網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

fertile and productive of such monsters; made up of the sacred Christian profession, conjoined with [with even worse than] pagan lives! and the more of sanctity any pretend to, the more deplorable is the case, when the wickedness breaks forth that was concealed before under the visor of that pretence. Is this no matter of lamentation to you? or will you here again say your unrelatedness to their party makes you unconcerned? If it do not justify your rejoicing, it will surely (you think) excuse your not mourning. Will it so indeed? Who made you of a distinct party? Are you not a Christian? Are you not a Protestant? and what do you account that but reformed, primitive Christianity? and so the more it is reformed, the more perfectly it is itself. Who put it in your power to make distinguishing additions to the Christian religion, by which to sever yourselves from the body of other Christians in the world, so as not to be concerned in the affairs of the body? If this or that member say, "I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body?" Is it not the Christian name that is dishonoured by the scandalous lives of them that bear that name? Whose laws are they that are broken, the laws of this or that party? or are they not the laws of Christ? Will you say they are unrelated to him too? or have they no concern with him? Can any party be united within itself by so sacred ties as all Christians are with the whole body of Christ? I know no way you have to be unconcerned in such cases as the matter of your humiliation (when they occur within your notice) but by renouncing Christianity. Nor indeed would that serve the turn. what will you do with your humanity? Are you not still a man, if you would be no longer a Christian? and even that methinks should oblige us to bewail the depravedness and dishonour of the nature and order of human beings, that they who were made for the society of angels, yea, and of the blessed God himself, should be found delighting and

For

wallowing in worse impurities than those of the dog or the swine.

The more strictness in morals they have (falsely) pretended to, the greater is your obligation to lament their violations of those sacred rules (which you also profess to be subject to), and not the less. Do I need to tell you that even among pagans, where profession of greater strictness had been once entered into, an apostacy to gross immoralities have been the subject of solemn lamentation, as in the school (or church should I call it) of Pythagoras, where, when any who had obliged themselves to the observation of his virtuous precepts did afterwards lapse into a vicious course, a funeral and solemn mourning was held for them as if they had been dead.

2. On your own account; for when our Saviour says, "Woe to that man by whom the offence cometh," does he not also say, "Woe to the world because of offences ?" and who would not fear and lament his share in that woe? Are you proof against all hurt by another's sin? What if it encourage you to sin too? What if it harden you in it? How many do some men's sins dispose to atheism, and to think there is nothing in religion? and, if you felt in yourselves an inclination to rejoice in them, that itself argues that the infection has caught upon you, seized your spirits, and corrupted your vitals; so that you have cause to lament your even having rejoiced; to be afflicted, and mourn, and weep, &c., James iv. 9. One would think them indeed but half men, and scarcely any Christians, that can allow themselves so inhuman and unhallowed a pleasure as rejoicing in another's sin. It is very unworthy in man to take pleasure in seeing his fellow-man turning beast. There is little in it of the ingenuousness that belongs to human nature, to delight in the harms of others; much less of the prudence, to make sport of common mischief; and would a Christian rejoice in the disadvantages of his own cause,

and in the dishonour and reproach of the very name which he himself bears ?-Howe.

Here also we have the reprehension of a false principle in the manner of comment; severe, yet just. It is however here necessary to remark that some principles may be doubtful, or at least opinions founded on them may be so: true Christians may upon many points differ; and in such cases we are not to comment upon the sentiments of each other with severity, remembering the quotation which I made in the last volume to this point, but, instead of severity, use fair and temperate argument. No passion should here be suffered to rise; for, when once it is excited, it will not, ten to one, subside before much mischief is done.

For an extensive and masterly exposure of the false principles commonly advanced or acted upon, by the nominal professors of Christianity, I must refer the student to Mr. Wilberforce's Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians: a work of unspeakable value. The whole deserves to be read with close attention; but I cannot prevail upon myself to quit this part of my subject without giving you a brief extract, in which the fallacy of two of the most specious and destructive principles is very forcibly exhibited. The one is, that" it signifies little what a man believes, if his practice be upright," &c. The advocates of this sentiment often quote with exultation the well-known lines of Pope :

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

The other is that "whatever a man's opinion and conduct may be, provided he be sincerely convinced they are right, he cannot be criminal in the sight of God;" or, in other words, that "" sincerity is all in all." Our author ob

serves:

It would detain us too long fully to set forth the various evils inherent in these favourite positions, of which it is

surely not the least that they are of unbounded application, comprehending within their capacious limits most of the errors which have been received, and many of the most desperate crimes which have been perpetrated, among men. The former of these maxims proceeds on the monstrous supposition that, although accountable creatures, we shall not be called to account for the exercise of our intellectual and mental powers. Moreover, it is founded on that grossly fallacious assumption, that a man's opinions will not influence his practice. The advocates of this fashionable principle require to be reminded that the judgment often receives a corrupt bias from the heart and the affections; that vice is the fruitful mother of prejudice and error. Forgetful of these acknowledged truths, and confounding the most important moral distinctions, they place on the same level those who occupy themselves in a sincere and warm pursuit of truth, and those who yield themselves implicitly to the opinions which early prepossession may have infused, or which passion or interest, or even acquiescing indolence, may have imposed upon their minds.

The latter of the foregoing maxims-that sincerity is all in all-proceeds on this groundless supposition, that the Supreme Being has not afforded us sufficient means of discriminating truth from falsehood-right from wrong: and it implies that, be a man's opinions or conduct ever so wild or extravagant, we are to presume that they are as much the result of impartial inquiry and honest conviction, as if his sentiments and actions had been strictly conformable to the rules of reason and sobriety. Never indeed was there a principle more general in its use, more sovereign in its potency. How does its beautiful simplicity, and compendious brevity, give it rank before the laborious subtleties of Bellarmin! Clement and Ravaillac, and other worthies of a similar stamp, from whose purity of intention the world has hitherto withheld its due tribute

of applause, would have here found a ready plea; and their injured innocence should now at length receive its full though tardy vindication. "These, however," it may be replied," are excepted cases." Certainly they are cases of which any one, who maintains the opinion in question, would be glad to disencumber himself, because they clearly expose the unsoundness of his principle. But it will be incumbent on such a one first to explain with precision why they are to be exempted from its operation; and this he will find an impossible task: for sincerity, in its popular sense, cannot be made the criterion of guilt and innocence on any ground which will not equally serve to justify the assassins who have been instanced. The conclusion cannot be eluded: no man was ever more fully persuaded of the innocence of any action than those men were convinced that the horrid deed they were about to perpetrate was, not merely lawful, but highly meritorious. Thus Clement and Ravaillac, being unquestionably sincere, were therefore indubitably innocent. Nay, the absurd and pernicious tendency of this principle might be shown to be even greater than what has yet been stated. It would scarcely be going too far to assert that, whilst it scorns the defence of petty villains, who still retain the sense of good and evil, it holds forth, like some well-frequented sanctuary, a secure asylum to more finished criminals, who, from long habits of wickedness, are lost to the perception, no less than to the practice, of virtue; and that it selects a seared conscience, and a callous heart, and a mind insensible to all moral distinctions, as the special objects of its vindication. Nor is it only in profane history that instances are to be found, like those which we have mentioned, of persons committing the greatest crimes with a sincere conviction of the rectitude of their conduct. Scripture will afford us parallels; and it was surely to guard us against the very error which we are now exposing that our blessed Saviour forwarned his disciples: "The

« 上一頁繼續 »