Part 11

That the accompaniments of the doctrine of justification, the tenets of conversion, instantaneous sanctification, assurance, and sinless perfection,--tenets which are not the essence of Wesley, but which are the essence of Wesleyan Methodism, and which have in them so much that is delusive and dangerous,--that these should have been discerningly judged by that mixture of piety and sobriety which marks Anglicans of the best type, such as Bishop Wilson,[105] will surprise no one. But years before Wesley was born, the fontal doctrine itself,--Wesley's '_Plead thou solely the blood of the Covenant!_'--had been criticised by Hammond thus, and the signal of deliverance from the Lutheran doctrine of justification given: 'The solifidian looks upon his faith as the utmost accomplishment and end, and not only as the first elements of his task, which is,--_the superstructing of good life_. The solifidian believes himself to have the only sanctified necessary doctrines, that having them renders his condition safe, and every man who believes them a pure Christian professor. In respect of solifidianism it is worth remembering what Epiphanius observes of the primitive times, that _wickedness was the only heresy_, that impious and pious living divided the whole Christian world into erroneous and orthodox.'

[Footnote 105: For example, what an antidote to the perilous Methodist doctrine of instantaneous sanctification is this saying of Bishop Wilson: 'He who fancies that his mind may effectually be changed in a short time, deceives himself.']

In point of fact, therefore, the historic Church in England, not existing for special opinions, but proceeding by development, has shown much greater freedom of mind as regards the doctrines of election, original sin, and justification, than the Nonconformists have; and has refused, in spite of Puritan pressure, to tie herself too strictly to these doctrines, to make them all in all. She thus both has been and is more serviceable than Puritanism to religious progress; because the separating for opinions, which is proper to Puritanism, rivets the separatist to those opinions, and is thus opposed to that development and gradual exhibiting of the full sense of the Bible and Christianity, which is essential to religious progress. To separate for the doctrine of predestination, of justification, of scriptural church-discipline, is to be false to the idea of development, to imagine that you can seize the absolute sense of Scripture from your own present point of view, and to cut yourself off from growth and gradual illumination. That a comparison between the course things have taken in Puritanism and in the Church goes to prove the truth of this as a matter of fact, is what I have been trying to show hitherto; in what remains I purpose to show how, as a matter of theory and antecedent likelihood, it seems probable and natural that so this should be.

A historic Church cannot choose but allow the principle of development, for it is written in its institutions and history. An admirable writer, in a book which is one of his least known works, but which contains, perhaps, even a greater number of profound and valuable ideas than any other one of them, has set forth, both persuasively and truly, the impression of this sort which Church-history cannot but convey. 'We have to account,' says Dr. Newman, in his _Essay on Development_, 'for that apparent variation and growth of doctrine which embarrasses us when we would consult history for the true idea of Christianity. The increase and expansion of the Christian creed and ritual, and the variations which have attended the process in the case of individual writers and churches, are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has had any wide or extended dominion. From the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas. The highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients; but, as admitted and transmitted by minds not inspired, and through media which were human, have required only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation.' And again: 'Ideas may remain when the expression of them is indefinitely varied. Nay, one cause of corruption in religion is the refusal to follow the course of doctrine as it moves on, and an obstinacy in the notions of the past. So our Lord found his people precisians in their obedience to the letter; he condemned them for not being led on to its spirit,--that is, its development. The Gospel is the development of the Law; yet what difference seems wider than that which separates the unbending rule of Moses from the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ? The more claim an idea has to be considered living, the more various will be its aspects; and the more social and political is its nature, the more complicated and subtle will be its developments, and the longer and more eventful will be its course. Such is Christianity.' And yet once more: 'It may be objected that inspired documents, such as the Holy Scriptures, at once determine doctrine without further trouble. But they were intended to create _an idea_, and that idea is not in the sacred text, but in the mind of the reader; and the question is, whether that idea is communicated to him in its completeness and minute accuracy on its first apprehension, or expands in his heart and intellect, and comes to perfection in the course of time. If it is said that inspiration supplied the place of this development in the first recipients of Christianity, still the time at length came when its recipients ceased to be inspired; and on these recipients the revealed truths would fall as in other cases, at first vaguely and generally, and would afterwards be completed by developments.'

The notion thus admirably expounded of a gradual understanding of the Bible, a progressive development of Christianity, is the same which was in Bishop Butler's mind when he laid down in his _Analogy_ that 'the Bible contains many truths as yet undiscovered.' 'And as,' he says, 'the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet understood, so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the restitution of all things and without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at,--by the continuance and progress of learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of the world. For this is the way in which all improvements are made; by thoughtful men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped as by nature accidentally, or which seem to come into our minds by chance.' And again: 'Our existence is not only successive, as it must be of necessity, but one state of our life and being is appointed by God to be a preparation for another, and that to be the means of attaining to another succeeding one; infancy to childhood, childhood to youth, youth to mature age. Men are impatient and for precipitating things; but the author of nature appears deliberate throughout his operations, accomplishing his natural ends by slow successive steps. Thus, in the daily course of natural providence, God operates in the very same manner as in the dispensation of Christianity; making one thing subservient to another, this to somewhat further; and so on, through a progressive series of means which extend both backward and forward, beyond our utmost view. Of this manner of operation everything we see in the course of nature is as much an instance as any part of the Christian dispensation.'

All this is indeed incomparably well said; and with Dr. Newman we may, on the strength of it all, beyond any doubt, 'fairly conclude that Christian doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true developments;' that 'the whole Bible is written on the principle of development.'

Dr. Newman, indeed, uses this idea in a manner which seems to us arbitrary and condemned by the idea itself. He uses it in support of the pretensions of the Church of Rome to an infallible authority on points of doctrine. He says, with much ingenuity, to Protestants: The doctrines you receive are no more on the face of the Bible, or in the plain teaching of the ante-Nicene Church, which alone you consider pure, than the doctrines you reject. The doctrine of the Trinity is a development, as much as the doctrine of Purgatory. Both of them are developments made by the Church, by the post-Nicene Church. The determination of the Canon of Scripture, a thing of vital importance to you who acknowledge no authority but Scripture, is a development due to the post-Nicene Church.--And thus Dr. Newman would compel Protestants to admit that which is, he declares, in itself reasonable,--namely, 'the probability of the appointment in Christianity of an external authority to decide upon the true developments of doctrine and practice in it, thereby separating them from the mass of mere human speculation, extravagance, corruption, and error, in and out of which they grow. This is the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church, of faith and obedience towards the Church, founded on the probability of its never erring in its declarations or commands.'

Now, asserted in this absolute way, and extended to doctrine as well as discipline, to speculative thought as well as to Christian practice, Dr. Newman's conclusion seems at variance with his own theory of development, and to be something like an instance of what Bishop Butler criticises when he says: 'Men are impatient, and for precipitating things.' But Dr. Newman has himself supplied us with a sort of commentary on these words of Butler's which is worth quoting, because it throws more light on our point than Butler's few words can throw on it by themselves. Dr. Newman says: 'Development is not an effect of wishing and resolving, or of forced enthusiasm, or of any mechanism of reasoning, or of any mere subtlety of intellect; but comes of its own innate power of expansion within the mind in its season, though with the use of reflection and argument and original thought, more or less as it may happen, with a dependence on the ethical growth of the mind itself, and with a reflex influence upon it.'

It is impossible to point out more sagaciously and expressively the natural, spontaneous, free character of true development; how such a development must follow laws of its own, may often require vast periods of time, cannot be hurried, cannot be stopped. And so far as Christianity deals,--as, in its metaphysical theology, it does abundantly deal,--with thought and speculation, it must surely be admitted that for its true and ultimate development in this line more time is required, and other conditions have to be fulfilled, than we have had already. So far as Christian doctrine contains speculative philosophical ideas, never since its origin have the conditions been present for determining these adequately; certainly not in the mediæval Church, which so dauntlessly strove to determine them. And therefore on every Creed and Council is judgment passed in Bishop Butler's sentence: '_The Bible contains many truths as yet undiscovered._'

The Christian religion has practice for its great end and aim; but it raises, as anyone can see, and as Church-history proves, numerous and great questions of philosophy and of scientific criticism. Well, for the true elucidation of such questions, and for their final solution, time and favourable developing conditions are confessedly necessary. From the end of the apostolic age and of the great fontal burst of Christianity, down to the present time, have such conditions ever existed in the Christian communities, for determining adequately the questions of philosophy and scientific criticism which the Christian religion starts? _God_, _creation_, _will_, _evil_, _propitiation_, _immortality_,--these terms and many more of the same kind, however much they might in the Bible be used in a concrete and practical manner, yet plainly had in themselves a provocation to abstract thought, carried with them the occasions of a criticism and a philosophy, which must sooner or later make its appearance in the Church. It did make its appearance, and the question is whether it has ever yet appeared there under conditions favourable to its true development. Surely this is best elucidated by considering whether questions of criticism and philosophy in general ever had one of their happy moments, their times for successful development, in the early and middle ages of Christendom at all, or have had one of them in the Christian churches, as such, since. All these questions hang together, and the time that is improper for solving one sort of them truly, is improper for solving the others.

Well, surely, historic criticism, criticism of style, criticism of nature, no one would go to the early or middle ages of the Church for illumination on these matters. How then should those ages develop successfully a philosophy of theology, or in other words, a criticism of physics and metaphysics, which involves the three other criticisms and more besides? Church-theology is an elaborate attempt at a philosophy of theology, at a philosophical criticism. In Greece, before Christianity appeared, there had been a favouring period for the development of such a criticism; a considerable movement of it took place, and considerable results were reached. When Christianity began, this movement was in decadence; it declined more and more till it died quite out; it revived very slowly, and as it waxed, the mediæval Church waned. The doctrine of universals is a question of philosophy discussed in Greece, and re-discussed in the middle ages. Whatever light this doctrine receives from Plato's treatment of it, or Aristotle's, in whatever state they left it, will anyone say that the Nominalists and Realists brought any more light to it, that they developed it in any way, or could develop it? For the same reason, St. Augustine's criticism of God's eternal decrees, original sin, and justification, the criticism of St. Thomas Aquinas on them, the decisions of the Church on them, are of necessity, and from the very nature of things, inadequate, because, being philosophical developments, they are made in an age when the forces for true philosophical development are waning or wanting.

So when Hooker says most truly: 'Our belief in the Trinity, the co-eternity of the Son of God with his Father, the proceeding of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, with other principal points the necessity whereof is by none denied, are notwithstanding in Scripture nowhere to be found by express literal mention, only deduced they are out of Scripture by collection;'--when Hooker thus points, out, what is undoubtedly the truth, that these Church-doctrines are developments, we may add this other truth equally undoubted,--that being _philosophical_ developments, they are developments of a kind which the Church has never yet had the right conditions for making adequately, any more than it has had the conditions for developing out of what is said in the Book of Genesis a true philosophy of nature, or out of what is said in the Book of Daniel, a true philosophy of history. It matters nothing whether the scientific truth was there, and the problem was to extract it; or not there, and the problem was to understand why it was not there, and the relation borne by what was there to the scientific truth. The Church had no means of solving either the one problem or the other. And this from no fault at all of the Church, but for the same reason that she was unfitted to solve a difficulty in Aristotle's _Physics_ or Plato's _Timæus_, and to determine the historical value of Herodotus or Livy; simply from the natural operation of the law of development, which for success in philosophy and criticism requires certain conditions, which in the early and mediæval Church were not to be found.

And when the movement of philosophy and criticism came with the Renascence, this movement was almost entirely outside the Churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, and not inside them. It worked in men like Descartes and Bacon, and not in men like Luther and Calvin; so that the doctrine of these two eminent personages, Luther and Calvin, so far as it was a philosophical and critical development from Scripture, had no more likelihood of being an adequate development than the doctrine of the Council of Trent. And so it has gone on to this day. Philosophy and criticism have become a great power in the world, and inevitably tend to alter and develop Church-doctrine, so far as this doctrine is, as to a great extent it is, philosophical and critical. Yet the seat of the developing force is not in the Church itself, but elsewhere; its influences filter strugglingly into the Church, and the Church slowly absorbs and incorporates them. And whatever hinders their filtering in and becoming incorporated, hinders truth and the natural progress of things.

While, therefore, we entirely agree with Dr. Newman and with the great Anglican divines that the whole Bible is written on the principle of development, and that Christianity in its doctrine and discipline is and must be a development of the Bible, we yet cannot agree that for the adequate development of Christian doctrine, so far as theology exhibits this metaphysically and scientifically, the Church, whether ante-Nicene or post-Nicene, has ever yet furnished a channel. Thought and science follow their own law of development, they are slowly elaborated in the growth and forward pressure of humanity, in what Shakspeare calls,--

... the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come;

and their ripeness and unripeness, as Dr. Newman most truly says, are not an effect of our wishing or resolving. Rather do they seem brought about by a power such as Goethe figures by the _Zeit-Geist_ or Time-Spirit, and St. Paul describes as a divine power _revealing_ additions to what we possess already.

But sects of men are apt to be shut up in sectarian ideas of their own, and to be less open to new general ideas than the main body of men; therefore St. Paul in the same breath exhorts to unity. What may justly be conceded to the Catholic Church is, that in her idea of a continuous developing power in united Christendom to work upon the data furnished by the Bible, and produce new combinations from them as the growth of time required it, she followed a true instinct. But the right _philosophical_ developments she vainly imagined herself to have had the power to produce, and her attempts in this direction were at most but a prophecy of this power, as alchemy is said to have been a prophecy of chemistry.

With developments of discipline and church-order it is very different. The Bible raises, as we have seen, many and great questions of philosophy and criticism; still, essentially the Church was not a corporation for speculative purposes, but a corporation for purposes of moral growth and of practice. Terms like _God_, _creation_, _will_, _evil_, _propitiation_, _immortality_, evoke, as we have said, and must evoke, sooner or later, a philosophy; but to evoke this was the accident and not the essence of Christianity. What, then, was the essence?

An ingenious writer, as unlike Dr. Newman as it is possible to conceive, has lately told us. In an article in _Fraser's Magazine_,--an article written with great vigour and acuteness,--this writer advises us to return to Paley, whom we were beginning to neglect, because the real important essence of Christianity, or rather, to quote quite literally, 'the only form of Christianity which is worthy of the serious consideration of rational men, is Protestantism as stated by Paley and his school.' And why? 'Because this Protestantism enables the saint to prove to the worldly man that Christ threatened him with hell-fire, and proved his power to threaten by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven; _and these allegations are the fundamental assertions of Christianity_.'

Now it may be said that this is a somewhat contracted view of 'the unsearchable riches of Christ;' but we will not quarrel with it. And this for several reasons. In the first place, it is the view often taken by popular theology. In the second place, it is the view best fitted to serve its Benthamite author's object, which is to get Christianity out of the way altogether. In the third place, its shortness gives us courage to try and do what is the hardest thing in the world, namely, to pack a statement of the main drift of Christianity into a few lines of nearly as short compass.

What then was, in brief, the Christian gospel, or 'good news'? It was this: _The kingdom of God is come unto you_. The power of Jesus upon the multitudes who heard him gladly, was not that by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven he enabled the saint to prove to the worldly man the certainty of hell-fire (for he had not yet done so); but that _he talked to them about the kingdom of God_.[106] And what is the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven? It is this: _God's will done, as in heaven so on earth_. And how was this come to mankind? Because _Jesus is come to save his people from their sins_. And what is being saved from our sins? This: _Entering into the kingdom of heaven by doing the will of our Father which is in heaven_. And how does Christ enable us to do this? By teaching us _to take his yoke upon us, and learn of him to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him, and to lose our life for the purpose of saving it_. So that St. Paul might say most truly that the seal of the sure foundation of God in Christianity was this: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_: or, as he elsewhere expands it: _Let him bring forth the fruits of the Spirit,--love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control._[107]

[Footnote 106: Nothing can be more certain than that the _kingdom of God_ meant originally, and was understood to mean, a Messianic kingdom speedily to be revealed; and that to this idea of the _kingdom_ is due much of the effect which its preaching exercised on the imagination of the first generation of Christians. But nothing is more certain, also, than that while the end itself, the Messianic kingdom, was necessarily something intangible and future, the _way_ to the end, the doing the will of God by intently following the voice of the moral conscience, in those duties, above all, for which there was then in the world the most crying need,--the duties of humbleness, self-denial, pureness, justice, charity,--became from the very first in the teaching of Jesus something so ever-present and practical, and so associated with the essence of Jesus himself, that the _way_ to the kingdom grew inseparable, in thought, from the kingdom itself, and was bathed in the same light and charm. Then, after a time, as the vision of an approaching Messianic kingdom was dissipated, the idea of the perfect accomplishment on earth of the will of God had to take the room of it, and in its own realisation to place the ideal of the true kingdom of God.]

[Footnote 107: II _Tim._, ii, 19; _Gal._, v, 22, 23.]