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This is, in our opinion, quite true. But how does it agree with Mr. Gladstone's
theory? What! the Government incompetent to exercise even such a degree of
supervision over religious opinion as is implied by the punishment of the most
deadly heresy! The Government incompetent to measure even the grossest
deviations from the standard of truth! The Government not intrinsically
qualified to judge of the comparative enormity of any theological errors! The
Government so ignorant on these subjects that it is compelled to leave, not
merely subtle heresies, discernible only by the eye of a Cyril or a Bucer, but
Socinianism, Deism, Mahometanism, Idolatry, Atheism, unpunished! To whom does
Mr. Gladstone assign the office of selecting a religion for the State, from
among hundreds of religions, every one of which lays claim to truth? Even to
this same Government, which is now pronounced to be so unfit for theological
investigations that it cannot venture to punish a man for worshipping a lump of
stone with a score of heads and hands. We do not remember ever to have fallen in
with a more extraordinary instance of inconsistency. When Mr. Gladstone wishes
to prove that the Government ought to establish and endow a religion, and to
fence it with a Test Act, Government is to pan in the moral world. Those
who would confine it to secular ends take a low view of its nature. A religion
must be attached to its agency; and this religion must be that of the conscience
of the governor, or none. It is for the Governor to decide between Papists and
Protestants, Jansenists and Molinists, Arminians and Calvinists, Episcopalians
and Presbyterians, Sabellians and Tritheists, Homoousians and Homoiousians,
Nestorians and Eutychians, Monothelites and Monophysites, Paedobaptists and
Anabaptists. It is for him to rejudge the Acts of Nice and Rimini, of Ephesus
and Chalcedon, of Constantinople and St. John Lateran, of Trent and Dort. It is
for him to arbitrate between the Greek and the Latin procession, and to
determine whether that mysterious filioque shall or shall not have a place in
the national creed. When he has made up his mind, he is to tax the whole
community in order to pay people to teach his opinion, what ever it may be. He
is to rely on his own judgment, though it may be opposed to that of nine-tenths
of the society. He is to act on his own judgment, at the risk of exciting the
most formidable discontents. He is to inflict, perhaps on a great majority of
the population, what, whether we choose to call it persecution or not, will
always be felt as persecution by those who suffer it. He is, on account of
differences often too slight for vulgar comprehension, to deprive the State of
the services of the ablest men. He is to debase and enfeeble the community which
he governs, from a nation into a sect. In our own country, for example, millions
of Catholics, millions of Protestant Dissenters, are to be excluded from all
power and honors. A great hostile fleet is on the sea; but Nelson is not to
command in the Channel if in the mystery of the Trinity he confounds the
persons. An invading army has landed in Kent; but the Duke of Wellington is not
to be at the head of our forces if he divides the substance. And after all this,
Mr. Gladstone tells us, that it would be wrong to imprison a Jew, a Mussulman,
or a Buddhist, for a day; because really a Government cannot understand these
matters, and ought not to meddle with questions which belong to the Church. A
singular theologian, indeed, this Government! So learned, that it is competent
to exclude Grotius from office for being a Semi-Pelagian, so unlearned that it
is incompetent to fine a Hindu peasant a rupee for going on a pilgrimage to
Juggernaut.
"To solicit and persuade one another," says Mr. Gladstone, "are privileges which
belong to us all; and the wiser and better man is bound to advise the less wise
and good; but he is not only not bound, he is not allowed, speaking generally,
to coerce him. It is untrue, then, that the same considerations which bind a
Government to submit a religion to the free choice of the people would therefore
justify their enforcing its adoption."
Granted. But it is true that all the same considerations which would justify a
Government in propagating a religion by means of civil disabilities would
justify the propagating of that religion by penal laws. To solicit! Is it
solicitation to tell a Catholic Duke, that he must abjure his religion or walk
out of the House of Lords? To persuade! Is it persuasion to tell a barrister of
distinguished eloquence and learning that he shall grow old in his stuff gown,
while his pupils are seated above him in ermine, because he cannot digest the
damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed? Would Mr. Gladstone think that a
religious system which he considers as false, Socinianism for example, was
submitted to his free choice, if it were submitted in these terms?--"If you
obstinately adhere to the faith of the Nicene fathers, you shall not be burned
in Smithfield; you shall not be sent to Dorchester goal; you shall not even pay
double land-tax. But you shall be shut out from all situations in which you
might exercise your talents with honor to yourself and advantage to the country.
The House of Commons, the bench of magistracy, are not for such as you. You
shall see younger men, your inferiors in station and talents, rise to the
highest dignities and attract the gaze of nations, while you are doomed to
neglect and obscurity. If you have a son of the highest promise, a son such as
other fathers would contemplate with delight, the development of his fine
talents and of his generous ambition shall be a torture to you. You shall look
on him as a being doomed to lead, as you have led, the abject life of a Roman or
a Neapolitan in the midst of a great English people. All those high honors, so
much more precious than the most costly gifts of despots, with which a free
country decorates its illustrious citizens, shall be to him, as they have been
to you, objects not of hope and virtuous emulation, but of hopeless, envious
pining. Educate him, if you wish him to feel his degradation. Educate him, if
you wish to stimulate his craving for what he never must enjoy. Educate him, if
you would imitate the barbarity of that Celtic tyrant who fed his prisoners on
salted food till they called eagerly for drink, and then let down an empty cup
into the dungeon and left them to die of thirst." Is this to solicit, to
persuade, to submit religion to the free choice of man? Would a fine of a
thousand pounds, would imprisonment in Newgate for six months, under
circumstances not disgraceful, give Mr. Gladstone the pain which he would feel,
if he were to be told that he was to be dealt with in the way in which he would
himself deal with more than one half of his countrymen?
We are not at all surprised to find such inconsistency even in a man of Mr.
Gladstone's talents. The truth is, that every man is, to a great extent, the
creature of the age. It is to no purpose that he resists the influence which the
vast mass, in which he is but an atom, must exercise on him. He may try to be a
man of the tenth century: but he cannot. Whether he will or not, he must be a
man of the nineteenth century. He shares in the motion of the moral as well as
in that of the physical world. He can no more be as intolerant as he would have
been in the days of the Tudors than he can stand in the evening exactly where he
stood in the morning. The globe goes round from west to east; and he must go
round with it. When he says that he is where he was, he means only that he has
moved at the same rate with all around him. When he says that he has gone a good
way to the westward, he means only that he has not gone to the eastward quite so
rapidly as his neighbors. Mr. Gladstone's book is, in this respect, a very
gratifying performance. It is the measure of what a man can do to be left behind
by the world. It is the strenuous effort of a very vigorous mind to keep as far
in the rear of the general progress as possible. And yet, with the most intense
exertion Mr. Gladstone cannot help being, on some important points, greatly in
advance of Locke himself; and, with whatever admiration he may regard Laud, it
is well for him, we can tell him, that he did not write in the days of that
zealous primate, who would certainly have refuted the expositions of Scripture
which we have quoted, by one of the keenest arguments that can be addressed to
human ears.
This is not the only instance in which Mr. Gladstone has shrunk in a very
remarkable manner from the consequences of his own theory. If there be in the
whole world a state to which this theory is applicable, that state is the
British Empire in India. Even we, who detest paternal governments in general,
shall admit that the duties of the Government of India are, to a considerable
extent, paternal. There, the superiority of the governors to the governed in
moral science is unquestionable. The conversion of the whole people to the worst
form that Christianity ever wore in the darkest ages would be a most happy
event. It is not necessary that a man should be a Christian to wish for the
propagation of Christianity in India. It is sufficient that he should be an
European not much below the ordinary European level of good sense and humanity.
Compared with the importance of the interests at stake, all those Scotch and
Irish questions which occupy so large a portion of Mr. Gladstone's book, sink
into insignificance. In no part of the world since the days of Theodosius has so
large a heathen population been subject to a Christian government. In no part of
the world is heathenism more cruel, more licentious, more fruitful of absurd
rites and pernicious laws. Surely, if it be the duty of Government to use its
power and its revenue in order to bring seven millions of Irish Catholics over
to the Protestant Church, it is a fortiori the duty of the Government to use its
power and its revenue in order to make seventy millions of idolaters Christians.
If it be a sin to suffer John Howard or William Penn to hold any office in
England because they are not in communion with the Established Church, it must
be a crying sin indeed to admit to high situations men who bow down, in temples
covered with emblems of vice, to the hideous images of sensual or malevolent
gods.
But no. Orthodoxy, it seems, is more shocked by the priests of Rome than by the
priests of Kalee. The plain red brick building, the Cave of Adullam, or Ebenezer
Chapel, where uneducated men hear a half-educated man talk of the Christian law
of love and the Christian hope of glory, is unworthy of the indulgence which is
reserved for the shrine where the Thug suspends a portion of the spoils of
murdered travelers, and for the car which grinds its way through the bones of
self-immolated pilgrims. "It would be," says Mr. Gladstone, "an absurd
exaggeration to maintain it as the part of such a Government as that of the
British in India to bring home to the door of every subject at once the
ministrations of a new and totally unknown religion." The Government ought
indeed to desire to propagate Christianity. But the extent to which they must do
so must be "limited by the degree in which the people are found willing to
receive it." He proposes no such limitation in the case of Ireland. He would
give the Irish a Protestant Church whether they like it or not. "We believe,"
says he, "that that which we place before them is, whether they know it or not,
calculated to be beneficial to them; and that, if they know it not now, they
will know it when it is presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their
applause at the expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests?"
And why does Mr. Gladstone allow to the Hindu a privilege which he denies to the
Irishman? Why does he reserve his greatest liberality for the most monstrous
errors? Why does he pay most respect to the opinion of the least enlightened
people? Why does he withhold the right to exercise paternal authority from that
one Government which is fitter to exercise paternal authority than any
Government that ever existed in the world? We will give the reason in his own
words.
"In British India," he says, "a small number of persons advanced to a higher
grade of civilization, exercise the powers of government over an immensely
greater number of less cultivated persons, not by coercion, but under free
stipulation with the governed. Now, the rights of a Government, in circumstances
thus peculiar, obviously depend neither upon the unrestricted theory of paternal
principles, nor upon any primordial or fictitious contract of indefinite powers,
but upon an express and known treaty, matter of positive agreement, not of
natural ordinance."
Where Mr. Gladstone has seen this treaty we cannot guess for, though he calls it
a "known treaty," we will stake our credit that it is quite unknown both at
Calcutta and Madras, both in Leadenhall Street and Cannon Row, that it is not to
be found in any of the enormous folios of papers relating to India which fill
the bookcases of members of Parliament, that it has utterly escaped the
researches of all the historians of our Eastern empire, that, in the long and
interesting debates of 1813 on the admission of missionaries to India, debates
of which the most valuable part has been excellently preserved by the care of
the speakers, no allusion to this important instrument is to be found. The truth
is that this treaty is a nonentity. It is by coercion, it is by the sword, and
not by free stipulation with the governed, that England rule India; nor is
England bound by any contract whatever not to deal with Bengal as she deals with
Ireland. She may set up a Bishop of Patna, and a Dean of Hoogley; she may grant
away the public revenue for the maintenance of prebendaries of Benares and
canons of Moorshedabad; she may divide the country into parishes, and place, a
rector with a stipend in every one of them; and all this without infringing any
positive agreement. If there be such a treaty, Mr. Gladstone can have no
difficulty in making known its date, its terms, and, above all the precise
extent of the territory within which we have sinfully bound ourselves to be
guilty of practical atheism. The last point is of great importance. For, as the
provinces of our Indian empire were acquired at different times, and in very
different ways, no single treaty, indeed no ten treaties, will justify the
system pursued by our Government there.
The plain state of the case is this. No man in his senses would dream of
applying Mr. Gladstone's theory to India; because, if so applied, it would
inevitably destroy our empire, and, with our empire, the best chance of
spreading Christianity among the natives. This Mr. Gladstone felt. In some way
or other his theory was to be saved, and the monstrous consequences avoided. Of
intentional misrepresentation we are quite sure that he is incapable. But we
cannot acquit him of that unconscious disingenuousness from which the most
upright man, when strongly attached to an opinion, is seldom wholly free. We
believe that he recoiled from the ruinous consequences which his system would
produce, if tried in India; but that he did not like to say so, lest he should
lay himself open to the charge of sacrificing principle to expediency, a word
which is held in the utmost abhorrence by all his school. Accordingly, he caught
at the notion of a treaty, a notion which must, we think, have originated in
some rhetorical expression which he has imperfectly understood. There is one
excellent way of avoiding the drawing of a false conclusion from a false major;
and that is by having a false minor. Inaccurate history is an admirable
corrective of unreasonable theory. And thus it is in the present case. A bad
general rule is laid down, and obstinately maintained, wherever the consequences
are not too monstrous for human bigotry. But when they become so horrible that
even Christ Church shrinks, that even Oriel stands aghast, the rule is evaded by
means of a fictitious contract. One imaginary obligation is set up against
another. Mr. Gladstone first preaches to Governments the duty of undertaking an
enterprise just as rational as the Crusades, and then dispenses them from it on
the ground of a treaty which is just as authentic as the donation of Constantine
to Pope Sylvester. His system resembles nothing so much as a forged bond with a
forged release indorsed on the back of it.
With more show of reason he rests the claims of the Scotch Church on a contract.
He considers that contract, however, as most unjustifiable, and speaks of the
setting up of the Kirk as a disgraceful blot on the reign of William the Third.
Surely it would be amusing, if it were not melancholy, to see a man of virtue
and abilities unsatisfied with the calamities which one Church, constituted on
false principles, has brought upon the empire, and repining that Scotland is not
in the same state with Ireland, that no Scottish agitator is raising rent and
putting county members in and out, that no Presbyterian association is dividing
supreme power with the Government, that no meetings of procursors and repealers
are covering the side of the Calton Hill, that twenty-five thousand troops are
not required to maintain order on the north of the Tweed, that the anniversary
of the Battle of Bothwell Bridge is not regularly celebrated by insult, riot,
and murder. We could hardly find a stronger argument against Mr. Gladstone's
system than that which Scotland furnishes. The policy which has been followed in
that country has been directly opposed to the policy which he recommends. And
the consequence is that Scotland, having been one of the rudest, one of the
poorest, one of the most turbulent countries in Europe, has become one of the
most highly civilized, one of the most flourishing, one of the most tranquil.
The atrocities which were of common occurrence: while an unpopular Church was
dominant are unknown, In spite of a mutual aversion as bitter as ever separated
one people from another, the two kingdoms which compose our island have been
indissolubly joined together. Of the ancient national feeling there remains just
enough to be ornamental and useful; just enough to inspire the poet, and to
kindle a generous and friendly emulation in the bosom of the soldier. But for
all the ends of government the nations are one. And why are they so? The answer
is simple. The nations are one for all the ends of government, because in their
union the true ends of government alone were kept in sight. The nations are one
because the Churches are two.
Such is the union of England with Scotland, an union which resembles the union
of the limbs of one healthful and vigorous body, all moved by one will, all
co-operating for common ends. The system of Mr. Gladstone would have produced an
union which can be compared only to that which is the subject of a wild Persian
fable. King Zohak--we tell the story as Mr. Southey tells it to us--gave the
devil leave to kiss his shoulders. Instantly two serpents sprang out, who, in
the fury of hunger, attacked his head, and attempted to get at his brain. Zohak
pulled them away, and tore them with his nails. But he found that they were
inseparable parts of himself, and that what he was lacerating was his own flesh.
Perhaps we might be able to find, if we looked round the world, some political
union like this, some hideous monster of a state, cursed with one principle of
sensation and two principles of volition, self-loathing and self-torturing, made
up of parts which are driven by a frantic impulse to inflict mutual pain, yet
are doomed to feel whatever they inflict, which are divided by an irreconcilable
hatred, Yet are blended in an indissoluble identity. Mr. Gladstone, from his
tender concern for Zohak, is unsatisfied because the devil has as yet kissed
only one shoulder, because there is not a snake mangling and mangled on the left
to keep in countenance his brother on the right.
But we must proceed in our examination of his theory. Having, as he conceives,
proved that is the duty of every Government to profess some religion or other,
right or wrong, and to establish that religion, he then comes to the question
what religion a Government ought to prefer; and he decides this question in
favor of the form of Christianity established in England. The Church of England
is, according to him, the pure Catholic Church of Christ, which possesses the
apostolically succession of ministers, and within whose pale is to be found that
unity which is essential to truth. For her decisions he claims a degree of
reverence far beyond what she has ever, in any of her formularies, claimed for
herself; far beyond what the moderate school of Bossuet demands for the Pope;
and scarcely short of what that school would ascribe to Pope and General Council
together. To separate from her communion is schism. To reject her traditions or
interpretations of Scripture is sinful presumption.
Mr. Gladstone pronounces the right of private judgment, as it is generally
understood throughout Protestant Europe, to be a monstrous abuse. He declares
himself favorable, indeed, to the exercise of private judgment, after a fashion
of his own. We have, according to him, a right to judge all the doctrines of the
Church of England to be sound, but not to judge any of them to be unsound. He
has no objection, he assures us, to active inquiry into religious questions. On
the contrary, he thinks such inquiry highly desirable, as long as it does not
lead to diversity of opinion; which is much the same thing as if he were to
recommend the use of fire that will not burn down houses, or of brandy that will
not make men drunk. He conceives it to be perfectly possible for mankind to
exercise their intellects vigorously and freely on theological subjects, and yet
to come to exactly the same conclusions with each other and with the Church of
England. And for this opinion he gives, as far as we have been able to discover,
no reason whatever, except that everybody who vigorously and freely exercises
his understanding on Euclid's Theorems assents to them. "The activity of private
judgment," he truly observes, "and the unity and strength of conviction in
mathematics vary directly as each other." On this unquestionable fact he
constructs a somewhat questionable argument. Everybody who freely inquires
agrees, he says, with Euclid. But the Church is as much in the right as Euclid.
Why, then, should not every free inquirer agree with the Church? We could put
many similar questions. Either the affirmative or the negative of the
proposition that King Charles wrote the Icon Basilike is as true as that two
sides of a triangle are greater than the third side. Why, then, do Dr.
Wordsworth and Mr. Hallam agree in thinking two sides of a triangle greater than
the third side, and yet differ about the genuineness of the Icon Basilike? The
state of the exact sciences proves, says Mr. Gladstone, that, as respects
religion, "the association of these two ideas, activity of inquiry, and variety
of conclusion, is a fallacious one." We might just as well turn the argument the
other way, and infer from the variety of religious opinions that there must
necessarily be hostile mathematical sects, some affirming, and some denying,
that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the sides. But we
do not think either the one analogy or the other of the smallest value. Our way
of ascertaining the tendency of free inquiry is simply to open our eyes and look
at the world in which we live; and there we see that free inquiry on
mathematical subjects produces unity, and that free inquiry on moral subjects
produces discrepancy. There would undoubtedly be less discrepancy if inquiries
were more diligent and candid. But discrepancy there will be among the most
diligent and candid, as long as the constitution of the human mind, and the
nature of moral evidence, continue unchanged. That we have not freedom and unity
together is a very sad thing; and so it is that we have not wings. But we are
just as likely to see the one defect removed as the other. It is not only in
religion that this discrepancy is found. It is the same with all matters which
depend on moral evidence, with judicial questions, for example, and with
political questions. All the judges will work a sum in the rule of three on the
same principle, and bring out the same conclusion. But it does not follow that,
however honest and laborious they may be, they will all be of one mind on the
Douglas case. So it is vain to hope that there may be a free constitution under
which every representative will be unanimously elected, and every law
unanimously passed; and it would be ridiculous for a statesman to stand
wondering and bemoaning himself because people who agree in thinking that two
and two make four cannot agree about the new poor law, or the administration of
Canada.
There are two intelligible and consistent courses which may be followed with
respect to the exercise of private judgment; the course of the Romanist, who
interdicts private judgment because of its inevitable inconveniences; and the
course of the Protestant, who permits private judgment in spite of its
inevitable inconveniences. Both are more reasonable than Mr. Gladstone, who
would have private judgment without its inevitable inconveniences. The Romanist
produces repose by means of stupefaction. The Protestant encourages activity,
though he knows that where there is much activity there will be some aberration.
Mr. Gladstone wishes for the unity of the fifteenth century with the active and
searching spirit of the sixteenth. He might as well wish to be in two places at
once.
When Mr. Gladstone says that we "actually require discrepancy of
opinion--require and demand error, falsehood, blindness, and plume ourselves on
such discrepancy as attesting a freedom which is only valuable when used for
unity in the truth," he expresses himself with more energy than precision.
Nobody loves discrepancy for the sake of discrepancy. But a person who
conscientiously believes that free inquiry is, on the whole, beneficial to the
interests of truth, and that, from the imperfection of the human faculties,
wherever there is much free inquiry there will be some discrepancy, may, without
impropriety, consider such discrepancy, though in itself an evil, as a sign of
good. That there are ten thousand thieves in London is a very melancholy fact.
But, looked at in one point of view, it is a reason for exultation. For what
other city could maintain ten thousand thieves? What must be the mass of wealth,
where the fragments gleaned by lawless pilfering rise to so large an amount? St.
Kilda would not support a single pickpocket. The quantity of theft is, to a
certain extent, an index of the quantity of useful industry and judicious
speculation. And just as we may, from the great number of rogues in a town,
infer that much honest gain is made there; so may we often, from the quantity of
error in a community, draw a cheering inference as to the degree in which the
public mind is turned to those inquiries which alone can lead to rational
convictions of truth.
Mr. Gladstone seems to imagine that most Protestants think it possible for the
same doctrine to be at once true and false; or that they think it immaterial
whether, on a religious question, a man comes to a true or a false conclusion.
If there be any Protestants who hold notions so absurd, we abandon them to his
censure.
The Protestant doctrine touching the right of private judgment, that doctrine
which is the common foundation of the Anglican, the Lutheran, and the
Calvinistic Churches, that doctrine by which every sect of Dissenters vindicates
its separation, we conceive not to be this, that opposite opinions rue; nor
this, that truth and falsehood are both may both be true; equally good; nor yet
this, that all speculative error is necessarily innocent; but this, that there
is on the face of the earth no visible body to whose decrees men are bound to
submit their private judgment on points of faith.
Is there always such a visible body? Was there such a visible body in the year
1500? If not, why are we to believe that there is such a body in the year 1839?
If there was such a body in the year 1500, what was it? Was it the Church of
Rome? And how can the Church of England be orthodox now, if the Church of Rome
was orthodox then?
"In England," says Mr. Gladstone, "the case was widely different from that of
the Continent. Her reformation did not destroy, but successfully maintained, the
unity and succession of the Church in her apostolically ministry. We have,
therefore, still among us the ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth,
conveying it to us through an unbroken series from our Lord Jesus Christ and His
Apostles. This is to us the ordinary voice of authority; of authority equally
reasonable and equally true, whether we will hear, or whether we will forbear."
Mr. Gladstone's reasoning is not so clear as might be desired. We have among us,
he says, ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, and their voice is to us
the voice of authority. Undoubtedly, if they are witness of the truth, their
voice is the voice of authority. But this is little more than saying that the
truth is the truth. Nor is truth more true because it comes in an unbroken
series from the Apostles. The Nicene faith is not more true in the mouth of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, than in that of a Moderator of the General Assembly.
If our respect for the authority of the Church is to be only consequent upon our
conviction of the truth of her doctrines, we come at once to that monstrous
abuse, the Protestant exercise of private judgment. But if Mr. Gladstone means
that we ought to believe that the Church of England speaks the truth because she
has the apostolically succession, we greatly doubt whether such a doctrine can
be maintained. In the first place, what proof have we of the fact? We have,
indeed, heard it said that Providence would certainly have interfered to
preserve the apostolically succession in the true Church. But this is an
argument fitted for understandings of a different kind from Mr. Gladstone's. He
will hardly tell us that the Church of England is the true Church because she
has the succession; and that she has the succession because she is the true
Church.
What evidence, then, have we for the fact of the apostolically succession? And
here we may easily defend the truth against Oxford with the same arguments with
which, in old times, the truth was defended by Oxford against Rome. In this
stage of our combat with Mr. Gladstone, we need few weapons except those which
we find in the well-furnished and well-ordered armory of Chillingworth.
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