The creed of the Christian is the fruit of exposition; no part of it is elaborated by processes of abstract reasoning; no part is furnished by the inventive faculties. To ascertain the true meaning of the words and phrases used by those who "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," is the single aim of the studies of the theologian. Interpretation is his function. But the work of interpretation, considered as an intellectual employment, differs essentially from that of the student of physical or abstract science; for it neither needs nor admits of the ardor by which those pursuits are animated. Nor has nature furnished the faculties that are employed in the labor of expounding the terms of ancient documents with any very vivid susceptibility of pleasurable excitement. The toils of the lawyer, of the philologist, and of the theologian, must therefore be sustained by a reference to some substantial motive of utility; and though there may be a few minds so peculiarly constituted as to cultivate these studies with enthusiastic ardor, from the pure impulse of native taste, the ranks of a numerous body of men can never be filled up by spontaneous laborers of this sort.

Christianity, being as it is, a religion of documents and of interpretation, must utterly exclude from its precincts the adventurous spirit of innovation. Theology offers no field to men fond of intellectual enterprise: the Church has no work for them; or none until they have renounced the characteristic propensity of their mental conformation. True religion, unlike human science, was given to mankind in a finished form, and is to be learned, not improved; and though the most capacious human mind is nobly employed while concentrating all its vigor upon the acquirement of this documentary learning, it is very fruitlessly, and very perniciously occupied in attempting to give it a single touch of amendment.

The form under which Christianity now presents itself as an object of study does, in a much greater degree, discourage and prevent speculation and novelty, than it did in the early ages; and in fact, if all the varieties of opinion which have appeared during the eighteen centuries of church history are numbered, a large majority of them will be found to belong to the first three centuries, and to the eastern church. That is to say, to the period when doctors of theology, possessing the rule of faiths in their vernacular tongue, had no other intellectual employment than that either of inventing novelties of doctrine, or of refuting them. Other causes may, no doubt, fairly be alleged as having had influence in quickening that prodigious efflorescence of heretical doctrine which infected the whole atmosphere of Christianity, in the east, during the second and third centuries, and at a time when the western church maintained, in a good degree, the simplicity of Scriptural faith; but the cause above-mentioned ought not to be ranked among the least efficient.

But theology in modern times offers an unbounded field of toil to the student;—the toil of mere acquisition, and of critical research; for a familiar knowledge of three languages, at least, is indispensable to every man who would take respectable rank as a teacher of Christianity; especially to every one who aspires to distinction in his order; and some acquaintance with two or three other languages, is also an object of reasonable ambition to the theological student. And moreover, an accomplished expounder of Scripture must be well versed in profane and church history; nor may he be entirely ignorant of even the abstract and physical sciences. These multifarious pursuits, which are to be acquired compatibly with the discharge of the public duties of the pastoral office, assuredly furnish employment enough for the most active and the most industrious mind long beyond the period of college initiation. Nor are we to consider merely the natural influence produced upon the intellectual habits by these employments, in preventing that discursiveness of the inventive faculties which is a principal source of heresy; for its quality, not less than its quantity, is decidedly corrective of the propensity to generate novelties of opinion.

Every one who has made the experiment well knows that the toils of learned acquisition have a direct tendency to impair the freshness and force of the intellectual constitution, to chill and cloud the imagination, and to break the elasticity of the inventive faculty; if not to blunt the keenness of the powers of analysis. Thus they indispose the mind to the wantonness of speculation, and impart to it rather the timidity, the acquiescence, the patience, which are proper to the submissive exposition of an authoritative rule of faith. Biblical learning, therefore, not only serves directly to dispel errors of opinion by throwing open the true sense of Scripture; but it contains within itself what might be termed a physical preventive against heresy, which, if it be not always efficacious, is perceptibly operative. Nothing then can be more desirable than that public opinion should continue, as it now does, to demand erudition from the teachers of religion.

Nevertheless, when a large class of men is professionally devoted to the study of theology, there will not be wanting some whose mental conformation (not to mention motives which are foreign to our subject) impels them to abandon the modest path of exposition, and to seek, within the precincts of religion, for the gratifications that accompany abstruse speculation, discovery, invention, exaggeration, and paradox. All these pleasures of a morbid or misdirected intellectual activity may be obtained in the regions of theology, not less than in those of mathematical and physical science, if once the restraints of a religious and heartfelt reverence for the authority of the word of God are discarded. The principal heresies that have disturbed the church, may, no doubt, fairly be attributed to motives springing from the pride or perverse dispositions of the human heart; but often a mere intellectual enthusiasm has been the real source of false doctrine.

Errors generated in this manner possess, commonly, some aspect of beauty or of greatness, or of philosophical simplicity, to recommend them; for as they were framed amid a pleasurable excitement of the mind, so they will have power to convey a kindred delight to others. And such exorbitances of doctrine, when advanced by men of powerful or richly furnished minds, conceal their deformity and evil tendency beneath the attractions of intelligence. But the very same extravagances and showy paradoxes, when caught up by inferior spirits, presently lose their garb, not only of beauty, but of decency, and show themselves in the unpleasing bareness of error. The mischief of heresy becomes often far more active and conspicuous in second hands than it was in those of its authors; and the reason is that it is usually the child of intellectualists—an inoffensive order of men: but no sooner has it been brought forth and reared, than it joins itself, as by instinct, to minds of vulgar quality, and in that society soon learns the dialect of impiety and licentiousness. The heresiarch, though he may be more blameworthy, is often much less audacious, and less corrupted, than his followers; for he, perhaps, is only an enthusiast; they have become fanatics.

In like manner as the passion for travel impels a man to perambulate the earth, and then makes him sigh to think that he has not other continents to explore, so the constitutional enthusiasm of speculation urges its victims to traverse the entire circuit of opinions: and even then leaves him insatiate of novelty. It is not caprice, much less is it the excessive solicitude of an honest mind, always inquiring for truth; but rather the impetus of a too highly-wrought intellectual activity, which carries the heretic onward and onward, from system to system, blazing as he goes, until there remains no form of flagrant error with which he has not scared the sober world. Then, though reason may have forgotten all consistency, pride has a better memory; and as this passion forbids his return to the truths he has so often denounced, and denounced from all points of his various course, nothing remains for him, when the season of exhaustion arrives, but to go off into the dark void of infidelity.

The sad story has been often realized. In the conformation of the heretic by temperament, there is more of intellectual mobility than of strength: a ready perception of analogies gives him both facility and felicity in collecting proofs, or rather illustrations in support of whatever opinion he may adopt. So copious are the materials of conjectural argument which crowd upon him, and so nice is his tact of selection, and so quick his skill of arrangement, that ere dull sobriety has gathered up its weapons, he has reared a most imposing front of defence. Pleased, and even surprised, with his own work, he now confidently maintains a position which at first he scarcely thought to be seriously tenable. Having convinced himself of the certainty of the new truth, and implicated his vanity in its support, deeper motives stimulate the activity of the reasoning and inventive faculties; and he presently piles demonstration upon demonstration, to a most amazing height, until it becomes, in his honest opinion, sheer infatuation to doubt. In this state of mind, of what value are the opinions of teachers and of elders? Of what weight the belief of the catholic church in all ages? They are nothing to be accounted of; there seems even a glory and a heroism, as well as a duty, in spurning the fallible authority of man: modesty, caution, hesitation, are treasons against conscience and heaven!

The young heresiarch, we will suppose to have spent the earliest season of life, while yet the ingenuousness of youth remained unimpaired, in the pursuits of literature or science, and to have been ignorant of Christianity otherwise than as a system of forms and offices. But the moment of awakening arrives; some appalling accident or piercing sorrow sets the interests of time in abeyance, and opens upon the soul the vast objects of immortality. Or the eloquence of a preacher may have effected the change. In these first moments of a new life, the great and common doctrines of religion, perceived in the freshness of novelty, afford scope enough to the ardor of the spirit; and perhaps, also, a new sentiment of submission quells, in some measure, that ardor: the craving of the mind does not yet need heresy; truth has stimulus enough; and even after truth has become somewhat vapid, the restraints of connection and friendship have force to retain the convert three years, or five, in the bosom of humility. But the first accidental contact with doctrinal paradox kindles the constitutional passion, and rouses the slumbering faculties to the full activity of adult vigor; contention ensues; malign sentiments, although perhaps foreign to the temper, are engendered, and these impart gloom to mysticism, and add rancor to extravagance. And now, no dogma that is obnoxious, terrific, intolerant, schismatical, fails to be, in its turn, avowed by the delirious bigot, who burns with ambition to render himself the enemy—not so much of the world, as of the church.

But will even the last extravagance of false doctrine allay the diseased cravings of the brain? Not unless that physical inertness which, towards the middle period of life, sometimes effects a cure of folly, or perhaps some motive of secular interest, supervenes. Otherwise a progression must take place, or a retrogression; and when the heart is sick and faint from the exhaustion of over-activity, and when the whispers of conscience have long ceased to be heard, and when the emotions of genuine piety have become painfully strange to the soul, nothing is so probable as an almost sudden plunge from the pinnacle of high belief, into the bottomless gulf of universal scepticism. A lamentable catastrophe of this kind, and which is only the natural issue of an intellectual enthusiasm, would, no doubt, much oftener take place than it does, if slender reasons of worldly prudence were not usually found to be of firmer texture than all the logic of theology.

A chronic intellectual enthusiasm, when it becomes the source of heresy, most frequently betakes itself to those exaggerations of Christian doctrine which pass under the general designation of Antinomianism;—not the Antinomianism of workshops, which is a corruption of Christianity concocted by mercenary teachers expressly to give license to the sensualities of those by whom they are salaried; but the Antinomianism of the closet, which is a translation into Christian phraseology of the ancient stoicism. The alleged relationship consists, not so much in the similar abuse which is made in both systems of the doctrine of necessity, but in the leading intention of both; which is to inclose the human mind in a perfect envelop of abstractions, such as may effectively defend it from the importunate sense of responsibility, or obligation, and such as shall render him who wears it a passive spectator of his own destinies. The doctrine of fate was seized upon by ancient sophists, and is taken up by the Antinomian, because, better than any other principle, it serves the purposes of this peculiar species of illusory delectation. Yet the Christian theorist has some signal advantages over his ancestor. For example: the egregious absurdities of the ancient philosophist met him on every walk of life, and stood in the way of constant collision with the common sense of mankind: and thus the sage, in spite of his gravity and self-command, could hardly pass a day in public without being put to shame by some glaring proof of practical inconsistency; for as often as he spoke or acted like other men, as often as he made it evident that he did not really think himself a statue or a phantom, he gave the lie direct to the fooleries of his scholastic profession.

But the modern stoic, while, by a sinister inference from his doctrine, he takes large leave of indulgence to the flesh (an indulgence which he uses or not, as his temperament may determine) and so borrows the practical part of Epicureanism, transfers his egregious dogmas to the unseen world, where they come not at all in contact with common sense. In the vast unknown of an eternity on both sides of time, he finds range enough, and immunity, for even the most enormous paradoxes which ingenuity can devise, or sophistry defend. Besides, the argumentative resources of the modern are incomparably more copious and various and tangible than those of the ancient wrangler; for the latter could only fall back, ever and again, upon the same abstractions; but the former may take position on any part of a very wide frontier; for having so large and multifarious a volume as the Scriptures in his hand, and having multiplied the argumentative value of every sentence it contains almost indefinitely by adopting the rule of Origen and the Rabbis, that the whole of Scripture is mystical, and may bear every sense that can be found in it, he is at once secure from the possibility of being confuted, and revels in an unbounded opulence of proof and illustration in support of his positions. To the sober interpreter, the Bible is one book; but to the Antinomian it is as a hundred volumes.

With a field so wide, and means so inexhaustible, the Christian theorist lives in a paradise of speculation; and no revolution to which human nature is liable can be less probable than that which must take place before he abandons his world of factitious happiness. The dreamer must feel that sin is a substantial ill, in which himself is fatally implicated, and not a mere abstraction to be discoursed of; he must learn that the righteous God deals with mankind not fantastically, but on terms adapted to the intellectual and moral conformation of that human nature, of which he is the author; and he must know that salvation is a deliverance, in which man is an agent, not less than a recipient.

It belongs not at all to our subject to attempt a confutation of this, the most strange of the many corruptions which Christianity has undergone; our part is merely to exhibit against the system the charge of delusion or enthusiasm; and this charge needs no other proof than the plain statement that, whereas Christianity recognizes the actual mechanism of human nature, and appeals to the moral sentiments, and urges motives of every class, and labors to enhance the sense of responsibility, and authenticates the voice of conscience, Antinomianism, with indurated arrogance, spurns all such sentiments, and substitutes nothing in their room but bare speculations; and these speculations are all of a kind to cherish the selfish deliriums of luxurious contemplation. But to take a course like this, is, whatever may be the subject in question, the part of an enthusiast. Whoever, in any such manner, cuts himself off from the common sympathies of our nature, and makes idiot sport of the energies of moral action, and has recourse, either to a jargon of sophistries, or to trivial evasions, when other men act upon the intuitions of good sense, and rebuts every idea that does not minister gratification either to fancy or to appetite, such a man must be called an enthusiast, even though he were at the same time—if that were possible—a saint.

We have spoken of the enthusiasm of mysticism. But there is also an enthusiasm of simplification. The lowest intellectual temperature, not less than the highest, admits extravagance, and sometimes even admits it more; for warmth and movement are less unnatural in the world of matter or of mind, than congelation: what so grotesque as the coruscations of frost? If the reasoning faculty had not its imaginative impulse, the sciences would never have moved a step in advance of the mechanic arts; much less would the high theorems of pure mathematics, or the abstruse principles of metaphysics, have been known to mankind. But if this natural and useful impulse be irregular and excessive, it becomes the spring of errors. Yet the perfection of science, and its general diffusion in modern times, operate so effectually to keep in check that propensity to absurd speculation of which the elements are always in existence, that if we are in search of specimens of this species of intellectual disease, we must expect to meet with them only without the pale of education, and among the self-taught philosophers of workshops, who sometimes amuse the hour of stolen leisure in digesting systems of the universe, other than the one which is demonstrated in our universities.

Driven from the enclosures where the demonstrable sciences hold empire, the enthusiasts of speculation turn off upon ground where there is more scope, more obscurity, more license, and less of the stern and instant magistracy of right reason. Some give themselves to politics, some to political economy, and some to theology; and whatever they severally meet with that is in its nature, or that has become concrete, complex, or multifariously involved, they seize upon with a hungry avidity. The disease of the brain has settled upon the faculty of analysis; all things compound must therefore be severed, and not only be severed but left in disunion. It cannot but happen that, in these zealous labors of dissolution, some happy strokes must now and then fall upon errors which wiser men have either not observed, or have spared: mankind owes therefore a petty debt of gratitude to such speculatists for having removed a few excrescences from ancient systems. But these trivial successes, which are hailed with much applause by the vulgar, who delight in witnessing any kind of destruction, and by the splenetic, who believe themselves to gain whatever is torn from others, inspire the heroes of reform with unbounded hopes of effecting universal revolutions; and they actually become inflated to so high a degree of presumption, that, at a time when all the great questions which can occupy the human mind have been thoroughly discussed, and discussed with every advantage of liberty, of learning, and of ability, they are not ashamed to adopt a style of speaking as if they thought themselves morning stars on the verge of the dark ages, destined to usher in the tardy splendors of true philosophy upon a benighted world!

—Or of true religion: as if the Christian doctrine, in its most essential principles, had become extinct, even in the days of the apostles, and had not merely remained under the bushel of superstition during the ages of religious despotism, but long after the chains of that despotism were broken, and after the human mind, with all the vigor and intensity of renovated intelligence and renovated piety had given its utmost force, and its utmost diligence to the exposition of the canon of faith. Of what sort, it might be asked, were this canon, if its meaning on the most important points might, age after age, be utterly misunderstood by ninety-nine learned, honest, and unshackled men, and be perceived only by the one? Yet this is the supposition of simplificators, who from the impulse of a faulty cerebral conformation, must needs disbelieve, because theology would otherwise afford them no intellectual exercise.

It is a common notion, incessantly repeated, and seldom sifted, that diversity of opinion, on even the cardinal points of Christian faith, is an inevitable and a permanent evil, springing, and always to spring, from the diversity of men's dispositions and intellectual faculties. Certainly no other expectation could be entertained if Christian theology were what moral philosophy was among the sophists of ancient Athens—a system of abstractions, owning subjection to no authority. But this is not the fact; and though hitherto the ultimate authority has been much abused or spurned, the re-establishment of its power on fixed and well understood principles seems to be far from an improbable event. We say more, that an actual progression towards so happy a revolution is perceptible in our own times. We do not for a moment forget that a heartfelt acquiescence in the doctrines of Scripture must ever be the result of a divine influence, and is not to be effected by the same means which produce uniformity of opinion on matters of science. But while we anticipate, on grounds of strong hope, a time of refreshing from above, which shall subdue the depraved repugnances of the human mind, we may also anticipate, on grounds of common reasoning, a natural process of reform in theology—considered as a science, which shall place the intrinsic incoherence of heresy in the broad light of day, henceforward to be contemned and avoided.

The fields of error have been fully reaped and gleaned; nor shall aught that is new spring up on that field, the whole botany of which is already known and classified. It is only of late that a fair, competent, and elaborate discussion of all the principal questions of theology has taken place; and the result of this discussion waits now to be manifested by some new movement of the human mind. Great and happy revolutions usually stand ready and latent for a time until accident brings them forward. Such a change and renovation we believe to be at the door of the Christian Church. The ground of controversy has contracted itself daily during the last half century; the grotesque and many-colored forms of ancient heresy have disappeared, and the existing differences of opinion (some of which are indeed of vital consequence) all draw round a single controversy, the final decision of which it is hard to believe shall long be deferred; for the minds of men are pressing towards it with an unusual intentness. This great question relates to the authority of Holy Scripture; and the professedly Christian world is divided upon it into three parties, comprehending all smaller varieties of opinion.

The first of these parties, constituted of the Romish Church, and its disguised favorers, affirms the subordination of the authority of Scripture to that of tradition and the Church. This is a doctrine of slavery and of ignorance, which the mere progress of knowledge and of civil liberty must overthrow, if it be not first exploded by other means. The second party comprises the sceptical sects of the Protestant world, which agree in affirming the subordination of Scripture to the dogmas of natural theology; in other words to every man's notion of what religion ought to be. These sects, having no barrier between themselves and pure deism, are continually dwindling by desertions to infidelity; nor will they be able to hold their slippery footing on the edge of Christianity a day after a general revival of serious piety has taken place.

The third party, comprehending the great majority of the Protestant body, bows reverently, and implicitly, and with intelligent conviction, to the absolute authority of the word of God, and knows of nothing in theology that is not affirmed, or fairly implied, therein. The differences existing within this party, how much soever they may be exaggerated by bigots, will vanish as the mists of the morning under the brightness of the sun, whenever a refreshment of pious feeling descends upon the Church. They consist, in part, of mere misunderstandings of abstract phrases, unknown to the language of Scripture; in part they hinge upon political constitutions, of which so much as is substantially evil is by no means of desperate inveteracy: in part these differences are constituted of nothing better than the lumber of antiquity, the worthless relics of forgotten janglings handed down from father to son, but now, by so many transmissions, worn away to an extreme slenderness, and quite ready to crumble into the dust of everlasting forgetfulness. Surely men are not always so to remain children in understanding, that the less shall be preferred to the greater; nor shall it always be that the substantial evils of schism are perpetuated and vindicated on the ground of obscure historical questions, fit only to amuse the idle hours of the antiquary. This trifling with things sacred must come to its end, and the great law of love must triumph, and the Christian Church henceforward have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism."