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No. 89.]

(Ad Clerum.)

[Price 2s.

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

ON THE MYSTICISM ATTRIBUTED TO THE EARLY
FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.

§ i. Occasion, Grounds, and Limits of the Present Inquiry.

(1.) It is curious, and may be not uninstructive, to observe how from time to time the assailants of Primitive Antiquity have shifted their ground, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. During the struggle of the Reformation, men had felt instinctively, if they did not clearly see, that the Fathers were against them, so far as they had begun to rationalize, whether in ecclesiastical practice, or in theological inquiry. But it was many years before they ventured to avow this feeling distinctly to themselves, much more to maintain and propagate it. It was not until divines of his class had thoroughly wearied themselves in vain endeavours to reconcile the three first centuries with Calvin and Zuinglius, that Daillé published his celebrated treatise "Of the Right Use of the Fathers" in which, under pretence of impugning their sufficiency as judges between Papist and Protestant, he has dexterously insinuated every topic most likely to impair their general credit; professing all the while extreme respect both for their sanctity and their wisdom; although, perhaps, an attentive reader may perceive his ironical meaning, disclosing itself more and more, as his argument draws to a point. However, by his skill in rhetorical arrangement, and by a certain air of thorough command of his subject, which he has been very successful in assuming, he became at once the standard author for all who took that side of the question; opening (if so homely a simile may be allowed) a kind

1 In 1631.

§ i. 1.

VOL. VI.-89.

B

§ i. 1.

2

Gradual Diminution of Respect for Antiquity.

of cheap shop, to which all who had a fancy for wares of that kind have ever since found it convenient to resort.

But though at the bottom Daillé seems to have had no more respect for Antiquity than those who came after him, he differs from them greatly, not only in his tone and manner, but also in the very ground and substance of his argument: professing, first, to confine himself to those points which are disputed between the Reformed and the Roman Church, (and, therefore, not to except against the Fathers' evidence on matters debated in their times, e. g. on the Trinitarian Controversy;) and secondly, laying, or seeming to lay, the chief stress of his objections on the scantiness of their remains, the amount of corruption and interpolation, the difficulty of ascertaining their real sense, and the like. When he does proceed to challenge their authority, he is careful in pointing out their own disclaimers of such authority, before he exemplifies their supposed errors and inconsistencies; which he does largely, but with great show of unwillingness in the concluding sections of his work.

But now if we pass over a hundred years, and come to the attacks made on the Fathers in the beginning of the eighteenth century, we shall find, for the most part, the same quotations appealed to, the same particulars insisted on, but with an air of much more open defiance, and with the direct and avowed purpose of impugning their credit, not in this or that point only, but in all questions of Christian religion. Thus Whitby prefaces his collection of what he calls specimens of patristical exposition of Scripture, with a declaration', that he wishes to exclude appeals to Antiquity, as to the transmission of the Rule of Faith, (meaning the great fundamental doctrines,) no less than in facts of general history, or in the controversies between England and Rome. And Middleton, in his flippant "Free Inquiry," lays the stress of his argument on his being able to prove that the ancient Fathers "were of a character from which nothing could be expected but what a weak or crafty understanding could supply, towards confirming those prejudices with which they happened to be possessed, especially where religion was the subject 2."

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Mysticism, a peculiarly invidious Imputation.

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One would think it impossible to go beyond this in the way of disparagement; but so it is, that in the course of the century which has elapsed since Whitby and Middleton, a yet more disrespectful, because more summary, way of dealing with the Fathers has become current. Whitby and Middleton did think it necessary to appear to have examined what is really to be found in Antiquity; and the former especially exhibits, throughout his treatise above-mentioned, what on his principles must be called a morbid anxiety, to confirm his own views on several important subjects, (on original sin, for example, and the natural condition of infants,) by the testimony of the very writers, whom he is most busy in disparaging. But in our day, perhaps, the more usual course is, for persons, who do not even profess any acquaintance with those writers, beyond vague impressions received from report or quotation, to dispose of their authority in any controverted point, under the notion, understood or expressed, that "the Fathers were Mystics, and need not be regarded at all."

(2.) Now, if it were indeed an object with the Evil Spirit, to decry the relics of Christian Antiquity, and divert men's attention from them, it is difficult to say what single word he could have chosen, so critically adapted to his purpose in our days, as this same word, Mysticism. In the first place, it is not a hard word, having been customarily applied to such writers as Fenelon and William Law, whom all parties have generally agreed to praise and admire. So far it suits well with the smoothness of phrase, on which the present generation especially prides itself. It seems to set down the Fathers gently, and so is readily acquiesced in by many, who would shrink from the coarse sneers of Middleton or Gibbon.

In the next place, it touches the very string, which most certainly moves contemptuous thought, in those who have imbibed the peculiar spirit of our time, Mysticism, implies a sort of confusion between physical and moral, visible and spiritual agency, most abhorrent to the minds of those, who pique themselves on having thoroughly clear ideas, and on their power of distinctly analysing effects into their proper causes, whether in matter or in mind.

§ i. 2.

§ i. 3.

Meaning of the Charge of Mysticism:

Again, Mysticism conveys the notion of something essentially and altogether remote from common sense and practical utility: but common sense and practical utility are the very idols of this

age.

Further, that which is stigmatized as Mysticism, is almost always something which at once makes itself discerned by internal evidence. The man of the world, the practical man, the inductive experimental philosopher, commonly persuades himself that he can perceive by instinct, when a train of thought, or mode of speaking, is mere religious dreaming, indistinct fanciful theory: and he rejects it accordingly, and is saved all trouble of research. Here, again, is no small temptation, in the eyes of a world full of hurry and business, to acquiesce over-lightly in any censure of that kind,

Yet, again, if any man be disposed to speak and think more harshly of the early Christian writers, this same term, Mysticism, may serve his purpose also; for it is easy by a dexterous enunciation, or choice of context, to insinuate through it a charge of deliberate fraud. It is an instance, therefore, of a mode of speaking, equally convenient for all shades and degrees of enmity to, or contempt of, Antiquity. We see what its power is in a kindred instance; how meanly even respectable persons allow themselves to think of the highest sort of poetry,-that which invests all things, great and small, with the noblest of all associations, when once they have come to annex to it the notion of Mysticism. And perhaps its mischievous effects on theology are as great as any attributable to a single word.

(3.) It may, therefore, be of some use to consider as distinctly as we can, what people really mean when they charge the Fathers with Mysticism; which being done, we may perhaps have a better chance of making out to our satisfaction, whether, and how far, as a body, they deserve the charge.

By the term Mysticism, then, as applied to the writers in question, I understand to be denoted, a disposition, first, to regard things as supernatural which are not really such; and secondly, to press and strain what may perhaps be really supernatural in an undue and extravagant way.

Temper in which we should begin to examine it.

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(4.) Upon which bare statement, without going any further, a devout mind will probably at once acknowledge, on which side in the present question the peril of erring will be greatest. The question is like that of the general evidences of religion: a person who would go into it with advantage, should be imbued beforehand with a kind of natural piety, which will cause him to remember all along, that perhaps, when he comes to the end of his inquiry, he will find that GOD was all the while really there. He will " put off his shoes from off his feet," if he do but think it possible that an angel may tell him, by and by, "The place where thou standest is holy ground." So it must be, in some measure, with every right-minded person, in the examination of every practice and opinion, against which the charge of Mysticism is brought. Whatever may appear in the case at first sight, likely to move scorn or ridicule, or tempt to mere lightness of thought; it will be an exercise of faith, a trial of a serious heart, to repress for the time any tendency of that kind: the loss and error being infinitely greater if we are found trifling with a really sacred subject, than if we merely prove to have been a little more serious than was necessary. In this sense, that is to say, in regard of reverent or irreverent temper, in which such inquiries may be approached, superstition is surely a great deal better than irreligion whatever may be thought of the abstract question, Whether it be the safer extreme to believe too much, or too little ?

:

It be said that the Fathers themselves indicate an excepmay tion to this rule, by the light and sarcastic way, in which they often allow themselves to treat the pretended mysteries, sometimes of heathens, sometimes of heretics as bad as heathens. But the case is not strictly in point. For I am speaking of pretensions unexamined, and therefore, as yet, more or less doubtful: but the Fathers had, or accounted themselves to have, good grounds for believing that the mysteries and miracles which they held up to scorn were, in part at least, the work of evil spirits, with whom they thus most effectually renounced communion. Before we indulge the like feeling in our treatment of any claim to supernatural powers, we had need have the like assurance of diabolical agency in them: and that to show them any reverence would seem

§ i. 4.

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