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ELE [ONE SHILLING,

CREEDS
THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
THE ALLIES 01 WORLDLY POLICY.
A LECTURE,
DELIVERED IN
PARADISE STREET CHAPEL,
LIVERPOOL,
ON TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1839,
BY
REV. HENRY GILES.

BEING THE ELEVENTH OF A SERIES, TO BE DELIVERED WEEKLY, IN ANSWER TO A
COURSE OP LECTURES AOAINST UNITARIANISM, IN CHRIST CHUBOH, LIVERPOOL,
BY THIRTEEN CLERGYMEN OF THfi CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

LIVERPOOL:
WILLMER AND SMITH, 32, CHURCH STREET.
LONDON:
JOHN GREEN, 121, NEWGATE STREET,

1839.

i A WiLtMEit and SmiTH, 82, Church Street, Liverpool.

Ur]A'ir

CREEDS
THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY.
A LECTURE, delivehed in
PARADISE STREET CHAPEL,
LIVERPOOL,
ON TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1830.

REV. HENRY GILES.

BEING THE ELEVENTH OF A SEMES, TO BE DELIVERED WEEKLY, IN ANSWER TO A
COURSE OF LECTURES AGAINST UNITARIANISM, IN CHRIST CHURCH, LIVERPOOL,
BY THIRTEEN CLERGYMEN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

LIVERPOOL:
WILLMER AND S>-iv[ith, 32, CHURCH STREET.
^°' ^DON:
JOHn"^^^'^' ^^^' ^^ WGATE STREET.

1839 tl

'Ef- .-¦ >^

WILLMl,, ,.,
32, CHURCH Sr'< Jl, LIVERPOOL.

LECTURE XL

CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH; THE ALLIES OF
WORLDLY POLICY.
BT EEAT, HENRY GILES.

" LET EVERY MAN BE FULLY PERSUADED IN HIS OWN MIND.'
Horn. xiv. 5.

The essential spirit of the religious revolution which in the
I Sth century shook Europe and its thrones, was resistance
to ecclesiastical authority. When Luther burned the Pope's
bull, in Wirtemberg, in one act pregnant with meaning and
with consequences, he broke the spell which had chained the
minds of men for a thousand years, and spread its fascination
over the whole space of Christendom, That single act was a
virtual denial that any church, however high in pretension,
however venerable in institutions, however universal in do
minion, however mighty in power, had a right to enslave his
intellect or to silence his conscience. The English martyr,
when ready to be offered up, boasted to his fellow-suiferer
that they would that day kindle such a flame in England as
should never be put out ; but the blaze of a piece of parch
ment in the hand of the German reformer, was a light far
more significant and impressive — a light at which thousands
started from their slumbers, and although it has often since
flickered and been clouded, it does yet, and ever will, point
the way to mental and religious freedom. Luther and the
other reformers, objected to the church of Rome, the usurp
ation of unjust authority, and the establishment of a false
A 2

4 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
standard in faith and practice : they objected to her that she
claimed a dominion over the souls of men which God alone
can hold ; and they object that she set aside the supremacy
of Christ by encumbering his gospel with her. own traditions.
Not alone for alleged errors in doctrine, but for this error in
the very root and foundation of her constitution, they sepa
rated from her communion, and protested against her juris
diction. They declared the Bible to be the only ground of a
Christian's faith — the only guide of his religious convictions,
and they claimed for themselves the ri^ht of private judg
ment and of individual interpretation. We make the same
declaration and assert the same claim, and we neither re
strict nor nullify it by creed, catechism or confession, by
tests or articles, by pains or penalties. Modern Protestant
churches, like the reformers, speak proudly of religious li
berty, but like the reformers also, it is a liberty they are
very unwilling to share — a liberty for themselves and not for
others : without claiming infaUibility in name, they assume
it in reality ; and without giving, as Rome does, the promise
of unerring guidance, they aim at an authority as despotic,
and would wrest a submission as slavish.
The energetic maxim of Chillingworth, "The Bible and
the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants," is ever and
ever repeated even by those who are pledged to find in it
the Athanasian creed and the thirty-nine articles, and by
others who are compelled to extract out of it the West
minster confession and the longer catechism. With a zeal
that never grows fatigued, it is translated in every tongue
and circulated in every nation ; nay, the lisping child must
have it to the very letter, and a fierce war-cry is opened
should a school, by selections or omissions, leave the youth
ful mind without an opportunity to study the patriarchal ge
nealogies, the prophesies of Daniel, or the apocalypse of
Saint John, The wide circulation of the Bible we regard as
a great social blessing; but when it is sometimes asked

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 5
whether its indiscriminate reading is suited to all ages and
classes, the very question is taken as an evidence of popery
or infidelity in the proposer. To doubt the perspicuity of
God's word, is is said, is to doubt the wisdom of God's pro
vidence. The first object of man in speaking to man, is to be
understood ; how much more in God addressing his crea
tures, and on the most momentous concerns ! The Bible, it
is asserted, is so plain that the child may understand it, that
he who runs may read, and that way-faring men, though
fools, shall not err therein. If this be true, it is in itself the
death-blow of creeds, for then they are both unnecessary
and absurd — unnecessary, because the statements can be as
clearly, can be as easily found in the Bible as in the creed ;
absurd, because it is monstrous folly to attempt making that
more distinct which is manifest enough already. The Bible
being, on the orthodox theory of plenary inspiration, lite
rally the word of God, there is even a degree of impiety in
the presumption of pretending to give a summary .of its
meaning in human fabrications, whether from Trent or
Augsburgh, from the palace of the Lateran or the haU of
Westminster. That simplicity is a characteristic of the Bible, at least in
its main tendency, I cordially admit ; it is the especial qua
lity of the gospel. I could desire no better test by which to
try the value of creeds. If the evangelists John or Mat
thew were again to appear on earth, bringing with them their
first simplicity, ignorant of the wrangling disputes, of the
vain scholasticism which have disturbed this world and the
church since they were taken to their rest — if the Athanasian
document were put into their hands, there is nothing in their
gospels which enables me to think they could understand it ;
if moreover they were told that the whole of it could be de
duced from their writings, I speak in all earnest solemnity
when I say, that at such an assertion I can conceive of
them as no otherwise than utterly bewildered and surprized.

6 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
Take our Lord's sayings and discourses as reported by his
evangelists, and contrast them with the creed we are discuss
ing. With what undisguised simplicity is God ever spoken
of, always presented in some intimate relation to our duty or
his own providence — as an object of worship, of trust, or
of love ! Pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Fa
ther who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. If ye
being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more will your heavenly Father give good things
to them that ask hira. Touch me not for I have not yet
ascended to my Father and your Father, to my God and
your God, Such is the clear and touching phraseology in
which Christ always speaks of God, and thus gives, not a scho
lastic dissertation, but a revelation to human affections. And
in the same spirit of simplicity is his own nature also mani
fested ; he who in all things was meek and lowly in heart,
who went about doing good, and came to seek and save the
lost. Astonishing mysteries indeed has Athanasian theology
made out of these plain statements, having found in them a
trinity in unity, and a unity in trinity ; the Father uncreate,
the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate ; the Father
incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy
Ghost incomprehensible ; the Father eternal, the Son eternal,
and the Holy Ghost eternal, and so on ; and though each
is distinctively asserted to be uncreated, incomprehensible,
and eternal, we are to believe on pain of eternal damnation,
that they are not three eternals, but one eternal — not three
uncreated, but one uncreated — not three incomprehensibles,
but one incomprehensible. Surely of all incomprehensibles
this theological jumble is the most incomprehensible. If to
defy contradiction by the very sublime of absurdity be a
safeguard from refutation, the Athanasian creed must stand
eternally unconfuted. Plausible falsehood, however inge
nious, may be stripped of its sophistries, but there is a cer
tain degree of wild fabrication which may challenge all the

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY, 7
efforts of philosophers and logicians, yet remain as firm as
before in the bulwarks of its impenetrable nonsense. It
may be truly said that these are things on which we cannot
reason ; most certainly they are, for they subvert at once aU
possible principles of reason and of truth. But the cUmax
of these astounding marvels is, that we are assured that if we
do not hold this CathoUc faith, "without doubt we shall
perish everlastingly." And this precious document, this
compilation of monkish mysteries and scholastic jargon, is
set forth as the accurate definition of the Christian faith — the
test of saving belief or of damnable heresy ; this production
of crazy or crafty churchmen, this concentration of hoary
absurdities, of bewildered metaphysics, and of savage bigot
ries, presumes to utter the judgment of God, and to launch
the thunder of the skies. Beginning with the pride of infal
libility, it closes consistently with a sentence of perdition ;
and for this there is pleaded the language of the gospel —
language evidently misinterpreted, as any language must be
which would identify the spirit of Christ with the spirit of
Athanasius. So on the ground of two false assumptions,
those who pride themselves in this Athanasian orthodoxy
are privileged to denounce with a safe and quiet conscience
perdition on their heretical brethren. First, it is assumed
that when the gospel says, " He that believeth not," it must
mean, he that believeth not the three creeds ; and, secondly,
it is assumed that when the gospel says, " He that believeth
not shall be condemned," the condemnation implied is ever
lasting destruction. This is in the genuine sjDirit of Church
and Creed Christianity, fencing in a little and a barren para
dise with the brambles and the briars of theological defini
tions, making holiness and virtue dependent on ecclesiastical
syUogisms, and shutting out all from heaven who may be
compelled to disagree with the doctors of Nice, or the com
pilers of our English Uturgy, who hold the faith of Milton
and Locke, but cannot be convinced by Bull, Waterland, or

8 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
Sherlocke. Creeds pronounce perdition, and Churches hold
up Creeds ; and ministers come forth to magnify the glory of
these Churches and to maintain the verity of these Creeds ;
but men of meek tempers and tolerant hearts seem half
ashamed of their work, and in the effort to soften dogmatical
ferocity, make a vain effort at compromise between their
consistency and their charity. It is all fruitless : the dark
and damning malediction is written on these Creeds with a
pen of adama't ; the preacher's feelings are of no avail, and
he is commanded by his system to proclaim them aloud and
afar — to hold them as warrants of eternal death to all who
gainsay or deny them. At the best, orthodox charity, after
aU admissions, can only embrace different shades of Trinita
rians ; Unitarians must still remain outside the pale of hope ;
if therefore condemned we must be, it is of but small import
ance in what form or on what theory. To those who are to
enter the regions of the lost for ever, questions on essences
and persons, with many other most grave disquisitions, can
signify but little; nor can much consolation be derived
from the reflection, that but a hair's breadth from the
Unitarian heresy, theology by evasions and distinction might
have given us a refuge in the doctrine of Sabellianism.
We are, however, most gravely told that he who receives
not the Athanasian Creed, cannot be saved — a Creed at
which reason, as it was well said, stands aghast, and Faith
' itself is half confounded; a Creed, of which it was better
I said, thaj; it is alike contrary to common sense, to common
arithmetic, and to common charity.
Were the exposure of the Athanasian formulary the design
of this Lecture, I should feel that I had undertaken a very
needless and a very presumptuous task, needless, because in
this age there are few that attach any importance to it ; pre
sumptuous, because, if minds are not affected by its self-con
futation, I have not the vanity to pretend to any arguments
which could shake their convictions. But one can scarcely

THE ALLIES OP WORLDLY POLICY. 9
suppress a feeling of sorrow and surprise at seeing this docu
ment dragged out for defence in the nineteenth century ;
this mixture of monkish metaphysics and scholastic bigotry,
a production which multitudes of the orthodox themselves
conspire to repudiate, and of which many of the best and
highest minds in the Church of England have been most
heartily ashamed — of which they desire to be well rid. Were
the defence of such a creed to be taken as a true sign of the
times, there would be cause indeed for pain to think that we
had been rolled back again into the dark ages ; but it is not
so ; such things are rather marks that show us how far the
advancing tide has moved beyond them. In the course of
the present Lecture I desire it to be distinctly understood,
that I oppose creeds in their very principle : it is not alone
such as I think false, but though I believed them true, I
would yet oppose their use. My opposition is directed
against the spirit of creeds, and if my own opinions were
attempted to be forced in that form, my opposition would be
the same, I am in this place to maintain a principle, the
principle of intellectual, moral, and Christian freedom, and
because creeds, as I think, are at variance with this, I de
nounce them, I intend nothing against individual profes
sors. If I should give them offence, I have no wrong mo
tive with which to charge myself, and must attribute it to the
necessity of plain speaking on a subject by no means agree
able ; but whether pleasant or not, I have a duty to perform,
and I must as far as my power goes, endeavour to do it ho
nestly and faithfuUy.
The title of this Lecture is, that creeds are the foes of
heavenly faith, and the allies of worldly policy. It is my
object to show that this accusation is not Ughtly or unjustly
advanced; and in making good this two-fold charge, the
greatest perplexity which attends it, is the multifarious and
abundant evidence whereby it can be estabhshed.

10 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
I, I proceed first to prove them the foes of heavenly
faith. Creeds disqualify the mind for the pursuit of truth. This
is my first assertion, and I shall establish its correctness in
several particulars. Creeds generate mental apathy and
mental dependence, and this is fatal in the very outset. To
a spirit of inquiry there is needed an impulsive intellectual
activity, and to this activity there is needed a desire for the
thing to be attained, and a sense of its importance. There
is no labour without motive, and if in religious belief, the
creed has defined before-hand all that is necessary for my
salvation, I have no necessity to take any more trouble in
the matter. If I am to rest on authority at last, it is just as
well for me to be satisfied with it at_first — if after toilsome
inquiry, at the peril of my soul's eternal peace, the dogmas
of the creed are those to which my conclusions must return,
I had better be at once content — if I must believe as the
Church believes, if I must believe as the Creed says I should
believe, if I must believe as the priest declares my hope of
heaven requires, if after criticism and research, long and pa
tient, I must arrive at but one exposition of the Bible, it is
but wisdom to spare myself from such a pressure of useless
labour. But indolence in this case is not merely aUowable,
it is, in fact, the safest. If to doubt be danger, and if to dis
believe be sin, then the curiosity which stimulates examina
tion may lead me into ruin, whilst implicit submission, that
receives aU and questions nothing, is a condition of peaceful
security. The incitements to mental labour are analogous to
those to any other sort of labour ; it is that one shall be the
richer and the better for it, and that what he acquires he may
justly possess. But, if by independent inquiry I may become
morally poorer and spiritually worse, if I shall have no right
to my own thoughts, and must be despoiled of my convic
tions, or punished for them, when I have worked them out

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 11
with the struggle of every faculty, it is exceeding foUy to risk
the misery and irritation of being torn between my opinion
and my creed, conscience forcing me to acquiesce, and reason
compeUing me to doubt. This view is no supposition ; it is
fact. Submission to Creeds and Churches, is the true cause
of that wide spread moral torpor in every country where
Creeds and Churches have dominion. There is nothing so
rare as inteUigent, independent reUgious conviction ; and how
can it be otherwise, when each leans upon his priest, and
the priest gives him ready-made opinions, as they were formed
a thousand years ago. There is a general and profound igno
rance of the sources of opinion, the history of opinion, of the
philosophy of opinion, and of the Bible, both in its letter and
in its spirit. Speak to multitudes of religion, in any broad
or liberal sense, and it seems to them as if it were an un
known tongue. To have any chance of attention, you must
use terms which Creeds have sanctified, you must address
them in traditionary phrases, which have the sectarian or
sacerdotal currency. This never could have been had religion
been recommended as a subject of individual and independent
study, leaving the mind free, both in its pursuit and its con
clusion. That I have stated nothing but what fact justifies,,
I may appeal to any one who has considered the religious con
dition of this country, or of Europe generally, and considered
it in every rank of society. I speak not of the Spaniard, who has
not yet rid himself from the palsy of the Inquisition, who can go
from the prostration of the confessional to scenes of the wildest
crime; I speak not of the Italian, that compound of profaneness
and credulity, of sin and devotion, who can bow before an
image, and with the same hand cross himself, by which a mi
nute before he plunged his stiletto in his fellow-creature's heart.
I speak not of our own peasantry, who Sunday after Sunday,
walk statedly to church or chapel, and know httle more than
that they went there and came back again ; I speak not of
the fashionable wealthy, who, on this point, are commonly as

12 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
ignorant as the boor, and choose religion as they choose every
thing else, as it happens to be the mode ; I pass these by,
because it may be said, that pleasure and gaiety leave them
no time for study ; but I wiU refer to multitudes who are es
teemed devout and serious Christians, whose minds passively
receive the mould of their teachers, and to whom religion
never presents itself as a system of various thought and of
independent examination. Now, this ignorant apathy has
bad effects, which are not merely negative ; and at the risk
of anticipating, I will allude in a few words to one or two of
them : it gives stability to every error and corruption, and
holds to them with an obstinacy, against which wisdom has
no power ; it is the very soil in which priestcraft grows
darkest and foulest ; and the hierarchy in any age or country
has never risen to its fuU stature of lordliness, until the people
have lain lowest in torpid Submission. And, in addition to
this, there is no uncharitableness so inveterate, there is no
bigotry so intolerant, as that which this species of character
matures, for as it is unable to comprehend an opposite opinion,
it is equally inadequate and unwilling to weigh the arguments
in its favour, or to estimate the evidence on which it is main
tained. Having no conception of independence itself, inde
pendence in another appears presumption, if not something
worse, and never having imagined that other opinions could
possibly be true except its own, to hold any different could
only be explained by supposing a want of honesty or a want
of grace.
I might dwell upon the fear by which Creeds paralyse the
faculties of weak or sensitive natures, by which they deprive
them of aU power for calm and deliberate examination, by the
fear of being excluded from their Church, by the fear of being
discarded by their friends, by the fear of being cast into hell,
above all these, by the fear of losing the favour of God, and
the friendship of Jesus, and with right and true minds, this
is the greatest of all fears. In the midst of so many terrors.

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 1.3
it is too much to expect that our weak humanity could be
calm, — that it could look with unmoved heart at the appalling
indications of so many and dire threatenings, it is Uke ex
amining a man on the terms of his faith, while the officials of
persecution are arranging the faggots or putting screws in the
rack. From this topic, disagreeable in any shape, I pass on,
and assert, that Creeds are enemies to truth, because, by pre
conception and prejudice, they disqualify the mind to seek or
apprehend it. This is my second, and in this section, ray last
position. The statement of the Church of England respecting the
three Creeds, is this : that they " ought thoroughly to be re
ceived and believed, for they may be proved by most certain
warrants of Holy Scripture."* The Catholic doctrine, with
equal decision, asserts that the InfaUibility of the Romish
Church may also be proved by most certain warrants of
Holy Scripture. Suppose then a Church of England Chris
tian with the Bible before him; he has been previously
indoctrinated in the three Creeds, and these ideas pre-occu-
pying his mind will so far influence his interpretation. Sup
pose a Roman Catholic in a like position ; he has ever pre
sent to his mind the InfalUbiUty of his Church, and her
decisions must be the Umits of his conclusions. InteUec-
tually or morally, no position can be conceived worse than
this for the pursuit or discovery of truth. The mind is
biassed from the first ; its calmness and its candour are sub
verted, and it is no longer a judge, but a partizan ; it is not
to decide on evidence, but, (to use a legal term) to act on the
instruction of its brief. That Creeds have the tendency to
distort and fetter the intellectual workings of the mind, we
know from the fact, too palpable to need proof, that Theolo
gians have always been the most obstinate in resisting the
discoveries of science, and ever the last to yield. Astro-
* Art. 8.

14 CREEDS THE FOES OP HEAVENLY FAITH ;
nomy, in its glimmerings of scientific truth, was once Church
heresy. A Father of the Church, as it is well known, had
denounced that man as infidel and profane who should dare
to assert that the earth moved round the sun, and not the
sun round the earth. On the other side ol this controversy,
we have been told that the arts and sciences have their com-
pendiums as well as religion. It was a most unfortunate
analogy ; for how would it have been now with art and
science, had Astronomy been made a Creed at the Council
of Nice, and a confession on Chemistry been compiled by
the Westminster divines, Galileo was pronounced a heretic ;
and the early Chemists laboured under strong suspicion of
witchcraft. Had we been bound in Astronomy as we are in
Theology, Joshua should be our authority, decisive and irre
vocable, and the calculations of Newton and Laplace should
be placed in the index expurgatorius of Ecclesiastical dogma
tism. Even Luther himself, the author of the greatest of
moral revolutions since Christianity, smiled at the idea that
the earth should move round the sun, and said, " that ac
cording to Holy Scripture, Joshua commanded the earth to
stand stUl, and not the sun,"* Had not the progressive
energy of human intellect been stronger, in what a position
should we yet have been as to the true principles of the con
struction and motion of the universe ? Geology as yet is a
scientific heresy ; and, to avoid the stigma, orthodox Geo
logists have been driven into all modes of eccentric explana-
' tion, some to disjoin the first verse of Genesis from all that
follows, and others to the supposition that a day may mean
a thousand years, or if the speculator needs it, ten thousand
or a miUion, The intellectual immorality thus occasioned, it
is not possible to estimate ; for it is a coarse view of sin to
place it altogether in the misdirection of the passions : cer
tainly, the sins which ever afflicted mankind most, were
• Michelet, vol. ii. pp. 124, 125.

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 15
the moral perversions of the intellect. And this may be
at once conceived if we have read the history of the Church,
and are able to take a calm and impartial review of its
cabals and controversies. I wiU not mention here the loss
of kindly affections, the loss of charity, the loss of peace ;
I merely allude to the immense intellectual waste which has
been occasioned by men setting out on their inquiries with
a foregone conclusion. I shall say nothing on the tomes,
enough to make a library as great as that the Turkish soldier
burned, which have been written to defend the Trinity —
I take an example to Protestants more grateful — I mean,
transubstantiation. What was it that for centuries perpe
tuated a false and absurd phUosophy in Europe ? What was
it that made Aristotle the supreme ruler of the Christian
Church — not Aristotle, as he was, the philosoper, but as
Churchmen used him, a verbal quibbler — was it not for the
purpose of constructing sjdlogisms with orthodox exactness,
and by theories on essences, species, forms, and so forth, to
make it evident that under the appearance of bread and wine,
the very God who created the heavens and the earth, and the
very man Christ Jesus who died on Calvary, were virtually
present ? Go into any great library, and on this subject alone
you may find volumes of which the very names are too many
for memory. Yet, in these there is abundance of talent, of
subtlety, and of acuteness — aU in the travail to sustain a
theory. No one can deny, no one wiU, who knows how
equally the Creator scatters his gifts, that minds of the very
highest order were amongst the schoolnaen; yet all these
magnificent powers were expended to sustain one or two ab
surd positions, enslaving their own intellect, and by their
authority and their influence, enslaving the intellect of Chris
tendom ; and, from the reformation to this hour, there have
been the same waste and perversion of thought. Just consider
what tortuous logic, what wire-drawing ingenuity have been
exercised to defend guilt by imputation, and righteousnes.s

16 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
by imputation — absurdities as great moraUy, as transubstan
tiation is intellectuaUy. This is the work of Creeds,
Dissenters are sometimes taunted with want of scholar
ship. The taunt may have foundation in fact; perhaps it
has, but on what are we to place the blame ? Dissenters, we
presume, have a measure of intellect on the average of other
men, and are gifted with as many mental faculties as those
who subscribe the articles of our National Church. God
does not distribute his blessings on the ground of subscrip
tion, however Universities may. The gifts of mind are equal
and bountiful like the beneficence of creation. The same
full hand that showers sunlight over hill and valley, that
opens fountains in the rocks, and sows the wilderness with
flowers, without reference to Sect or Church, impregnates aU
understandings with the elements of thought, and aU fancies
with the germs of beauty. The Dissenter, as the Church
man, hath eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections.
If then this fair portion of our Maker's mercy be equaUy given,
whence are we to trace the want of its proper cultivation ?
If the orthodox close the Universities against us by Creeds,
draw fast the iron bolt by an iron theology, take away the
key of knowledge, and repulse those that with all their hearts
would enter, place before us tests which, if stupid enough, we
might subscribe without understanding, and if dishonest
enough we might subscribe without believing, but, candidly
confessing we neither understand them nor believe them,
therefore refuse to sign them, — where then is the magna
nimity or the generosity which throws in our teeth, though
it were true, that we have not the science of Cambridge, or
the classicality of Oxford. Yet, despite of aU restrictions,
Dissent has had a goodly number of noble and cultured
minds — minds able and honest, which, in the hour of need,
even the Church herself was not ashamed to acknowledge, or
ashamed to use.
Creeds act as mighty temptations, — as the very Satans of

THE ALLIES OP WORLDLY POLICY. l7
theology; — and they are not temptations to the covetous
and ambitious only, but also to the weak and good. When
sects and Creeds are the standards of preferment, those
with whom preferment is the great object, are made to add
the sin of sanctimonious hypocrisy to that of Ecclesiastical
covetousness and Ecclesiastical ambition. But there are
others good in their own hearts, yet not mighty enough to
be martyrs, whom Creeds keep in a whole life of agony.
There are those who entered a religious community, believing
its opinions most enthusiastically, who, by the further pro
gress of intellect or judgment, may be brought to doubt or
deny them. They are then driven to a desperate alternative,
either to belie their conscience, or to do violence to their
hearts. Take the case of many of the curates and incum
bents of the Church of England. Suppose, that on receiving
orders they assented to all the bishop or the Church prescribed,
but that after years of thinking they were compeUed to dis-
beUeve the Athanasian Creed. They are then periodically
reading, with the most serious tones, and from the most so
lemn place, a statement of doctrine which they conceive in
their souls to be hideous and false, reading it as the convic
tion of their own judgments, and as that which ought to be
the saving faith of all men. If the conscience is not utterly
hacknied, if the religious sensibilities are not torn out from
the heart, this must be continually as the torture of the rack.
Like all human faculties, conscience has a limit ; beyond a
certain point it can endure no more, and so when bigoted ex
action has stretched it to the last, it must revolt or expire.
The alternative in the end is, moral apathy or theological re
beUion — a quiescent hypocrisy, or an open opposition. But
few can brave the contest, and they have no refuge except a
tacit and unwilling submission. Honest men, it may be said,
when they ceased to beUeve the doctrines they solemnly
affirmed, would renounce them with a denial as public as their
profession. It is easy to say this, but, even for honest men,
B

18 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
it is sometimes hard to do it. In the clerical order especially
there are numbers, whose position has been attained by long
study and weary toil — whose very means of life — not to speak
of their station and their friendships — hang upon adherence
to the Creed of their Church. What are these men to do ?
To dig they are not able, and to beg they are ashamed. ' Yet
I can easily conceive that many could abandon rank and
friendship, and count them Ught, in comparison with their
faith, to conscience, that they could take a cell in the wilder
ness for their dweUing, quench their thirst at the running
stream, and seek their food on the briar and the bramble,
sooner than be false to their convictions, and do dishonour to
the integrity of their souls. But it may be, that others with
themselves are to suffer, — those whose fives are bound up in
their lives, — those to whom they are the only earthly support
and refuge, the wife, the child, the aged father, or the widowed
mother, — whom to cast on the friendless world, were worse
than a thousand martyrdoms. Think, then, of the poor cu
rate of the Church of England, or the humble incumbent, who
has grown long into life, with claims most pressing multiplying
around him — one who once out of his pulpit knows not where
to turn for the bread which his children crave — and we cannot
judge harshly or uncharitably, if the power of his affections is
too strong for the stern demands of duty. I know there have
been those who could commit father, and mother, and wife,
and children, to that good Provider who feedeth the raven and
sheltereth the nest of the sparrow ; who could speak the truth
and take the consequences ; — I trust there are those yet in the
world who could do the same ; but in this or any other age, mar
tyrs must be few, and the spirit of martyrdom rare. We blame
not too severely those who have not the highest courage of re
ligious heroism, but we may condemn with honest indignation
those institutions that byfencing their position with Creeds and
Articles, compel them to be hypocrites. I do not apply these
assertions to members or ministers of the Church of England,

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 19
or Other Churches, individuaUy, but any one who has studied
the history of religion, or watched the tendency of institu
tions, knows that in the EngUsh Establishment, in the Romish,
in all estabUshments that have been narrowly restrictive, the
hypocrisy of ambition, or the hypocrisy of fear, has been
deeply and abundantly nourished.
The Church does not deny a smaU amount of liberty — no
Church can,— it wiU therefore aUow you to read the Bible,
if you desire it, but you must find nothing therein but what
the Church proposes. In the study of the Sacred text, you
must have always before your eyes the three Creeds and the
thirty-nine Articles ; find what these prescribe, and it is all
the better for your peace and comfort ; miss them, and you
are open to social and spiritual condemnation. Churches
which dictate creeds, use words without meaning, when they
say, that you may read the Bible, for they tell you also, at the
commencement, what you ought to find in the Bible. I shaU
give an illustration here of my meaning, by an extract from
one of the Oxford Tract writers : — I know well that some
object to these writers, but so far as I have been able to study
the subject — and I have read, attentively or casually, the whole
of what are called the Oxford Tracts, — I think their state
ments and their doctrines are entirely in the spirit of their
system, and in most exact consistency with their assevera
tions and their Creed. There is no medium ; we require an in
fallible tribunal, or we must have a free judgment ; but the
authorities of the English Estabhshment will give us neither ;
for with that we must encounter the twofold endurance of an
erring Church and an enslaved understanding. I think, there
fore, the Oxford doctors in most perfect consistency with their
profession ; and thus believing, I quote the following passage,
illustrative of these writers, and of the spirit of Ecclesiastical
authority in general. It is a portion of a dialogue between a mi
nister and his parishioner. Not to spoil the dramatic effect of
it, I shall give you a little more than absolutely belongs to my
B 2

20 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
subject. Thus speaks the Parishioner to the Pastor : — " My
good mother, said he, not long before her death, said to me
very earnestly. My dear Richard, observe my words : never
dare to trifle with God Almighty. By this I understood her
to mean, that in aU religious actions we ought to be very
awful, and seek nothing but what is right and true. And I
knew she had always disapproved of people's saying, as they
commonly do, that it little matters what a man's religion is,
if he is but sincere, and that one opinion, or one place of
worship, is as good as another. To say, or think, or act
so, she used to call 'trifling with God's truth;' and do
you not think so, (addressing himself to me,) that she was
right ?
" Indeed I do, said I.
"And, he said, I was very much confirmed in these
opinions by constantly reading a very wise, and as I may say
to you, a precious book, which a gentleman gave me some
years ago, whom I met by chance as I was going to see my
father, in the infirmary. It is called, 'A Selection from
Bishop Wilson's Works,' and there are many places which
show what his opinions were on this subject, and I suppose.
Sir, there can be no doubt, that Bishop Wilson was a man of
extraordinary wisdom and piety. Then, after a slight remark
from his interlocutor, he observes. And what Bishop Wilson
says is this, or to this effect, that to reject the government of
bishops is to reject the ordinance of God. Having men
tioned some controversy he had with a Dissenter, he ob
serves, it seemed to me (and I told the man so,) like going
round and round in a wheel, to say, that if he is God's mi
nister, he preaches what is good, and if he preaches what is
good, he is God's minister ; for stiU the question would be,
what is right or good ? And some would say one thing, and
some another ; and some would say, there is nothing good or
right in itself, but only as it seems most expedient to every
person for the time being. So, for my own satisfaction, and

THE ALLIES OP WORLDLY POLICY, 21
hoping for God's blessing on my future endeavours, I resolved
to search the matter out for myself, as well as I could. My
plan was this : First to see what was said on the subject in
the Church Prayer Book, and then to compare this with the
Scriptures. If, after all, I could not satisfy myself, I should
have taken the liberty of consulting you. Sir, &c. Yours,
repUed this Rev. instructor to his prudent catechuman, was
a good plan."
This passage contains the whole spirit of Creeds and
Churches. Take the Prayer Book with you, keep the
fear of the bishop before your eyes, and walk reverently
in the way of the Articles. Then read the Scriptures if you
will, but read them to show that all this is Holy Writ.
Creeds are, further, at enmity with truth, because they re
sist its development, and embarrass its progression. The
world could never have advanced beyond a fixed point, had it
been governed by Churchmen, in the true Church spirit. For
what is it that Creed-makers so insanely attempt ? They at--
tempt what is alike inconsistent with the glory of truth and
the nature of man. Truth is infinite, like its author, and they
would confine it within the limits of the Nicene and Athana
sian formularies. Truth is eternal and progressive, but Creeds
would swear us to the worst barbarisms of the worst ages.
Truth is discovered and carried onward by the independent
working of free and various minds, but Creeds would reduce
all to an apathetic uniformity ; and had not truth been greater
than Creeds, all that has been done for religion and science, i
would now be in eternal silence. Creeds not only thus retard
the progress of Truth, by the sanction of authority, by the
influence of prejudice, by the tenacity of habit; but give
errors all but immortality. Creeds are foes to whatever is most
heavenly in our nature ; to conscience, in its rectitude, and to
charity in its gentleness ; to conscience by an utter perversion
of the moral sense, making that to be guilt which is not guilt, ¦
and giving merit to that which deserves none, making it

22 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
righteous to believe one proposition, and sinful to doubt an
other, thus creating a factitious vice, and as often denying the
evidence of real virtue ; to charity, also. Creeds, I have said,
are foes, and such they are by bitter exclusiveness, by wrong
terms of communion and brotherhood, by dissension, by
enmities and contentions, and by hatred in aU its most odious
shapes. Creeds have failed in all the objects for which it is pre
tended they were made, and they have infinitely multiplied
the evils against which it is pretended they are the guards.
They are needful, it is said, for the preservation of the Faith,
and instead of preserving the Faith, they have provoked the
wildest unbeUef ; they are required, it is argued, as bonds of
unity, and instead of this they have bred divisions and here
sies without number ; they are means, some will go so far as
to say, of maintaining Christian peace, and instead of this
they have rioted in wars and persecutions the most inhuman
and the most sanguinary. The history of religion shows
that unbelief is never so prevalent as when the Creed is most
rigid. The countries and the times in which Theological
ingenuity left least scope for the free play of inteUect, have
always been the comitry and times, when, under the outward
guise of a uniform faith, there has been the most absolute
contempt for the popular religion, as well as for Christianity in
general. For the proof of this need I refer to the French
Church, and the withering scepticism which it nurtured ; the
Spanish Church ; the Italian Church ; and to sustain the same
principle we might likewise accumulate heaps of evidence
from the Protestant Churches. As to heresies, the case is
still more clear. One heresy may have called forth a Creed,
but one Creed has produced a thousand heresies ; and Creed-
makers, when they imagined their work complete, to their
sorrow have found it was but merely commenced. The his
tory of heresies would be at once humiliating and instructive.
In all varieties we have them on every point in religion, and

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 23
on all that has connection with it ; on the nature of God.
Men not satisfied with a simple trust, must speculate on the
Di^dne Being — must ascertain whether he was essentiaUy
one, or numerically divided; Churchmen must define, and
after much labour we have such a document as the Athana
sian Creed, and such a doctrine as the Athanasian Trinity.
On the nature of Christ, we have the same subtleizing pro
cess; we are tossed between Arius and Athanasius, and
having got clear of these, we are again to be bandied between
Nestorius and Eutychus, and to determine whether Christ's
godhead and manhood were so united as to make one nature,
or so divided as to constitute two natures ; whether his di
vinity was not instead of a human soul, or in what relation
his human soul stood to his divinity ; whether he had one
will or two wiUs ; whether his death was a substitution or
not ; whether it was for the elect only, or for the whole race
of man universally. On the Church ; what its constitution,
what its extent, what its authority ; is it falUble or infallible ;
and if infallible, where does that infaUibiUty rest ; in the Pope,
in a Council, in both together ; in a congregation, or in every
individual Christian ? On the Sacraments ; are there two or
seven ; what is their nature and efficacy ; does baptism
cleanse from original sin, or does it not ; is it necessary to
salvation or not ? Roman Catholics affirm both, and ^o do
the Oxford Tract writers. Is it to be consequent on per
sonal belief or not ; is it to be administered to infants, or to
persons of mature years, and to be by immersion or by sprink
ling ? Again, we have a whole crowd of divisions and here
sies on the Lord's Supper ; are the elements actuaUy changed
into the substance of Christ, or is Christ merely present
along with them, or is he spirituaUy, but not personally, pre
sent ; is it a rite mystically effective, or is it merely comme
morative ? AU these questions have been sources of endless
division of opinion ; even at the present hour, the Oxford
divines teach a doctrine concerning the Eucharist, which it

24 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
requires marvellous perspicacity to distinguish from transub
stantiation, while the Calvinistic evangelicals maintain views
which might content the very lowest sacramentarian. But
why speak of Creeds and Articles as means of reUgious
unity, when the Church of England herself affords us the
means of giving such assertion a flat denial ? Within her
pale, she has had men of aU and opposite opinions — ^Armi
nian and Calvinist, Unitarian and Tritheist — every possible
hue that orthodoxy could assume. Paley smiles at the idea,
as one of most grotesque absurdity, that men should be
thought to believe the articles they sign ; they ar^, according
to his morality, mere articles of peace, intended to exclude
no one but Papists and Anabaptists. If this be true, a man
might, as an able writer on non-conformity says, take a bene
fice with a good conscience from the Grand Turk. Nay, not
to speak of believing the Articles, we have heard it asserted,
in connection with the Universities, that the youthful sub
scribers are not supposed to understand them, or in some
cases even to have read them. The Church of England is
perhaps wise in not pushing matters too far, for in her
former efforts to force uniformity, she lost the best of her
sons by thousands ; an event that she has cause to regret to
the latest hour of her existence, and for which America
should bless her for ever. The distinction between essen
tials and non-essentials, is one of the most quibbling of The
ological vamties. Every one knows that each sect has its
essentials and non-essentials, according to the compass of its
Creed, some many and some few : with the Roman Catholic,
Transubstantiation is as essential as the Trinity; he con
demns the orthodox Protestant to perdition for not holding
one as well as the other, whilst both combine to pass sentence
on the unfortunate Unitarian who can receive neither. Again,
I assert the distinction is petty and quibbling, for who is to
fix it, where is it to stop ; who is to decide it, and what are to
be grounds of the decision ? All things are important to us.

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 25
as they bear relation to our conscience or our convictions ;
one man eateth only herbs, another eateth all things ; one
man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth
every day alike : let every man be persuaded in his own mind ;
that is the Apostle's view of the subject, and that is the true,
the safe, the charitable one. Protestantism has not lessened
or softened the number or the inveteracy of religious divisions
infinitely more perplexed than Romanism in her views of re
ligious authority, she has given importance to doctrines
which the Church under that system scarcely noticed : such
as grace, predestination, and other similar disputed theories :
thus the sting of controversy has been added to topics that
were before sufficiently repulsive in their dry and technical
abstruseness. But it is pitiful, it is humiUating, not merely
to our common Christianity, but to our common human na
ture, to see the arrogant assumption with which puny men
decree what their brothers are to believe, now and in all fu
ture times, tying down the mind that should be free as hea
ven, as it is as progressive as it is eternal : putting themselves
on the throne of God, and dealing judgment where he deals
mercy. The minuteness of theological definition has sur
passed all other efforts of human ingenuity, but it has not
alone deadened the freedom of intellect, but also injured its
honesty. On the Trinity, more especiaUy, heresy has ever
been treading closely on orthodoxy, " until, after revolving
round the theological circle," as Gibbon says, "we are sur
prised to find that the Sabellian ends where the Ebionite had
began." Each theological speculator has his own Trinity,
his own exposition of the Athanasian mystery, until amidst
the whirl of dogmatical contradictions, the mind grows giddy,
and knows hot where to rest. The Church of England, as I have
observed before, has all systems between the extremes of Sher
lock's Tritheism and South's Sabellianism : between the three
infinite minds of the one, and the three somewhats of the other.
The ancient Christians afforded full occasion for the caustic

26 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
description which Gibbon gives of their disputes, and the
modern Christians have not grown wiser, or learned better.
" The Greek word," he says, " which was chosen to represent
this mysterious resemblance, bears so close an affinity to the
orthodox symbol, that the profane of every age derided the
furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong ex
cited between the Homoousians and the Homoisians. As it
frequently happens that sounds and characters which approach
nearest each other, accidentally represent the most opposite
ideas, the observation would be itself ridiculous, if it were
. possible to mark any sensible difference between the doctrine
of the Semiarians, as they were improperly styled, and that
of the Catholics themselves. The Bishop of Poictiers, who in
his Phrygian exile, very wisely aimed at a coalition of parties,
endeavours to prove, that by a pious and faithful interpreta
tion, the Homoousian may be reduced to a consubstantial
sense. Yet he confesses that the word has a dark and sus
picious aspect ; and, as if darkness were congenial to theolo
gical disputes, " the Semiarians who advanced to the doors of
the Church, assailed them with the most unrelenting fury."
If it be said, that the Creeds are not the creators of divisions,
but that divisions are the creators of Creeds, I admit that
they act and react on each other. If they create not the dif
ferences which they make, they give them all their bitterness.
If it be said, that independently of Creeds, there would stiU
be endless variety of private opinions, I grant it ; I go fur-
ther, and say, it were most desirable there should be such
divisTons. It is Creeds that infuriate religion, and turns dis
sent into dissension. A man who felt he could form his
opinion in freedom, and hold it in peace, would never per
secute another ; would never hate another ; would never pre
tend authority over another ; he would give the liberty he
used. It is the authority which Creeds pretend, that consti
tute one of their greatest evils. The ancient Church then
had Creeds in plenty, but no unity ; the Reformed Churches

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 2?
are in the same position. If it be asserted they have agree
ment in essentials, I refer to what I have already said on this
point ; but if it be maintained that their difference is only in
name, then, I say, the matter becomes worse, and plainly
shows that Creeds, out of small disputes, can cause gigantic
evils. Nothing could be more bitter than the Sacramentarian
Controversy amongst the Reformers ; nothing could be more
vile than the language with which they assailed each other ;
nothing more furious than the invectives with which they
pelted one another. Each would fix on his opponent what he
did not believe himself ; and yet there occasionally peeps out a
glimmer, that they had some sense of their inconsistency. " It
is of great importance," says Calvin, in writing to Melancthon,
" that the least suspicion of the divisions that are among
ourselves pass not to future ages ; for it is ridiculous beyond
all things that can be imagined, that after we have broken off
from the whole world, we should so little agree among our
selves since the beginning of the Reformation." The charity
of Calvin was not equal to his discretion, as we may see by
this extract.
" Honour, glory, and riches," says he to the Marquis de
Poet, " shall be the reward of your pains ; but, above all,
do not fail to rid the country of those zealous scoundrels who
stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should
be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus,
the Spaniard."
In the same spirit is the language of Austin, who was Cal
vin's master, not only in his doctrine, but also in his zeal.
" O, you Arian heretic," he says, " the thief knew him when
he hung upon the cross ; the Jews feared hira when he rose
from the dead ; and you treat him with contempt, now he is
reigning in heaven. Take care, beloved, of the Arian pesti
lence !" (Quoted from Robinson's Ecclesiastical Researches,
pp. 348, and 181.)
Division and heresy are, in truth, innumerable, and the

28 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
ideas of stemming them by Creeds, is to imitate the peasant
standing on the river's bank, and waiting until it should have
all flowed by. " One doctor of the Lutheran Church," says
Robert Robinson, of Cambridge, " hath given a comment on
heresy and schism, and hath inserted no less than six hundred
and thirty-two sorts of heretics, heresiarchs, and schismatics,
diversified as the birds of heaven, and agreeing only in one
single point, the crime of not staying in what is called the
Church." I have now shown that Creeds did not promote unity in
the ancient Church ; that they did not promote it in the
Roman Church ; that they did not promote it in the Reformed
Church ; that in the present day they do not promote it in
any of the Protestant Churches ; not to allude again to our
own Establishment ; to many in the Scotch Church, they are
a dead letter ; they are entirely so in the French and German
Churches; and in the Genevese Church, the very school
where blackest Calvinism was fabricated, the arena where
the stern persecutor burned Servetus, Calvin's spirit is ex
tinct, and his creed repealed. I have shown, then, that they
never produced unity, and I believe the most intrepid Eccle
siastic will not affirm they have been favourable to Christian
peace. Turn to the page of history ; look abroad over the
face of the world, and you have lamentable evidence of the
charge. Creeds have broken the peace of Christendom, and
given unwonted fury to all its strifes ; Controversies have
arisen without number, and have been maintained with fa
natic zeal, fury, and detestation. What shame should the op
posite conduct of Philosophers flash in the face of theologians,
— men, who in quietness pursued their own studies, and left
their results for the progressive araelioration of their species
— 'Whilst the janglings of Churchmen, wringing through every
age, have been empty of aU things but their enmity. Why
is it, that we in this hour are not raore profitably engaged, —
why is it, that we are not rather seeking out the woes that

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY, 29
crush down humanity, and joining forces to remove them, —
why is it with so much of what is positive to be done, so much
of wretchedness to relieve, so much sin to remove, so many
solemn claims on all sides of us, that when we think of it, we
feel as if this were the veriest trifling ; why are we thus in
strife, when we might be in union ; why are we compelled to
say hard things, and to repel them ? It is aU to be charged to
Creeds, which with the spirit of Cain, has risen the hand of
brother against brother, and caused contention and an evU
heart, where there ought to be charity and peace. It is aU .
vain, it is not human nature, no matter how strongly dis
claimed, to think, that polemical contention can be perfectly
free from the wrong passions, and it is better not to pretend
to meekness, when the opposite is frequently but too evident.
The days of physical strife in religion, it is to be hoped, are
gone ; but upon the head of Creeds there is a blood-stain, a
blood guiltiness, which the whole ocean could not wash out.
Religion was made the watch-word for war ; the cross was
raised as the symbol of destruction, and the gathering of na
tions were around it, to carry ruin as a flood, ay, into those
very scenes, where it once bore the dying form of him, who
said, " I came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them."
War, in its simplest utterance, is a word of horror ; but re
ligious war leaves nothing darker to be imagined. In worldly
enmities, when the contest is deadliest, there are touches of hu
man compunction ; in the most sanguinary strife, the voice of
mercy is sometimes heard, and the hand of help is given ;
fiercest opponents will occasionaUy be generous — the op
pressed, in the hour of triumph, can be magnanimous to the
tyrant in his fall, but place men against each other with dif
ferent religious sentiments, unsheath the sword of the ortho
dox against the heretic, the heart becomes steel, the bosom
becomes ruthless, and the man is lost in the fiend. Demand
you evidence of this ? It is written in gore over the whole
face of earth ; call up the shades of the thousands that

30 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
sunk in the valleys and the mountains of Judea, of those in
the solitudes of the Alps, that fell under the sword of Roraish
and merciless extermination ; of those with whose life-blood
the fierce Spaniard dyed the soil of South America ; of those
who were laid low in the glens of Scotland by Episcopalian
fury, — you would have army of witnesses which no man could
number, the accusers of those who for different faith became
the slayers of their brethren. Creeds are naturaUy aUied to
the spirit of persecution, for they establish the principle, and
act on it, that belief may be a sin, and this is the very life of
the persecuting spirit ; it was this that built the Inquisition,
which for so many ages spread its ruthless tempest in the
Christianity of Europe ; it was this that called forth the rack,
and kindled every fire in which a heretic was ever sacrificed
to the demon-god of bigotry : it was this created a Dominic.
Protestants are fond of caUing the Roman Catholic Church a
persecuting Church, but that Church can retort the accusa
tion. Every Church is in truth a persecuting Church which
acts in the spirit of a Creed. The Reformers maintained the
right of the civil magistrate to punish heretics. This, if it
needed pr6of, is triumphantly made out by Bossuet. " There
is no need here," he says, " of explaining on that question,
whether or no Christian princes have a right to use the sword
against their subjects, enemies to sound doctrine and the
Church, the Protestants being agreed with us in this point.
Luther and Calvin have written books to make good the right
and duty of the magistrate in this point. Calvin reduced it
to practice, but against Severus and Valentine Gentili. Me
lancthon approved of this procedure by a letter he wrote him
on the subject." John Knox maintained the same doctrine,
and even quoted the extermination of the Canaanites as a case
which would justify like treatment of heretics. Nay, in the
present day, one of the Oxford theologians asserts, " that
we ought to anticipate the evils of error in the person of the
heresiarch," because he contends that it is better he should

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 31
endure pain, than that his error should be propagated, and
bring ruin on his infatuated but less guilty followers. This is
the true inquisitorial religion. A man who holds sentiments
like these is a persecutor in his heart, and it is only by acci
dent that he is not a persecutor with his hand. A man who
could send forth that expression, in other days might have
been grand inquisitor or a familiar of the Holy Office, and
would have dragged his victims to the stake, or gloated over
their tortures on the rack. A heresiarch, he maintains, is
unworthy of compassion ; and in correspondence with this
are some passages of Irenseus, quoted with approbation in the
Tracts for the Times : "What prospect, then, of peace have we,"
says this reverend and truculent Ecclesiastic, " who are foes
to the brethren ? What sacrifice do they think they cele
brate, when they become rivals to the Priesthood ? When
gathered together beyond the pale of the Church, do they
think that Christ is still in the midst of them ? Though men
like these were killed in the profession of their faith, not even
by their blood would these spots be washed out. The offence
of discord is a weighty offence, it includes no expiation, and
is absolved by no suffering." " They cannot remain with
God," he says, " who will not remain with one heart in God's
Church. Though they be cast to the flame, to the fire to be
burnt, or lay down their lives by being a prey to wild beasts,
they will gain not the crown of faith, but the penalty of per
fidy ; their end, not the glorious consummation of religious
excellence, but the death-blow of despair. Such men may
attain unto death, but can never attain unto the crown."
Creeds have sharpened the sword of persecution, though
the civil arm was used, and if it now be idle in the sheath,
it is more owing to the tolerance of civil governments, than
to any change in the spirit of Churchmen. If Rome had her
Inquisition, England had her Star Chamber ; if Rome had
her Dominic, England had her Laud. I wish not, howr
ever, to pass unmitigated censure : I am willing and glad

32 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
to acknowledge that the Church of England has had many
men who were the Ughts of their age, but they had minds
which were not cast in the Athanasian mould. It is not
Churches only that persecute, but also sects ; not great
Churches, but little ones equally; thus did the Genevese,
whilst the spirit of Calvin ruled in it ; thus did the Dutch
Churches, while the Dort-decrees had power, and even
Socinus himself persecuted Francis David : a Creed, however
simple, can be made an instrument of unjust power, as
weU as the most complex one. The persecuting spirit is
not extinct, but changed; it is now a social and a moral
persecution. Long experience has shown that physical tor
ture is useless, and if the principle remained, the power is
gone. But never can we sum up the whole amount of
evil which Creeds inflicted on the world, until we can
count the sighs that have died unheard in the dungeon ;
until we know all the bitterness of heart which waits on
hopeless captivity; until we count the pangs of torture
which gave slow consuming death ; until we can foUow the
course of merciless wars, unsoftened by a touch of pity;
until we know all the friends that have been made ene
mies, and the griefs which have in many cases made life
a martyrdom; until, in fact, we have all laid bare before
us which that day alone wiU reveal, which reveals aU the
hidden works of darkness.
II. I have so far shown that Creeds are the enemies of
truth, and disquaUfying the mind to seek truth aright, by
resisting and embarrassing its free development, by ensnaring
conscience and destroying charity ; I have shown their failure
in their proposed objects, and their instrumentality in pro
ducing aU the evils they pretend to avert, and I proceed in
the remaining observations, to establish the second charge.
It is one, however, which does not need much elaborate
argumentation. It will be easy to discover their tendency,
if we consider who are commonly the framers of Creeds, in

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 33
what periods they are formed, and in what temper they are
usually imposed. They are framed by Ecclesiastics, and for
the main purpose of supporting Ecclesiastical supremacy.
If we take a few names connected with Creed-making, or
with furnishing the materials out of which Creeds are made,
we can easily see the spirit in which they are conceived, and
of which they are the expression. We have then an Atha
nasius, an intriguing and ambitious Ecclesiastic, not only the
fomenter of spiritual strife in the Church, but by political
intermedUng, the fomenter of civil strife in the Empire : a
Cyril, the opponent of Nestorius, and the hater of Origen ;
the composer of mighty tomes of divinity, which with much
the sarae kind since, were equally massive, and equally ob
livious ; a popular preacher at first, and afterwards a most
orthodox patriarch ; at once the persecutor of the phUo-
sophic Pagans, and the heretical Christians : a TertuUian,
that exulted in the prospective damnation of heretics, with a
zeal that almost rivals some modern Calvinistic writers : a
Dominic, that has left the raeraory of a sanguinary monk,
and the name of a saint ; who has been often commemorated
in the flames of many an auto-de-fe, and has had a durable
monument to his glory in the dark piles of the inquisition :
a Calvin, the stern Theological tyrant of Geneva, and the
slayer of Servetus : a Knox, who pleaded for the extermination
of the heretical after the manner of the Canaanites : a Cranmer,
who caused so many, both of Catholics and Protestants, to be
led to the stake by laws which changed with the fickleness of a
tyrant's will, who at last himself blenched before the fate
that had been so often prepared for others : a Laud, the
pillar of a star-chamber, and the downfaU of a throne. Such
are some of the men concerned in the formation of Creeds —
men of stern natures, of haughty minds, and of boundless
spiritual ambition. And as to the periods in which Creeds are
commonly made, we know they are in times of religious
strife, when different parties are labouring for the ascen-
c

34 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY' FAITH ;
dancy, when no pains are spared to gain it, when no acts
however shameful or dishonest are thought too bad to use,
if they assist to humble an opponent, or secure a victory ;
when passion is heated and malignant, and the judgment
totaUy unfit for irapartiaUty. The history of Councils and
Theological cabal is the shame of Christianity. Yet, for
mularies thus fabricated are to be made the everlasting stan
dards of truth, and men are to be punished here and hereafter
because they do not receive as Divine Truth these shapeless
abortions of Churchmen's foUy. And the temper in which
they are imposed is quite in conformity with that in which
they are conceived — oppressive, exclusive, unjust. With
what a vindictive and grasping spirit have not the Clergy of
the English Church laid hold on all they could monopoUze
of privilege and power ; with what resistance to the last they
have endeavoured to shut out Dissenters from all the rights
of Christians and of citizens. To this hour, had it been in
the power of Ecclesiastics, the Test and Corporation Acts
had never been repealed, or the Catholic disabiUties re
moved. That which is their power gives sufficient evidence
how they would act if they had exclusive possession of more.
I mean the Universities, which they keep closed against
Dissenters with such an obstinate and gothic bigotry. Nor
does the injustice end here : there is a silent, social injustice,
which Dissenters suffer ; every one feels it, though it is not
easily defined. The Churchman, on the strength of signing
a Creed which he does not always believe, assumes to be of
a higher reUgious caste than the Dissenter. It is not suf
ficient that Dissenters contribute from their worldly good
to support a system which has no alliance with their con
science, but they must still further undergo the humiliation
of being regarded as spiritual and social inferiors. Creeds
are the allies of worldly policy, and ever have been since
Christianity had the misfortune to become a state religion,
for they are the main ties of that unnatural union of Christ's

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 35
religion to human governments — a union injurious to both,
making the government unjust and partial, and religion self
ish and secular. They are worldly in their objects^ and they
are worldly in their instruments and means. They are made
the stepping stones to wealth, rank, and power ; for if the
Estabhshment did not give wealth, rank, and power, numbers
of expectants would be moderate enough as to the Articles
and Creeds. It would seem anomalous if universal history
did not make it evident, that a body of men in all ages,
pledged to denounce covetousness and earthly passions,
pledged to preach humility after the example of a crucified
master, pledged to curb by heavenly motives the abuse of
power, should be of all men themselves the most insatiate in
their desires after gain, the most haughty in their elevation
to station, the severest and the most grinding in the exercise
of prerogative, the least wiUing to mitigate it, and the most
determined not to share it. In every period of the Church,
the worldliness of Ecclesiastics, their ambition, and their love
of lucre, have been proverbial, the scandal of Christians, and
the scorn of unbeUevers. The covetousness of the Priest,
has, in aU periods, been outstripped by his pride alone ; and
under every change in society, the Priesthood have taken
care to secure themselves so that their lines should fall in
the most pleasant places. The struggle is a worldly one
from beginning to end, it is aU of the world and the things
of the world ; if the prize were not of earth, we should hear
far less noise amongst the combatants. The struggle is a
worldly one, the policy is a worldly one, the means and
ends are worldly. For are there any means so evil, that
Creeds, if there is a purpose to be gained, wiU not tempt to,
or assist with force, if there be the power to use it ; with
fraud, if there is a necessity that demands it ? Creeds and
doctrines have been maintained by frauds the most bare
faced, by every artifice and by every falsehood. But Creeds
are indirectly the cause of dire immorality ; of immorality
c 2

36 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY' FAITH;
the worst in its kind, and the most evil in its effects : they
corrupt motive in its very source, they weaken that sense of
inward sincerity necessary to all that is true and noble in
human character, they punish honesty, and they bribe to
hypocrisy. How many rainds have been robbed of their
truthfulness, how many consciences have been despoiled of
their integrity, how many hearts sacrificed their purity on
the altar of interest and expediency, it would be a long and
dark catalogue to enumerate. And it is truly painful to
think, that this result is prepared for in the brightest and the
best period of life. AVhat must be the effect on a young
man who, at the very threshold of his College studies, must
profess to believe dogmas that he has scarcely read, that he
has never examined ; how much worse if he has examined
and disbelieves them : if he be honest, he is excluded ; the
fear of his family starts before him ; if he spares them, he
ruins his soul ; if he speaks the truth, he wrecks, perhaps, aU
his worldly fortunes beyond redemption. When he sees then
the most solemn interests made mere matters of form, reli
gious declarations the tests of honours and of office, the
Confessions of grave Ecclesiastics but a pompous and solemn
hypocrisy, the zeal for worldly gain killing the ardour of re
ligion, the zeal for r,eligion itself only a means to get wealth
and power ; when, I say, he beholds all this, he can have no
other feeling than that of unmitigated contempt for the
hollow show of orthodoxy ; he must observe that it is only
an instrument, a mere raakeJaelieve, theatrical acting ; and
the chances are raany, that, disgusted with the whole affair,
he transfers his disgust to religion in general, and raakes
shipwreck both of faith and virtue. Creeds are the support
of Priestly intolerance ; these are the statutes of the Priest.
He does not, it is true, require you to believe thera, but he
requires you to say you believe them ; say but that and your
peace is made. These are his statutes on which he con
demns, or on which he acquits ; by which he tries your alle-

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY' POLICY'. 37
giance to sacerdotal authority, and by which, if he can, he
will enforce it. Creeds are instruments of worldly and of
spiritual despotism. The relation of the Priesthood to the
civil power, is changeful and capricious ; one time its slave,
another time its tyrant. Cunning Kings have always had
the sagacity to see that the safest course was to flatter and
enrich the Priesthood, giving thera the shield of the temporal
power, and receiving in return the support of the whole spi
ritual armoury either from heaven or hell ; and both, thus
agreed and united, have been enabled to enslave the people
with a most hopeless bondage. Let the Prince but heap
good things on the Church, hate her enemies, curse her op
ponents, patronise her friends, the Church gratefully in re
turn submits to him with most obsequious obedience. But
reverse the case, and suppose the Prince not only ventures
to do without the Priests, but attempts to curtail some of
their good things, then no epithet is too strong to mark his
iniquity; he is then profane, heretical, infidel : and if the su
perstition of the people give them the power, they compel
hira to bend before spiritual prowess, and from being their
master, reduce him to their slave. The spirit of a Creed-
enforcing Clergy is also seen in this fact, that they dislike
the civil power more and more as that power becomes liberal
and enlightened ; they oppose it, and abuse it in exact pro
portion as it deserves to be admired and praised : if there be
but a syraptora that their raonopoly is likely to be broken,
and that others are about to share blessings which they had
so long kept to theraselves as to think only their own,
immediately the Monarch must be prepared to meet the
fierceness of their enmity. It is a combat to which many a
Monarch has been unequal, and to which many a one has
fallen a victim. Tyranny on their side, and slavery on
that of others, is the congenial element in which most esta
blished Priesthoods raove, breathe, and have their being;
the men themselves are the victims of their circumstances.

38 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
circumstances which the influence of Creeds have made;
for Creeds are the parents of Priestcraft, and Priestcraft is
identical with reUgious despotism.
Creeds are the allies of worldly policy; Creeds are the
creatures of the Church, and the Church is the creature of
the state. A national Church with Creeds for its tests, and
legal support and legal penalties, can be nothing else. And
the English Establishment is peculiarly in this condition;
are not her Bishops appointed by the government ? Are we
not aU aware that every Prelate is virtuaUy the selected of
the minister for the time being ? Are we not aware that her
canons and constitution, her catechisms and articles, her
rubrics and her ceremonies, are enforced and established by
acts of parliament? Are we not especially aware that her
wealthy revenues are derived from compulsory exaction, and
that payment is wrenched from Dissenters by the strong arm
of the law ? — Whence, but from this source, can the Clergy
claim their wealth ? By what other power could they enforce
it ? Every one, who is not a simpleton, knows that the vast
possessions in which the Church rejoices, are not free will
offerings, and that they have stronger security in the Courts
of Exchequer and Chancery, than in the consciences of those
who pay them. They were at first endowments to the
Church of Rome ; it is by act of parliament that they enrich
those who maintain the Thirty-nine Articles, instead of pray
ing for souls in Purgatory. The Monarch, in this country,
is acknowledged the supreme head of the Church on earth ;
and though that Monarch may be a girl of eighteen, a boy of
eleven, an infant, or an idiot, it is exclusion from the esta
blished ministry to deny it, and was once high treason. To
be persuaded of this fact, we have only to recollect that the
law of the land deposed the Romish Priesthood, and that the
Act of Uniformity excluded from the service of the altar two
thousand non-conforming Ministers. "The second Canon
excommunicates every one who shall endeavour to limit or

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 39
extenuate the King's authority in Ecclesiastical cases, as it is
settled by the laws of the kingdom ; and declares he shaU not
be restored until he has recanted such impious errors."
" The thirty-seventh Canon obliges all persons, to their ut
most, to keep and observe aU and every one of the statutes
and laws made for restoring to the crown the ancient juris
diction it had over the Ecclesiastical state." " The twelfth
of King James's Canons declares, that whoever shall affirm
that it is lawful for the order either of Ministers or Laics, to
make canons, decrees, or constitutions, in Ecclesiastical mat
ters, without the King's authority, and submits himself to be
governed by them, is, ipso facto, excommunicated, and is not
to be absolved before he has publicly repented and re
nounced these Anabaptistical errors." Queen Anne, in an
angry letter to the Archbishop, made the convocation aware
that " she was resolved to maintain her supremacy as a fun
damental part of the constitution of the Church of England."
" Archbishop Bancroft, when at the head of all the Clergy
of England, dehvered articles to King James for increasing
the Ecclesiastical courts, and for annexing aU Ecclesiastical
as well as Civil power to the Crown. This may be seen at
large in Lord Coke's third institute." On such grounds as
these, men claim authority to impose Creeds on their feUow-
citizens, to proclaim themselves the commissioned messen
gers of heaven, to assert religious supreraacy and to arrogate
a divine right ; to bind and loose, to conderan and to forgive.
I heard a person lately well remark, that if you gave him the
incomes of the Clergy, he would give you the social status of
those from whom they were taken, and vice versa. At ordi
nation, they solemnly affirm that they are moved by the Holy
Ghost ; but if the extreme stipend were two or three hun
dred a year, this inspiration would seldom be found to fall
on the son of a Duke, or the brother of an Earl.
But, whatever be the abuses which Creeds occasion, or
whatever be the evils they inflict, it may stiU be said the

40 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY' FAITH;
Church has authority to decree them ; and what she has au
thority to decree, she has authority to enforce. To one of
the strongest arguments on this point lately renewed, and
more strenuously urged than it had ever been before, I shall
here devote a few general observations.
The claim to dictate and enforce Creeds by the Clergy of
our Establishment, is founded on another claim which, by a
party of divines, is recently asserted with a zeal not inferior
to that of the Roraish Priesthood ; I allude to the doctrine
of Apostolic succession. It is pretended that the national
Clergy by deriving a mission from the immediate disciples of
Christ, have authority, by a mystical coraraunication of divine
energy transmitted to thera frora age to age, an authority to
decide what is, and what is not, the true faith. On this
ground the high Churchmen consistently deny to all other
Ministers the power to teach or to preachy, and with one fell
stroke, cut off the whole of the Dissenters frora the spiritual
body of Christ, On this ground we raay ask several ques
tions which must receive very unsatisfactory, or very contra
dictory answers. First — where, in the gospel history, is it
proposed, as an essential qualification of a religious teacher,
that he shall have an uninterrupted succession frora the
Apotles ? Paul, in his letters to Timothy and Titus, enume
rates many qualities which should distinguish the Christian
Minister ; but Apostolical succession is not once mentioned
amongst the number. In the early age of Christianity, we
have abundant evidence, both from Evangelical and Eccle
siastical history, that many preached the gospel who had no
such authority as Churchmen call Ordination or Holy or
ders. Secondly — is it possible that the Apostles could have
any successors ? The Apostles had powers to which no Priest
in his highest pride, wiU dare to lay claim ; the Apostles
healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead; they
proved their mission by miracles, and this gave a peculiarity
to their office which, it will be admitted, was not transfer-

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 41
able. Besides, between the office of an Apostle and that of
a Bishop, there is no identity, and few analogies. An
Apostle was a missionary, a Bishop is a temporal and spi
ritual peer : there is no raore resemblance of one to the
other, than of his grace of Canterbury amidst the sumptuous
luxury of his palace, to a Moravian preacher in the snows of
Lapland ; than of the Bishop of Exeter declaiming politics
in the senate, to Felix Neff proclaiming Christ amidst the
Alps. An Apostle was a poor man, a Bishop is a rich one ;
an Apostle was a pilgrim and wanderer, a Bishop is a mitred
prince ; an Apostle was the object of contumely and scorn
to a world which was not worthy of him, a Bishop is the
praised and the applauded by a world of which he is worthy ;
an Apostle was the servant of the humble and the lowly, a
Bishop is the companion of the exalted and the great ; an
Apostle was the object of state persecution, a Bishop is the
favourite of state patronage : by what paradoxical mistake,
therefore, one office came to be derived from the other, it is
a puzzle to conjecture. Thirdly — by what sort of evidence
is the succession to be proved; what are the conditions
which render it true and genuine ? By what signs am I to
know that the Ecclesiastical concatenation is one whole un
broken chain, without a single heretical flaw ? By what signs
am 1 to know that the sacerdotal mystery is rightly given,
that there is no spuriousness, no falsehood, and no forgery ?
Is every peasant, who hears a sermon from his Parson, to
be in possession of that historic lore, which shall enable
him to determine, by erudite tracing of age to age, that
orthodox hands have been laid on othodox heads, and that
he to whom he commits the salvation of his soul has all the
conditions of a true priesthood? Fourthly — Whence does
the Church of England derive her succession? — That she
derives it from the Church of Rome, all authentic ecclesiasti
cal history confirms. The establishment of the Enghsh
Church can be clearly traced no further than the mission of

42 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY' FAITH;
Austin the Romish Monk ; and it is well known, indeed,
there is no attempt at denial, that aU which have since been
caUed papal error.s, were then proclaimed and adopted. The
preacher came with the pope's sanction, the English received
the pope's religion, and acknowledged the pope's authority.
It is vain beyond all vanities to argue for succession in the
English Establishment, and assert its independence on the
Church of Rome. Its origin is from a Roman Missionary ;
it admits the validity of Roraan_ordination ; its liturgies and
rituals are but garbled or abridged translations from Roman
formularies. Whence then is the independence ? If unbroken
succession be the absolute condition of ecclesiastical autho
rity, then the EngUsh establishment must either admit the
jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, or acknowledge itself
guilty of rebellion, and confess that it is wanting in one of
the prime essentials of a Christian Church. But our Esta
blishment accuses the Romish system of aU manner of errors
and of evils, of idolatry, of tyranny, of persecution, of doing
dishonour to the supremacy of God, and of undermining the
merits of Christ, — of being an awful and fatal apostacy :
surely then the purity of that descent may well be doubted,
which comes from so corrupt a source. The Church of Rome
is called by all our declamatory divines the " mother of
harlots," — if that of England be one of her daughters, it is
a hard task for a controversialist to defend the legitimacy of
her birth or the purity of her character. Moreover, that
is a queer kind of unbroken succession, which could in
a few years reflect so raany hues of doctrine, which turned
from reign to reign like the weathercock before the wind, as
royal caprice determined, from the bigoted half popery of the
Eighth Henry to the whole Protestantism of the Sixth Ed
ward ; frora the violent Catholic Mary, to the equally violent
reforraed Elizabeth ; from a Cranmer to a Gardiner, and from
a Gardiner to a Laud. It is not, therefore, grateful or grace
ful in our Establishment to heap odium on her mother, her

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY.

43

from whom she must date her existence, to whom she traces
her clergy, and from whom she has received her creed.
III. In disputing against creeds, and churches which are
the creatures of creeds, I do not deny that religion most
genuine and pure, may exist in many forms — and may be as
fervent amongst the adherents of EstabUshments as amongst
the most zealous of dissenting churches. Religion, I consider,
a necessity of the human heart ; it may grovel in the dust or
aspire to the skies — it may appeal to our fears or to our hopes
— it may create hideous images or rejoice in beautiful pic-
turings ; it may decorate the altar with flowers, or bathe it iii
blood ; but stiU it belongs to us, is of us, and that of which
we cannot, if we would, divest ourselves. While man has
within his soul admiration of greatness and power, unsatisfied
desires and perishing pleasures ; while he has many griefs and
many tears ; while there are those living whom he loves,
and those departed whom he mourns ; while his existence
is thus bound to the past and to the future; while he
has speculations that seek, but find no Umit, musings on
his own and universal destiny, — ^he must have religion to
destroy these, and you destroy rehgion,, but ; you also de
stroy humanity. '^If the strongest excitements and the
deepest contrasts could fill and satisfy the human soul, our
age and country supply them ; whatever would fix us to the
material and the present we have in aU possible varieties, both
in their glory and their grossness. If the spirit is to be seen
anxious with poverty we have but a few steps to walk from
rejoicing splendour to pining misery. Civilization is amongst
us with aU its luxuries and with aU its woes. Thousands toil
for daily bread, and thousands more languish for daily
pleasures. Yet nobler things have we than these. Our
science, our phUosophy, and our literature, are rich beyond
expression. Our mechanism is akin to inagic, and our in
dustry is like the regularity of nature ; the- stir of many in
terests is abroad, and the struggle of many principles. The

44 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
power of fresh life is in the social heart, and the courage of
free speech upon the lips. The tide of thought and liberty
moves onward with majestic swell, and no one can say
" Hitherto shalt thou corae and no further, and here shall thy
proud waves be staid." Whatever there be in wealth, in
power, in glory, in ambition, that desires triumphant sway
and secures all it desires ; whatever there be in speculation of
boundless enterprize or capacity of gigantic achievement, our
times may boast, yet they remove not the need of religion,
but the religion which the heart demands is not what creeds
or churches can give either to a nation or an individual.
Creeds are the alhes of establishments, and establishments
are the friends of the world. Their whole history and ten
dency are evidence of this. But, far be it frora me to say
that this has no qualification. All old institutions more or
less knit themselves into popular veneration, the religious as
weU as others. We cannot look back upon the church of our
country, even in its Romish form, without some of the re
verence with which our nature compels us to gaze on fallen
greatness ; and now that the mitre is worn by other heads,
and the crosier passed into other hands, now that its good
deeds reveal themselves in the calm of the past, we can re
gard its evil ones more , in sorrow than in anger. Zealots,
who would eternalize the darkest creeds that superstition ever
shaped, who would build up the throne of proudest priest
hood, declaira against Popery in the most popish spirit : but
while national feelings have any power, while a single venera
ble structure stands upon our soil in which we hear the voices
of our ancestors, and from which a thousand years look down
upon us, the Roraan church, with all its errors, is linked by
sacred raemories to our history. It laid the foundation of
our civilized existence ; it grew with our growth and it
strengthened with our strength. When our country was yet
divided amongst barbarian kings, the monk of Rome lifted
up the cross of Christ, and the heart of the savage was sub-

THE ALLIES OP WORLDLY' POLICY. 45
dued to the Prince of Peace. It accompanied our national
independence, it trained our fathers' spirits when Uv^ing, and
now they are dead it shelters their bones. Through all his
toric changes, and through most sanguinary struggles, it
preserved alive the spirit of our common Christianity.
Within it arose many of our greatest men ; it nurtured
many of our purest and holiest characters ; it reared the altar
at which an Anselm ministered and before which an Alfred
prayed. But wealth coraraonly brings worldliness, and as it
is with layraen, so is it with ecclesiastics. The church was
fed and fostered by Saxon piety, and when the conquest gave
the island new masters it suffered nothing by the change.
The progress of aggrandizement went forward with a quicker
pace and a more grasping hand. Spiritual authority allied
itself more firmly to temporal majesty ; celestial vocation
would have feudal titles ; the coil would be transformed to
the coronet ; the humble robe to the princely purple ; the
voice of humility swelled into absolute command, monks took
their places above barons, and the primate sat only below the
throne. But under that porap and ostentation, we say not that
all was hollow — that there was not much of genuine piety
far beyond the reach of history. In the ceUs of these gor
geous abbeys there were raany who did in reality leave the
world and its wickedness behind them. There were some who
wept and prayed in no feigned prostration, who worshipped,
it may be with superstition, but still with sensibility and an
upright conscience. In that stream of melody which pealed
at solemn midnight through many a dome that now lies moul
dering, there were some hallelujahs which reached the throne
of God and mingled with the hymn of angels. The pavements
over which we tread in many a secluded ruin may have been
worn by kneeling martyrs that now sleep in peace beneath
thera : within these massive buildings so grey and time-wrecked,
how often might be found at the evening hour, when the

46 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH ;
dim religious light melted through the painted windows, and
the vesper song softened through the lofty vaults, scattered
worshippers who were feeding their immortal life : how fre
quently within those temples raay the serf in faith and prayer
have forgotten his bonds, and only reraembered that he was
the brother of Jesus, and the son of God. And amongst
that priesthood so often stigmatized unjustly by indiscrimi
nate bigotry, many were worthy of their office ; they were
the poor man's friends when poverty was hopeless ; they
were his brethren when to the worldly powers poverty was
slavery; they were his supporters and consolers when he
had many to oppress and few to cheer him ; they were with
him in joy and sorrow, in sickness and death, when his joy
and sorrow, his sickness and death, were to the mass of his
worldly superiors, a matter of contemptible indifference. In
the times to which I refer, the Church was a most excellent
antagonist against political assumption, a barrier against des
potism, a shield for the people against the crown ; but now
it is an ally of the crown only when the crown is against
the people : in either, the Crown and the Church struggle
may have been only for supremacy, but whatever were their
respective motives, the people were the gainers ; the clergy
might make them slaves for another world, but they saved
them from being slaves in this. The power of the priest
could curb the ambition of the ruler ; and, in the ruler him
self, the wiU of the monarch was held in check by the con
science of the devotee. Ecclesiastical institutions were then
not whoUy ineffective, but now the reUgious and social inte
rests of man are better secured than by any struggle between
the superstitious fears of the Prince, and the spiritual threat
enings of the Priest. Frora these social changes. Church Es
tablishments outliving the slaveries which they meUorated,
become inflictors of slavery in return, and hang as mill
stones and dead weights on every effort for freedom and ad
vancements But if we are to have authority on conscience

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 4?
at all in the form of institutions, I would rather it should
be absolute and unchangeable, uniform, solemn, and im
posing ; and if there is to be submission, I prefer it should
be to that which is believed to be stedfast and infallible ; for
then, if we had not the freedom of thought, we might at
least have the peace of piety ; if we had not the indepen
dence of men, we might hope for the meekness of children.
We cannot say that the EngUsh Church in its Protestant
state has lost aU claims to traditional veneration. We may,
however, safely assert, that in becoming protestant, it has
not become less earthly, and that if transformed in anything,
it is not from the Spirit of the world. We see very clearly,
that it is not in any way distinguished for free or progressive
amendment ; and among the Reformed of European churches
it is most the creature of the world, most the lover of the
world, most dependent on the world, both in its origin and
its continuance.
On the continent it comraenced with the ecclesiastical
powers ; in ours it commenced with the civil ; and the church
in this country adopted the new doctrine rather as a matter
of command than as a matter of conscience. Whatever
have been the theological vibrations of the Establishment^ or
whatever its theological inconsistencies, we deny not that it
has had within it right noble spirits, and that it has them still,
and while we condemn such systems, we do not so much
condemn, as lament the fine natures which they have mis
directed. Numbers we are aware are now in its ranks, which
are the ornaments of life and to whom the world is in many
ways indebted ; and if it were not so, there are those gone
by who would fully dignify her. Amongst her members we
recognise raany of the great Ughts both of our nation and our
nature ; a Jeremy Taylor of rich eloquence and rare sweetness
of spirit ; a Barrow with a mind as lofty as it was simple and
an oratory as prodigal in thought as it was massive in logic ;
a ChiUingworth, the prince of reasoners, who never allowed

48 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
his polemics to ruffle his meekness, to warp his candour, or
to deaden his charity ; a Berkeley, whose genius was only in
ferior to his sanctity, and whose subtle philosophy never dis
turbed the simplicity of- his truly child-like nature ; a Bedel,
who was humble and generous when it was the fashion to
oppress, who though the bishop of a foreign faith in the
midst of a people whom his nation had aggrieved, raade his
way to their hearts, and was the object of their blessings ;
and in our own day there has been the good and sainted
Heber, who corabined piety with humanity, and who adorned
practical virtue with aU the beauty of the poet and the
Christian. Names like these might throw a lustre over any system ; it
is only to be regretted that any system has not been more
fruitful in their production. In any system, we cannot ex
pect that such men should be abundant, but observation
compels us to confess that the Church has taken raore pride
in the reputation of her heroes, than in resembling them.
If we are to judge results by her possessions and opportuni
ties compared with her moral or spiritual achievements, her
works of worldliness far surpass her works of godliness. Her
earthly means have been unbounded, but where are her hea
venly trophies ? She has nothing in comparison to her op
portunities to produce in justification of her raoral and na
tional stewardship. Wealth she has had even to fulness.
Her lines have fallen in pleasant places ; hers have been the
green pastures and hers the still waters ; the tenth of the na^
tion's produce has been reserved for her altars. Political
power has likewise been hers. Her raitred ministers are
amongst the state's chief senators. Whether it be seemly
or not, that preachers of the crucified should sit in courts of
proud and worldly legislation, we here forbear to discuss ;
but once there, the spirit of the crucified, and of the citizen
sanctified by that spirit, might have been nobly manifested ;
even there. Ministers of Christ might have done a glorious

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY' POLICY', 49
work. Men whose lives had been disciplined by severe and
various study ; men of chastened passions and solemn medi
tation ; raen who had gone through the humanizing duties of
pastoral gradation from the village pulpit to the episcopal
throne, might be thought a happy counterpoise to the hoary
worldliness or youthful rashness of mere temporal Peers;
they would rebuke, we might suppose, the assumptions of
aristocracy, and be as the voice of God for the rights of the
poor. Men who proclaimed that gospel which is full of
mercy and compassion, would resist oppression to the last,
and denounce sanguinary laws with the whole force of their
authority ; men who were followers of peace would arrest
the blood-hand of war, and quell with all gentle suasion the
horrid spirit of destruction ; men appointed to be teachers of
the ignorant, and lights to the blind, would be the friends of
universal instruction ; men who were the Priests of that God
before whom all are equal, the Apostles of that Jesus who
lived and died for all, would be ever the friends of liberty and
brotherhood. But, I may ask, when have the Bishops, as a
body, not been against the people, and with the wealthy
and the noble ? When have they been the first to come for
ward to denounce long existing, tolerated, but oppressive,
abuses ? When have they raised their voice, as Ministers of
God, against Ministers of the Crown, to avert the horrid
curse of war ? When have they given their influence for a
free and generous education, which should be full and bound
less as the heart of charity ? When, rather, have they not
thrown their most inveterat'e opposition against it ? When is
it that a single effort of national liberty or religious has met
their cordial support ? To the raoraent of despair they stood
against the Catholic and the Dissenter, to the last hour they
will also resist the Jew. The defender of the wronged, the
pleader for the weak, the opponent of sanctified prejudices,
the enthusiast for human reforms, the advocate for peace,
the apostle of general education, have never in their most
D

50 CREEDS THE FOES OF IIE.WENLY FAITH;
hopeless hour raised their eyes towards the bench of Bishops
with any expectations of support.
With wealth, with influence, with law, and with scholar
ship, the Church has done, and is doing no great spiritual
work for her country, or for mankind, proportioned to her
means. She makes a show of upholding her Creeds, but to
many, even of her own members, they are but empty sounds
or convenient mockeries. When we look for any permanent
impression on the popular mind, we have yet to ask con
cerning the Church, what has she done ? Has she Chris
tianized any great tracts of Heathenism ? The English Esta
blishment, as a Church, has exhibited no raissionary zeal,
and can show no missionary triumphs. Individuals and
bodies that belong to her communion, have undoubtedly
been active in the great movements that distinguish modern
times, but the irapulse has been frora outside the Church, and
not frora within it — from the zeal of the Sectaries, and not from
the Creeds or Constitution of the Church. On the contrary,
of those who never owned the Establishment, you might
find proofs of Missionary zeal from Indus to the Pole, and
from Andes to the Alps. But has she protestantized our
own empire ? Consult the writings of Doctor Baines, or
those of Doctor Wiseman ; nay, let the lamentations of Re
formation Society itself, ever wailing over the increase of
Popery, give the answer ; look through the villages and the
glens of England, where Roman Catholic Chapels are start
ing up as from the earth, and you will find the answer fully
justified. Ask it in the cities and the mountains of Ireland,
the shout of millions will proclaim what Established Protes
tantism has done with all her Creeds and Clergy after cen
turies of existence, and a countless expenditure. Three
hundred years have nearly expired since the reforraed stand
ard has been planted on that soil, and after all the spoliation
and persecution to which the country has been subjected,
after all the blood and sorrow that have been expended in

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY. 51
the work of compulsory proselytism. Popery has grown
stronger, and Protestantism is expiring. The people pay
with repugnance a priesthood in whom they have not faith,
but no power can force them to the worship in which
they have no heart, and they prefer to be taxed rather
than be taught. They are repelled further and further from
that system which commenced in a blunder, and has been
continued by rapacity, which reverses the precepts of Christ,
using the sword where he commands it to be sheathed —
which reverses the course of the olden Israelites finding a
land of milk and honey, but leaving it a wUderness, having
the pillar of fire always before, and the pillar of cloud ever
behind; the one kept in flame by hatred and strife, and
the other continuaUy dark with maledictions and tears.
But admitting the difficulties of proselytism, exaraine the
moral state of those over whom the Church has had
undivided control — those with whom there has been least
of foreign interference, and I may appeal to her most
strenuous defenders, whether she has not allowed thousands
of human souls to grow up around her for whom she pro
vided no shelter, whose hearts and wants she made no ef
fort to reach : they lived without her teaching, they mourned '
without her solace, they sickened without her prayer, and
until she received the fees for their burial, she was ignorant
of their existence. Yet, after all, by many she has been called
" The poor man's Church." It is true that for some years past,
and especially at present, there has been a species of excite
ment and activity in the church : but so far as these have
moral life in them, so far as they concern the spiritual in
terests of the people, whence did they originate ? Where
were they before John Wesley and Whitfield raised their
soul-piercing cries, and awoke the sense of iminortality that
was dormant in the minds of besotted multitudes ? Did the
church join with these men, or rather did it not persecute,
calumniate, expel them — say and do all manner of evil against
D 2

52 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY' FAITH ;
them ? What at the present hour is the activity of the
church ? Much, it raay be, is sincere and conscientious, but
greatly raore an emulation with dissenters in which the preg
nant elements are jealousy and fear. Much, it raay be, of
disinterested action for the souls of men, but raore it is to be
feared for the order and the church. Great excitement there
is in the Establishment, but little of calm and healthy action —
a raighty stir of poleraics that raake few converts, and of socie
ties that beat the air. The church has neither union within,
nor peace without. Her hand is against all, and the hands of
all are against her. She holds forth creeds as the symbols of
unity, and yet within her own courts are all sorts of divisions,
a chaos of voices that make her the very Babel of theology ;
here is one preaching the grace of Palagius, and there another
that of Augustine ; one arguing for the hell of Calvin, and
another all but teaching the purgatory of the pope : one a
Boanerges for the Bible, and another an apostle for tradition ;
with one, Rome is the mother of abominations, and with
another she is the mistress of churches. Amidst the din,
then, of polemics, politics, and theological contradictions, of
inward confusion and outward strifes, how are we to catch
the voice of moral power and of gospel truth ? The truth
must be told, there is no grand or concentrative energy of
any sort in the church ; neither faith nor freedom, neither
bold speculation nor a raighty spiritual zeal ; there is no room
even for a gigantic fanaticism or a picturesque superstition ;
upon the whole the strife is of this world, and for it ; a strife
for wealth or place, in which the spiritual is swallowed in the
earthly. With all her riches and honours ; with all her show
of dignities and pride of prelacy, she is yet poor in enlight
ened esteem, poorer still in general affection ; without autho
rity to sway the superstitious or liberality to attach the think
ing, she has neither the submission of faith nor the approba
tion of reason. She has, considering her position and means,
fulfilled no great Christian or Protestant mission ; is she then

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY'. 53
in a humbler sphere, the friend of general education ? Pass
ing over the Universities, which with a heavy hand she has
bolted against dissenters, is she favourable to the instruction
of the youthful poor ? No : except in connection with her
ecclesiastical supremacy. Until recently she had no zeal
whatever in the matter : but other parties becoming active,
under the broad gaze of public observation, both her fears
and her interest were awakened. Whilst others were toiling,
she for very shame could not sit whoUy idle, and she therefore
adopted education, so far as it was an instrument to counter
act her rivals or to preserve her authority. But to the last
and to the death, she is the sworn enemy to any system of
popular instruction which is comprehensive, liberal, and un-
sectarian. In this great country, where, thanks to law and
not to creeds, each man raay hold and speak his own opinion,
she raeets with defiance and resistance every movement to
wards a large and equal distribution of knowledge, for lack of
which the people are literally perishing. In a country like
this where sects are so many and so various, and where each
has an equal claim on the blessings of civilized institutions,
with a bigotry equalled only by its injustice, she would usurp
the monopoly of national instruction. This is in the true
spirit of creeds, and however repugnant to Christian equity
is fully consistent with worldly policy.
When the church of England seceded from that of Rome,
if she cut off some theological errors, she showed no such dis
position respecting her earthly riches. It cannot be doubted
that in the Reforraed Establishment, a greed of lucre remained
as deep as was ever in the Romish, less ideal in its form, and
more selfish in its spirit. In our times raen absorb the in
terests of their church in the interests of themselves, in olden
times men lost theraselves in the glory of their church ; in
that was centered every thing, even passion itself, as one great
and raighty sentiraent. From this it was arose the solemn
structure of universal empire; from this sprung forth the

54 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH;
vision of a glory that was to fill the universe. It was this
called up a power before which monarchs bowed, which armed
itself with the terrors of hell and crowned itself with the stars
of heaven. It was this which gave genius the subliraity of
religious inspiration, and which has left for a colder age the
forras of beauty to which faith gave life ; it was this which
could speak to the world as to single audience with an elo
quence that must live while language has existence. It may
be called fanaticism and ambition, but it is a fanaticism and an
ambition that had something unworldly to dignify thera. The
reforraed church had preserved the creeds of the ancient one,
but not its creativeness ; it has not given conscience freedom,
but it has stripped faith of poetry. Even the ceremonies and
forras which it has preserved are without energy and inspi
ration — the mere rairaicries of superstition unfraught with a
single breath of its enthusiasra. Writings of no coramon
eloquence have eulogized the cathedral service ; it deserves aU
that can be said of it, and so do the temples themselves ; no
one can hear the one when it receives right expression without
solemn emotion, and no one can behold the antique raajesty
of the other, but in silent veneration. The poetry of these
things is beautiful, but what is the reality ? A sad contrast —
in general, a cold and heartless utterance of the- service, un
occupied pews, a few listless hearers, feeble choirs, that seera
rather to sing the requiem than the triumph of the church,
ostentation without grandeur, and formality without grace.
Here, as in every other department, we find the dominant
spirit of worldliness. Though this service depends for much
of its impression on ritual beauty, yet the higher clergy con
tinually encroach on the revenues and means of sustaining
it. " When we see," says Dr. Wiseman, " the cathedral
service shrunk into the choir originally designed for the jiri-
vate daily worship of God's special ministers, or when we
find the entire congregation scattered over a small portion of
the repaired chancel, while the rest of the edifice is a majestic

THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY' POLICY. 55
ruin, as I but lately witnessed, assuredly one must be more
prone to weep than to exult at the change which has taken
place, since these stately fabricks were erected." I would
not have the world hurled back into Popery ; but if we are
to have Romish creeds, rather than have them in repulsive
nakedness, give them to us covered and adorned with the
grace of Romish ceremonies ; if we are to resign our liberty,
give us at least grandeur and pageantry to arause our slavery.
But creeds exist otherwise than in formal expression. A
creed is the standard of a church, it may be the spirit of a
sect. And frora the antagonistic aspect which each sect bears
to another, and the centralized organization which it has
within itself, this spirit raay have a fierce and powerful ope
ration. The Church-creed is defined; the Sect-creed is
vague, and may depend for interpretation on narrow and
bitter prejudice : the Church-creed may possibly lie dormant,
but there is no escape from the wakeful vigilance of a re
ligious surveiUance. What some sects do by enlarged and
rigid co-operation, others effect by compact and separate
unions. The sraallness of the asserablies, or the gradations
of dependency, puts one individual within the iramediate ken
of another, and thus, if by chance a free thought should be
born, there is little hope that it shall live. Take methodism
as an illustration ; so gigantic and yet so minute : with its
band-meetings, its class-meetings, its district assemblies, and
its general conference — leaving not a spot where a heretic
could hide himself. In such a system there is neither room
nor a name for liberty, from the preacher who is under
the brow of his conference to the member who lives in the
eye of his class-leader. It is not that such a system creates
a terror of expression, from the first it initiates a slavish in
tellect — and tends to all the vices of rancour, bigotry, hypo
crisy, and subserviency, to which such an intellect is allied.
It raay be said that my own community in being also a
sect, is open to similar accusations. I do not say that a

56 CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY' FAITH, ETC.
dictation of belief is essential to a sect, but it raay possibly
attach to it with all the despotism of the most formal creed.
If a creed in spirit or expression be necessary to the con
stitution of a sect, those then are no sect with whom I
would desire to hold communion. If all in my own belief or
any other, which is great, good, pure, and eternal, inspired
by the mind of God and blessed to the heart of raan ; if all
which disserainates virtue ; which justifies Providence, which
eraancipates and glorifies society, goes onward with unde-
viating pace, if the Kingdora of Jehovah extends, and the
throne of Christ is reared, and the teraple of righteousness
is beautified, then, forgetting ourselves and forgetting our
sect, we should rejoice with an honest and generous exul
tation. We trust the day will come, when the spirit and the
life of Christ, and not the forraularies of men, will be the
standards of true religion ; when we shall have unity instead
of divisions, when we shall have charity instead of creeds,
when heretic and orthodox shall be lost in the coraraon narae
of Christian.

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