CHRISTIANITY. 



394 





Christian!- 191. Now we hazard the assertion, that, with a number 

 tv - of professing Christians, there is not this unexcepted sub- 



x> ^~ ,""' mission of the understanding to the authority of the Bi- 

 ble ; and that the authority of the Bible is often modi- 

 fied, and in some cases superseded by the authority of 

 other principles. One of these principles is the reason 

 of the thing. We do not know if this principle would 

 be at all felt or appealed to by the earliest Christians. 

 They turned from dumb idols to serve the living and the 

 true God. There was nothing in their antecedent theo- 

 logy which they could have any respect for: Nothing 

 which they could coi.front, or bring into competition 

 with the doctrines of the New Testament. In these 

 days, the truth as it is in Jesus came to the mind of its 

 disciples, recorr, mended by its novelty, by its grandeur, 

 by the power and recency of its evidences, ajid above all 

 by its vast and evident superiority over the fooleries of a 

 degrading Paganism. It does not occur to us, that men in 

 these circumstances would ever think of sitting in judg- 

 ment over the mysteries of that sublime faith which had 

 charmed them into an abandonment of their earlier reli- 

 gion. It rather strikes us, that they would receive them 

 passively ; that, like scholars who had all to learn, they 

 would take their lesson as they found it ; that the infor- 

 mation of their teachers would be enough for them ; and 

 that the restless tendency of the human mind to specu- 

 lation, would for a time find ample enjoyment in the rich 

 and splendid discoveries, which broke like a flood oflight 

 upon the world. But we are in different circumstances. 

 To us, these discoveries, rich and splendid as they are, 

 have lost the freshness of novelty. The sun of righteous- 

 ness, like the sun in the firmament, has become familiar- 

 ized to us by possession. In a few ages, the human mind 

 deserted its guidance, and rambled as much as ever in 

 quest of new speculations. It is true, that they took a 

 juster and a loftier flight since the days of Heathenism. 

 But it was only because they walked in the light of re- 

 velation. They borrowed of the New Testament with- 

 out acknowledgment, and took its beautiet and its truths 

 to deck their own wretched fancies and self-constituted 

 systems. In the process of time, the delusion multiplied 

 and extended. Schools were formed, and the way of 

 the Divinity was as confidently theorized upon, as the 

 processes of chemistry, or the economy of the heavens. 

 Universities were endowed, and natural theology took its 

 place in the circle of the sciences. Folios were written, 

 and the respected luminaries of a former age poured their 

 a priori and their d posteriori demonstrations on the 

 world. Taste, and sentiment, and imagination, grew 

 apace ; and every raw untutored principle which poetry 

 could clothe in prettiness, or over which the hand of ge- 

 nius could throw the graces of sensibility and elegance, 

 was erected into a principle of the divine government, 

 and made to preside over the councils of the deity. In 

 the mean time, the Bible, which ought to supersede all, 

 was itself superseded. It was quite in vain to say that 

 it was the only authentic record of an actual embassy 

 which God had sent into the world. It was quite 'in 

 vain to plead its testimonies, its miracles, and the unques- 

 tionable fulfilment of its prophecies. These mighty 

 claims must be over, and be suspended, till we have set- 

 tled what ? The reasonableness of its doctrines. We 

 must bring the theology of God's ambassador to the bar 

 of our self-formed .theology. The Bible, instead of be- 

 ing admitted s the directory of our faith upon its exter- 

 nal evidences, mu$t be tried upon the merits of the work 

 itself; and if our verdict be favourable, it must be brought 

 in, not as a help to our ignorance, but as a corollary to 



VOf.. VI. HART II. 



our demonstrations. But is this ever done? Yes! by Cfrritfittii- 

 Dr Samuel Clarke, and a whole host of followers ai.d , 

 admirers. Their first step in the process of theological 

 study, is to furnish their minds with the principles of na- 

 tural theology. Christianity, before its external proofs 

 are looked at or listened to, must be brought under the 

 tribunal of those principles. All the difficulties which 

 attach to the reason of the thing, or the fitness of the 

 doctrines, must be formally discussed, and satisfactorily 

 got over. A voice was heard from heaven, saying of 

 Jesus Christ, " This is my beloved Son, hear ye him." 

 The men of Galilee saw him ascend from the dead to 

 the heaven which he now occupies. The men of Galilee 

 gave their testimony ; and it is a testimony which stood 

 the fiery trial of persecution in a former age, and of so- 

 phistry in this. And yet, instead of hearing Jesus Christ 

 as disciples, they sit in authority over him as judges. In- 

 stead of forming their divinity after the Bible, they try 

 the Bible by their antecedent divinity ; and this book, 

 with all its mighty train of evidences, must drivel in their 

 antichambers, till they have pronounced sentence of ad- 

 mission, when they have got its doctrines to agree with 

 their own airy and unsubstantial speculations. 



192. We do not condemn the exercise of reason in mat- 

 ters of theology. It is the part of reason to form its con- 

 clusions, when it has data and evidences before it. But 

 it is equally the part of reason to abstain from its conclu- 

 sions when these evidences are wanting. Reason can 

 judge of the external evidences for Christianity, because 

 it can discern the merits of human testimony ; and it can 

 perceive the truth or the falsehood of such obvious cre- 

 dentials in the performance of a miracle, or the fulfilment 

 of a prophecy. But reason is not entitled to sit in judg- 

 ment over these internal evidences, which many a presump- 

 tuous theologian has attempted to derive from the reason 

 of the thing, or from the agreement of the doctrine with 

 the fancied character and attributes of the Deity. One of 

 the most useful exercises of reason, is to ascertain its limits, 

 and to keep within them ; to abandon the field of conjec- 

 ture, and to restrain itself within that safe and certain bar- 

 rier whicli forms the boundaryof human experience. How- 

 ever humiliating you may conceive it, it is this that lies at 

 the bottom of Lord Bacon's philosophy, and it is to this 

 that modern science is indebted for all her solidity and all 

 her triumphs. Why does philosophy flourish in our days ? 

 Because her votaries have learned to abandon their own 

 creative speculations, and to submit to evidences, let her 

 conclusions be as painful and as unpalatable ae they will. 

 Now all that we want, is to carry the same lesson and 

 the same principle to theology. Our business is not to 

 guess, but to learn. After we have established Christia- 

 nity to be an authentic message from God upon these 

 historical grounds, when the reason and experience of 

 man entitle him to form his conclusions, nothing re- 

 mains for us, but an unconditional surrender of the mind 

 to the subject of the message. We have a right to sit iti 

 judgment over the credentials of heaven's ambassador, but 

 we have no right to sit in judgment over the information 

 he gives us. We have no right either to refine or to mo- 

 dify that information, till we have accommodated it to 

 our previous conceptions. It is very true, that if the 

 truths which he delivered lay within the field of human 

 observation, he brings himself under the tribunal of oui 

 antecedent knowledge-. Were he to tell us, that the bo- 

 dies of the planetary system moved in orbits which are 

 purely circular, we would oppooe to him the observations 

 and measurements of astronomy. Were he to tell us, that 

 in winter the sun never shone, and that in iummer n 

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