, into so great ruin, that it could neither 
 entertain right sentiments respecting God with its mind or 
 obey God with its will." § 
 
 The Lutheran theologians were most of them, including 
 Luther himself, traducians. Herein they differed from the 
 body of the Calvinists. 
 
 *Loc. Com. (Hase'sEd., v. p. 86). f Ibid., p. 85. X Ibid., p. 91. 
 
 § Quoted by Heppe, Dogm. d. Deutsch. Prot. im \Qtn, JaJihr. I., 390, 391. 
 
THEOKIES OF OEIGINAL SIN COMPAKED. 375 
 
 We have now to inquire into the origin of the federal 
 theory ? How did the doctrine of a covenant with Adam 
 become connected with Augustinism ? The best histories of 
 doctrine ascribe this innovation to Cocceius the celebrated 
 theologian of Holland, Professor at Franeker, and then at 
 Ley den, where he died in 1669. It is not denied that 
 germs of this theory may be found scattered in the writings 
 of theologians of an earlier date. It is seldom that a theory 
 is absolutely new with him who fii'st gives it currency, and 
 with whose name it is afterwards associated. But Cocceius 
 has the credit not only of introducing the method of bring- 
 ing the matter of systematic theology under the three cove- 
 nants, but also of engrafting the conception of a covenant 
 with Adam, as the representative of the race, upon Calvin- 
 istic theology. There is no distinct mention of such a 
 covenant, as far as we have been able to discover, either 
 in the writers of the first age of the Reformation, or after- 
 wards until near the time of Cocceius. There is no mention 
 of such a covenant in the Augsburg Confession, the Form 
 of Concord, or in any other of the p-incipal creeds of the 
 Lutheran Church. There is no mention of it in the princi- 
 pal Confessions of the Reformed Church, with the exception 
 of the Creeds of Westminster ; for the Formula Consensus 
 Helvetica, where the Covenant appears, is a creed of minor 
 importance and of comparatively insignificant authority. 
 We do not find the doctrine of a covenant with Adam in 
 the First Basle Confession (1532), the Second Basle (or First 
 Helvetic) (1536), the Gallic (1559), the First Scottish Con- 
 fession (1560), the Belgic (1562), the Heidelberg Catechism 
 (1573), the Second Helvetic Confession (1565), the Hunga- 
 rian (1570), the Polish (Declaratio Thoruniensis, 1645), or 
 the Anglican Articles (1562). 
 
 Perhaps we shall best satisfy our readers in regard to this 
 historical question, by referring to one or two authorities of 
 great weight. The first is Weissmann, the learned Lutheran, 
 who in his history of the church in the seventeenth cen- 
 
376 THE AUGUSTmiAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 tury, has entered into a somewhat full account of the rise of 
 the federal theology. The federal method, he says, origi- 
 nated with Cloppenburgius, a Franeker theologian, and was 
 farther carried out by Cocceius. To these men it is chiefly 
 due. From their time, the federal method spread in the 
 Reformed Church, especially of Holland, so that the systems 
 constructed on this model can hardly be numbered. " Among 
 Lutherans," adds Weissmann, " this method did not find 
 many favorers. Rather does Foertschius think, and public- 
 ly teach in his Breviarium Select, Theol., that this method 
 has not less inconveniences than belong to methods previ- 
 ously used ; adding, that the federal doctrine, both respect- 
 ing covenants and promises, as it is held among the learned 
 and publicists, cannot be applied to theology, except by an 
 abuse and perversion of terms." * In another passage, Weiss- 
 mann sets forth the objections to federalism, which were 
 brought forward by Lutheran theologians. Among them 
 are the considerations, that the word covencmt in the New 
 Testament is very sparingly used, and does not signify that 
 which is here in controversy ; that in covenants and con- 
 tracts respect is had to a benefit to be conferred on both 
 parties, which, as far as God is concerned, cannot be here 
 supposed ; that man previously owed all things to God, and, 
 therefore, there is no need of a covenant and compact ; that 
 the Mosaic economy alone partakes of the nature of a cove- 
 nant-t 
 
 Under the name of Cocceianism, were included a variety of 
 opinions ; and the advocates and antagonists of this theolo- 
 gian waged a heated conflict that agitated the Reformed 
 Church, especially in Holland. Numerous opponents of 
 Cocceianism who were actuated by hostility to the Cartesian 
 philosophy, or to some other real or imaginary doctrine which 
 came to be identified with the name of Cocceius, held to the 
 
 ♦ Weissmann, Introductio in Memorabilia Ecd. Historic Sacrce^ etc., voL 
 ii., p. 698 seq. 
 t Ibid., p. 1103. 
 
THEORIES OF OEIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 377 
 
 theory of a covenant with Adam. Yan Mastricht, for ex- 
 ample, was an Anti-Cocceian. Yet it remains true that this 
 last theory found its way into theology, very much through 
 the influence of the most distinguished advocate of the fed- 
 eral method. 
 
 A second witness respecting the rise of the federal theory, 
 is Campegius Yitringa. In the text, and especially in the 
 editorial notes connected with the text, of his system, is a 
 very full statement of the history of this change in theology. 
 For some time, says Yitringa, it has pleased divines to de- 
 scribe the state of man in Paradise, by the term covenant, 
 which they style the covenant of works or of nature, to dis- 
 tinguish it from the covenant of grace. " That Adam lived 
 in a state of friendship with God, and looked for a certain 
 good under certain conditions, has been already shown. 
 That this state can sano sensu, be called a covenant, is not 
 doubted. /Still we must hold that in the Scriptures this des- 
 ignation does not clearly aj[ypear^ unless^ perhaps, you choose 
 to apply Ilosea vi. 7 to this relation rather than to the Mosaic 
 history / so that the Bible malces no mention of the covenant : 
 on the contrary, this notion is clearly presented to us, that 
 God, as absolute and natural Lord of man, has treated him 
 as a subject, of whose affection and obedience he desired to 
 make trial. And it really seems that the notion of a cove- 
 nant pertains to the economy of gra/ie ; both Scripture a/rvd 
 reason favoring this view.'''' It is stated in the note, that 
 the opposition to this notion by Episcopius and other Ar- 
 minians, in which they were followed by Socinians, stimu- 
 lated Calvinistic theologians to espouse and defend it with 
 more zeal.* 
 
 These last observations are deserving of especial notice. 
 It would appear that the idea of the covenant of works was 
 carried back to the Adamic constitution from the analogy of 
 the covenant of grace, with which theologians were familiar ; 
 
 * Vitringa, Doctrina Christ. Relig., etc., vol. ii., p. 341. 
 
378 THE AIJGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 and the opposition of Arminians and Socinians tended to 
 confirm and spread the innovation. 
 
 The federal system was considered, at the outset, a soften- 
 ing of Calvinism. Predestination was mitigated, in appear- 
 ance at least, by this introduction of juridical considerations. 
 Theology seemed to take on a more biblical cast. Hence the 
 federal method was disliked by the Protestant schoolmen, as 
 they were called ; that class of Calvinistic writers in whose 
 hands theology, especially after the rise of the Arminian 
 controversy, ran out into endless hair-splitting, according 
 to a dry and rigid scheme, predestination being the central 
 idea. 
 
 But what is the covenant with Adam, as distinguished 
 from the law of nature ? What is the nature of this posi- 
 tive constitution ? The covenant is, in its essence, a. promise 
 — a promise of such blessings, on the condition of obedience, 
 as the rational creature is not entitled to by the law of na- 
 ture. It is a gracious act on the part of God ; an act of 
 condescension. He couples with obedience a reward wholly 
 disproportionate to the creature's deserts — namely, eternal 
 life. In this general definition all are agreed. In regard to 
 more specific points in the definition, theologians vary from 
 one another. The attaching of the promise to a brief term 
 of obedience, for example, is sometimes regarded as one ele- 
 ment in the covenant. But if we seek for the precise differ- 
 ence between the provisions of the covenant and the princi- 
 ples of natural and universal justice, which were of binding 
 force, independently of it, we find this -difference to consist 
 in the magnitude of the promise and in the appointing of a 
 special test of obedience. Inasmuch, however, as this spe- 
 cial test was a revealed law, and might have been laid upon 
 Adam, had there been no covenant, the substance of this 
 positive constitution lies in the gracious promise that is con- 
 nected by the Creator with the law. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the covenant does not of neces- 
 sity affect, the substance of the Augustinian doctrine at all. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 379 
 
 The theory of the covenant may be accepted at the same 
 time that the posterity of Adam are held to be really par- 
 takers in his sin and guilt. The breach of the law and the 
 breach of the covenant were one and the same act. If the 
 posterity of Adam really broke the law in Adam, they broke 
 the covenant also. Even on the supposition that they took 
 part in the transgression of the law, and did not take part in 
 the violation of the covenant, still Adam brings on them no 
 condemnation which they do not themselves deserve by sin- 
 ning in him ; they merely lose blessings to which they have, 
 and could have, no title on the foundation of natural law. 
 I lay a command upon a child. It is a reasonable command, 
 and by the law of nature, I have a right to impose it ; and I 
 have a right to affix a certain punishment to disobedience. 
 But I freely promise that in case he obeys I will grant to 
 him, and to his brothers also, some high and undeserved 
 privilege. Now suppose him to disobey. They, as well as 
 he, lose something ; but they lose nothing which the law of 
 nature gave them. Suppose them, in some way, to partici- 
 pate in his disobedience ; they, too, justly incur the positive 
 penalty prescribed by the law, in addition to the negative 
 forfeiture through his breach of the covenant. They suffer 
 no greater penalty than they really deserve ; they lose a 
 gi-eater reward than obedience would have given them a 
 title to, apart from a special, gratuitous promise. 
 
 The mistake of the modern defenders of imputation is in 
 ignoring and denying the capital fact of a true and real 
 PARTICIPATION IN Adam's SIN, which stiU formed the ground- 
 work of the doctrine of original sin long after the federal 
 theory came into vogue. They mistake history likewise, by 
 ascribing their own purely federal view to the great body of 
 Calvinistic theologians in the seventeenth century, who were 
 Augustinians as well as federalists, holding to the second type 
 of doctrine which we mentioned in the beginning — the Au- 
 gustino-federal. 
 
 There is another historical error of a kindred nature, 
 
380 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 which pervades the Princeton discussions of original sin. 
 These assume that the old Calvinists held to the immediate 
 or antecedent imputation of the first sin — that is, tq the 
 condemnation of men for it, independently of their native 
 depravity. But with the exception of certain supralapsa- 
 rians, the Calvinistic view was, that the ascription to men 
 of the first sin, and the ascription to them of native, sinful 
 corruption, are each conditional to the other. The first 
 could not take place without the second, as an inseparable 
 part or accompaniment ; and the order in which the two 
 occur, is indifferent, as far as orthodoxy was concerned. 
 This has been conclusively proved, and the error above 
 stated has been fully exposed, in a series of learned articles, 
 from the pen of R. W. Landis, D.D., which were published 
 in The Danville Review. * As we do not care to do 
 what has been so well done already, we shall have less to 
 say here on this particular point. But having had occa- 
 sion, before and since the appearance of these Articles, to 
 traverse a great portion of the same ground, we can give 
 an intelligent assent to this main position of the learned 
 author. 
 
 The proposition which we are now concerned to main- 
 tain, is that in the prevailing theology of the seventeenth, 
 as well as the sixteenth century, even after the covenant 
 theory was adopted, the doctrine of participation in the 
 first sin — the old groundwork of Augustinism — was stiU 
 cherished. 
 
 (1.) The most approved orthodox theologians of that age 
 confirm this statement. From a throng of witnesses we se- 
 lect one, for the reason that he is an acknowledged repre- 
 sentative of the strict Calvinism of his times. The follow- 
 ing passages are from John Owen : 
 
 Of original sin, he says " that it is an inherent sin and 
 pollution of nature, having a proper guilt of its own, mak- 
 
 * In the Numbers from September, 1861, to December, 1862, inclusive. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 381 
 
 ing us responsible to the wrath of God, and not a bare im- 
 putation of another's fault to us, his posterity." * Answer- 
 ing the objection that the first sin is not ours, is not our vol- 
 untary act, he refers to the covenant, but adds : 
 
 " That Adam, being" the root and head of all human kind, and we all 
 branches from that root, all parts of that body whereof he was the head, 
 Jiis will may be said to be ours. We were then all that one man,f we 
 were all in him, and had no other will but his ; so that though that be 
 extrinsical unto us, considered as particular persons, yet it is intrinsical, 
 as we are all parts of one common nature. As in him we sinned, so in him 
 we had a will of sinning.:}: Original sin is a defect of nature, and not of 
 this or that particular person." " It is hereditary, natural, and no way 
 involuntary, or put into us against our wills. It possesseth our wills, 
 and inclines us to voluntary sins." § "If God should impute the sin of 
 Adam unto us, and therein pronounce us obnoxious to the curse deserved 
 by it — if we have a pure, sinless, unspotted nature — even this could 
 scarce be reconciled with that rule of his proceeding in justice with the 
 sons of men, ' The soul that sinneth, it shall die ; ' which clearly grant- 
 eth impunity to all not tainted with sin. Sin and punishment, though 
 they are sometimes separated by his mercy, pardoning the one, and so 
 not inflicting the other, yet never by his justice, inflicting the latter where 
 the former is not. Sin imputed, by itself alone, without an inherent guilt, 
 was never punished in any but Christ. The unsearchableness of God's 
 love and justice, in laying the iniquity of us all upon him who had no 
 sin, is an exception from that general rule he walketh by in his dealing 
 with the posterity of Adam." | The grounds of the imputation of 
 Adam's sin to us are : *' 1. As we were then in him and parts of him ; 2. 
 As he sustained the place of our whole nature in the covenant God made 
 with him ; both which, even according to the exigence of God's justice, 
 require that his transgression be also accounted ours." ^ " There is none 
 damned but for his own sin. When divines affirm that by Adam's sin we 
 are guilty of damnation, they do not mean that any are actually damned 
 for this particular fact, but that by his sin, and our sinning in him, by 
 God's most just ordination, we have contracted that exceeding pravity 
 and sinfulness of nature which deserveth the curse of God and eternal 
 damnation," "The soul then that is guilty shall die, and that for its 
 own guilt. If God should condemn us for original sin only, it were not 
 by reason of the imputation of Adam's fault, but of the iniquity of that 
 
 * "Display of Arminianism," Works, x., 70. 
 
 f •* Omnes eramus onus ille homo." — Aug. X Ihid., p. 73. 
 
 § Ibid., p. 73. B Ibid., p. 74. 1 Ibid., p. 75. 
 
382 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 portion hy nature^ in wJiich we are proprietaries.^'' * " The sin of Adam 
 holds such relation to sinners, proceeding from him by natural propaga- 
 tion, as the righteousness of Christ doth unto them who are horn again of 
 him by spiritual regeneration. But we are truly, intrinsically and inher- 
 ently sanctified by the Spirit and grace of Christ ; and, therefore, there 
 is no reason why, being so often in this chapter (^Rom. v.) called sinners, 
 because of this original sin, we should cast it off, as if it were concerned 
 only by an external denomination, for the right institution of the com- 
 parison and its analogy quite overthrows the solitary imputation." f 
 
 One of the great arguments of the defenders of immedi- 
 ate or antecedent imputation in our day is founded on the 
 analogy of tlie imputation of our sins to Christ, and espe- 
 cially of his righteousness to us. But Owen, like the old 
 Calvin ists generally, supralapsarian speculatists being ex- 
 cepted, makes a marked distinction between these various 
 instances of imputation. This is evident from two of the 
 passages quoted above. 
 
 In his work on justification, also, he says : 
 
 ' ' None ever dreamed of a transfusion or propagation of sin from us to 
 Christ, such as there was from Adam to us. For Adam was a common per- 
 son to us, we are not so to Christ ; yea, he is not so to us ; and the imputa- 
 tion of our sins to him, is a singular act of divine dispensation, which no 
 evil consequences can ensue upon." " There is a great difference between 
 the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to us, and the imputation 
 of our sins to Christ ; so that he cannot in the same manner be said to 
 be made a sinner by the one, as we are made righteous by the other. 
 For our sin was imputed to Christ, only as he was our surety for a time, 
 to this end, that he might take it away, destroy it and abolish it. It was 
 never imputed to him, so as to make any alteration absolutely in his per- 
 sonal state and condition. But his righteousness is imputed to us, to 
 abide with us, to be ours always, and to make a total change in our state 
 and condition as to our relation to God," etc.J 
 
 The combination of the Augustinian and federal theories, 
 which is manifest in the citations from Owen, appears in the 
 creeds of the Westminster Assembly. In the Confession, 
 it is said of Adam and Eve — 
 
 * '*Omnes eramus unus ille homo." — Aug., p. 80. \ Ibid., p. 71. 
 
 X The Doctrine of Justification, etc. (Philadelphia ed.), p. 227. 
 
THEOEIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 383 
 
 " They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of his sin was imputed, 
 and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their 
 posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation." 
 
 In the larger Catechism, we read — 
 
 " The covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for him- 
 self only, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordi- 
 nary generation sinned in him and fell with him in that first transgres- 
 sion." 
 
 The proof -texts which were attached to these statements, 
 and were printed with the emphatic portions in italics, show 
 most clearly that the Augustinian conception was side by 
 side with the Federal, in the minds of the framers of these 
 creeds. What they meant to teach is clearly set forth in 
 the Brief Sum of Christian Doctrine^ which was issued 
 by the authority of the Assembly. 
 
 " God in six days made all things of nothing, very good in their own 
 kind, in special he made all the angels holy ; and made our first parents, 
 Adam and Eve, the root of mankind, both upright and able to keep the 
 law within their heart ; which law they were naturally bound to obey, 
 under pain of death ; but God was not bound to reward their service, till 
 he entered into a covenant or contract with them, and their posterity in 
 them, to give them eternal life upon condition of perfect personal obedi- 
 ence, without threatening death, in case they should fail. 
 
 *' Both angels and men were subject to the change of their own free- 
 will, as experience proved, God having reserved to himself the incommu- 
 nicable property of being naturally unchangeable. For many angels, of 
 their own accord, fell by sin from their first estate, and became devils. 
 Our first parents being enticed by Satan, one of these devils, speaking in 
 a serpent, did break the covenant of works, in eating the forbidden fruit, 
 whereby they and their posterity, being in their loins, as branches in the 
 root, and comprehended in the same covenant with them, became not only 
 liable to eternal death, but also lost all ability of will to please God ; yea, 
 did become by nature enemies to God, and to all spiritual good ; and in- 
 clined to evil continually. This is our original sin, the bitter root of all 
 our actual transgressions in thought, word, and deed," * 
 
 Plainly we have here the old doctrine of a nature, cor- 
 rupted in Adam, and as such, transmitted to his posterity ; 
 
 * Quoted by Dr. Baird, Eiohim Repealed, p. 41. 
 
384: THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDEEAL 
 
 the covenant idea being superadded, but not yet supplanting 
 the Augustinian. Baxter, Goodwin, and most of the con- 
 temporary Calvinistic divines, are full and explicit in the in- 
 culcation of this same doctrine. 
 
 (2.) The Placaean controversy and the publications conse- 
 quent upon it, afford decisive proof of our position that the 
 Augustinian idea of participation in the first sin prevailed 
 among Calvinistic writers long after the acceptance of the 
 covenant theory. The French school of Saumur, one of the 
 Protestant academies of theology, had for its professors, 
 after the year 1633, three men of marked ability and erudi- 
 tion, Louis Capellus (Cappel), Moses Amyraldus (Amyraut), 
 and Joshua Placseus (La Place). Before them, John Cam- 
 eron, a Scotchman by birth, had produced some commotion 
 by his doctrine in regard to the operation of grace, w^hich 
 was that the spirit renews the soul, not by acting on the w^ill 
 directly, but rather by an enlightening influence on the in- 
 tellect. This was broached partly for the sake of parrying 
 Catholic objections to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestina- 
 tion and election. Cameron's theory did not mitigate this 
 doctrine in the slightest degree, as was admitted so soon as 
 his theory was understood. His substantial orthodoxy was 
 allowed by those who withheld their sanction from the 
 theory. The most eminent of his pupils was Amyraut. 
 He boldly propounded the doctrine of hypothetical, imiver- 
 sal grace, as it was called, which was really the doctrine of 
 universal atonement. He maintained that there is in God, 
 in some proper sense, a will or desire (velleitas, affectus) that 
 all should repent and be saved. The decree of election fol- 
 lows in the order of nature the decree providing the atone- 
 ment. The attempt was made in two national synods to 
 procure a condemnation of his doctrine, but in both cases it 
 failed. He successfully defended himself, and proved that 
 his doctrine was not inconsistent with the creed of the 
 Synod of Dort. Cappel was a biblical scholar, and by his 
 critical opinions in this department caused a commotion 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 385 
 
 only less than that excited by his colleague. He taught 
 that the vowel pointing of the Hebrew text of the Old Tes- 
 tament is an invention later than the Christian era, and 
 clothed with no infallible authority ; and that the masoretie 
 text of the Ancient Scriptures is open to amendment from 
 the comparison of manuscripts and versions. Placseus is 
 the one of these three disturbers of theological quiet, with 
 whom we have to do at present. He was understood to 
 deny that the first sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity, 
 and to resolve original sin into mere hereditary depravity. 
 At the Synod of Charenton, in 1644-5, Garrisolius (Garri- 
 sole), the head of the rival school of Montauban, presided. 
 In no small degree, through his influence, there was carried 
 through the synod a condemnation of the opinion attributed 
 to Placseus, although his name was not mentioned. This 
 opinion was pronounced an error, and was declared to in- 
 volve in peril the doctrine of inherent sin itself, since apart 
 from the imputation of the first transgression, this doctrine 
 rests on no secure foundation. Placseus did not consider 
 himself to be at all touched by the decree of Charenton. 
 He explained afterwards that he did not deny the imputa- 
 tion of Adam's sin ; but only that this imputation is inde- 
 pendent of, and prior to, inherent depravity. He distin- 
 guished between mediate and immediate or antecedent im- 
 putation. The former imputes Adam's sin not directly, but 
 mediately — on the ground of our inherent depravity, which 
 is its first fruit and effect. This depravity is first imputed 
 to us, and then the sin from which it comes. When he 
 made this explanation, Drelincourt, the distinguished Pastor 
 of Paris, who had been a member of the synod and on the 
 committee that drafted the decree, wrote to Placaeus an ex- 
 pression of his satisfaction and confidence, saying that they 
 had never intended to condemn the doctrine thus explained. 
 That the doctrine of Placseus involved no serious departure 
 from the current orthodoxy, was likewise conceded by other 
 prominent theologians who at first arrayed themselves 
 17 
 
386 THE AFGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 against him. While the matter was in agitation, and be- 
 fore Placseus had corrected what he deemed a grave misap- 
 prehension of his views, Andrew Rivet, a Frenchman by 
 birth, but then a professor in Holland, prepared, for the 
 purpose of counteracting the supposed error of Placseus, a 
 copious collection of testimonies on the subject of imputa- 
 tion. It is a collection of citations from standard creeds 
 and numerous orthodox theologians. His prime end, as we 
 have said, is to make it manifest by an appeal to authorities, 
 that besides native, inherent depravity, original sin involves 
 the imputation of the first transgression. These testimonies 
 are very interesting and important for the light which they 
 throw on the particular questions which we are here consid- 
 ering. In former articles in the Princeton Review, the mis- 
 take has been made of supposing that the design of Eivet 
 was to assert the doctrine of antecedent or immediate impu- 
 tation — that is to say, to maintain that Adam's sin is im- 
 puted to us and made a ground of condemnation prior to, 
 and irrespectively of, native corruption. This was no part 
 of his plan. If it had been, his testimonies would have 
 overthrown himself. For, as we have already remarked, if 
 we count out a handful of supralapsarians, the general 
 theory was that the imputation of Adam's sin and native de- 
 pravity are inseparable, so that the one cannot exist without 
 the other. Rivet is simply opposing the theory that original 
 sin comprises no element but native depravity. Whoever 
 held to a participation in Adam's sin, such as involves a 
 legal responsibility for it, might put the elements of the doc- 
 trine in whatever order he saw fit. • 
 Here let us explain what we consider the real philosophy 
 of imputation, as the subject was generally viewed. Some- 
 times Adam's actual sin was said to be truly and really ours ; 
 but this was not the common representation. That sin was 
 the act of another : it is imputed to us, as far as its guilt 
 and legal responsibility are concerned, because we were all 
 jparticipes criininis. In a strict philosophical view, partici- 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 387 
 
 pation is the first fact in order, and the first thing to be 
 proved. Take an ilhistration. A. B. is charged with a 
 crime. Three other persons are accused of being accom- 
 plices. Tliey did not do the deed — with their own hands 
 fire the dwelling or commit the act of homicide. But they 
 are charged with being participants, in the legal idea of the 
 term, and therefore partakers of the guilt of the principal 
 and liable to the same penalty. His act is imputed to them 
 by the law. But before this is possible, \h^fact of partici- 
 pation must first be established ; for on this fact their legal 
 responsibility for the criminal act depends. Kow extend 
 the illustration and suppose that this deed was the transgres- 
 sor's first criminal act, and as such brought on him a corrupt 
 character, or engendered, as it inevitably must, a corrupt 
 principle. A principle of the same sort is found to have 
 simultaneously arisen in the hearts of those whom we have 
 spoken of as accomplices. But as they in their proper per- 
 sons have done no criminal act, can this principle, in their 
 case, be regarded as truly and properly sinful ? Kot unless 
 they can be connected with the original act of wrong-doing, 
 as accomplices or participants. Now it will be found that 
 Rivet and his witnesses, when they insist on the imputation 
 of the first sin, are contending against the idea that mere 
 native corruption is the whole of original sin ; just as Cal- 
 vin and many others deny that imputation is the whole. 
 Both belong inseparably together. One may give the logi- 
 cal priority to inherent depravity, provided he includes 
 under it participation in the first sin, on which imputation 
 ultimately rests ; and another may make imputation first, it 
 being understood that participation is the condition of it. 
 The fact (A participation^ by which the first act is both per- 
 sonal and generic, and therefore ours in one sense, and not 
 ours in another, is the point of coincidence between both 
 views. The circumstance that participation is sometimes 
 implied, rather than expressed, both by those who give the 
 precedence to imputation, and those who give the precedence 
 
388 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 to native corruption, occasioned some misunderstanding be- 
 tween them, and has been since a fruitful source of misun- 
 derstanding to their interpreters. But, as we have ah*eady 
 observed, if we except a few supralapsarians, the fact of a 
 true and real, though not personal, participation in the first 
 sin, is everywhere held. Not unfrequently the true philo- 
 sophical order, with participation in its proper place, is found 
 in the writers quoted by Rivet. We may cite Parens as an 
 example : 
 
 '* Original sin, as well in Adam as in his posterity, includes these three 
 deadly evils, actual iniquity (culpam), legal guilt (reatum) or the penalty 
 of death, and habitual depravity or deformity. These concur in connec- 
 tion with the first sin, simultaneously in the parent and posterity : with 
 this difference only, that Adam was the principal sinning agent, admitting 
 iniquity, meriting guilt, casting away the image of God, and depraving 
 himself. All these things belong to his posterity by participation, impu- 
 tation, and generation from a sinful parent. Thus it is a futile dispute 
 of sophists, whether it was only the first iniquity (culpa) or only guilt, or 
 only disorder, pollution or native vitiosity. For it is all these. Giving a 
 broad definition, you may say it is the fall and disobedience of the first 
 parents, and in them of the whole human race, in which all alike (pariter), 
 the image of God being cast away, depraved their nature, were made ene- 
 mies of God, and contracted the guilt of temporal and eternal death, un- 
 less deliverance and reconciliation take place by the Son of God, the 
 Mediator." " All are dead by the offence of one man. Therefore, the 
 offence was the offence of all, but by participation and imputation." * 
 
 Statements parallel with this of Parens might be quoted 
 in abundance, f 
 
 * Jtiveti Opera, t. iii. , 319. 
 f That participation is an essential element in original sin, may be seen 
 especially by reference to the passages, in Rivet, from Musculus, Viretus, 
 Bucanus, Polanus, Chamierus, Mestrezatius, Whittaker (Professor at 
 Cambridge), Davenant, Ames, WalsBus, Junius, Frisius, Hommius—who 
 says, " Peccatum Adami non est nobis omnino alienum, sed est proprium 
 cujusque, quod propter banc naturae communionem singulis hominibus 
 non tantum imputatur, sed a singulis etiam est perpetratum " — Lauren- 
 tius, Zanchius, Piscator, Textor, Crocius, Bucer, Chemnitz (the author 
 of the Examen. Cone. Trid ). Compare the two Dissertations on Original 
 Sin by Bivet himself, Disput. II. (t. iii., p. 747), and the Theses Theolog. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 389 
 
 What lias been said will prepare us to comprehend the 
 Placsean controversy. Having made a careful examination 
 of the writings of Placaeus, we feel competent to state what 
 his views really were. His great aim was to confute the 
 doctrine of immediate or antecedent imputation. He was at 
 first understood to deny participation, but this misunder- 
 standing, as was said above, he corrected. His opinions are 
 expressed, prior to the Synod of Charenton, in the Theses 
 Salmu7*enses.'^ God, he says, counts no man a sinner who 
 is not truly so. Either Adam's actual sin is imputed to us, 
 or our original, inherent depravity. The former cannot be 
 proved from the Bible. AYe sinned in Adam, as we died in 
 him. Human nature was in Adam, generically the same as 
 in us, but numerically distinct from human nature in us con- 
 sidered as persons. Hence our sin is the same generically, 
 but not numerically with his. K he was appointed to obey 
 or disobey instead of us, why not to be punished instead of 
 us, also ? If his first actual sin was ours, why not his act of 
 generating Cain or Seth ? The true doctrine is that of 
 seminal corruption. The sensitive soul — the animal soul — 
 is produced from the parent; the intellectual or rational 
 soul is directly created. The soul on entering the corrupted 
 physical nature, is not passively corrupted, but becomes cor- 
 rupt actively, accommodating itself in character to the other 
 part of human nature ; as water, by an appetency of its 
 OTf^Ti, takes the form of the bowl into which it is poured. 
 
 In the copious treatise on Imputation, which he wrote 
 after the action of the synod, he develops his system with 
 great fulness and likewise with great ability. f The report 
 
 de pec. orig. (t. iii,, p. 824). In the former, sections x. — xvi. (inclusive) 
 and xxiv. deserve particular attention ; in the latter, sections 5, 20, 23, 
 25, 27, 28, 29, 83, 34, 42. 
 
 * Syntagma Thes. TheoLog. in Acad. Salm., etc. Edit. Secunda., Pt. i., 
 205 seq. 
 
 f Placaei, Opera Omnia : Edito novissima : Franequer. De Imp. primi 
 pec. AdamiUiispuLy etc. Tom i., p. 161 seq. 
 
390 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 tliat his doctrine had been condemned by the synod, he 
 says, had been eagerly caught up by those unfriendly to 
 Saumur. * But the terms of their decree did not touch him. 
 The decree did not condemn those who restrict original sin 
 to inherent depravity, but those who so restrict it to inherent 
 depravity as to deny the imputation of Adam's first sin. f 
 This he does not deny. He holds to imputation, but to 
 mediate, not immediate imputation.ij: Adam's first actual 
 sin is imputed to us in the sense that it is the cause of our 
 guilt by causing our depravity, and further as our inherent 
 sin involves and implies a consent to his first transgression.§ 
 In defence of the propriety of using the term " imputation " 
 to designate this view, he appeals to Romans ii. 27 : " If 
 the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall 
 not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision." || He 
 holds that we participate in Adam's sin, and habitually con- 
 sent thereto at the outset of our personal life. It may be 
 truly said that we were in the loins of Adam, and sinned in 
 him and with him.^f The sin of Adam is communicated to 
 us by propagation. The corruption that followed Adam's 
 first actual sin is imputed to us as passing over to us — idem 
 specie — Adam communicating at once sin and nature.** He 
 appeals to Calvin, to Gualter, to Chamier, to Eivet, in sup- 
 port of his doctrine as to the difference in the mode of the 
 imputation of Adam's sin and Christ's righteousness.-t-f 
 The analogy of Christ's relation to us proves nothing in favor 
 of immediate imputation. Our sins are not imputed to 
 Christ as their author, but as a surety ; but Adam's sin is 
 imputed to us as its authors. The one is of grace, the 
 other on the ground of desert. P;. But our own faith is the 
 necessary condition of justification, just as our intermediate 
 depravity is the necessary prerequisite of the imputation of 
 
 * De Imp. primipee, Adami Disput, etc. Tom. i., p. 163. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 176. t Ibid., p. 173. § Ibid., pp. 179, 284, 286. 
 
 I Ibid., p. 284. IF Ibid., p. 188. ** Ibid., p. 198. 
 
 ft Ibid., pp. 195, 198, 201, 206. U Ibid., p. 185. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 391 
 
 Adam's sin. He contends that his antagonist, Garrisole, ad- 
 mits everything that is essential to the Placsean doctrine. 
 For lie allows that the guilt of Adam's first sin and of inher- 
 ent depravity are one and the same guilt. There are not 
 two guilts, or guiltinesses, but only one. 
 
 Placgeus claimed that his conception of the subject is iden- 
 tical with that of Calvin. He could appropriate the lan- 
 guage of Calvin in the Institutes and in the Commentary on 
 the Epistle to the Romans, as a faithful description of his 
 doctrine. It appeared at first to the opponents of Placaeus, 
 as we have more than once remarked, that he had dropped 
 the idea of participation in the first sin ; but this was simply 
 because he dwelt so much on seminal corruption and the law 
 of propagation, according to which depravity passes from 
 father to son. But Anselm and Calvin might have been at- 
 tacked with as much justice as Placaeus. This attack on 
 Placaeus is an indication that the doctrine of original sin was 
 in danger of being removed from its Augustinian foundation. 
 
 One of the most active opponents of the doctrines of the 
 Saumur professors was Francis Turretine. Though he had 
 studied at Saumur as well as at Paris, he allied himself with 
 the more rigid theologians of Montauban. He became the 
 head of a party at Geneva, which labored to procure the con- 
 demnation of the Saumur views by the Swiss Church. Op- 
 posed to this party at Geneva were Mestrezat and Louis 
 Tronchin, colleagues of Turretine, and other theologians of a 
 liberal and tolerant spirit. Turretine and his party at length 
 effected a partial success by securing the promulgation and 
 partial enforcement, for a time, in Switzerland, of the Formu- 
 la Consensus Helvetica^ which they took the lead in framing. 
 They were not deterred from this step by the remonstrance 
 of eminent ministers of foreign churches, among whom were 
 the Paris pastors, the younger Daille, and the famous Claude, 
 together with the distinguished theologian of Holland, J. R. 
 Wetstein. Turretine and the party to which he belonged 
 professed to regard with charity and toleration the ministers 
 
392 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 who differed from tliem on the points of theology to which 
 the Conseiisus relates ; they were only anxious to keep the 
 Swiss Church free from erroneous teaching. Their creed is 
 levelled at the peculiar doctrines of each of the three Saumur 
 professors. Against Capi^el, they go so far as to assert the 
 inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points in the Old Testament, 
 and to condemn, also, his critical views respecting the Hebrew 
 text — thus givuig their solemn sanction to the Buxtorllan 
 grammar and criticism ! Having demolished Capellus, the 
 Consensus condemns Amyraldism — universal atonement and 
 the doctrine that God desires the salvation of all. Amyraut's 
 doctrine of universal grace is carefully defined and denounced. 
 Then the Placsean doctrine, or the doctrine which Tm-retine 
 persisted in ascribing to Placseus, is put under the ban. The 
 Consensus never acquired authority outside of Switzerland. 
 Within about fifty years it was abrogated. One of the strong- 
 est advocates of this last measure was Turretine's own son, 
 Alphonso Turretine, who was as zealous in opposing as his 
 father had been in advocating it.* If there was ever a creed 
 which deserves to be called the manifesto of a theological 
 party, rather than a confession of faith on the part of the 
 church, the Formula Consensus is that one. And yet we have 
 seen this partisan document, with its not only verbal but lit- 
 eral inspiration, according to the grammar of Buxtorf, quoted 
 side by side with passages from the Augsburg Confession 
 and the Heidelberg Catechism ! 
 
 * In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the younger Turretine 
 says that the Consensus would exclude from the ministry many excellent 
 ministers of God ; almost all the doctors of the first four centuries and a 
 great number of ages following ; almost all of the Reformers, a great part 
 of the reformed theologians of France, and the ablest among them ; a 
 great portion of the German theologians, and almost all the theologians 
 of the English church. 
 
 This letter may be read in the Supplement to Bayle^s Dictionary by 
 Chauseppie — Art. " Louis Tronchin," Note C. The earlier letter of F. 
 Turretine to Claude, ou the other side, is in curious contrast with the sen- 
 timents of hia son. This may also be read in Chauseppie. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 393 
 
 But even the Formula Consensus Helvetica associates with 
 the theory of the covenant that of a real participation in the 
 first sin. It affirms that prior to actual sin, man is exposed 
 to the divine wrath for a double reason, " first, on account of 
 the irdpaiTTOD^a and disobedience which he committed in the 
 loins of Adam ; then by reason of the consequent hereditary 
 corruption, introduced at his very conception, by which his 
 whole nature is depraved and spiritually dead." 
 
 If we turn to the Institutes of Turretine, which was pub- 
 lished in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and 
 when the antagonism to Placseus had produced its full effect 
 in determining the form of theology on this subject, we see, 
 indeed, vestiges of the genuine Augustinian doctrine, but we 
 see also that this is well-nigh supplanted. Turretine leans 
 strongly to the supralapsarian philosophy, which explains 
 moral phenomena by reference to the w^ill of God, as the ul- 
 timate foundation, rather than his immutable justice. The 
 doctrine of immediate or antecedent imputation coheres with 
 that system, and was espoused by its advocates. In their 
 view, it is sufficient that God determines to consider one 
 guilty if another sins. His determination to establish such a 
 constitution makes it just. There is one word in Turretine's 
 discussion of imputation which is quite significant as mark- 
 ing the doctrinal transition which we are attempting to 
 sketch. He founds imputation on our natural union with 
 Adam, as the father and root of the race, and on the federal 
 union with him, our appointed representative. " The foun- 
 dation, therefore, of imputation is not only the natural union 
 w^hich comes in between us and Adam — otherwise all his sins 
 would have to be imputed to us, but chiefly the mm^al and 
 federal^ by which God framed a covenant with him as our 
 head." * It is chiefly-^"^flg^w6 " — the covenant relation 
 on which the justice and propriety of imputation are made 
 to rest. At the same time there are passages in this author 
 
 * InsiituteB, P. L Loc. IX., Q. IX, xi. 
 17* 
 
394 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 which go beyond the more modem theory of immediate im- 
 putation and in the direction of Augustinism. He declares, 
 in arguing against Placseus, that the orthodox doctrine holds 
 to both sorts of imputation, immediate and mediate ; imply- 
 ing that they are inseparable. He says : "In the propaga- 
 tion of sin, the accident does not pass from subject to sub- 
 ject " — that is, sin does not go from person to person — " be- 
 cause the immediate subject of sin is not the person, but 
 human nature, vitiated by the actual transgression of the 
 person, which being communicated to the posterity of Adam, 
 this inherent corruption is communicated in it. As, there- 
 fore, in Adam, person infected nature, so, in his posterity, 
 nature infects person." ^ Sin is transmitted — handed down. 
 But sin is not a substance, it is an accident. Hence it inheres 
 in something. It inheres not in the person, but in the natu7'e, 
 which being corrupted in Adam, passes down to his descend- 
 ants. Alluding to Hebrews vii. 9 — " Levi, also, who receiv- 
 eth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham " — Turretine denies that 
 it is to be figuratively taken. It is to be taken in the proper 
 sense. Abraham in that solemn action sustained the person 
 of Levi or of the Aaronic sacerdotal order that was to spring 
 from him ; and this he did properly and truly, though his 
 other relations — his faith, for example — were merely per- 
 sonal.f 
 
 Apart from the supposed scriptural foundation for the 
 theory of the covenant, it is easy to account for the spread 
 of it, and for its displacement of the Augustinian idea. The 
 old difficulty growing out of the origin of souls by separate 
 acts of creation, which was the accepted hypothesis among 
 Calvinists, was felt with. ever-increasing force. In particu- 
 lar, the covenant theory suggested a plausible mode of meet- 
 ing two objections to the doctrine of original sin in its ancient 
 form. One thing which had not been satisfactorily explained 
 was the non-imputation of other sins of Adam, besides the 
 
 * Institutes, P. L, Loc. IX., Q. X., xxii. f Ibid., Q. IX., xxv. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 395 
 
 first, not to speak of all his other actions, to his posterity. If 
 we participated responsibly in the first sin, why not in his 
 subsequent acts also ? The other fact that demanded expla- 
 nation was the non-imputation of the sins of nearer ances- 
 tors, even of all mankind, to each individual. The theory 
 of a common nature, when taken as a sufficient explication 
 of the subject, was attended with these difficulties. The 
 solution had been commonly sought in the hypothesis th^t 
 all acts of Adam subsequent to the first, as well as the acts 
 of nearer kindred, are phenomenal, personal. That act alone 
 corrupted the nature. But the covenant, it was thought, 
 furnished an easier and better answer. The covenant, by its 
 terms, turned upon the conduct of Adam for a limited pe- 
 riod, and one act of sin on the part of Adam forfeited all its 
 privileges and brought upon mankind the judicial forfeiture. 
 It is true that the difficulty remained until the fundamental 
 principle of Augustine was wholly given up. How can man- 
 kind, it might still be asked, participate in the first act alone ? 
 For it was still the prevailing view, throughout the seven- 
 teenth century, among adherents of the covenant theology, 
 with the exception of supralapsarians, that in that first sin 
 there was a true and proper participation. It seems to have 
 been long felt by theologians that the covenant would not 
 answer of itself, without the doctrine of real participation, in 
 confronting objections to imputation and native depravity ; 
 and yet the two props were hardly congruous with one an- 
 other. When the justice of imputation on the ground of a 
 federal relation was called in question, they fell back on the 
 theory of participation ; but when asked why all the actions 
 of Adam are not imputed to us, they pleaded the covenant. 
 The process of supplanting the Augustinian theory was 
 consummated in the eighteenth century. But Calvinistic 
 theology in England, having nothing but the covenant to 
 rest upon, fomid itself in the hapless plight which is de- 
 scribed by the younger Edwards in his account of the state 
 of things when his father began his labors. To illustrate 
 
396 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 the half-hearted tone and helpless situation of the represen- 
 tatives of Calvinistic doctrine, we have only to refer to 
 three of the most conspicuous of them, Ridgelej, Dodd- 
 ridge, and Watts. Eidgeley says that Adam's sin is ours 
 only in a forensic sense.* He considers how the imputa- 
 tion of it can be justified. 1. It is said : " If Adam had 
 not fallen, we should be content with the arrangement." 
 Xhis, replies Eidgeley, is not a sufiicient answer. 2. If his 
 posterity had existed, the law of nature would have directed 
 them to choose Adam for their representative, he being the 
 common father. This answer, says Ridgeley, "bids fairer 
 to remove the difficulty," but does not wholly remove it. 
 3. God chose Adam to be our representative, and we ought 
 to acquiesce. But this, Eidgeley replies, will not satisfy the 
 objector ; it puts the sovereignty of God, he will say, against 
 his other perfections. Eidgeley comes to the conclusion 
 that the guilt of men for Adam's sin cannot be so great as 
 the guilt we contract by actual sins.f Here he takes up an 
 opinion which the schoolmen and later Eoman Catholics 
 had avowed, but which the old Protestant theology had 
 looked upon with disfavor. The punishment of infants, 
 Eidgeley thinks, will be the mildest of any. Accusations 
 of conscience will not belong to those who have no sin save 
 original sin. How we can be properly sinful at birth is the 
 point which Eidgeley, even with the help of the covenant, 
 is obviously puzzled to explain. 
 
 According to Doddridge, men are bom with evil propen- 
 sities ; but the difficulty of supposing this " is considerably 
 lessened " if we suppose that things are so constituted upon 
 the' whole as that a man is not necessa/rily impelled to any 
 actions which shall end iti his final destruction." % What re- 
 mains of the difficulty, says Doddridge, is the same under 
 other schemes as under the scheme of Christianity. The 
 
 * These citations are from the Am. ed. of Ridgeley's Syf^tem, vol. i. 
 f Ibid., p. 141. X Doddridge's Lectures, Prop. 133, SchoL 3. 
 
THEOEIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 397 
 
 sin of Adam is, " in some degree," imputed to his poster- 
 ity.* The covenant with Adam is, " in some measure," for 
 his posterity, t '^ It may seem probable'''' that the posterity 
 of Adam would have been advantaged by his obedience, 
 but to what extent we cannot say.:j: One rational creature, 
 we may be certain, will not be made finally and eternally 
 miserable for the sin of another. What the state of those 
 who die in infancy is, we know not. 
 
 Watts afiirms that the fact of infants being the descend- 
 ants of Adam will not account for their miseries and their 
 death. We must also suppose that he is our legal represen- 
 tative. Of this theory of representation, Watts naively ob- 
 serves : " I must confess I am not fond of such a scheme or 
 hypothesis." "No! I would gladly renounce it," "if I 
 could find any other way " to vindicate Providence. § The 
 appearance of injustice, in one man's making millions of 
 men sinners, is relieved, " in some meojsure^'' if Adam is 
 regarded as our natural head. Legal representation will 
 " do much " towards removing all remaining appearance of 
 injustice.]! Watts tries to answer the objection that we did 
 not consent to this representation by Adam. 1. A noble- 
 man, when guilty of treason, disgraces and impoverishes 
 his descendants as well as himself. 2. God bestows bless- 
 ings on children and deprives them of privileges on account 
 of parents' sins. 3. The appointment of Adam, with his 
 advantages for remaining upright, was a very advantageous 
 thing for his posterity. Souls are separately created, but 
 are defiled by entering corrupt bodies. This transmission 
 of sin, says Watts, is the greatest difficulty in the doctrine. 
 It would not be just to jpunish infants eternally. ^^ The in- 
 fant children of wicked men, he thinks, are annihilated at 
 death.** 
 
 * Doddridge's Lectures, p. 413 (London ed., 1763). 
 f Ibid., p. 414. X Ibid., p. 414. ^ Works, vl, 224, 225. 
 
 i Ibid., p. 235. T[ Ibid., p. 309. ** Ibid., pp. 309, 314. 
 
398 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 Into tills plight were candid and excellent men brought 
 by their federal theology. Such timid theolognes were an 
 easy prey to their Arminian assailants. Doubtless it is to 
 Watts and Doddridge that President Edwards refers, to- 
 wards the end of his treatise on original sin, where he con- 
 futes the opinion of "two divines of no inconsiderable 
 note among the Dissenters of England, relating to 2i. partial 
 irrvputation of Adam's sin." 
 
 President Edwards fell back on what was substantially 
 the old doctrine of original sin. In reading his discussion 
 we seem to be carried back to Aquinas and Augustine. His 
 original speculations are to support this doctrine, but they 
 do not materially modify it. It is true that he calls Adam 
 our federal head, but the covenant is only " a sovereign, 
 gracious establishment," going beyond mere justice, and 
 promising rewards to Adam and his posterity, in case he 
 should obey, to which neither he nor they could lay claim.''*" 
 What he attempts to make out is a true and real participa- 
 tion in the first sin. The human species rebelled against 
 God, and that act, as far as the morality of it is concerned, 
 is ours not less than Adam's. There is a consent to it, or a 
 concurrence in it, on our part. The first rising of a sinful 
 inclination is this consent and concurrence ; and our guilt 
 for this first rising of sinful inclination is identical with our 
 guilt for Adam's sin. There is not a double guilt, as if two 
 things were " distinctly imputed and charged upon men in 
 the sight of God." We really constitute with Adam one 
 complex person — one moral whole ; as truly so as if we co- 
 existed with him in time^ and were physically united to him 
 as the members of the body are to the head. " The first 
 existing of a corrupt disposition is not to be looked upon as 
 sin distinct from their participation of Adam's first sin. It 
 is as it were the extended pollution of that sin through the 
 whole tree, by virtue of the constituted union of the 
 
 * Edwards's (D wight's ed.), ii., 543. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 399 
 
 branches with the root ; or the inherence of the sin of that 
 head of the species in the members, in their consent and 
 concurrence with the head in that first act." * In saying 
 that this is a constituted union, Edwards does not mean that 
 it is artificial, unreal, or merely legal. It depends, to be 
 sure, on the will of God, but not more so than does the ac- 
 cepted fact of personal identity. It is a divine constitu- 
 tion, but it is natural — a constitution of nature. The first 
 depravity of heart and the imputation of Adam's sin, " are 
 both the consequences of that established union ; but yet 
 in such order that the evil disposition i^ first, and the charge 
 of guilt consequent, as it was in the case of Adam himself." 
 Depravity, as an established principle, unlike the^r^^ rising 
 of depravity in the soul, " is a consequence and punishment 
 of the first apostasy thus participated, and brings new 
 guilt." Our share in the first sin is really the same as if we 
 were parts of Adam, " all jointly participating and all concur- 
 ring, as one whole, in the disposition and action of the 
 head." It will be seen that the conception of Edwards is 
 very like that of Aquinas. One original point in Edwards's 
 explication of the subject is the careful distinction between 
 the first rising or manifestation of sinful inclination in the 
 Boul, and the same as an established principle. Had this 
 distinction been explicitly made by Flacseus, and by advo- 
 cates of mediate imputation generally, their doctrine would 
 not have been mistaken for a mere doctrine of hereditary 
 sin. Edwards presents a philosophical theory and defence 
 of participation. His aim is to show that it is no absurd or 
 impossible thing for " the race of mankhid truly to partake 
 of the sin of the first apostasy, so that this, in reality and 
 propriet}^, shall become their sin ; " " and therefore the sin 
 of the apostasy is not theirs merely because God imputes it 
 to them ; but it is truly and properly theirs, and on that 
 ground God imputes it to them." f 
 
 * Ibid., p. 544. flbid, P- 559. 
 
400 THE AUGUSTESriAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 In New England, among the followers of Edwards, only 
 80 much of his theory was retained as asserted an infallible 
 connection, in virtue of an established constitution, between 
 Adam's first sin and the existence of a sinful inclination in 
 each of his descendants. This sinful inclination was re- 
 garded not as a real participation, but only as a virtual or 
 constructive consent to the first sin of Adam. The doctrine 
 of mere inherited depravity on the one hand, and Hopkin- 
 sianism and the new-school theology on the other, were the 
 natural consequence. Imputation of Adam's sin was given 
 up. On the contrary, Calvinists of the Princeton school 
 planted themselves on the federal theory, took up the doc- 
 trine of Immediate Imputation, which had brought the 
 English Calvinism of the eighteenth century into such diffi- 
 culties, and making Turretine their text-book, waged war 
 upon the Isqw England views, not wholly sparing Edwards 
 himself. 
 
 When we direct our attention to the Eoman Catholic the- 
 ology we observe that the doctrine of immediate imputation, 
 which Abelard and certain nominalists broached in the mid- 
 dle ages, has found little favor in later times, except among 
 latitudinarians. The orthodox Catholic theology — the rep- 
 resentatives of Augustinism — have regarded the whole fed- 
 eral theory with distrust and aversion. It is remarkable 
 that in the Council of Trent the federal theory was brought 
 forward by Catharinus, the opponent of Calvin, and a man 
 who was all his life suspected in his own church of being 
 loose in his theology in relation to the points which sepa- 
 rated Augustine from Pelagius. According to Father Paul, 
 Catharinus explained his opinion to be that as " God made 
 a covenant with Abraham and all his posterity, when he 
 made him father of the faithful, so when he gave original 
 righteousness to Adam and to all mankind, he made him 
 seal an obligation in the name of all, to keep it for himself 
 and them, observing the commandments ; which, because he 
 transgressed, he lost, as well for others as for himself, and 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 401 
 
 incurred the punishments also for them." * Against this 
 opinion the celebrated champion of orthodoxy, Dominicus 
 "Soto, protested, f He distinguished between the actual sin 
 of Adam ^and the principle or habit " bred in the mind of 
 the actor." " This habitual quality," remaining in Adam^ 
 " passed into the posterity, and is transfused as proper unto 
 every one." " He compareth," says Father Paul, " original 
 sin to crookedness, as it is indeed a spiritual obliquity ; for 
 the whole nature of man being in Adam, when he made 
 himself crooked by transgressing the precept, the whole na- 
 ture of man, and, by consequent, every particular person re- 
 mained crooked, not by the curvity of Adam, but by his own, 
 by which he is truly crooked and a sinner, until he be 
 straightened by the grace of God." Afterwards, Father 
 Paul observes that the opinion of Catharinus was best un- 
 derstood, " because it was expressed by a political conceit of 
 a bargain made by one for his posterity, which being trans- 
 gressed, they are all undoubtedly bound ; and many of the 
 fathers did favor that ; but perceiving the contradiction of 
 the other divines, they durst not receive it." In his theo- 
 logical writings, composed after the council, Soto opposed 
 the covenant theory and defended pure Augustinism. Bel- 
 larmine declares that the council intended to condemn the 
 doctrine of Pighius and Catharinus, who denied that innate 
 depravity is properly sinful. This great expounder of Cath- 
 olic theology maintains that the first sin of Adam was gene- 
 ric. " There could not be anything in infants," he says, " of 
 the nature of sin, unless they were participant in the first sin 
 of Adam." j^ This sin is imputed to all, who are born of 
 Adam, since all, existing in the loins of Adam, in him and 
 by him sinned, w^hen he sinned." § 
 
 By common consent of Protestants, Jansenius is considered 
 to have been, on the Catholic side in the seventeenth cen- 
 
 ♦ We quote from the Old English translation of Father Paul's History 
 of the Council of Trent, pp. 175, 177. f Ibid. , p. 176. 
 
 X Vol. iii. , Cont. ii. , Lib. v. , c. xviii. § Ibid. , c. xiii. 
 
402 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 tuiy, the most faithful follower of Augustine. He read all 
 the writings of Augustine seventeen times, and his copious 
 work on this father was the fruit of his devoted labors. 
 "Now, Jansenius opposes the covenant theory with aU his 
 might, as being at war with Augustinian theology. Recent 
 theologians have invented that theory, he says. They could 
 not have excogitated anything more foreign to Augustine's 
 thoughts, more absurd in relation to his system, or more re- 
 pugnant to his principles. * Augustine held that the great- 
 ness of the first sin is the cause of the corruption of nature 
 and of the transmission of corruption ; and so that " all 
 things take place by no agreement, but happen from the na- 
 ture of things, because the children are said to have sinned 
 in the parent and to have been one with him." f " In Au- 
 gustine's view nothing else is original sin, but concupiscence 
 with guilt." Jansenius declares that nobody ever had so 
 wild a dream as to imagine that this great depravation of 
 human nature comes upon men from some agreement made 
 by God with their parents, or is propagated by the positive 
 law or wiU of God. :j: Augustine, he says, never resorted to 
 any compacts or positive laws of God for the explication of 
 this subject. It was through the nature of things, in Augus- 
 tine's view, that the first great sin, together with human na- 
 ture, pass to the posterity of Adam. § We could quote from 
 Jansenius pages of argument and warm denunciation directed 
 against the federal theory. It is not merely the idea of im- 
 putation without inherent sin — the notion of Pighius and 
 Catharinus — that he opposes, but also the whole conception 
 of a covenant with Adam, entailing a curse on his posterity. 
 The significance and importance of his sentiments on this 
 subject, theological scholars will at once comprehend. He 
 considers the federal hypothesis an innovation, hostile to the 
 spirit of the Augustinian doctrine. 
 
 * Jansenius, Auguatimis (Louvain, 1640), t. ii., p. 208. 
 t Ibid., p. 211. X Ibid., p. 247. § Ibid., p. 246. 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED. 403 
 
 Here we pause in this historical investigation. It is clear 
 to us, first, that the prevailing doctrine, down to a compara- 
 tively recent period, made the imputation of Adam's sin and 
 inherent depravity, each the inseparable condition of the 
 other, instead of regarding the latter merely as the penal 
 consequence of the former ; and, secondly, that real partici- 
 pation in the first sin formed the groimdwork of imputation, 
 the covenant hypothesis without participation being a later 
 notion, tlie offspring of the false and untenable philosophy 
 which supralapsarian theologians vainly endeavored to es- 
 tablish in the Reformed Church. 
 
 We subjoin a brief statement of objections to the theory 
 of immediate imputation on the federal basis. 
 
 1. The Scriptural argument for this theory will not bear 
 examination. The relation to God under which Adam was 
 placed is never called in the Scriptures a covenant. The ad- 
 vocates of the theory pretend to adduce but one passage 
 where it is thus called — Hosea vi. 7 ; but this passage is cor- 
 rectly rendered in our version as follows : " For they like 
 men " — not like Adam, which is the other rendering — " have 
 transgressed the covenant." The offence of Ephraim and 
 Judah is an example of a common species of depravity. It 
 is not claimed that the teachings of Jesus Christ contain any 
 reference to a covenant with Adam or to a vicarious office 
 such as the doctrine of immediate imputation attributes to 
 him. If this doctrine is one of so vast consequence in the 
 Christian system, it is astonishing that the founder of Chris- 
 tianity should make no mention of it. The circumstance 
 that the same penalties which are threatened to Adam, like- 
 wise fall upon his descendants, proves nothing to the purpose. 
 In whatever way they become sinful, these penalties are ap- 
 propriately inflicted on them. If it is said by Paul (1 Cor. 
 XV. 21, 22, 47), that all die '' in Adam," this is not saying 
 that their death is the penalty of his sin. They die because 
 they are the children of Adam, but how this takes place, or 
 the causal nexus between the two facts, is not given. The 
 
404 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 real stronghold — ^if it can be called a stronghold — of the im- 
 putation theory is Romans v. 12 seq. We have not room to 
 examine this passage in detaU. The stress of the argument 
 of the advocates of this theory rests finally on the apostle's 
 statement that " condemnation ^' comes upon men " by one 
 that sinned " and " by the offence of one," or by one offence. 
 But the apostle's declaration holds good, if the transgression 
 of Adam brought mankind into a state of condemnation, 
 whether this result was through their own depravity or not. 
 The great thought of Paul is that Adam ruined the race, 
 and Christ saved it. Our condemnation is traceable to one, 
 our justification to the other. Intermediate agencies and 
 proximate causes are left out of consideration. The manner 
 in which the advocates of immediate imputation interpret 
 these words of Paul reminds one of Luther's iteration of the 
 hoG est meuni corpus in his controversy with Zwingle. It is 
 an example of that rather frigid style of exegesis, by which 
 transubstantiation and consubstantiation become dogmas in 
 large portions of the church. 
 
 2. The extreme form of the doctrine of imputation, which 
 is in vogue at present, involves its advocates in the inconsist- 
 ency of supposing that there is a sin for which we are respon- 
 sible in the full legal sense — as truly so as was its perpetra- 
 tor — ^but which does not bring on us, of itself, eternal pun- 
 ishment. Calvin and most of the old theologians were con- 
 sistent in holding that the penalty could not be inflicted on 
 us for Adam's sin alone, apart from inherent depravity ; for 
 they held that imputation is impossible apart from inherent 
 depravity. But the Princeton writers, separating the one 
 from the other and making inherent depravity merely the 
 punishment of sin imputed, still make this depravity the 
 necessary condition of the infliction of eternal death. Why ? 
 Did not Adam deserve this penalty for that first act alone ? 
 Is not our responsibility for it as great as his ? Why would 
 it not be just to inflict eternal death upon us for imputed sin 
 alone ? What a strange theory ! Here is a sin in which we 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPAJIED. 405 
 
 had no real part, for whicli we are not regarded with moral 
 disapprobation, which we are not bound to repent of, and 
 which does not bring on us, as a direct penal consequence, 
 eternal death ; and yet it is a sin for which we ai-e legally 
 responsible — as truly so as the individual who committed 
 it! 
 
 3. The covenant hypothesis, regarded as a solution of the 
 problem of sin, wears a superficial character. It is one of 
 those artificial solutions of great moral and social problems, 
 which remove difficulties in too easy a manner, at the same 
 time that they raise difficulties greater than those which they 
 remove. There is a striking analogy between this hypothe- 
 sis and the social compact theory of government, which was 
 the product of the same age. A covenant between individ- 
 uals was declared to be the foundation of civil society, and 
 the obligation of civil obedience was made to rest on this 
 imaginary contract. Certain perplexing questions appeared 
 to be solved by this hypothesis, which was a mere legal fic- 
 tion, and accordingly its mischievous bearing in other re- 
 spects was overlooked. 
 
 The theoretical defences of the federal h}^othesis are 
 weak enough. It is objected to the doctrine that men infal- 
 libly become sinners in consequence of Adam's sin, through 
 a sovereign constitution — the idea of Kew England theology 
 — ^that this doctrine attributes too much to the will of God. 
 We will not here discuss the New England view ; but, 
 strange to say, this objection comes from those who found 
 the covenant itself on nothing better. They hold that men 
 are judicially condemned to be sinners, and to endure the 
 penalty of sin ; but when we ask for the ground of this con- 
 demnation we are referred to the covenant, and when we 
 inquire into the justice of the covenant, we are thrown back 
 on the sovereignty of God. They seek to remove a diffi- 
 culty by creating another, only one step distant, of a more 
 formidable character. It is better, with Augustine, to leave 
 some questions mianswered than to solve them by inventing 
 
406 THE ArGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 hypotheses which are in open conflict with proper concep- 
 tions of the divine justice. 
 
 The most plausible defence of the covenant hypothesis is 
 that founded on sdentia media, God foresaw that the de- 
 scendants of Adam, if they were to be tried individually, 
 would not do better than he, his inducements to right action 
 being greater than theirs would be ; and, therefore, deter- 
 mhied to treat them judicially according to his conduct. 
 The scientia media, in such applications of it, is an exploded 
 principle. It might as well be argued that because God 
 foresaw that Adam and his posterity would be sinners, it 
 would be just for him to condemn them all and punish them 
 eternally, without any probation whatsoever. 
 
 The analogy of Christ's work is pleaded in support of the 
 theory in question. But Owen, as we have seen, makes the 
 relation of Christ, as the author of benefits to his people, an 
 exception to the ordinary rule of the divine administration, 
 and a case by itself. Not to insist on the propriety of this 
 distinction, it is sufficient to say that the argument from the 
 analogy of Christ's work depends wholly on the idea that 
 distributive justice is satisfied by the atonement, so that the 
 believer, apart from the consideration of the promise to him, 
 could not be justly condemned. To identify the scriptural 
 and orthodox conception of expiation with the last proposi- 
 tion is simply preposterous. 
 
 4. The doctrine of immediate imputation, in the form in 
 which it is now held, involves, by necessary inference, the 
 proposition that God is the author of sin. It is held that, 
 on account of Adam's sin, God withdraws from the soul, 
 from the moment of its creation — that is, never imparts to 
 the soul — the grace, without which it cannot but sin. It is 
 thus rendered sinful, prior to moral choice — prior to the 
 knowledge of moral distinctions. It is vain to urge that the 
 act of God is of a negative character. What he does ren- 
 ders the effect inevitable. It is vain to say that the faculties 
 of agency remain. By the supposition, it is just as impossi- 
 
THEOIilES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPAEED. 407 
 
 ble, from the moment of creation, to be holy as to see with- 
 out light or to breathe without air. To suppose a man to be 
 holy is even more absurd, for, on the withdrawal of grace, 
 the powers of the soul necessarily fall into disorder and cor- 
 ruption. We do not see how the conclusion can be avoided 
 that God is the author of sin. 
 
 5. The imputation theory makes sin the penalty of sin, in 
 a way which the church has never countenanced. I am con- 
 demned to be sinful, as a punishment for the sin of Adam, 
 who is called my representative. I had no real agency, it is 
 asserted, in that sin. But sin is inflicted on me as a penalty 
 for another's act. ]^ow, this theory is totally different from 
 the old view that a wrong-doer fastens on himself a habit 
 which becomes too strong for him to cast off ; so that his 
 sin becomes his punishment. The theory of immediate im- 
 putation makes sin to be inflicted on them who are not 
 wrong-doers. They are sinful in pursuance of an ante-natal 
 condemnation — ante-natal, and of an earlier date than their 
 creation. The Augustinian doctrine holds that native de- 
 pravity is both sin and punishment; but it professes to 
 bring this birth-sin under the great law of habit, to which 
 we have just adverted. We sinned in Adam and brought 
 on ourselves, as individuals, the sinful bondage to evil in 
 which we are born. It is thus widely at variance with the 
 modern theory, according to which we are slaves of sin for 
 an act which we are not to blame for and with which we 
 had nothing to do. The agency of God in relation to the 
 existence of sin is discussed by President Edwards in his 
 treatise on original sin ; and he makes the precise distinc- 
 tion which we have made here. The continuance of a state 
 of depravity according to a settled course of nature, is one 
 thing ; the origination of such a state in an individual is 
 quite another thing. This is to charge Adam's sin to his 
 posterity. The statement and admission of this distinction 
 leads Edwards to introduce, at this point in his discussion, 
 the realistic view of our connection with Adam, whereby 
 
408 THE AUGUSTINIAN AND THE FEDERAL 
 
 his act is made to be ours also, and thus to be a just cause of 
 our inherent depravity from birth. 
 
 6. The theory of immediate imputation is incompatible 
 with a right conception of the nature of sin. Princeton es- 
 says in support of this theory make much use of President 
 Edwards^s proposition that the virtuousness or viciousness of 
 acts of the will or dispositions of the heart lies not in their 
 cause, but their nature. Without assenting to everything 
 that Edwards teaches under this head, we fully accord with 
 his main idea that blame and praise belong to acts and states 
 of the will, and not to anything antecedent, to which they 
 are in some sense due. In the chapter referred to, he is 
 prosecuting his old crusade against the notion of choosing 
 choices. But he guards his own meaning in the following 
 remark : " As the phrase, heing the author, may be under- 
 stood, not of being the producer by an antecedent act of 
 will ; but as a person may be said to be the author of the act 
 of will itself, by his being the immediate agent, or the being 
 that is acting, or in exercise in that act ; if the phrase, heing 
 the author, is used to signify this, then doubtless common 
 sense requires men being [to be] the authors of their own 
 acts of will, in order to their being esteemed worthy of 
 praise or dispraise on account of them." Men are responsi- 
 ble, according to Edwards, for their evil native character, or 
 state of will, because they produced it through the generic act 
 — the act of the race — in Adam. Whether that first sin 
 was thus generic, and whether if it were so, it would justify 
 the consequences just stated — whether, in other words, a 
 generic act of this sort may, according to a righteous order, 
 entail guilt on the individual and engender sinful character 
 prior to an act of individual self-determination — we shall 
 not here inquire. But this is manifest, that Edwards, like the 
 Augustinians, supposed that an act of sin in which we truly 
 and really took part is the indispensable condition of native 
 guilt and depravity. This condition the doctrine of imme- 
 diate imputation on the federal basis sweeps away. We 
 
THEORIES OF ORIGINAL SIN COMPARED.. 
 
 409 
 
 are made to have a habit of sin from the outset, with no 
 prior act of sin on om* part, out of which it grew. This 
 violates the fundamental conception of holy and sinful char- 
 acter, which both the Scriptures and the common-sense of 
 mankind decisively sanction. 
 18 
 
410 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE 
 OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT.* 
 
 Recent ecclesiastical events in New England have called 
 up for public discussion the Christian doctrine of punish- 
 ment in the future life. The earnest and dispassionate con- 
 sideration of any of the momentous themes of religion cannot 
 fail to be of wholesome tendency. In the present ferment 
 of theological opinion in all Protestant countries, no tradi- 
 tional belief can escape the ordeal of renewed and searching 
 inquiry. Whatever in the temper of the times may be de- 
 serving of censure, there is a vast and increasing number of 
 persons who do really seek the truth with an open mind. 
 It having been thought best to present to the readers of The 
 New Englander two essays on the doctrine referred to — 
 written independently of one another, with no polemical in- 
 tent, and each of them by a theological scholar competent 
 to handle the questions involved, in the light to be drawn 
 from the improved philology of our day — the present 
 writer willingly consents to introduce these learned discus- 
 sions by preliminary remarks, chiefly historical. 
 
 In the ancient period — the patristic period — embracing 
 the first six centuries, the doctrine of endless punishment 
 was the prevalent opinion.f The idea of the ultimate res- 
 
 * An Article in The New Englander for March, 1878. 
 
 f A word may here be said upon Jewish opinion on this subject. The 
 Pharisees in the time of Christ taught the doctrine of endless punish- 
 ment, as we learn from Josephus, B. J!, ii. 8, 14, Ant. xviii 1, 3. In 
 both passages Josephus uses the term od^ios. See, also, Gfrorer, Das 
 , where the Rabbinical teaching is given. 
 
DOCTEIKE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 411 
 
 toration of all was entertained by a few eminent church 
 teachers, and the notion of an eventual annihilation of the 
 wicked was occasionally broached. Certain writers are 
 often erroneously cited as favoring the last-rnentioned view. 
 The Fathers not unfrequently argue against the belief that 
 the soul is self -existent, and in opposition to such a theory 
 they affirm that the soul, like every other creature of God, 
 is upheld by divine power, and will continue to exist as 
 long as He shall choose to maintain it in being. Remarks 
 of this kind have been construed as indicating that the souls 
 of the wicked will one day cease to be. So Justin Martyr 
 (Dial. c. Tryjph.y c. 5) is often interpreted ; and, at the first 
 blush, this seems to be the natural understanding of his 
 words. But the context of the very passage appears to ex- 
 clude this construction, which elsewhere would seem to be 
 expressly contradicted {Dial. c. Tryph., c. 130, Apol., i., 28). 
 Irenseus is misinterpreted in a similar way. In one place 
 (Adv. Ha^r., lib. ii., 34), a casual reader would suppose him 
 to affirm -that the existence of wicked souls is terminable. 
 Here again a close scrutiny of the context shows that a dis- 
 tinction is made between bare existence, and " life " in the 
 higher sense, with which " length of days " is made synony- 
 mous. This distinction is drawn out in other passages (Lib. 
 V. 4, § 3 ; 7, § 1 ; 27, § 2). " Separation from God," he 
 says, " is death," or the loss of that " life and light," that 
 triie joy, which depends on communion w^th God. That 
 Irenaeus held to the doctrine of annihilation has also been 
 deduced from a remark made in one of the so-called Pfaf- 
 fian fragments relative to the ultimate destruction of evil. 
 The author of this fragment evidently had in mind Col. i. 
 20, 22 ; and what he meant to say precisely, as far as the des- 
 tiny of the wicked is concerned, is not fully clear. But the 
 document itself is of more than doubtful genuineness, so 
 
 Endless punishment, though the common, was not the universal, belief 
 of the Jews. See the reference to the Talmud, in Schiirer, HT. T. Zeitge- 
 schichte^ p. 597. 
 
412 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that no inference respecting the tenets of Irenseus can be 
 built npon it. There are passages in which Irenseus can 
 hardly be otherwise interpreted than as teaching endless 
 conscious punishment (e. g.^ Lib. iv. 28, § 1 ; c. 39, § 4 ; cf . 
 Lib. iii. 23, § 3 ; iv. 28, § 1). At least every other interpre- 
 tation seems artificial. 
 
 Amobius (near the beginning of the fourth century), the 
 African rhetorician, advocated the opinion that the soul 
 gains immortality by perseverance in goodness, and that con- 
 sequently the wicked absolutely go out of being. But he 
 had too many idiosyncrasies of opinion to be of any weight 
 as an authority for ascertaining the beliefs of his contempo- 
 raries. Arnobius was in no sense a representative of ortho- 
 doxy. 
 
 The Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, are the chief dis- 
 sentients from the ordinary doctrine, in the first three cen- 
 turies. Clement explicitly aflSrms his belief that all will 
 finally be restored to holiness. Origen maintains this opin- 
 ion, and contributed more than any other theologian to give 
 it whatever degree of currency it obtained in the ancient 
 church. With Origen it was an esoteric doctrine, a doctrine 
 which belonged to the believer in the mature stage of Chris- 
 tian character and of discernment, but one which would be 
 abused and be prolific of harm, if it were proclaimed to all. 
 
 It is important to observe the connection of this belief of 
 Origen with other parts of his system. He held that the 
 will does not lose its mutable quality, or issue in that per- 
 manence of character, which is an essential idea in the 
 Augustinian anthropology. Original sin he explained on 
 the supposition of a pre-existence of souls, a doctrine derived 
 from Platonism, and of a moral fall prior to birth ; and 
 though he believed in universal restoration, which would 
 comprehend in its wide sweep fallen angels and even Satan, 
 he thought that there might be a series of falls and recover- 
 ies in the seons to come. Punishment, it is also important 
 to remark, he held to be disciplinary in its aim, the reform 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTUEE PUNISHMENT. 413 
 
 of the offender being the prime end in view in the infliction 
 of it. 
 
 At this point we may interpose two observations. The 
 first is that the question of the design of punishment in the 
 future life is intimately connected with the problem of its 
 duration. Is punishment ordained chiefly for the recovery 
 of the transgressor ? Or is it retrospective, strictly retribu- 
 tive, a recompense, a reaction of offended justice and of the 
 violated moral order ? It is true that restoration does not 
 follow, with logical necessity, from the first view, stated 
 above, of the office of punishment in the divine economy ; 
 for it may be held that the resistance of free-will will de- 
 feat the provision of grace, and prevent chastisement from 
 bringing forth its appropriate fruits, since they do not ensue 
 with any fatalistic certainty. Still, universal restoration is 
 more likely to be adopted in connection with this idea of 
 the reformatory function of penalty. Nor does the doctrine 
 of the retributive, or vindicatory, design of punishment 
 necessarily exclude restoration ; since it is conceivable that 
 repentance should take place under the operation of penal- 
 ties not ordained for the sake of this result. Still, a doc- 
 trine of restoration is much more likely to be rejected by 
 those who so interpret the significance of punishment. It is 
 possible, to be sure, to combine the two views of punish- 
 ment, and to consider it, in its direct or primary design, re- 
 troactive, but with a subordinate aim which looks to a bene- 
 ficent effect upon the character of the sufferer. We do not 
 here discuss the question, but simply point out its cardinal 
 importance. In not a few modern discussions of the Atone- 
 ment, it has surprised us to find no preliminary consideration 
 of the design of punishment under the divine government. 
 
 The second observation suggested by the foregoing state- 
 ment of Origen's creed is that the question relates to the 
 effect of redemption. What are to be its consequences? 
 What the extent of its actual operation ? There is a Uni- 
 versalism — a Universalismvs vulgaris — which makes little 
 
414 A SKETCH OF THE HISTOET OF THE 
 
 or nothing of the fact of sin, and founds itself either on a 
 denial of ill-desert, or on a belief in man's power to extricate 
 himself from the control of evil, to shake off the principle 
 of selfishness and ungodliness. Christianity is the redemp- 
 tion of the world by Jesus Christ. Its fundamental postu- 
 late is the fact of sin and of condemnation. Deliverance is 
 provided, which is available to all. Now it is conceivable 
 that all should sooner or later lay hold of this help and be 
 saved. If the Bible had so declared, there would, have been 
 involved in this declaration no denial or attenuation of the 
 essential elements of the Gospel. It would have been sim- 
 ply the revelation of a fact by which the truths of the In- 
 carnation and Expiation of Christ, and of the work of the 
 Spirit, are nowise affected. We are not aware that John 
 Foster denied any fundamental part of the gospel method 
 of redemption. He probably accepted cordially the Apos- 
 tles' and the Nicene creeds. He was an evangelical Uni- 
 versalist. Universalism in every form may be an error, and 
 a very mischievous error ; or it may not be. But all sorts 
 of Universalism are not to be confounded together.* 
 
 When we pass into the second section of the patristic 
 period (from the beginning of the fourth to the end of the 
 sixth century), we find that although the doctrine of endless 
 punishment still prevails, there is more dissent from it. 
 
 * A student at Cambridge laid before Robert Hall his perplexities on 
 the subject of eternal punishment. Hall, after stating, in his forcible 
 manner, his reasons for accepting the doctrine, thus concludes : "I 
 would only add that in my humble opinion the doctrine of the eternal 
 duration of future misery, metaphysically considered, is not an essential 
 article of faith, nor is the belief of it ever proposed as a term of salva- 
 tion; that, if we really flee from the wrath to come, by truly repenting 
 of our sins, and laying hold of the mercy of God through Christ by a 
 lively faith, our salvation is perfectly secure, whichever hypothesis we 
 embrace on this most mysterious subject. The evidence accompanying 
 the popular interpretation is by no means to be compared to that which 
 establishes our common Christianity, and therefore the fate of the Chris- 
 tian religion is not to be considered as implicated in the belief, or disbelief 
 of the popular doctrine."— Hall's Works, v., 537. 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 415 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa, one of the most eminent, if not the most 
 eminent, of the ancient Greek theologians, expresses himself 
 distinctly on the side of universal restoration."^ Less defi- 
 nitely, Gregory of ]S^azianzus takes the same view. In the 
 latter part of the fourth century, the two great representa- 
 tives of the Antioch school of theology, Diodore of Tarsus 
 and Theodore of Mopsuestia were restorationists. In their 
 theology, the Incarnation was not only for the deliverance 
 of man from sin, but its design and effect were to elevate 
 mankind to a higher stage of being than that on which he 
 stood, or which was possible to him, as a descendant of 
 Adam. Beyond its negative effect, the work of Christ, 
 the second Adam, conferred a positive good by lifting up 
 the race to a higher destination. And this work, Theodore 
 and his followers maintained, would eventually take effect 
 on all. Theodore argues that Christ never would have said 
 " until thou hast paid the uttermost farthing," if it had not 
 been possible for this to be done ; nor would he have said 
 that one should be beaten with many stripes, and another 
 with few, if there was to be no end to the infliction when 
 men had suffered a punishment commensurate with their 
 sin.f This argument, it will be perceived, presupposes that 
 a limited punishment is all that justice requires, and that, 
 when this has been endured, the debt is paid. 
 
 No doubt this opinion of the Antiochian teachers, which 
 was consonant with that of Origen, though adopted by them 
 independently, had many adherents in the fifth century. 
 But the antagonism to Origen's philosophy and theology, 
 which was excited under the lead of Jerome and others, 
 caused this opinion, together with other peculiarities of the 
 theology of the gi-eat Alexandrian, to be at length generally 
 rejected and proscribed as heretical. • Augustine strenuously 
 defended the doctrine of endless punishment, although in 
 
 * Oral. Cat, 8, 35 ; also in the treatise de anima. 
 f Asseman. Bibl. Orient.^ t. iii., p. 323. 
 
416 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 his time, and within the circle of his influence, there were 
 "tender-hearted Christians," as he styles them, besides 
 others whom he classifies differently, who declined to accept 
 it.* From the close of the fifth century, the doctrine that 
 those condemned at the last judgment endure endless pain 
 became an undisputed article of belief in the church. 
 
 Yet this article of belief was practically modified in a 
 most important degree by the rise and establishment of the 
 doctrine of purgatory. The church from the beginning had 
 believed in an intermediate state. The fathers of the first 
 centuries held that Christ, after his death,^ descended into 
 Hades. There he prosecuted his work in opposition to 
 Satan. Sometimes it was said that he was victorious there 
 in some undefined conflict with the Devil. This ancient 
 idea is expressed thus in The Institution of a Christian 
 Mem, which was issued in the early days of the English 
 Reformation, in the reign of Henry YIII. : " Our Saviour 
 Jesus Christ at his entry into hell first conquered and op- 
 pressed both the devil and hell, and also death itself," f 
 "Without tracing the different modifications of this idea — 
 half -earnest, and half -mythical or symbolic — as it is brought 
 forward in the patristic vn*iters, this, at least, was a clear 
 and accepted tenet, based, as was supposed, on 1 Pet. iv. 5-7 
 and Eph. iv. Y-11, that in the interval between his crucifix- 
 ion and resurrection, Jesus preached to a portion of the in- 
 habitants of Hades, or the Underworld, the abode of de- 
 parted souls. There he delivered the pious dead of the 
 Old Testament, whom he transported to Paradise. This 
 tenet is also set foi'th in immediate connection with the 
 passage which we have cited from The Institution of a 
 Christian Man : " Afterward he spoiled hell, and deliv- 
 ered and brought with him from thence all the souls of those 
 righteous and good men which from the fall of Adam died 
 
 * De Civit. Dd, lib. xxi. 17-21. Of. Encheirid., c. 112. 
 f Quoted in Blunt's Diet of Doctr. and Mist. Theol^ p. 416. 
 
DOCTEINE OF FCTUBE PUNISHMENT. 417 
 
 in the fear of God, and in the faith and belief of this our 
 Saviour, which was then to come." Clement of Alexandria, 
 in harmony with his general system, thought that the vir- 
 tuous heathen shared in the benefit of Christ's preaching in 
 Hades. Paradise, to which the saints of the old covenant 
 were conveyed, was not generally considered by the Fathers 
 to be a subdivision of Hades, but it was held to be an abode 
 of happiness, with respect to the precise location of which 
 opinion was not uniform. Origen placed it in an apartment 
 of heaven — the third heaven. More and more the feeling 
 spread, especially after Origen's time, that Hades, the Un- 
 derworld, was a gloomy, undesirable region, where there 
 could be nothing but suffering, and where Satan held sway."^ 
 Yet it was agreed that the righteous and the wicked do not 
 enter at death into the full fruition of reward or the full 
 measure of suffering. They wait for this until the resurrec- 
 
 * Hades is the rendering, in the Septuagint, of Sheol, the Underworld, 
 the abode of departed souls without reference to distinctions of character 
 or lot. In the New Testament Hades occurs only in Matt. xL 23 (and its 
 parallel, Luke x. 15), Matt. xvi. 18, Luke xvi. 23, Acts ii. 27, 31, Rev. i. 
 18, vi. 8, XX. 13, 14 : since in 1 Cor. xv. 55 and Rev. iii. 7, the correct 
 reading" omits the word. In Acts ii 27, 31, the term appears obviously 
 to retain its old significance. In the book of Revelation it retains its in- 
 timate association with "death." In Matt. xL 23, Luke x. 15, the gen- 
 eral idea of destruction comports with the old conception of Hades. The 
 same is true of Matt. xvi. 18: "The gates of Hades shall not prevail 
 against it." In Luke xvi. 23, Dives is in Hades, in torment; Lazarus 
 " afar off," separated from him by a chasm or an abyss, in the bosom of 
 Abraham. Comparing this passage with Acts ii. 27, 31, and with Luke 
 xxiii. 43, we are led to believe that the Evangelist conceived of the place 
 denoted by " the bosom of Abraham" as in Paradise, and Paradise as in- 
 cluded within Hades. The heavenly Paradise of which Paul speaks (2 
 Cor. xii. 4) is differently placed. The perplexity of Augustine in deter- 
 mining the sense of the statement in the Apostles' Creed — '* he descended 
 into hell," is partly connected with his inability to think of Hades as com- 
 prehending ** Paradise " within it. His frank confession of the diflBculties 
 that beset his mind on this subject, and especially on the preaching to 
 the spirits in prison (1 Pet. iii. 19), is made at length in one of his Epistles 
 (clxiv., ad Ecodium), 
 18* 
 
418 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tion and the last judgment. Some of the Fathers had 
 taught — among them, Clement of Alexandria, and, later, 
 Lad;antius, Ambrose, and Jerome — that in the fire of the 
 last day, which consumes the world, the remaining dross of 
 sin will be burnt away from the souls of the redeemed. The 
 same idea, it appears, is found h'ere and there in the Rabbini- 
 cal teaching, and even, as some think, prior to the time of 
 Christ.* Clement of Alexandria, as might be expected, 
 pronounced this purifying fire to be of an etherial or spirit- 
 ual nature. It was reserved for Augustine, however, to lay 
 the foundation of the doctrine of purgatory, by suggesting 
 that Christians not fully cleansed at death from the pollu- 
 tion of sin are purified in the intermediate state, through 
 the agency of purgatorial fire. His conjecture was converted 
 by those who came after him into a fixed article of belief. 
 Under the auspices of Gregory I. it established itself in the 
 theology of the Western Church. It connected itself with 
 the doctrine of penance and indulgences, which was rounded 
 out by Alexander of Hales, in the thirteenth century, by 
 the introduction of the notion of a treasury of supererogatory 
 merits. The Eastern Church has never admitted the Latin 
 doctrine of a fiery purgatory. Yet Eastern orthodoxy 
 allows that pains of remorse may exist in the minds of the 
 redeemed after death, and that prayers and offerings in 
 their behalf are beneficial. 
 
 Thus the church, throughout the middle ages, or for a 
 thousand years, held to a reformatory punishment, of a 
 limited duration, for the mass of those who were under its 
 tutelage. All were baptized. None were excluded from 
 the sacraments but the contumacious and incorrigible. Hell 
 was reserved for those dying unabsolved, in mortal sin. 
 There was hope for the final salvation of all not obstinate 
 in their rebellion against the church and the law of God. 
 From this hope, however, the heathen and the infidel were 
 
 * Gfrorer, Das JahrJu d. HeUs, ii., p. 81. 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 419 
 
 of course cut off. The Divina Commedia of Dante, in its 
 three parts, gives to the reader a fair conception of the 
 theology of Aquinas, whom the poet calls his master. Only 
 over the gate of one of the regions which the poet explored 
 was written the inscription : 
 
 "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate." 
 
 The Reformers attacked the whole doctrine of purgatory. 
 This they did on scriptural grounds, and from the connec- 
 tion in which that doctrine stood with the theory of indul- 
 gences, and with the claim of the church and the Pope to a 
 partial control over the lot of those who are enduring pur- 
 gatorial fire. It was with an assault upon the mediaeval 
 conception of iridulgences and the correlated tenets, that 
 Luther began his movement. The Augsburg Confession 
 (Art. IX.) makes baptism essential to salvation, and teaches 
 that even unbaptized children are lost. Some of the Calvia- 
 istic confessions (as the Confessio Belgica^ Art. XXXIY.), 
 appear to affirm the same tenet ; though others (as Conf. 
 Scot. a. A. D. 1580), repudiate it. Calvin denies that all un- 
 baptized persons are adjudged to eternal death, and uses 
 language consonant with the view which so many of the old 
 Protestant theologians embraced, that not the privation, 
 but the contempt, of the sacraments brings perdition {Inst., 
 lY., xvi., 26). Many of the Calvinistic confessions (as those 
 of the Westminster Assembly) affirm that " elect " infants 
 are saved, and say nothing, except by implication, respect- 
 ing those who are not elect. Augustine had taught the 
 final condemnation of non-elect infants, and had retreated 
 from his earlier view that their pimishment in the future 
 life is purely negative. He thought, however, that their 
 damnation is of the mildest ' sort (" levissima," Cont. Jul., 
 v., 4. Cf . Ep. clxxxvi., 29). The schoolmen were generally 
 disposed to embrace Augustine's prior and more merciful 
 opinion, so that when a distinguished ecclesiastic in the four- 
 teenth century, Gregory of Rimini, revived the later idea 
 
4:20 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of Augustine, he was designated by the opprobrious title of 
 tortor infantum. The schoolmen placed infants in one of 
 the outer zones of hell — the limbus infantium — where they 
 are deprived of bliss. Augustine had a greater influence 
 than any other patristic writer in shaping the doctrines of 
 the Reformers on these topics. Zwingle, who brought away 
 from the old church more of the tone of the Renaissance 
 than any other of the Protestant champions, held that not 
 only infants, but the virtuous heathen, also, are partakers of 
 salvation. These ideas were associated with his peculiar 
 tenet respecting original sin, and with other opinions, which, 
 as is well known, led Luther to feel that there was in him a 
 certain Rationalistic vein : " Ihr Kaht einen anderen Geist 
 denn WirP 
 
 The Protestant theologians carried their opposition to 
 purgatory so far as to obliterate the whole doctrine of the 
 intermediate state. The Westminster Confession (c. xxxii.) 
 declares that " the souls of the righteous," at death, " are 
 received into the highest heavens," and " the souls of the 
 wicked are cast into hell ; " and adds : " Besides these two 
 places for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture 
 acknowledgeth none." In Luther's Bible, both 8heol and 
 Hades (even in Acts ii. 31), as well as Gehenna^ were ren- 
 dered Hohle ; in King James's version, " Hell." That doc- 
 trine was revived, in a form to exclude the notion of pur- 
 gatory, in particular by certain Anglican divines, as Light- 
 foot, Burnet, and Pearson, and by Campbell in his Disserta- 
 tions on the Four Gospels. 
 
 We have now to glance at those modifications of doctrinal 
 opinion on this subject, which have arisen in more modern 
 times among evangelical theologians who do not accept liter- 
 ally the confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies. 
 
 We begin with the Lutheran theologians who are loosely 
 designated as of the Schleiermacherian school — that school 
 to which the revival of a believing and scientific theology, 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 421 
 
 in opposition to the old -fashioned Rationalism, is chiefly 
 due. 
 
 The point to which theologians of this class not unfre- 
 quentlj refer is the prophetic and fragmentary character of 
 the eschatological teaching of the New Testament. Just 
 as the predictions of the Messianic age must of necessity be 
 presented in pictures, and be only partially apprehensible to 
 the. church of the Old Testament, so an analogous predic- 
 tive element enters into the description of the Last Things, 
 which forms a part of the New Testament Revelation. It 
 is only glimpses that are afforded us of an order of things 
 outside of all present experience. Hence the impossibility 
 of that precision of dogmatic statement which is practica- 
 ble in other parts of the Christian system. This considera- 
 tion may, to be sure, be used to eviscerate of their proper 
 meaning express declarations of the Saviour and his apos- 
 tles, or to attenuate the force of the moral truth revealed in 
 them. But such is not the design of the theologians to 
 whom we now refer. They bring forward this suggestion 
 by way of wholesome caution against an over-literal inter- 
 pretation, or a presumptuous claim to know more than it 
 was the intention of Heaven to reveal. 
 
 The principal deviation from the traditional tenets on the 
 subject before us, which is found among the German evan- 
 gelical theologians, is in the idea of an opportunity of hear- 
 ing the Gospel, to be granted, beyond the bounds of this 
 life, and prior to the last judgment, to those who have not 
 heard of Christ here, or have imperfectly apprehended his 
 Gospel. The belief is frequently expressed that multitudes 
 who depart from the world without a true knowledge of the 
 way of life, will be enlightened and renewed during this in- 
 termediate period. It is maintained that eternal punish- 
 ment is threatened in the Scriptures to those who have been 
 made acquainted with the Gospel, but have refused to avail 
 themselves of its offers, and that a sound exegesis does not 
 warrant the assumption that anything but the conscious re- 
 
422 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 jection of the light and help which the Gospel affords, will 
 be attended with final condemnation. It is true, also, that 
 the problem of the ultimate restoration of all is discussed ; 
 but an affirmative solution is seldom unequivocally ex- 
 pressed. Many, on the other hand, would decide this ques- 
 tion in the negative. 
 
 It should be stated, also, that this class of theologians, how- 
 ever much they may qualify the old formulas and concep- 
 tions of inspiration, stand firmly upon the Protestant princi- 
 ple that the Bible, fairly interpreted, with a comparison of 
 Scripture with Scripture, is the rule of faith. 
 
 Schleiermacher {Christl. Glauhe, ii., 503 seq.) opposes the 
 doctrine of eternal punishment, partly on exegetical grounds : 
 he interprets 1 Cor. xv., 25, 26, as teaching the opposite. 
 He finds psychological difficulties in the supposition of an 
 unending self-reproach through an activity of conscience 
 which yet is attended with no moral improvement. The 
 capacity to conceive of the blessedness of the redeemed, 
 which is the necessary condition of this anguish, involves a 
 remaining capacity to share in the good thus imagined. It 
 is impossible, he argues, to suppose that the saints in heaven 
 can be happy if their fellow-men, for whom, even though 
 their sufferings are deserved, they must feel compassion and 
 sympathy, are in a state of misery from which there is no 
 hope of deliverance. The sorrow of the good would be in- 
 creased by the consciousness that their own salvation was se- 
 cured by help accorded, in the course of the divine govern- 
 ment, to them, which the lost had not enjoyed. " Therefore 
 we should not hold to such a notion [as to the destiny of 
 ihen], without decisive testimonies that Jesus has foreseen it, 
 such as we by no means possess. 
 
 Keander, in his Planting and Training of the Church 
 (Eobinson's ed., p. 483 seq.), takes up this question of resto- 
 ration. He admits the possibility of an increasing illumina- 
 tion of the Apostle Paul's mind in respect to the prospects of 
 the kingdom, analogous to that progressive enlightenment 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTUEE PUNISHMENT. 423 
 
 which Peter experienced on the question of the privileges of 
 the Gentiles. In the later Pauline epistles there is an ad- 
 vance beyond the earlier. " We discern in Paul a progres- 
 sive knowledge of eschatology generally, as it grew up under 
 the enlightening and guiding influence of the Holy Spirit, 
 when w^e compare his Epistles to the Thessalonians with his 
 later epistles, the lif ting-up of believers to an ever-enduring 
 fellowship with the Lord (1 Thess. iv. 17), with the later de- 
 veloped doctrine of the earth as the seat of the perfected 
 kingdom of God ; and 2 Thess. i. T, 9, with the doctrine of 
 a final restitution announced at a later period." This doc- 
 trine Xeander is inclined to find in 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28, in con- 
 nection with Phil. ii. 10, 11, and Coloss. i. 20. He also touches 
 on this topic in his posthumous work on the Epistles to the 
 Corinthians {Corinther'hTiefe^ p. 246 seq.), in his comment on 
 1 Corinthians xv. 22 : " For as in Adam all die, even so in 
 Christ shall all be made alive." After noticing the differ- 
 ent interpretations given to the passage, he says : " After 
 all, the simplest construction would be to take the second 
 ' all ' as equally universal with the first. In that case there 
 would be contained in these words the doctrine of a univer- 
 sal restoration." He then proceeds to answer objections to 
 this interpretation from declarations found elsewhere in the 
 New Testament, and by Paul himself, which are thought 
 to be of a contrary tenor ; and concludes thus : " therefore, 
 the possihility of such a construction of the passage as we 
 have pointed out, must be maintained." But in a note writ- 
 ten later (in 1834), he says : " Paul had in mind only the be- 
 lievers, and ignores those who are lost." That is, he returns 
 to the restricted interpretation of the second " all." In con- 
 nection wdth the passage previously quoted from the earlier 
 work, is this note : " The doctrine of such a universal resti- 
 tution would not stand in contradiction to the doctrine of 
 eternal punishment, as the latter appears in the Gospels ; for 
 although those who are hardened in wickedness, left to the 
 consequences of their conduct, their merited fate, have to 
 
424 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 expect endless unhappiness, yet a hidden purpose of the di- 
 vine compassion is not necessarily excluded, by virtue of 
 which, through the wisdom of God revealing itself in the 
 discipline of free agents, they will be led to a free appropri- 
 ation of redemption " (Robinson's ed., p. 487). 
 
 This last thought appears to be involved in the rather 
 obscure discussion by Nitzsch, one of the most eminent of 
 the modern Lutheran theologians and ecclesiastics {Syste^n 
 d. christL Lehre^ p. 416 seq.). " The Scripture teaches an 
 eternal damnation of individual men, because it is in hy- 
 pothesi necessary. The non-coercive, non-magical, non-me- 
 chanical nature of grace leaves room for final resistance to 
 its influence ; perseverance in the resistance of unbelief is 
 possible : consequently there must be de futuro^ and on this 
 supposition, if there is to be a final judgment, eternal dam- 
 nation." But whether this hypothesis will become thesis, 
 or actuality, is another question. Nitzsch argues against 
 the annihilation doctrine. The Saviour (in Matt. x. 28, 
 Luke xii. 4, 5) does not oppose to the fear of being killed 
 by men, the fear of being killed by God ; he does not op- 
 pose to the fear of bodily death, the fear of death abso- 
 lutely. Not to kill {cLTTOKTelvaL^ but "to destroy the 
 soul " {aTToKeaai, '^v)(riv)y " to cast into hell " {ifi^aXeiv 
 ek Tr}v yievvav), is what God is represented, in contrast 
 with men, as able to do. It is supposable that eternal dam- 
 nation is a mere hypothesis and universal restoration the 
 fact ; or that there is an absolute annihilation ; or that the 
 wicked soul is reduced to a ruin — bereft of every good as 
 well as evil activity. In either case it is conceivable that 
 the same apostle who had preached eternal danmation, yet 
 in his final eschsitologj (dusserste Mchatologie), in 1 Cor. xv., 
 passes above and beyond this antithesis. 
 
 Julius Miiller discusses the question before us with his 
 wonted ability, in his unpublished lectures, and in his trea- 
 tise on The Doctrine of Sin {Lehre v. d. Siinde, ii., 598 seq.). 
 In this work (vol. i., p. 334 seq.), Miiller insists upon the dis- 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 425 
 
 tinction between chastisement and penalty, the former being 
 distinguished by having for its design the amendment of 
 him on whom it is inflicted, and being thus the product of 
 paternal mercy. The idea of punishment, on the contrary, 
 is set forth in such passages as 2 Thess. i. 8, 9, ii. 12, He- 
 brews X. 29, 30 ; and most clearly in 1 Cor. xi. 32, where 
 chastisement and penalty are brought into juxtaposition, and 
 explicitly contrasted with one another. Punishment, more- 
 over, is set forth as related to guilt, rather than to sin as a 
 principle to be overcome. Miiller maintains that no univer- 
 sal restoration can possibly take place prior to the judgment, 
 since in that case there could be no separation and no judg- 
 ment at all. Hence he concludes that restoration cannot be 
 taught in 1 Cor. xv. 22, nor in Rom. v, 18, 19, since these 
 passages would place it, if they referred to it at all, in this 
 intermediate period. He confutes the argument for univer- 
 sal restoration which is founded on the aim, or proper ten- 
 dency, of the Gospel and of the divine system of recovery ; 
 since the results are made contingent on the free act of the 
 creature. Nor does he regard as conclusive the grounds 
 which are drawn from Christian feeling, which revolts at an 
 unsubdued antagonism to the divine will to be perpetuated 
 forever. He admits the weight of this objection, but does 
 not consider it decisive. The infliction of punishment, 
 where the disobedient creature passively and involuntarily 
 acknowledges the absolute supremacy and majesty of the 
 divine law, secures from discordance the harmony of the di- 
 vine order. Nor, again, can restoration be infallibly de- 
 duced from the divine love, since though justice is a branch 
 of love, yet in love justice and holiness are essential ele- 
 ments. Love, from its very nature, must react against its 
 opposite, and assume the form of holy indignation. [N'or 
 can inhumanity be charged on the Creator, if a being en- 
 dued with free-will, through his own sin brings on himself 
 endless ruin. The jpossihility of endless punishment must 
 then be conceded. Sin has a tendency to pei-petuate itself \ 
 
426 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 character tends to permanence — evil character, as well as 
 good. What the actual results will be can be learned only 
 from revelation. Miiller holds that the divine love will 
 never abandon men until they have become hardened against 
 its influences and efforts. His conclusion is that the text 
 (Matt. xii. 31, 32) : " All manner of sin and blasphemy " — 
 that is, every sin, even blasphemy — " shall be forgiven unto 
 men ; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not 
 be forgiven unto men .... neither in this world, neither 
 in the world to come " — is to be taken as a distinct declara- 
 tion that all sins, except one, will be forgiven either before 
 or after the consummation of the Iledeemer's kingdom ; that 
 is, in the present, or the future, seon. 
 
 The theory of an eventual extinction of the wicked has 
 few adherents among the eminent German theologians. 
 Rothe is its principal advocate ; and in his system it is con- 
 nected with his peculiar view of the relation of spirit to mat- 
 ter, and of the development and immortality of the soul as 
 contingent on its own holy action. 
 
 Itothe's elaborate discussion of the topic of Future Pun- 
 ishment is found in his posthumous Dogmatlh (pp. 132-169, 
 291-336). The most of the Saviour's utterances on this sub- 
 ject, he asserts, relate to what is to occur prior to the last 
 judgment. At the first glance, Jesus appears to teach the 
 endless punishment of all who enter Gehenna. This, how- 
 ever, is not the fact. The word aionios (alcovio^), which oc- 
 curs in Matt. xxv. 41, 46, is used in the Scriptures in a more 
 lax sense. It signifies, not an indefinitely long time, but the 
 longest time which can belong to an object, in accordance 
 with its nature. There are many examples of this restricted 
 meaning : e. g., Exod. xxi. 6, Deut. xv. 17. In Jude (ver. 6, 
 cf . 2 Pet. ii. 4), a stronger term (atSto?), is applied to a ter- 
 minable period. As to the opinion of the Jews, in the time 
 of Christ, respecting the duration of future punishment, 
 they were not agreed on this point ; and if they had been, 
 this does not authorize us to conclude that he followed the 
 
DOCTEINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT, 42Y 
 
 popular view. Eternal life and eternal death are spoken of 
 together ; but if " eternal " denotes the longest time which 
 the conception, or nature, of an object admits of, that fact 
 presents no difficulty. Of the wicked it is only said, in 
 Matt. XXV. 41, 46, that "during the continuance of their 
 stay in Gehenna^ their pain will not cease, without any de- 
 termination of the question whether that stay will, or will 
 not, be endless " (p. 138). If Matt. xxvi. 24, Mark xiv. 21 
 (cf. Luke xxii. 22) refer to Judas, these expressions are jus- 
 tified on the supposition that Judas was eventually to cease 
 to exist. The statements of Jesus in Matt. v. 26, xii. 32 (cf. 
 Mark iii. 29) oblige us to restrict the sense of aionios. The 
 few passages in his teaching, which do not refer to the in- 
 termediate state — for to this Rothe applies all those cited 
 above, even Matt. xxv. 41, 46 — indicate that the unpardoned 
 will gradually be deprived of sense and being : e. g.^ Matt. x. 
 28, Luke xii. 5. This opinion was not, Rothe affirms, un- 
 known to the Jews : it is expressed in the apocryphal 4th 
 Book of Ezra. The terms by which the Apostles denote 
 perdition (o 6\e^po<; al(ovoL<;, r) dwooiXeia, 6 ^dvaro^, rj (j>^opd) 
 most naturally signify annihilation of soul, as well as of 
 body ; especially as Paul (Tit. i. 2, Rom. xvi. 25, Eph. iii. 9) 
 uses aionios {ai(ovLo^) in the looser sense of the term. Rev. 
 xiv. 11, XX. 10, must be understood in the light of Rev. xx. 
 14 and xvii. 8. The idea of annihilation is involved in John 
 vi. 39, 40, 44, 54, Matt. x. 28, 30, John iii. 15, 16, x. 28, 
 Luke xvii. 39, ix. 24, 25, Matt. vii. 13, Phil. i. 28, iii. 19, 
 Gal. vi. 8, 1 John iii. 15 (cf. Rev. xx. 4, 5), and 1 John v. 
 16, 17, Heb. X. 39, vi. 8, x. 27, 2 Pet. ii. 1, 3, ii. 12, 19, Jude 
 10, 12, 19 ; cf. 20, 21, etc. Rothe (p. 152) presents a concise 
 statement of the objections which have been brought, on 
 grounds of reason and Christian feeling, to the doctrine of 
 endless punishment, and subjects them to criticism. On the 
 supposition of a final impenitence in the condemned, eternal 
 punishment is fully suited to their guilt. The possibility of 
 final impenitence cannot be denied. The end of God, so far 
 
428 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 as the individual is concerned, may be baffled by his own per- 
 versity ; though not the comprehensive end of God in crea- 
 tion. Reformation is not tlie sole — it is not the proper and 
 immediate — design of punishment. This has its end in it- 
 self. Punishment need not and ought not to cease for the 
 reason that the recovery of the transgressor is no longer to 
 be hoped for. The pain of the lost may not consist in such 
 reproaches of conscience as might involve an actual or possi- 
 ble repentance, but rather in the incessant experience of the 
 absolute fruitlessness of their rebellion against God, of the 
 hostile relation of the whole created universe to them on ac- 
 count of this rebellion, and of the rage and hatred against 
 God and all his creation, which perpetually blaze up anew 
 within their souls. But other objections to the doctrine of 
 endless suffering Rothe considers valid. The necessary dis- 
 turbance of the happiness of the redeemed, and the divine 
 plan of the world, with which the endless continuance of sin 
 is held to be incongruous, are among these objections. ]S"o 
 conceivable reason can be given why the hopelessly wicked 
 should be kept in being : the notion that their endless suffer- 
 ing is required as a warning is groundless. Final impeni- 
 tence, on the supposition that the pains of hell are never to 
 cease, would be psychologically inexplicable. Yet in this 
 life, and in the interval prior to the judgment, all the means 
 of grace will have been exhausted upon such as at that time 
 remain impenitent. The only satisfactory solution of the 
 problem is found in the supposition of a gradual wearing 
 out and extinction of their being. This will be the lot of 
 those who persist to the last day in their resistance to the 
 Spirit — of those who are guilty of the unpardonable sin. 
 Rothe lays great stress on the results to be expected from 
 the grace of God, beyond the bounds of this life, in the in- 
 termediate state. Among the passages on which he founds 
 this expectation, are included, of course, 1 Peter iii. 19, 20, 
 iv. 6. 
 
 With the foregoing notice of the opinions of celebrated 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 429 
 
 German theologians, we may connect a brief description of 
 the views of a distinguished Danish theologian of the evan- 
 gelical type, Martensen, as they are expressed in his Dog- 
 matik (pp. 534-544). " Shall the development of the world 
 end in a dualism ? " Is there an eternal damnation, or a 
 final restoration of all moral beings ? The church has never 
 been willing to accept this last hypothesis, both on grounds 
 of Scripture, and from the feeling that the Christian idea of 
 redemption would lose something of its profound earnestness. 
 On the contrary, however, the doctrine of restoration, which 
 has appeared and reappeared at different times in the church, 
 is not without support in the Scriptures, and has sprung up, 
 not always from a lack of earnestness, but from a feeling 
 of humanity, founded in the very nature of Christianity. 
 Here then is an antinomy — a seeming contradiction. 
 
 This antinomy is found in the Scriptures. There are 
 passages which, taken in their full weight — " nach ihrem 
 gamen Gewicht genoramen " — ^most expressly assert eternal 
 damnation. There is " the unquenchable fire," " the worm 
 that never dieth," the " sin unto death," the sin that " shall 
 not be forgiven." On the other hand, there are 1 Cor. xv. 
 26-28, Eph. i. 10, 1 Cor. xv. 22 (cf. Matt. xix. 26), from 
 which, unless the force of these expressions is curtailed, the 
 notion of a universal restoration cannot be eliminated. That 
 God's Word cannot contradict itself and that this antinomy 
 must admit of some solution, is conceded. But no solution 
 is given. May it not be, asks the author, that the solution 
 is wisely withheld from us as long as we are in this stage of 
 our being ? 
 
 But the same antinomy, Martensen proceeds to say, 
 emerges in our own reasonings on the subject. From the 
 point of view, which, to be sure, for Christian reflection, is 
 the highest — that of the teleology of divine love, we are led 
 to the doctrine of restoration. The end of God in creation, 
 does not look, as the Pantheist assumes, at the kingdom in 
 general, but at the well-being of each individual. The idea 
 
430 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that the end is reached in the manifestation of punitive jus- 
 tice, does not satisfy the mind ; if there is a will which 
 eternally withstands God, there is a barrier which, the divine 
 love never overcomes. The power of love reaches its end, 
 not when beings bow the knee by compulsion — which would 
 only be a revelation of might — but when all bow the knee 
 to Christ with willing consent. On the contrary, the anthro- 
 pological, psychological, and ethical considerations, the facts 
 of life, lead us to the doctrine of eternal condemnation. Man 
 is free ; he is not compelled to repent ; salvation is not a 
 process of nature ; the hardening of the heart is possible. 
 The time must come when the possibility of conversion is 
 gone ; w^hen "it is too late." In conversion, not only the 
 abstract power is needful, but also the order of things, the 
 environing circumstances, in which trial and probation have 
 their place. For the condemned, there is no future ; there is 
 only the retrospect of a lost opportunity, a wasted life. There 
 is an inward demand in the soul of the lost for the realiza- 
 tion of that which is abstractly possible, while all the condi- 
 tions of that realization are wanting. This is " the worm 
 that never dieth." Shakespeare has helped us to imagine that 
 desperate condition, in such a conception as that of Lady 
 Macbeth, wandering about in her sleep, seeking in vain to 
 wash the ineffaceable stain of blood from her hand. Here 
 is no true, no fruitful contrition ; no change of will. 
 
 The theological idea leads us to restoration. Hence this 
 doctrine was found mostly in the Greek Church ; the anthro- 
 pological idea tends to the opposite doctrine, which accord- 
 ingly was defended by Augustine, and has had fewer to dis- 
 sent from it in the "Western Church. 
 
 The theory of annihilation does not solve the antinomy. 
 This theory is not supported by the Scriptures : it leaves tlie 
 fatherly love of God baffled in its aim and end. The idea 
 that those guilty of the unpardonable sin serve out their time 
 of punishment, and are then delivered, besides the exegeti- 
 cal difficulties which lie against it, gives no rational expla- 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 431 
 
 nation of the way in which conversion, in such cases, is to be 
 secured. For it is not only a right knowledge of sin that is 
 required, but the beginning of a new life. 
 
 The antinomy must, therefore, be left standing. There is 
 a will of God, and in this sense, a design that all should be 
 saved : there is a possibility that such wdll be the actual fact, 
 but the opposite is also possible (p. 543). 
 
 In the annals of English theology, a noted representative 
 of the annihilation doctrine is John Locke. In his Reason- 
 ableness of Christianity^ he shows himself a literalist in his 
 interpretation of the word " death.'^ He understands that 
 Adam was threatened with the literal destruction of soul and 
 body ; that he and his race are saved from this penalty by 
 the work of Christ, and put upon a new probation, under 
 " the law of faith ; " that those who fail to fulfill the condi- 
 tions on which " life " is offered in the Gospel will undergo 
 the penalty of annihilation, and will forever cease to be. 
 
 Of the modern English advocates of the doctrine of the ex- 
 tinction of souls, the most prominent is Archbishop Whately. 
 In his work on The^ Future State (Lect. viii.) he sets forth 
 his opinions. The words translated " destruction," and the 
 word " death," as these terms are applied in the Scriptures 
 to the lot of the finally impenitent, he takes in the most lit- 
 eral meaning. He also maintains the opinion, which was 
 occasionally, broached in the middle ages, but was counted 
 heretical, that the souls of men are in an unconscious state 
 during the interval between death and the general resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 In recent times the doctrine of universal restoration has 
 been espoused by a number of theologians, of conspicuous 
 ability, in England. John Foster is one of the most noted 
 of these. His position is, that the endless punishment of 
 men for the sins of this life would be inconsistent with the 
 equity of the divine administration. He assumes that their 
 nature, at tlie start, is so " fatally corrupt," and their circum- 
 stances so unfavorable, that there is no hope for them, save 
 
432 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 in an operation of grace ah extra, which is arbitrary and dis- 
 criminative on the part of the sovereign Agent, and inde- 
 pendent of the will of man. To the objection that punish- 
 ment is endless, because there is an endless continuance in 
 sinning, he answers that it is the doom of the condemned 
 which " necessitates a continuance of the criminality," for 
 this is a doom to sin as well as to suffer. " Virtually there- 
 fore, the eternal punishment is the punishment of the sins 
 of time." As to the teaching of Scripture, Foster remarks, 
 that the terms " everlasting," " eternal," " forever," original 
 or translated, are often employed in the Bible, as well as 
 other writings, under great and various limitations of im- 
 port. But " how could the doctrine have been more plainly 
 and positively asserted, than it is in the Scripture language ? " 
 To this Foster answers, that we are able to express it so as to 
 leave no possibility of a misunderstanding of our language ; 
 and this was equally possible to the biblical writers. The 
 terms they use are designed to magnify, to aggravate, rather 
 than to define the evil threatened. The great difference of 
 degrees of future punishment, so plainly stated in the Scrip- 
 tures, is said to be an argument of some weight against its 
 perpetuity. If a limited measure of punishment is consist- 
 ent with equity, then a limited duration may be ; the argu- 
 ment from the alleged infinite evil of sin, in one case as 
 much as the other, is set aside.* 
 
 Another English theologian, whose writings on this sub- 
 ject have excited much attention, is the late Be v. F. D. 
 Maurice. His opinions are presented in his Commentary on 
 John^s Gosjpel^ his Theological Essays — the last essay in the 
 volume — and in his Letter to Dr. Jelf. In this last publica- 
 tion, Mr. Maurice denies that he is a Universalist. Whether 
 suffering will be without end in the future life, is a point on 
 which he professes himself unable to affirm or deny. His 
 position is that of nescience. Nothing, as he thinks, is re- 
 
 ♦ Life and Correspondence of John Foster^ ii., 333 seq. 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 433 
 
 vealed with regard to the duration of punishment. The 
 word aionios {alcovio^;) signifies eternal, and is thought by 
 him to have no reference to time. It is applied in the 'New 
 Testament to God and to things extra-temporal. It denotes 
 not duration, but a state or quality. " Eternal " death (or 
 punishment) is the opposite of " eternal life," as this is de- 
 fined by the Apostle John. It is the condition of a soul be- 
 reft of the fellowship of God ; but on the question how long 
 this state will continue, the word " eternal " sheds no light. 
 " Life eternal " is the knowledge of God, and the quality 
 termed " eternal " is, in its entirety, in that life now, in the 
 case of every one who is possessed of it. 
 
 With respect to the English Episcopal Church, since the 
 publication of the Assays and Heviews, the civil courts have 
 decided that the Articles do not inculcate the doctrine of 
 endless punishment. In the revision of the Articles under 
 Elizabeth, when the forty-two were reduced to thirty-nine, 
 the forty-second Article, in which eternal punishment had 
 been directly asserted, was among those left out. This was 
 not because the revisers of the Articles disbelieved the doc- 
 trine — a doctrine which would seem to be implied in Art. 
 XYII. (Of Predestination and Election) — but it was omitted 
 for other reasons. Inasmuch, however, as this tenet had 
 once been inserted in the Creed, and had been afterwards 
 deliberately omitted, the judicial decision was that clerg}^- 
 men who subscribe to the Articles are not bound to believe 
 and teach it. How extensively it has been abandoned in 
 the Anglican Church, at the present day, it is impossible to 
 judge. A fervid discourse in opposition to it by Canon 
 Farrar has lately been put in print. He describes himself 
 as having no clear and decisive opinion on the question of 
 the duration of future punishment. He cannot accept the 
 Romish doctrine of purgatory, or the " spreading belief in 
 conditional immortality," or the certain belief that all will 
 finally be saved. Yet the final sentences of the sermon ap- 
 pear to be an expression of this last-mentioned belief. Dr. 
 19 
 
434 A SKETCH OF THE HISTOKT OF THE 
 
 Farrar holds that aionios {al(ovco<;) means " age-long," not 
 " everlasting," and in this sense is used in the Bible ; that it 
 means, secondly, something extra-temporal ; but that it does 
 not contain " the fiction of an endless time." He holds 
 that " Gehenna," as used by Christ, indicates, not final and 
 hopeless, but purifying and corrective punishment, an 
 "intermediate, a metaphorical, and a terminable retribu- 
 tion." 
 
 Among the Non-conformists in England, in the evangeli- 
 cal bodies, there are many ministers who no longer believe 
 in the doctrine of endless punishment. A competent wit- 
 ness, Rev. Dr. Allon, in a biographical sketch of Rev. T. 
 Binney, prefixed to a volume of his /Sermons (London, 
 1875), says of him, that " he refused the hard and terrible 
 conclusions of Calvinistic predestination." Dr. Allon adds : 
 
 "He was one of the earliest of his generation to maintain the broad 
 universal purpose of the divine Father's love, and of the salvation which 
 is proffered through Christ. And, it may be added here, for the same 
 reasons he rejected the dogma of eternal punishment; which seems pass- 
 ing through the same stages of instinctive shrinking from it, traditional 
 aflfirmation, subtle disintegration, and religious abandonment. While 
 Mr. Binney shrank from propounding any alternative theory of the des- 
 tiny of the wicked, he distinctly refused to believe in eternal torments. 
 He felt that conclusions from which, not in their sinful and alienated 
 but in their best and holiest feelings, good men instinctively recoiled 
 could not be possible to the holy and loving God. He felt too that it was 
 not possible, as with some mysteries which are simply things unknown, 
 to bow in silence before these conclusions. They involve a necessary ap- 
 peal to moral judgment and feeling, and if in this appeal, repugnance, 
 and not sympathetic conviction is produced, there must be reason to 
 doubt their correctness. 
 
 " His own conclusion, avowed in many conversations on the subject, was, 
 ' It cannot be, that which our best feelings shrink from cannot be possi- 
 ble to God. In some way or other, he will solve the dark problem of 
 evil in harmony with his righteousness and love.' And here he was con- 
 tented to rest. Mr. Binney propounded no counter theory of universal- 
 ism, or of repentance beyond the grave ; to both he saw, both in the 
 statements of Scripture and in the moral philosophy of things, insuper- 
 able objections. He thought that the exegesis of Scriptural representa- 
 tions needed a thorough re-examination ; and that a reasonable and revet- 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 435 
 
 ent interpretation of the strong language of Scripture was possible which 
 would not necessitate the dogma of eternal suffering. " 
 
 A few ministers of distinction among the English Congre- 
 gationalists, but only a few, favor the annihilation doctrine. 
 
 In the letters of Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, the au- 
 thor of the noted work on the Internal Evidence of Revelor 
 tion, the doctrine of universal restoration is professed and 
 supported. The main foundation of this belief is made to be 
 the fatherly character of God as revealed in the Bible. A 
 father can never cease from the endeavor to make his child 
 righteous. The Father of the spirits of all flesh will not 
 throw off his care for the souls of his children when they 
 leave this world ; the supposition that he will, grows out of 
 false conceptions of his justice and righteousness, which are 
 not separrable from his love. No human being, it is held 
 by Mr. Erskine, can be beyond the reach of God's grace 
 and the sanctifying power of his spirit.* The love of God 
 will attain to its end and aim. This he supposes to be defi- 
 nitely taught by the apostle Paul in the 5th and 11th chap- 
 ters of the Epistle to the Komans.f By these full and 
 explicit declarations of the apostle, the language in Matt. 
 XXV. must be intei-preted. " Eternity has nothing to do with 
 duration." " I think eternal means essential in opposition to 
 phenomenal. So eternal life is God's own life ; it is essen- 
 tial life ; and eternal punishment is the misery belonging 
 to the nature of sin, and not coming from outward causes." % 
 " I do not believe that ala)vco<;, the Greek word rendered 
 * eternal' and * everlasting ' by our translators, really has 
 that meaning. I believe that it refers to man's essential or 
 spiritual state, and not to time, either finite or infinite. 
 Eternal life is living in the love of God ; eternal death is 
 living in self ; so that a man may be in eternal life or in 
 eternal death for ten minutes, as he changes from one state 
 to another." § 
 
 * Vol. ii., p. 243. t P- 239. X P- 135. § P. 240. 
 
436 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 One of the earliest American works in defence of the 
 theory of restoration was The Salvation of all Men Ex- 
 amined, bj Dr. Charles Chauncej, which was printed in 
 London in 1784. Dr. Chauncey advocates this theory, .but 
 he maintains that, if it be rejected, the alternative doctrine 
 which next to this is best supported, is that of annihilation. 
 The " mipardonable sin " is a sin of which the full penalty 
 is exacted ; but this penalty is not everlasting. The reply 
 to Chauncey by Dr. Jonathan Edwards is marked by ex- 
 traordinary logical acumen, and by no small degree of acute- 
 ness in the exegetical part of the discussion. One promi- 
 nent topic in his book is the true nature or end of punish- 
 ment in the divine government. Edwards argues that the 
 penalty of sin in the future life is not disciplinary, but vin- 
 dicative in its intent. If it be of the nature of chastisement, 
 why is it called a " curse ? " Dr. Chauncey had asserted 
 that future punishment is graduated according to the vary- 
 ing deserts of offenders. Dr. Edwards charges his opponent 
 with a confusion of ideas. If all the condemned are pun- 
 ished according to the degree of their guilt, what distinction 
 is there between him who suffers for the unpardonable sin, 
 and transgressors generally ? 
 
 Since the rise of the Universalist denomination in this 
 country, numerous works have appeared on the subject be- 
 fore us ; but it is impossible, in this place, to refer to them 
 individually. 
 
 We subjoin to the foregoing sketch one or two sugges- 
 tions, which may afford material for reflection to those who 
 are interested in tracing a theological system to its roots, and . 
 in observing the transformations which it may undergo in 
 the lapse of time. 
 
 Strict Calvinism was a symmetrical and coherent system. 
 It was constructed from the teleological point of view. The 
 starting-point was God and his eternal purpose. The end 
 was made to be the manifestation of his love and his justice, 
 conceived of as co-ordinate. The salvation of some, and the 
 
DOCTRINE OF FUTUEE PUNISHMENT. 437 
 
 condemnation of others, are the means to this end. The 
 motive of redemption is love to the elect, for whom all the 
 arrangements of Providence and grace are ordered. The 
 cap-stone was placed upon the system by the supralapsarians, 
 who followed Calvin's strong language in the Institutes (but 
 not elsewhere, especially not in his Commentaries)^ and 
 made the fall and sin of mankind, like creation itself, the 
 object of an efficient decree — means to the one supreme end ; 
 for if mercy and righteousness are to be exerted in the sal- 
 vation and condemnation of sinners, a world of sinners must 
 first exist. 
 
 There was rebellion against this system. [N^ot to speak of 
 the different theology of the Lutherans — in the French Cal- 
 vinistic school of Saumur, wherever Arminianism prevailed, 
 in the modified Calvinism of the New England churches, it 
 was asserted that in " the intention of love," Christ died for 
 all, that God's love extends over all, in the sense that he de- 
 sires them to be saved, yearns toward them, and offers them 
 help. 
 
 This mode of thought has more affinity to the Greek an- 
 thropology than has rigid Calvinism, or its Augustinian pro- 
 totype. The teleological point of view is less prominent ; it 
 stands in the background. The universal love and pity of 
 God, the broad design of the atonement, are the central 
 points. 
 
 The more rigid Calvinism often protested against this 
 modification of the system : it considered the whole theodicy 
 imperiled by it : it saw in it a drift and tendency towards 
 other innovations subversive of the system. 
 
 For if this is universal, yearning love is at the basis of re- 
 demption, will it not be suggested that this love vrill not fail 
 of its end ? Will the heart of God be disappointed of its 
 object ? Will the Almighty be baffled by the creaturely 
 will ? If Christ died for all, will he be " satisfied " with 
 anything short of the recovery of all ? 
 
 As a matter of historical fact, belief in restoration and 
 
438 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 kindred doctrines are seen to spring up, in different quarters, 
 in the wake of the mitigated form of theology to which we 
 have referred. 
 
 [N^ot that such beliefs are logically required. All d priori 
 reasoning must be subject to the correction of experience. 
 There is a terrible reign of sin, though all sin is contrary to 
 the will of God ; there is a development of sinful charac- 
 ter, a hardening of the heart, a persistent resistance — " how 
 often would / . . . . but ye would not ; " " woe unto thee, 
 Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida ; " there is a stern, trag- 
 ic side to nature and to human life. We stand within a 
 sphere where results are not worked out by dint of power, 
 but where freedom, under moral law, with all the peril, as 
 well as possibility of good, which freedom involves, is an es- 
 sential attribute of our being. No speculations on the prob- 
 lem of the theodicy can have the certainty that belongs to 
 the law which is verified by conscience and experience: 
 " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
 
RATIONALISM. 4:39 
 
 RATIONALISM.* 
 
 At the threshold of all enlightened investigation of reli- 
 gious truth stands the question, What are the sources of 
 knowledge on the subject? On this first and fundamental 
 question, opinion is divided. We may leave out of the 
 account, for the present, the Eastern Church, which has now 
 for a thousand years exhibited few signs of intellectual 
 life, and these mostly in the shape of occasional outbreak- 
 ings of polemical fervor against its great rival in the West. 
 Proud of its illustrious teachers of the patristic age — Chry- 
 sostom, the Gregories, Basil, Athanasius — and of those an> 
 cient councils which are alone regarded as oecumenical, the 
 Greek Church haughtily denies the claim of the Roman 
 bishop to more than a titular and honorary precedence, yet 
 agrees with the Latins in recognizing tradition and church 
 authority. Turning to Western Christendom, we find three 
 parties in reference to the question already stated — the 
 Roman Catholic, the evangelical Protestant, and the 
 Rationalist. 
 
 The Roman Catholic and the Protestant have common 
 ground. They both acknowledge a supernatural, divine 
 revelation. They both admit an authoritative teaching, ob- 
 jective, or outside of the individual. They both profess 
 that all this teaching, all of Christian truth that has been 
 revealed from heaven, is to be traced back to Christ and his 
 apostles. It is only since the Reformation, to be sure, that 
 the Roman Catholic Church has thus limited its doctrine of 
 tradition. In the middle ages, tenets were in some instances 
 
 * A Lecture in Boston in 1870, forming paxt of a Course of Lectures by 
 different persons, on " Christianity and Skepticism." 
 
440 RATIONALISM. 
 
 attributed to a post-apostolic revelation. This is done, for 
 example, by Gerson, in the case of the Yirgin's Immaculate 
 Conception and the Assumption ; and by Occam in respect 
 to the dogma of Transubstantiation. But the prevailing 
 and established theory now is, that the tradition which is 
 the supplement of Scripture includes only apostolic teaching 
 orally transmitted. The church defines the faith ; discerns 
 more and more of its meaning, and promulgates what it 
 discerns, but adds nothing to the original deposit. But the 
 Eoman Catholic interposes, between the individual and 
 Christ, the church ; that is, the visible body organized 
 under the hierarchy of which the Roman bishop is the head. 
 This is the radical, defining characteristic of their system. 
 In keeping with it, the church is held to be at once the in- 
 fallible custodian and infallible interpreter of both Scripture 
 and tradition — the written and the oral teachings of Christ 
 and the apostles. This last position, together with the the- 
 ory of the church that underlies it, the evangelical Prot- 
 estant rejects. He may allow that the oral teaching of the 
 apostles, if we could get at it, would be as authoritative as 
 their writings ; but he denies that any safe and sure channel 
 has been provided for its transmission. And, even as to 
 Scripture, he denies that the church in any age is an unerr- 
 ing expounder. Hence ail that part of the Homan Catholic 
 creed which he cannot find confirmed in the Scriptures he 
 discards. Tenets, which, if they claim any support from the 
 Bible, rest on alleged obscure intimations of Scripture, are 
 not admitted to be a part of the Christian faith. There is 
 truth in the well-known aphorism, " The Bible, the Bible, 
 is the religion of Protestants ! " It is perfectly consistent 
 with this position to hold that the logical implications of 
 the primitive teaching are more and more unfolded to view 
 in the progress of society ; that the ethics of the Gospel are 
 developed in new directions and applications ; that Christian 
 life is a commentary on Christian truth. We may allow 
 some grains of truth in the mystical and ideal conception 
 
RATIONALISM. 441 
 
 of the church's authority which Mohler and other liberal 
 Catholics have undertaken to propound ; but, when all rea- 
 sonable concessions have been made, there remains a radical 
 antagonism. 
 
 The distinguishing note of rationalism is the rejection of 
 authoritative teaching, the disbelief in supernatural revela- 
 tion. Whatever special view he may take of the Bible — 
 whether he adopt the low estimate of Thomas Paine, who 
 said that he could write a better book himself ; or the higher 
 estimate of those who pronounce it a lofty product of human 
 genius — the Rationalist denies that the Bible is in any 
 proper sense the rule of faith. The prophets and apostles 
 teach with no authority that does not belong to them in 
 common with all poets and philosophers and preachers. 
 There is nothing properly miraculous either in the origin of 
 their doctrine, or in the evidences that support it. This is 
 the common ground of rationalism in all of its various 
 types. The Atheist, the Pantheist, and the Deist unite in 
 this negation of the supernatural as connected with the origin 
 of Christianity and the Christian system of doctrine. 
 
 I am aware, that, in so general a classification, there must 
 be embraced under the term rationalism dissimilar phases 
 of character and opinion. There are Rationalists in fact, 
 but not in spirit. If there is positive and downright infi- 
 delity at one extreme, there is an approach to faith at the 
 other. There are men — a numerous class in these days — 
 who can believe only as they can assimilate religious truth ; 
 who seek for it, therefore, with an earnest heart, though 
 under a cloud of doubt. Could they discern the harmony 
 of Christian truth with their intellectual and moral nature, 
 could they set this truth in a close and vital relation to the 
 soul, they would be satisfied. This immediate, living per- 
 ception is what they most crave. For such, as we may hope 
 to indicate, there is a way out of their present position. 
 Were the principle of division some other than the one we 
 
 have chosen — which is the position taken with reference to 
 19* 
 
442 EATIONALISM. 
 
 the sources of knowledge — they might fall into a different 
 category; but, as long as their criterion for judging and 
 ascertaining what is true in religion remains a purely subjec- 
 tive one, they adopt the distinctive rationalistic principle. 
 
 Modem scepticism and unbelief, or the whole movement 
 which in its different phases and stages is termed rational- 
 ism, is often charged by Roman Catholic theologians upon 
 Protestantism. It is unjustly declared to be the legiti- 
 mate fruit of the Eeformation. The ancient foes of Chris- 
 tianity in the field of thought — Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, 
 and the rest — were heathen writers, standing outside of the 
 church. In the mediaeval age, scepticism came mostly from 
 the Arabic schools in Spain, and was prevented from gain- 
 ing a foothold through the efforts of Aquinas and other 
 great teachers of the thirteenth century. But before the 
 Reformation, through the disgust that arose against the 
 scliolastic theology, and through the influence of classical 
 and literary studies connected with the revival of learning, 
 widespread tendencies to scepticism had become rife in the 
 southern nations of Europe. Neander, in an essay read be- 
 fore the Berlin Academy, quotes a remarkable sentence 
 from a letter of Melanchthon, in which the keen-sighted re- 
 former says tliat far more serious disturbances {longe gram- 
 ores tumultus) would have ensued had not Luther arisen to 
 turn the studies of men in a new direction. The Reforma- 
 tion was a powerful religious movement, which was strong 
 enough to stifle the germs of scepticism far and wide, and 
 which made itself felt with most wholesome results within the 
 Catholic Church itself. The rise of men like Fenelon and 
 the Jansenists must be ascribed to the indirect agency of 
 the Protestant Revolution ; but the humanistic spirit, witli 
 the sceptical turn that accompanied it among the Latin 
 nations, continued in France. In the seventeenth century, 
 if Luther's Bible was the popular book in Germany, Plu- 
 tarch's Lives had a like place in France ; and the spirit to 
 
RATIONALISM. 443 
 
 which I have referred found expression in the genial scepti- 
 cism of Montaigne. Without doubt, the decline of relig- 
 ion in the Protestant churches, the incessant controversies 
 among them, and especially the partial sacrifice of the Prot- 
 estant spirit of liberty in a partisan zeal for creeds, must 
 bear a portion of the responsibility for the infidel reaction 
 that followed. The Protestant scholasticism of the seven- 
 teenth century had an effect like that of the Catholic scho- 
 lasticism of the fourteenth. But the deism of the last cen- 
 tury found the most welcome reception in France. Voltaire 
 was not bred a Protestant. Owing to causes, among which 
 the degeneracy of Protestantism as compared with the spirit 
 of piety and freedom that belonged to it at the outset was 
 one, deism obtained a foothold in Germany and England, 
 as well as in the Catholic countries. As Neander truly 
 remarks, the spirit that characterized deism, if logical, and 
 consistent with itself, must lead to the rejection of the 
 supernatural altogether. Pantheism, which identifies God 
 with Nature, is, therefore, the natural successor of deism ; 
 although the forms which pantheism took were due to the 
 course of philosophical speculation of which they were the 
 immediate product. At the present time, scepticism and 
 unbelief are far from being confined to Protestant lands. 
 Renan is the name most frequently coupled with that of 
 Strauss. Wherever there is intellectual activity in Catholic 
 countries, scepticism, either hidden or avowed, is prevalent. 
 We have seen lately in Spain how the hatred of the eccle- 
 siastical system of the Roman Catholic Church takes the 
 form of a rejection, and even denunciation, of aU revealed 
 religion. 
 
 Evangelical Protestantism puts no tyrannical yoke upon 
 reason. It does not concede that any contrariety exists be- 
 tween the Christian faith and reason. When Augustine 
 affirmed that faith precedes knowledge, he meant that 
 Christianity is a practical system, adapted to practical ne- 
 
444 RATIONALISM. 
 
 cessities of the soul, and must, therefore, be applied or ex- 
 perienced before it can be comprehended. It is a case 
 where insight follows upon life ; where one must taste and 
 see: but that good reasons can be given for the act of 
 Christian consecration in the soul, and good evidence in be- 
 half of the truth that is then received, he, and the school- 
 men who followed him in this religious philosophy, f ullj be- 
 lieved. It was the maxim of Socrates and Plato even, that 
 men must be improved before they can be instructed. Pas- 
 cal was not a sceptic in his philosophy, as some of his crit- 
 ics have charged: he maintained that faith is reasonable, 
 though not reached by a chain of reasoning ; and this be- 
 cause it is an act of the soul, conformed to higher intuitions. 
 Hume, Gibbon, and other free-thinkers of the last century, 
 caricatured the position of Christian theology, when they 
 ironically, with "the grave and temperate irony," which 
 Gibbon says that he learned from The Provincial Letters^ 
 spoke of the truths of religion as received by faith alone, in 
 the absence of, or in the face of, unanswerable arguments. 
 What, then, in the view of the evangelical Protestant, is 
 the place of reason ? First, he allows and claims for the 
 human soul a native recognition, however obscure it may 
 have become through sin, of the verities of natural religion 
 — God, freedom, accountableness, immortality. Secondly, 
 he concedes the necessity of establishing the supernatural 
 origin of the gospel, and of the mission of Christ, by com- 
 petent evidence. Christ and the apostles, in preaching to 
 Jews, naturally took for granted that groundwork of relig- 
 ious beliefs which was accepted by their hearers. They 
 had only to evince that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. 
 Yet it is remarkable how frequently in the discoTirses of 
 Christ — how habitually, it might be said — an appeal is 
 made directly to the moral and spiritual nature. How con- 
 stant is the recognition of those primary convictions which 
 are inwrought into the soul by its Maker! He rebukes 
 men who can predict the weather from signs in the sky for 
 
RATIONALISM. 445 
 
 not interpreting aright the signs of the times, and for not 
 deducing from phenomena that fell under their own obser- 
 vation the proper inference ; and he adds to this censure 
 the memorable words, " Yea, and why, even of yourselves, 
 judge ye not what is right ? " In preaching to the heathen, 
 the apostles argued the case. They set forth the truths of 
 natural religion, which the heathen in part acknowledged ; 
 and then they proceeded to establish by testimony the facts 
 of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It was, 
 throughout, an appeal to the intelligence of their auditors. 
 So it has been since among all considerate defenders of the 
 Christian faith, as the copious library of "Apologies will 
 bear witness. Thirdly, it is requisite to investigate the 
 question of the authorship of the books which enter into 
 the canon, wherever honest doubts arise on the subject. 
 The authority of the church on this point a consistent 
 Protestant cannot admit. The church, as an historical 
 witness, is entitled to speak. The reception, by the early 
 church, of books as apostolic, is certainly a strong, and in 
 many cases a conclusive, argument in favor of so regarding 
 them ; but the church, like other witnesses, must submit to 
 be cross-examined. We discard from the Old Testament 
 canon the so-called apocryphal books, because we know from 
 ancient testimony that they formed no part of the Scrip- 
 tures that were used by Christ and the apostles — no part of 
 the Hebrew canon ; and we charge the Church of Kome 
 with being uncritical in incorporating them into the Bible, 
 and pronouncing them, as it does in the Creed of Trent, a 
 part of Holy Scripture. Jerome taught the reformers, on 
 this matter, what Augustine with his defective scholarship 
 did not know. But the Protestant is equally bound not to 
 shrink from the investigation of the New Testament canon 
 whenever he is fairly challenged to this work. Thus in the 
 fourth century, as Eusebius tells us, there were several 
 books in regard to which the church was divided in opin- 
 ion; some regarding them as apostolic, and others taking 
 
446 EATIONALISM. 
 
 the opposite view. At this time, zeal for uniformity was 
 stronger than zeal for independent study ; and the doubtful 
 questions were disposed of without much inquiry. At an 
 earlier day, the state of things was different ; for there did 
 not exist in the second century that indifference to the gen- 
 uineness of books, and ready credulity, which Strauss and 
 many other infidel writers falsely attribute to the early 
 church. But the church of the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 on these particular questions to which I have referred, was 
 rather uncritical. Not that the doubt which Eusebius re- 
 ports is at all conclusive against the books in question ; but 
 it is one suflScient reason, if there were no other, why there 
 should be candid and fearless investigation : and so Luther 
 and the first reformers held. For the settlement of the 
 canon the enlightened Protestant will demand historical 
 testimony, in the shape both of internal evidence and ex- 
 ternal authentication, of such a nature as to convince the 
 imbiassed judgment. Fourthly, he admits that no amount 
 of evidence can justify belief in propositions that are either 
 self -contradictory, or in conflict with known truth. He ad- 
 mits, that, if such doctrines were to be found in the Bible, 
 it would so far detract from the authority of the book, and 
 might disprove the supernatural origin of the Christian sys- 
 tem. But, just here, the evangelical Protestant interposes 
 a protest against the rash, superficial, and sometimes flip- 
 pant assertion, that doctrines are irrational because they are 
 in some respects mysterious, or because they clash with 
 somebody's scheme of philosophy. There has been an in- 
 finite amount of confident but shallow denial of Christian 
 doctrine on grounds which a change in the reigning phi- 
 losophy renders obsolete. Pationalism may often be left to 
 confute itself. For example, the old. Kantian Rationalism, 
 which, in common with the Anglo-French Deism that went 
 before, cast out the doctrines, which, like the Trinity, it 
 could not square with its own preconceived ideas, was, for 
 this very reason, treated by Hegel and his associates of the 
 
RATIONALISM. 44^7 
 
 speculative school with great contempt. The professors 
 who had supposed themselves to have reduced Christianity 
 to a rational system, by eliminating mysteries and trying 
 everything by the touchstone of common-sense, found them- 
 selves charged by the more advanced school with a deplor- 
 able want of philosophical grasp. Theories of religion and 
 philosophy which are easy^ which present no hard prob- 
 lems, no unanswered questions, no vistas that the eye can- 
 not explore, find ready credence for a while ; but they are 
 short-lived, because flat and insufficient. A " Christianity 
 not mysterious " can take but a feeble hold of the convic- 
 tions of men. Fifthly, the evangelical Protestant is free in 
 the interpretation of the Bible. He is bound to no view of 
 a passage simply because it is traditional. Whatever light 
 antiquarian and philological study may throw on the pages 
 of the Bible, he is thankfully to accept. The text, the 
 translation, the exegesis, are fixed by no authority which 
 supersedes the exercise of private judgment. Protestant- 
 ism, on the one hand, vindicates the importance of learning 
 as an aid in the interpretation of the Scriptures; and, on 
 the other hand, asserts for the humblest individual, provi- 
 ded he be endued with an honest heart, the power of arriv- 
 ing at the general sense of the Bible, and of attaining the 
 knowledge that is requisite for the guidance of life and the 
 attainment of salvation. 
 
 The true relation of philosophy to faith, of reason to 
 revelation, it is not difficult to define. Philosophy was 
 styled by Anselm the ancilla, or handmaid of religion. The 
 office of philosophy was conceived by the schoolmen to be 
 that of elucidating and establishing the contents of faith. 
 The truth which faith lays hold of, reason demonstrates. 
 This did not, of necessity, imply a degradation of philoso- 
 phy ; since the schoolmen, one and all, held that faith has 
 an independent root of its own in our moral and spiritual 
 nature, and is, in the highest sense, reasonable. But the 
 
448 KATIONALISM. 
 
 limited scope allowed to philosophical investigation, without 
 doubt, hampered its development. With Descartes the new 
 era began. It was recognized that philosophy may and 
 must start with the data of consciousness, and erect its own 
 structure with entire independence ; taking nothing for 
 granted, and borrowing nothing from other branches of 
 knowledge. And here we come to the precise distinction 
 between philosophy and Christian theology, and, by conse- 
 quence, to the real relations of reason and faith. Chris- 
 tianity is an historical religion. Unlike the philosopher, 
 the theologian proceeds on the basis of historical facts. 
 These facts — the life, miracles, death, resurrection, of Christ 
 — constitute the starting-point of theology. We know that 
 a sound philosophy must harmonize with them, or find 
 room for them, because we know that they are well attested, 
 and truth is not in conflict with itself. When, therefore, a 
 new scheme of philosophy is broached which is incompati- 
 ble with the Christian faith, we conclude that it must be to 
 that extent false. Yet an inquisitive Christian mind will 
 not be satisfied until it has detected the particular fallacies 
 and errors which enter into such a system : in other words, 
 it will not be satisfied fully until a theoretical has been ad- 
 ded to the practical refutation of it. For example, the Ger- 
 man philosophers after Kant, inspired largely by Spinoza, 
 brought forward pantheistic systems claiming to solve all 
 problems, and explain the universe. These systems involve 
 the denial of a supernatural revelation, because they deny 
 the supernatural altogether ; and, of course, they rule out 
 the facts of Christianity. This was clearly seen when 
 Strauss applied the Hegelian principles to the discussion of 
 the gospel history, and when Baur did the same with refer- 
 ence to the origin of Christianity and of the J^ew Testament 
 writings. It is plain, that when the facts, the reality of 
 which is thus impugned, are established, the philosophy at 
 variance with them is overthrown ; yet the confutation is 
 not radical and complete until the philosopher is met on his 
 
RATIONALISM. 449 
 
 own ground, and convicted of unfoimded assumptions or 
 reasonings. Then his edifice is subverted from the founda- 
 tion. Tlie generality of Christians are not called upon to 
 undertake such a work : it belongs to thinking and educated 
 men. There is many a spectre in regard to which the un- 
 learned Christian has a right to say, when it crosses his 
 path, " Thou art a scholar, Horatio : speak to it ! " 
 
 If rationalism is taken in the broad sense, in which it is 
 equivalent to disbelief in revelation, it is found in three forms 
 — atheism, pantheism, and deism ; atheism being, for the 
 most part, an explicit or disguised materialism. The criti- 
 cal attacks on the Scriptures, dating from Semler, would 
 form properly a distinct chapter in the history of rational- 
 ism ; yet, as they have sprung from a philosophical princi- 
 ple or bias, they might be placed under the head of deism 
 or pantheism. The rationalistic critics of the school of 
 Kant belong under the former head ; those of the school of 
 Hegel, under the latter. It is not my purpose to treat the 
 subject historically, but to characterize briefly types of ra- 
 tionalism which now present themselves to observation. 
 
 First, there are those systems which utterly deny or 
 ignore the religious nature of man. The most prominent 
 of them is the so-called positive philosophy, in the form in 
 which it was propounded by its founder. Mr. J. S. Mill 
 maintains that either theism or atheism may be held in 
 consistency with positivist principles. This position, M. 
 Littre, the leading disciple of Comte, earnestly combats. 
 Comte was himself an atheist. This is the proper inference 
 from the doctrines of his system. Religion is declared to be 
 an excrescence upon human nature ; or, rather, it is one of 
 those fancies or delusions which belong to the childhood of 
 the race, and vanish with the development of intelligence. 
 Comte makes the incredible mistake of looking for the 
 prime origin of religion in an effort of the understanding to 
 explain the phenomena of Nature. Religion he makes the 
 
450 RATIONALISM. 
 
 result of the personifying instinct, which at the outset en- 
 dues all things with personal life. The errors involved in 
 his famous generalization, according to which mankind pass 
 through the successive stages of religion, metaphysics, and 
 positivism, have been frequently exposed. We are con- 
 cerned at this moment with the stupendous mistake which 
 he commits of ignoring the relation which religion has to 
 conscience and the deepest feelings of the soul. One would 
 think that a simple survey of the operation of religion in the 
 world, the mighty power it has exercised in human society, 
 the wide space it fills in human history, would be sufficient 
 to convince a man that it arises from native, profound, ine- 
 radicable sentiments and tendencies of the soul. Even the 
 evil that religion, when unenlightened, has caused in the 
 world — the strife and bloodshed and misery — might teach 
 one that the principle or sentiment from the abuse of which 
 all these baleful effects grow is an indestructible element of 
 human nature ; otherwise the poet would not have had oc- 
 casion to write the familiar words — 
 
 ** Tantum religio potuit snadere malonim." 
 
 Religion is rather to be compared, in the source and ex- 
 tent of its influence, with the social tendency. Some who 
 have called themselves philosophers have said that society is 
 artificial ; the natural condition of man being that of seclu- 
 sion and solitude, and social existence being a device to avoid 
 certain inconveniences, and secure certain comfoi-ts. This 
 theory, if it ever found serious acceptance, was long ago 
 given up. It is acknowledged that the individual by him- 
 self is not complete ; that we are naturally, as well as by 
 grace, members one of another. Solitude is, therefore, one 
 of the shortest roads to the mad-house. The marvellous 
 gift of language, the instrument of social intercourse, is the 
 testimony of nature that we exist for this end ; for it is 
 hardly probable that this wonderful power was given us 
 
RATIONALISM. 451 
 
 that we might indulge in soliloquies. Place a human being 
 in utter solitude ; suppose him to be ignorant that other be- 
 ings like himself exist : the sense of loneliness, the vague 
 but intense craving for social converse, the deep yearning of 
 his soul, testify that he is out of his element, that he has lost 
 a part of his being. There is a nistcs, an unfulfilled exertion, 
 a searching, unresting desire. So it is in respect to religion. 
 The state of a man without religion, without God, is similar. 
 Our belief in God does not appear at first in the form of a 
 deduction, in the form of a proposition, but in the form of 
 trust, reverence, fear, gratitude, supplication — in the form of 
 dependence and obligation ; in the same way that the social 
 instinct makes itself manifest in the child reaching out and 
 groping for another. Psychology is too often defective in 
 failing to state, or even to consider, the propensities of the 
 spiritual nature, on which, after all, human experience and 
 history so much depend. The evidences or arguments for 
 the being of God call out and meet an inward testimony of 
 the soul, of the character which I have indicated. There is 
 an inward nisus, as in the eye when in quest of light. There 
 is a gravitating of the soul towards the being who reveals 
 himself in the consciousness and in the law that is written 
 on the heart. Men like Pascal have been called sceptics, 
 only because they found belief, not on external proofs, but 
 on the intuitions of the spirit. 
 
 It cannot be denied that those systems which are allied 
 in spirit to positivism — whether their advocates call Comte 
 their master, or, abjuring him, claim to be followers of 
 Hume, or to follow nobody — have strong affinities, not to 
 say a logical relationship, with materialism and atheism. 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer holds to the relativity of knowl- 
 edge — the sceptical doctrine which comes down from the 
 sophists, that nothing is known as it is in itself ; that is, that 
 nothing is truly known — and from this assumption he de- 
 duces the corollary that God is utterly unknown. What he 
 or it is, it is impossible to say. But religion is the commu- 
 
452 RATIONALISM. 
 
 nion of man with a personal being ; and, if God cannot be 
 affirmed to be a person, religion is no more. Mr. Huxley, 
 giving to albumen, the old term for the material substance 
 that enters into living beings, the name of " protoplasm," 
 avows his belief that what we call the soul is the product of 
 a certain disposition of material molecules. But then " mat- 
 ter " itself is said to be only a name for states of conscious- 
 ness ; and the same is true of " spirit." Matter and spirit 
 are identified in a sort of monism that denies both, or as- 
 serts both to be phenomenal. By this unexpected turn, he 
 saves himself from the open assertion of what Sir William 
 Hamilton likes to call the "dirt philosophy" — the philos- 
 ophy, namely, which teaches that the rational soul is made 
 of dirt, or that both are of one substance. Mr. Huxley pro- 
 fesses to build on Hume. He speaks of metaphysics in a 
 tone of supercilious contempt ; yet, like the rest of the ex- 
 treme empirical school, he is unable to find a basis for in- 
 duction, or any real validity for the generalizations of his 
 own science. He raises the question. How can we predict 
 the future ? how can we know from our past experience that 
 the next stone we throw into the air will descend to the 
 earth? Casting away all metaphysical theories, he pro- 
 ceeds to assign two reasons : First, all the stones that have 
 been thrown up have fallen. But the question is. How can 
 we infer from this fact that the same thing will happen ? 
 On what ground can we infer the future from the past ? 
 Plainly, he does not advance an inch in solving the ques- 
 tion. His second ground is equally remarkable : we have 
 no reason to the contrary, but every reason to expect that it 
 will fall ; that is to say, we believe that the stone will fall 
 for the reason that there is every reason to expect it will ! 
 In this peculiar style does our great foe of metaphysics 
 handle a philosophical question. And yet, in his own de- 
 partment of investigation, he is an able observer and a 
 learned man. Mr. Mill is not so unwary ; still, in his oppo- 
 sition to an d^'iori and spiritual philosophy, and in his 
 
RATIONALISM. 463 
 
 zeal for the empirical tendency, he barely saves himself from 
 pronouncing the human mind merely a series of sensations; 
 he offers no explanation of the' way in which he can know 
 that any other being exists but himself, and can find no 
 theory of induction which does not involve a plain paralo- 
 gism. 
 
 In the field of history, the empirical school has found a 
 representative in Buckle — a writer who has dipped into a 
 multitude of books, but brings to his ambitious enterprise 
 no thoroughness of learning in any single department ; who 
 starts with the principle, that every new fact is the necessary 
 product of antecedent facts, and that both Providence and 
 free-will are a delusion, and count for nothing. The ma- 
 chinery of physical laws, either material or intellectual, takes 
 the place of personal agency. History is a drama where 
 the actors are automatons, and through which runs no divine 
 purpose. All that gives interest and pathos to the story of 
 human affairs vanishes at the touch of this pretentious but 
 contracted philosophy. It is pleasant to hear the masters of 
 historical study on the Continent, as De Tocqueville in 
 France and Droysen in Germany, utter their warm protest 
 against the narrow theory of Buckle, to say nothing of the 
 inaccuracies of his narrative. On both these points, the ul- 
 timate verdict of aU considerate scholars will be the same. 
 
 Secondly, there are those — many of whom are not to be 
 reckoned under the class last named — who deny the miracles 
 of Christianity. This unbelief must be traced ultimately to 
 a want of faith in a supernatural order. It springs from a 
 lurking scepticism respecting the primal truths of religion, 
 which may yet be received through the force of a traditional 
 impression. But the disbelief in miracles belongs to many 
 who have not abandoned the belief in a personal God, and 
 have no thought of questioning the truth that man has a 
 rational soul. There is a deistic as well as a pantheistic 
 infidelity. The Epicurean view of the universe, in which 
 the Deity, though admitted to exist, is kept aloof from the 
 
454 RATIONALISM. 
 
 world, and not allowed to concern himself in human affairs, 
 much less to interpose supernaturally, is not wholly banished 
 from the world. The real alternative is atheism or panthe- 
 ism on the one hand, and Christianity on the other ; but 
 this is not at once perceived. 
 
 That the apostles testified to the miracles recorded in the 
 New Testament, that they could not be deceived, and were 
 not liars, is a position which all the modern assaults of scep- 
 tical criticism have left unshaken. The impregnable char- 
 acter of this position is every day becoming more manifest. 
 It was admitted by Strauss, Baur, and their associates, that 
 the apostles testified to the resurrection of Jesus ; but Strauss 
 would fain establish the point, that they did not thus testify 
 to the other miracles described in the Gospels. The early 
 date of the synoptical Gospels absolutely precludes the sup- 
 position oi Strauss. If the resurrection is counted a myth, 
 no possible explanation of the origin of it can be given, un- 
 less, at the same time, it is supposed that the disciples had 
 witnessed such miracles before as would account for their 
 expecting it as a possible and probable event. But, if the 
 prior miracles are credited, there is no longer a motive for 
 seeking to resolve the resurrection into a delusive vision or 
 dream of fancy. Moreover, it is evident that the miracles 
 are so intertwined in the life of Jesus with his words and 
 actions, that no consistent conception of that life, as it went 
 on from day to day, can be formed in case the miracles are 
 excluded. Deny the miracles, and you cannot explain the 
 disciples' belief that Jesus was the Messiah ; you cannot ex- 
 plain his own undoubted words in consistency with the hy- 
 pothesis that he was honest ; and -you cannot explain the 
 narratives which embody the testimony of eye-witnesses. 
 It is remarkable that the leading advocates of the mythical 
 hypothesis have felt obliged to give up, to a great extent, their 
 favorite theory, and to resort to the hypothesis of a conscious 
 deception by the New Testament authors, whom they unsuc- 
 cessfully strive to bring down into an age later than the apos- 
 
RATIONALISM. 455 
 
 tolic. Henan, too, is forced to adopt the notion of a pious 
 fraud on the part of the founder of Christianity and his 
 chosen disciples, because he cannot escape from the fact of 
 contemporaneous testimony to the miracles, which yet his 
 narrow philosophy cannot allow. It is very characteristic of 
 the whole method and spirit of Renan, that he should re- 
 quire, as an indispensable condition of faith, the performance 
 of miracles at Paris before a council of savans. The moral 
 relations of a miracle, apart from its character as an act of 
 power, he seems utterly to overlook. He might as reasona- 
 bly ask, that before believing in the facts recorded by Euse- 
 bius of the devoted heroism and endurance of Christian 
 women and children, who, in the Roman persecutions, died 
 for the faith, some persons of like condition should consent 
 to go through the same sufferings before a French commis- 
 sion : not that the evidence by which miracles must be es- 
 tablished is the same in kind and degree (this is not the 
 point); but, in both cases, the events are such as occur 
 under the proper moral conditions and surroundings. 
 
 It may be said, generally, that, of all the recent writers 
 upon the Gospel history, there is no one who makes greater 
 pretentions to critical impartiality than Renan ; and yet 
 there is no one who is more obviously under the sway of sub- 
 jective standards and prepossessions. One of his principal 
 objections to the discourses of Jesus recorded in John is, 
 that they do not suit his taste ; which reminds one of the 
 lines which Goethe puts into the mouth of the old Rational- 
 ist Bahrdt — 
 
 "Ein Gedanke kommt mirungefahr — 
 So red'te Ich wenn Ich Christus war'."* 
 
 But even Renan involves himself, by his concessions, in a 
 dilemma, where he is forced either to admit the miracle, or 
 
 * "Up comes a thought I did not seek — 
 If 1 were Christ, thus would / speak.'* 
 
456 , KATIONALISM. 
 
 to impeach the truthfulness of the founder of Christianity 
 and his chosen disciples. 
 
 The whole course of sceptical criticism, if attentively fol- 
 lowed, is seen to be leading really to the inevitable conclu- 
 sion, which will be at length extorted from reluctant minds, 
 that the miraculous events which are set down in the Gos- 
 pels actually took place. 
 
 Thirdly, there are those who admit the historical truth of 
 miracles and the fact of revelation, but deny that the Scrip- 
 tures are inspired. A distinction is to be made between 
 revelation and inspiration. It is^ quite possible to hold that 
 Jesus performed miracles, and rose from the dead ; to hold 
 that God, who at sundry times and in divers ways spoke 
 unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
 spoken unto us by his Son ; and, at the same time, to disbe- 
 lieve that supernatural guidance was given to the minds of 
 the sacred writers. They were left, it may be said, to com- 
 prehend and interpret the revelation by the unaided light 
 of their own understanding. This is not an infidel position : 
 it admits fully the supernatural origin of the gospel ; it al- 
 lows that the great transactions occurred which constitute 
 the historic basis of revealed religion. God has made him- 
 self known to men otherwise than in the stated order of 
 nature ; but the view to which I refer leaves us no author- 
 ized interpretation of the facts — no surety that the prophets 
 and apostles did not mistake their import : it leaves, in a 
 word, no authoritative teaching. Whatever varying forms 
 the doctrine of inspiration may assume from the hyper- 
 orthodox view, that the words are dictated, down through all 
 the grades of opinion, evangelical Protestantism holds and 
 cannot surrender the tenet that the Bible is somehow the 
 rule of faith. There is an objective standard — not one, if 
 you please, that dispenses with the need of study, of com- 
 paring Scripture with Scripture, of considering the circum- 
 stances of each writer, of having regard to the progressive 
 character of the revelation — but still an objective standard, 
 
RATIONALISM. 457 
 
 exalted above the conjectures and speculations of tlie indi- 
 vidual — a divine testimony — an umpire to end the strife. 
 Inspiration is the means to this end. Christ told his follow- 
 ers that they would, after his death, understand what they 
 could not comprehend before ; they would be guided to a 
 true interpretation of what they could not explain in his 
 life and death ; they should be led into all truth in regard 
 to him. He directed them, when they should be arraigned 
 before hostile magistrates, not to hunt up arguments and 
 devise rejoinders, but they should have given them what 
 they should say. Intuition, under the illumination of the 
 Spirit, would supersede contrivance. In short, they were 
 to be, and were qualified to be, competent expositors of the 
 Gospel ; and their teaching was to have a normal authority ; it 
 was to be the supplement and further unfolding of his own 
 divine instruction. Inspiration, therefore, is a truth concern- 
 ing which the evangelical Protestant cannot be indifferent ; 
 it being the source and safeguard of authoritative teaching. 
 
 nationalism, through all of its numerous and conflicting 
 schools, affirms the full competency of the human mind to 
 discover religious truth for itself. Underneath the rational- 
 istic creed there lies this principal assumption. The great 
 fact that is overlooked is the fact of sin, and the influence 
 of sin upon all parts of human nature. The truth that hu- 
 man nature is not in its normal condition, and that sin has 
 darkened the perceptions of the soul, is avowedly or uncon- 
 sciously set aside. The Pelagian theory lies at the root of ra- 
 tionalism : this lies at the bottom of its denial of the need 
 of external authoritative instruction, of an enlightening and 
 quickening influence upon the mind from without. The 
 consequences that flow respectively from the acknowledg- 
 ment and the virtual denial of the Christian doctrine of sin 
 can hardly be overstated. This doctrine is the one great 
 postulate of the gospel : " They that are whole need not a 
 physician, but they that are sick." It affirms, against Mani- 
 20 
 
458 EATIONALISM. 
 
 cliseism and dualism in whatever form, that moral evil be- 
 longs to the human, creaturely will, and comes not from the 
 Creator ; but, with equal earnestness, it asserts the deep and 
 universal dominion of evil among men. There has been a 
 separation of mankind from God. We behold a state of 
 things which compels us either to deny that evil is, and to 
 call evil good, or to assume a mysterious catastrophe, of 
 which revealed religion itself gives, and professes to give, 
 but an imperfect explanation. But, whatever mysteries 
 hang over the origin of sin, two things are certain : one is 
 our personal responsibility for what we are in character — a re- 
 sponsibility to which conscience, the highest witness, clearly 
 testifies ; the other is the baleful effect of sin, not only on 
 society, not only on the pursuits and purposes of the individ- 
 ual, but also on the spiritual perceptions. It is a depart- 
 ment where the bent of the will affects the perception of 
 the intellect ; where mind and heart share a common disas- 
 ter. How is it possible to look abroad on the world, and 
 see what men are, even when placed under the most favor- 
 able conditions ; to review the course of history, and notice 
 what men have done — their conduct to one another, their 
 governments, their literature, their amusements, their social 
 customs, their religions even — ^how is it possible for one to 
 look within himself, and interrogate his own soul, and not 
 acknowledge this great fact of sin — acknowledge that a 
 malady has infected mankind, differing from any other dis- 
 ease only in this, that it emanates from the will, and in- 
 volves guilt ? How is it possible to ignore a fact which all 
 deep-thinking men, heathen or Christian, have united in de- 
 ploring — a fact which Seneca declares almost in the lan- 
 guage of Paul ? The human mind, as an organ for the dis- 
 cernment of God and divine things, is not in the condition 
 in which it would be, had sin not perverted its powers. 
 Vague and doubtful apprehensions need to be enlivened 
 and confirmed by the voice of One who speaks as one hav- 
 ing authority. It is not truth alone that the human soul 
 
RATIONALISM. 459 
 
 needs, but redemption through One who is himself the 
 truth. But communications of truth respecting God, and our 
 relations to him, will form an essential part of the process 
 which has for its end the restoration of men to communion 
 with God. 
 
 The Pelagian view of things appears, at the first glance, 
 to be the easiest. It avoids a number of very difficult ques- 
 tions which theology has not yet succeeded, and perhaps 
 never will succeed, in solving. The trouble is, that it omits 
 to recognize or take into the account vast facts which ob- 
 trude themselves upon observation at 'every turn. How 
 well has it been said that sin is the one mystery that makes 
 every thing else plain ! Superficial views on the subject of 
 sin, where the views are not absolutely false and anti-Chris- 
 tian, lie at the foundation of most of the current infidel 
 theories. A truly profound and just view of this sub- 
 ject is the one grand corrective. Every system of panthe- 
 ism assumes, and must assume, w^hat the healthy moral 
 sense of every man denounces as a falsehood — that the en- 
 tire course of this world is normal, and conformed to the 
 ideal ; that baseness and perfidy, and every form of selfish- 
 ness, are well, and even divine, in their • place. It is no 
 wonder that Spinoza and Hegel betray some uneasiness at 
 what are the necessary ethical implications of their systems. 
 Every system of deism likewise assumes that man is able, 
 without aid from above, to acquaint himself, as fully as he 
 needs, wdth God, and to deliver himself from the yoke of 
 evil. The Author of revelation says the whole truth in a 
 word: "Thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy 
 help." 
 
 Let full justice be done to the position of the Rationalist : 
 his doctrine, in the most refined form, is that of the suprem- 
 acy of reason and the moral sense. There is force and 
 plausibility in the statement ; but let one consideration be 
 noted. Suppose that I am driven to the admission that rea- 
 son and the moral sense within me are not quenched, but 
 
460 RATIONALISM. 
 
 perverted and obscured ; and suppose that, in Christ, I rec- 
 ognize one in whom, being sinless, reason and the moral 
 sense are clear and perfect, so that his eye sees moral truth 
 with an infallible discernment ; suppose that my conviction 
 of his superiority in this respect is deepened with every 
 day's contemplation of his character and teaching, and that, 
 the more I assume the temper of a disciple, the more is my 
 moral sense quickened and clarified through contact with 
 his spirit : why shall I not recognize him as the authority in 
 this province of morals and religion ? In this act of trust, 
 do I not establish, rather than subvert, the supremacy of 
 reason and conscience ? Be it remembered, also, that this 
 relation to Christ is not one that supplants the exercise of 
 my intelligence and moral sense ; but it is one that rectifies, 
 and at the same time constantly develops, elevates, and edu- 
 cates, these powers of the soul. We call him Lord and Mas- 
 ter ; and so he is : but he does not call us servants, but rath- 
 er friends ; for all things that are made known to him he 
 reveals to us. The relation of dependence is ever turning 
 into that of fellowship and friendship, of sympathy and per- 
 sonal insight. 
 
 Let a man discern the surpassing excellence of Christ, and 
 the germ of . faith is within him. Kemember that there is 
 an order among things to be believed. You are conscious of 
 sin and moral weakness ; you have lost that filial relation to 
 God which is the birthright of human nature ; but you are 
 struck with the perfect excellence of Christ as he is de- 
 scribed in the Gospels. Here is a character that more than 
 fills out your highest conception of nobleness and virtue ; 
 here is one whose filial communion with God sin has never 
 broken. This character of Christ is the witness to its own 
 reality. It is no product of imagination : the records that 
 exhibit it could never have been framed by invention. But 
 how about the supernatural facts of the history ? They, too, 
 are upheld by the power of this human, and yet superhuman, 
 excellence. You feel that the works of Christ are no more 
 
RATIONALISM. 461 
 
 wonderful than his words and his life, and that he himself 
 is the greatest wonder of all. Who but he can be the Eec- 
 onciler ? Whose hand can I take but his ? But he proposes 
 to bring us out of our separation from God, and rescue us 
 from the ruin which sin has brought upon human nature. 
 He is at once the instrument and the first example of re- 
 demption ; for in his own person, having overcome sin, he 
 overcomes death. He is the power of life to all who come 
 to him, infusing into them his own holiness and peace, re- 
 connecting them with God, saving them from death. It is 
 a legitimate progress, then, from the first living perception 
 of the excellence of Christ to a personal trust in him as the 
 Saviour, and to a discernment, also, of the inner rationality 
 of the method of redemption. Difficulties respecting this 
 or that portion of the Bible may be left to take care of them- 
 selves, provided they are not obstacles in the way of a prac- 
 tical acquaintance with Christ. Even the Bible is not to be 
 interposed between the soul and Christ. Pie was preached 
 and believed in before the l^ew Testament was written, and 
 to those who knew little or nothing of the Old. Salvation 
 is by faith in him. Believing in him, we stand on safe 
 ground, from which all questions, even such as relate to the 
 Scriptures themselves, may be studied. No loyal disciple 
 need fear the displeasure of his Master on account of intel- 
 lectual difficulties which he is doing his best to solve. 
 
 It should not be overlooked that Christianity is more than 
 theory or precept : it is fact ; it is a great act of love and 
 sacrifice — an act of God himself. For this reason,int can 
 never be thought out by an a jpriori process, or brought 
 under the category of necessary truth. As sin can never be 
 explained, in the sense of being reduced under the category 
 of cause^ and effect, like a physical event, for the reason that 
 sin is a free act, so it is with redemption. In its very na- 
 ture it is historical : hence philosophy can never bring it 
 into a chain of necessary conceptions. Christianity is some- 
 thing which reason does not evolve out of itself, but wliich 
 
4:62 RATIONALISM. 
 
 must be received like any other great historical transaction 
 in which free-will plays the essential part. 
 
 In dealing with rationalism, let it be observed that it is 
 vain, as well as wrong, to attempt to check the freedom of 
 investigation in any province of knowledge. In regard to 
 the beautiful sciences of nature, the rapid progress of which 
 is a leading characteristic of the present age, this remark is 
 especially pertinent. Let the investigation of second causes 
 in nature be carried as far as possible, and let there be no 
 hindrance put in its way. A jealousy on the part of stu- 
 dents and ministers of the gospel with reference to these 
 branches of study is equally unmanly and futile. At the 
 same time, it deserves to be remarked, that, just now, the 
 tendency to speculation is more rife among physical philos- 
 ophers than among metaphysicians ; and theories of nature 
 are brought forward which have a very slender basis of 
 facts to rest upon, and which evince a wide departure from 
 the Baconian method. Those philosophers must not be ten- 
 derly sensitive if their theories are subjected to a rigid criti- 
 cism by theologians, who, to say the least, are, equally with 
 them, trained to habits of logical analysis. We must be ex- 
 cused for not showing the deference to guesses that is prop- 
 erly paid to established truth. Again : it is unjust to charge 
 the clergy and theologians with a standing opposition to new 
 discoveries in physical science. It would be strange if the 
 Christian Church, which has educated the European nations, 
 reduced their languages to writing, founded their schools and 
 universities, saved the ark of learning in the midst of a del- 
 uge of barbarism, were to be found uniformly an obstacle in 
 the path of scientific progress. The fact is, that almost all 
 new discoveries which subvert traditional opinions are looked 
 upon at the outset with distrust, and meet with opposition. 
 This opposition is far from being peculiar to theologians, 
 even in the case of physical discovery. Resistance often 
 comes from the men of science themselves. Galileo, the old 
 
RATIONALISM. " 463 
 
 example of ecclesiastical intolerance, had his contest to wage 
 with them. There was the scientific professor at Padua, who 
 could not be induced to look through the glass, and see the 
 moons of Jupiter. Why is not more eloquence expended 
 against the narrowness and bigotry of scientific men them- 
 selves in respect to new truth in their own department ? 
 And, if so much progress is claimed for the physical branch- 
 es, why may not some progress be permitted from age to 
 age in the understanding of the Bible and of the nature and 
 boundaries of inspiration ? Once more it must be said, that 
 the natural and physical sciences, beautiful and useful as 
 they are, often claim, just at present, a higher relative place 
 on the scale of studies than justly belongs to them. The 
 study of matter, even the study of living beings below man, 
 and of his material organism, must ever stand in respect to 
 dignity, as an instrument of culture, second to the studies 
 that relate to the mind. " The proper study of mankind is 
 man." Man, and the products of his activity — language, 
 history, literature, art — are the grandest, the most fructifying 
 studies. The opposite view must be withstood, because it 
 can only prevail in alliance with materialistic tendencies and 
 influences. The study of material nature is lauded as being 
 an observation of the thoughts of God, and an examination 
 of his works, instead of the works of man. But the human 
 mind is the great work of God, being his image. More is to 
 be learned from the mind of Shakespeare, concerning God its 
 Creator, than can be gathered from the astronomic system — 
 infinitely more. We would not disparage physical studies ; 
 let them be encouraged, fostered, cultivated, to the utmost : 
 but there are loftier, more inspiring, more edifying branches 
 of study than these. The natural and physical sciences do 
 their best work in the way of mental culture when they are 
 pursued by men who bring to the study of nature an ideal 
 element that flows into the mind from other fountains. 
 Alexander Yon Humboldt, though not belonging to the first 
 order of genius, and not to be compared with men like Xep- 
 
464 RATIONAI.ISM. 
 
 ler, E'ewton, and Leibnitz, is, nevertheless, an example of the 
 warming and widening influence of literary studies upon a 
 devotee of science. He caught something from the genius 
 of his brother, who was probably the abler man of the two. 
 
 But rationalism must be met in the field of argument. 
 To this end, apart from the intrinsic interest and value of 
 these studies, the physical sciences must be so far pursued 
 by the student of the gospel as to qualify him to judge of 
 the theories and deductions that bear closely on natural and 
 revealed religion. The two classes of scholars need to know 
 more of one another, and of the wide fields of research in 
 which, respectively, each of them is most at home. Then 
 the naturalist will not ignore the vast range of facts and data 
 that do not lie within his own circle, and a like benefit will 
 accrue to the theologian. 
 
 The theologian must not set his face against new truth in 
 his own branch. Revelation is complete, but not our un- 
 derstanding of it. Let us not mistake the outpost for the 
 citadel. Let us not imagine that the Christian faith is im- 
 perilled by every proposed modification of received opinions. 
 The effect of historical, philological, and scientific study, is 
 to bring out in bolder relief the human element in the Holy 
 Scriptures. It is more and more felt that " we have this 
 treasure in earthen vessels." If the result is, that tradi- 
 tional formulas are somewhat altered, and new statements 
 must be framed in their place, let it not be supposed that all 
 or that anything truly valuable, is lost. Be it ever remem- 
 bered that " the letter killeth ; the spirit givetli life." 
 Much may be conceded, respecting the Bible, that was once 
 denied ; and yet it is left infallible and sufficient as a rule 
 of faith. There is a power in the Bible to quicken the soul ; 
 to meet our deepest necessities ; to satisfy us when all other 
 sources of wisdom and comfort fail ; "to find us," as Cole- 
 ridge has aptlv expressed it : and this power, made manifest 
 in all ages, and among all conditions of men, is the evidence 
 of his divine origin, and a pledge, that, whatever peculiari- 
 
RATIONALISM. 465 
 
 ties incidental to its human origin likewise may come to 
 light, it will never lose its hold upon mankind. A good 
 way to make infidels of sharp-sighted and thoughtful men is 
 to identify the truth of the Gospel with untenable formulas 
 respecting the Scriptures ; to make, for example, Chris- 
 tianity stand or fall with the exactness of a genealogical 
 table. Richard Baxter felt this, even in his day. [Never 
 was there a louder call for the utmost candor and fairness in 
 dealing with the difficulties and objections of inquiring 
 minds, whose perplexities find little relief in much of the 
 current and traditional teaching. Where there is no settled 
 hostility to the Christian faith, an irenical, conciliatory spirit 
 on the side of its defenders is eminently called for. " Prove 
 all things, hold fast to that which is good," is the motto for 
 the times. It was a Church father — Tertullian, I believe — 
 who said that it was tradition that nailed Christ to the cross. 
 
 [Nevertheless, the tenor of the foregoing remarks will pre- 
 vent surprise at the observation, that the most effective an- 
 tidote to the influence of rationalism is found in direct ap- 
 peals to the moral and spiritual nature. There is a testi- 
 mony within, if it can only be called forth. Sometimes the 
 inward witness is awakened by the experiences of life. 
 Robert Hall said that he buried his materialism in the grave 
 of his father. But another providential agent for effecting 
 this result is the prophet's voice. Men are raised up in 
 sceptical times when the higher spiritual nature of men 
 seems dormant, and when the understanding has taken the 
 throne of reason — men whose office it is to appeal with a 
 direct and vivifying power to the intuitive function of the 
 spirit. Among the heathen, this work was done by Socrates, 
 in opposition to the Sophists. He taught men to find with- 
 in themselves, in their own moral intuitions, a certainty 
 which nothing could shake. In modern times, in Germany, 
 when a barren rationalism had paralyzed faith, it was 
 Schleiermacher who recalled men to religion. The high 
 
466 EATIONALISM. 
 
 privilege was given him to awaken his contemporaries to a 
 sense of the indestructible character and sacred authority of 
 religion. His errors, whatever they may have been, should 
 never prevent us from recognizing the greatness of the ser- 
 vice which he rendered. There is no truly earnest preacher, 
 who speaks from a living experience, who is not carrying 
 forward an effective war against rationalism. Robertson of 
 Brighton, referring to the cry of John the Baptist to the 
 Pharisees and Sadducees, " Who hath warned you to flee 
 from the wrath to come ? " raises the question, how such 
 words could be addressed with any hope to Sadducees, who 
 did not believe in a wrath to come, or in any life hereafter. 
 But, says the preacher, when they heard the prophet say, 
 " Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ? " 
 they knew that there was a wrath to come. There are re- 
 sponsive chords in the soul, which the truth, when simply 
 asserted with the earnestness of a living conviction, sets in 
 vibration. Arguments are sometimes necessary and useful ; 
 but they may be superfluous, and even harmful. A striking 
 statement that brings truth in direct contact with the spirit, 
 a declaration that comes from insight and experience, may 
 do what reasoning fails to accomplish. A single utterance, 
 which I call, for the want of an equally expressive term, pro- 
 phetical, will sometimes dissipate doubt in a moment, and 
 develop a conviction which intellectual inquiry alone might 
 never awaken. 
 
 In Germany, it was an orthodox rationalism that paved 
 the way for the heterodox. Theologians took their proposi- 
 tions from the creed, or reasoned them out by processes of 
 logic, but forgot to set them in a living relation to the wants 
 and aspirations of the soul; or they dwelt on the ethical 
 side of the Gospel, to the lieglect of the properly religious 
 elements, in which the originality and power of Christianity 
 chiefly reside. Let not the lesson be lost upon us, who are 
 going through an experience not unlike that through which 
 Germany has, in a sense, already passed. 
 
RATIONALISM. 467 
 
 There is one final test to which irreligious as well as reli- 
 gious systems are subject; and that is, their influence on 
 society. The Christian religion is the life-blood of the social 
 body. That gone, decay and moral death inevitably follow. 
 Jesus called his followers " the salt of the earth," " the light 
 of the world." They were the light of the world because 
 he is the light of the world, and their light is kindled from 
 him. Let materialism prevail, and, as surely as effects fol- 
 low causes, the appetites of sense and earthly passions will 
 gain an undisputed ascendancy, and overturn at last the 
 social fabric. Let a less gross form of rationalism supplant 
 faith in the verities of the Gospel, and a like appalling result 
 will ultimately, though it may be with slower pace, ensue. 
 History unites with reason in teaching, that, when the re- 
 straints and incentives that flow from religion are lost, there 
 is no power adequate to control the selfish propensities 
 which clamor for indulgence. If men are made to believe 
 that they are merely animals, they will, in the end, behave 
 like the brutes. K they are persuaded that they are desti- 
 tute of a free and responsible nature, they will act without 
 a conscience. If they reject the truth of a righteous moral 
 government, they will sin without fear. If the religion of 
 Christ is treated as a human invention, the regenerating 
 power that lies in the Gospel is wanting. By this last stern 
 test, every irreligious and anti-Christian system which is not 
 otherwise overcome must be tried. Supernatural Christi- 
 anity has been tried as a reformatory agent in millions of 
 individuals, and in society at large. We know what the 
 Gospel can do when it is cordially received. We are not 
 ignorant of what may be expected if atheism, or pantheism, 
 or a Christless deism, should prevail. The fate of the civi- 
 lized heathen nations of antiquity is instructive : so is the 
 history of modem nations which have given themselves up 
 to infidelity. Apart from argument, there remains, then, 
 the great test of experience, " By their fruits ye shall know 
 them." 
 
4:QS THE UNEEAS0NABLENES8 OF ATHEISM. 
 
 THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM.* 
 
 The word " fool " commonly means, in the Bible, not a 
 person actually devoid of reason, but one who, having rea- 
 son, fails, through some wrong quality of character, to use 
 it aright, but proceeds in his thinking or conduct in a way 
 contrary to the dictates of a soimd intelligence. There are 
 two sorts of fools ; first, natural fools, and secondly, fools 
 from choice — or those who, from haste or conceit, or some 
 evil inclination, occult it may be, are grossly misled in their 
 opinions, or in their practical action. When, for example, 
 we read in the Proverbs that " Judgments are prepared for 
 sinners, and stripes for the back of fools ; " and, in another 
 place, " Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among 
 wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from 
 him," the allusion is plainly not to men whose native talents 
 are below the average, and whose attainments of knowledge 
 are small. Everything like contempt for inferiors of this 
 class is utterly at variance with the spirit of Christianity. 
 The pride of knowledge, like eveiy other kind of pride, is 
 rebuked in the Bible. But the allusion is to one who, while 
 possessed of the attributes of a rational being, chooses, 
 nevertheless, to adopt principles, or pursue lines of conduct, 
 that are perfectly unreasonable. Even then, to call another 
 " fool " in any bitter temper, to despise or hate him for any 
 cause, is forbidden in the Sermon on the Mount. Yet there 
 is nothing to hinder us from designating folly, not passion- 
 ately, but in a calm and sober way, by its true name. Not 
 
 * A Discourse in the chapel of Yale Colleg-e (October 22, 1876), on the 
 text : " The fool hath said in his heart, ' There is no God.' " Ps. xiv. 1. 
 
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 469 
 
 to tarry longer upon the explanation of words, I wish to 
 speak of the folly of atheism under two heads; first, the 
 futility of the reasons that lead to it, and secondly, the 
 strength of the evidence for the being of God which it ig- 
 nores. 
 
 Among the sources of atheism, one is the fact that God 
 is imperceptible by the senses. The remark has been at- 
 tributed to La Place that, searching the heavens, he could 
 not find God with his telescope. It is doubtful whether he 
 ever said it. But whether he did or not, it indicates the 
 spirit that often tacitly underlies theoretical and practical 
 atheism. God, when sought for as a visible object, cannot 
 be found by traversing the sea, or exploring the sky, even 
 if one pursued his journey to the farthest star. But what 
 folly to conclude that God does not exist, because he is not 
 visible ! Men — unless you call the body the man — are not 
 visible. The thinking principle, neither in yourself nor in 
 others, have you ever seen. You may say that you are con- 
 scious of it in yourself. But how do you know that it ex- 
 ists in another — in the friend, for example, who sits at your 
 side? You cannot see it: all that you behold is certain 
 manifestations, or phenomena — certain visible and tangible 
 signs — which reveal its presence. You may be in daily, in- 
 timate converse with another, but his soul ever remains in- 
 visible: for 
 
 " We are spirits clad in veils : 
 Man by man was never seen : 
 All our deep communing faOs 
 
 To remove the shadowy screen." * 
 
 Why then disbelieve in God because you cannot see him ? 
 If through the look, the tone, the gesture of a man at your 
 side you can infer, or behold with the eye of faith, the in- 
 visible mind that resides within, the seat of thought and af- 
 fection, why not recognize the Supreme Intelligence, of 
 
 * From a poem of C. P. Cranch. 
 
470 THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 whom it is true, as an apostle has said, that " The invisible 
 things of him from the creation of the world are clearly 
 seen, being understood by the things that are made, even 
 his eternal power and Godhead ? " Even within the sphere 
 of material nature, invisible forces, some of them of vast 
 energy, are admitted to exist. They tell us that matter is 
 composed of atoms : who has seen them ? Who has seen 
 the force of gravitation,* and can paint a likeness of it ? 
 Who has beheld the subtle ether which, it is believed, per- 
 vades all space ? He who believes in nothmg but what he, 
 or somebody else has seen, will have a short creed. Even 
 if he admit the reality of matter and molecular motion, he 
 will have to deny the existence of any such thing as a power 
 of thought or volition — a principle of intelligence — behind 
 the actions and expressions of his fellow-men. He must 
 deny that he is endued with such a power himself. There 
 is no need to go farther. When he has emptied the world 
 of everything but brute matter, which can be weighed and 
 clutched, or brought under the laws of molecular action, he 
 may, perhaps, logically reject God. 
 
 A second source of atheism, is the notion that as far as 
 second causes are brought to light, the first cause is excluded, 
 or the notion that second causes are disconnected from God. 
 In the Bible, we read, in a sentence that has hardly a paral- 
 lel for beauty : "By the Word of the Lord were the 
 heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of 
 his mouth." ISTow suppose the nebular hypothesis, as 
 broached by Herschel and La Place, to be true. Whether 
 it be true or not, I cannot say : the astronomers have not 
 yet • made up their minds about it. But suppose it to be 
 true. Then a homogeneous, nebulous matter diffused abroad 
 in space, by a long process of attractions and repulsions, 
 combinations and motions, solidified into the bodies and sys- 
 tems which now form the sidereal world. Does this rule 
 out the sublime declaration of Scripture — " By the Word of 
 the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them 
 
THE UNBEASONABLKNESS OF ATHEISM. 471 
 
 by the breath of his mouth ? " Before attending to this 
 question, let us turn for a moment to another illustration. 
 A person, after a lingering illness, dies. The minister and 
 the physician happen to be together. The minister says : 
 " It has pleased Grod to terminate the life of our brother." 
 " Ko," says the doctor, " he died of a fever." " You are 
 wrong," replies the minister, " it is God — it is he that killeth 
 and that maketh alive." " You are wrong," rejoins the 
 other, " I have watched the progress of the fever from the 
 beginning : such a fever seizing upon such a constitution can 
 have no other issue." The one party falls back on religious 
 conviction, and the testimony of the Bible ; the other ap- 
 peals to the obvious connection of antecedent and conse- 
 quent. I>[ow shall this unseemly wrangle between the min- 
 ister and the doctor be dignified by the high-sounding name 
 of " a conflict between religion and science ? " In such a 
 contest, both are right in what they affirm, and wrong in 
 what they deny. Let all the links of secondary causation 
 be exposed as completely as possible, each of them bound to 
 the one before and after it, it is not less true that, when life 
 ends, it is God who brings it to an end. The instrument 
 used does not exclude, it includes his agency. If a bird is 
 shot by a rifle, it is a man still that kills the bird. Many 
 appear to think that God is to be found, if found at all, only 
 at the origin of things — the origin of matter, the origin of life, 
 the origin of different species — at crises, so to speak. But " he 
 maketh his sun to rise " — daily maketh his sun to rise — " on 
 the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and 
 on the unjust." He is present with his agency in the course 
 of nature not less really and efficiently than at the begin- 
 nings of nature. He is the primal fountain from which all 
 force emanates. " Not a sparrow falls to the ground without 
 your Father." We revert now to the question of the origin 
 of the stellar universe. God is not less its author even if 
 the material of which it is composed were carried through a 
 succession of changes, reaching through a long series of ages. 
 
472 THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 There is, to be sure, tlie origination of the material to be 
 accounted for, with all its latent properties and tendencies. 
 But God is presupposed not only at this initial stage, but at 
 every subsequent movement, until the glorious work was 
 consummated. " By the Word of the Lord " — by his will 
 and in pursuance of his plan — " were the heavens made." 
 
 Science has for its business the investigation of second 
 causes. Let it have a fair field. I sympathize with the re- 
 sentment which the students of nature feel when the at- 
 tempt is made to furnish them with conclusions beforehand. 
 Their peculiar province is to unfold all the links of second- 
 ary causation — every nexios between antecedent and conse- 
 quent—which they can ferret out. But the origin of things 
 — I mean, the primary origin — and the end, or design, it 
 belongs to philosophy, in the light of revelation, to define. 
 The man of science may, also, be a philosopher ; and he may 
 not be.* The particular fallacy, however, which I would 
 here point out is the false and unauthorized assumption that 
 where secondary causation begins, divine agency ceases, and 
 that as far as secondary causation extends, divine agency is 
 excluded. How much nobler is the conception of the Bible, 
 in the E^ew Testament as well as in the Old ! It is God by 
 whom the lilies of the field are clothed with beauty. The 
 fowls of the air — it is your Heavenly Father that feedeth 
 them ! 
 
 Closely allied to the fallacy just named is the assumption 
 that mechanical causes are incompatible with design. Much 
 
 * It is a remark of Archbishop Whately, to be found somewhere in his 
 biography, and a remark characteristic of his sagacity, that science has 
 nothing to do with religion. If I ask a man of science for the origin of an 
 eclipse, it is not for him, that is, not for him in his character as a man of 
 science, to answer that God caused it. This I knew before. His func- 
 tion is to explain the antecedents which constitute the ground on which 
 the event can be predicted. What is true of an eclipse is true of every- 
 thing else in nature. With respect to the origin of man, it is perfectly 
 legitimate, it is, in fact, the proper function of the scientific man, to find 
 out the mediating process — if there was one — in his creation. 
 
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 473 
 
 of the atheistic reasoning current at the present day proceeds 
 on this wholly gratuitous assumption, which the analogies of 
 human experience contradict. But to this fallacy I shall 
 soon advert again. 
 
 A third particular in which atheism demonstrates its folly 
 is in the assumption that the laws of nature — or the unifor- 
 mity of nature's laws — excludes God. Must there be then a 
 break — discord where there is order — to prove that God 
 reigns ? Is there no God, because there is a reign of law ? 
 Lnagine that in the room of the universal sway of law, there 
 were a jumble of events, no fixed relation of antecedent and 
 consequent ; in a word, chaos. Would there be more or less 
 evidence of a God than there is now ? It is because nature is 
 an orderly system, that the universe is intelligible, and science 
 possible. This very aspect of nature shows that the head of 
 the universe is an intelligent being. Miracles would not be 
 credible, if they were, as some suppose them to be, anti-natural. 
 Though not the mere effect of nature, they harmonize with 
 it, as parts of a more comprehensive system. ^ What a 
 strange idea that for the heavens to declare the glory of 
 God, it is necessary that the planets should leap out of their 
 orbits, instead of keeping their appointed path with unfal- 
 tering regularity ! We count it the perfection of intelligent 
 control, when the railway train reaches its destination, day 
 after day, at the same appointed moment. " O, no ! " cries 
 the Atheist : " let the train, now and then, run oif the track 
 into yonder meadow, and I will believe that it does not go 
 of itself, and that an engineer guides it." A government of 
 law is opposed to that of wild chance or mutable caprice. 
 
 * Miracles surpass the capacities of nature. But, as Augustine long 
 ago affirmed, the ordinary operations of nature are just as truly from 
 God, as are miraculous phenomena; and those operations would be just 
 as marvellous, were we not familiar with them, as any miracle can be. 
 What marvel greater than every new-bom child ? But the point made 
 above is that miracles have their law — their rationale — as parts of the 
 divine plan. 
 
474 THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 What should we expect of perfect wisdom, and of perfect 
 goodness too, but a system of nature, a fixed order, on which 
 men can build their plans ? Of all the grounds for atheism, 
 the rationality of the universe is the most singular. 
 
 Another pretext for atheism is the alleged contrariety of 
 the teaching of the Bible to the discoveries of natural and 
 physical science. An odd conclusion surely, even if such a 
 contradiction were found. For the Bible does not first make 
 known the existence of God. If the Bible were shown to be 
 full of errors, it would not disprove the being of God. His 
 being is assumed in the Bible. It is declared to be manifest 
 in the universe around us, and within us, so that heathenism 
 is without excuse. But there is no discrepancy between the 
 ascertained truth of science, and the essential teaching of 
 the Bible respecting God and his relations to the world. 
 The Bible is our guide in morals and religion. It does not 
 anticipate the discoveries of science, or of art. Paul was a 
 tent-maker. The inspiration that so illuminated his spiritual 
 perception as to render him an authoritative teacher of the 
 Gospel, did not, as far as we know, enable him to make tents 
 any better than other workmen of the same craft. There 
 has been, doubtless, since his time, a progress in this art as 
 in almost every other. These two things are true of the 
 Bible : first, it js written from the religious point of view. 
 That is, God is brought directly before us, in describing the 
 works of Providence, as well as the phenomena of nature — 
 secondary and intermediate causes being, to a large extent, 
 dropped out of sight. The veil that hides him, so to speak, 
 from the dull eyes of men, is torn away, and his agency is 
 brought into the foreground. Secondly, the Bible vsrriters 
 take the science of their time, or the ordinary conceptions 
 of men respecting the material world, and proceed upon that 
 basis, eliminating, however, everything at variance with true 
 religion. They stand substantially on the same plane of phys- 
 ical knowledge as their contemporaries ; and from that plane 
 they exhibit the attributes of God as the creator and ruler 
 
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 475 
 
 of nature. The astronomy of the Bible is that of the an- 
 cients. Its authors had no idea of the Copernican system. 
 They simply discard all heathen mythological conceptions, 
 leaving no room for Baal-worship. Their concern was to 
 reveal God as the almighty maker and sustainer of the visi- 
 ble universe ; they did not, and they could not, explain the 
 sidereal system. * As for geology, there was none. The 
 Pentateuch records the giving of the law upon Sinai, but 
 does not tell us that the rock is of granite. The journey of 
 the Israelites in the wilderness was not a geological excur- 
 sion. We know not when, or by whom, the story of the 
 creation was first recorded in the form in which we have it. 
 But that sublime passage of Holy Writ has its parallels in 
 the ancient traditions of other Semitic peoples. In Genesis, 
 we find it cleansed of polytheistic error, and made the vehi- 
 cle of conveying the loftiest moral and religious truth. Com- 
 pare it with the cosmogony of Assyria or Babylon, and you 
 will see wherein the proof of its inspiration lies. There may 
 be striking correspondences with modern knowledge, as in 
 the creation of light before the heavenly bodies, f But I 
 should not expect to find in this old panorama of the crea- 
 tion, as it passed before the purified imagination of the 
 primitive Hebrews, any rigid conformity in detail with that 
 vast book which modern science has unrolled. It passed for 
 literal history in by-gone ages ; but it must be read now as 
 a poem — a history in the forms of the imagination, as it 
 really was in its primitive inception ; yet a poem stamped 
 with the evidences of divine inspiration, containing the es- 
 sential principles of the Old Testament religion, and em- 
 
 * It was a wise as well as witty remark of a celebrated ecclesiastic, sup- 
 posed to be the (Cardinal Baronius, to whom Galileo refers, that the Bible 
 was given to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. 
 
 f Yet it seems to have been a prevalent conception that light was inde- 
 pendent of the heavenly luminaries. It has a dwelling-place (Job xxxviii. 
 19). Even in the Greek conception, " the rosy-fingered dawn" preceded 
 the chariot of Apollo. 
 
476 TIIE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 bodying more moral and religious truth than all other books 
 not written in dependence on the Bible. The first utterance 
 — " In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" 
 — is a truth to which heathen philosophy, on its highest 
 stage, never absolutely attained. * The Bible fares hardly 
 in these days, between an infidel theology, on the one hand, 
 which is blind to the supernatural wisdom that belongs to it, 
 and a rabbinical theology on the other, that makes no room 
 in its formulas for the human element which pervades the 
 book from beginning to end. The Bible is crucified, as it 
 were, between these two theologies. But the Bible, con- 
 
 * In the first three chapters of Genesis, we find asserted the truths that 
 the universe owes its being to the creative agency of one personal God — 
 as against dualism, pantheism, and polytheism ; that man is like God in 
 his spiritual faculties ; that sin is not a physical or metaphysical necessity, 
 but has its origin and seat in the will of the creature ; that guilt brings 
 shame and separation from communion with God ; that immorality is the 
 natural fruit of impiety. These are truths of vast moment ; peculiar, in 
 their pure form, to the religion of the Bible. 
 
 Ordinarily we find it to be the method of Providence that sacred history, 
 like other history, should be recorded by *' eye-witnesses or well-informed 
 contemporaries. " Witness the almost complete silence of the Evangelists 
 upon the first thirty years of the Saviour's life. " Wherefore," said Peter 
 (Acts i. 21, 22), "of these men which have companied with us all the 
 time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the 
 baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must 
 one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." The early 
 part of Genesis, the Prolegomena to the Mosaic legislation and to the re- 
 cord of the founding of the Hebrew Commonwealth, precedes contempo- 
 rary authorship, except so far as earlier documents may be interwoven. 
 It is to be expected that difficulties, and questions for criticism, would 
 arise in extraordinary measure respecting this section of the Bible. Es- 
 pecially is this true of the first ten chapters, which carry us far back into 
 the primeval era, anterior to the beginnings of the Jewish people. But 
 whatever may be here set down to "the human element," the homo- 
 geneity of these narratives, as to their moral and religious spirit and con- 
 tent, with the rest of the Scriptures, and thus their elevation above all 
 heathen literature, must not be overlooked. The divine element is not 
 less conspicuous and impressive on the mind of a thoughtful student of 
 the history of religion, than in those portions of the Bible which emanate 
 directly from persons who participated in the events which they record. 
 
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 477 
 
 taming as it does the word of God, has a perennial life in 
 it. It has shown its power to outlive the changing systems 
 of its human interpreters. There is no inconsistency, then, 
 between the Bible, taken as the teacher of moral and relig- 
 ious truth, and the results of scientific study. There is no 
 room for contradiction, since they move on different planes. 
 Hence atheism founded on this pretext is a folly. 
 
 Another ground of atheism is the supposed imperfection 
 in the Creator's work, or government. This,uf shown to 
 exist, would not disprove the being of God, though it might 
 affect our estimate of his attributes. If a house is leaky, we 
 do not infer that it was never built, but only that the work- 
 men lacked skill, or were guilty of negligence. It was 
 thought, a century ago, to be a ridiculous boast when 
 Thomas Paine said of the Bible that he could write a bet- 
 ter book himself. But we have had to listen, in our time, 
 to criticisms equally daring upon the system of nature, 
 which has been pronounced in various particulars defective. 
 Complaint is, also, made that, in the course of things, right- 
 eousness and prosperity are not always united ; and, hence, 
 that a perfect moral Ruler, one possessed of infinite good- 
 ness and infinite power, cannot be supposed. This last is 
 an old objection. "We might stop to ask whence the sceptic 
 derives the faculties by which he undertakes to criticise the 
 natural and moral system, and where he obtained the stand- 
 ard on which his judgments are based ? If the universe is 
 so at fault, what assurance has he that his own judging 
 faculty, the author of this unfavorable verdict, is any better 
 constructed 'i But, passing by this consideration, the whole 
 objection, as Bishop Butler has shown with irresistible force, 
 is an argument from ignorance. It is a rash judgment upon 
 a system not yet completed. I will suppose a man to enter 
 the Cologne Cathedral, one of the grandest monuments of 
 the genius and piety of the middle ages. He paces up and 
 down its long aisles ; he follows with his eye the columns, 
 ascending upward, and spreading their branches like a 
 
478 THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 mighty forest, to uphold the far-off canopy of stone ; he 
 pauses at 
 
 " The storied windows, richly dight, 
 Casting a dim, religious light ; " 
 
 but, just as the grandeur and symmetry of the vast edifice 
 touch his soul with a sensation of awe, his eye falls on por- 
 tions of the wall left in the rough, on towers abruptly broken 
 off, and cries out, " the artist was, after all, a bungler ! " 
 What would you say to such a man ? You would say, " O 
 profane babbler, the building is not yet done ! " Is there 
 not enough to prove the skill of the architect ? You can 
 see to what result the construction tends. Wait till the plan 
 is complete, before you utter your disparagement. So it is 
 with the moral system, and the moral administration of the 
 world, l^ow we know in part. We see that the direction 
 is right ; we can securely wait for the consmnmation. 
 
 Turn now, for a moment, to the positive evidence of God 
 which atheism fails to acknowledge in its real import. 
 
 There is, first, the revelation of God in the soul. There 
 is within us a sense of dependence, and a consciousness of a 
 law imposed upon us by the Power on whom we depend — a 
 law moral in its nature, and thus revealing that power as 
 having a preference for right — in other words, as personal 
 and holy. An almost audible voice of God in the soul dis- 
 closes to us his being, and intimate relation to ourselves.* 
 Connected with this inward experience of dependence and 
 of duty, there is in the depth of the spirit a yearning for 
 
 * Suppose the unverified notion of the gradual genesis of the moral 
 faculty — that it is the result of the accretion of hereditary impressions — to 
 be held ; still the moral faculty now exists. Moreover, it stands as well, 
 as to its origin, as the intellectual nature; and legitimate deductions 
 from the phenomena of our moral consciousness are equally valid with 
 the science which depends for all of its conclusions on the validity of our 
 intellectual faculty. It is difficult for the most erratic speculation to 
 strike at religion without, at the same time, not only striking at morality, 
 but annihilatmg itself ; for the science that casts discredit on the organ 
 of knowledge commits suicide in the very act. 
 
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 479 
 
 communion with liim in wliom we live, and move, and have 
 our being. Tliese inward testimonies of God can never be 
 absohitelj silenced. A recent writer has defined God as the 
 power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. There 
 is a power, then, that gives law to the will without coercing 
 it, cheers with the hope of reward, and menaces with the 
 dread of punishment, and actually secures the reward to the 
 righteous ; and yet that power has no love of righteousness, 
 and no hatred to iniquity ! It is unnatural, it is a perver- 
 sion of reason to believe this. Behind the mandate of con- 
 science is the preference and will of God. Coleridge is 
 right in saying that it is our duty to believe in God ; for 
 this belief is indispensable to the life of conscience. The 
 only correlate for the unquenchable yearning of the human 
 spirit for a higher communion, is the living God, who, 
 though not seen by us, himself " seeth in secret." Faith in 
 God springs up in the soul spontaneously, where the soul is 
 not darkened and perverted. It is strictly natural. Hence 
 religion, in some form, is universal, or as nearly so as are 
 the exercise of a moral sense, and the rest of the higher 
 powers of man. Religion, the belief in God, is like the 
 domestic affections. They may be weakened, they may be 
 corrupted, they may be deadened, and, to all appearance 
 well-nigh extirpated. Nevertheless, they remain, an inde- 
 structible part of human nature. A man may argue that 
 these affections — ^filial, parental, conjugal love — are irrational, 
 the product of fancy, or merely an heir-loom from the past. 
 Pseudo-philosophers have done this. He may profess to 
 emancipate himself from these superstitious feelings. But if 
 he succeed, he will only starve his heart ; and, in the end, 
 mature will prove too strong for him.* Religion is not a 
 \ — _ ____ 
 
 * If the attempt were made to bring up a child without the exercise on 
 his part of domestic affection, all the propensities and feelings that relate 
 to the family being, as far as practicable, stifled, the experiment would be 
 analogous to that which John Stuart Mill suffered, as regards religion, at 
 the hands of his father. 
 
480 THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 doctrine merely ; it is a life, an integral part of the life of 
 the soul ; and without religion, man is a poor deformed 
 creature, more dead than alive. Every organ, deprived of 
 its correlated object, feels after it. There is an effort, a 
 nisus — from which there is no rest. So it is in a man who 
 undertakes to live without God — at least until higher sensi- 
 bility is paralyzed. In these ways does God give a witness 
 of himself within us, to disregard which is not less irrational 
 than wicked. 
 
 Secondly, atheism disregards the revelation of God in the 
 structure of the world, the marks of design that everywhere 
 present themselves to the unbiassed observer. " lie that 
 planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the 
 eye, shall he not see ? " The mind refuses to believe that 
 the author — the cause — of the eye and ear, is itself void 
 of perception. The adaptations of nature exhibit on every 
 hand a contriving mind. The thought of God springs up 
 within us involuntarily, whenever we consider the human 
 frame, or look at any other of the countless examples of de- 
 sign of which the world is full. There is proof of arrange- 
 ment everywhere. The heart rises in thanks and worship 
 to " Him who alone doeth great wonders ; " " to him that 
 by wisdom made the heavens ; " " that stretched out the 
 earth above the waters ; " " to him that made great lights, 
 the sun to rule by day, the moon and stars to rule by night." 
 This evidence of God has impressed the greatest minds of 
 the race — men like Socrates and Cicero — and the humblest 
 minds alike. One would think that a man, knowing by con- 
 sciousness and observation what the characteristic marks and 
 fruits of intelligence are, must have put out his eyes if he 
 fails to discern a plan in the marvellous order of nature. 
 How can an invisible, spiritual being reveal himself to other 
 minds, if works appropriate to intelligence do not inspire a 
 conviction of his presence and agency 'i * 
 
 * The argument from final causes in nature is not weakened by our in- 
 ability to discern, in many cases, what they are, or by mistakes made in 
 
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 481 
 
 'Not is the force of this evidence weakened by the doc- 
 trine of evolution, unless it is pushed into materialism, in 
 which case it can be overthrown by irrefutable arguments. 
 Suppose it were true that all animals — nay, all living 
 things — could be traced. back to a single germ, out of which 
 they are developed in pursuance of certain laws or tenden- 
 cies. Then they were all contained in that germ. Nothing 
 can be ^-volved that was not before m-volved. What a mar- 
 vel that gelatin — or protoplasm — or whatever it be called — 
 in which are shut up all the living things that exist ? Who 
 laid it in the properties — the tendency to variation, the ten- 
 dency to permanence, and the rest — by the operation of which 
 this endless variety, and beauty and order emerge ? You see 
 that God is required as much as ever. This new doctrine, 
 whether it be an established truth, or an unverified specula- 
 tion, strikes at religion only when it assumes to deny the ex- 
 istence of mind in the proper sense, and holds that thought 
 
 presumptuous endeavors to point them out. The objection of Hume to 
 affirming an analogy between works of nature and works of art, is futile, 
 since in respect to design — the feature in both on which the argument 
 turns— the analogy holds. The eye is an instrument employed by a ra- 
 tional being for a purpose ; and when we see how it is fitted to this use, 
 we cannot resist the persuasion that it was intended for it. The idea of 
 the organ we discern, as Whewell well puts it : we have in our minds the 
 idea of a final cause, and when we behold the eye, we find our idea ex- 
 emplified. This idea, then, governed the construction of the eye, be its 
 mechanical causes, the operative agencies that produced it, what they 
 may. Every part of an organized being, also, displays design ; for there 
 is no better definition of a living thing than that of Kant, that in it every 
 part is both means and end. Some talk of the ''unknowable," but they 
 contradict themselves by admitting in the same breath that the unknowa- 
 ble is manifested as the first cause. They hold that it is only as a cause 
 that we recognize its existence. But this cause is further manifested as 
 intelligent and holy. Nothing can be more sophistical, than the remark 
 of Herbert Spencer, that could the watch, in Paley's illustration, think, 
 it would judge its Creator to be like itself, a watch. Could the watch 
 think and choose, it would be rational, and would then reason like other 
 rational beings, and conclude that the artificer of such a product as itself 
 must have designed it beforehand — that is to say, must be a mind. 
 21 
 
482 THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 is only a function of the brain, perisliing with it. That is 
 to say, there is no free, contriving intelligence in man. 
 What is called that, is only a product of the movement of a 
 blind, unintelligent force. Then, of course, we cannot con- 
 clude that there is a free intelligence anywhere. But ma- 
 terialism is not less fatal to morals than religion, for it anni- 
 hilates responsibility. In truth, it is fatal to the higher life 
 of man. It gives the lie to consciousness which testifies to 
 our freedom, and to our guilt for wrong choices. It de- 
 stroys the difference between truth and error in mental per- 
 ception ; for both are equally the result of the molecular ac- 
 tion of the brain, and equally normal. It provides no norm 
 for distinguishing between the true and the false. It de- 
 stroys science, for who can say that the molecular movement 
 by which science is thought out, may not at any time change 
 its form, and give rise to conclusions utterly diverse ? There 
 is no end to the absurdities of materialism ; a doctrine which 
 can be maintained only by a disregard of phenomena, the 
 reality and proper significance of which no reasonable person 
 can call in question. Let scientific exploration be carried to 
 the farthest bound — it will never be able to dispense with 
 God. It is plain that the world is a cosmos — a beautiful 
 order. It came to be such by the operation of forces mov- 
 ing steadily towards this end ; for anything like accident, or 
 properly fortuitous events, science can never admit. The 
 world is the necessary outcome of the agencies, be they few 
 or many, near or remote, that gave rise to it. The time oc- 
 cupied in the process is a point irrelevant ; were it a billion, 
 or ten billions of years, a moment's thought transports us to 
 the beginning, and the whole problem stares us in the face. 
 There is a plan ; rational ends have been reached by adapta- 
 tions and arrangements ; and thus God is revealed.* 
 
 * The statements made above are corroborated, it would seem, by re- 
 marks of Professor Huxley, who says : " The teleological and the mechani- 
 cal views of nature are, not necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the con- 
 trary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does 
 
THE UNKEASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 483 
 
 Thirdly, the folly of atheism appears in its failure to 
 discern the revelation of God in the history of mankind. 
 It ignores, also, the God of Providence. The history of 
 mankind is not a chaotic jumble of occurrences, but an or- 
 derly sequence where one set of events prepares for another, 
 
 he assume primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the pheno- 
 mena of the universe are consequences ; the more completely is he there- 
 by at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove 
 that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve 
 the phenomena of the universe." Quoted in Jackson's Philosophy of 
 Natural Theology, p. 136. On the relation of evolution to theism and 
 teleology, see the excellent remarks of Dr. A. Gray, in his Darwiniana 
 (New York, 1876). The only escape from teleology is in the doctrine of 
 an eternal sequence of causes and effects, a notion which, as Dr. Gray 
 says, ' ' no sane man " will permanently hold. Such a notion is equivalent 
 to a denial of all real causation, since the eternal regress can never bring 
 ns to the thing sought— a real cause which is not itself an effect. The 
 principle of causation, as a subjective conviction, or demand of the intel- 
 ligence, involves the belief in the reality of such a first cause. 
 
 As to the question of the origin of man, it is evident, in the first place, 
 that we are, on one side of our being, composed of matter. This is an 
 undeniable fact. What is the origin of this material part ? It may be 
 supposed that it was created outright, in the organized human form, by a 
 fiat of the Almighty, when the first man was called into being. This is 
 one supposition. Another is that man was made out of the " dust of the 
 earth" — out of pre-existing inorganic matter. This is the mode of con- 
 ception in the biblical writers. See Gen. iii. 19, Ps. xc. 3, civ. 29, cxlvi. 
 4, Job X. 9, Eccl. iii. 20. Or, thirdly, it may be supposed that man was 
 made out of previously existing organized matter — developed from a lower 
 class of animal beings, either by easy gradations (according to the Dar- 
 winian creed), or per saltum. If by slow gradations, the proposition 
 amounts to this, that beings intermediate between man and existing or 
 extinct lower animals, once lived on the earth. This remains to be 
 proved, the intermediates not having been found. Neither of these hy- 
 potheses necessarily denies the reality of the higher endowments of man. 
 They impinge upon the Christian system only when they are connected 
 with a denial of the distinctive qualities of man as a spiritual being — his 
 free and responsible nature. Precisely how and when he received from 
 the Creator this higher nature — the quomodo — is a question, however in- 
 teresting, of secondary importance. It is only materialism — or, what is 
 theologically equivalent, a monism which identifies soul and body — that 
 cannot cohere with the truths of religion. 
 
484: THE UNEEASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 and where rational ends are wrought out by means adapted 
 to them. There is a divine plan stamped upon history : 
 
 *' — thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs." 
 
 And, irrespective of this plan, records of the past, it has 
 been well said, have little more interest for us than the bat- 
 tles of crows and daws. There is a design connected with 
 history: it is not an aimless course of events — a stream 
 having no issue — a meaningless succession, or cycle of phe- 
 nomena. Now the atheist shuts his eyes to the evident 
 traces of a providential guidance and control of the world's 
 affairs. It is chance, he says ; or if there is law, it is law 
 without a law-giver. That moral government which ap- 
 pears in the prosperity accorded to righteousness, and in the 
 penalties that overtake iniquity — that sublime manifesta- 
 tion of justice through all the annals of mankind — declares 
 the presence of a just God. The minds of men, when un- 
 perverted by false speculation, instinctively feel that God 
 reigns, whenever they behold these providential allotments. 
 It is necessary to stifle the voice of nature, and to resort to 
 some far-fetched, unsatisfactory solution of the matter, in 
 order to avoid this impression. In this way, the conscience 
 of mankind convicts atheism of folly. 
 
 Fourthly, atheism discerns not the revelation of God in 
 Christ. God is manifest in the flesh. I waive all discus- 
 sion of the Bible, its authority, and inspiration. The charac- 
 ter of Jesus disclosed in the Gospel record could never have 
 been imagined ; it vouches for its own reality, and thus for 
 the history in and through which it is made known to us. 
 In Christ there is a manifestation of God. The power that 
 actuates him is not of the earth and not of man. The 
 righteousness and love of the Father are reflected as in an 
 image. The Father is known through the Son. In his 
 face we behold the Invisible.* His soul is obviously in un- 
 
 * This impression was actually made on those most intimately 
 ated with him. See John i. 14, xiv. 9, Matt, xtl 16. 
 
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 485 
 
 interrupted communion with the Father. When he quits 
 the world, he says : " Father, into thy hands I commend 
 my spirit." Was there no ear to hear that voice ? Was it 
 lost in boundless space, obtaining no response? Then, 
 verily, 
 
 " The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble." 
 
 Then let us draw a pall over life, with its flickering joys, 
 soon to be quenched in eternal night. All that is most ele- 
 vated, all that is most consoling, all that raises our destiny 
 above that of the brutes that perish, is built on illusion ! 
 There is no grand future, no serene hereafter, where the 
 longing soul shall have its profoundest -aspirations met in 
 the fellowship of the spiritual world, and in the everlast- 
 ing dominion of truth and righteousness. " Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die." The senses, at least, do not 
 mock us. The pleasure that they give is real, as far as it 
 
 If atheism is a folly, is not sin at the root of it ? Kot, it 
 may be, a particular sinful practice, or conscious transgression, 
 but a habit of feeling, which is wrong, and which spreads a 
 film over the organ of spiritual perception. Can a man who 
 reflects, as he ought, upon his own being, and deals honestly 
 with himself as accountable and as convicted of imworthi- 
 ness in his own conscience, rest in atheism ? Why is it that 
 to one mind the heavens declare the glory of God, while 
 to another mind their starry surface is a blank page ? It is 
 because, in the one case, there is first a recognition of God 
 within the soul; there is a glad acknowledgment of the 
 Father of our spirits, to whom consciousness and conscience 
 alike testify. In the other case, there is darkness within. 
 
 And how important it is that all progress in knowledge 
 should bring us closer to God ! Alas, that the study of the 
 works of God should ever be prosecuted in such a spirit 
 that he is more and more removed out of sight ! Alas, that 
 
4t8Q THE UNREASONABLENESS OF ATHEISM. 
 
 the study of history should ever fail to confirm the scholar's 
 faith in the God, of whose Providence history is the record ! 
 Vain, nay, worse than in vain, are all our studies, if they 
 fail to deepen our faith in God. The student's daily prayer 
 should be 
 
 — '* what in me is dark 
 Illumine, what is low, raise and support." 
 
 Then will knowledge prove, indeed, a blessing. 
 
 *' Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul, according well, 
 May make one music as before, 
 
 But vaster." 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 487 
 
 THE APOSTLE PAUL * 
 
 There are two very different classes of persons, who, 
 without any abuse of terms, may be called enemies of the 
 Christian faith. In the one there is a latent hostility to 
 principles that still find a secret approval in their own con- 
 sciences. A more or less conscious opposition of their char- 
 acters to truth that is known or surmised to exist in the 
 Christian system is at the bottom of their hatred of it. In 
 the other class, however, their enmity may be traced to a 
 wrong bias of will, or perverse tempers of feeling, as the ul- 
 timate source, the immediate, conscious ground of it is quite 
 diverse. There is no immoral practice, no unrighteous 
 course of conduct, that shrinks from the rebuke uttered in 
 the Gospel. There is no guilty dread of the light ; there is 
 no honest conviction smothered : but they hate Christianity 
 because they misconceive its doctrine, or deem it to be at 
 war with something which they hold as sacred truth. From 
 their education, falling in, perhaps, with their native intel- 
 lectual tendencies, or from some other influence, they have 
 come to cherish, with theiu whole soul, beliefs that appear 
 to clash with the Christian system. From their point 
 of view, they cannot do otherwise than misjudge, and, 
 it may be, detest it. Now, as one of this class can be 
 moved to embrace the religion which he has hated, only by 
 being enlightened ; so, in case he does embrace it, let the 
 change be never so radical, there will be a certain continuity 
 between his life before and his life after his conversion. 
 His previous position, with whatever moral fault he may 
 
 * A Lecture in Boston, in 1871, forming part of a course of Lectures by 
 different persons, on Christianity and Skepticism. 
 
488 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 charge himself, he can justly attribute to a misapprehension. 
 His new views are a rectification of the old. Underneath 
 the contrariety, there are some hidden threads of unity. 
 The old conception has proved at least a stepping-stone to 
 the new. Opposite as his new life seems to his former 
 career, there is a logical and moral bond between the two. 
 Paradoxical as it may appear, a thread of consistency passes 
 over from the earlier to the later period of his history. 
 
 In this class of antagonists of the Christian faith belonged 
 Saul of Tarsus. He was, in a sense, an intensely religious 
 man before he believed in Jesus of Nazareth. Religion, the 
 relations of man to God, was tlie ruling, absorbing thought 
 of his mind. It was not science or learning, or any purely 
 mundane interest or occupation, that engaged his attention. 
 It was religion — the relation of the soul to God and the su- 
 pernatural order. And he was not less sincere in the pro- 
 fession than he was earnest in the practice of his creed. If 
 there were many Pharisees who delighted in the hollow 
 reputation of sanctity — knaves and impostors, all whose 
 thoughts centred in themselves — Paul was at the farthest 
 remove from all such. He was elevated above the influence 
 of a vulgar ambition, and he was an utter stranger to insin- 
 cerity. There is no hint that he was impeded by any mis- 
 givings when he was performing the part of an inquisitor 
 against the disciples of Jesus. The phrase " It is hard for 
 thee to kick against the pricks," refers to no struggle in his 
 own mind : it simply asserts the futility of the attempt to 
 withstand the progress of the new faith. He had entered 
 on an abortive undertaking ; he had plunged into a hopeless 
 enterprise : but he went into it with no divided mind. He 
 verily thought that he ought to extirpate the new sect. He 
 had no stifled misgivings, no scruples of conscience, on 
 the subject. What he did he did ignorantly, in unbelief." 
 He considered it afterwards a sin, but a sin of ignorance, the 
 responsibility for which did not inhere in the act itself 
 immediately,' or in the opinion that dictated it. 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 489 
 
 Moreover, his ideal of character remained, in its general 
 features, the same. Righteousness formed that ideal before 
 he was converted, as well as after. In the earlier period, 
 his idea of righteousness included both personal conformity 
 to the standards of obligation, and that unqualified citizen- 
 ship in the theocracy which involved a title to all its bless- 
 ings, and, among them, eternal life. Righteousness, in this 
 inward quality and outward relation, as a determination of 
 the will and a consequent privilege, was to him the sum of 
 all good. But now we come to the contrast. He first 
 thought that the way to attain righteousness, and the only 
 way, was to obey the Mosaic statutes — the moral and cere- 
 monial ordinances at the foundation of the Hebrew theo- 
 cratic commonwealth. The Mosaic institute, in w^hich ethi- 
 cal and ritual precepts were interwoven, he conceived of as 
 something permanent and eternal. That visible form of 
 society, which had God for its direct author, was to endure 
 as long as the sun and moon. There was no hope for man- 
 kind except in the extension of this kingdom. Hence Paul 
 joined the sect whose zeal to bring in the heathen moved 
 them " to compass sea and land to make one proselyte ; " 
 the sect at the head of that aggressive Judaism, the progress 
 of which led a Roman philosopher to declare that the con- 
 quered had given laws to the conquerors. Hence, too, the 
 cause of the disciples of Jesus appeared to Paul in the light 
 of an impious and treasonable revolt against the divine 
 order. To uphold the theocratic state in full unity and 
 vigor, and to extend the sway of it abroad, was the first 
 duty. 
 
 If, now, we look at Paul the apostle, we find him holding 
 a difPerent view of the place and office of the Mosaic system 
 in the divine plan. That system no longer fills his eye to 
 the exclusion of everything else. It is only one link in the 
 chain ; one stadium in the series of revelations. He has 
 risen to a more comprehensive view of the divine dispensa- 
 tions, where the function of the Old Testament law-system 
 31* 
 
490 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 is perceived to be subordinate and provisional ; as when, 
 from a lofty tower, one sees mountains and plains stretch- 
 ing far away beyond the previous boundaries of his vision. 
 Abraham was before Moses; promise preceded law. The 
 statutory system was an expedient, wholesome and necessary, 
 not without sacred and everlasting elements incorporated 
 with it, yet, as a system, destined to give place to a spiritual 
 kingdom founded on a different principle. This kingdom is 
 spiritual, the head of it being an invisible person to whom 
 we are connected by faith which takes hold of the unseen. 
 It is thus a free and universal religion, in contrast with the 
 external, local, restricted theocracy. The vast revolution of 
 sentiment which Paul's mind underwent might be termed a 
 deeper insight into the philosophy of history. The philoso- 
 phy of history, the science that aspires to interpret the plan 
 of God in the course of human affairs, has its beginning in 
 the Hebrew prophets. The problem that inspired Augus- 
 tine to compose The City of God, and Edwards The History 
 of RedeTYijption / the problem on which modern thinkers of 
 80 diverse character — Yico and Hegel, Bossuet and Herder 
 — ^have labored — ^first presented itself to the seers of Judaea 
 and Israel. In that old state-system, where the little princi- 
 pality of the Jews was surrounded by the mighty, conquer- 
 ing empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, what chance 
 had that feeble kingdom against the overwhelming odds % 
 What chance was there, when to the vast preponderance of 
 force on the side of their neighbors there was added the in- 
 fectious example of their idolatries ? Then it was that the 
 prophets, called by the Spirit, sometimes from the sheep- 
 pasture, their souls filled and exalted with the grand idea of 
 an indestructible kingdom of God on earth, pointed to splen- 
 did and opulent cities, the London and New York and Paris 
 of that day, and predicted their downfall. They outstripped 
 the sagacity of the profoundest of statesmen. Edmund 
 Burke is admired with reason for anticipating events of the 
 French Revolution ; but Burke, in the very work that con- 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 491 
 
 tained these vaticinations, said also that the military strength 
 of France had culminated, and was no more to be feared. 
 And this prediction was uttered just before the wars of Na- 
 poleon. What is there more sublime in literature, when all 
 the circumstances are weighed, than the words of Scripture, 
 — " There shall be a handful of com in the earth upon the 
 top of the mountains ; the fruit thereof shall shake like 
 Lebanon ? " K one inquires for their fulfilment, let him be- 
 hold the Christendom of to-day. The prophets themselves 
 did not divine the full and exact sense of their own predic- 
 tions. They had glimpses of the felicity of the kingdom in 
 its future developed and mature form. A more spiritual 
 worship was to characterize it ; a more unfettered and uni- 
 versal character was to belong to it. Paul, after his conver- 
 sion, entered into the import of these prophetical pictures, 
 and found them verified and realized in the society that 
 looked to Jesus as its head. The beginnings of this society 
 antedated the law. The germ of it was in the theocracy it- 
 self. But the kingdom of believing souls, as it existed be- 
 fore, might exist now, independently of the Mosaic laws and 
 institutions. Regarded as a religious institute, they had 
 fulfilled their end. 
 
 But Paul would never have reached this view, his conver- 
 sion would have remained incomplete, had he not been 
 driven outside of the law-system by the force of some in- 
 ward experience. This was the painful conviction that he 
 had been mistaken in supposing himself righteous. Instead 
 of having attained that which he sought, he had fallen far 
 short of it. He stood at a hopeless remove from the stand- 
 ard of character which a deeper perception of human obli- 
 gations revealed to him. With the loss of the sense of in- 
 ward righteousness, his standing as a member of the divine 
 kingdom was gone too. Instead of being a just or justified 
 member of the theocratical community, he was a condemned 
 person. Precisely how Paul came to discern, in this new 
 light, the deep, spiritual demands of law, we have not the 
 
492 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 means of answering. It may be, that, in the crisis of his 
 conversion, teachings of Jesus were brought to his knowl- 
 edge by some of the disciples who instructed him, and that 
 these gave new life to his conscience. Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
 in recent clever essays upon St. Paul, is correct in asserting 
 that it was not fear that lay at the bottom of his distress. 
 This, at least, was not the chief ingredient of that shai-p 
 anguish of spirit which he suffered : it was, rather, the sense 
 of unrighteousness. It was tlie humiliation, the piercing 
 self-reproach, the burden of a conscious bondage to evil, that 
 afflicted his soul. His self-approbation was undermined. 
 Instead of approving, he must abhor himself. But Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold is wrong in ignoring the element of guilt 
 as related to God, or the objective condemnation, that 
 formed one part of Paul's misery. Paul, with all the depth 
 of his emotional nature, had none of the unhealthy, one-sided 
 subjectiveness that pertains to modern pantheistic tendencies 
 of thought. He was not shut up within the circle of his 
 own sensibilities. He wished not only to be right before 
 himself, but also to stand right before God. Besides the 
 conscious servitude of his will to passion — the " video pro- 
 boque meliora, deteriora sequor," of the heathen poet — there 
 was the objective verdict of the righteous, infallible judge. 
 Where did he get relief ? ]N^ot from the law, in whose com- 
 manding and forbidding there was no force that could over- 
 come the opposing propensities of his nature. The law could 
 condemn and threaten ; but it could not create a principle of 
 obedience. There was nothing in bare law to subvert the do- 
 minion of sensuality and selfishness. The result was a feel- 
 ing of wretchedness, of self -despair. Paul turned to Jesus as 
 a helper. Jesus had overcome in the conflict with evil. He 
 had died, but died victorious. The patient, self-denying 
 sufferer was a victor in the struggle. There was a loveli- 
 ness in Christ that touched the sympathies of Paul, and 
 kindled the desire to walk as he walked ; and this desire was 
 a new power in the soul, quite distinct from the influence of 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 493 
 
 law. But moral admiration, deepening into sympathy, is not 
 the whole of what the apostle meant by faith. There was a 
 love from Jesus to him ; there was a compassion of God, un- 
 derlying the whole mission of Jesus. That love and com- 
 passion Paul believed in. The helper whom he received 
 was no distant hero, who exerted power only through an in- 
 spiring example ; but he was invisibly present, to support, 
 by the mysterious influence of spirit upon spirit, the new 
 life which he had awakened. Hold what particular view 
 one may of the Pauline doctrine as to the significance of the 
 death of Jesus, it is evident that Paul saw in it the means 
 and the assurance of forgiveness. There is a foundation in 
 his teaching for the ordinary Protestant idea of forensic jus- 
 tification. Righteousness had always to him a double aspect : 
 it was both an internal quality and an outward relation. But 
 what the law could not do was accomplished through the per- 
 sonal influence of Christ upon the soul united to him in sym- 
 pathy and dependence. Nothing in Kenan's book upon St. 
 Paul is more groundless than the implication that his per- 
 sonal character was little altered by his becoming a Christian. 
 A new spirit of love took possession of his nature. In the 
 room of the fierce temper of a persecuting zealot, we find a 
 genuine humility, a constant inculcation of kindness and 
 charity. When it is remembered that he was naturally 
 high-spirited, and perhaps irritable, this change is the more 
 touching. "Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, good- 
 ness, faith, meekness, temperance " — these are the traits on 
 which he dwells. Against these, he says, there is no law. 
 But they are not the fruit of law : they are the fruit of the 
 Spirit. They have their springs in the relation of the soul 
 to Christ. In this relation there was a great liberty. In 
 regard to these many virtues and their opposites, the apostle 
 writes, "Ye are not under the law." It is the Christian 
 paradox of a correspondence to the law, but from motives 
 and impulses to the law unknown. It was not the constraint 
 of a statute ; but " the love of Chi'ist constraineth us." 
 
494 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 Observe, now, the order in which this conversion, in its 
 different parts or constituent elements, took place. It did 
 not begin with new ideas of the spiritual character of the 
 laW, and with a sense of sin ; but the historical evidence 
 necessitates the conclusion, that a recognition of the truth 
 of the claims of Jesus was the first step. The apostle him- 
 self, in his writings, attributes the change to a sudden reve- 
 lation. Up to a certain moment, he had thought that he 
 ought to put down the Christians by force. There was no 
 intermediate process of reflection and inquiry between this 
 state of feeling and his acknowledgment of Jesus as the 
 ascended Lord and Messiah. He expressly affirms that this 
 primary conviction was not imparted to him by the other 
 apostles through the exhibition of proofs. How, then, did 
 he obtain it ? It was not by reflecting on the death of 
 Jesus ; for, apart from the consideration that his first belief 
 resulted from no process of examination, the death of Jesus 
 was, to his mind, one of the strongest arguments against the 
 verity of his pretensions. To him, as to other Jews, the 
 cross was a stumbling-block — an insuperable obstacle in the 
 way of faith. It is impossible, then, that he could have 
 believed in Jesus, except through some disclosure of him, 
 real or supposed, as triumphant over death, in a higher and 
 glorified form of existence. Therefore the testimony of 
 Paul on the mode of his conversion, while it accords with 
 the probabilities of the case, tends to corroborate the narra- 
 tive of Luke respecting the journey to Damascus. It is re- 
 markable, however, and characteristic of Paul, that, besides 
 the vision or revelation that formed the primary source of 
 his belief, he discerns the value of external testimony. The 
 resurrection of Jesus is verified, he affirms, by eye-witnesses, 
 whom he enumerates, presenting the evidence in a circum- 
 stantial manner. There was a series of interviews of the 
 risen Jesus : first with Peter ; then with the Twelve ; then 
 with ^ve hundred brethren, of whom the greater part, he 
 says, were then living ; after that with James ; then again 
 
THE APOSTLE TAUL. 495 
 
 with all the apostles. It was a true and real manifestation 
 of Jesus, in bodily form, to the senses of the disciples. The 
 testimony is such, considering the panic and despair of the 
 witnesses after the crucifixion, and the outward circumstan- 
 ces, as to exclude the idea of an hallucination ; but it was a 
 manifestation to the disciples and believers alone. The fact 
 of the resurrection of Jesus was an indispensable condition 
 of the apostle's faith in him. 
 
 Here we fall out once more with Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
 who is duly impressed with the truth that Jesus, in the 
 might of his holy love to God and men, died to sin and the 
 world ; that this inward death was perfected and shown in 
 his death on the cross, and was the means of a true, spirit- 
 ual, eternal life, of which all who are united to him in sym- 
 pathy are enabled to partake. This, without doubt, is a 
 vital fart of Paul's religion ; but it is not the whole. Bis 
 faith rested on objective realities. Beyond his own subjec- 
 tive impressions and feelings, there must be the word of 
 God. The resurrection of Jesus proved the acceptance of 
 him as a Redeemer : it was the counterpart, the sign and 
 necessary consequence, of his complete victory over sin. 
 Without that verifying act of God, faith had no objective 
 support, and was vain. The soundness of the apostle's con- 
 ception of religion, as a relation to God, instead of a mere 
 round of inward experiences, where the subjective feeling 
 goes for every thing, appears very strikingly at this point. 
 The pantheistic drift of much of our modern speculation 
 gets no countenance from him; and yet where shall we find 
 an equal richness and depth of spiritual experience, or so 
 pj-ofound a representation of what may be called the subjec- 
 tive side of the Gospel ? To die with Christ in his death, 
 to live to Christ, to live because Christ lives in him — these 
 are his familiar thoughts. But as the death of Jesus on the 
 cross fulfilled and expressed his inward dying to the world, 
 so did his resurrection express and demonstrate his life in 
 God. 
 
496 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 By the resurrection of Jesns to a spiritual and glorified 
 form of existence, he becomes the head of a kingdom funda- 
 mentally different from that of the Jewish dispensation. 
 The kingdom has shuffled off the carnal form which it had 
 previously worn. The former requirements and ceremonies 
 are something quite heterogeneous to its present mode of 
 being. When Paul declares that he does not any longer 
 know Jesus, according to the flesh, as a Jew, the member 
 of a particular nation, with local and national associations 
 upon him, he sets forth in the strongest possible manner, in 
 a manner even startling, his consciousness of the altered 
 character of the kingdom. The throne is not at Jerusalem, 
 but in heaven. The offering is not bulls and goats, but our 
 body and spirit, a reasonable — that is, a spiritual, or inward 
 — service. The temple is not on Mount Zion, but is the 
 soul of the believer. The whole conception turns on the 
 fact of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. 
 
 One might anticipate what attitude a man of Paul's logi- 
 cal intellect and fervid spirit, who held nothing by halves, 
 would assume towards Judaism and Judaizing tendencies in 
 the church. A great amount of ingenuity has been ex- 
 pended of late in an effort to exhibit Paul as at variance 
 with the other apostles on the subject of the admission of 
 Gentiles to the church, and on the whole matter of their 
 relation to the Old Testament ritual. As a means to this 
 end, a deliberate attempt has been made to impeach the ve- 
 racity of Luke ; or, rather, of the author of the book of 
 Acts, whom the negative criticism denies to have been Luke. 
 This last attempt breaks down, not only from the variety 
 and weight of evidence in behalf of the genuineness and 
 historical credibility of the book in question, but also from 
 the failure to establish any contradiction between the gen- 
 eral representations of Paul himself in his admitted epistles 
 and the testimony of the Acts. These points are clear from 
 Paul's own statement — that Peter, James, and John re- 
 quired of the Gentiles nothing more than he required ; that 
 
THE ArOSTLB PAUL. 497 
 
 thej recognized him as an apostle ; that they rejoiced in the 
 conversion of the heathen converts when it was reported to 
 them ; that they approved of the contents of his preaching, 
 and bade him God-speed when he went forth on his errand, 
 tliey asking and receiving at his hand charities for the poor 
 Christians at Jerusalem from the churches which he planted. 
 At the same time, it was inevitable, and it is perfectly clear, 
 that the original band of apostles, the first disciples of 
 Christ, did not have at the outset that clear perception, and, 
 with the exception of John, probably never had that sharp 
 and vivid perception, of the antithesis of the new system to 
 the old, which had seized on the convictions of Paul. The 
 reason is, that, under the teaching of Jesus, they came out 
 of the old system by a more imperceptible transition. Their 
 religious life was a growth, in which their traditional ideas 
 were gradually corrected and supplanted. They had never 
 entered with so intense earnestness into legal Judaism as 
 Paul had. They had not, like him, to renounce a definite 
 system to which they had committed themselves with all 
 their hearts, and from which they were parted by a sudden 
 access of light. Analogous phenomena occur at the present 
 day among those who enter upon a Christian life. In some 
 cases there is a conscious, abrupt revolution ; in other cases. 
 Christian character springs almost imperceptibly out of 
 Christian training. A diversity in the mode of looking at 
 the Gospel is the natural consequence. The wonder is that 
 the Galilean apostles could so entirely emancipate them- 
 selves from habitual, inherited impressions, as to welcome 
 the heathen converts who had not been circumcised, and ex- 
 tend a cordial fellowship to Paul. But he was not only 
 ready to tolerate the Gentiles in the acceptance of the bene- 
 fits of the Gospel : he would carry these benefits to them. 
 He would enter into the broad field that opened itself far 
 and wide before him. 
 
 The effect of such a course must be to excite the malig- 
 nant hostility of his Jewish countrymen. He must appear 
 
498 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 to them in the light of an apostate, and become the object 
 of that vindictive hatred which partisans feel towards a 
 renegade who has deserted his associates and passed over 
 into the camp of the enemy. But the development of the 
 Jiidaizing principle within the church was destined to be 
 still more mischievous and annoying. Not all of the Phari- 
 sees who were converted had Paul's clearness of perception, 
 nor had they tested by so thorough a personal trial the legal 
 method of salvation. Hence they held with stubborn tena- 
 city to the idea that the door into the church was through 
 the Judaic rite of circumcision. To concede this, as Paul 
 saw, was to give up the Gospel as a spiritual and universal 
 religion, to curtail the office of Christ as a Saviour, and to 
 sacrifice the liberty of the heathen convert by subjecting 
 them to a burdensome ritual. To maintain his position on 
 this point was the battle of his life. By his instrumen- 
 tality, more than by that of any other, Christianity was 
 saved from sinking down into a Jewish sect. 
 
 In the encounter with Jews and Judaizers, Paul had an 
 objection to meet, which at first must have perplexed his 
 own mind, and which his opponents would not fail to urge 
 with the utmost emphasis. Were not the Jews the people 
 of God ? Were they not a chosen nation ? As such, were 
 they not to receive the blessings of salvation? When it 
 was found that comparatively few of the Jews believed in 
 Jesus, and when the number of Gentile converts was rapidly 
 increasing, these questions could not fail to arise. " If you 
 are right," said the unbelieving Jew to Paul, " what becomes 
 of election and the promises ? " And the Judaizing be- 
 liever repeated the inquiry. This brings the apostle to the 
 matter of predestination and election. I do not propose to 
 discuss the interpretation of the ninth chapter of the Epistle 
 to the Romans — the field which has been trodden for so 
 many generations by contending armies of theological com- 
 batants — except to say that it was no part of the apostle's 
 idea to offer a metaphysical solution of the old problem of 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 499 
 
 liberty and necessity, any more than it was his design, in 
 the fifth chapter, to solve the mystery of original sin. All 
 that I propose is to point out the historical occasion of his 
 introducing the subject. The actual rejection of Christ by 
 a great majority of the Jewish people forced him to con- 
 sider their selection by God, and what the nature of it was. 
 In short, it opened up what we have called the philosophy 
 of history, the character of the Jewish dispensation. There 
 had not been a strict adherance to the hereditary principle 
 on the part of God in constituting the chosen people. The 
 principle of legitimacy, so to speak, had been set aside by 
 his decree. He had not, as a matter of fact, been bound, in 
 the past, by the mere consideration of lineage. Isaac was 
 not the only child of Abraham, and Jacob was an example 
 of a deviation from the natural order of succession ; the 
 reason being, in both cases, the divine choice and appoint- 
 ment. Therefore the Jewish theory of hereditary claims 
 and exclusive national rights was a false one, as their own 
 history proved. What should prevent God, then, if he saw 
 fit, from giving the blessing of salvation to the Gentiles? 
 There was no principle of the divine administration that 
 imposed any fetters upon his will in this particular. Hence, 
 if the Jews lost the gift, and the heathen received it, no one 
 had a right to charge the Divine Being with inconsistency, 
 or a disregard of lawful claims. But Paul does not leave 
 the discussion without bringing forward his usual doctrine — 
 that the blessings of grace are transmitted in the line of 
 faith, instead of that of carnal descent. It is not member- 
 ship in a race, but faith, that puts one in possession of them, 
 as the narrative of Abraham himself proved. The Calvinist 
 will always point to the apostle's language about Pharaoh, 
 and to the illustration of the potter and the clay ; the Ar- 
 minian will appeal to his declaration, that the reason why 
 Israel had not attained to righteousness is because " they 
 sought it not by faith," and that the rejection of Israel is tem- 
 porary until the Gentiles have been gathered into the church. 
 
500 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 Both unite in denying salvation by works or human merit, 
 and in attributing all the praise to God ; and this was the 
 truth which the apostle had most at heart. I have often 
 thought, that, had I the genius of Walter Savage Landor, I 
 would compose an imaginary conversation between John 
 Calvin and John Wesley, two men who were equals in firm- 
 ness of conviction and energy of will, and with an ardor 
 that impels them to pour out abundant anathemas against 
 the doctrines that offend them. To Wesley, election meant 
 the divine authorship of sin, and insincerity in the invita- 
 tions of the Gospel ; to Calvin, the denial of election meant 
 salvation by merit, and the insecurity of the trembling and 
 tempted believer. Each fights the inferences that he de- 
 duces from the doctrine of the other ; and each denies that 
 the inferences of his opponent are fairly drawn. But how 
 insignificant is the real difference between them when com- 
 pared with what they hold in common ! It is one conse- 
 quence of the historical method of exegesis, which, in con- 
 nection with a more correct philosophy, characterizes the 
 biblical interpretation of the present time, that a new point 
 of view is often gained, from which difficulties are lessened, 
 and the rigid interpretation of the dogmatical school is 
 modified by the infusion of a more genial, penetrative, and 
 catholic spirit. Even Peter did not find the style of Paul 
 very perspicuous. His impetuous mind does not stop to fill 
 out a chain of reasoning, or guard an illustration from a 
 possible misuse. His swift mind leaves gaps for the reader 
 himself to supply. His thoughts, in their hurry, jostle one 
 another ; and parenthesis is thrown within parenthesis to 
 help him in the utterance of them. Before one idea is 
 fully expressed, it is overtaken by another ; as a wave flow- 
 ing into the shore is chased and overrun by the wave be- 
 hind it. Hence, of all writers, he requires breadth and in- 
 sight in the interpreter who would explore his meaning. 
 
 The Pauline type of doctrine is frequently brought into 
 comparison with the types of doctrine presented in the Epis- 
 
raE APOSTLE PAUL. 601 
 
 tie of James and the writings of John. It is more obvious 
 to students of the Bible now than formerly, that the inspi- 
 ration of the apostles did not operate to supersede, but to in- 
 tensify, their native faculties of mind. It was dynamic, not 
 mechanical, in its mode of action. The effect of it was or- 
 ganic — to elevate, to guide, to purify the powers of intellect 
 and feeling, but not to supplant them, and not to extinguish 
 their peculiarities, or check their free movement, as by an 
 agency exerted upon them from without. Nor did inspira- 
 tion interfere with the individuality of religious character 
 that belonged to the apostles. What type their piety as- 
 sumed varied with their natural traits. They were all de- 
 pendent on Christ, and moulded by his influence ; but, like 
 various musical instruments touched by the same hand — the 
 lute, the organ, and the harp, which give forth various tones 
 and strains of melody^so is the characteristic nature of each 
 of the apostles manifest. The inspiration of the apostles 
 differs from the inspiration that has produced the master- 
 pieces of literature — first, that the former relates to relig- 
 ious and ethical truth ; and, secondly, that the products of it 
 are verified to us, and, for this reason, endued with author- 
 ity. The divine agency here includes a miraculous element, 
 by which the sacred books are set apart from all human 
 productions ; even the loftiest efforts of genius, though gen- 
 ius may handle the themes of religion. But the human ele- 
 ment, out of which grow the individuality, naturalness, and 
 personal living force of the apostolic writers, is not less evi- 
 dent than the divine element which has imparted to them an 
 inexhaustible, as it is an altogether unique, power. When 
 we compare Paul with James, we perceive that James puts 
 forth no contrary doctrine on the method of salvation. 
 When he declares that faith without works is dead, he shows 
 that he conceives of faith as containing a seed of virtue or 
 holy living, so that good works are not an adjunct of faith, 
 but a necessary fruit. Faith has lost its vitality, it resembles 
 a corpse, when it no longer produces right and benevolent 
 
602 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 conduct. This is precisely the conception of Paul. As to 
 his relations to John, it is common to designate the one as 
 the apostle of faith, and the other of love. There are cur- 
 rent sayings like that of Schelling, who marks off three pe- 
 riods of the church : the first being the age of Peter, the era 
 of law and ecclesiastical order ; the second, the age of Paul, 
 the era when faith is held in highest honor, the age of Prot- 
 estantism ; and the third, the age of John, the coming age 
 of love. Penan thinks to disparage Paul by calling him a 
 Protestant, the forerunner and author of Protestantism. But 
 turn to the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Cor- 
 inthians : " jS'ow abideth faith, hope, love — these three ; but 
 the greatest of these is love." Without love, he declares, all 
 gifts are worthless — the gift of tongues ; the gift of prophecy 
 —the eloquence of the preacher ; the gift of knowledge — all 
 intellectual superiority ; the gift of faith, by which miracles 
 were performed ; the habit of alms-giving without stint ; the 
 martyr-spirit — all are of no account without the love, which 
 includes a gentle, forgiving temper ; is the opposite of envy 
 and jealousy, of mistrust, of rudeness and indecorum, of 
 pride and boasting ; the love which delights at seeing men 
 good, and deplores their sin ; that is patient under the bur- 
 dens of life ; that leaves no room for self-seeking. Love 
 alone is the imperishable virtue : faith will give way to 
 sight, and hope to fruition. " On each side of this chapter," 
 says Dean Stanley, " the tumult of argument and remon- 
 strance still rages ; but within it all is calm : the sentences 
 move in almost rhythmical melody ; the imagery unfolds it- 
 self in almost dramatic propriety ; the language arranges it- 
 self with almost rhetorical accuracy. We can imagine how 
 the apostle's amanuensis must have paused to look up in his 
 master's face, and seen his countenance lighted up as it had 
 been the face of an angel, as this vision of divine perfection 
 passed before him." 'Now turn to John ; and what do we 
 meet with at the beginning of his Gospel ? — " To as many 
 as received him, to them gave he power to be the sons of 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 503 
 
 God ; even to them that believe on his name." Later we 
 read : " This is the work of God, to believe on him whom 
 he hath sent." The love to him who hath first loved us, on 
 which John dwells — what is it but faith ? We believe in a 
 love to us that has gone before all love on our side. Respon- 
 sive love implies faith. Faith, in the doctrine of Paul and 
 John alike, is the connection of the soul with Christ, from 
 which love and all other parts of goodness result. The unity 
 of apostolic doctrine lies in the common view of Christ as 
 the one source of life. He is the vine, sending life and 
 f ruitfulness through the branches. 
 
 Had Paul been less pure and disinterested in character, 
 he would infallibly have been made the head of a party ; 
 but when he heard of the attempt at Corinth to set him in 
 this position, and to organize a sect to be called by his name, 
 he repelled the project with indignation. It was a kind of 
 man- worship, and a dishonor to Christ, from which his 
 whole nature recoiled. ' Who, then,' he said, ' is Paul ? 
 Who is Paul ? Was Paul crucified for you ? Paul and 
 Apollos are but ministers ; and shall the servant usurp the 
 place of his Lord ? ' 
 
 In connection with his warm utterances on this subject, he 
 tells us how to look upon uninspired authors of systems of 
 ethics and theology. There is only one foundation ; and 
 that is Christ, and his work as a Saviour. Whoever builds 
 on this foundation is a Christian teacher ; but he may mingle 
 in his system, in the superstructure which he builds up by 
 the effort of his intellect, wood, hay, and stubble, or ele- 
 ments of doctrine that will not endure the searching test. 
 Building on the true foundation, he is personally saved ; but 
 the system that he has created is a human work, is liable to 
 imperfection, and will, at last, be sifted. In this light the 
 great system-makers in the church — as Origen, Augustine, 
 Aquinas, Calvin, Edwards — are to be regarded. Their un- 
 dertaking is legitimate : they may render a great service in 
 the exposition and defence of truth ; but they are not au- 
 
504 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 thoritative teachers ; and, when an undue deference is paid 
 to them, Christ loses the place that belongs to him. If Paul 
 was offended that his name should be given to a party in the 
 church, is there not, to say the least, an equal objection to 
 ' the practice of Christians, in later ages, of arraying them- 
 selves under the banner of some favorite theologian ? 
 
 Turning now from the doctrine to glance at the work of 
 the apostle Paul, we find him, by the natural bent of his 
 mind, a missionary. After, as before his conversion, he was 
 a propagandist. A life of contemplative devotion wouldv 
 have been intolerable to him. His favorite metaphor is 
 drawn from the race-course : athletes and soldiers are his 
 types of Christian manliness. There is one popular idea 
 respecting Paul, which, I think, is ill-founded. He is fre- 
 quently styled a learned man. It is true that he may be 
 called a scholar, so far as the Old Testament Scriptures and 
 the theology and casuistry of the Jewish schools are con- 
 cerned. As an intellectual man, he is to be rated above 
 most, and probably all, of the apostles, who belonged to 
 what was considered by their countrymen the uneducated 
 class. But there is no sufficient ground for supposing that 
 Paul was a learned man in the sense in which this term is 
 generally applied to him. It is not probable that he had 
 studied the Greek authors. Remember that he was of the 
 stock of Israel, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; born, not of 
 proselytes, but of Hebrew parentage on both sides. It is 
 not improbable that his father or grandfather had been a 
 captive in war, and, being emancipated, had acquired the 
 right of citizenship which descended to Paul. But his 
 father, though living in Tarsus, a cultivated city, was a rigid 
 Jew. Had he found his son reading a pagan writer, it is 
 likely that he would have dealt with him as one of our Puri- 
 tan ancestors would have treated a child whom he had caught 
 reading the tales of Boccaccio. Transferred at an early age 
 to Jerusalem, he sat at the feet of the Jewish doctor, Gama- 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 605 
 
 liel. Here the method of instruction was interlocutory ; a 
 stimulating method, which was practised also by the masters 
 of Greek philosophy, and is too little in vogue in our mod- 
 ern schemes of education. Gamaliel is represented in the 
 Jewish tradition as more tolerant in reference to Greek wis- 
 dom than most of the rabbis of that day. He gave advice 
 to the Sanhedrim that might indicate that the apostles had 
 made some impression on him of a favorable kind ; but, on 
 the other hand, might imply an expectation on his part that 
 the new sect would soon die a natural death. The president 
 of the Sanhedrim, it is not probable that he had any real in- 
 clination towards the Christian doctrine, except as far as it 
 recognized the belief in a resurrection, which the Pharisees 
 also cherished. But, whatever was the temper of the teach- 
 er, we know very w^ell what were the sentiments and spirit 
 of the pupil. " After the straitest sect of our religion," he 
 says, " I lived a Pharisee ; . . . . concerning zeal, perse- 
 cuting the church." After his conversion, and his return 
 from Arabia, he spent several years again at Tarsus. Here 
 it is reasonable to suppose that he came in contact with dis- 
 ciples of the Greek philosophy ; in particular, of the Stoic 
 system, of which Tarsus was a flourishing seat. The occa- 
 sional use of Stoic phraseology and maxims, in a new and 
 higher application, in his writings, is certainly remarkable, 
 and may be owing to opportunities of personal intercourse 
 with Stoic teachers which he then enjoyed. His coinci- 
 dences, extending even to forms of expression, with Seneca,, 
 are much more reasonably ascribed to that sort of acquain- 
 tance with Stoic doctrine than to a personal acquaintance of 
 the two men ; a supposition which has little evidence in its 
 favor. But what is the proof that he was possessed of the 
 erudition that is sometimes attributed to him ? A passage 
 that occurs in the poet Aratus, who happens to have been a 
 native of Tarsus, to the effect that we are the offspring of 
 God (Acts xvii. 28) ; and a hexameter line, which occurs in 
 Epimenides, on the bad qualities of the Cretans (Tit. i. 12). 
 23 
 
606 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 But these sayings, it is likely, were scraps in general circu- 
 lation, and no more indicate a familiarity with Greek authors 
 than the repetition of the words, " An honest man is the no- 
 blest w^ork of God," with the accompanying remark, that it 
 is an utterance of some of the English poets, proves a man 
 to be conversant with English literature. There is no indi- 
 cation in Paul's writings, and no proof from any quarter, 
 that he had read JEschylus or Homer, Plato or Demosthenes, 
 or any other classic writer of heathen antiquity. Had he 
 studied either of these authors, it is hardly possible that dis- 
 tinct traces of this fact should be missing from his writings. 
 The style, as well as the contents, of his letters, would ex- 
 hibit signs of a culture so diverse from that which the rab- 
 bis afforded. The " much learning " which, as Festus thought, 
 had made Paul mad, was converse with Jewish, not Gentile 
 books ; and of this matter Festus was a poor judge, learning 
 being a source of insanity to which he had probably taken 
 care not to expose himself. Perhaps the impression to which 
 we refer in respect to Paul's Gentile learning may have 
 sprung from a natural wish of some minds to have one 
 among the apostles who could lay claim to this distinction. 
 It reminds one of the lavish praise that it was once the cus- 
 tom of preachers to bestow on the scientific acquirements of 
 the first man ; as when Robert South says that Aristotle was 
 but the rubbish of Adam, and Athens the ruins of Paradise. 
 But Paul is indebted for his eminence to sources of power 
 far higher than literature and science can confer. It was 
 impossible that all vestiges of his rabbinical training should 
 be cast aside ; but they serve as a foil to set off more im- 
 pressively the native vigor of his mind. If he did not de- 
 vote himself to the study of the heathen authors, he fully 
 comprehended heathenism as a religious phenomenon. The 
 religious aspiration that lies at the root of heathen worship 
 is pointed out in the discourse at Athens. The origin of 
 idolatry is revealed in the opening chapter of the Epistle to 
 the Romans. The responsibility of those who have not 
 
HE APOSTLE PAUL. 607 
 
 been taught by a written revelation is proved by referring 
 to the testimony of their own consciences and the law writ- 
 ten on the heart. How was the declaration of the Saviour, 
 that " salvation is of the Jews," verified afresh when this 
 " Hebrew of the Hebrews " stood on Mars' Hill, and proclaim- 
 ed to an audience of Athenians Jesus and the resurrection ! 
 Among the qualifications of Paul for his peculiar work as 
 a propagator of the gospel and a founder of churches, the 
 singular blending of enthusiasm with prudence in his nature 
 deserves attention. There was a fire which no difiiculties 
 that stood in his path could quench ; but along with it there 
 was a moderation, the temperance or sobriety, which kept 
 him back from all extravagance. He unites a zeal, which 
 one might think would brook no restraint, with a wonder- 
 ful tact and shrewdness. A certain sagacity, or good sense, 
 presides over his conduct. His burning zeal never runs 
 into fanaticism. At the right time, he knows how to con- 
 sult expediency. When we find these apparently incongru- 
 ous qualities combined in the champion of anycause, we may 
 look out for great results. These traits mingle in the char- 
 acter of such a statesman as Cromwell, and in the founders 
 of some of the great religious orders in tlie Catholic Church. 
 The history of Paul contains many examples of the oppor- 
 tune exercise of this prudence and tact. He would not 
 yield an inch to the demand of the Judaizers when the 
 principle was at stake, even though Peter was seduced to give 
 them his tacit support ; but he rebuked this leading apostle 
 in pointed terms. Yet he would go very far in making 
 concessions to remove the misunderstanding and prejudice 
 of the Jews, and to pacify Jewish feeling that was offended 
 by his apparently radical proceedings. Before the Sanhe- 
 drim he contrived, by avowing himself a believer in one of 
 the doctrines of the Pharisees, to kindle a strife between 
 the two schools of doctors, in the smoke of which he effected 
 his escape. He was not afraid of the face of man : he did 
 not tremble before the furious mob at Jerusalem, and he 
 
508 THE APOSTLE PAIJIi. 
 
 stood before Kero without quailing. But he was not the 
 man to throw away his life ; and he did not think it undig- 
 nified to be let down in a basket from the wall of Damascus. 
 He had no heroic moods that moved him to fling away a 
 reasonable caution. His courtesy to heathen magistrates, 
 even bad men, is in marked contrast with the temper of a 
 fanatic. A refinement and delicacy of sentiment are never 
 wanting. He considers it a superstition to refuse to eat the 
 meat of animals that have been killed at the altars of Jupi- 
 ter, Diana, or Neptune ; but he would drive nobody into 
 doing what he felt to be wrong, however unfounded his 
 scruples might be. He would not, like a fanatic, insist on 
 the outward act before the conviction was ripe for it. In a 
 kind of chivalry of tenderness, as one has called it, he would 
 himself abstain from eating such meat, if his example was 
 to mislead a weak and superstitious brother into the doing 
 of a right thing against his conscience. The practical wis- 
 dom, or sobriety, of Paul, is illustrated on a point where an 
 ignorant criticism has often condemned or sneered at him — 
 in what he says of the dress and deportment of Christian 
 women. He paid a proper respect to the ancient ideas of 
 decorum, not wishing unnecessarily to stir up a prejudice 
 where there was already hostility enough against the infant 
 churches. Paul is censured for the very things that pre- 
 vented the churches from being broken up by tumults with- 
 in, and by enmity and suspicion without. He knew just 
 where to draw the line between a Christian independence 
 and a reckless fanaticism. He would do more than excite a 
 commotion: he would organize and build on enduring foun-. 
 dations. I wish that all zealots for social reforms would 
 spend the time which they devote to supercilious criticism 
 upon Paul in the humble study of his life. Let me observe 
 here, that no man has given a higher honor to woman, or set 
 a higher dignity and sacredness upon marriage, than the 
 apostle who makes it the symbol of the union of Christ with 
 his church. 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 609 
 
 The sympathy of Paul with his fellow-disciple^, with his 
 countrymen, and with all men, " Greeks and Barbarians," 
 made self-sacrifice the habit of his life. He clasped the lit- 
 tle churches as children in his arms. In his communications 
 to them, he poured out his tender solicitude and more than 
 paternal affection. All that he is, all that he experienced, 
 is for them. Whether he is afflicted or consoled, it is a 
 divine appointment for their benefit. Any form of spirit- 
 ual good that he may possess is not for Limself, but has 
 been given that it might be imparted again to them. A 
 beautiful instance of this identification of himself with his 
 brethren is found in the passage (2 Cor. i. 4) in which he 
 speaks with gratitude of the comfort which he had received 
 from God, " who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that 
 we may he able to comfort them, which are in any trouhle hy 
 the comfort wherewith we are comforted of GodP So deep 
 is his sympathy for his kinsmen of the race of Israel, that 
 he would himself willingly be cut off and cursed for their 
 sake ! A power in itself, the self-denying love of the apostle 
 called out all his energies, and kept them directed to a sin- 
 gle end. 
 
 The absorbing religious consecration of Paul is the lead- 
 ing feature in his character. His earnest, strenuous devo- 
 tion to the word to which he had been called by the Master 
 had no intermission, and knew no rest. It must not be for- 
 gotten that we have in the book of Acts a sketch of only a 
 fragment of Paul's missionary career, which covered, in all, 
 a period of thirty years. In the reference that he incident- 
 ally makes to the perils, indignities, and hardships to which 
 he had been subject — how he had been scourged and 
 stoned ; had fallen among robbers ; been exposed to the 
 plots of hostile Jews and treacherous disciples, to hunger 
 and cold ; burdened with the care of churches only just con- 
 verted from paganism — he mentions that thrice he had ex- 
 perienced shipwreck. This was written before the occur- 
 rence of the shipwreck on the shore of Malta, which is de- 
 
510 THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 scribed hy Luke. There is a vast, unrecorded history of 
 toil, anxiety, persecution, casualty ; chapters of biography 
 irrecoverably lost, but all the more pathetic for the veil that 
 hangs over them. His life was one long campaign. So 
 he himself felt at the close. He could look back and say 
 that he had fought a good fight. It is interesting to notice 
 that the great idea of righteousness, the one idea that had 
 engaged his thoughts from childhood, was still before his 
 mind : " Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
 righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will 
 give me." 
 
 I must gather up, in the briefest compass, a few of the 
 lessons for our time, and for all tinie, which are drawn from 
 the glimpses we have taken of the character and career of 
 the Apostle to the Gentiles. 
 
 He is an eloquent witness to the supremacy that belongs 
 to religion, in Christian teaching, as in the lives of men. 
 The inculcation of justice and charity among men is never 
 to be neglected ; but the life of ethics is in religion. The 
 recovery of men to God is the prime end of the Gospel. 
 The preaching of Paul was a beseeching of men, in the 
 name of Christ, to be reconciled to God. 
 
 In all Christian ages, Paul is a witness against ritualism 
 — if by ritualism is meant a dependence upon external rites 
 and an earthly priesthood. Imagine a ritualist of this de- 
 scription thanking God that he had baptized onl}^ Caius and 
 Crispus and a few other individuals, as Paul says of the 
 church at Corinth, with which he stood in such intimate re- 
 lations ! At the Reformation, it was the voice of Paul that 
 called men away from human mediators to Christ, and broke 
 up the reign of the mediaeval system of religion. As long 
 as the Epistle to the Galatians remains, it will be impossible 
 for Judaizing Christianity permanently to triumph in the 
 church. 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 511 
 
 How is Christ exalted when we look at tlie greatness of 
 Paul and the greatness of his influence ! Luther said that 
 the spiritual miracles were the greatest. Paul, in all that 
 constitutes the excellence of his character and influence, was, 
 as he himself felt in his inmost soul, only one effect of Christ. 
 The splendor of the planet is not its own, but is derived 
 from the sun round which it revolves. In this dependent 
 relation Paul consciously stood to Christ. "When we con- 
 template such a disciple, are not the power and rank of the 
 Master felt to be altogether unique? Is there not some 
 other, transcendent distinction between Paul and Christ be- 
 sides that of the degree of moral excellence that belonged to 
 them respectively ? The love of Christ to him was the one 
 great consolation and joy, from which no event, and no 
 power, human or superhuman, could separate him. There 
 is something in the bare relation of this disciple to his Lord, 
 apart from all specific declarations, which impresses us with 
 the conviction that Christ, in the apostle's view, was more 
 than a morally perfect man. He stands forth as the divine 
 author of a new spiritual creation. 
 
 The best fruit that we can gather from a view of the life 
 of Paul is a rebuke for the languid spirit that belongs to our 
 service of the Master, and a spur to a more unselfish, earnest, 
 courageous performance of whatever work he has given us 
 to do. The most effectual defence of the Christian cause is 
 not reasoning, which ingenious men may contrive to parry, 
 but the irresistible argument of a holy life, before which 
 infidelity stands abashed. 
 
512 THE FOUR gospels: 
 
 THE FOUR GOSPELS : A REVIEW OF SUPERNATU- 
 RAL RELIGION.* 
 
 The anonymolis work entitled Swpernatural Religion 
 is an elaborate attack upon the validity of the evidences and 
 the authenticity of the documents of the Christian religion. 
 The morality of the New Testament is alone possessed of 
 value, in the judgment of the writer ; and this morality is 
 not helped, but weakened, in its influence by the religious 
 doctrine connected with it.f By "morality" he under- 
 stands love to God and man, although he implies that the 
 personality of God is an anthropomoi*phic conception.:]: He 
 reserves, however, the full exposition of his theoretical sys- 
 tem, which is to supersede revelation, for another work, to 
 be issued hereafter. Nearly one-half of the first volume 
 (pp. 1-214) is taken up with a discussion of the subject of 
 miracles, in which their incredibility is advocated, and a 
 polemical review is presented of the arguments of Newman, 
 Trench, and especially of Mozley. The remainder of the 
 first volume and the whole of the second are devoted to a 
 critical examination of the evidence for the genuineness of 
 the synoptic Gospels and of the Gospel of John. In this, 
 by far the most important, portion of the work, the early 
 ecclesiastical writers are subjected to an extended scrutiny. 
 The author is conversant with the modem critical discussions 
 in Germany. He is very copious in his marginal references 
 to books, even taking pains to point out volume and page of 
 
 * From The Independent^ in November and December, 1874. The title 
 of the work reviewed is : Supernatural Religion. An Inquiry into the 
 Reality of Divine Revelation. In two vols. London : Longmans, Green 
 &Co. 1874. 
 
 t Vol. ii., p. 483. X Vol. i., p. 72. 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPEENATURAL RELIGION. 613 
 
 the well-known manuals on the Introduction to the New 
 Testament, and of other books of a like character, on occa- 
 sions where there is hardly need of so much particularity. 
 The book is, for substance, a reproduction in English of the 
 theories and arguments of the Tubingen school respecting 
 early Christianity and the gospels. Baur, Hilgenfeld, Yolk- 
 mar, Zeller, Schwegler, Scholten, and their coadjutors are 
 the names with which his foot-notes are most frequently 
 sprinkled. It is the Tubingen criticism anglicized. The 
 impression which the book makes in England, if we may 
 judge from the tone of the English press, indicates a want 
 of familiarity on the part of the educated class in that 
 country with the course of theological discussion on the con- 
 tinent. Journals like the Pall Mall Gazette are quite daz- 
 zled at the erudition, as well as skill, of the unknown com- 
 batant. In some points this Anglican critic out-herods 
 Herod. For example, in contradiction to most of the 
 scholars of the German sceptical school, he still claims that 
 Marcion's Gospel is the original of Luke's,* and will not 
 admit — what even Hilgenfeld and Strauss concede — that the 
 Clementine Homilies quote from the fourth gospel. Can- 
 did and discerning readers of works like Bleek's Introduction 
 to the New Testament^ Norton's Genuineness of the Gosj)els, 
 and Westcott's Canon of the New Testament — we purposely 
 name books which are accessible to English readers — will de- 
 tect without difficulty the fallacies which swarm in this last 
 attack on the gospels. To sift the work in detail and to ex- 
 pose the mass of sophistry which it contains would require 
 a large space. It is practicable, however, to point out the 
 weakness of some of its main positions. 
 
 We begin with the first three Gospels. We shall after- 
 wards take up the Gospel of John. It cannot be denied 
 (and this author does not deny) that in the latter half of 
 the second century the number of Gospels acknowledged in 
 
 *[ This opinion is retracted in the 7th edition of Supernatural Eeltgion.] 
 22* 
 
514 THE FOUR gospels: 
 
 the church ever}^where — from Antioch and the farthest East 
 to Carthage and the Atlantic shore of Spain — is limited to 
 the four of our canon. Clement, and Irenaeus, and Tertul- 
 lian, the Italic version, and probably the Sjriac version, are 
 the chief witnesses. These Gospels the fathers of that time 
 affirm to have been handed down from the apostolic age. 
 This anonymous author fifty times asserts that in the first 
 half of the second century numerous gospels were widely 
 circulated in the church. This statement is utterly unproved 
 and it is untrue. The Gospel of the Hebrews, in its different 
 recensions, was an altered Matthew, and the Gospel of Mar- 
 cion a mutilated Luke. The one was in use among the 
 Ebionites and the other in the Marcionite sect. Leaving 
 these out of the accoimt, the reiterated statement about the 
 wide circulation and acceptance of other gospels is without 
 foundation. But, if the writer's assertion were true, it 
 would puzzle him to give a satisfactory explanation of the fact 
 that the four — these and no others — are found, in the last 
 quarter of the second century, consentaneously adopted by 
 the churches scattered over the Eoman Empire, and adopted 
 without a lisp of dissent or contradiction among them. 
 
 Yery few of the ecclesiastical writers of \hQ first half of 
 the second century are extant. The most important of those 
 whose works remain is Justin Martyr. About the genuine- 
 ness of his two apologies and of the dialogue with Trypho 
 there is no question. It is natural that the author of Su- 
 jyernatiiral Religion should exert himself to the utmost to 
 show that Justin's quotations are not, as they have been 
 generally deemed to be, derived from the gospels of the 
 canon, but from lost works. About forty years ago, Cred- 
 ner, a theologian of Giessen, published his critical works on 
 the New Testament, in which the quotations of Justin were 
 collected and tabulated. The judgment of this scholar was 
 not always equal to his learning. He held that the first 
 three gospels were in the hands of Justin, and he believed 
 in the Johannine authorship of the fourth ; but he attributed 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 515 
 
 exaggerated influence to the Jewish gospels — the " Gospel 
 of the Hebrews," etc. — and maintained that Justin drew at 
 least the main portion of his passages from them. The 
 Tubingen doctors started with the facts and data of Credner, 
 and, as one might expect, pushed his theory to the extreme 
 of excluding altogether the canonical gospels from the 
 knowledge of Justin. The author of Sujpernatural Religion 
 treads closely in their footsteps. Justin ten times calls the 
 source of his quotations the Memoirs hy the Apostles, and five 
 times simply Memoirs / in one case he speaks of them as 
 composed by " the apostles and their companions," * and 
 once he explains that they " are called Gospels." f In the 
 passage where " the apostles and their companions " are 
 mentioned as the authors of the Memoirs the connected 
 quotation is found in Luke, a circumstance that w^ould ac- 
 count for the express reference to " companions" in connec- 
 tion with " apostles." The reason why the gospels are 
 called Memoirs, without a mention of the author's names, is 
 plain. Justin was writing for heathen readers, or for Jews, 
 who knew nothing of the evangelists by name, and would 
 not understand the title " Gospels." In several places in the 
 " Dialogue with Trypho," who was acquainted with Chris- 
 tianity, Justin does use " the Gospel " in the singular as a 
 designation for the Memoirs. Seeing that later fathers in 
 the same century — as Irenseus and Tertullian — employ this 
 very term as a name for the four gospels collectively, it is 
 natural to suppose that Justin did the same. His Dialogue 
 with Trypho was written about a.d. 160, when Irenseus must 
 have been about thirty years of age. The Memoirs, what- 
 ever they were, were read along with the prophets, Justin 
 tells us, in the Christian assemblies on the Lord's Day, in 
 city and country. The author whom we are reviewing re- 
 peatedly affirms that Justin did not consider the Memoirs 
 inspired or authoritative, that he believed them solely on 
 
 ♦ Dial, c. 103. t ^'Po'^- i-» ^6. 
 
516 THE FOUR gospels: 
 
 account of their accordance with prophecy, and that he was 
 a Judaizer, hostile to Paul — statements contrary to the 
 truth, but not of sufficient relevancy to require here a 
 refutation. In the first place, this author expresses the re- 
 markable opinion that Justin by his Memoirs designates a 
 single gospel — one work. Then this one book must have 
 had " the apostles and their companions " for its authors ! 
 Against this odd supposition, stands not only the natural 
 interpretation of Justin's language in all of his references to 
 the Memoirs, but also his express declaration that they " are 
 called gospels." But this last clause, without a particle of 
 manuscript evidence, is thrown out of the text and pro- 
 nounced spurious ! That the author is not absolutely alone 
 in this emendation makes it none the less an arbitrary con- 
 jecture. When Justin speaks of the Memoirs as \^Titten by 
 " the apostles and their companions " there is no reason to 
 doubt that he has in mind the works which Tertullian 
 describes in just the same manner. When he refers to a 
 circumstance about Peter as recorded in his Memoirs it is 
 right to conclude that the Gospel of Mark which Papias and 
 the ancient church connected with Peter as having been 
 written by his disciple, is the book referred to.* Secondly, 
 the author of Supernatural Religion tries to get over the 
 difficulty arising from the liturgical use of the MemoirSyhj 
 pretending that many other works were read in like manner. 
 A few homiletic writings — as the EjpistU of Clement, and 
 the Shejpherd of Ilermas — were not unfi-equently read in 
 the early churches. But, with the exception of the Gos- 
 pel of the Hebrews in the Ebionitic communities, there is 
 no proof that other gospels than the four had this public 
 recognition. Justin must have been acquainted with the 
 churches of Italy and Asia. How did the unknown gospel, 
 which corresponded so closely to the canonical narratives, and 
 
 * In Dial.^ c. 106. In the same sentence, Justin refers to Boanerges, 
 as the name given to John and James, a fact mentioned by Mark alone 
 of the Evangelists. 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 517 
 
 which it is pretended that Justin quotes from, get crowded 
 out of the services on Sunday and get supplanted by others, 
 and all within the space of a few years, since Irenseus must 
 have been a man grown, when Justin wrote his Dialogue ? 
 Justin himself dwells on the multitude of Christians in his 
 time, who were scattered over the whole world, among all 
 nations, whether nomadic or civilized.* How could the gos- 
 pels which existed in multiplied copies, and which they read 
 in their public worship, be suddenly dropped, and exchanged 
 for others, and no notice be left of the fact of such a revolu- 
 tion or of the process by which it was effected ? 
 
 In the very great number of references to the gospel 
 narrative in Justin there is a general and striking coinci- 
 dence with our evangelists. "We shall here speak of the 
 first three gospels, reserving the consideration of John for 
 a later page. We have in Justin no myths respecting 
 Mary and the infancy of Jesus, such as fill the apocryphal 
 narratives. Why attribute his references to any other 
 source than to the gospels of the canon ? First, our author 
 brings forward the fact that the quotations are not verbally 
 accurate. But {a) this is no peculiarity of Justin. The 
 other fathers, who are known to have received the four 
 alone, quote from memory and exhibit the same sort of in- 
 accuracy. One of the most striking instances of this inex- 
 act method of quotation is in the case of Matt. xi. 27 (Luke x. 
 22), on which our author builds much. But the same devia- 
 tions from the canonical text are found in Clement of Alex- 
 andria, Origen, and Irenseus ; so that his argument is good for 
 nothing. To paraphrase a passage, instead of giving it ver- 
 hathn / to combine the language of two evangelists upon the 
 same matter ; to misrecoUect the phraseology of a passage 
 and to quote it more than once in the same inexact form, 
 are so natural, so explicable on known principles of mental 
 action, and so common, even at the present day, that phe- 
 
 * Dial, c. 117. 
 
518 THE FOUR GOSPELS *. 
 
 nomena of this sort, occurring at a time when the gospels 
 were comparatively new and were read only in manuscripts, 
 should occasion no surprise. It is true that the author be- 
 fore us stigmatizes this method of accounting for Justin's in- 
 accurate quotations, as " elastic," " convenient," " arbitrary," 
 etc. But such epithets will affect no one who reflects on 
 the subject and who is acquainted with the ordinary practice 
 of the authors of antiquity, {h) We find that Justin quotes 
 other writers with quite as much freedom as to the verbal 
 form. He quotes the Septuagint with similar departures 
 from the text. He quotes from Plato, especially in one 
 striking passage where we might look for a literal citation, 
 with a deviation from the original as marked as that of most 
 of his gospel quotations.'^ Did he read a different Plato, 
 an apocryphal Timcms f Is the supposition that he read 
 the TimcBus that we read, " elastic," " arbitrary," the sub- 
 terfuge of " Apologists " ? He quotes from Isaiah, doubt- 
 less by a mistake, a passage not to be found in the prophet.f 
 Does this prove that he had another Isaiah or was unac- 
 quainted with the canonical books of tlie Old Testament ? 
 Has the canonical Isaiah supplanted an earlier Isaiah which 
 Justin used ? Lastly (<?), Justin differs from himself. He 
 brings forward in repeated instances passages which he 
 gives in different places in a varying form. In the passage 
 to which we have adverted (Matt. xi. 27) our author finds 
 in Justin's use of the aorist for the present ("knew "for 
 " knoweth ") proof of the use of a heretical gospel. But 
 Justin himself cites the passage, giving the verb in the 
 present.:j: This comparison of Justin with himself proves 
 conclusively that he was in the habit of quoting from 
 memory and frequently without taking pains to cite the 
 text verbatim. If the position of the author of Super- 
 natural Religion is to stand, he must show that Justin's 
 quotations deviate from our gospels in such a way as to ac- 
 
 * A'poL ii., 10. t Dial,, a 138. % Dial, c. 100. 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 519 
 
 cord systematically with the Jewish gospel, to which he at- 
 tributes them. This, secondly, he attempts to do. As- 
 suming that the Clementine Homilies quote from such a 
 gospel, he would make out a verbal correspondence be- 
 tween certain of Justin's passages and those found in that 
 work. In this effort he follows Credner. The attempt is 
 made with reference only to a very few of the numerous 
 references to the gospel narrative in the Homilies, and the 
 result of the comparison is far from justifying the inference 
 of the author. For example, both Justin and the Homilies 
 ascribe to the Lord the precept, " Let your yea be yea, and 
 your nay, nay." But the canonical epistle of James gives 
 the precept in the same form, and so does Clement of Alex- 
 andria, who regarded the four gospels as alone authoritative. 
 The ecclesiastical writers may have taken the form of the 
 precept from James — the form in which it came orally to 
 this Apostle. The instances of verbal coincidence — so far 
 as such exist between Justin's references and those of the 
 Clementines — are quite inadequate to prove a common 
 source distinct from the canonical gospels. When Justin's 
 quotations are compared generally with those of the Homi- 
 lies, it is found that, so far from tallying with them, they 
 differ in phraseology as widely as do Justin's from the text 
 of our evangelists. The third main argument in Supernat- 
 ural Religion^ on the topic before us, is founded on the ref- 
 erences in Justin to facts and sayings not contained in our 
 Gospels. These additions are frequently alleged to be nume- 
 rous and important. This is not true. In the multitude 
 of references to Christ's teaching, there are only two say- 
 ings ascribed to him which are extra-canonical. One is the 
 prediction that heresies and divisions would break out ; the 
 other is — " In whatsoever things I apprehend you, in these 
 will I judge you." The first of these (resembling the pas- 
 sage in 1 Cor. xi. 18 seq.), is attributed to Jesus by Clement 
 of Alexandria and Lactantius, The second is also in Clem- 
 ent, as well as in later writers. Justin speaks of Jesus as 
 
520 THE FOUR gospels: 
 
 having been born in a cave — a circumstance referred to also 
 by Origen and in many of the later fathers, and unquestion- 
 ably an early tradition. But it was in a manger — Justin 
 tells us in the same passage — that Christ was born ; the cave 
 contained a manger. Justin says that when Jesus entered 
 the water to be baptized a fire was kindled in the Jordan. 
 The same thing is found in several apocryphal books. In 
 the Gospel of the Hebrews the fire is said to have appeared 
 when he came up from the water. Here we have probably 
 an early tradition, which became incorporated in more than 
 one writer. Justin represents the voice from Heaven at 
 the baptism as saying : " Thou art my Son. This day I have 
 begotten thee." We learn from Augustine that this read- 
 ing of the passage was current in his day. It is found in 
 the old Latin version. It occurs in the Cambridge manu- 
 script D. It is met with in Clement of Alexandi;ia, and 
 other later authors. Justin speaks of Jesus as a carpenter, 
 making plows and yokes — a statement introduced into the 
 apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy and the Gospel of Thomas. 
 Justin says that the people considered his miracles a magic 
 phantasy and called him a magician. This may have been 
 a free paraphrase of the statements in Matthew ix. 34 ; 
 xii. 24 ; Mark iii. 22 ; Luke xi. 15 ; but it is found in 
 Origen, the Recognitions of Pseudo-Clement, and else- 
 where. He also says that the ass on which he rode was tied 
 to a vine — a circumstance which probably connected itself 
 early in the tradition with the prophecy in Genesis xlix. 10, 
 with which Justin associates it.* This brief list comprises 
 everything which can fairly be called a supplement to the 
 contents of the four Gospels in the entire mass of Justin's 
 references ; and, as this writer says Justin's works " teem 
 with these quotations." f They are here brought together, 
 be it observed, from all his works. In the places where 
 they occur, they would hardly attract an ordinary reader's 
 attention. It is not impossible that Justin may have been 
 
 ♦i>»aZ., c. 63. , tVol. i.,p. 341. 
 
A REVIEW OF ST7PERNATUEAL RELIGION. 521 
 
 acquainted with the Gospel of the Hebrews — the Ebionitic 
 Matthew ; and that reminiscences of his reading of that 
 book may have mingled themselves with his extracts from 
 the canonical four. Certain sayings of Jesus and circum- 
 stances in his life which are not recorded by the Evangel- 
 ists formed a part of the early tradition. They found their 
 way into books. Whether Justin drew these few things 
 from such books or from an oral source — from traditional 
 report — it is difficult to decide. But there is one point of 
 capital importance : not one of these extra-canonical state- 
 ments is referred hy him to the Memoirs. The author of 
 Supernatural Religion labors hard to prove the contrary, 
 but he labors in vain. In the account of the baptism of 
 Jesus it is only what our gospels contain that is referred by 
 Justin to the Memoirs. To infer that he means to attribute 
 his whole narrative of this event to them is without warrant. 
 If this inference were just, it would only authoi-ize us to con- 
 clude that Justin's memory in this instance, as in the case of va- 
 rious references by him to the Old Testament, was imperfect. 
 
 That Justin drew the bulk of his references to the gos- 
 pels from the Matthew, Mark, and Luke of our canon, is 
 one of the best-established results of impartial critical and 
 historical research. That he made use of John's Gospel is, 
 also, capable of satisfactory proof. 
 
 If the notions of the author of Supernatural Religion as 
 to the source of Justin's quotations were tenable we should 
 have to conclude that there was a gospel preceding the four 
 of the canon, which contained a great part of the contents of 
 all of them ; that the four were written on the basis of it, each 
 drawing off a portion of the matter ; that this comprehensive 
 gospel was dropped by the churches after the middle of the 
 second century, and the four taken up in the room of it.* 
 
 * [The improbabilities (amounting to absurdity) of this theory as to 
 the contents of The Goapel to the Hebrews, and its relation to the canoni- 
 cal gospels, are well set forth in The Lost Oospd and its Contents^ by the 
 Eev. M. F. Sadler, M.A. (London, 187G).] 
 
522 THE FOUK GOSPELS : 
 
 As we approach the close of the second century we find 
 that the churches everywhere, without conciiiar action or 
 the influence of prominent individuals, have settled in com- 
 mon upon the four gospels as possessed of exclusive author- 
 ity. This very remarkable fact is fully attested, as we have 
 remarked, by the testimony of the fathers, and by the early 
 versions. The author of Supernatural Religion repeatedly 
 alludes to the use of other gospels by Clement of Alexan- 
 dria ; but -Clement himself, referring to an alleged conversa- 
 tion of Salome and Jesus, says : " We have not this saying 
 in the four gosjpels which have been handed down to us, but 
 in that according to the Egyptians." * He distinguishes the 
 four as authoritative. We must offer a brief comment here 
 upon the way in which the Muratorian Canon is treated in 
 the work which we are criticising. This interesting frag- 
 ment, as is well known, begins with a broken sentence, which 
 may be naturally interpreted as relating to Mark's Gospel. 
 The MS. then proceeds to speak of the " tlikd book of the 
 Gospel according to Luke " ; then of the Gospel of John, 
 which is called the fourth; and then of the Acts. That 
 Matthew and Mark preceded this notice of Luke in the ms., 
 no person can reasonably doubt. Yet this author is bold 
 enough to say that there is no evidence of it " stronger than 
 a mere conjecture." The ms. says of the Pastor of Her- 
 nias: "Ilermas, in truth, composed the Pastor ^'e/'y recently 
 in our times in the City of Rome, the Bishop Pius, his broth- 
 er, sitting in the chair of the Church of the City of Rome." 
 The latest possible date of the episcopate of Pius is 142-157 ; 
 yet our author falls back upon a subterfuge of Yolkmar, who 
 suggested that the writer of the canon speaks of the date of 
 Hermas comparatively, in relation to that of the apostolic 
 writings — a suggestion having no support from the language 
 of the document — and forthwith brings down its date " to a 
 late period of the third century." He even observes, with 
 
 • Str&ni,, iil, 13. 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPEKNATrKAL RELIGION. 523 
 
 some naivete, that if it can be supposed tliat the phrase was 
 used thirtj or forty years after the time of Pius, " so much 
 license is taken that there is absolutely no reason why a still 
 greater interval may not be allowed." " Very recently," " in 
 our times " — keep us, at least, within the limit of the second 
 century. Be it observ^ed that this same author, who resorts 
 to such flimsy arguments in order to bring the Muratorian 
 MS. down into the third century, nevertheless treats the fact 
 that Matthew and Mark were referred to in it, as " a mere 
 conjecture ! " 
 
 This author discloses a partisan spirit in what he says of 
 Marcion's Gospel, which, being an altered, mutilated Luke, 
 proves the currency of the canonical third gospel in the first 
 half of the second century. Kitschl and some others of the 
 Tubingen school, contrary to the declaration of the fathers 
 — Irengeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius — and to the well-nigh uni- 
 versal opinion, had defended the proposition tiiat Marcion's 
 Gospel was first and that Luke's grew out of it. This opin- 
 ion was confuted by Yolkmar, of the same school, who was 
 supported by Hilgenfeld and Zeller ; and these were joined 
 by Baur and by Ritschl, who retracted their former opin- 
 ions. The priority of our Luke in general was thus con- 
 ceded by the sceptical school which had impugned it. The 
 author of Sujoernatural Heligion is adventurous enough to 
 take up " the lost cause." He prepares the way by sweep- 
 ing remarks upon the utterly uncritical habit of the fathers, 
 and the worthlessness of their testimony. Especially does 
 he seek to heap contempt upon Tertullian, the most formid- 
 able witness in the case, who, though a vehement controver- 
 sialist (like Martin Luther), had taken great pains to inform 
 himself about Marcion. Almost the only thing of the na- 
 ture of serious argument in connection with this indiscrim- 
 inate and, therefore, unjust diatribe against the fathers, is 
 the attempt to show that Marcion admitted into his Gospel 
 various things inconsistent with his alleged design to exclude 
 what gave sanction to the Old Testament and the Jewish 
 
524 THE FOUR GOSPELS : 
 
 system. Whoever will carefully consider the omitted pas- 
 sages — as given by De Wette and Bleek — will see that they 
 fully sustain the allegation of the church writers as to the 
 intent of Marcion. That he did not use the pruning-knife 
 with absolute consistency and thoroughness, that in some 
 cases he relied upon strained and perverse interpretations, as 
 a means of getting -rid of obnoxious statements, does not 
 militate against the truth of this allegation. In the case of 
 one of Marcion's characteristic alterations, our author de- 
 fends Marcion's reading, in the face of decisive evidence. 
 The passage is Luke xvi. 17. Marcion rejected all of the 
 apostles but Paul, and, hence, cast away the gospels with 
 which they were connected. But Irenreus and Tertullian 
 both distinctly imply that he was acquainted with the other 
 canonical gospels. Marcion expunged, also, from the Epis- 
 tles of Paul passages opposed to his own type of doctrine. 
 This is established, although in some cases his variations 
 were doubtless due to diverse readings of the text. The 
 Marcionites, after their master, introduced further altera- 
 tions into the documents which they received. Besides the 
 peculiarity of Marcion's changes, it is on other grounds irra- 
 tional to assign the priority to his gospel. Did the church 
 in the middle of the second century take a gospel from the 
 hands of a heretical sect and amplify it ? This is one mar- 
 velous hypothesis which has not wanted supporters. The 
 absurdity of it the author before us appears to recognize. 
 He broaches the theory that Marcion's Gospel was the orig- 
 inal Luke, and had remained in use among the churches of 
 Pontus after it had been supplanted elsewhere by our third 
 gospel. He would have us believe that Marcion's Gospel 
 had been altered and enlarged, and in this new form had 
 been spread abroad ; while the first form, the germ of it, 
 still remained among the orthodox Christians of Pontus, 
 where Marcion was brought up. It is fatal to this extraor- 
 dinary hypothesis that there is not a particle of evidence, 
 from any quarter, that Marcion's Gospel was ever used by 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPEENATUEAL RELIGION. 525 
 
 any but Marcionites. There is no proof whatever that Mar- 
 cion, his opponents, or his followers pretended that his gos- 
 pel was in use among the orthodox any wliere, either before 
 or after his time. Marcion's Gospel began with the third 
 chapter of our Luke. The prologue of Luke — the first 
 verses — bears every mark of being a part of the original 
 work, and not a forged addition by some later hand. The 
 Gospel has throughout the same uniform characteristics of 
 style and language. It is by one and the same writer.* 
 
 The author of Sxijpernatural Religion is not less sophisti- 
 cal in his treatment of the testimony of Papias. He is very 
 free in imputing prejudice and unfairness to Westcott, Tisch- 
 endorf , and to " Apologists " generally ; but he himself fur- 
 nishes not a few instances of special pleading which are 
 not worthy of a scholar. " It is clear," he says, " that, even 
 if Papias knew any of our gospels, he attached little or no 
 value to them." f As if Papias took pains to give an ac- 
 count of the origin of gospels and of the connection of apos- 
 tles with them, but attached no value to these works ! Pa- 
 pias says that Mark, in writing down Peter's accounts of 
 Christ's deeds and words, did not observe a chronological 
 order. On the ground of the statement, which, at best may 
 have been a merely subjective judgment of Papias — natural, 
 perhaps, in view of the abrupt beginning and abbreviated 
 character of the second Gospel — it is concluded that Papias 
 refers to some other book than onr Mark. Neither Irenseus, 
 Eusebius, or any other of the ancient writers, who had the 
 work of Papias in their hands, dreamed of his referring to 
 any other Mark than the canonical Gospel. We are told 
 again, of course, that these authors were uncritical, imbecile : 
 yet they were critical enough to make inquiries on this very 
 subject, and to examine the statements of Papias. These 
 
 * [As stated above, the author of Supernatural Religion, in his last 
 edition, retracts the opinion that Marcion's Gospel preceded the canonical 
 Luke. ] 
 
 f Vol. ii. , p. 445. 
 
526 THE FOUR GOSPELS : 
 
 wholesale charges against the fathers are extremely unjust, 
 and are only serviceable to help an advocate bolster up a 
 weak cause. When it serves his turn, this same w^riter is 
 ready enough to rely on them. Hilgenfeld maintained that 
 our Mark has been manipulated by a devotee of the Petrine 
 interest. The author before us thinks it not Petrine enough 
 to suit the account of Papias. A candid student will find 
 little weight in the arguments of either of these critics on 
 this point. There is nothing in the gospel, and nothing 
 omitted from it, which can lead to the conclusion that a dis- 
 ciple of Peter was not its author. But if SujpeTnatural Re- 
 ligion is correct in holding that Papias referred here to the 
 apocryphal book called The Preaching of Peter ^ it is an in- 
 teresting question how this book became universally sup- 
 planted and superseded by our second Gospel, without any 
 notice, too, of the fact, or any traces of a controversy. We 
 are not favored with any solution of this tough problem. 
 " It is not necessary for us to account " for this disappear- 
 ance of one book, and adoption of another in its room, says 
 our author ; and then he pours out his customary assertions 
 about the uncritical character of the fathers. This is sim- 
 ply to throw dust in the eyes of his readers. There are cu- 
 rious inconsistencies in this author's comments upon the ref- 
 erence of Papias to Matthew. He takes the term Logia in 
 the restricted sense, to denote " the discourses " of the Lord. 
 Hence he infers that the first Gospel, in its present form, 
 was not known to Papias — a quite illegitimate inference, 
 since Papias, in referring to the translation which every one 
 made as he could from the Aramaic original, speaks in the 
 aorist tense. The implication is, that the necessity for trans- 
 lating no longer existed. The main point of our author's 
 argumentation is that, if there was not a Hebrew (Aramaic) 
 original, we have no testimony to the fact of the existence 
 of a Gospel by Matthew. Various writers — including even 
 Guizot — have asserted that Calvin first published his Insti- 
 tutes in French. The fact is that the first publication of 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPEENATDEAL RELIGION. 627 
 
 that work was in Latin. Then, by parallel reasoning, as re- 
 gards the testimony of all these writers, we have no proof at 
 all that Calvin ever wrote or published the Institutes, But 
 the author of Swpernatural Religion appeals to the state- 
 ment of Pantaenus, Irenseus, Eusebius, and the fathers gen- 
 erally, in favor of a Hebrew original of Matthew. Xow all 
 of these fathers speak of the entire Gospel ; so that, by par- 
 ity of reasoning, again, if their testimony is good for any- 
 thing, it was the whole Gospel which Papias had. The 
 chronological position of this "ancient man" renders the 
 opposite opinion in the highest degree improbable. The 
 question whether the first Gospel is a translation or not, is 
 decided differently by equally competent critics. Bleek 
 plausibly explains how Papias might have been misled on 
 this point. His testimony in general would not be invali- 
 dated by such an error. The author of Supernatural Be- 
 ligion contends w4th much positiveness that if the first Gos- 
 pel is a translation of a lost original, it is destitute of author- 
 ity. But here, as so often elsewhere, he falls into fallacious, 
 extravagant assertions. 
 
 "We have not the space even to sum up the evidence for 
 the antiquity of the first three Gospels. The unanimous, 
 undisputed acceptance of them by the churches of the last 
 half of the second century, their coincidence with known 
 fact in a thousand archaeological particulars, their eschato- 
 logical passages (Matt, xxiv., xxv., etc.), their sobriety of 
 tone, in which they are in marked contrast with apocryphal 
 Gospels, are among the principal proofs of their early com- 
 position. Peferring to a strange expression about the mil- 
 lenium, attributed, on the ground of tradition, by Papias to 
 Jesus, the work before us says that, if " it be not of a very 
 elevated character, it is quite in the spirit of that age." 
 This author would not deny that it is utterly foreign to the 
 spirit of the canonical Gospels. It illustrates what sort of 
 stuff they would have contained had they been composed at 
 the period where he would place them. We may say one 
 
528 THE FOUR GOSPELS I 
 
 word here upon the genuineness of the Gospel of Luke. 
 The book of Acts refers back to the third Gospel. Both 
 profess to be by the same author. They are homogeneous 
 in style. Both books were written throughout by the same 
 pen. Tradition from the beginning ascribed them to Luke. 
 At the part of the narrative in the Acts where Paul leaves 
 Troas (xvi. 11) the writer first uses the first person plural — 
 " we.'^ This disappears after Paul leaves Philippi and un- 
 til his return. Then the same form of expression reappears 
 (xxi. 1-18 ; xxvii. 1 ; xxviii. 17). It is implied, of course, 
 that the writer became a companion of Paul. Since the 
 Acts is not a conglomerate, is not a piece of patchwork, but 
 is composed and wrought by a single author, it follows that, 
 if this author was not an actual participant in the events at 
 the points referred to, we must attribute to him a knavish 
 device — a trick, too, of a sort unexampled in apocryphal lit- 
 erature. Suppose these two books to have been written 
 by Luke, to whom the unanimous tradition of the ancient 
 churches ascribed them, and the peculiarities to which we 
 have adverted, as well as their whole structure and complex- 
 ion, meet with a perfectly natural explanation. But, if the 
 genuineness of Luke is established, doubt respecting the an- 
 tiquity of Matthew and Mark must disappear. 
 
 The patristic evidence for the Gospels is, to use an old 
 simile, like a bundle of fagots. There are single sticks in 
 the bundle which it is almost impossible to break. Of 
 many of these rods, however, it is true that each can be 
 separately broken ; yet, when combined, they are irrefraga- 
 ble. There are leading proofs, and there are corroborative 
 proofs. The art of the controversialist, which the author of 
 /Supernatural Beligion finely exemplifies, is to isolate each 
 of the numerous items of evidence and then attack it by itself. 
 Thus, in the case of the Fourth Gosjpel, there are passages 
 in Ignatius, in the Epistle to Diognetus, and in other docu- 
 ments, which, taken in connection with the general stream of 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 529 
 
 evidence, go to prove the Johannine authorship ; though, 
 considered by themselves, thej are not conclusive. The. 
 writer's arguments against the genuineness of the Fourth 
 Gospel are few of them new, and thej have been more than 
 once confuted. His attempt to show that Papias was not 
 acquainted with the Fourth Gospel, on account of the silence 
 of Eusebius on this point, is utterly futile, as any one can 
 see who will observe the limit which Eusebius proposes to ob- 
 serve, and actually did observe, in his references to quotations 
 made by the earlier writers from New Testament books. 
 References to " acknowledged," or undisputed books, among 
 which he reckons John's Gospel, he did not profess to notice.* 
 The efforts to show that Justin Martyr was not acquainted 
 with this gospel is one of the points that merit attention. 
 This author maintains that Justin drew his conceptions of the 
 Logos mainly from Philo. But Justin, although he may have 
 been acquainted with Philo's writings, does not mention him, 
 even in the dialogue with the Jew, where the authority of 
 the Alexandrian might have helped him in his argument. 
 But there is this grand peculiarity of Justin and the Chris- 
 tian writers, that they dwell upon the incarnation. It is 
 the incaimate Logos in whom they are chiefly interested. 
 But the incarnation of the Logos is something utterly for- 
 eign to Alexandrian Judaism. The Logos is scarcely per- 
 sonal in Philo ; of the incarnation of the Logos in a man, 
 the life and soul of the doctrine alike in John and in Justin, 
 the Alexandrian speculatist knows nothing. The substance 
 of the Christian conception of Christ was the direct effect of 
 the impression which he made upon the apostles and of his 
 testimony respecting himself. The Logos terminology was 
 no part of his own teaching; it was the vehicle through 
 which John expressed his idea of Christ, thereby rectifying 
 all other notions of " the Word." Again, it is in the highest 
 degree improbable that Justin should say as much as he 
 
 ♦ Eusebius, JK ^., iii,, 3, 
 
530 THE FOUR gospels: 
 
 does of Christ as the Word unless he depended for this doc- 
 ' trine on some authoritative gospel. A single allusion of 
 doubtful meaning to Christ as the Word, in the Apocalypse, 
 is utterly insufficient to account for the phenomena which 
 Justin's writings present. When we find him, then, in 
 connection with remarks on the Logos, distinctly referring 
 to the Memoirs^^ ^ who can honestly doubt that it is John's 
 Gospel which is the source of his doctrine % The terms in 
 which he describes the incarnation differ in form, rather 
 than substance, from those of John ; and our author's argu- 
 ment in this matter is a very frail one. When we come to sin- 
 gle passages, that on regeneration baffles every attempt to con- 
 nect it with any other source than the Fourth Gospel.f Both 
 of the verbal deviations in Justin from the text of the Gos- 
 pel are found in the same passage as quoted by Irengeus and by 
 Eusebius, and both of them are easily explained. The substi- 
 tution of " Ejngdom of Heaven " for " Kingdom of God " is 
 an inaccuracy of frequent occurrence in citing this passage. 
 In this way, as Prof. Abbot has pointed out, Jeremy Taylor 
 quotes the passage.:]: The differences in the passage as quoted 
 in the Clementine Homilies and by Justin are as marked 
 as are the points of resemblance. Moreover, Hilgenf eld and 
 Yolkmar concede that the author of the Clementines quotes 
 from John. The endeavor of Supernatural Religion to 
 show the contrary — even in reference to the story of the 
 man born blind § — is a desperate attempt to disprove what 
 is patent to every unbiased scholar. There is no known 
 source to which the account of this miracle can be referred, 
 except the Fourth Gospel. When the concluding portion of 
 the Homilies was issued by Dressel, containing unmistakable 
 references fo John's Gospel, the whole enterprise of tracing 
 Justin's quotation on the new birth to a lost gospel suffered 
 
 *DiaZ.,c. 105. \Apoli.,Q\. 
 
 X See Am. ed. of Smith's Bible Diet., Art. Jolm, Gospel of . 
 %Hom. xix.,22. 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 531 
 
 shipwreck. In his desire to weaken the force of the proof 
 derived from the Clementine Homilies, the author would 
 make the date of the work as late as possible. But the 
 later he makes it, the more improbable is his hypothesis 
 that these passages, which are in the characteristic stjle of 
 John, are quotations from some other book. 
 
 We must pass over the writer's effort to show that Yalen- 
 tinus, Marcion, and other teachers, heretical and orthodox, 
 were not acquainted with the Fourth Gospel. He is obliged, 
 in respect to Marcion and Valentine, for example, to contra- 
 dict, by an arbitrary dictum, the explicit assertions of the 
 ecclesiastical writers who w^ere in a position to know the 
 truth. All the evidence, external and internal, goes to show 
 that the Fourth Gospel preceded the Yalentinian heresy. 
 If it be supposed, as this waiter would have us think, that 
 the Fourth Gospel was used not by Yalentinus and Easilides 
 themselves, but by their disciples and followers — by " the 
 school " of Yalentinus and by " the school " of Basilides — 
 what is the result ? Why, we are driven to the conclusion 
 that in the very heat and ferment of the great Gnostic con- 
 troversy, this new Gospel appeared, was accepted by both 
 antagonistic parties as an authority, was referred to by each 
 and interpreted by each in his own manner — all uniting in 
 ascribing it to John ! Is any marvel that is narrated in the 
 Gospel itself greater than such a fact would be ? A new 
 Gospel, distinguished from the gospels already in use by 
 striking peculiarities, pronouncing upon doctrinal points of 
 the highest interest and moment to the two contending par- 
 ties, is composed by some unknown writer, but is accepted 
 at once, without hesitation, and without suspicion, by both ! 
 
 We wish especially to call the attention of our readers to 
 this writer's disposition of the testimony of Irenseus. This 
 testimony is of so convincing a character that the only pos- 
 sible mode of turning the edge of it is by an assault upon 
 the intelligence of the witness. Accordingly, Irenaeus is 
 pronounced so wholly uncritical as to be absolutely unworthy 
 
532 THE FOUR GOSPELS I 
 
 of confidence. That tliis father sometimes errs we admit. 
 An example, and the most striking example, is his idea 
 respecting the long ministry of Jesus, which he accepted 
 from others, of course without a critical attention to the 
 data afforded bj the Gospels. He is sometimes fanciful in 
 his reasoning, as are Augustine and most of the patristic 
 writers. IS^evertheless, he was a man of more than ordinary 
 talentsj practical, sober in his judgments, and conscientious. 
 That he was careless as to accepting spurious documents is 
 a false accusation. It is one of his own charges against the 
 Gnostics that they alter the gospels, and frame new gospels 
 for themselves. In short, he is an unexceptionable witness 
 on the question before us. Now, Irenseus, in his youth, knew 
 Polycarp, a pupil of John. He remembered how Polycarp 
 discoursed of the Apostle John. He had also known other 
 presbyters in Asia Minor who had been acquainted with the 
 same apostle. Irengeus gives the most decisive testimony to 
 the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel. So established is he 
 in his faith in the four as the only authentic gospels that he 
 appeals, in a fanciful way, to cosmical and other analogies 
 to show that there must be four and only four. Strange to 
 say, this conceit is referred to by sceptical writers, including 
 the author before us, to discredit Irenseus's testimony. If 
 Irenseus had been first led to believe in the four by the fact 
 of there being four winds, and four quarters of the globe, 
 there might be some force in the objection. But everybody 
 who reads him knows that the ground of his faith in the 
 Four Gospels is the testimony of the churches and of " the 
 elders." To this, he explicitly refers his readers ; and these 
 fanciful analogies indicate not at all the source, but only the 
 strength and settled character of his reliance upon the Four 
 Gospels of the Canon as the sole authentic sources of knowl- 
 edge respecting Jesus. The chronological position of Ire- 
 naeus, whose active life covered the last forty years of the 
 second century, his intimate acquaintance with the churches 
 in the East, as well as in the West, and his separation by 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 633 
 
 only a single link from the Apostle John himself, give to his 
 testimony an irresistible weight. 
 
 There are several references in the writings of Irenaeus to 
 his acquaintance with Polycarp. From the most copious of 
 these, his letter to Florinus, who had joined the Yalentini- 
 ans, we copy this extract : 
 
 *' Those opinions, Florinus, that I may speak in mild terms, are not 
 of sound doctrine ; those opinions are not in agreement with the church, 
 and involve those who adopt them in the deepest impiety ; those opinions 
 not even the heretics outside of the church have ever ventured to broach ; 
 those opinions the elders who were before us, who were the pupils of the 
 apostles, did not deliver to you. For, while I was still a boy, I saw you 
 in Lower Asia, with Polycarp, when you were in a brilliant position in 
 the royal palace and strove to approve yourself to him. For I recall bet- 
 ter what occurred at that time than I do recent events, since what we 
 learned in childhood being united to the soul as it grows up, becomes in- 
 corporated with it, so that I can even describe the place in which the 
 blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse, his goings out, too, and com- 
 ings in, the manner of his life and the form of his body, and his discourses 
 which he used to deliver to the people, and how he spoke of his familiar 
 intercourse with John and with the rest of those who had heard the Lord, 
 and how he would call to mind their words. And whatever things he had 
 heard from them respecting the Lord, both as to his miracles and his 
 teaching, just as Polycarp had received it from the eye-witnesses of the 
 Word of Life, he recounted it agreeably to the Scriptures. These things, 
 through the mercy of God which was upon me, I diligently heard and 
 treasured them up, not on paper, but in my heart, and I am continually, 
 by the grace of God, revolving these things in my mind ; and I can bear 
 witness belore God that, if that blessed and apostolic elder had ever heard 
 any such thing, he would have cried out and stopped his ears, saying, as 
 he was wont to say : ' Good God ! unto what times hast thou reserved 
 me that I should endure these things ? ' And he would have fled from 
 the very place where, whether sitting or standing, he had heard such 
 words."* 
 
 This extract will enable the reader to judge of the tone 
 and spirit of Irenseus, and to decide whether it is probable 
 that a gospel having all the peculiarities of the fourth, and 
 differing, as that does, from the synoptics, could have been. 
 
 * Irenaeus (ed. Stieren) i., 833 seq. 
 
534 THE FOUR GOSPELS I * 
 
 invented, and silently palmed off on the cliurclies throughout 
 the Roman empire, during the period when Polycarp was 
 in active life and either shortly before or shortly after the 
 personal intercourse of Irenseus with him. The truth is, 
 that the recent adversaries of the genuineness of this gospel 
 have done no sort of justice to the external evidence in its 
 favor. 
 
 The examination of the internal evidence respecting the 
 authorship of the Fourth Gospel, in the book before us, pre- 
 sents few points that are fresh. We must content ourselves 
 with noticing one of these. Says this writer : * " The author 
 [of the Fourth Gospel] shows in a marked way that he is 
 not a Jew, by making Caiaphas and the chief priests and 
 Pharisees speak of the Jewish nation, and the people not 
 as 6 7ui6<i, like the Synoptics and other New Testament writ- 
 ings ; but as to i^vo^, the term always employed by the Jews 
 to designate the Gentiles." Now John uses the w^ord ethnos 
 in only two passages — in xi. 48-52 and in xviii. 35. In the 
 last case it is uttered by Pilate ; " Thine own nation and 
 the chief priests," etc. In Pilate's mouth, surely, this word 
 might naturally be expected. In the other passage (John 
 xi. 50) Caiaphas uses both terms — that one man should die 
 for the people (laos) , and not that the whole nation (ethnos) 
 should perish." The latter term denotes the Jewish people 
 more in a political relation ; the former, in a theocratic char- 
 acter. In any event, it would be natural for John to use the 
 term ethnos, writing, as he was, for Gentiles, at a distance 
 from Judea. But in Luke's Gospel it is twice used by Jews 
 of themselves — cc. vii. 5, xxiii. 2 ; and in the Acts in cc, 
 xxiv. 17, xxvi. 4, xxvii. 19 ; also in Kom. x. 19. The 
 statement of Supernatural Religion, which we have quoted 
 here, is far from being a solitary example of inexact asser- 
 tion and weak reasoning to be met with in this portion of 
 the book. 
 
 * Vol. a, 410. 
 
A EEVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 535 
 
 This author brings forward no definite theory of his own 
 in relation to the motives and design of the writer^ — whoever 
 he was — of the Fourth Gospel. PI ere is a history of Jesus 
 written from beginning to end by one man who earnestly 
 believes that Jesus is the Messiah, and written in order that 
 others might partake of his faith. According to the Tubin- 
 gen doctors, he composed a fictitious biography of the Mas- 
 ter, whom he loved and adored. Why did he do this ? In 
 answer to this question we are told that all his interest was 
 in the metaphysical, pre-existent Logos ; that the history of 
 Jesus had for him personally no importance. It is the manu- 
 factured investiture of an idea. Except on this remarkable 
 hypothesis, the Tubingen theory about the Fourth Gospel is 
 not even intelligible, much less plausible. If it be true, 
 then, that the faith of the author of the Gospel was '' a his- 
 torical faith " — that is to say, if his faith centered in the in- 
 carnate Jesus — living, teaching, working miracles, dying and 
 rising from the dead — the whole foundation of the skeptical 
 cause falls away. But who that reads the Fourth Gospel 
 can doubt for a moment that the religious life of the author 
 drew its origin and its daily breath from the historical mani- 
 festation of Christ ? The opposite view can be maintained 
 only by the most arbitrary and artificial exegesis. This fatal 
 weakness of the negative theo-ry has been often pointed out. 
 Quite lately this has been done, with signal clearness, by 
 Beyschlag.* This article demolishes the position of Baur, 
 by showing that the author of the Fourth Gospel was no sucli 
 transcendental dreamer as the negative school is obliged to 
 assume him to be. He believed in the divine character and 
 mission of Jesus, and in the fourth gospel he sets forth the 
 historical facts on which his belief was founded. 
 
 Before the author of Supernatural Religion makes his 
 literary onset upon Kevelation, he undertakes to prove the 
 
 * In the SPudien u. Kritiken, Oct., 1874. 
 
536 THE FOUR GOSPELS I 
 
 inherent incredibility of all miracles, and in particular of 
 those which the Gospels describe. His principal points 
 may be conveniently reviewed under five heads : 
 
 I. He contends that a supernatural occurrence is incapa- 
 ble of being proved. He goes so far as to say of the sup- 
 posed case of Paley, that the testimony of twelve observing, 
 sober, disinterested witnesses, of tried veracity, to an event 
 requiring supernatural agency ought to be disbelieved. He 
 reviews and undertakes to expound the reasoning of Hume. 
 Mr. J. S. Mill, among others, has clearly shown that Hume's 
 argument has no weight in disproving a miracle, provided 
 there be a Supreme Being who is able and willing to bring 
 such an event to pass. In other words, the real battle wdth 
 imbelief is on the principles of natural theology. Is there a 
 God and is Eevelation antecedently probable? If so, 
 Hume's argument is stripped of its force ; it has no perti- 
 nency. Mill also points out the obvious fact that the mira- 
 cle is no violation of the axiom that the same causes pro- 
 duce the same effects, since the intervention of a new cause 
 is presupposed. To these considerations, so lucidly set forth 
 by one of the chiefs of the empirical school, the book before 
 us offers no adequate reply. All that the author says about 
 " a complete induction " as ruling out miracles, is fully an- 
 swered in the remarks of Mill to which we have just re- 
 ferred. Whether miracles have occurred is a question of 
 evidence. To elevate practically the presumption adverse to 
 their occurrence, derived from the observed uniformity of 
 Nature, to a level with mathematical axioms, is an extrava- 
 gance which hardly merits a serious refutation. 
 
 But these truths of natural religion — such as the being of 
 a personal God — are, says the author, " a mere assumption." 
 As far as the argument for miracles is concerned, that is 
 granted by the " Apologists," for whom this author is so 
 fond of expressing his contempt. You cannot prove the 
 fact of a miracle to a dogmatic atheist. The Gospels inform 
 us that Christ did not expect persons of this class to assent 
 
A EEVIEW OF 6UPERNATUEAL RELIGION. 537 
 
 to his affirmations respecting himself. What " Apologists " 
 claim is that the existence and character of God and the 
 need of a revelation are assumed on good and sufficient 
 grounds. 
 
 II. This author maintains that supernatural events, on the 
 supposition that they should occur, may be referable to evil 
 beings, as well as to God ; and that, hence, they have no 
 evidential value. Let it be granted that, as far as mere 
 power is concerned, superhuman evil behigs are capable of 
 producing events which surpass the power of men and of 
 natural causes. This objection Christ met by saying that 
 " a house divided against itself cannot stand." Beelzebub 
 does not work against his own cause. He does not do deeds 
 of benevolence which are adapted to win men to the love 
 and worship of God and to the practice of righteousness. 
 We go behind the supernatural occurrence, and determine 
 in particular its origin by moral considerations. Why is not 
 this criterion adequate ? 
 
 m. Our author strives again to destroy the evidential 
 value of miracles by the consideration that their credibility 
 as divine works is contingent on the character of the doc- 
 trine which they profess to verify. The fact we admit ; the 
 inference we deny. The doctrine proves the miracle and 
 the miracle proves the doctrine. That is, they lend to each 
 other a mutual corroboration. If the doctrine were immoral 
 or otherwise unworthy, it would discredit the miracle. If, 
 on the contrary, the doctrine seems noble and beneficent 
 and worthy to have God for its source, this lends probability 
 to the miracle, which, in turn, affixes a seal of verity and 
 divinity to the doctrine which accompanies it. The purity 
 and elevation of the doctrine are not only a prerequisite ; 
 they also give to the miracle a measure of positive credibil- 
 ity. The author of the work before us argues that, since 
 the contents of Revelation are above reason, they cannot be 
 judged to be credible beforehand ; and that the presumption 
 against the recurrence of the miracles adduced in support of 
 23* 
 
538 THE FOUE gospels: 
 
 them cannot, therefore, be set aside. The supernatural he 
 would gladly convert into the anti-natural. He takes as the 
 synonym of " doctrine " theological propositions upon the 
 Trinity, the Incarnation, etc. As if tlie whole teaching of 
 Jesus upon man — his soul, his duties, his relations to God, 
 his sin — and upon the principles of God's government, and 
 as if the personal characteristics of Jesus himself — his wis- 
 dom, his self-sacrifice, his stainless purity and rectitude — 
 were not elements in that internal evidence which renders 
 miracles antecedently credible, as the natural and expected 
 accompaniments of this unrivalled moral and spiritual excel- 
 lence. This author first reduces Christianity and Christ to 
 a few metaphysical conceptions, which, however well war- 
 ranted, are far from being a fair or complete statement of 
 the Gospel ; and then he proceeds to infer that they are not 
 sufficiently clear and credible in themselves to lend an ante- 
 rior probability to the assertion that miracles attend the pro- 
 mulgation of them. He cannot be ignorant that intelligent 
 " Apologists " have always laid stress on the perfection of 
 the Gospel as a means of deliverance from sin, and as a dis- 
 closure of the character of God ; on the imparalleled greatness 
 and excellence of Jesus and the peculiarity of his aims. The 
 true relation of the internal to the external argument can be 
 made plain. Let us suppose ourselves to have been among 
 the hearers and attendants of Jesus. We first listen to his 
 teaching. We behold an instance of healing performed by 
 him. It seems altogether miraculous. But we may, per- 
 haps, question the accuracy of our observation ; or, admitting 
 the phenomenon, we may doubt as to the agency by which 
 it is made to occur — whether it be, indeed, the act of God, 
 or an effect wrought by some inferior, possibly evil, instru- 
 mentality. But the more we see of Jesus the more irresisti- 
 ble becomes the impression of His moral and spiritual integ- 
 rity and elevation. He speaks as never man spake. Wit- 
 nessing, further, His wonderful works, we no longer doubt 
 either their reality or the means by which they are wrought. 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 539 
 
 Coining thus to believe in the works, they cast back a new 
 character of iinpressiveness npon his teaching, the divine 
 source of which is now demonstrated by these exhibitions of 
 power and love. We were not personally witnesses of the 
 miraculous works, or hearers of the teaching of Christ ; but, 
 by means of the testimony of the apostles, we can place our- 
 selves back among those who were, and can see with their 
 eyes and hear with their ears, and can partake of the im- 
 pression which the whole manifestation of Jesus made upon 
 their minds. It does not follow from the circumstance that 
 Christianity is revealed and presents a mysterious side, that 
 it has no points of contact with man's intelligence and moral 
 nature. Rather is it the " bread of life." It corresponds 
 to an inward hunger. It meets profound and more or less 
 conscious necessities of the soul. It is medicine to the sick. 
 In a word, it is redemption. Our author's argument de- 
 pends for its plausibility on an extreme and irrational super- 
 naturalism, which ignores the affinity of Christianity to hu- 
 man nature, and the intrinsic rationality of the Gospel, not- 
 withstanding the mysterious aspects and partially insoluble 
 problems which a divine revelation might be expected to 
 offer. 
 
 lY. A prominent topic in Suj^ernatural Religion is the 
 credulity of the Jews at the time of the appearance of 
 Christ. The book speaks of the " dense ignorance and su- 
 perstition " of the Jews at that date. The idea is that, in 
 such an atmosphere, a belief in all sorts of miracles might 
 easily arise and spread. When we look for the proofs of 
 this sweeping statement respecting the countrymen and con- 
 temporaries of Josephus, we are furnished with an assem- 
 blage of notions drawn partly from the book of Enoch and 
 other apocryphal writings, but mainly from the Talmud, 
 which is assumed to reflect the prevalent ideas of the Jews 
 at the beginning of the Christian Era. Without debating 
 this last point, we observe that it is Jewish notions about 
 angels and demons on which our author almost exclusively 
 
54:0 THE FOUR GOSPELS *. 
 
 dwells. But he breaks tlie force of liis own argument by 
 insisting himself on the long continuance of what he regards 
 as superstitious beliefs on this subject. Demoniacal agency, 
 sorcery, and witchcraft, he tells us, have been almost uni- 
 versally believed in, down to a recent date. The times of 
 King James I. seem, in his judgment, to have shared in the 
 credulity of the times of Herod. When he leaves this par- 
 ticular topic of demoniac agency, and looks about for proofs 
 of the excessive credulity wdiich he attributes to the Jews in 
 the time of Christ, he is obliged to cite such examples as the 
 familiar passage in Josephus on the portents observed in 
 connection with the downfall of the Temple. Of the insuf- 
 ficiency of such proofs to establish his main thesis no well- 
 informed student of history needs to be assured. Such por- 
 tents, in times of high-wrought public excitement, even in 
 modern times, have been often imagined to occur. There 
 are certain facts which prove conclusively the erroneous and 
 misleading conception of the state of the Jewish mind which 
 this author seems to entertain. The geographical position of 
 the Jews ; their intercourse with the Greek world, as indi- 
 cated in the circumstance that they were bilingual ; the fixed 
 legal character of their theology and worship ; the existence 
 of the party of Sadducees, a party marked by a tone of skep- 
 ticism ; the fact that no miracles are ascribed to John the 
 Baptist and none to Jesus before his public life began ; the 
 numerous expressions in the gospels which signify the amaze- 
 ment which the miracles of Christ excited — these are among 
 the circumstances which disprove the position of the author 
 of this work. How could events of a class which everybody 
 easily credited, and believed to be common, excite astonish- 
 ment and fear, and be spoken of as events the like of 
 which had never been heard of ? 
 
 Y. We are told by the author of Supernatural Religion^ 
 that if we believe the gospel miracles we must likewise ac- 
 cept the later ecclesiastical miracles ; that both classes rest 
 upon equal evidence; that there has been a continuous 
 
A REVIEW OF BIJPEENATTJRAL RELIGION. 641 
 
 stream of miraculous pretension down to the present time ; 
 and that to draw a line at any given point, after which we 
 withhold our credence, is an arbitrary proceeding. 
 
 The view which an enlightened Protestant takes of mira- 
 cles is this : that they w^ere requisite elements in that crea- 
 tive, providential epoch when Christ and Christianity were 
 introduced and entered into the historic life of humanity. 
 At the same time, we are not obliged to affirm that mira- 
 cles, at a given instant, abruptly and altogether ceased. In- 
 stances of manifest supernatural power exerted, in answer 
 to prayer, in the healing of physical disorders, may have 
 occurred after the death of the apostles, and even in later 
 ages. Such events would not prove the infallibility of those 
 through whose instrumentality they were wrought ; nor 
 would they invalidate the force of the gospel miracles as 
 attestations of authoritative teaching. In the case of the 
 latter, they were avowedly presented as credentials of a di- 
 vine commission to teach. This was one of their direct 
 and declared functions. But of the alleged post-apostolic 
 miracles in the patristic age we remark, first, that they most 
 frequently lack the proofs that would be requisite to estab- 
 lish even extraordinary natural events. For example, the 
 author of this work appeals to the stories told of Gregory 
 Thaumaturgus by his biographer, Gregory of Nyssa, and by 
 St. Basil. But both of these lived a century after the per- 
 son to whom these narrative's relate. As to St. Basil, our 
 author can hardly be serious in recommending his testi- 
 mony on the ground that his " grandmother, St. Macrina, 
 was brought up at jN"eo-C8esarea by the immediate follow- 
 ers of the saint." In many other cases the evidence, when 
 it is sifted, turns out to be not more satisfactory. We re- 
 mark, secondly, that the alleged post-apostolic miracles are 
 conceded to be in contrast with those of the Gospels in re- 
 spect to " dignity and beauty." This author tries to account 
 for the fact by saying that the latter were associated with 
 " our sublimest teacher." But the explanation is not very 
 
54:2 THE FOUR GOSPELS : 
 
 clear, and the striking fact remains that the miracles of the 
 apocryphal gospels, which are connected with Christ, have 
 a grotesque and offensive character, in marked contrast with 
 the narratives of the evangelists. These last narratives 
 comport with the whole tone of the teaching ascribed to 
 Christ ; they harmonize with it in their spirit, they fit into 
 it also, and are presupposed by it in ways which no counter- 
 feiter would be expert enough to contrive. We remark, 
 thirdly, that the post-apostolic and especially the mediaeval 
 legends of miracles are explicable from the effect of Chris- 
 tianity itself, with its authentic miracles, upon the imagina- 
 tion and feelings of men of undisciplined minds, who were 
 deeply impressed and kindled into a flame of emotional life 
 by the Gospel. The gospel miracles, on the other hand, 
 were not wrought in behalf of an accepted faith ; they crea- 
 ted a new faith. It is not true, as the author says, that no 
 individuals in the mediaeval age ascribed to themselves mir- 
 aculous powers. For example, Augustin, the missionary to 
 the Anglo-Saxons, and St. Bernard supposed themselves to 
 perform miraculous works of healing. But, generally speak- 
 ing, it is true that it was not the missionaries and preachers 
 themselves, but others about them or after them, who at- 
 tributed to them these marvels. 
 
 Now the Old Testament religion stood in no such rela- 
 tion to Jesus and his contemporaries as did the Gospel to 
 the mediaeval peoples, and in a less degree to the Christians 
 of the third and fourth centuries. Keander, in his Life of 
 Christy has a brief but profound and important passage on 
 this distinction. Christ and the apostles introduced a move- 
 ment which is aboriginal and creative, notwithstanding its 
 organic relation to the Old Testament religion. It is pretty 
 generally felt that Strauss's theory was a plausible, but su- 
 perficial, hypothesis. Judaism was languishing and dying. 
 The age of miracles was in the far-off past. Men were 
 fully sensible of the contrast between that distant period, 
 the era of Moses and of the prophets, and the stagnant and 
 
A REVIEW OF SUPEENATUKAL KELIGION. 543 
 
 petrified period in which they themselves were living. There 
 were no miracle- workers, unless exorcists are to be counted as 
 such. Moreover, it is inconceivable that Jesus could have 
 believed himself to be the Messiah, or in that character 
 could have attached his followers to his person, had he not 
 wrought miracles. 
 
 The main question is whether the Gospels give a substan- 
 tially correct representation of the life of Jesus — of what 
 he said and what he did. If the writer of Supernatural 
 Religion had succeeded in his literary attack — we hold that 
 he has added another to the long list of failures — but had 
 he succeeded, he would have simply shown that these par- 
 ticular books, in their present form, represent merely the 
 belief of the church in the second century. But how the 
 church arose, what Christianity was — that tremendous move- 
 ment which went forth with a silent, conquering power, in 
 the face of obloquy, torture, death, on its mission to subdue 
 the world — of these questions we are furnished with no so- 
 lution. It is as certain as any historical fact can be — the 
 Epistles of Paul, by themselves, establish it — that the apos- 
 tles, the immediate followers and chosen companions of 
 Jesus, testified to the miracles, including the crowning mira- 
 cle of his resurrection. 
 
 The capital defect of this book, and of many other books 
 of the same kind, is that they utterly lack a deep, broad, 
 comprehensive understanding of Christianity, and a phi- 
 losophical appreciation of its historical relation to the times 
 previous and to the times subsequent to its appearance in 
 the world. If here is not a new spiritual creation, if Christ 
 is not " the second Adam," a new head of humanity, the 
 Redeemer, all this discussion about miracles might as well 
 be dropped. Writers, who start with the fixed idea, whether 
 consciously or unconsciously cherished, that the Christian 
 religion is an example of the thousand and one impostures 
 which have arisen and passed away in each generation ; 
 writers who are thus ignorant of Christianity as a system 
 
544 THE FOUR GOSPELS. 
 
 of moral and religious truth, and as a vast, transforming 
 movement in the course of human history, are shut up by 
 their own narrow perceptions to a false conclusion. One 
 who mistakes a pyramid upon the Nile for a cob-house will 
 hardly arrive at a correct theory respecting its origin. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Ab61ard, characterized, 228. 
 
 Agency, human, in conversion and 
 sanctification, 349 seq. 
 
 Albornoz, Cardinal, his service to the 
 popes, 81. 
 
 Alexander VI., Pope, his character, 84. 
 
 Allen, Rev. Dr. H., on Rev. T. Bin- 
 ney's views of future punishment, 
 434. 
 
 Alva, the Duke of, 14. 
 
 Amboise, the conspiracy of, 10. 
 
 Ambrose, on the invocation of angels, 
 51. 
 
 Anjou, Duke of (Henry III.), his pro- 
 jected marriage with Elizabeth, 14; 
 his account of the plot of St. Bar- 
 tholomew, 20. 
 
 Annihilation of the wicked, doctrine of 
 the, 430. 
 
 Anselm, of Canterbury, 227; his dis- 
 cussion of original sin, 365; on the 
 transmission of sin, 367. 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 227 ; on necessity 
 and freedom, 236 ; on the divine per- 
 mission of sm, 305, 324 ; his discus- 
 sion of original sin, 369. 
 
 Arabic schools, scepticism in the Span- 
 ish, 442. 
 
 Aristotle, on the desire of happiness, 
 314. 
 
 Arnobius. on future punishment, 412. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, on the conversion of 
 Paul, 492. 495. 
 
 Articles of the Church of England, as 
 relating to episcopacy, 213 seq. 
 
 Atheism, grows out of the fact that 
 God is imperceptible by the senses, 
 469 ; or out of the notion that second 
 causes exclude the first cause, 470; 
 or out of the assumption that me- 
 chanical causes exclude design, 472 ; 
 or out of the assumption that the 
 uniformity of nature is inconsistent 
 with theism, 473 ; or out of the belief 
 that the Bible contradicts science, 
 474; or out of the supposed imper- 
 fection of nature, 477 ; disproved by 
 the revelation of God in the soul, 
 478 ; by the marks of design in the 
 world, 480 ; by the revelation of God 
 in nature, 483 ; by the revelation of 
 God in Christ, 484 ; involves sin, 485. 
 
 Augustine, his Latin training, 49; on 
 the use of incense, 59; his Co7ifes- 
 sions, 227 ; on the idea of necessity, 
 236 ; on liberty ad utrumvis, 238 ; on 
 the desire of happiness, 314; on the 
 voluntary nature of sin, 342 ; relation 
 of his theory of original sin to real- 
 ism, 359 ; on the origin of souls, 361 
 seq.; his difficulties in regard to 
 creationism, 364 ; his letter to Jerome 
 on original sin, 362 seq. 
 
 Augustinians admit the power of con- 
 trary choice, 309. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, on the admission of pres- 
 byterian ministers to English par- 
 ishes, 187. 
 
546 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bancroft, Dr., on the jure divino bu- 
 periority of bishops, 185. 
 
 BaroniuB, Cardinal, on the donation of 
 Constantino, 74; on the Bible and 
 science, 4T5. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, his conversation with 
 Ussher on Presbyterian ordination, 
 201. 
 
 Becon, Thomas, on the identity of 
 bishop and presbyter, 185. 
 
 Bellamy, Joseph, on the divine permis- 
 sion of sin, 307. 
 
 Bellarmine, on the Constance decrees, 
 121. 
 
 Bernard, St., characterized, 228. 
 
 Bible, the, its relation to natural sci- 
 ence, 474 seq. 
 
 Bishops, not considered a distinct 
 order, in the middle ages, 183. 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, his dealings with 
 the Popes, 86. 
 
 Boniface VIII., Pope, his conflict with 
 the Colonnas, 79 ; how described by 
 Dante, 79 seq. 
 
 Bowen, Prof. Francis, on the merit of 
 Berkeley, 230. 
 
 Bramhall, Archbishop, his interpreta- 
 tion of the Act of Uniformity, 222. 
 
 Brentius, on original sin, 374. 
 
 Brescia, Arnold of, his aims and career, 
 76. 
 
 Bmmalia, 57. 
 
 Buckle, H. T., his philosophy, 453. 
 
 Buckminster, Joseph S., his eloquence 
 in the pulpit, 253. 
 
 Burnet, Bishop, his character as a his- 
 torian, 192. 
 
 Butler, Bishop, on the desire of happi- 
 ness, 315. 
 
 Church, the Roman Catholic, its use- 
 fulness in the middle agos, 162 ; the 
 rule of society by a sacerdotal class, 
 163 ; unfavorable to liberty, 166 ; does 
 not condemn religious persecution, 
 169 ; effect of commerce upon the au- 
 thority of its clergy, 171 ; its influence 
 in South America and Mexico, 172 ; in 
 a struggle to revive medi8evalism,175 ; 
 how far in agreement with the Pro- 
 
 testant, 439 ; its doctrine of tradi- 
 tion, 440 ; its doctrine of church au- 
 thority, 440. See Churchy the Latin. 
 
 Civilization, constituent elements of, 
 161 ; influence of Christianity upon, 
 162. 
 
 Clarendon, on the growth of High 
 Church notions in England, 195. 
 
 Clarke, Dr. Samuel, his view of liberty 
 and necessity, 249. 
 
 Clement, of Alexandria, on the art of 
 painting, 53 ; on future punishment, 
 412 ; on the Four Gospels, 522. 
 
 Clement, of Rome, his Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, 45 ; on the method of 
 appointing church oflicers, 151. 
 
 Cocceius, on original sin, 374 ; his rela- 
 tion to the Federal theology, 375. 
 
 Coligny, Gaspard de, his character, 9; 
 at the court of Charles IX., 15; the 
 attempt to assassinate him, 19 ; death 
 of, 23. 
 
 Collins, his doctrine of liberty com- 
 pared with that of Edwards, 234 seq. 
 
 Conclave, origin of the Papal, 151 seq. 
 
 Cajetan, on Aquinas's doctrine of ori- 
 ginal sin, 370. 
 
 Calvin, John, his influence on France, 
 5; his view of episcopacy, 196; on 
 the divine permission of sin, 306 , his 
 discussion of original sin, 371 seq. ; 
 contrasted with Wesley, 500. 
 
 Calvinism, its spread in France, 5 ; 
 on the state of the will after the fall, 
 294; supralapsarian, 347; the doc- 
 trine of future punishment in, 436 
 seq. 
 
 Canon, not to be determined by church 
 authority, 445. 
 
 Cardinals, origin of, 148 seq. ; how ap- 
 pointed, 150 ; their functions, 151. 
 
 Cardwell, on changes in the Prayer 
 Book at the Restoration, 220. 
 
 Carpocratians, their use of images of 
 Jesus, 55. 
 
 Catacombs, pictures in the, 54. 
 
 Catherine de Medici, her character, 6 ; 
 her leading purpose, 11 ; her connec- 
 tion with the massacre of St. Bartho- 
 lomew, 19 seq. ; her death, 33. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 547 
 
 Catharintis, on imputation, 400, 
 
 Cavour, Count, 158. 
 
 Celestine III., Pope, 155. 
 
 Channing, character of his eloquence, 
 253 ; Bources of his power, 254 , early 
 influences upon his mind, 262 ; stud- 
 ies Ferguson and Hutcheson, 363 ; 
 sentimental period in his early life, 
 263 ; his religious consecration, 263 ; 
 a student of Price, 264; his inter- 
 course with Hopkins, 264; his idea 
 of the dignity of human nature, 266 ; 
 imperfect discernment of the guilt and 
 power of sin, 367 seq. ; captivated by 
 an ideal of human nature, 269; his 
 doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, 
 270 ; on the purpose of the mission of 
 Christ, 273 ; on the relation of Christ's 
 death to the remission of sin, 274 ; on 
 the essentials of Christian doctrine, 
 275 ; his relation to Parkerism, 219 
 seq. ; his discourse on war, 281 seq. ; 
 his papers on slavery, 283. 
 
 Charlemagne, his authority in relation 
 to the popes, 72 seq. , 148. 
 
 Charles IX., King of France, his char- 
 acter, 15 ; his death, 33. 
 
 Chauncey, Dr. Charles, on future pun- 
 ishment, 436. 
 
 Christ, his eternal sonship, 273; the 
 Nicene doctrine respecting, 273. 
 
 Christianity, Jewish stage of, 34; 
 Greek stage of, 35; its relation to 
 paganism, 36 seq. ; not to be thought 
 out a priori, 461. 
 
 Chrysostom, on the observance of 
 Christmas, 56. 
 
 Church, the Eastern, 44; its stagna- 
 tion, 439. 
 
 Church of England, High Church doc- 
 trine in the, 176. 
 
 Church, the Latin, had the Roman ge- 
 nius for ruling, 45 ; its ideal of impe- 
 rialism, 46 ; its legal spirit, 47 ; con- 
 trasted with the Greek Church, 49 ; 
 contrasted with Teutonic Christian- 
 ity, 49; its cultus of angels and 
 saints, 50 seq. ; localizing of worship 
 in, 52 ; its use of image and pictures, 
 53; multiplying of festivals in, 56; 
 
 its customs and ceremonies resem- 
 bling those of heathenism, 58 seq. 
 See Church, the Rommi Catholic. 
 
 Constance, the Council of, its charac- 
 ter, 101 ; its oecumenical authority, 
 105 ; its condemnation of Huss, 109 
 seq. 
 
 Constantine, the pretended donation 
 of, 74. 
 
 Constantia, sister of Constantine, 54. 
 
 Cosin, Bishop, on the admission of 
 presbyterian ministers to English 
 parishes, 187. 
 
 Council, the Vatican, its definition of 
 the infallibility of the Pope, 133; 
 its definition of the Pope's jurisdic- 
 tion in the church, 133. 
 
 Cranmer, invites Peter Martyr and 
 Bucer to England, 182 ; his plan for 
 a general synod of Protestants, 183 ; 
 on the identity of bishop and pres- 
 byter, 184; his final views on epis- 
 copacy, 218. 
 
 Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, on the 
 choice of Cornelius to the Roman 
 Bishopric, 147. 
 
 Dante, his protest against the tem- 
 poral power of the popes, 91. 
 
 Decretals, the pseudo-Isodorian, 74. 
 
 De Rossi, on the pictures in the Cata- 
 combs, 54. 
 
 Design, the argument of, 480 seq. 
 
 Development, Dr. Newman's theory 
 of, 43. 
 
 Diodore of Tarsus, on future punish- 
 ment, 415. 
 
 Doddridge, Philip, his theology, 339 ; 
 on original sin, 396. 
 
 Dominicus Soto, on imputation, 401. 
 
 Dort, the synod of, delegates from the 
 English Church in, 190. 
 
 Dwight, President T., character of his 
 influence as a theologian, 259 ; char- 
 acter of his influence as a preacher, 
 260 ; on original sin, 298 seq. ; on re- 
 generation, 301 ; on the desire of 
 happiness, 315. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, his precocity, 
 
648 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 228 ; a Berkeleian, 329 seq. ; his first 
 acquaintance with Berkeley's doc- 
 trine, 231 ; how influenced by Locke, 
 231 ; his doctrine on the Will com- 
 pared with that of Hobbes and Col- 
 lins, 234 ; his objection to the term 
 "necessary," 236; a champion of 
 Calvinism, 237; his conception of 
 freedom, 238 ; his confidence in rea- 
 soning, 239 ; his conception of origi- 
 nal sin, 239 ; his ethical theory, 241 
 seq. ; on the meaning of self-love, 
 243 ; on God's chief end in creation, 
 244 ; his acquaintance with Hutche- 
 son, 245 ; his History of Redemp- 
 9ion^ 246 ; his idea of predestination, 
 247 ; his studious habits, 251 ; the 
 theological movement led by him, 
 256 ; his doctrine of original sin, 
 257 ; drift of his treatise on the Will, 
 258; on our identity with Adam, 
 290 ; how far indebted to Locke, 
 
 291 ; his idea of "natural ability," 
 
 292 ; his relation to Hobbes and Col- 
 lins, 293; the relation of his doc- 
 trine on the Will to former Calvin- 
 ism, 294 ; on the desire of happiness, 
 814 ; on our identity with Adam, 
 898. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., state of Cal- 
 vinism when his father began his 
 work, 289; on future punishment, 
 436. 
 
 Election, Dr. N. W. Taylor's concep- 
 tion of, 325. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, her suspension of 
 Archbishop Grindal, 1 85. 
 
 Elmmons, Dr. Nathaniel, on original 
 sin, 296. ' 
 
 England, the Reformation in, 1. 
 
 England, Church of. its opportunities 
 for a more catholic comprehension, 
 224. 
 
 Epicurus, on the existence of evil, 321. 
 
 Epiphany, the feast of, 56. 
 
 Erastianism, its spread among Protes- 
 tants, 185 ; opposed by Calvin, 
 185. 
 
 Erskine, Thomas, on future punish- 
 ment, 435. 
 
 Eschatology, views of German theolo- 
 gians concerning, 421. 
 
 Eugene III., Pope, 155. 
 
 Eugene IV., Pope, sanctions the pro- 
 ceedings of the Council of Constance, 
 108. 
 
 Eusebius, of Caesarea, on the use of 
 images, 54. 
 
 Everett, Edward, on the eloquence of 
 the younger Buckminster, 253. 
 
 Evolution, not inconsistent with de- 
 sign, 481. 
 
 Fagius, Paul, made teacher at Cam- 
 bridge, 182. 
 Faith, its relation to reason according 
 
 to Protestantism, 443 seq. 
 Ferguson, influence of his writings on 
 Channing, 262. 
 
 Festivals, the early Christian, 56 seq. 
 
 Fichte, the younger, his opinion of Ed- 
 wards's theory of virtue, 245. 
 
 Field, Dean, on the identity of bishop 
 and presbyter, 184. 
 
 Fitch, Dr. E. T.,on the scientia media^ 
 335. 
 
 Fleetwood, Bishop, on the admission 
 of presbyterian ministers to English 
 parishes. 187. 
 
 Formula Consensus Helvetica, 891. 
 
 Foster, John, on future punishment, 
 431. " 
 
 France, in the age of the reformation, 
 2 ; development of its territory, 2 ; 
 its ruling families, 8. 
 
 France, materials of civil war in, 10. 
 
 France, beginning of the civil wars in, 
 11. 
 
 Francis I., king of France, 3 ; his con- 
 cordat with Pope Leo X., 4. 
 
 Francis II., king of France, 5. 
 
 Eraser, Prof., on Edwards's acquain- 
 tance with Berkeley, 231. 
 
 Frederick II., the emperor, 155. 
 
 Fulke, master of Pembroke College, on 
 the identity of bishop and presby- 
 ter, 185. 
 
 Galileo, opposed by scientific men, 463. 
 
rNDEX. 
 
 549 
 
 Gallicanism, its principles, 110; how 
 regarded by Manning, 128 ; Bossuet's 
 definition of, 138. 
 
 Garrison, W. L., his method of com- 
 bating slavery, 283. 
 
 Germany, the reformation in, 1. 
 
 Gieseler, reply to a criticism of Hefele 
 on, 117. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., his discussion of the 
 Vatican decrees, 133; on the au- 
 thority and meaning of the papal 
 syllabus, 134 ; on the power of juris- 
 diction given to the Pope, 135 ; on the 
 Pope's deposing power, 136 ; on the 
 relation of the Roman Catholic theo- 
 ries to liberty, 138 ; on the breach of 
 ple,dges given by the Roman Catholic 
 clergy in Great Britain, 138 ; on the 
 difference between Protestants and 
 Catholics as to civil loyalty, 139. 
 
 Gospels, the synoptic, their origin, 513. 
 
 Gratry, M., on the heresy of Honorius, 
 124 seq. 
 
 Gregory of Nazianzus, on future pun- 
 ishment, 445. 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa, on future punish- 
 ment. 415. 
 
 Gregory I., Pope, 45 ; his reluctance to 
 accept the station, 155. 
 
 Gregory VII., Pope, and Henry IV. of 
 Germany, 45. 
 
 Gregory XIII., Pope, approves of the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, 27. 
 
 Guise, Duke Francis of, 8 ; assassina- 
 tion of, 12. 
 
 Guise, Duke Henry of, his connection 
 with the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew, 23 ; killed at Blois, 32. 
 
 Guizot, on the temporal kingdom of the 
 popes, 96 seq. 
 
 Hades, early Christian doctrine con- 
 cerning, 416 ; its import in the New 
 Testament, 417. 
 
 Hall, Bishop, on the admission of non- 
 episcopal ministers to preferment in 
 the English Church, 190 ; on the vali- 
 dity of Presbyterian ordination, 203 
 seq. ; 209. 
 
 Hall, Robert, on the relation of Godwin 
 
 to Edwards, 244 ; on future punish- 
 ment, 414 ; abandoned materialism, 
 465. 
 
 Hallam, on the doctrine of English re- 
 formers respecting episcopacy, 180 ; 
 on the admission of foreigners to 
 preferment in the English Church 
 without reordination, 186. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, his view of lib- 
 erty and necessity, 250 ; on the rela- 
 tion of Edwards to Collins, 293. 
 
 Hebrews, the Gospel of the, 514. 
 
 Hefele, Bishop, his theory respecting 
 Pope and Council, 102 ; on the rela- 
 tion of the Pope to the Council of Ni- 
 cea, 103 ; on the decrees of the fourth 
 and fifth sessions of the Council of 
 Constance, 105 seq. ; on the execu- 
 tion of Huss, 110 seq. ; on the safe- 
 conduct given by Sigismund to Huss, 
 113 seq. ; on Pope Honorius, 160. 
 
 Hegel, on the Reformation, 50. 
 
 Henry of Navarre, his projected mar- 
 riage with Margaret, 16 ; his mar- 
 riage, 18. 
 
 Henry II., king of France, his treat- 
 ment of the Protestants, 4; his 
 treaty with Philip II. for the exter- 
 mination of heresy, 5 ; his death, 5. 
 
 Henry IH. , king of France, death of, 
 33. 
 
 Hildebrand,see Gregory VII. 
 
 History, the apostle Paul's philosophy 
 of, 490. 
 
 Hobbes, his doctrine of liberty com- 
 pared with that of Edwards, 234. 
 
 Hodge, Dr. A. A., his Outlines of 
 Theology^ 285. 
 
 Hodge, Dr. Charles, his article on Pres- 
 byterian Reunion, 285 ; criticism of 
 his representation of Dr. N. W. Tay- 
 lor's theology, 332 seq. 
 
 Honorius, Pope, embraced heresy, 122 
 seq. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, recognizes the valid- 
 ity of presbyterian ordination, 186, 
 198 ; on the competency of the church 
 to change its government, 210. 
 
 Hopkins, President Mark, on the de- 
 sire of happiness, 315. 
 
550 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Hopkins, Dr. Samuel, his influence on 
 Channing, 264 ; on original sin, 295 ; 
 on divine efficiency, 295 ; on the di- 
 vine permission of sin, 307. 
 
 Hopkinsianism, characterized, 257. 
 
 Hosius, Bishop, his connection with 
 the council of Nicea, 103. 
 
 Howe, John, on God's Prescience of 
 sin, 327. 
 
 Hume, David, on the existence of evil, 
 321. 
 
 Huss, John, his principles, 109 ; his ex- 
 ecution, 110 ; the safe-conduct given 
 to him, 113 seq.; his treatment by 
 the Council of Constance, 119 seq. 
 
 Hutcheson, the Scottish philosopher, 
 245; influence of his writings on 
 Channing, 262. 
 
 Huxley, Prof., on the nature of matter, 
 452; his philosophy of induction, 
 452. 
 
 Hyacinthe, Pfere, 67 ; his ecclesiastical 
 
 • position, 160. 
 
 Images, used in worship, 53 seq. ; 
 
 Augustine on the worship of, 55. 
 Imputation of Adam's sin, Augustinian 
 
 philosophy of, 386 ; Roman Catholic 
 
 theory of, 400. 
 Imputation, Federal doctrine of, ob- 
 jections to it, 403 seq. 
 Incense, its use in churches, 59. 
 Innocent II., Pope, 155. 
 Innocent III., Pope, 46 ; builds up the 
 
 papal kingdom, 77, 155. 
 Innocent VIII., Pope, his character, 
 
 84. 
 Intermediate state, Protestant views 
 
 respecting, 420 seq. 
 Irenaeus, wrote in Greek, 35 ; a witness 
 
 to the gospels, 532. 
 Italy, Protestantism in, 2 ; restoration 
 
 of its unity, 157. 
 
 James I., king, sends delegates to the 
 
 Synod of Dort, 190. 
 Jansenists, on the resistibility of grace, 
 
 294. 
 
 Jansenius, on the covenant theory of 
 
 imputation, 402. 
 Jeanne D' Albret, the queen of Navarre, 
 
 at Blois, 16 ; her death, 17. 
 Jerome, St., on the purity of the clergy, 
 
 184. 
 Jewel, Bishop, on the identity of bishop 
 
 and presbyter, 184 ; on the origin of 
 
 bishops, 208; his use of the term 
 
 '* order, "210. 
 John, the Gospel of, its genuineness, 
 
 528 ; quoted by Justin, 539. 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, a tutor in Yale 
 
 Coliege, 231. 
 Joseph II., the emperor, his reforms, 
 
 95. 
 Julian, of Eclanuma, his opposition to 
 
 Augustinism, 361. 
 Julius II., Pope, builds up the states of 
 
 the church, 85. 
 Justin Martyr, on future punishment, 
 
 411 ; the gospels used by him, 514 
 
 seq. ; his method of quotation, 517 ; 
 
 source of his quotations, 521. 
 Justinian, his treatment of the popes, 
 
 148. 
 
 Keble, John, on the jure divino theory 
 of episcopacy, 183 ; on the admission 
 of non-episcopal ministers to English 
 parishes, 192. 
 
 Kingdom, the Pope's temporal, its rise, 
 69 ; after the donation of Pepin, 72 ; 
 how affected by the divisions in the 
 Frank empire, 74 ; enlarged by the 
 bequest of Matilda, 75 ; enlarged by 
 Innocent III. , 77 ; concessions ex- 
 torted by the cities in, 78 ; its condi- 
 tion during the " Babylonian captiv- 
 ity," 81 ; how affected by the Pope's 
 return to Rome, 82 ; in the latter 
 part of the 15th century, 83 seq.; 
 strengthened by Julius II., 86 ; dur- 
 ing the French revolution, 86 ; under 
 Pius IX., 87 ; character of the gov- 
 ernment in, 88 ; its influence on the 
 character of the popes, 89 seq.; 
 Guizot on the expediency of continu- 
 ing, 96; its absorption in the king- 
 dom of Italy, 99. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 551 
 
 La Place, his alleged atheism, 469. 
 
 Law, Roman, its influence on theology, 
 47. 
 
 Lasco, John a, superintendent of the 
 foreign churches in London, 210. 
 
 Lathbury, on the doctrine of the Eng- 
 lish reformers respecting episcopacy, 
 177. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, his connection with 
 the jure divino doctrine of episcopa- 
 cy, 194. 
 
 League, Catholic, in France, 13. 
 
 Leibnitz, on the divine permission of 
 sin, 323. 
 
 Leo I., Pope, on the worship of the sun 
 among Christians, 57. 
 
 Leo III., Pope, crowns Charlemagne, 
 68, 73. 
 
 Leo X. , Pope, how described by Father 
 Paul Sarpi, 90 ; made cardinal, 150, 
 
 Liberius, Pope, errs from the faith, 122. 
 
 Liberty and necessity, Dr. Samuel 
 Clarke's view of, 249 ; the later New 
 England theology on, 249; Sir Wil- 
 liam Hamilton's doctrine respecting, 
 250; Dr. Mozley's conception of, 
 250 ; Dr. N. W. Taylor's theory of, 
 308 seq. 
 
 Lightfoot, Bishop, on the angels of the 
 Apocalypse, 201. 
 
 Locke, John, his influence on Edwards, 
 231 ; his doctrine of liberty and ne- 
 cessity, 232 ; the influence of his writ- 
 ings in New England, 255 ; on the de- 
 sire of happiness, 314 ; on the an- 
 nihilation of the wicked, 431. 
 
 Lombards, conquest of, by Pepin, 71. 
 
 Louis of Conde, his character, 9. 
 
 Louis XL, king of France, 3. 
 
 Luther, Martin, assaulted central dog- 
 mas, 67 ; against the doctrine of a 
 priestly order in the church, 196. 
 
 Lutheranism in France, 4. 
 
 Machiavelli, his political ethics, 7. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, his opinion of 
 Jonathan Edwards, 228 ; his descrip- 
 tion of Edwards's theory of virtue, 
 246. 
 
 Macaulay, his character as a historian, 
 192. 
 
 Maine, Mr., on the influence of Roman 
 law upon theology, 47. 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, on Bossuet, 127 ; in 
 favor of declaring the Pope's infalli- 
 bility, 130. 
 
 Marcion's gospel, its origin, 523. 
 
 Margaret, sister of Francis L , 66. 
 
 Margaret of Valois, her account of the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, 25. 
 
 Martensen, on future punishment, 429. 
 
 Martin V., Pope, his Bull against the 
 Hussites, 105 ; sanctions the proceed- 
 ings of the Council of Constance, 107. 
 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the 
 causes and instruments of the, 28 seq. 
 
 Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, her be- 
 quest to the Papal See, 75. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., on Edwards's treatise 
 on the Will, 227 ; on future punish- 
 ment, 431. 
 
 Melanchthon, Philip, his view of epis- 
 copacy, 196 ; on the odium theologi- 
 cum, 285 ; persecution of, 285 ; on 
 original sin, 374; on the scepticism 
 of the Renaissance, 442. 
 
 Mill, Mr. J. S. , on the relation of posi- 
 tivism to theism, 449 ; on miracles, 
 536. 
 
 Miracles, ecclesiastical, 38. 
 
 Miracles, source of disbelief in, 453; 
 validity of the testimony to, 454 ; 
 Renan on, 455 ; harmonize with na- 
 ture, 473 ; their credibility, 536 seq. 
 
 Mclinists, their doctrine of " sufficient 
 grace," 336. 
 
 Montaigne, his scepticism, 443. 
 
 Morrison, John, licensed to preach by 
 Archbishop Grindal, 191. 
 
 Mozly, Dr. J. B., his review of New- 
 man's essay on Development, 43 ; hia 
 view of liberty and necessity, 2.50. 
 
 Mliller, Julius, on the supralapsarian 
 doctrine, 248, 347 ; on future punish- 
 ment, 424. 
 
 Neal, on the admission of non-episco- 
 pal ministers to preferment in the 
 English Church, 19L 
 
552 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Neander, on future punishment, 423 
 seq. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, his theory of de- 
 velopment, 42 ; on the Pope's "power 
 of jurisdiction," 136; on the Pope's 
 control over the conscience, 138, 238. 
 
 Nicholas I., Pope, 73. 
 
 Nicholas II. , Pope, his regulations for 
 the election of popes, 149. 
 
 Nitzsch, C. I., on future punishment, 
 424. 
 
 Norton, Andrews, his scholarship, 254 ; 
 his address to the Cambridge divinity 
 school, 376. 
 
 Old Catholic movement, the, 67. 
 Ordinal, proper construction of the, 
 
 214 seq. ; the changes in, in 1661, 
 
 217. 
 Origen, on the Christian festivals, 56 ; 
 
 on future punishment, 413. 
 Otho I., his interference in Italy, 75. 
 Owen, John, his discussion of original 
 
 sin, SbO ; on imputation, 383. 
 
 Palacky, on the safe-conduct given to 
 Huss, 113. 
 
 Palfrey, Dr. John G., on the eloquence 
 of the younger Buckminster, 253. 
 
 Papacy, the Latin spirit in the, 45 ; its 
 theocratic claim in the middle ages, 
 68; its relation to political society in 
 the past and present, 141. 
 
 Papias, his testimony to the gospels, 
 525. 
 
 Parens, on imputation, 387. 
 
 Parker, J. H., on the paintings in the 
 catacombs, 54. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, his popular talents, 
 354 ; Unitarianism characterized by, 
 261 ; his rejection of miracles, 377. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 338 ; "bu the resistibility 
 of grace, 394. 
 
 Paschal IIL, Pope, 73. 
 
 Paul, the apostle, religious before his 
 conversion, 488; righteousness, his 
 ideal, 489 ; his view of the office of 
 the Mosaic system, 489 ; his sense of 
 sin, 491 ; how delivered by Christ,492 ; 
 Bteps in his conversion, 494 ; impor- 
 
 tance to him of the resurrection of 
 Christ, 495 ; his attitude towards Ju- 
 daizing tendencies, 496 ; hated by the 
 Jews, 497; motive of his discussion 
 of election, 498 ; his type of doctrine, 
 500 ; exalts love, 503 ; as a mission- 
 ary, 504 ; his mingled shrewdness and 
 enthusiasm, 504 ; not versed in Greek 
 learning, 505; his tenderness, 509; 
 his consecration, 509 ; lessons from 
 his life, 510. 
 
 Peabody, Ephraim, 254. 
 
 Pfclagianism, contrasted with the the- 
 ology of Dr. N. W. Taylor, 333 ; its 
 leading ideas, 329 ; how defined by 
 Augustine, 330 ; superficial character 
 of, 459. 
 
 Pepin, his conquest of the Lombards, 
 71 ; his donation to the Pope, 71. 
 
 Peter, the Apostle, his relation to the 
 other apostles and to the church, 146 ; 
 Roman Catholic idea of his prece- 
 dence, 146. 
 
 Peter Lombard, his discussion of origi- 
 nal sin, 368. 
 
 Philip IT. of Spain, his ambitious 
 schemes, 14. 
 
 Philosophy, its relation to faith, 447 
 seq. 
 
 Phocas, the patron saint of sailors, 58. 
 
 Pilkington, Bishop, on the identity of 
 bishop and presbyter, 185. 
 
 Pius VL, Pope, a piisoner in France, 
 87. 
 
 Pius VII., Pope, Napoleon's conflict 
 with, 87. 
 
 Pius IX. , Pope, his policy at the outset, 
 87 ; protest against the law of papal 
 guarantees, 100; his liberal meas- 
 ures, 156; his political plans, 156 ; 
 his abandonment of the liberal pol- 
 icy, 157 ; promulgates the dogma of 
 the Immaculate Conception, 158 ; in- 
 fluence of the Jesuits upon, 159 ; his 
 Syllabus, 159; summons the Vatican 
 Council, 159. 
 
 Placaeus, Joshua, his doctrine of im- 
 putation, 384, 389 seq. 
 
 Pope, origin of the term, 1 42 ; the of- 
 fice of the, 143 ; his relation to other 
 
INDEX. 
 
 553 
 
 bishops, 143 ; his authority in rela- 
 tion to oecumenical councils, 144 ; 
 meaning of the Vatican definition of 
 his infallibility, 144; his legislative 
 and judicial powers, 145 ; method of 
 electing the, 153 ; coronation and en- 
 thronement of the, 154. 
 
 Protestantism, stimulates mental en- 
 ergy, 164 ; its effect in Holland, 165 ; 
 in England, 165 ; in the United 
 States, 165 ; favors universal educa- 
 tion, 165; circulates the Scriptures, 
 166 ; favors civil and religious liber- 
 ty, 166 seq. ; condemns religious per- 
 secution, 170; supplants the ascetic 
 type of religion, 170; keaps alive the 
 spirit of progress, 171 ; not responsi- 
 ble for modern unbelief, 172 ; devises 
 means of preventing social evils, 
 175 ; its type in Southern Europe, 
 66. 
 
 Pseudo-Dionysius, on the use of in- 
 cense in worship, 60. 
 
 Punishment, future, the doctrine of, 
 in the Anglican Church, 4C3 : Canon 
 Farrar on, 433 ; Rev. T. Binney on, 
 434 ; Thomas Erskine on, 435 ; Dr. 
 Charles Chauncey on, 436 ; the 
 younger Edwards on, 430 ; its con- 
 nection with Calvinism, 430 seq.; 
 Justin Martyr's view of, 411 ; Ire- 
 naeus's view of, 411 ; Jewish opin- 
 ions respecting, 410; doctiine of 
 Arnobius concerning, 412; Origen's 
 doctrine of, 413; the design of, 413; 
 view of Robert Hall concerning, 414 ; 
 Gregory of Nyssa on, 415 ; the An- 
 tioch school on, 415; Theodore of 
 Mopsuestia on, 415 ; rejection of 
 Origen's opinion on, 415; recent Ger- 
 man theologians on, 420 seq.; 
 Schleiermacher on, 423; Neander 
 on, 433; Nitsch on, 434; Julius 
 Muller on, 424 ; Rothe on, 436 seq.; 
 Marten sen on, 439. 
 
 Purgatory, history of the doctrine of, 
 416 ; Augustine's view of, 418 ; view 
 of the Eastern Church concerning, 
 418 ; doctrine of, attacked by the re- 
 formers, 418. 
 
 Ramus, Peter, his death, 24. 
 
 Rationalism, its distinguishing note, 
 441 ; its variety of phases, 441 ; not 
 the legitimate fruit of Protestantism, 
 442; its three forms, 449; in the 
 
 ■ form of positivism, 449 ; in the form 
 of agnosticism, 451 ; in the field of 
 history, 453 ; rejects inspiration, 
 456 ; ignores the darkening influence 
 of sin, 457; not to be met by opposi- 
 tion to science, 463 ; effect of an 
 awakening of the moral nature on, 
 465. 
 
 Reformers, the English, their theory 
 of Episcopacy, 181 seq. 
 
 Regeneration, Dr. N. W. Taylor's con- 
 ception of, 319. 
 
 Religion, its foundation in human na- 
 ture, 450. 
 
 Renan, his bias, 455 ; on the character 
 of Paul, 493. 
 
 Restoration, universal, 431. 
 
 Ridgeley, on original sin, 396. 
 
 Rienzi, Cola di. his career, 81. 
 
 Ripley, George, his learning, 254 ; his 
 reply to Andrews Norton, 276. 
 
 Roman Catholicism, a return to the old 
 dispensation, 40. 
 
 Rothe, on future punishment, 436. 
 
 St Germain, peace of, 13. 
 
 Saiviati, Cardinal, 31. 
 
 Saints, w^orship of, 51 seq. 
 
 Sandys, Archbishop of York, his con- 
 flict with Whittingham, 189 ; con- 
 sults the Zurich pastors on church 
 government, 211, 
 
 Saturnalia, 56. 
 
 Savigny, on Pepin's donation to the 
 Pope, 71. ^ 
 
 Saumur. the French school of, 384. 
 
 Scepticism, in the Roman Catholic 
 Church, 443. 
 
 Schleiermacher, on future punishment, 
 433. 
 
 Science, the function of physical and 
 natural, 473 ; not contradictory to the 
 Bible, 474. 
 
 Udentia media^ 835 seq. 
 
554 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Scriptures, Protestant doctrine of the 
 authority of, 456. 
 
 Scotland, the reformation in, 2. 
 
 Sectarianism, decline of, 353. 
 
 Belf-love, Edwards on the idea of, 
 243. 
 
 Sigillaria, 57. 
 
 Sigismund, the Emperor, the safe-con- 
 duct given by him to Huss, 113. 
 
 Sin, divine permission of, 305 seq. ; Dr. 
 N. "W. Taylor's definitions of, 310 seq. ; 
 an evident fact in human character, 
 458. 
 
 Sin, original, Edwards's doctrine con- 
 cerning, 239; Augustinian theory, 
 356; Federal theory of, 357; rela- 
 tion of the Federal to the Augus- 
 tinian doctrine of, 378 seq. 
 
 Sixtus IV., Pope, 8; his character, 
 83. 
 
 Smalley, Dr. John, oa possible im- 
 provements in theology. 287 ; on the 
 doctrine of original sin, 397. 
 
 Smith, Dean, of Canterbury, 233. 
 
 Spain, Protestantism in, 2. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on the relativity of 
 knowledge. 451. 
 
 Stanley, Dean, on the doctrine of the 
 English leformers respecting episco- 
 pacy, 178. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, his opinion of Jona- 
 than Edwards, 227. 
 
 Stillingfieet, Bishop, his views of epis- 
 copacy, 205 seq. 
 
 Stuart, Mary, 9 ; her return to Scot- 
 land, 11. 
 
 Stuart, Moses, his conception of the 
 Trinity, 273. 
 
 ♦'Supernatural Religion," its object, 
 512; reproduces the Tubingen criti- 
 cism, 513; on Justin's quotations, 514 
 seq.; on Justin's "Memoirs," 515 
 seq.; on the Muratorian Canon, 533; 
 on Marcion's gospel, 533 seq.; on the 
 testimony of Papias, 525 ; on the 
 fourth gospel. 539 seq. ; on the testi- 
 mony of Irenaeus, 531 ; on miracles, 
 536 seq. ; on the alleged credulity of 
 the Jews, 539; its capital defect, 
 548. 
 
 Sutri, the synod of, 75. 
 
 Syllabus, issue of it, by Pius IX., 159. 
 
 Symbolism, the nature of, 63; its 
 
 proper limits in Christian worship, 
 
 63 seq. 
 
 Tauler, John, 328. 
 
 Taylor, Dr. John, read in New England, 
 
 256. 
 Taylor, Dr. N. W., his idea of election, 
 325 seq., 338; of grace in regenera- 
 tion, 340 ; on sin as a principle, 344, 
 320 seq. ; on the divine permission 
 of sin, 347 ; his aim as a theologian, 
 308 ; on the problem of liberty and 
 necessity, 308; on the voluntary 
 nature of sin, 310 ; on sin as a per- 
 manent principle, 310 ; on the con- 
 nection of our sin with that ot 
 Adam, 311 ; on the tendency to sin, 
 311; on sinfulness by "nature," 
 312 ; opposes the Hopldnsian theory 
 of divine efficiency, 312 ; on moral 
 inability, 313; his "self-love the- 
 ory," 313 seq. ; his use of the term 
 "self-love," 317; on the doctrine of 
 regeneration, 319; on special grace, 
 328 ; not a Pelagian, 329 seq. ; his 
 personal traits, 386; his metaphy- 
 sical talents, 287. 
 
 Tertullian, his style, 36; his legal 
 phraseology, 48 ; on the art of paint- 
 ing, 53. 
 
 Theodore of MopsUestia, on future 
 punishment, 415. 
 
 Theology, New England, its belief in 
 progress, 287 ; its free spirit of in- 
 quiry, 288. 
 
 Theology, New Haven, its essential 
 features, 347 seq. 
 
 Transcendentalism, its rise in New 
 England, 277. 
 
 Travers, Ma&ter of the Temple, why 
 deposed by Whitgift, 189; teacher 
 of Ussher, 189. 
 
 Turretine, Francis, his theory of impu- 
 tation, 393. 
 
 Ultramontanism, its character, 139. 
 Unitarianism, its rise in New England, 
 255 seq. ; developed in antagonism to 
 
INDEX. 
 
 555 
 
 the theology of Edwards and Hop- 
 kins, 256 seq.; why not found in 
 Connecticut, 259 ; connected with a 
 new type of culture in New England, 
 260 seq. 
 
 Universalism, 413. 
 
 Ussher, Archbishop, his views of epis- 
 copacy, 199 seq. 
 
 Vassy, the massacre of , 11. 
 
 Vatican, the Council of the, how com- 
 posed, 126 ; Mr. Gladstone's discus- 
 sions of its decrees, 133 seq. 
 
 Vendome, Anthony of, his character, 
 9. 
 
 Victor Emanuel, takes possession of 
 Rome, 99, 157. 
 
 Virtue, Edwards's theory of, 241 seq. ; 
 265. 
 
 Vitringa, Campegius, on the theology 
 of the covenants, 377. 
 
 War, the morality of, 281. 
 Ware, Henry, Jr., his piety, 254. 
 Watts, Isaac, on original sin, 239, 397. 
 Weissman, on the theology of the Cov- 
 enants, 375. 
 
 Wesley, John, contrasted with Calvin, 
 
 500. 
 Westminster creeds, on the imputation 
 
 of Adam's sin, 383. 
 Whately, Archbishop, on false claims 
 
 to Catholicity, 236; on the future 
 
 state, 431 ; on the function of 
 
 science, 472. 
 Whitgift, his doctrine of episcopacy, 
 
 186 ; on church ceremonies and 
 
 government, 193. 
 Whittinghara, Dean of Durham, the 
 
 attempt to depose him, 188. 
 William III., his Calvinism, 248. 
 Woods, Dr. Leonard, on original sin, 
 
 302 ; on moral agency, 303. 
 
 Zabarella, Cardinal, in the Council of 
 Constance, 105 seq. 
 
 Zacharias, Pope, 70. 
 
 Zurich Letters, the, illustrate the in- 
 timate relations of the English and 
 the continental churches, 210. 
 
 Zwingle, his doctrine of original sin, 
 
fai^ ani l^aHonfllism. 
 
 By Prof. GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D.. 
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