Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion
And here it will not be impertinent to observe, that what the eldest Greek Philosophy entitled the Reason (ΝΟΥΣ) and Ideas, the philosophic Apostle names the Spirit and Truths spiritually discerned: while to those who in the pride of learning or in the over-weening meanness of modern metaphysics decry the doctrine of the Spirit in Man and its possible communion with the Holy Spirit, as vulgar enthusiasm, I submit the following sentences from a Pagan philosopher, a nobleman and a minister of state—“Ita dico, Lucili! sacer intra nos Spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos. Hic prout a nobis tractatus est, ita nos ipse tractat. Bonus vir sine Deo nemo est.” Seneca, Epist. xli.
Aphorism I.
H. More.
Every one is to give a reason of his faith; but Priests and Ministers more punctually than any, their province being to make good every sentence of the Bible to a rational inquirer into the truth of these Oracles. Enthusiasts find it an easy thing to heat the fancies of unlearned and unreflecting hearers; but when a sober man would be satisfied of the grounds from whence they speak, he shall not have one syllable or the least tittle of a pertinent answer. Only they will talk big of the spirit, and inveigh against Reason with bitter reproaches, calling it carnal or fleshly, though it be indeed no soft flesh, but enduring and penetrant steel, even the sword of the Spirit, and such as pierces to the heart.
Aphorism II
H. More.
There are two very bad things in this resolving of men’s Faith and Practice into the immediate suggestion of a Spirit not acting on our understandings, or rather into the illumination of such a Spirit as they can give no account of, such as does not enlighten their reason or enable them to render their doctrine intelligible to others. First, it defaces and makes useless that part of the Image of God in us, which we call reason; and secondly, it takes away that advantage, which raises Christianity above all other religions, that she dare appeal to so solid a faculty.
Aphorism III
It is the glory of the Gospel Charter and the Christian Constitution, that its Author and Head is the Spirit of Truth, Essential Reason as well as Absolute and Incomprehensible Will. Like a just Monarch, he refers even his own causes to the Judgment of his high Courts. He has his King’s Bench in the Reason, his Court of Equity in the Conscience: that the Representative of his majesty and universal justice, this the nearest to the King’s heart, and the dispenser of his particular decrees. He has likewise his Court of Common Pleas in the Understanding, his Court of Exchequer in the Prudence. The Laws are his Laws. And though by Signs and Miracles he has mercifully condescended to interline here and there with his own hand the great Statute-book, which he had dictated to his Amanuensis, Nature; yet has he been graciously pleased to forbid our receiving as the King’s Mandates aught that is not stamped with the Great Seal of the Conscience, and countersigned by the Reason.
Aphorism IV
On an Unlearned Ministry, under pretence of a Call of the Spirit, and inward Graces superseding Outward helps.
H. More.
Tell me, Ye high-flown Perfectionists, ye boasters of the Light within you, could the highest perfection of your inward Light ever show to you the history of past ages, the state of the world at present, the knowledge of arts and tongues, without books or teachers? How then can you understand the Providence of God, or the age, the purpose, the fulfilment of Prophecies, or distinguish such as have been fulfilled from those to the fulfilment of which we are to look forward? How can you judge concerning the authenticity and uncorruptedness of the Gospels, and the other sacred Scriptures? And how without this knowledge can you support the truth of Christianity? How can you either have, or give a reason for the faith which you profess? This Light within, that loves darkness, and would exclude those excellent Gifts of God to Mankind, Knowledge and Understanding, what is it but a sullen self-sufficiency within you, engendering contempt of superiors, pride and a spirit of division, and inducing you to reject for yourselves and to undervalue in others the helps without, which the Grace of God has provided and appointed for his Church—nay, to make them grounds or pretexts of your dislike or suspicion of Christ’s Ministers who have fruitfully availed themselves of the Helps afforded them?
Aphorism V.
H. More.
There are wanderers, whom neither pride nor a perverse humour have led astray; and whose condition is such, that I think few more worthy of a man’s best directions. For the more imperious sects having put such unhandsome vizards on Christianity, and the sincere milk of the Word having been every where so sophisticated by the humours and inventions of men, it has driven these anxious melancholists to seek for a teacher that cannot deceive, the voice of the eternal Word within them; to which if they be faithful, they assure themselves it will be faithful to them in return. Nor would this be a groundless presumption, if they had sought this voice in the Reason and the Conscience, with the Scripture articulating the same, instead of giving heed to their fancy and mistaking bodily disturbances, and the vapours resulting therefrom, for inspiration and the teaching of the Spirit.
Aphorism VI
Bishop Hacket.
When every man is his own end, all things will come to a bad end. Blessed were those days, when every man thought himself rich and fortunate by good success of the public wealth and glory. We want public souls, we want them. I speak it with compassion: there is no sin and abuse in the world that affects my thought so much. Every man thinks, that he is a whole Commonwealth in his private family. Omnes quæ sua sunt quærunt. All seek their own.69
Comment
Selfishness is common to all ages and countries. In all ages Self-seeking is the Rule, and Self-sacrifice the Exception. But if to seek our private advantage in harmony with, and by the furtherance of, the public prosperity, and to derive a portion of our happiness from sympathy with the prosperity of our fellow-men—if this be Public Spirit, it would be morose and querulous to pretend that there is any want of it in this country and at the present time. On the contrary, the number of “public souls” and the general readiness to contribute to the public good, in science and in religion, in patriotism and in philanthropy, stand prominent70 among the characteristics of this and the preceding generation. The habit of referring actions and opinions to fixed laws; convictions rooted in principles; thought, insight, system;—these, had the good Bishop lived in our times, would have been his desiderata, and the theme of his complaints.—“We want thinking Souls, we want them.”
This and the three preceding extracts will suffice as precautionary Aphorisms. And here again, the reader may exemplify the great advantages to be obtained from the habit of tracing the proper meaning and history of words. We need only recollect the common and idiomatic phrases in which the word “spirit” occurs in a physical or material sense (as, fruit has lost its spirit and flavour), to be convinced that its property is to improve, enliven, actuate some other thing, not to constitute a thing in its own name. The enthusiast may find one exception to this where the material itself is called Spirit. And when he calls to mind, how this spirit acts when taken _alone_ by the unhappy persons who in their first exultation will boast that it is meat, drink, fire, and clothing to them, all in one—when he reflects, that its properties are to inflame, intoxicate, madden, with exhaustion, lethargy, and atrophy for the sequels—well for him, if in some lucid interval he should fairly put the question to his own mind, how far this is analogous to his own case, and whether the exception does not confirm the rule. The Letter without the Spirit killeth; but does it follow, that the Spirit is to kill the Letter? To kill that which it is its appropriate office to enliven?
However, where the Ministry is not invaded, and the plain sense of the Scriptures is left undisturbed, and the Believer looks for the suggestions of the Spirit only or chiefly in applying particular passages to his own individual case and exigences; though in this there may be much weakness, some delusion and imminent danger of more, I cannot but join with Henry More in avowing, that I feel knit to such a man in the bonds of a common faith far more closely, than to those who receive neither the Letter nor the Spirit, turning the one into metaphor, and oriental hyperbole, in order to explain away the other into the influence of motives suggested by their own understandings, and realized by their own strength.
Notes
69 Hacket’s Sermons, p. 449.—Ed.
70 The very marked positive as well as comparative, magnitude and prominence of the bump, entitled Benevolence (see Spurzheim’s Map of the Human Skull) on the head of the late Mr. John Thurtel, has woefully unsettled the faith of many ardent Phrenologists, and strengthened the previous doubts of a still greater number into utter disbelief. On my mind this fact (for a fact it is) produced the directly contrary effect; and inclined me to suspect, for the first time, that there may be some truth in the Spurzheimian Scheme. Whether future Craniologists may not see cause to new-name this and one or two other of these convex gnomons, is quite a different question. At present, and according to the present use of words, any such change would be premature; and we must be content to say, that Mr. Thurtel’s Benevolence was insufficiently modified by the unprotrusive and unindicated convolutes of the brain, that secrete honesty and common-sense. The organ of Destructiveness was indirectly potentiated by the absence or imperfect development of the glands of Reason and Conscience in this, “unfortunate Gentleman!”