Part 2 (1/2)

In studying the narrative of John I was strongly impressed by the fact, that the glory and greatness of the Son of G.o.d is constantly ascribed to the will and pleasure of the Father. I had been accustomed to hear this explained of his _mediatorial_ greatness only, but this now looked to me like a make-s.h.i.+ft, and to want the simplicity of truth--an impression which grew deeper with closer examination.

The emphatic declaration of Christ, ”My Father is greater than I,”

especially arrested my attention. Could I really expound this as meaning, ”My Father, the Supreme G.o.d, in greater than I am, _if you look solely to my human nature?_” Such a truism can scarcely have deserved such emphasis. Did the disciples need to be taught that G.o.d was greater than man? Surely, on the contrary, the Saviour must have meant to say: ”_Divine as I am_, yet my heavenly Father is greater than I, _even when you take cognizance of my divine nature._” I did not then know, that my comment was exactly that of the most orthodox Fathers; I rather thought they were against me, but for them I did not care much. I reverenced the doctrine of the Trinity as something vital to the soul; but felt that to love the Fathers or the Athanasian Creed more than the Gospel of John would be a supremely miserable superst.i.tion. However, that Creed states that there is no inequality between the Three Persons: in John it became increasingly clear to me that the divine Son is unequal to the Father. To say that ”the Son of G.o.d” meant ”Jesus as man,” was a preposterous evasion: for there is no higher t.i.tle for the Second Person of the Trinity than this very one--Son of G.o.d. Now, in the 5th chapter, when the Jews accused Jesus ”of making himself equal to G.o.d,” by calling himself Son of G.o.d Jesus even hastens to protest against the inference as a misrepresentation --beginning with: ”The Son can do nothing of himself:” and proceeds elaborately to ascribe all his greatness to the Father's will. In fact, the Son is emphatically ”he who is sent,” and the Father is ”he who sent him:” and all would feel the deep impropriety of trying to exchange these phrases. The Son who is sent,--sent, not _after_ he was humbled to become man, but _in order to_ be so humbled,--was NOT EQUAL TO, but LESS THAN, the Father who sent him. To this I found the whole Gospel of John to bear witness; and with this conviction, the truth and honour of the Athanasian Creed fell to the ground. One of its main tenets was proved false; and yet it dared to utter anathemas on all who rejected it!

I afterwards remembered my old thought, that we must surely understand _our own words_, when we venture to speak at all about divine mysteries. Having gained boldness to gaze steadily on the topic, I at length saw that the compiler of the Athanasian Creed did _not_ understand his own words. If any one speaks of _three men_, all that he means is, ”three objects of thought, of whom each separately may be called Man.” So also, all that could possibly be meant by _three G.o.ds_, is, ”three objects of thought, of whom each separately may be called G.o.d.” To avow the last statement, as the Creed does, and yet repudiate Three G.o.ds, is to object to the phrase, yet confess to the only meaning which the phrase can convey. Thus the Creed really teaches polytheism, but saves orthodoxy by forbidding any one to call it by its true name. Or to put the matter otherwise: it teaches three Divine Persons, and denies three G.o.ds; and leaves us to guess what else is a Divine Person but a G.o.d, or a G.o.d but a Divine Person. Who, then, can deny that this intolerant creed is a malignant riddle?

That there is nothing in the Scripture about Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity I had long observed; and the total absence of such phraseology had left on me a general persuasion that the Church had systematized too much. But in my study of John I was now arrested by a text, which showed me how exceedingly far from a _Tri-unity_ was the Trinity of that Gospel,--if trinity it be. Namely, in his last prayer, Jesus addresses to his Father the words: ”This is life eternal, that they may know _Thee, the only True G.o.d_, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” I became amazed, as I considered these words more and more attentively, and without prejudice; and I began to understand how prejudice, when embalmed with reverence, blinds the mind. Why had I never before seen what is here so plain, that the _One G.o.d_ of Jesus was not a Trinity, but was _the First Person_, of the ecclesiastical Trinity?

But on a fuller search, I found this to be Paul's doctrine also: for in 1 Corinth, viii., when discussing the subject of Polytheism, he says that ”though there be to the heathen many that are called G.o.ds, yet to us there is but _One G.o.d_, the Father, _of_ whom are all things; and _One Lord_, Jesus Christ, _by_ whom are all things.” Thus he defines Monotheism to consist in holding the person of the Father to be the One G.o.d; although this, if any, should have been the place for a ”Trinity in Unity.”

But did I proceed to deny the Divinity of the Son? By no means: I conceived of him as in the highest and fullest sense divine, short of being Father and not Son. I now believed that by the phrase ”only begotten Son,” John, and indeed Christ himself, meant to teach us that there was an unpa.s.sable chasm between him and all creatures, in that he had a true, though a derived divine nature; an indeed the Nicene Creed puts the contrast, he was ”begotten, not made.” Thus all Divine glory dwells in the Son, but it is _because_ the Father has willed it. A year or more afterward, when I had again the means of access to books, and consulted that very common Oxford book, ”Pearson on the Creed,” (for which I had felt so great a distaste that I never before read it)--I found this to be the undoubted doctrine of the great Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, who laid much emphasis on two statements, which with the modern Church are idle and dead--viz. that ”the Son was _begotten_ of his Father _before all worlds_,” and that ”the Holy Spirit _proceedeth from_ the Father and the Son.” In the view of the old Church, the Father alone was the Fountain of Deity,--(and _therefore_ fitly called, The One G.o.d,--and, the Only True G.o.d)--while the Deity of the other two persons was real, yet derived and subordinate. Moreover, I found in Gregory n.a.z.ianzen and others, that to confess this derivation of the Son and Spirit and the underivedness of the Father alone, was in their view quite essential to save Monotheism; the _One_ G.o.d being the underived Father.

Although in my own mind all doubt as to the doctrine of John and Paul on the main question seemed to be quite cleared away from the time that I dwelt on their explanation of Monotheism, this in no respect agitated me, or even engaged me in any farther search. There was nothing to force me into controversy, or make this one point of truth unduly preponderant. I concealed none of my thoughts from my companions; and concerning them I will only say, that whether they did or did not feel acquiescence, they behaved towards me with all the affection and all the equality which I would have wished myself to maintain, had the case been inverted. I was, however, sometimes uneasy, when the thought crossed my mind,--”What if we, like Henry Martyn, were charged with Polytheism by Mohammedans, and were forced to defend ourselves by explaining in detail our doctrine of the Trinity? _Perhaps_ no two of us would explain it alike, and this would expose Christian doctrine to contempt.” Then farther it came across me; How very remarkable it is, that the Jews, those strict Monotheists, never seem to have attacked the apostles for polytheism!

It would have been so plausible an imputation, one that the instinct of party would so readily suggest, if there had been any external form of doctrine to countenance it. Surely it is transparent that the Apostles did not teach as Dr. Waterland. I had always felt a great repugnance to the argumentations concerning the _Personality_ of the Holy Spirit; no doubt from an inward sense, however dimly confessed, that they were all words without meaning. For the disputant who maintains this dogma, tells us in the very next breath that _Person_ has not in this connexion its common signification; so that he is elaborately enforcing upon us we know not what. That the Spirit of G.o.d meant in the New Testament _G.o.d in the heart_, had long been to me a sufficient explanation: and who by logic or metaphysics will carry us beyond this?

While we were at Aleppo, I one day got into religious discourse with a Mohammedan carpenter, which left on me a lasting impression. Among other matters, I was peculiarly desirous of disabusing him of the current notion of his people, that our gospels are spurious narratives of late date. I found great difficulty of expression; but the man listened to me with much attention, and I was encouraged to exert myself. He waited patiently till I had done, and then spoke to the following effect: ”I will tell you, sir, how the case stands. G.o.d has given to you English a great many good gifts. You make fine s.h.i.+ps, and sharp penknives, and good cloth and cottons; and you have rich n.o.bles and brave soldiers; and you write and print many learned books: (dictionaries and grammars:) all this is of G.o.d. But there is one thing that G.o.d has withheld from you, and has revealed to us; and that is, the knowledge of the true religion, by which one may be saved.” When he thus ignored my argument, (which was probably quite unintelligible to him,) and delivered his simple protest, I was silenced, and at the same time amused. But the more I thought it over, the more instruction I saw in the case. His position towards me was exactly that of a humble Christian towards an unbelieving philosopher; nay, that of the early Apostles or Jewish prophets towards the proud, cultivated, worldly wise and powerful heathen. This not only showed the vanity of any argument to him, except one purely addressed to his moral and spiritual faculties; but it also indicated to me that Ignorance has its spiritual self-sufficiency as well as Erudition; and that if there is a Pride of Reason, so is there a Pride of Unreason.

But though this rested in my memory, it was long before I worked out all the results of that thought.

Another matter brought me some disquiet. An Englishman of rather low tastes who came to Aleppo at this time, called upon us; and as he was civilly received, repeated his visit more than once. Being unenc.u.mbered with fastidiousness, this person before long made various rude attacks on the truth and authority of the Christian religion, and drew me on to defend it. What I had heard of the moral life of the speaker made me feel that his was not the mind to have insight into divine truth; and I desired to divert the argument from external topics, and bring it to a point in which there might be a chance of touching his conscience. But I found this to be impossible. He returned actively to the a.s.sault against Christianity, and I could not bear to hear him vent historical falsehoods and misrepresentations damaging to the Christian cause, without contradicting them. He was a half-educated man, and I easily confuted him to my own entire satisfaction: but he was not either abashed or convinced; and at length withdrew as one victorious.--On reflecting over this, I felt painfully, that if a Moslem had been present and had understood all that had been said, he would have remained in total uncertainty which of the two disputants was in the right: for the controversy had turned on points wholly remote from the sphere of his knowledge or thought.

Yet to have declined the battle would have seemed like conscious weakness on my part. Thus the historical side of my religion, though essential to it, and though resting on valid evidence, (as I unhesitatingly believed,) exposed me to attacks in which I might incur virtual defeat or disgrace, but in which, from the nature of the case, I could never win an available victory. This was to me very disagreeable, yet I saw not my way out of the entanglement.

Two years after I left England, a hope was conceived that more friends might be induced to join us; and I returned home from Bagdad with the commission to bring this about, if there were suitable persons disposed for it. On my return, and while yet in quarantine on the coast of England, I received an uncomfortable letter from a most intimate spiritual friend, to the effect, that painful reports had been every where spread abroad against my soundness in the faith.

The channel by which they had come was indicated to me; but my friend expressed a firm hope, that when I had explained myself, it would all prove to be nothing.

Now began a time of deep and critical trial to me and to my Creed; a time hard to speak of to the public; yet without a pretty full notice of it, the rest of the account would be quite unintelligible.

The Tractarian movement was just commencing in 1833. My brother was taking a position, in which he was bound to show that he could sacrifice private love to ecclesiastical dogma; and upon learning that I had spoken at some small meetings of religious people, (which he interpreted, I believe, to be an a.s.suming of the Priest's office,) he separated himself entirely from my private friends.h.i.+p and acquaintance. To the public this may have some interest, as indicating the disturbing excitement which animated that cause: but my reason for naming the fact here is solely to exhibit the practical positions into which I myself was thrown. In my brother's conduct there was not a shade of unkindness, and I have not a thought of complaining of it. My distress was naturally great, until I had fully ascertained from him that I had given no personal offence. But the mischief of it went deeper. It practically cut me off from other members of my family, who were living in his house, and whose state of feeling towards me, through separation and my own agitations of mind, I for some time totally mistook.

I had, however, myself slighted relations.h.i.+p in comparison with Christian brotherhood;--_sectarian_ brotherhood, some may call it;--I perhaps had none but myself to blame: but in the far more painful occurrences which were to succeed one another for many months together, I was blameless. Each successive friend who asked explanations of my alleged heresy, was satisfied,--or at least left me with that impression,--after hearing me: not one who met me face to face had a word to reply to the plain Scriptures which I quoted.

Yet when I was gone away, one after another was turned against me by somebody else whom I had not yet met or did not know: for in every theological conclave which deliberates on joint action, the most bigoted scorns always to prevail.

I will trust my pen to only one specimen of details. The Irish clergyman was not able to meet me. He wrote a very desultory letter of grave alarm and inquiry, stating that he had heard that I was endeavouring to sound the divine nature by the miserable plummet of human philosophy,--with much beside that I felt to be mere commonplace which every body might address to every body who differed from him.

I however replied in the frankest, most cordial and trusting tone, a.s.suring him that I was infinitely far from imagining that I could ”by searching understand G.o.d;” on the contrary, concerning his higher mysteries, I felt I knew absolutely nothing but what he revealed to me in his word; but in studying this word, I found John and Paul to declare the Father, and not the Trinity, to be the One G.o.d. Referring him to John xvii, 3, 1 Corinth. viii, 5, 6, I fondly believed that one so ”subject to the word” and so resolutely renouncing man's authority _in order that_ he might serve G.o.d, would immediately see as I saw.

But I a.s.sured him, in all the depth of affection, that I felt how much fuller insight he had than I into all divine truth; and not he only, but others to whom I alluded; and that if I was in error, I only desired to be taught more truly; and either with him, or at his feet, to learn of G.o.d. He replied, to my amazement and distress, in a letter of much tenderness, but which was to the effect,--that if I allowed the Spirit of G.o.d to be with him rather than with me, it was wonderful that I set my single judgment against the mind of the Spirit and of the whole Church of G.o.d; and that as for admitting into Christian communion one who held my doctrine, it had this absurdity, that while I was in such a state of belief, it was my duty to anathematize _them_ as idolaters.--Severe as was the shock given me by this letter, I wrote again most lovingly, humbly, and imploringly: for I still adored him, and could have given him my right hand or my right eye,--anything but my conscience. I showed him that if it was a matter of action, I would submit; for I unfeignedly believed that he had more of the Spirit of G.o.d than I: but over my secret convictions I had no power.

I was shut up to obey and believe G.o.d rather than man, and from the nature of the case, the profoundest respect for my brother's judgment could not in itself alter mine. As to the whole _Church_ being against me, I did not know what that meant: I was willing to accept the Nicene Creed, and this I thought ought to be a sufficient defensive argument against the Church. His answer was decisive;--he was exceedingly surprized at my recurring to mere ecclesiastical creeds, as though they could have the slightest weight; and he must insist on my acknowledging, that, in the two texts quoted, the word Father meant the Trinity, if I desired to be in any way recognized as holding the truth.

The Father meant the Trinity!! For the first time I perceived, that so vehement a champion of the sufficiency of the Scripture, so staunch an opposer of Creeds and Churches, was wedded to an extra-Scriptural creed of his own, by which he tested the spiritual state of his brethren. I was in despair, and like a man thunderstruck. I had nothing more to say. Two more letters from the same hand I saw, the latter of which was, to threaten some new acquaintances who were kind to me, (persons wholly unknown to him,) that if they did not desist from sheltering me and break off intercourse, they should, as far as his influence went, themselves everywhere be cut off from Christian communion and recognition. This will suffice to indicate the sort of social persecution, through which, after a succession of struggles, I found myself separated from persons whom I had trustingly admired, and on whom I had most counted for union: with whom I fondly believed myself bound up for eternity; of whom some were my previously intimate friends, while for others, even on slight acquaintance, I would have performed menial offices and thought myself honoured; whom I still looked upon as the blessed and excellent of the earth, and the special favourites of heaven; whose company (though oftentimes they were considerably my inferiors either in rank or in knowledge and cultivation) I would have chosen in preference to that of n.o.bles; whom I loved solely because I thought them to love G.o.d, and of whom I asked nothing, but that they would admit me as the meanest and most frail of disciples. My heart was ready to break: I wished for a woman's soul, that I might weep in floods. Oh, Dogma! Dogma! how dost them trample under foot love, truth, conscience, justice! Was ever a Moloch worse than thou? Burn me at the stake; then Christ will receive me, and saints beyond the grave will love me, though the saints here know me not But now I am alone in the world: I can trust no one. The new acquaintances who barely tolerate me, and old friends whom reports have not reached, (if such there be,) may turn against me with animosity to-morrow, as those have done from whom I could least have imagined it. Where is union? where is the Church, which was to convert the heathen?

This was not my only reason, yet it was soon a sufficient and at last an overwhelming reason, against returning to the East. The pertinacity of the attacks made on me, and on all who dared to hold by me in a certain connexion, showed that I could no longer be anything but a thorn in the side of my friends abroad; nay, I was unable to predict how they themselves might change towards me. The idea of a Christian Church propagating Christianity while divided against itself was ridiculous. Never indeed had I had the most remote idea, that my dear friends there had been united to me by agreement in intellectual propositions; nor could I yet believe it. I remembered a saying of the n.o.ble-hearted Groves: ”Talk of loving me while I agree with them! Give me men that will love me when I differ from them and contradict them: those will be the men to build up a true Church.” I asked myself,--was I then possibly different from all? With me,--and, as I had thought, with all my Spiritual friends,--intellectual dogma was not the test of spirituality. A hundred times over had I heard the Irish clergyman emphatically enunciate the contrary. Nothing was clearer in his preaching, talking and writing, than that salvation was a present real experienced fact; a saving of the soul from the dominion of baser desires, and an inward union of it in love and homage to Christ, who, as the centre of all perfection, glory, and beauty, was the revelation of G.o.d to the heart. He who was thus saved, could not help knowing that he was reconciled, pardoned, beloved; and therefore he rejoiced in G.o.d his Saviour: indeed, to imagine joy without this personal a.s.surance and direct knowledge, was quite preposterous. But on the other hand, the soul thus spiritually minded has a keen sense of like qualities in others. It cannot but discern when another is tender in conscience, disinterested, forbearing, scornful of untruth and baseness, and esteeming nothing so much as the fruits of the Spirit: accordingly, John did not hesitate to say: ”_We know_ that we have pa.s.sed from death unto life, _because_ we love the brethren.” Our doctrine certainly had been, that the Church was the a.s.sembly of the saved, gathered by the vital attractions of G.o.d's Spirit; that in it no one was Lord or Teacher, but one was our Teacher, even Christ: that as long as we had no earthly bribes to tempt men to join us, there was not much cause to fear false brethren; for if we were heavenly minded, and these were earthly, they would soon dislike and shun us. Why should we need to sit in judgment and excommunicate them, except in the case of publicly scandalous conduct?

It is true, that I fully believed certain intellectual convictions to be essential to genuine spirituality: for instance, if I had heard that a person unknown to me did not believe in the Atonement of Christ, I should have inferred that he had no spiritual life. But if the person had come under my direct knowledge, my _theory_ was, on no account to reject him on a question of Creed, but in any case to receive all those whom Christ had received, all on whom the Spirit of G.o.d had come down, just as the Church at Jerusalem did in regard to admitting the Gentiles, Acts xi. 18. Nevertheless, was not this perhaps a theory pleasant to talk of, but too good for practice? I could not tell; for it had never been so severely tried. I remembered, however, that when I had thought it right to be baptized as an adult, (regarding my baptism as an infant to have been a mischievous fraud,) the sole confession of faith which I made, or would endure, at a time when my ”orthodoxy” was unimpeached, was: ”I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of G.o.d:”[2] to deny which, and claim to be acknowledged as within the pale of the Christian Church, seemed to be an absurdity. On the whole, therefore, it did not appear to me that this Church-theory had been hollow-hearted with _me_ nor unscriptural, nor in any way unpractical; but that _others_ were still infected with the leaven of creeds and formal tests, with which they reproached the old Church.

Were there, then, no other hearts than mine, aching under miserable bigotry, and refreshed only when they tasted in others the true fruits of the Spirit,--”love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control?”--To imagine this was to suppose myself a man supernaturally favoured, an angel upon earth. I knew there must be thousands in this very point more true-hearted than I: nay, such still might some be, whose names I went over with myself: but I had no heart for more experiments. When such a man as he, the only mortal to whom I had looked up as to an apostle, had unhesitatingly, unrelentingly, and without one mark that his conscience was not on his side, flung away all his own precepts, his own theories, his own magnificent rebukes of Formalism and human Authority, and had made _himself_ the slave and _me_ the victim of those old and ever-living tyrants,--whom henceforth could I trust? The resolution then rose in me, to love all good men from a distance, but never again to count on permanent friends.h.i.+p with any one who was not himself cast out as a heretic.

Nor, in fact, did the storm of distress which these events inflicted on me, subside until I willingly received the task of withstanding it, as G.o.d's trial whether I was faithful. As soon as I gained strength to say, ”O my Lord, I will bear not this only, _but more also_,[3] for thy sake, for conscience, and for truth,”--my sorrows vanished, until the next blow and the next inevitable pang. At last my heart had died within me; the bitterness of death was past; I was satisfied to be hated by the saints, and to reckon that those who had not yet turned against me would not bear me much longer.--Then I conceived the belief, that if we may not make a heaven on earth for ourselves out of the love of saints, it is in order that we may find a truer heaven in G.o.d's love.

The question about this time much vexed me, what to do about receiving the Holy Supper of the Lord, the great emblem of brotherhood, communion, and church connexion. At one time I argued with myself, that it became an unmeaning form, when not partaken of in mutual love; that I could never again have free intercourse of heart with any one;--why then use the rite of communion, where there is no communion?