This answer, this solution proceeding too from a divine so pre-eminently gifted, and occurring (with other passages not less startling) in a vehement refutation of the received doctrine on the express ground of its opposition to the clearest conceptions and best feelings of mankind—this it is that surprises me! It is of this that I complain! The Almighty Father exasperated with those, whom the Bishop has himself in the same treatise described as "innocent and most unfortunate"—the two things best fitted to conciliate love and pity! Or though they did not remain innocent, yet those whose abandonment to a mere nature, while they were left amenable to a law above nature, he affirms to be the irresistible cause, that they one and all did sin! And this decree illustrated and justified by its analogy to one of the worst actions of an imperfect mortal! From such of my readers as will give a thoughtful perusal to these works of Taylor, I dare anticipate a concurrence with the judgment which I here transcribe from the blank space at the end of the Deus Justificatus in my own copy; and which, though twenty years[116] have elapsed since it was written, I have never seen reason to recant or modify. "This most eloquent Treatise may be compared to a statue of Janus, with the one face, which we must suppose fronting the Calvinistic tenet, entire and fresh, as from the master's hand: beaming with life and force, witty scorn on the lip, and a brow at once bright and weighty with satisfying reason:—the other, looking toward the "something to be put in its place," maimed, featureless, and weather-bitten into an almost visionary confusion and indistinctness."[117]
With these expositions I hasten to contrast the Scriptural article respecting Original Sin, or the corrupt and sinful Nature of the Human Will, and the belief which alone is required of us, as Christians. And here the first thing to be considered, and which will at once remove a world of error, is; that this is no tenet first introduced or imposed by Christianity, and which, should a man see reason to disclaim the authority of the Gospel, would no longer have any claim on his attention. It is no perplexity that a man may get rid of by ceasing to be a Christian, and which has no existence for a philosophic Deist. It is a Fact, affirmed, indeed, in the Christian Scriptures alone with the force and frequency proportioned to its consummate importance; but a fact acknowledged in every religion that retains the least glimmering of the patriarchal faith in a God infinite, yet personal—a Fact assumed or implied as the basis of every religion, of which any relics remain of earlier date than the last and total apostacy of the Pagan world, when the faith in the great I am, the Creator, was extinguished in the sensual Polytheism, which is inevitably the final result of Pantheism or the worship of nature; and the only form under which the Pantheistic scheme—that, according to which the world is God, and the material universe itself the one only absolute Being—can exist for a people, or become the popular creed. Thus in the most ancient books of the Brahmins, the deep sense of this Fact, and the doctrines grounded on obscure traditions of the promised remedy, are seen struggling, and now gleaming, now flashing, through the mist of Pantheism, and producing the incongruities and gross contradictions of the Brahmin Mythology: while in the rival sect—in that most strange phænomenon, the religious atheism of the Buddhists: with whom God is only universal matter considered abstractedly from all particular forms—the Fact is placed among the delusions natural to man, which, together with other superstitions grounded on a supposed essential difference between right and wrong, the sage is to decompose and precipitate from the menstruum of his more refined apprehensions! Thus in denying the Fact, they virtually acknowledge it.
From the remote East turn to the mythology of Lesser Asia, to the descendants of Javan who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed the Isles. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic solution we find the same Fact, and as characteristic of the human race, stated in that earliest and most venerable mythus (or symbolic parable) of Prometheus—that truly wonderful Fable, in which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind (Θεος φιλανθρωπος) are united in the same person; and thus in the most striking manner noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal tradition with the incongruous scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both gods and men are mere powers and products of nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its wiser enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of this great problem of the Moral World, the beautiful Parable of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a rival Fall of Man: and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the human race was again recognized. In the assertion of Original Sin the Greek Mythology rose and set.
But not only was the fact acknowledged of a law in the nature of man resisting the law of God; (and whatever is placed in active and direct oppugnancy to the good is, ipso facto, positive evil;) it was likewise an acknowledged Mystery, and one which by the nature of the subject must ever remain such—a problem, of which any other solution, than the statement of the Fact itself, was demonstrably impossible. That it is so, the least reflection will suffice to convince every man, who has previously satisfied himself that he is a responsible being. It follows necessarily from the postulate of a responsible Will. Refuse to grant this, and I have not a word to say. Concede this and you concede all. For this is the essential attribute of a Will, and contained in the very idea, that whatever determines the Will acquires this power from a previous determination of the Will itself. The Will is ultimately self-determined, or it is no longer a Will under the law of perfect freedom, but a nature under the mechanism of cause and effect. And if by an act, to which it had determined itself, it has subjected itself to the determination of nature (in the language of St. Paul, to the law of the flesh), it receives a nature into itself, and so far it becomes a nature: and this is a corruption of the Will and a corrupt nature. It is also a Fall of Man, inasmuch as his Will is the condition of his personality; the ground and condition of the attribute which constitutes him man. And the ground work of personal Being is a capacity of acknowledging the Moral Law (the Law of the Spirit, the Law of Freedom, the Divine Will) as that which should, of itself, suffice to determine the Will to a free obedience of the law, the law working therein by its own exceeding lawfulness.[118] This, and this alone, is positive Good; good in itself, and independent of all relations. Whatever resists, and, as a positive force, opposes this in the Will is therefore evil. But an evil in the Will is an evil Will; and as all moral evil (that is, all evil that is evil without reference to its contingent physical consequences) is of the Will, this evil Will must have its source in the Will. And thus we might go back from act to act, from evil to evil, ad infinitum, without advancing a step.
We call an individual a bad man, not because an action is contrary to the law, but because it has led us to conclude from it some Principle opposed to the law, some private maxim, or by-law in the Will contrary to the universal law of right reason in the conscience, as the ground of the action. But this evil principle again must be grounded in some other principle which has been made determinant of the Will by the Will's own self-determination. For if not, it must have its ground in some necessity of nature, in some instinct or propensity imposed, not acquired, another's work not our own. Consequently, neither act nor principle could be imputed; and relatively to the agent, not original, not sin.
Now let the grounds on which the fact of an evil inherent in the Will is affirmable in the instance of any one man, be supposed equally applicable in every instance, and concerning all men: so that the fact is asserted of the individual, not, because he has committed this or that crime, or because he has shown himself to be this or that man, but simply because he is a man. Let the evil be supposed such as to imply the impossibility of an individual's referring to any particular time at which it might be conceived to have commenced, or to any period of his existence at which it was not existing. Let it be supposed, in short, that the subject stands in no relation whatever to time, can neither be called in time nor out of time; but that all relations of time are as alien and heterogeneous in this question, as the relations and attributes of space (north or south, round or square, thick or thin) are to our affections and moral feelings. Let the reader suppose this, and he will have before him the precise import of the Scriptural doctrine of Original Sin; or rather of the Fact acknowledged in all ages, and recognized but not originating, in the Christian Scriptures.
In addition to this it will be well to remind the inquirer, that the stedfast conviction of the existence, personality, and moral attributes of God, is presupposed in the acceptance of the Gospel, or required as its indispensable preliminary. It is taken for granted as a point which the hearer had already decided for himself, a point finally settled and put at rest: not by the removal of all difficulties, or by any such increase of insight as enabled him to meet every objection of the Epicurean or the sceptic with a full and precise answer; but because he had convinced himself that it was folly as well as presumption in so imperfect a creature to expect it; and because these difficulties and doubts disappeared at the beam, when tried against the weight and convictive power of the reasons in the other scale. It is, therefore, most unfair to attack Christianity, or any article which the Church has declared a Christian doctrine, by arguments, which, if valid, are valid against all religion. Is there a disputant who scorns a mere postulate, as the basis of any argument in support of the Faith; who is too high-minded to beg his ground, and will take it by a strong hand? Let him fight it out with the Atheists, or the Manichæans; but not stoop to pick up their arrows, and then run away to discharge them at Christianity or the Church!
The only true way is to state the doctrine, believed as well by Saul of Tarsus, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the Church of Christ, as by Paul the Apostle fully preaching the Gospel of Christ. A moral Evil is an evil that has its origin in a Will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. But the actual existence of moral evil we are bound in conscience to admit; and that there is an evil common to all is a fact; and this evil must therefore have a common ground. Now this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine Will: it must therefore be referred to the will of man. And this evil ground we call Original Sin. It is a mystery, that is, a fact, which we see, but cannot explain; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, but can neither comprehend nor communicate. And such by the quality of the subject (namely, a responsible Will) it must be, if it be truth at all.
A sick man, whose complaint was as obscure as his sufferings were severe and notorious, was thus addressed by a humane stranger: "My poor Friend! I find you dangerously ill, and on this account only, and having certain information of your being so, and that you have not wherewithal to pay for a physician, I have come to you. Respecting your disease, indeed, I can tell you nothing, that you are capable of understanding, more than you know already, or can only be taught by reflection on your own experience. But I have rendered the disease no longer irremediable. I have brought the remedy with me: and I now offer you the means of immediate relief, with the assurance of gradual convalescence, and a final perfect cure; nothing more being required on your part, but your best endeavours to follow the prescriptions I shall leave with you. It is, indeed, too probable, from the nature of your disease, that you will occasionally neglect or transgress them. But even this has been calculated on in the plan of your cure, and the remedies provided, if only you are sincere and in right earnest with yourself, and have your heart in the work. Ask me not how such a disease can be conceived possible. Enough for the present that you know it to be real: and I come to cure the disease not to explain it."
Now, what if the patient or some of his neighbours should charge this good Samaritan, with having given rise to the mischievous notion of an inexplicable disease, involving the honour of the King of the country;—should inveigh against him as the author and first introducer of the notion, though of the numerous medical works composed ages before his arrival, and by physicians of the most venerable authority, it was scarcely possible to open a single volume without finding some description of the disease, or some lamentation of its malignant and epidemic character:—and, lastly, what if certain pretended friends of this good Samaritan, in their zeal to vindicate him against this absurd charge, should assert that he was a perfect stranger to this disease, and boldly deny that he had ever said or done any thing connected with it, or that implied its existence?
In this Apologue or imaginary case, reader, you have the true bearings of Christianity on the fact and doctrine of Original Sin. The doctrine (that is, the confession of a known fact) Christianity has only in common with every religion, and with every philosophy, in which the reality of a responsible Will and the essential difference between good and evil have been recognised. Peculiar to the Christian religion are the remedy and (for all purposes but those of a merely speculative curiosity) the solution. By the annunciation of the remedy it affords all the solution which our moral interests require; and even in that which remains, and must remain, unfathomable, the Christian finds a new motive to walk humbly with the Lord his God.
Should a professed Believer ask you whether that, which is the ground of responsible action in your will, could in any way be responsibly present in the Will of Adam,—answer him in these words: "You, Sir! can no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive the affirmative. The corruption of my will may very warrantably be spoken of as a consequence of Adam's fall, even as my birth of Adam's existence; as a consequence, a link in the historic chain of instances, whereof Adam is the first. But that it is on account of Adam; or that this evil principle was, a priori, inserted or infused into my Will by the will of another—which is indeed a contradiction in terms, my Will in such case being no Will—this is nowhere asserted in Scripture explicitly or by implication." It belongs to the very essence of the doctrine, that in respect of Original Sin every man is the adequate representative of all men. What wonder, then, that where no inward ground of preference existed, the choice should be determined by outward relations, and that the first in time should be taken as the diagram? Even in Genesis the word, Adam, is distinguished from a proper name by an Article before it. It is the Adam, so as to express the genus, not the individual—or rather, perhaps, I should say, as well as the individual. But that the word with its equivalent, the old man, is used symbolically and universally by St. Paul, (1 Cor. xv. 22 45. Eph. iv. 22. Col. iii. 9. Rom. vi. 6.) is too evident to need any proof.
I conclude with this remark. The doctrine of Original Sin concerns all men. But it concerns Christians in particular no otherwise than by its connexion with the doctrine of Redemption; and with the Divinity and Divine Humanity of the Redeemer as a corollary or necessary inference from both mysteries. Beware of Arguments against Christianity, which cannot stop there, and consequently ought not to have commenced there. Something I might have added to the clearness of the preceding views, if the limits of the work had permitted me to clear away the several delusive and fanciful assertions respecting the state[119] of our first parents, their wisdom, science, and angelic faculties, assertions without the slightest ground in Scripture:—Or, if consistently with the wants and preparatory studies of those for whose use the volume was especially intended, I could have entered into the momentous subject of a Spiritual Fall or Apostacy antecedent to the formation of man—a belief, the scriptural grounds of which are few and of diverse interpretation, but which has been almost universal in the Christian Church. Enough, however, has been given, I trust, for the Reader to see and (as far as the subject is capable of being understood) to understand this long controverted Article, in the sense in which alone it is binding on his faith. Supposing him therefore, to know the meaning of original sin, and to have decided for himself on the fact of its actual existence, as the antecedent ground and occasion of Christianity, we may now proceed to Christianity itself, as the Edifice raised on this ground, that is, to the great Constituent Article of the Faith in Christ, as the Remedy of the Disease—The Doctrine of Redemption.
But before I proceed to this momentous doctrine let me briefly remind the young and friendly pupil, to whom I would still be supposed to address myself, that in the following Aphorism the word science is used in its strict and narrowest sense. By a Science I here mean any chain of truths which are either absolutely certain, or necessarily true for the human mind, from the laws and constitution of the mind itself. In neither case is our conviction derived, or capable of receiving any addition, from outward experience, or empirical data—that is, matters of fact given to us through the medium of the senses—though these data may have been the occasion, or may even be an indispensable condition, of our reflecting on the former, and thereby becoming conscious of the same. On the other hand, a connected series of conclusions grounded on empirical data, in contra-distinction from science, I beg leave (no better term occurring) in this place and for this purpose, to denominate a scheme.
[103] It has in its consequences proved no trifling evil to the Christian world, that Aristotle's Definitions of Nature are all grounded on the petty and rather rhetorical than philosophical Antithesis of Nature to Art—a conception inadequate to the demands even of his philosophy. Hence in the progress of his reasoning, he confounds the natura naturata (that is, the sum total of the facts and phænomena of the Senses) with an hypothetical natura naturans, a Goddess Nature, that has no better claim to a place in any sober system of Natural Philosophy than the Goddess Multitudo; yet to which Aristotle not rarely gives the name and attributes of the Supreme Being. The result was, that the idea of God thus identified with this hypothetical Nature becomes itself but an hypothesis, or at best but a precarious inference from incommensurate premises and on disputable principles: while in other passages, God is confounded with (and every where, in Aristotle's genuine works, included in) the Universe: which most grievous error it is the great and characteristic merit of Plato to have avoided and denounced.
[104] Take one passage among many from the posthumous Tracts (1660) of John Smith,[105] not the least star in that bright constellation of Cambridge men, the contemporaries of Jeremy Taylor. "While we reflect on our idea of Reason, we know that our Souls are not it, but only partake of it; and that we have it κατα μεθεξιν and not κατ᾽ ουσιην. Neither can it be called a Faculty, but far rather a Light, which we enjoy, but the Source of which is not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual to be denominated mine." This pure, intelligence he then proceeds to contrast with the Discursive Faculty, that is, the Understanding.
[105] There is a Note on John Smith and his 'Select Discourses' in Coleridge's 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii. pp. 415-19.—Ed.
[106] See Coleridge on Jeremy Taylor: 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii. pp. 295-334, &c.—Ed.
[107] We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley, that the Church of England does not demand the literal understanding of the document contained in the second (from verse 8) and third Chapters of Genesis as a point of faith, or regard a different interpretation as affecting the orthodoxy of the interpreter; divines of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy, and the most averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in general, having from the earliest ages of the Christian Church adopted or permitted it in this instance. And indeed no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt, that if in any other work of Eastern origin he met with Trees of Life and of Knowledge; talking and conversable snakes:
Inque rei signum serpentem serpere jussum;
he would want no other proofs that it was an allegory he was reading, and intended to be understood as such. Nor, if we suppose him conversant with Oriental works of any thing like the same antiquity, could it surprise him to find events of true history in connexion with, or historical personages among the actors and interlocutors of, the parable. In the temple-language of Egypt the serpent was the symbol of the understanding in its twofold function, namely as the faculty of means to proximate or medial, ends, analogous to the instinct of the more intelligent animals, ant, bee, beaver, and the like, and opposed to the practical reason, as the determinant of the ultimate end; and again, it typifies the understanding as the discursive and logical faculty possessed individually by each individual—the λογος εν ἑκαστω, in distinction from the νους, that is, intuitive reason, the source of ideas and ABSOLUTE Truths, and the principle of the necessary and the universal in our affirmations and conclusions. Without or in contra-vention to the reason (i.e. the spiritual mind of St. Paul, and the light that lighteth every man of St. John) this understanding (φρονημα σαρκος, or carnal mind) becomes the sophistic principle, the wily tempter to evil by counterfeit good; the pander and advocate of the passions and appetites; ever in league with, and always first applying to, the Desire, as the inferior nature in man, the woman in our humanity; and through the Desire prevailing on the Will (the Man-hood, Virtus) against the command of the universal reason, and against the light of reason in the Will itself. This essential inherence of an intelligential principle (φως νοερον) in the Will (αρχη φελητικη) or rather the Will itself thus considered, the Greeks expressed by an appropriate word βουλη. This, but little differing from Origen's interpretation or hypothesis, is supported and confirmed by the very old tradition of the homo androgynus, that is, that the original man, the individual first created, was bi-sexual: a chimæra, of which and of many other mythological traditions the most probable explanation is, that they were originally symbolical glyphs or sculptures, and afterwards translated into words, yet literally, that is into the common names of the several figures and images composing the symbol, while the symbolic meaning was left to be deciphered as before, and sacred to the initiate. As to the abstruseness and subtlety of the conceptions, this is so far from being an objection to this oldest gloss on this venerable relic of Semitic, not impossibly ante-diluvian, philosophy, that to those who have carried their researches farthest back into Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian antiquity, it will seem a strong confirmation. Or if I chose to address the sceptic in the language of the day, I might remind him, that as alchemy went before chemistry, and astrology before astronomy, so in all countries of civilized man have metaphysics outrun common sense. Fortunately for us that they have so! For from all we know of the unmetaphysical tribes of New Holland and elsewhere, a common sense not preceded by metaphysics is no very enviable possession. O be not cheated, my youthful reader, by this shallow prate! The creed of true common sense is composed of the results of scientific meditation, observation, and experiment, as far as they are generally intelligible. It differs therefore in different countries and in every different age of the same country. The common sense of a people is the moveable index of its average judgment and information. Without metaphysics science could have had no language, and common sense no materials.
But to return to my subject. It cannot be denied, that the Mosaic Narrative thus interpreted gives a just and faithful exposition of the birth and parentage and successive moments of phænomenal sin (peccatum phænomenon; crimen primarium et commune), that is, of sin as it reveals itself in time, and is an immediate object of consciousness. And in this sense most truly does the Apostle assert, that in Adam we all fell. The first human sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors. And with no less truth may it be said, that it is the same Adam that falls in every man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too dear and undivorceable Eve: and the same Eve tempted by the same serpentine and perverted understanding, which, framed originally to be the interpreter of the reason and the ministering angel of the Spirit, is henceforth sentenced and bound over to the service of the Animal Nature, its needs and its cravings, dependent on the senses for all its materials, with the World of Sense for its appointed sphere: Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. I have shown elsewhere, that as the Instinct of the mere intelligence differs in degree not in kind, and circumstantially, not essentially, from the vis vitæ, or vital power in the assimilative and digestive functions of the stomach and other organs of nutrition, even so the Understanding, in itself and distinct from the Reason and Conscience, differs in degree only from the Instinct in the animal. It is still but a beast of the field, though more subtle than any beast of the field, and therefore in its corruption and perversion cursed above any—a pregnant word! of which, if the reader wants an exposition or paraphrase, he may find one more than two thousand years old among the fragments of the poet Menander. (See Cumberland's Observer, No. CL. vol. iii. p. 289 290.) This is the Understanding which in its every thought is to be brought under obedience to Faith; which it can scarcely fail to be, if only it be first subjected to the Reason, of which spiritual Faith is even the blossoming and the fructifying process. For it is indifferent whether I say that Faith is the interpenetration of the Reason and the Will, or that it is at once the Assurance and the Commencement of the approaching Union between the Reason and the intelligible realities, the living and substantial truths, that are even in this life its most proper objects.
I have thus put the reader in possession of my own opinions respecting the narrative in Gen. ii. and iii. Εστιν ουν δη, ὡς εμοιγε δοκει, ἱερος μυθος, αληθεστατον και αρχαιτατον φιλοσοφημα, ευσεβεσι μεν σεβασμα, συνετοις τε φωναν· ες δε το παν ἑρμηνεως χατιζει. Or I might ask with Augustine, Why not both? Why not at once symbol and history? or rather how should it be otherwise? Must not of necessity the first man be a Symbol of Mankind, in the fullest force of the word, Symbol, rightly defined—that is, a sign included in the idea, which it represents;—an actual part chosen to represent the whole, as a lip with a chin prominent is a symbol of man; or a lower form or species used as the representative of a higher in the same kind: thus Magnetism is the Symbol of Vegetation, and of the vegetative and reproductive power in animals; the Instinct of the ant-tribe, or the bee, is a symbol of the human understanding. And this definition of the word is of great practical importance, inasmuch as the symbolical is hereby distinguished toto genere from the allegoric and metaphorical. But, perhaps, parables, allegories, and allegorical or typical applications, are incompatible with inspired Scripture! The writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary. Yet I readily acknowledge, that allegorical applications are one thing, and allegorical interpretation another: and that where there is no ground for supposing such a sense to have entered into the intent and purpose of the sacred penman, they are not to be commended. So far, indeed, am I from entertaining any predilection for them, or any favourable opinion of the Rabbinical commentators and traditionists, from whom the fashion was derived, that in carrying it as far as our own Church has carried it, I follow her judgment, not my own. But in the first place, I know but one other part of the Scriptures not universally held to be parabolical, which, not without the sanction of great authorities, I am disposed to regard as an Apologue or Parable, namely, the book of Jonah; the reasons for believing the Jewish nation collectively to be therein impersonated, seeming to me unanswerable. Secondly, as to the Chapters now in question—that such interpretation is at least tolerated by our Church, I have the word of one of her most zealous champions. And lastly it is my deliberate and conscientious conviction, that the proofs of such having been the intention of the inspired writer or compiler of the book of Genesis, lie on the face of the narrative itself.
[108] Rom. v. 14. Who were they, who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; and over whom, notwithstanding, death reigned?
[109] Slightly altered from Jeremy Taylor's 'Deus Justificatus; or a Vindication of the Glory of the Divine Attributes in the Question of Original Sin, Against the Presbyterian way of Understanding it.' See Heber's edition of Taylor's works, 1822, v. ix. pp. 315-16.—Ed.
[110] This sense of the word is implied even in its metaphorical or figurative use. Thus we may say of a river that it originates in such or such a fountain; but the water of a canal is derived from such or such a river. The Power which we call Nature, may be thus defined: A Power subject to the Law of Continuity (lex continui; nam in naturâ non datur saltus) which law the human understanding, by a necessity arising out of its own constitution, can conceive only under the form of Cause and Effect. That this form (or law) of Cause and Effect is (relatively to the world without, or to things as they subsist independently of our perceptions) only a form or mode of thinking; that it is a law inherent in the Understanding itself (just as the symmetry of the miscellaneous objects seen by the kaleidoscope inheres in, or results from, the mechanism of the kaleidoscope itself)—this becomes evident as soon as we attempt to apply the pre-conception directly to any operation of nature. For in this case we are forced to represent the cause as being at the same instant the effect, and vice versâ the effect as being the cause—a relation which we seek to express by the terms Action and Re-action; but for which the term Reciprocal Action or the law of Reciprocity (Wechselwirkung) would be both more accurate and more expressive.
These are truths which can scarcely be too frequently impressed on the mind that is in earnest in the wish to reflect aright. Nature is a line in constant and continuous evolution. Its beginning is lost in the super-natural: and for our understanding, therefore, it must appear as a continuous line without beginning or end. But where there is no discontinuity there can be no origination, and every appearance of origination in nature is but a shadow of our own casting. It is a reflection from our own Will or Spirit. Herein, indeed, the Will consists. This is the essential character by which will is opposed to Nature, as Spirit, and raised above Nature, as self-determining Spirit—this namely, that it is a power of originating an act or state.
A young friend or, as he was pleased to describe himself, a pupil of mine, who is beginning to learn to think, asked me to explain by an instance what is meant by "originating an act or state." My answer was—This morning I awoke with a dull pain, which I knew from experience the getting up would remove; and yet by adding to the drowsiness and by weakening or depressing the volition (voluntas sensorialis seu mechanica) the very pain seemed to hold me back, to fix me (as it were) to the bed. After a peevish ineffectual quarrel with this painful disinclination, I said to myself: Let me count twenty, and the moment I come to nineteen I will leap out of bed. So said, and so done. Now should you ever find yourself in the same or in a similar state, and should attend to the goings-on within you, you will learn what I mean by originating an act. At the same time you will see that it belongs exclusively to the Will (arbitrium); that there is nothing analogous to it in outward experiences; and that I had, therefore, no way of explaining it but by referring you to an act of your own, and to the peculiar self-consciousness preceding and accompanying it. As we know what Life is by Being, so we know what Will is by Acting. That in willing (replied my young friend) we appear to ourselves to constitute an actual Beginning and that this seems unique, and without any example in our sensible experience, or in the phænomena of nature, is an undeniable fact. But may it not be an illusion arising from our ignorance of the antecedent causes? You may suppose this (I rejoined):—that the soul of every man should impose a Lie on itself; and that this Lie, and the acting on the faith of its being the most important of all truths and the most real of all realities, should form the main contra-distinctive character of Humanity, and the only basis of that distinction between Things and Persons on which our whole moral and criminal Law is grounded;—you may suppose this; I cannot, as I could in the case of an arithmetical or geometrical proposition, render it impossible for you to suppose it. Whether you can reconcile such a supposition with the belief of an all-wise Creator, is another question. But, taken singly, it is doubtless in your power to suppose this. Were it not, the belief of the contrary would be no subject of a command, no part of a moral or religious duty. You would not, however, suppose it without a reason. But all the pretexts that ever have been or ever can be offered for this supposition, are built on certain notions of the Understanding that have been generalized from conceptions; which conceptions, again, are themselves generalized or abstracted from objects of sense. Neither the one nor the other, therefore, have any force except in application to objects of sense and within the sphere of sensible Experience. What but absurdity can follow, if you decide on Spirit by the laws of Matter? if you judge that which, if it be at all, must be super-sensual, by that faculty of your mind, the very definition of which is "the faculty judging according to sense"? These then are unworthy the name of reasons: they are only pretexts. But without reason to contradict your own consciousness in defiance of your own conscience, is contrary to reason. Such and such writers, you say, have made a great sensation. If so, I am sorry for it; but the fact I take to be this. From a variety of causes the more austere Sciences have fallen into discredit, and impostors have taken advantage of the general ignorance to give a sort of mysterious and terrific importance to a parcel of trashy sophistry, the authors of which would not have employed themselves more irrationally in submitting the works of Raffaelle or Titian to canons of criticism deduced from the sense of smell. Nay, less so. For here the objects and the organs are only disparate: while in the other case they are absolutely diverse. I conclude this note by reminding the reader, that my first object is to make myself understood. When he is in full possession of my meaning, then let him consider whether it deserves to be received as the truth. Had it been my immediate purpose to make him believe me as well as understand me, I should have thought it necessary to warn him that a finite Will does indeed originate an act, and may originate a state of being; but yet only in and for the Agent himself. A finite Will constitutes a true Beginning; but with regard to the series of motions and chants by which the free act is manifested and made effectual, the finite Will gives a beginning only by co-incidence with that absolute Will, which is at the same time Infinite Power! Such is the language of Religion, and of Philosophy too in the last instance. But I express the same truth in ordinary language when I say, that a finite Will, or the Will of a finite free-agent, acts outwardly by confluence with the laws of nature.
[111] It may conduce to the readier comprehension of this point if I say, that the equivoque consists in confounding the almost technical sense of the noun substantive, right, (a sense most often determined by the genitive case following, as the right of property, the right of husbands to chastise their wives, and so forth) with the popular sense of the adjective, right: though this likewise has, if not a double sense, yet a double application;—the first, when it is used to express the fitness of a mean to a relative end, for example, "the right way to obtain the right distance at which a picture should be examined," and the like; and the other, when it expresses a perfect conformity and commensurateness with the immutable idea of equity, or perfect rectitude. Hence the close connexion between the words righteousness and godliness, that is, godlikeness.
I should be tempted to subjoin a few words on a predominating doctrine closely connected with the present argument—the Paleyan principle of General Consequences; but the inadequacy of this Principle as a criterion of Right and Wrong, and above all its utter unfitness as a Moral Guide have been elsewhere so fully stated ('The Friend,' vol. ii. Essay xi.[112]), that even in again referring to the subject, I must shelter myself under Seneca's rule, that what we cannot too frequently think of, we cannot too often be made to recollect. It is, however, of immediate importance to the point in discussion, that the reader should be made to see how altogether incompatible the principle of judging by General Consequences is with the Idea of an Eternal, Omnipresent, and Omniscient Being;—that he should be made aware of the absurdity of attributing any form of Generalization to the All-perfect Mind. To generalize is a faculty and function of the human understanding, and from the imperfection and limitation of the understanding are the use and the necessity of generalizing derived. Generalization is a Substitute for Intuition, for the power of intuitive (that is, immediate) knowledge. As a substitute, it is a gift of inestimable value to a finite intelligence, such as man in his present state is endowed with and capable of exercising; but yet a substitute only, and an imperfect one to boot. To attribute it to God is the grossest anthropomorphism: and grosser instances of anthropomorphism than are to be found in the controversial writings on Original Sin and Vicarious Satisfaction, the records of superstition do not supply.
[112] Essay xv. p. 204, Bohn's edition.—Ed.
[113] I have since this page was written, met with several passages in the Treatise on Repentance, the Holy Living and Dying, and the Worthy Communicant, in which the Bishop asserts without scruple the impossibility of total obedience; and on the same grounds as I have given. [See Taylor's 'Doctrine and Practice of Repentance,' c. I. sec. ii., "On the Possibility or Impossibility of Keeping the Precepts of the Gospel;" Heber's ed. of the 'Works,' v. 8, p. 265.—Ed.]
[114] Availing himself of the equivocal sense and (I most readily admit) the injudicious use, of the word "free" in the—even on this account—faulty phrase, "free only to sin," Taylor treats the notion of a power in the Will of determining itself to evil without an equal power of determining itself to good, as a "foolery." I would this had been the only instance in his "Deus Justificatus" of that inconsiderate contempt so frequent in the polemic treatises of minor divines, who will have ideas of reason, spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned, translated for them into adequate conceptions of the understanding. The great articles of Corruption and Redemption are propounded to us as spiritual mysteries; and every interpretation, that pretends to explain them into comprehensible notions, does by its very success furnish presumptive proof of its failure. The acuteness and logical dexterity, with which Taylor has brought out the falsehood or semblance of falsehood in the Calvinistic scheme, are truly admirable. Had he next concentered his thoughts in tranquil meditation, and asked himself: What then is the truth? If a Will be at all, what must a will be?—he might, I think, have seen that a nature in a Will implies already a corruption of that Will; that a nature is as inconsistent with freedom as free choice with an incapacity of choosing aught but evil. And lastly, a free power in a nature to fulfil a law above nature!—I, who love and honour this good and great man with all the reverence that can dwell "on this side idolatry," dare not retort on this assertion the charge of foolery; but I find it a paradox as startling to my reason as any of the hard sayings of the Dort divines were to his understanding.
[115] Vol. ix. pp. 5, 6, Heber's edit. ['Doctrine and Practice of Repentance,' c. vi. sec. I.—Ed.]
[116] This passage appears as here in the first edition of the 'Aids,' 1825.—Ed.
[117] The same, slightly different, appears in Coleridge's 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii., p. 328.—Ed.
[118] If the Law worked on the Will, it would be the working of an extrinsic and alien force, and, as St. Paul profoundly argues, would prove the Will sinful.
[119] For a specimen of these Rabbinical dotages I refer, not to the writings of mystics and enthusiasts, but to the shrewd and witty Dr. South, one of whose most elaborate sermons stands prominent among the many splendid extravaganzas on this subject.
In whatever age and country it is the prevailing mind and character of the nation to regard the present life as subordinate to a life to come, and to mark the present state, the World of their Senses, by signs, instruments, and mementos of its connexion with a future state and a spiritual world;—where the Mysteries of Faith are brought within the hold of the people at large, not by being explained away in the vain hope of accommodating them to the average of their understanding, but by being made the objects of love by their combination with events and epochs of history, with national traditions, with the monuments and dedications of ancestral faith and zeal, with memorial and symbolical observances, with the realizing influences of social devotion, and above all, by early and habitual association with Acts of the Will, there Religion is. There, however obscured by the hay and straw of human Will-work, the foundation is safe. In that country, and under the predominance of such maxims the National Church is no mere State-Institute. It is the State itself in its intensest federal union; yet at the same moment the Guardian and Representative of all personal Individuality. For the Church is the Shrine of Morality; and in Morality alone the citizen asserts and reclaims his personal independence, his integrity. Our outward acts are efficient, and most often possible, only by coalition. As an efficient power, the agent, is but a fraction of unity: he becomes an integer only in the recognition and performance of the Moral Law. Nevertheless it is most true (and a truth which cannot with safety be overlooked) that morality as morality, has no existence for a people. It is either absorbed and lost in the quicksands of prudential calculus, or it is taken up and transfigured into the duties and mysteries of religion. And no wonder: since morality (including the personal being, the I am, as its subject) is itself a mystery, and the ground and suppositum of all other mysteries, relatively to man.
Paley not a Moralist.
Schemes of conduct, grounded on calculations of self-interest; or on the average consequences of actions, supposing them general; form a branch of Political Economy, to which let all due honour be given. Their utility is not here questioned. But however estimable within their own sphere, such schemes, or any one of them in particular, may be, they do not belong to Moral Science, to which both in kind and purpose, they are in all cases foreign, and, when substituted for it, hostile. Ethics, or the Science of Morality, does indeed in no wise exclude the consideration of action; but it contemplates the same in its originating spiritual source, without reference to space or time or sensible existence. Whatever springs out of the perfect law of freedom, which exists only by its unity with the will of God, its inherence in the Word of God, and its communion with the Spirit of God—that (according to the principles of Moral Science) is good—it is light and righteousness and very truth. Whatever seeks to separate itself from the Divine Principle, and proceeds from a false centre in the agent's particular will, is evil—a work of darkness and contradiction. It is sin and essential falsehood. Not the outward deed, constructive, destructive, or neutral,—not the deed as a possible object of the senses,—is the object of Ethical Science. For this is no compost, collectorium or inventory of single duties; nor does it seek in the multitudinous sea, in the pre-determined waves, and tides and currents of nature that freedom, which is exclusively an attribute of spirit. Like all other pure sciences, whatever it enunciates, and whatever it concludes, it enunciates and concludes absolutely. Strictness is its essential character: and its first Proposition is, Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For as the Will or Spirit, the Source and Substance of Moral Good, is one and all in every part; so must it be the totality, the whole articulated series of single acts, taken as unity, that can alone, in the severity of science, be recognised as the proper counterpart and adequate representative of a good Will. Is it in this or that limb, or not rather in the whole body, the entire organismus that the law of life reflects itself?—Much less, then, can the law of the Spirit work in fragments.
Wherever there exists a permanent[120] learned class, having authority and possessing the respect and confidence of the country; and wherever the Science of Ethics is acknowledged, and taught in this class as a regular part of a learned education, to its future members generally, but as the special study and indispensable ground-work of such as are intended for holy orders;—there the Article of Original Sin will be an Axiom of Faith in all classes. Among the learned an undisputed truth, and with the people a fact, which no man imagines it possible to deny: and the doctrine, thus inwoven in the faith of all, and coeval with the consciousness of each, will for each and all, possess a reality, subjective indeed, yet virtually equivalent to that which we intuitively give to the objects of our senses.
With the learned this will be the case, because the Article is the first—I had almost said, spontaneous—product of the application of moral science to history, of which it is the interpreter. A mystery in its own right, and by the necessity and essential character of its subject—(for the Will, like the Life, in every act and product pre-supposes to itself, a Past always present, a Present that evermore resolves itself into a Past)—the doctrine of Original Sin gives to all the other mysteries of religion a common basis, a connection of dependency, an intelligibility of relation, and total harmony, that supersede extrinsic proof. There is here that same proof from unity of purpose, that same evidence of symmetry, which, in the contemplation of a human skeleton, flashed conviction on the mind of Galen, and kindled meditation into a hymn of praise.
Meanwhile the People, not goaded into doubt by the lessons and examples of their teachers and superiors; not drawn away from the fixed stars of heaven, the form and magnitude of which are the same for the naked eye of the shepherd as for the telescope of the sage—from the immediate truths, I mean, of Reason and Conscience to an exercise to which they have not been trained,—of a faculty which has been imperfectly developed,—on a subject not within the sphere of the faculty, nor in any way amenable to its judgment;—the People will need no arguments to receive a doctrine confirmed by their own experience from within and from without, and intimately blended with the most venerable traditions common to all races, and the traces of which linger in the latest twilight of civilization.
Among the revulsions consequent on the brute bewilderments of a Godless revolution, a great and active zeal for the interests of religion may be one. I dare not trust it, till I have seen what it is that gives religion this interest, till I am satisfied that it is not the interests of this world; necessary and laudable interests, perhaps, but which may, I dare believe, be secured as effectually and more suitably by the prudence of this world, and by this world's powers and motives. At all events, I find nothing in the fashion of the day to deter me from adding, that the reverse of the preceding—that where religion is valued and patronized as a supplement of law, or an aid extraordinary of police; where Moral Science is exploded as the mystic jargon of dark ages; where a lax System of Consequences, by which every iniquity on earth may be (and how many have been!) denounced and defended with equal plausibility, is publicly and authoritatively taught as Moral Philosophy; where the mysteries of religion, and truths supersensual, are either cut and squared for the comprehension of the understanding, "the faculty judging according to sense," or desperately torn asunder from the reason, nay, fanatically opposed to it; lastly, where Private[121] Interpretation is every thing and the Church nothing—there the mystery of Original Sin will be either rejected, or evaded, or perverted into the monstrous fiction of Hereditary Sin,—guilt inherited; in the mystery of Redemption metaphors will be obtruded for the reality; and in the mysterious appurtenants and symbols of Redemption (Regeneration, Grace, the Eucharist, and Spiritual Communion) the realities will be evaporated into metaphors.