Part 5

The fundamental truths of Morals are eternal as He to whom they primarily relate, and immutable as the purposes which they subserve. But it is necessary that they should be communicated to men under different forms and according to various methods, as minds are prepared to receive them: and their application must also be regulated according to the circumstances in which men are placed. The same principle was proposed to Adam in Paradise, to Abraham in Beersheba, and to Paul when he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, knowing that bonds and afflictions awaited him there. Obedience to God was the motive proposed for abstaining from the forbidden fruit, for sacrificing an only son, and for facing suffering and death. But an intimation which was all powerful with Abraham was insufficient to secure a much less painful obedience from Adam; and the self-devotion of Paul was ennobled in all its manifold instances, by its springing, not from so many express directions, but from a principle, undeviating and perpetual in its operation. In the infancy of the race, it would have been utterly useless to reveal the grand principles of morals in any other way than that which was adopted, viz. by exhibiting their application in various instances. The Divine will was therefore made known in express directions, probably very few in number at first, and gradually increasing in number and importance, so as to enable observers, from remarking the similar tendency of several, to infer a general principle from them. All the records which we possess of the history of the race to the calling of the Israelites out of Egypt, prove this to have been the method adopted. The commands of God, and the promises and threats by which they were sanctioned, bore an analogy, in their gradual elevation, to those by which we influence an opening mind in its progress from the first manifestation of intelligence to the age when the power of conscience is recognizable. In the Mosaic system, a considerable advance was made, a direct appeal to conscience being instituted, and the gradual revelation of a moral government being provided for. Men were then taught, not what we now know, that the relation between virtue and happiness, vice and misery, is immutable (which they could not have understood,) but that in their particular case, obedience to certain laws would secure prosperity, and disobedience adversity. Such obedience, the most virtuous were incited to render, from a fear and love of God; but they could not have rendered it in any but specified cases, because, not yet being made acquainted with the principle as a principle, they could not direct its application for themselves. The case was the same with the other great principle, Benevolence, as with Piety; and, accordingly, the body of laws which was prepared for the Israelites was voluminous, and their sanctions were expressed in a copious variety of promises and threatenings, and embodied in a burthensome ritual, consisting chiefly of penal acts. When the nation had thus been exercised long enough to prepare it for entering on a new course of moral agency (as we prepare a child for the spontaneous exercise of filial duty and fraternal love by a discipline of express commands and particular acts,) Christianity was dispensed, and men were at length furnished with the principles themselves, with whose application they were henceforth to be entrusted.

Christianity was designed to be permanent and universal; and, therefore, though it was first communicated in the form best adapted to those who were first to receive it, it contains within itself that which shall fit it to be a revelation to the mind of man in every stage.

It contains eternal principles of doctrine and morals, embodied in facts, which are the only immutable and universal language. The character of Christ affords a never-failing suggestion, and a perfect illustration of the principles of morals; a suggestion which only the most careless minds can fail to receive, and an illustration by which only the most hardened can fail to be impressed. From him it was learned what part of the moral law of Moses was to be retained and what forgone; how much was vital and permanent and how much external and temporary. From him it was learned, and shall be learned to the end of time, how the sympathy which caused tears at the grave of Lazarus, the compassion which relieved the widowed mother of Nain, the tenderness which yearned towards the repentant Apostle, the diffusive love which embraced in its prayer all of every age and nation who needed the gospel of grace, combined to enforce and adorn the principle of Benevolence. His parables are eloquent in their praise of benevolence; his entreaties to mutual love are urgent, and his commands decisive; but the eloquence of his example is by far more urgent and irresistible. From him it was, and ever shall be, learned that the rule of life is to be found in the will of God. From his devotion to the work which God had given him to do, from his perpetual reference of all things to the Divine will, from his unhesitating submission to suffering and death, from his supreme delight in devotional communion, we learn how Piety is the pre-eminent principle of feeling and action which men are required to adopt. The parables which inculcate ready filial obedience and sorrow for disobedience, the declarations that it was his meat and drink to do the will of God, and that he was not alone because the Father was with him, are powerful enforcements of the principle; but not so powerful as the acts of obedience and resignation in which its power shone forth. The whole scheme of morals is comprehended in the precepts, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself;' but the concentration of truth and beauty is less resplendant, less engaging, less universally clear and interesting, than in the character of him who deduced these two principles from all the law and the prophets.

With these two principles, and all the subordinate ones which are derived from them, are connected sanctions from above, which attest their origin and secure their adoption. By an irreversible decree of Him who founded nature and vouchsafed a revelation, certain states of enjoyment and suffering are connected with the practical adoption or rejection of the principles of duty, not by way of arbitrary appointment, but of natural consequence. The relations of holiness and happiness, of guilt and misery, are unalterable; shown to be so by the teachings of nature and experience, by the explicit declarations of Scripture, and by every species of evidence which the mind of man is capable of receiving.

Though the chief object of the Christian revelation was to make this relation more evident than it had ever been before, many who received the Gospel imagine that it discovers to them a means by which the relation may be suspended or destroyed. This misapprehension we hold to be more fatal in its moral consequences than any other which human prejudice has originated. By what appears to us a strange perversion of Scripture language, and by the gradual increase of some subordinate errors, it began to be imagined, some centuries ago, that, though misery is necessarily connected with guilt, yet that the guilt may be perpetrated by one person, and the consequent misery endured by another; and this belief has subsisted in almost every Christian church till this day. It is well that it has been confined to the churches, and that its application has been limited, by all but Catholics, to one very peculiar case; for if it had become the common doctrine of our schools, and colleges, and homes, if it had been enforced by parents and moral philosophers and professors as a general truth, as it is by divines with reference to a particular case, the very foundations of virtue would have been overthrown, and the force of its sanctions not only wasted but fatally perverted.

Happily the accents of reason and religion have been too distinct and harmonious to be overpowered by the dictates of error, or very extensively neglected. Notwithstanding all that religious teachers have erroneously inculcated of the possible and actual separation of guilt and its punishment on the principle of vicarious suffering, education has still proceeded, and moral discipline been enforced as if no such false principle had ever been advocated. Children are swayed by hope and fear of the consequences of their actions to themselves; and self-government is enforced at a riper age by the same motives, though enlarged and elevated. In religion alone has an error, as absurd in its nature as injurious in its tendencies, been retained thus long by the force of prejudice; and that it has not spread further we hold to be owing to its manifest folly and to its evidently noxious influence when applied to any case but that to which it is appropriated. There can be no surer proof that the principle itself is false.

It is difficult to know where to begin in disproving a doctrine which is repugnant to every other doctrine, inconsistent with every received truth, and incompatible with every admitted divine and human relation, with every known attribute of mind, divine or human. It will be sufficient to state one reason for utterly rejecting as we do the doctrine of vicarious suffering; that reason being suggested and confirmed both by our own understandings and by Scripture.

It is clear that no man can sin for another. He may sin at the instigation of another, or for the supposed benefit of another; but in the first case, the sin remains with both, and in the last, with the perpetrator only. Moral disease thus bears an exact analogy to natural disease. Natural disease may be communicated, or even incurred for the benefit of another, but it cannot be so transferred as to be annihilated with respect to the person who was first subject to it. The case is precisely the same with the pain which is the inseparable consequence of sin. If endured by any but the sinner, it is actually and completely disconnected with the sin. It is no longer a punishment, but a gratuitous infliction. This is so evident that, if proposed in any court of justice but that from which our purest conceptions of justice are derived, the reason and conscience of every man would exclaim against the monstrous notion of a substitution of punishment. If a man had transgressed the laws of his country by theft, would he not be the most unjust judge upon earth who would sentence his elder brother, known to be innocent and virtuous, to imprisonment or death for the offence?

Would the case be altered, except in the way of aggravation, if the sentence were inflicted at the desire of the innocent man? Would any purpose of justice be answered by such a process? Would not every principle of equity--to say nothing of benevolence--be violated? Would not the sufferer be as foolish and blind in his submission as the judge arbitrary in the infliction? Is it not utterly impossible that a transaction, perfectly analogous in principle, though infinitely more momentous in its influences, should take place between the just Judge, the tender Father of men, a creature made fallible by Him, and His holy and beloved Son?

But we are told it is not for us to argue thus on the right and wrong of a transaction which has taken place, and is continually taking place, by Divine appointment. It is enough that God has appointed this method of salvation.

The lawfulness of examining the Divine decrees with intent to understand them, will be discussed hereafter. Our business now is to declare why we do not believe this to be the appointed method of salvation, set forth in the sacred records. Repentance (including not merely shame and sorrow for sin, but newness of life) appears to us to stand forth on the face of the sacred records as the grand, the sole, condition of forgiveness of sins. The faith in Christ, which is so strenuously insisted on as a requisite, is valuable as inducing sorrow for sin and purity of life. Our obligations to Christ, which are so vividly described, are due to him for the benefits he has bestowed on us through his Gospel, and not for any subsequent arbitrary gift, which we feel it impossible for him to have offered, for us to avail ourselves of, and for God to accept. Our obligations to him are boundless and eternal;--for having devoted and sacrificed his life to furnish us with the conditions of salvation,--to teach us repentance, and incite us to holiness. He was truly a sacrifice for men; he suffered and died because they were sinners, and in order to bring them salvation. This the Scripture teaches, and this we readily admit; finding, however, no intimation that any sin has ever been forgiven on any other condition than that of repentance; that repentance has ever failed to procure forgiveness; that any being whatever has at any time exercised or possessed the power of separating sin and suffering by taking either upon himself, or of transferring both from the consciousness of another to his own; that if the endurance of suffering by substitution were possible, it could not be righteous; or that if it were not unrighteous, it could be available to any beneficent purpose. Finding none of these suppositions, but all their opposites in the spirit and detail of the sacred records, we absolutely reject the popular doctrine of the atonement by Christ, while we regard his sacrifices for us with reverential gratitude, and our obligations to him with awe and rejoicing.

The more attentively we ponder his instructions and the more amply we estimate the benefits he brought us, the more conscious do we become of the impiety of withholding from the Supreme Author of our salvation the gratitude and praise which are due to his free, unpurchased grace. It is given through Christ, but it originates in God. It comes through a mediator; but that mediator was appointed, informed, guided by God. To him Christ ascribed, not only the acceptance of his sacrifice and mediation; but the design in which it originated, the means by which it was wrought, and the end which it should ultimately accomplish; and the more we contemplate the design, become acquainted with the means, and joyfully anticipate the end, the more eagerly do we join with Christ in ascribing to Jehovah the glory and the praise.

We will now explain our meaning in saying that the Catholics alone, of all Christians who have admitted the doctrine of satisfaction for sin, have not restricted its application to one very peculiar case. They have been perfectly consistent in not so restricting it; and they would have been more extensively consistent if they had gone as much beyond the point they have reached, as they have beyond the Church of England and the disciples of Calvin. If the principle be sound, it will bear a boundless application; if it be unsound, it can be no part of revelation, and should be instantly relinquished. If atonement for sin by a transferrence of punishment be possible in any case, it cannot be pronounced impossible in any similar case. If spiritual guilt can be atoned for by ritual sacrifices, in any instance, no one knows that it may not in any other instance. Therefore if the Church of England holds that the Jewish sacrifices were in strict analogy with that of Christ, they cannot reasonably condemn the offering of the mass, and pious gifts offered by the innocent on behalf of the sinner. Neither can the Calvinists, who regard the Mosaic offerings as atonements for spiritual sin, consistently object to the practice of penance, or the principle of granting indulgences. It appears to us that there is no tenable ground between the ultimate extension of the principle and its absolute rejection,--between dissolving to each individual the connection between guilt and punishment, and asserting that connection to be absolutely indissoluble: thereby maintaining the genuine Scripture doctrine that repentance alone can obtain remission of sins.

The lawfulness of the practice of penance and the enjoyment of indulgences is, we perceive, defended by Catholics as being established on the same ground as the Jewish sacrifices. They expressly state that the _eternal_ pain due to guilt cannot be removed by indulgences, or averted by penance, but only the temporal pain over which the death of Christ has no power of remission. This bears a strong analogy to the case of the Mosaic sacrifices, which were ceremonial atonements for breaches of the ceremonial law, and were not of themselves, as is universally allowed, intended to avert the penalties of spiritual guilt. But this analogy yields no countenance to the Catholic practices we are considering, unless it can be proved that two distinct species of punishment were divinely ordained, and two distinct methods of atonement prescribed. And even if this were proved, the case would not be complete: for though we should suppose two kinds of punishment, and two methods of reconciliation appointed, it is further necessary that the offender should be liable to two distinct species of offence; a position in which none but an ancient Jew was ever placed.

The Divine sanctions were altogether so different under the Jewish from what they are declared to be under the Christian dispensation, that no analogy which can be instituted between them will hold with any completeness. A future state of retribution formed no part of the revelation made to the Jews. To them, the ultimate punishment which they could anticipate was national adversity, which was the infallible consequence of moral guilt (unless averted by repentance), as ritual penalties were the necessary atonement for breaches of the external law. Of Christians, a higher obedience is required,--a more spiritual devotion to the will of God; and this higher obedience is enforced by more elevated sanctions. Christians are free from the Divine imposition of external observances, and therefore from all divinely appointed external penalties. They are to worship in spirit and in truth; to yield the obedience of the heart; and all their outward manifestations of devotion are of human appointment;--salutary, no doubt, and even necessary to the maintenance of piety, but still optional, possessing only a derived value, and in their very nature incapable of being made atonement for sin. Spiritual atonement, _i. e._ repentance, is the only atonement which the Gospel prescribes or supposes possible for spiritual guilt. Reparation indeed is to be made by the guilty to the injured person, when the case admits of it; but this reparation does not constitute the atonement, nor does it partake of the nature of penance. It is only an external atonement for an external injury, and is an evidence that the spiritual atonement,--repentance, has been already made. It bears a relation to that class of offences only which immediately respects our fellow-men, and is impracticable in cases where the offence is against God and ourselves. In such cases, external penance bears no other relation to the offence than such as the weak will of man has originated;--a relation arbitrary, unsanctioned by God, and therefore perilous to man.

This relation, being thus arbitrary, fails of the object for which it was established. Their belief in the efficacy of penance is thus stated by Catholics. (We copy from the universally accredited work, entitled 'Roman Catholic Principles in reference to God and the King,' first published in 1680, and ever since acknowledged as a faithful exposition.) 'Though no creature whatsoever can make condign satisfaction, either for the guilt of sin, or the pain eternal due to it, this satisfaction being proper to Christ our Saviour only, yet penitent sinners, redeemed by Christ, may, as members of Christ, in some measure satisfy by prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, and other works of piety, for the temporal pain which, in the order of Divine justice sometimes remains due, after the guilt of sin and pains eternal have been remitted. Such penitential works are, notwithstanding, no otherwise satisfactory than as joined and applied to that satisfaction which Jesus made upon the cross, in virtue of which alone all our good works find a grateful acceptance in the sight of God.'

As we have already stated our opinion respecting the nature of the sacrifice of Christ, we have only to inquire, in our examination of this passage, into the meaning of the words _temporal pain_. If they be intended to signify the natural evil consequences of sin in this world, it is clear that no penance of human institution can avert them; since the very efficacy of this penance would prove these consequences not to be natural but arbitrary. A man who has defrauded his neighbor cannot preserve or recover his character for honesty, or secure the confidence of those around him 'by prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, or other works of piety.' The means are not adapted to the end. The method he must pursue, and the only one which can be used with effect, is to restore that which he had unjustly obtained, and to persevere in a course of integrity till the rectitude of his motives becomes unquestionable. If in the meanwhile he employs prayer, fasting, and alms-deeds as means of rousing his highest affections and confirming his virtuous resolutions, he may find them so far efficacious; but the removal of the _temporal pain_, the stain upon his reputation, is not ascribable to them, but is the consequence of his well attested repentance.

But it appears doubtful whether we have rightly interpreted the words _temporal pain_; since the being obnoxious to this pain is one of the qualifications for the discipline of purgatory. We wish that an exact account could be obtained of its real nature: though, be it what it may, it is clear to us that no natural penalty can be averted by so arbitrary an institution as that of penance. The clause on indulgences is as follows. We quote the doctrinal part of it, that we may avoid the danger, of which it warns us, of charging on the Church such abuses or mistakes as have been sometimes committed in point of granting and gaining indulgences, through the remissness or ignorance of individuals.

'The guilt of sin, or pain eternal due to it, is never remitted by what Catholics call indulgences; but only such temporal punishments as remain due after the guilt is remitted: these indulgences being nothing else than a mitigation or relaxation, upon just causes, of canonical penances, enjoined by the pastors of the Church on penitent sinners, according to their several degrees of demerit.'

Our conviction of the absolute inefficacy of canonical penances to obtain the end for which they are practised having been stated, we proceed to consider the legitimacy of the power by which such acts are imposed, and a remission from them granted. We shall ground our arguments on some of the subordinate principles, which are clearly deducible from the primary principles of doctrine and morals which we have already stated and arranged.