Theological Essays and Other Papers v2
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Thomas de Quincey >> Theological Essays and Other Papers v2
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Nothing was gained, except the putting on record an implacability that
was _confessedly_ impotent. This was the very lunacy of malice.
Mortifying it might certainly seem for the members of a supreme court,
like the General Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate
court: but still, since each party must be regarded as representing
far larger interests than any personal to themselves, trying on either
side, not the energies of their separate wits, but the available
resources of law in one of its obscurer chapters, there really seemed
no more room for humiliation to the one party, or for triumph to the
other, than there is amongst reasonable men in the result from a game,
where the game is one exclusively of chance.
From this period it is probable that the faction of Non-intrusionists
resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left
for sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast
in public estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a
convocation in Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was
generally understood that at this time they concerted a plan for going
out from the church, in the event of their failing to alarm the
Government by the notification of this design. We do not pretend to
any knowledge of secrets. What is known to everybody is--that, on the
annual meeting of the General Assembly, in May, 1843, the great body
of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession. The sort of
theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a few hurried
days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made wise men
both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from that
state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by the
vague anticipation of a 'scene,' possibly of a quarrel, together with
the natural interest in _seeing_ men whose names had been long before
the public in books and periodical journals.
The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a
pseudo-General Assembly. When there are two suns visible, or two moons,
the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_,
and the mock moon a _paraselene_. On that principle, we must call this
mock Assembly a _para-synodos_. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the
Seceders in the fabrication of names. They distinguish as _quoad sacra_
parishes those which were peculiarly _quoad politica_ parishes; for
in that view only they had been interesting to the Non-intrusionists.
Again, they style themselves _The Free Church_, by way of taunting the
other side with being a servile church. But how are they any church
at all? By the courtesies of Europe, and according to usage, a church
means a religious incorporation, protected and privileged by the State.
Those who are not so privileged are usually content with the title of
Separatists, Dissenters, or Nonconformists. No wise man will see either
good sense or dignity in assuming titles not appropriate. The very
position and aspect towards the church (legally so called) which has
been assumed by the Non-intrusionists--viz., the position of protesters
against that body, not merely as bearing, amongst other features, a
certain relation to the State, but specifically _because_ they bear
that relation, makes it incongruous, and even absurd, for these
Dissenters to denominate themselves a 'church.' But there is another
objection to this denomination--the 'Free Church' have no peculiar and
separate Confession of Faith. Nobody knows what are their
_credenda_--what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership, either
as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they reply--'Oh!
as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever we _did_ profess when
members of the Scottish kirk'--then in effect they are hardly so much
as a dissenting body, except in some elliptic sense. There is a grievous
_hiatus_ in their own titledeeds and archives; they supply it by
referring people to the muniment chest of the kirk. Would it not be
a scandal to a Protestant church if she should say to communicants
--We have no sacramental vessels, or even ritual; but you may borrow
both from Papal Rome.' Not only, however, is the kirk to _lend_ her
Confession, &c.; but even then a plain rustic will not be able to guess
how many parts in his Confession are or may be affected by the
'reformation' of the Non-intrusionists. Surely, he will think, if this
reformation were so vast that it drove them out of the national church,
absolutely exploded them, then it follows that it must have intervened
and _indirectly_ modified innumerable questions: a difference that was
punctually limited to this one or these two clauses, could not be such
a difference as justified a rupture. Besides, if they have altered
this one or these two clauses, or have altered their interpretation,
how is any man to know (except from a distinct Confession of Faith)
that they have not even _directly_ altered much more? Notoriety through
newspapers is surely no ground to stand upon in religion. And now it
appears that the unlettered rustic needs two guides--one to show him
exactly how much they have altered, whether two points or two hundred,
as well as _which_ two or two hundred; another to teach him how far
these original changes may have carried with them secondary changes
as consequences into other parts of the Christian system. One of the
known changes, viz., the doctrine of popular election as the proper
qualification for parish clergymen, possibly is not fitted to expand
itself or ramify, except by analogy. But the other change, the infinity
which has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the
rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the doctrine
and application of _spirituality_, seems fitted for derivative effects
that are innumerable. Consequently, we say of the Non-itrusionists--not
only that they are no church; but that they are not even any separate
body of Dissenters, until they have published a 'Confession' or a
_revised_ edition of the Scottish Confession.
IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the _ultimate_ consequences
of these things. Let us pursue them to the end of the vista.--First
in order stands the dreadful shock to the National Church Establishment;
and that is twofold: it is a shock from without, acting through opinion,
and a shock from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each
case is separately perfect. Through the opinion of men standing
_outside_ of the church, the church herself suffers wrong in her
authority. Through the contagion of sympathy stealing over men _inside_
of the church, peril arises of other shocks in a second series, which
would so exhaust the church by reiterated convulsions, as to leave her
virtually dismembered and shattered for all her great national
functions.
As to that evil which acts through opinion, it acts by a machinery,
viz. the press and social centralization in great cities, which in
these days is perfect. Right or wrong, justified _or not_ justified
by the acts of the majority, it is certain that every public body--how
much more, then, a body charged with the responsibility of upholding
the truth in its standard!--suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion
by any feud, schism, or shadow of change among its members. This is
what the New Testament, a code of philosophy fertile in new ideas,
first introduced under the name of _scandal_; that is, any occasion
of serious offence ministered to the weak or to the sceptical by
differences irreconcilable in the acts or the opinions of those whom
they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities. Now here, in
Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no longer
theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation; here is
a change of doctrine, _on one side or the other_, which throws a sad
umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the
church to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always
be henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such
incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish
church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more
deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so
irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or
speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet
no breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and
irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit
the beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the
first light augury of mischief skirted the horizon--a cloud no bigger
than a man's hand. In 1843, the evil had 'travelled on from birth to
birth.' Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy;
already it had entered upon a second, viz., to rear up an _Anti-Kirk_,
or spurious establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like
folds about the legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman _vinea_
surmounted the fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under
whatsoever practical issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook,
molest, and insult the true church for ever. Even this brief period
of development would have been briefer, had not the law courts
interposed many delays. Demurs of law process imposed checks upon the
uncharitable haste of the _odium theologicum_. And though in a question
of schism it would be a _petitio principii_ for a neutral censor to
assume that either party had been originally in error, yet it is within
our competence to say, that the Seceders it was whose bigotry carried
the dispute to that sad issue of a final separation. The establishment
would have been well content to stop short of that consummation: and
temperaments might have been found, compromises both safe and honorable,
had the minority built less of their reversionary hopes upon the policy
of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they insisted upon becoming: and that
they _might_ be martyrs, it was necessary for them to secede. That
Europe thinks at present with less reverence of Protestant institutions
than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these institutions in
particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to the minority
in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration, all
brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in
the other. Consequently upon _their_ consciences lies the responsibility
of having weakened the pillars of the reformed churches throughout
Christendom.
Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were
it possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside
for generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers
of reproach before 1834? How came it that no aurora of early light,
no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run
before this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have
been huge error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been
traitorously below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.
Such conclusions are irresistible and upon any path, seceding or not
seceding, they menace the worldly credit of ecclesiastical bodies.
That evil is now past remedy. As for the other evil, that which acts
upon church establishments, not through simple failure in the guarantees
of public opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition;
here undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish church from the
very gates to the centre. And unhappily the same chasm, which marks
a division of the church internally, is a link connecting it externally
with the Seceders. For how stands the case? Did the Scottish kirk, at
the late crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections?
Was there one of these bisections which said _Yes_, whilst the other
responded _No_? Was the affirmative and negative shared between them
as between the black chessmen and the white? Not so; and unhappily not
so. The two extremes there were, but these shaded off into each other.
Many were the _nuances_; multiplied the combinations. Here stood a
section that had voted for all the changes, with two or three
exceptions; there stood another that went the _whole_ length as to
this change, but no part of the way as to that; between these sections
arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or _eclectically_, that is,
by no law generally recognised. And behind this eclectic school were
grouped others who had voted for all novelties up to a certain day,
but after _that_ had refused to go further with a movement party whose
tendencies they had begun to distrust. In this last case, therefore,
the divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the accident of
having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of conscientious
alarm. The principles upon which men had divided were various, and
these various principles were variously combined. But on the other
hand, those who have gone out were the men who approved totally, not
partially--unconditionally, not within limits--up to the end, and not
to a given day. Consequently those who stayed in comprehended all the
shades and degrees which the men of violence excluded. The Seceders
were unanimous to a man, and of necessity; for he who approves the
last act, the extreme act, which is naturally the most violent act,
_a fortiori_ approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity
of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the
modifications, all who had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so
great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious; whose
casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who had preferred an
interest of conscience to a triumph of partisanship. We honor them for
that policy; but we cannot hide from ourselves, that the very principle
which makes such a policy honorable at the moment, makes it dangerous
in reversion. For he who avows that, upon public motives, he once
resisted a temptation to schism, makes known by that avowal that he
still harbors in his mind the germ of such a temptation: and to that
scruple, which once he resisted, hereafter he may see reason for
yielding. The principles of schism, which for the moment were
suppressed, are still latent in the church. It is urged that, in quest
of unity, many of these men _succeeded_ in resisting the instincts of
dissension at the moment of crisis. True: But this might be because
they presumed on winning from their own party equal concessions by
means less violent than schism; or because they attached less weight
to the principle concerned, than they may see cause for attaching upon
future considerations; or because they would not allow themselves to
sanction the cause of the late Secession, by going out in company with
men whose principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of
supporting those principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident,
that little stress is to be laid on a negative act; simply to have
declined going out with the Seceders proves nothing, for it is
equivocal. It is an act which may cover indifferently a marked hostility
to the Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness
not quite equal to so extreme a test. And, again, this negative act
may be equivocal in a different way; the friendliness may not only
have existed, but may have existed in sufficient strength for any test
whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but their Jacobinical
mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve of the repulsion
to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to collect from
these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone past. The
earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general tendency
in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--
'The earthquake is not satisfied at once.'
All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they
intermit, only as the revolving lamps of a light-house are periodically
eclipsed. The General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon
the Seceders, shut _in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at the
time she succeeded in shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the
world outside, it seemed advisable to shut out the least number
possible; for in proportion to the number of the Seceders, was the
danger that they should carry with them an authentic impression in
their favor. On the other hand, as respected a greater danger, (the
danger from internal contagion), it seemed advisable that the church
should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who, for the
present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more
absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety
there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety
in this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by
looking over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to
separate the _wheat from the chaff_. By the 'wheat,' in the view of
this writer, is meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their
recusant policy up to the practical result of secession. All who stopped
short of that consummation (on whatever plea), are the 'chaff.' The
writer is something of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but
he is consistent with regard to his own principles, and so elaborately
careful in his details as to extort admiration of his energy and of
his patience in research.
But the reason for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to
the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind
in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question
of that nature, _can_ be so showy and _ostensive_ to a stranger as
that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past
vote recording a scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing,
though for the moment suppressed. Since the secession, nearly four
hundred and fifty new men may have entered the church. This
supplementary body has probably diluted the strength of the
revolutionary principles. But they also may, perhaps, have partaken
to some extent in the contagion of these principles. True, there is
this guarantee for caution, on the part of these new men, that as yet
they are pledged to nothing; and that, seeing experimentally how
fearfully many of their older brethren are now likely to be fettered
by the past, they have every possible motive for reserve, in committing
themselves, either by their votes or by their pens. In _their_
situation, there is a special inducement to prudence, because there
is a prospect, that for _them_ prudence is in time to be effectual.
But for many of the older men, prudence comes too late. They are already
fettered. And what we are now pointing out to the attention of our
readers, is, that by the past, by the absolute votes of the past, too
sorrowfully it is made evident, that the Scottish church is deeply
tainted with the principles of the Secession. These germs of evil and
of revolution, speaking of them in a _personal_ sense, cannot be purged
off entirely until one generation shall have passed away. But, speaking
of them as _principles_ capable of vegetation, these germs may or may
not expand into whole forests of evil, according to the accidents of
coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize our billowy aspects of
society; or, on the other hand, largely to fertilize the many occasions
of agitation, which political fermentations are too sure to throw off.
Let this chance turn out as it may, we repeat for the information of
Southerns--that the church, by shutting off the persons of particular
agitators, has not shut off the principles of agitation; and that the
_cordon sanataire_, supposing the spontaneous exile of the
Non-intrusionists to be regarded in that light, was not drawn about
the church until the disease had spread widely _within_ the lines.
Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future course of action;
warned in time, such a man may stand neutral in practice; but thus far
they poison the fountains of wholesome unanimity--that, if a man can
evade the necessity of squaring particular _actions_ to his past
opinions, at least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions
themselves, or his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too
notoriously have placed on record by his votes.
But, if such are the continual dangers from reactions in the
establishment, so long as men survive in that establishment who feel
upbraided by past votes, and so long as enemies survive who will not
suffer these upbraidings to slumber--dangers which much mutual
forbearance and charity can alone disarm; on the other hand, how much
profounder is the inconsistency to which the Free Church is
doomed!--They have rent the unity of that church, to which they had
pledged their faith--but on what plea? On the plea that in cases purely
spiritual, they could not in conscience submit to the award of the
secular magistrate. Yet how merely impracticable is this principle,
as an abiding principle of action! Churches, that is, the charge of
particular congregations, will be with _them_ (as with other religious
communities) the means of livelihood. Grounds innumerable will arise
for excluding or attempting to exclude, each other from these official
stations. No possible form regulating the business of ordination, or
of induction, can anticipate the infinite objections which may arise.
But no man interested in such a case, will submit to a judge appointed
by insufficient authority. Daily bread for his family is what few men
will resign without a struggle. And that struggle will of necessity
come for final adjudication to the law courts of the land, whose
interference in any question affecting a spiritual interest, the Free
Church has for ever pledged herself to refuse. But in the case supposed,
she will not have the power to refuse it. She will be cited before the
tribunals, and can elude that citation in no way but by surrendering
the point in litigation; and if she should adopt the notion, that it
is better for her to do _that_, than to acknowledge a sufficient
authority in the court by pleading at its bar, upon this principle
once made public, she will soon be stripped of everything, and will
cease to be a church at all. She cannot continue to be a depository
of any faith, or a champion of any doctrines, if she lose the means
of defending her own incorporations. But how can she maintain the
defenders of her rights, or the dispensers of her truths, if she
refuses, upon immutable principle, to call in the aid of the magistrate
on behalf of rights, which, under any aspect, regard spiritual
relations? Attempting to maintain these rights by private arbitration
within a forum of her own, she will soon find such arbitration not
binding at all upon the party who conceives himself aggrieved. The
issue will be as in Mr. O'Connell's courts, where the parties played
at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play, and no
longer 'made believe' to be disputing, the award of the judge became
as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry of such a transaction.
This should be the natural catastrophe of the case; and the probable
evasion of that destructive consummation, to which she is carried by
her principles, will be--that as soon as her feelings of rancor shall
have cooled down, these principles will silently drop out of use; and
the very reason will be suffered to perish for which she ever became
a dissenting body. With this, however, we, that stand outside, are
noways concerned. But an evil, in which we _are_ concerned, is the
headlong tendency of the Free Church, and of all churches adulterating
with her principle, to an issue not merely dangerous in a political
sense, but ruinous in an anti-social sense. The artifice of the Free
Church lies in pleading a spiritual relation of any case whatever,
whether of doing or suffering, whether positive or negative, as a
reason for taking it out of all civil control. Now we may illustrate
the peril of this artifice, by a reality at this time impending over
society in Ireland. Dr. Higgins, titular bishop of Ardagh, has
undertaken upon this very plea of a spiritual power not amenable to
civil control, a sort of warfare with Government, upon the question
of their power to suspend or defeat the O'Connell agitation. For, says
he, if Government should succeed in thus intercepting the direct power
of haranguing mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them, and
cause them to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the same topics,
from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate extension of this principle
would be--that every disaffected clergyman in the three kingdoms, would
lecture his congregation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he
would denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad government
would become, in his language, the most sacred of duties. In any
argument with such a man, he would be found immediately falling back
upon the principle of the Free Church; he would insist upon it as a
spiritual right, as a ease entirely between his conscience and God,
whether he should press to an extremity any and every doctrine, though
tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against
war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most
colorable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would
soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the
improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the _Levellers_
in Cromwell's time, of the _Anabaptists_ in Luther's time, would exalt
themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments were weak enough
to recognise these spiritual claims in the feeblest of their initial
advances. If it were possible to suppose such chimeras prevailing, the
natural redress would soon be seen to lie through secret tribunals,
like those of the dreadful _Fehmgericht_ in the middle ages. It would
be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social chimeras
through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush so
monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such
insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction
upon which the Free Church has laid the foundations of its own
establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to
an officer of a church which is not spiritual by one of its two Janus
faces. And every examination of the case convinces us more and more
that the Seceders took up the old papal distinction, as to acts
spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion less or more, but
under a simple necessity of finding some evasion or other which should
meet and embody the whole rancor of the moment.
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