Essays and Reviews
Authority and Liberty
by Orestes A. BrownsonRemarks on the Past, and its Legacies to American Society
by J. D. Nourse
Louisville, Ky.: Morton & Griswold 1847, 16mo., pp. 223.A CRITIC in this city expresses surprise that this book could have been written by a young man born and brought up in Kentucky; but we see no reason why it could not have been written by a young man as well as by an old man, and in Kentticky as well as in any other part of the Union. We suppose 263 they read and think in Kentucky as well as in Massachusetts; and it is not more strange that a young Kentuckian than that a Bostonian should expend a good deal of thought in elaborating a @ysteiii compounded of truth and falsehood, common-place and crude speculation. The book certainly indicates some natural and acquired ability, but no ability peculiar to either side of the Alleghaiiies. The substance of it may be read any day in Schlegel, Carlyle, Macaulay, Guizot, Bancroft, and The Boston Quarterly Review. We have discovered nothing new or striking in the views it sets forth, or if now and then something we never met with before, it is usually something we have no desire to meet with again.
The author tells us, in his brief advertisement, 11 that it may seem presumptuous for a youno, back-woodsman...... to enter the li@ts with Schlegel, Guizot, and Macaulay." We think it Dot only may seem so, but that it actually is so; for Schlegel and Guizot-to say nothing Of Macaulay-are at least men of varied aT,d profound erudition. Tbev are scholars, and have not derived their learning at second or third hand. Mr. Nourse may rival, iiay, surpass then, in his ambition and self confidence ; but he must live long, and enjoy advantages of study which neither Kentucky nor Massachusetts affords, before he rivals them in any thing else, or can do much else than travesty them. Not that we ragard either of them as a safe guide. Guizot is eclectic and hum,,tnitaraD; and Schlegel is too mystical, and too ambitious, to reduce within a theory matters which by their very nature transcend any tbeorv the human mind can form or comprebend. Mr. Nourse has, if you will, extraordinary natural abilities, an honest and ingenuous disposition ; but he has not yet begun to master the present, far less the whole past. He has a vague recognition of religion, concedes some influence to Christianity in civilizing the world; but he is without faith, an(.l has yet to learn the very rudiments of the Christian creed. We doubt, also, whether he is able to give even the outlines of a single historical period, or of a single people or institution, with sufficient accuracy to enable them to serve as the basis of a ran 264 o,le sound induction. One should know the fctcts of history fore proceedino- to construct its philosophy. He will forgive us. therefore, if we tell him that we do regard him as not a little I)resuinlituous in attempting a work for which he has in reality Dot a single qualification. Ile writes, indeed, with earnestness ; hi- stvle, tbouoh somewhat cramped, and deficient in freedom and ease, is dioilified, simple, clear, and terse, occasionally rich and beautiful; but this cannot atone for the general incorrectness of his statements, or the crudeness and unsoundness of his speculations.
With sound premises and freed from the prejudices of his education, we doubt not, Mr. Nourse might arrive at passable conclusions; but he is ruined by his love of theorizing, his false philosophy, and his unsound theology. He may have philanthropic impulses and generous sentiments,; he may mean to be a Christian, and aettiallv believe that he is a Christian believer; but, whether he knows it or not, the order of thought which he seeks to develop and propagate is neither more nor less than the old Alexandrian Syncretism, as obtained through German Mysticism, French Eclecticism, and Boston Transcendentalism. Radically considered, his system, if systei-n it can be called, is the old Alexandrian system, which sprang up in the third century of our era, as the rival of the Christian Church, ascended the throne of the Coesars with Julian the Apostate, and fled to Persia in the sixth century, when Justinian closed the last schools of philosophy at Athens. This system was an attempted fusion of all the particular forms of Gentilisin, moulded into a shape as nearly like Christianity as it -ni(rht be, and intended to dispute with it the empire of the world. It borrowed largely from Christianity,-copied the forms of it. hierarchy, and many of its dogmas; which has led some in more recent times, who never consult chronoloo, , to charge the Church with having herself @y copied her hierarchy, her ritual, and her principle doctrines from it. It uiade, no direct war on the Christian Symbol; it simplv ienied or derided tl)e sources whence it was obtained, and i@e silithority which Christian faith always presupposes. It called 265 itself Pllilosophy, and its pretension was to raise philosophy t(i t@ie dignity of religion, and to do bv it what Christianity profes,-es to do by faith and an external and supernaturally accr@dited revelation. It was, thei@efore, Gentile Rationalism, and, in fact, Gentile Rationalism carried to its last deo-ree of perfection. It is this Rationalism, met and refuted by the great Fathers of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, that lies at the bottom of ,our authors thought, and which he labors to reproduce with t zeal-we cannot say abilit,7-not unworthy of a disciple of Plotinus, Proclus, and Porphyrius.
This should not surprise us. There is nothing new under the sun. The old Gentile world exhausted human reason ; and it is not possible, even with a full knowledge of all the Church teaches, taking human reason alone as the basis of our system, to surpass the old Alexandrian Syncretism, or Neoplatonisin, as it is sometimes called. In constructing it, the human mind had present to it, as materials, all the labors and traditions of Gentilism in all ao,,es and nations, and also all the teachings and traditions of Jews and Christians, as well as of the Jewish and early Christian sects and it was, from the point of view of Rationalism, the resum6 of the whole. It was the last word of heathendom in it Gentilism, collecting and combining all that was not the Christian Church, exei@tc', at her forces and all her energies for a last desperate battle against the Nazarene, against the triumph of the Cross. Catholicity or Rationalism is, as every one knows or may know, the only alternative that remains to us since the preaebin(y of the Gospel. Impossible, then, is it to depart from Catholicity without falling back on Rationalism, and, if a little profound and consistent, upon Neoplatonism, as Rationalism in its fulness and integrity. All heresies are simply attempts to return to this Rationalism, tnd in it they find their complement, as may be historically as well as logically established. All your modern philosophies are regarded as profound and complete only as they approach it. Kaiit, Schelling, Heoel, Cousin, Leroux, De Larnennais,-Herines, Schleiermacher, Carlyle, Emerson, Parl-er, all belong to the Alexandrian school, and 266 only reprodu-e, more or less successfully, its teachings, and to the best of their ability renew the war it waged against the Christian Church.It is no objection to what we assert, that the sects and many of the modern philosophies retain sol-lie or even the greater part of the Christian dofymas. Neoplatonism did as much. We must not forget that Neoplatonism is subsequent to the Christian Church ; that it took its rise in the school of Ammonius Saccas, in the beginning of the third century of our era ; that it received its forid and development from Plotiijus, who flourished about the year of our Lord 260 ; and that it proposed itself as the rival rather than the antagonist of Christianity. Its aim was to satisfy the ever-recurring and indestructible religious wants of the human soul, without recognizing the Christian Church, or bowing to the authority of the Nazarene. It was not the Christian doctrines, abstracted from the Christian Church, and received as pbilosopy on the authority of reason or even private inspirations, instead of the authority of our Lord and his supernaturall' commissioned teachers, that it opposed. It was willy ino, to accept Christianity as a philosophy, or A part of philosopby; but not as a religion, far less as a religion complete in itPelf and excluding all others. Hence, it, as well as the Church, taught one Supreme God existing as a Trinity in Unity, the iriamortality of the soul, the fall of man and the corruption of human nature, the necessity of redemption, self-denial and the practice of austere virtue ; that we are bound to worship God, must live for him, and can attain to supreme felicity only in attaining to an ineffable union with him. In the simple province of philosophy it was often profound and just. In many thing it ' and Christianitv ran parallel one with the other. Not ullfrequently do the Alexandrian philosophers talk like Christian Fathers, and Christian Fathers talk like Alexandrian philosophers. There is Neoplatonisyn in St. Gregory Nazianzen, in St. Basil, and St. Augustine. The most renowned of the Fathers studied in it-, schools, as distinguished Doctors now study in the schools of the philosophers of France and Germany. But Neo- 267 Platonism was at bottom a philosophy, and whatever it held from Christianity, it held as philosophy, as resting on a human, riot a Divine basis. The philosophers transformed Christianity, so far as they accepted it, into a philosophy ; while the Fathers made Neoplatonism, so far as they did riot reject it, subservient to Christianity, to the statement and explication of Christian theology to the human understanding, keeping it alwavs within the province of reason, and never allowing it to become the arbiter of the dogmas of faith, or to supersede or idterfere with the Divine authority on which alone they were to be meekly and submissively received. The Fathers, therefore, were not less Christian for the philosophy they did not reject, nor the Alex- andi-ians the less Gentile Rationalists for the Christian doctrines they borrowed. One may embrace, avowedly, all Christian doctrine, without approaching the Christian order, if, as Hermes proposed. be embraces it as philosophy, or on the authority of reason ; for the Christian, to be a Christian believer, must believe God, and therefore Christianity, because it is his supernatur,tl word, not because it is the word of human reason or human sentiinedt, as contend our modern Liberal Christians.
It, would be interesting to show Iiistoricallv the resemblance of the whole modern un-Catholic world to the old Alexandrian world represented by Plotinus. Janiblicus, Porphyrius, Proclus, and Julian the Apostate ;-how each heresiarch and each modern philosopher only reproduces what the old Christian Fathers fought against and defeated,-how every progress in this boasted age of progress only tends to bring us back to the system which the Gregories, the Basils, and their associates combated from the Christian pulpit and the Episcopal chair; but we have neither the space nor the learning to do it as it should be done. Yet no one who has studied with tolerable care the learned Gentilism of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries of our era, and is passably well acquainted with the modern Rationalism of France and Germany, and the iiiovei-nents of the various lieret. ical sects in our dav ' can doubt that our own nineteenth century is distinguished for its return to Gentilism, and has nearly repro. 268 duceditunderitsmostperfectform. Theseparqteformsof,heath-nisii-i had become effete; no one of them any longer satisfied the minds or the hearts of its adherents. An age of skepticism and indifference had intervened, attended by a licentiousness of nianiiers and public and private corruption which threatened the universal dissolution of societ . Individuals rose who saw it, y and felt the necessity of a general reform, and that a general reform was impossible without religion. But they would not, on the one hand, accept the Church, and could not, on the other, hope any thing from any of the old forms of heathenism. The world must have a religion, and could not get on without it. But bow get a religion, when all religions were discarded, when all forms of religion were treated with general neglect or contempt 9 The Reformers saw that they must have a religion, and, since, none existed which was satisfactory, none which was powerful enough to meet the exi(rency of the times, they must make one for themselves;-that is, form one to their purpose out of the old particular religious no lonffer needed. Alexandria was their proper workshop, for there were collected or Iv@@'ncy about in glorious confusion all the necessary materials. They began with the assumption, that all religions are at a bo ttom equally true, and that the error of each is in its exclusiveness, in its claiii)iii(y to be the whole of religion, and the onlv true religion. Take, then, the elements of each, xnould them together into a complete and harmonious whole, and you will have the true religion, a religion which will meet the wants of all minds and hearts, rally the human race around it, and be "The Church of the Future." Hence arose the Alexandrian Syncretism, coi-nbining in one systematic whole., as far as reason could combine them, all the known religions of the world, which, under the name of philosophy, but which became a veritable superstition, disputed the empire of the world with Christianity for full three hundred years. What is the movement of our dty, but an attempt of the ,same sort? By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the 269 rarious forms of heresy, in which the Protestant spirit bad developeci itself, and which had attempted to reprodu--e Gentilism without forfeiting their title to Christianity, bad exhausted their moral force, and the a(,e beoan to Itpse again into the old license and corruption. Never in its worst diys ivas there grosser iinrnoi-alitv and corruption in the Roman Empire than prevailed in England dut,in(r the earlier half of the last century, under tha reruns of George, the First and George the Second. Deism was rife in the court, in the schools, in the Church, arnODg the nobility and the people. Geri-naiiy -,vas bardlv better, if so good ; and of France under the regency of the profligate Duke of Orleans, or under Louis the Fifteenth with his parc au ce@fs, we need not speak. Literature was infidel throughout, and atheism became fasbiODable. To the rabid infidel propac,);andism, begun by the English deists, and carried on by Voltaii@e and his associates, under the motto -Ecrasez l'infame, soon succeeded, fL-, of old, profound skepticism and indiff(-,rence. Neither false religion nor no religion could rouse the mind from the torpidity into which it sank. Exclusive heresy, or, as we may say, sectarianism, born from the Protestant Reformation, though producing its effects far beyond the limits of the so-called Protestant -,vorld, had caused all forms of religion, about the beginning of this century, to be treated as equally false and contemptible.
But, once more, individuals started up frightened at the prospect they beheld. They felt and owned the eternal truth, Man cannot be an atheist. They saw the necessity of a general re. form, and that a general reform could be effected only by reli@ ion. But, disdaining the Church as did the old Alexandrians, and seeing clearly that all the particular forms of Protestantism ,were worii out, they felt that they must have a new reliuion, and to have it they must either make it for themselves, or reconstruct it out of s@ch materials as the old religious supplied. The pi,iiiciple on -vlvliieh they proceed is precisely the Alexandrian. To tbe,i all religious are equally true or equally false,-true as parts of a whole, false when regarded each as a whole in itself. 'rare, then, the several religions which have been and are,, mould 270 them into I complete, uniform, and systematic whole, and you will have what the Editor of The Boston Quarterly Review, and Chevalier Bunsen after him, call " The Church of the Future,"' and Dr. Bushnell and his friends call 11 Comprehensive -Christianity,"-wbat Saint-Simon denominated Nouveau Christianisme, and M. Victor Cousin brilliantly advocates under the name of Eclecticism, borrowed avowedly from the Neoplatonists.
In perfect harmony with this, you see everywhere attempts to amalgamate sects, to form the un-Catbolic world into one body, with a common creed, a common worship, and a common purpose. While, the philosophers elaborate the bases of the UDion, statesmen - and ministers attempt its practical realization. This is what we see in "Evangelical Alliances" and 11 World's Conventions," in the formation of "The Evanoelical Church" in Prussia, and the union of Prussia and England in establishing the bishopric of Jerusalem. The aim is everywhere the same that it was with the Alexandrians, the principles of proceeding are the same, and the result, if obtained, must be similar. The movement of the un-Catholic world now, how much soever it may borrow from Christianity, however near it may approach the Catholic model, can be reyarded, by those who understand it, only as a conscious or unconscious effort to reproduce the Gentile Rationalism of the old Alexandrian school.
The identity of the two movements might be established even down to minute details. The most fanciful dreams of our Transceddentalists may be found aniodo- the Alexandrians,-either with those who disavowed Christianity, or the sects, professin(y to retain it, allied to them. The very principle of Transceudentalism, namely, an element or activity in the human soul above reason, by which man is place(,l in immediate communion with the Divine mind, is nothing but the Ecstasy or Trance of the Neopl,ttonists, or their flfth source of sc,@ence; and the Alexandrian theurgy and magic are reproduced in your Swedenborgianism and Mesmerism. Moreover, the Protestant Reformation itself not only involved as its legitimate consequence a return to the Alexandrian Rationalism, but was in some measure the ef- 271 fect of such return. To be satisfied of this, we need but study the history of the Revival of Letters and the controversies of the schools in the fifteenth ceilturv. We say nothing of the Revival in so far &-, it was simply a revival of classical antiquity under the relation of art, or beauty of form,-under which rela, tion it was not censurable, but relatively, perhaps a progress. Christian piety and learnino- can coexist with barbarism in taste, and want of elegance and polish in manners, but do not demand them. The Revival, however, was, in fact, something more than this, and something far different from it. Those Greek scholars who escaped from Constantinople when it was taken by the Turks, and who spread themselves over Western Europe, did not brine, with them merely the poets, orators, and historians of ancient Greece, nor merely more complete editons of Plato and Aristotle; they brought with them Proclus and Plotinus, and the old Alexandrian Rationalism, with its Oriental comprebensiveness and its Greek subtlety. They made no attacks on the Chureb,-they professed profound respect for Catholicity, and with Eastern suppleness readily submitted to her authority; but they deposited in the minds and hearts of their disciples the germs of a system the rival of hers, which weakened their attachment to her doctrines, disgusted them with the barbarous Latin and un-Greek taste of her Monks, and the rigid, sometimes frioid, Scholasticism of her Doctors. These germs were not slow in developing, and very soon gave us the Neoplatonists in philosophy, and the Humanists in literature, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The former destroyed the au ' tbority of the Seboolmen; the latter, at the head of whom stood Erasmus, the Voltaire of his time, covered the clergy, especially the Monks, with ridicule, and sowed the see(-Is of practical, as the others had of speculative infidelity. Combined or operating to the same end, they prepared, and, favored by the politics of the period, produced the Protestant Reformation. Not accidentally, then, has Protestantism from its birth manifested a Gentile sp,rt, misrepresented and ridiculed every thing distinctively Christian, oi that it is now undeniably developing in pure Alexandrian Syn 272 cretism, ctathei-inly itself up a grand and well-oro,,anized supe-- ZD as stition to wage war once more on the old Alexandrian battle,Olround, with the old Alexandrian forces and arms, against the I '-Njazarene, as Julian the Apostate always terms our- Lord. Was it by accident that Protestantism, wherever permitted to follow its instincts, began by pulling down, breaking, or defacing the CROSS, the sacred symbol of Christianity? 'flie identity of the modern movement with that which result. ed in Alexandrian Syncretism may be traced also in the pantheistic tendencies of- the day. The Alexandrian school rejected none of the popular gods; it placed Apis and Jove, Isis and Hercules, and sometimes even Christ himself, in the same temple; but all under the Shadow of the god Serapis, the symbol of unity, or rather Of THE WHOLE, THE ALL, that is, of pure pantheism, in which all pure Rationalism is sure to end. To what does all modern philosophy tend, but to pantheism? Have we not seen Spinoza in our own day rehabilitated, and commented upon as the greatest of modern philosophers? Cousin's Eclecticism is undeniably pantheistic, and less cannot be said of SebelliDO'iSM or Hegelism. Socialism, now so rife, is simply pantheism adapted to the apprehensions of the vulgar,-refined and voluptuous with the Fourierists and Saint-Simonians, coarse and revoltino, with the Chartists and Red Republicans.
But we are pursuing this line of remark beyond our original purpose. We may return to it hereafter. In the meantinie we invite those who have the requisite leisure and learning to take up the subject, and consider the relation of all the ancient and modern sects to Gentilism, the persistence of Gentilism in Cbristian nations down to our own times, in spite of the anathemas of the Church and the unwearied efforts of the Catholic clergy to exterminate it, and its all but avowed revival in our own day under the most comprehensive, scientific, erudite, subtle, and dangerous form it has ever assumed. In doing this, great atten tion should be paid to chronology; for the Geiitilism with which it is the fashion among Protestants and unbelievers to comparq Christianity, and from which it is pretended the Church hat 273 larg,-,, borrowed, will be found to have been formed two centuries and a half after the birth of our Lord. That stupendous fabric, that systematic organization of GeDtilism, which we find in the tii-ne of Julian the Apostate, and which fell with him, was not the model copied by the Church, but was itself modelled after the Christian hierarchy, and it is heathenism that ba.4 Christianized, not the Church tbtt has heathenized. The Platonism of modern times, whether on the COntiDent or in Eno-land, L- not the Platonism of Plato, but of the Alexandrians, a.every one knows who has studied Plato himself in his own inimitable Dialooues, not merely in the speculations of Plotinus, or the coi-nnientar-les of Proclus.
That our author, born tnd brouobt up in the Protestant world, and firii-ied by its Gentile spit-it and tendencies, should even unconciously fall into the Alexandrian order of thou(yht, and labor to reconstruct a system intended to rival the Christian, is Doth@ng strange. In doino, so, he only yields to the spirit of the a(re, and follows the lead of those whom the age owns and reverences as its chiefs. That his system is not Christian, although he would have us receive it as Christian, is evident enough from his di(@tu?n with i,eo-ard to miracles. " The niiracles ascribed to Christ and his Apostles," he says (p. 61,) " honvever conclusive to those who witnessed them, are no evidence to us, until by other means we have established the truth of the wiitin(,r,-, which record them,-that is to say,,ttntit we haveproved all that we wish to prove." There is a sophism in this, which, probably, the author does not perceive. If the writings are the only authority for the miracles as historical facts, that we must establish their historical authent city before the miracles can be evidence to us, we concede; but not their truth, that is, the truth of the mysteries they teach, the material object of faith,therefore the matter we want proved. The miracles are not proofs of the mysteries, but simply motives of credibility. " Rabbi, we know that thou art come a teacher from God; for no mantould do these miracles which thou doest, unless God were with 274 him." Ordinary historical testimony, though wholly inadequate to prove the mysteries, is sufficient to prove the miracles as facts, and, when so proved, they are evidence to us in the same manner and in the same degree that they were to those who witnessed them. It does not, therefore, follow that we must prove, without them, all we want proved, before they can be evidence to us.
But this by the way. The author in his dictum asserts either that Christianity is not provable at all, or that it is provable without miracles; but no Christian can assert either the one or the other. The former is absurd, if Christianity came from God and is intended for reasonable bein,@. God, as the author of reason, cannot require us to believe, and we as reasonable being,,; cannot believe, without reason, or authority sufficient to satisfy reason. The latter cannot be said without reducing Christianity to the mere order of nature ; for a supernatural religion is, in the nature of things, provable only by supernaturally accredited witnesses, and witnesses cannot be supernaturally accredited without miracles of some sort. To deny the necessity of miracles as motives of credibility, or to assert the provability of Christianity without them, is to deny the supernatural character of Christianity, and therefore to deny Christianity itself; for Christianity is essentially and distinctively supernatural. Without the miracles, Christianity is provable only as a philosophy, and as a philosophy it must lie wholly within the order of nature; since philosophy, by its very definition, is the science of principles cognizable by the lidht of natural reason. Rationalisin turns for ever within the limits of nature, and, do it's best, it can never overleal) them. It can never rise to Christianity ; all it can do is, by rejecting or explaining away the mysteries, discardid@ all that transcends reason, to bring Christianity down to itself,-a fact we commend to the serious consideration of all who pretend that our religion, even to iLq loftiest mysteries, is rationally or philosophically demonstrable. The Christianity they can prove as a philosophy is no more the Christianity of the Gospel than the Neoplatonism of Proclus and Plotinus wa,the Christianity of the Gregoiies, the Ba-,ils, and the Augustine4
275 The author also betrays the unchristian character of his order of thou(ybt in his third discourse, entitled Spiritual Despotism and the Reformation. He says, indeed, in this part of his work, some @ very handsome things-in his own estimation-of the Church; but, as he says them from the humanitarian point of view, on the hypothesis that she is a purely human institution, and therefore a gigantic imposition upon mankind, we cannot take them as evidences of his Christian mode of thinking. If the Church is what we hold her to be, these humanitarian cornpliments and apologies are impertinent; and if what be holds her to be, they betray on his part a very unchristian laxity of moral principle. An infallible Church, the Church of God, needs no apologies; man's Church, or the Synagogue of Satan, deserves none. But, although the author maintains that the Church was very necessary from the fifth to the fifteenth cen-. tury,-that she preserved our holy religion, and without her Christian faith and piety would have been los@ Christianity would have been unable to fulfil her mission, and the European nations would have remained uncivilized, ignorant, illiterate, ruthless barbarians,-be yet holds that she was a spiritual despotism, and the Protestant Reformation was inevitable and necessary to emancipate the human mind from-her thraldom, and to prepare the way for mental and civil freedom.
According to the author, the spiritual despotism of the Church consisted in her claiming and exercising authority over faith and morals,-over the minds, the hearts, and the consciences of the faithful. If we catch his meaning, which does not appear to lie very clear or distinct even in his own mind, the despotism is in the authority itself, not simply in the fact that the Church claims and exercises it. It would be equally despotism, if claimed and exercised bv any one else, because it is intrinsically hostile to the riahts of the mind and to the principles of civil liberty. Consequently, he objects not merely to the claimant, but to the thing claimed, and rejects the authority, let who will claim it, or let it be vested where or in whom it may.
But this is obviously unchristian. If we suppose Christianity 276 at all, we must suppose it as an external revelation definitp and authoritative religion, given 'by the STpy-eine Lovgiver to all men as the Supreme Law, binding upon the whole man, against which no one has the right to think, speak, or act, and to which every one is bound to conform in thought, word, and deed. All this is implied in the very conception of Cbtir.tiatiity, and must be admitted, if we admit the Christian at all. The authority objected to is therefore included in the fundamental conception of the Christian revelation, and coiisequently we cannot denominate it a spiritual despotism without denomidating Christianity itself a spiritual despotism, which, we .need not say, would be any thino, but Christian.
The author's order of thought would carry him even fai-ther. If the authority of the Church is a spiritual despotism for the reason he assigns, the authority of God is also a spiritual despotism. The principle on which be objects to the Church is, that the mind and the state are free, and that any authority over either is unjust. The essence of despotism is not that it is authority, but that it is authority without right, will without reason, power ivithout justice. We cannot suppose the existence of God without supposing the precise authority over the mind and the state objected to. If this authority, claimed and exercised in his name by the Church, is despotism, it must be, their, because he has no right to it ; if no rio-ht to it, lie is not sovereign; if not sovereign, he does not exist. If God does not exist, there is Do conscience, no law, no accountability, moral or civil. To this conclusion the author's notions of meutal freedom and civil liberty, pushed to their lowical consequences, necessarily lead.
Every Christian is obli(yed to recoonize, in the abstract, to say the least, the precise authority claimed and exercised by the Church over faith and morals, over the intellect and the conscience, in spirituals and in temporals ; and it is a well-known fact, that all Christian sects, as long as they retain any thing distinctively Christian, do claim, and, as fat- as able, exercise it, and. never practically abandon it, till they lapse into pure Ration-al.ism, from which all that is distinctively Cbrisfian diiap- 277 pears. It cannot be otherwise ; because Christianity is essertially law, and the supreme Law, for the reason, the will, the conscience, for individuals and nations, for the sul-)ject and for the prince. If our author's order of thoti(rht were Christian be could not o@ject to authority in ithelf; he would feel himself obli(yed to assert and vindicate it somewhere for -onie one ; and and if lie objected to the Church at all, he would do so, not because of the authority, but because it is not rigbtfL'-Iy hers, but another's,-wliieb would be a legitimate objection, and conclusive, if sustained, as of course it cannot be, by the facts in the -ewe. His failure to object on this ground is a proof that his thought is not Christian.
The author's notions of authority and liberty are not only uncbristian, but exceediiioly unphilosopliical -and confused. He has no just conception of either, and is evidently unable to draw any inteilioible distinction between authority and despotism on the one band, or between liberty and license on the other. He can conceive of authority and liberty onlv as each is the antagonist or the limitation of the other ; he iii(renuously confesses that he is unable to reconcile them, and presents their reconciliation as a problem that Protestantism has yet to solve. " To adjust the respective limits of these antao;onists,-Liberty of thought and Ecclesiastical authority,-and bring about a lasting treaty of peace between them, is the yet unsolved problem of the Reformation. The Reformers attempted to solve it, and strove in vain to confine the torrent they had set in motion, within certain dikes of their own construction. The spring-tide of free inquiry, not yet perhaps at its flood, is sweeping away their bariiers, and ages may elapse before it subsides into its proper channel, after cleansing the earth of a thousand follies and abuses." (p. 160.) All this proves that his order of thought is uncliris Tian, and that his conceptions of authority and of liberty are not taken from the Gospel. No intelligent Christian, no sound philosopher even, ever conceives of authority and liberty as anta!,Yonists, as limiting one the other, or admits that their conciliation is an unsolved problem, or even a problem at alL 278
The Christian, even the philosopher, derives all from God, a,icl Dothin
In the presence of authority there is no liberty; where, then, is liberty? It is not before God, but it is between man and man, between man and society, and between society and society. The absolute and plenary sovereignty of God excludes all other sovereignty, and our absolute and unconditional subjection to him excludes all other subjection. Hence no liberty before God, and no subjection before man ; and therefore liberty is rightly defined, full and entire freedom from all authority but the authority of God. Here is liberty, liberty in the human sphere, and liberty full and entire, without restraint or limit in the sphere to which it pertains. Man is subjected to God, but to God only. No man, in his own right, has any, the least, authority over man; no body or community of men, as such, has any rightful authority either in spirituals or temporals. All merely human authorities are usurpations, and their acts are without obligation, null and void from the beginning. If the, parent, the pastor, the prince has a-ay ri@),Iit to command, it is as the vise 279 of God, and in that character alone ; if I am bound to obey my parents, my pastor, or my prince, it is because my God comiiiands iue to obey them, and because in obeying them I am obeviii(y him. Here is the law of liberty, and here, too, is the law of authority. Understand now why reli on must found the state, why it is nonsense or blasphemy to talk of an alliance between religion and liberty, a reconciliation between authority and freedom. Both proceed from the same foudtain, the absoItite, underived, uDIiinited sovereignty of God, and can be no more opposed one to the other than God can be opposed to himself. Hence, absolute and unconditional subjection to God is absolute and unliniited freedom. Therefore says our Lord, " If the Son makes you free, you sball. be free indeed." The, sovereignty of God does not oppose liberty; it founds and guaranties it. Authority is not the antagonist of freedom it is its support, its vin dicator. It is not religion, it is not Christi,initv but infidelity, that places authority and liberty one over against the other, in battle array. It is not God who crushes,% our liberty, robs us of our rights, and binds heavy burdens upon our shoulders, too grievous to be borne; it is man, who at the same time that he robs us of our rights robs God of his. He who attacks our freedom attacks his sovereignty ; be who viddicates his sovereignty, the riohts of God, vindicates the rights of man; for all human rights are summed up in the one right to be governed by God and by him alone, in the duty of absolute subjection to him, and absolute freedom from all subjection to any other. Maintain, therefore, the rights of God, the supremacy in all departments of the Divine law, and you need not trouble your beads about the rights of man, freedom of thought or civil liberty; for they are secured with all the guaranty Of the Divine sovereignty. The Divine sovereignty is, therefore, as indispensable to liberty as to authority.
We need not stop to show that the Divine sovereignty is not it-,elf a despotism. The essence of despotism, as we have said, is not that it is authority, but that it is authority without ri,-,,h@ will without reason, power without justice, which can never be 280 said of God; for his riffht to universal dominion is unquestion. able, and in him will and reason, power and justice are never di,;joined, are identical, are one and the same, and are indistin. guisbable save in our manner of CODCeiN'illg them. His sovereignty is i-iobtful, his will is intrinsically, eternally, and immutably just will, his power just power. - Absolute subjection to him is absolute subjection to eternal, iinmiitable, and absolute justice. Hence, subjection to hii-n alone is, on the one hand, subjection to absolute justice, and, on the other, freedom to be and to do ill that absolute justice permits. Here is just authority as oi,eat as can be conceived, and true liberty as large as is possible this side of license ; and between the two there is and can be in the nature of tliin(ys no clasliin(r, no conflict, no antagonism. How mean and shallow is infidel philosophy
Taking this view along with us, a view which is alike that of Christianity and of sound philosophy, we cannot fail to perceive that the objection arced ioainst the Church is exceediiloly ill- n zn chosen. The Church, if wl)at she professes to be,-and we have the ri(ybt b(@re to reason on the supposition that she is,represents the Divine sovereignty, and is commissioned by God to teacli and to govern in his name. Her tuthority, then, is his authority, and it is lie that teaches and governs in her and throu n _Zh.ber; so far, therefrom bC@iDr hostile to liberty in one department or another, she must be its support and safeguard in every department. The ground and condition of liberty is the presence of the Divine sovereignty, for in its presence there is no other sovereignty, no other authority, consequently DO slavery. The objection, that the Church is a spiritual despotism, is grounded on the supposition that all authority is despotism and all liberty license,-tliat is, that libertv and authority are antagonist forces,-wliieh would require us to deny both, for neither despotism nor license is defensible. Authority and liberty are only the two phases of one and the same principle; suppose the ibsciiee of authority, you suppose the presence of l@use or de,-,potism, which, 9(rain, are only the two ph@ of 281 one and the same thing. 'To remove license or despotism, you must suppose the presence of legitimate authority. The Church being the representative of the Divine so@@erci(ynty on the earth, introduces legi,,'@illate authority, ind by bey presence necessarily displaces both despotism and license, that is, establishes both order and liberty.The difficulty which Protestants and unbelievers suppose must exist in conforming reason, which is not @,tlwtys obedient to will, to the commands of authority, arises from their overlookiD(Y the nature of authority. The authority is not only an order to believe, but it is authority for believing. The authority of reason in the natural order is derived from God, Dot from man ; and the obligation to believe the axioms of mathematics or the definitiods of geometry arises solely from the fact, that reason, which declares them, does, thus -far, speak by Divine authority. If it did not, reason would be no reason for believing or asserting them. The same Divine authority in a higher order, speakiiig tbroti(,Yli the Church, cannot be less authoritative, or a less authority for believing what the Church teaclies. lience the command of the Church is at once authority for the will and for the reason, an injunction to believe and a reason for believidoThe absolute submission of reason to her commands is not, as some fancy, the abnegation of reason. Reason does not, in submitting, fold her bands, shut her eyes, and take a doze, like a fat alderman after dinner, but keeps wide awake, and exercises her highest powers, her most sacred rights, according to her own nature. What more reasonable reason for believing than the command of God?-since, in the order of truth, his sover, eio-ntyisidenticallybisveracity. TosiipposeaCatholicnaindcan have any difficulty in bringing reason to assent to the teachings of the Church, believed to be God's Church, is as absurd as to suppose tl)at an American who has never been abroad can have any difficulty in believing that there is such a city as Paris, or that Louis Ntpoleon Bonaparte has recently been elected President of the French Republic; or as t,3 suppose that the logician fidds a difficulty in bringing his reason to assent to the 282 proposition that the same is the same, that the same tliinonot both be ind not be at the same time, or that two and two make four.
It is not the Church that establishes spiritual despotism ; it is she who saves us from it. Spiritual despotism is that which subjects us, in spiritual matters, to a human authority, whether our own or that of others,-for our own is as human as another's ; and the only redemption from it is in having in them a divine authority. Protestants themselves acknowledge this, when they call out for the pure word of God. The Church teaches by Divine authority ; in submitting to her, we submit @ God, and are freed from all human authority. She teaches infallibly ; therefore, in believing what she teaches, we believe the truth, which fi-ees us from falsehood and error, to which all men ivithout an infallible guide are subject, and subjection to wl)icli is the elemental principle of all spiritual despotism., IE[er authority admitted excludes all other authority, and therefore frees us li-om beresiarchs and sects, the very embodiment of spiritual despotism in its most odious forms. Sectarianism is spiritu,,il despotism itself; and to know bow far spiritual despotism and spiritual slavery may go, you have only to study the history of tl)e various sects and false religions which now exist, or have heretofore existed.
In the temporal order, a(rain, the authority claimed and exercised by the Church is nothiro, but the assertion over the state of the Divine sovereignty, which she represents, or the subjection of the prince to the Law of God, in his character of prince as well as in his character of man. That the prince or civil power is subject to the law of God, no man who admits Christianity, at all dares question; and, if the Church be the Divinely commissioned teacher and guardian of that law, as she certainly is, r,he same subjection to her must be conceded. But this, instead of being opposed to civil liberty, is its only possible condition. Civil libertv, like all liberty, is in being held to no obedience but u'bgdi,-nee to God; and obedience to the state can be compatible with liberty only on the condition that God commands it, or on 283 the condition that he governs in the state, which he does not and cannot do, unless the state holds from his law and is ' subject to it. To deny, then, the supremacy of the Church in temporals is only to release, the temporal order from its selection to the Divine sovereignty, which, so far as regards the state, is to deny its authority, or its right to govern, and, so far as regards the subject, is to assert pure, unmitigated civil despotism. All authority divested of the Divine sanction is despotic, because it is authority without riobt, will unregulated by reason, power di-joined from justice. Withdraw the supremacy of the Church from the temporal order, and you deprive the state of that sanction, by assertino- that it does not hold from God and is not amenable to his law; you give the state simply a human basis, and have in it only a human authority, which has no right to govern, which I am not bound to obey, and which it is intolerable tyranny to compel i-ne to obev. "Let every sou7i," says the blessed Apostle Paul, the Doctor of the Gentiles, " be subject to the higher powers-, for there is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resistetb power resisteth the ordinance of God...... Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but for conscience' sake." (P,om. xiii. 1-5.) Here the obligation of obedience is grounded on the fact that the civil power is the ordinance of God, that is, as we say, holds from God. But, obviously, this, while it subjects the subject to the state, equally subjects the state to the Divine sovereignty. 'rake away the subjection of the state to God, and you take away the reason of the subjection of the subject to the state; and we need not tell you that to subject us to an authority which we are not bound to obey is tyranny. See, then, what you get by denying the supremacy of the Church in temporals !
The Church and the state, as administrations, are distinct bodies; but they are not, as some modern politicians would persuade us, two coordinate and mutually independent authorti(,s. The state holds under the law of nature, and has authority only within the limits of that Itw. As long as it confines 284 tself witb:r@ that law, and ftitbftillv executes its provisions, it acts freelv, without ecclesiast ' 'eal restraint or itit(,ritreiiee. But the Church holds from God under the supernatural or i@evealc--d law, which includes, as integral in itc;elf, the law of nature, and is therefore the teacher and (Yuai-dian of the natural as well ,is of the revealed law. She is, under God, the supreme itid(Ye of both laws, which for her are but one law ; and hence she takes cognizance, in her tribunals, of the breaches of the natural law as well as of the revealed,and lia,,; the rioht to take cognizance of its breaches by nations as weii as of its breaches by individu@is, by the prince as well as by the subject, for it is the supreme law for both. The state is, therefore, only an inferio@- court, bound to receive the law from the supreme court. and 'liable to have its decisions reversed on appeal.
This must be asserted, if we assert the supremacy of the Christian law, and hold the 'Church to be its teacher and judge; for no man will deny that Christianity includes the natural as well as the supernatural law. Who, with any just conceptions, or any conceptions at all, of the Christian religion, will pretend that one can fulfil the Christian law and yet violate the natural law?-that one is a good Christian, if he keeps the precepts of the Church, though he break every precept of the Decalogue? -or that Christianity remits the catechumen to the state to learn the law of nature, or what we term natural morality? Grace presupposes nature. The supernatural ordinances of God's law presupposes the natural, and the Church, which is the teacher and ouardian of faith and morals, can no more be so without plenary authority with regard to the latter than the former. Who, again, dares pretend that the moral law is not as obligatory on emperors, kings, princes, commonwealths, " upon private individuals?-upon politicians, as upon priests or simple believers? Unless, then, you exempt the state from ill obligation even to the law Of nature, you must niale it amenable to the moral law as expounded by the Church, divinely commissioned to teach and declai@e :1 .
Deny this, and t-,sei-t the independence of the political order, 285 jitid declare the state in its own riobt, without acco intability ta the Christian law, of which it is not the teacher or guardian, supi-eine, in teiiiporals, tnd you gain, instead of civil liberty, simpl@,, in principle at least, civil despotism. If you deny that the Cliut-cla is the teacher and guardian of the law of God, you must either claim the authority you denv liei- for the state, or 3-o-a fruit deny it altogether. If you claim it for the state, yo@i, on your own principles, make the state a spiritual despotism. aid on ours also ; for the stat,-, obviously has Dot received that autlioi-ity, is incompetent in spirituals, is no teacher of morals, or director of consciences. If you deny it altogether, you make the state independent of the moral order, independent of the Divine sovereignty, the only real sovereignty, and establish pure, unmitigated civil despotism.
There is no escaping this conclusion ; and lience we see the folly and madness of those who assert in the name of liberty the independence of the political order, and exclaim, in a tone of mock heroism, " Neither priest nor bishop sliall interfere with my political opinions as lono- as I am able to resist him!" Bi-avo! my young Liberal; but did you know what you are doin(r you would see that you are la ino- the foundation, not of liberty, y Z, but of despotism. Hence, too, we see that our author must be mistaken, when be asserts that the Protestant Reformation, in its essential principle, was " a revolt of free spirits a(rainst profligate despotism." It was no such tliino,. Its objections to the Church, reduced to their substance, were simple, the Church is a spiritual despotism because she claims supremacy over reason, conscience, and the state ; and it objected to her, Dot because it was she who claimed that supremacy, but because it rejected the supremacy itself, let it be claimed bv whom it might. This our author himself concedes, contends, and proves. Its argument was, the Church of God cannot claim supremacy over reason, conscience, and the state. But the, Church does claim this L;upremacy, therefore she cannot be the, Church of God. The prini3iple of the argument is, that God could not delegate the authority to any Church. But if he could not,. it must havg 286 been because he himself did not possess it. Therefore the e@sential principle of the Reformation, in the last analysis, was the denial, on the one hand, of the sovereignty of God over reason, conscience, and the state, and on the other, the assertion of the absolute independence of man and the temporal order, which is either pure license or pure despotism, according to the light in which you choose to consider it. The real character of the Reformation was the substitution of human sovereignty for the Divine; and hence, in it-, developments, wherever it is free to follow its own law, we see it result either in pure humanism or pure pantheism, as it does or does not combine with religious sentiment. And either is the denial of both authority and liberty; for all authority is in the Divine sovereignty, and all liberty in being bound to it alone, that is, in freedom from all human goverdmeut resting merely on a human basis, whether ourselves, the one, the few, or the many, as every one would see, if it were understood that authority over myself, emanating from myself, is a.-, human, and therefore as illeoitimate, as much of the essence of despotism, as authority over me emanating from other men. Is it not said in all languages that a man may be the slave of himself, of his own passions, his own ignorance, or his own prejudices -? Under Protestantism we miy have civil and spiritual despotism, or civil and spiritual License, the only two things that man can foui)d, without a divine commission and subjection to the divine law; but authority and libei-tv are possible and can be practically secured onlv under the divine order represented by the Church, or an institution precisely sim ilar to what she prof@es to be, the divinely commissioned teacher and guardian of both the natural and the revealed law.
That this conclusion will be acceptable to our politicians, young or old, we are not quite so simple as to suppose; but we are not aware that it is necessary to consult their pleasure. They have in these, as they had in other times, the phvsieal power to do with us as seems to them good. They can @ecry us, they can pull out our tongue, cut off our right hand, and at need burn our body, or cast it to the wild beasts; but this will 287 not alter the nature Of things, mtke wrong right, or right wrong. Civil and spiritual despotism is not the less despotism becau% practised by them, and in the name of humanity tiid the people. We desire to have all due respect for them ; but we must confess that we hive Dot yet seen their title-deeds, the papers which prove them to have a chartered rio-lit from Almighty God to be the -ole governors of mankind. We have no iuthority for pronouncing them infallible or impeccable; we have seen no reason for supposing their ascendancy, freed from the restraints of the Divine law, is either bonoi@able to God or serviceable to man; we have not found them always exempt from the common infirmities of our nature; and we think we have seen, at least heard of, politicians who were ambitious, selfish, intriguing, ZD greedy of power, pface, emolument even. In a word, we have no reason to believe that they monopolize all the wisdom, the virtue, the generosity and disinterestedness of the community, or that they never need looking after, and therefore never need a power above them, under the immediate and supernatural protection of Alnii(,,bty God, to look after them, and to compel them to keep within their own province, to respect religion, and to retain from idflicting irreparable injuries upon society. Even should they, then, clamor against us, or do worse, it would not greatly move us, and would tend to confirm us in the truth of our doctrine, rather than lead us to distrust its soundness or Decessity.
We need hardly say that we advocate no amalgamation of the civil and ecclesiastical administrations. They are in tbe,r nature, as we have said, distinct, and the supremacy of the Church which we assert is by no means the supremacy of the clergy as politicians. We have no more respect for clergymen turned politicians than we have for any other class of politicians of equal,worth, perhaps not quite so much; for we cannot forget that they, in becoming politicians, descend from their sacerdotal rank, as a jud-e does in descending f.-oi-n the benel to play the part of an advocate. We have bad political priests ever since there was a Christian state, and many of them have made wA 288 work of both politic-- and religion. We have nothing to Sly Of them, but that they were politicians, and their censurable acts Ni,erenotperformediDtlicirch,tracterofpriests. Theprinciplewe assert does not exact that the Church should turn politicians and thus from the Church become the state, or that the clergy should @-irn politicians; it exacts that both she and they should Dot. The clergy as politicians fall into the category of all politicians, and their supremacy a.-, politicians would still be the supremacy of the state, not of the Church. The state is supreme, if politici,,tns as such be supreme, let them be selected from what class ,of the community they may. The principle exacts, indeed, the supremacy of the clergy, but solely as the Church, in their .sacerdotal and pastoral character as teachers, guardians, and judges of the law of God, natural and revealed, supreme for in,dividuals and nations, for prince and subject, king and commonwealth, noble and plebeian, and poor, great and small, wise and simple ; not as politicians, in which character they have and ,can have no preeminence over politicians selected from the laity, and i-nust stand on the same level with them. We do not advo,c,ite-far from it-tbe notion that the Church must administer the civil government; what we advocate is her supremacy as the teacher and guardian of the law of God,-as the supreme court, which must be recognized and submitted to as such by the state, ,and whose decisions cannot be disregarded, whose prerogatives cannot be abridoed or usurped by any power oil earth, without rebellion against the Divine i-najesty, and robbing man of his ,@rio,btQ,. As Christians, we must insist on this supremacy ; a,-, Catholics, it is not only our dutv, but our glorious privilege, to assert it, and to understand aiix practise our religion as God himself, through his own chosen organ, promulgates and ex- pounds it.
We know how hateful this doctrine is to politicians, to the world, and to the devil, who seek alwavs to find a rival in the state to the kinodom of God. We know that the representatives -of the state in nearly all ages of Christendom, and in nearly all mati@, have resisted it, and been encouraged, sustained, in 0 289 their rc@sistance, by ambiious priests and courtly pre@ates. We know that it is now resisted by-every civil government-on earth, that the kings of the earth stand up, the princes conspire togetlier, the nations rage, and the people imigine vain things, against the Lord and against his Christ, saying, Let us break their bonds asunder, let us cast away their yoke from us ; but we cannot help that. We know the truth, and dare assert it ; we know the rights of God, and dare not betray them. We cannot be false, because others are,-sbrink from proclaiming the supremacy of the moril order, because now more than ever it is necessary to proclaim it. We do not understand the hereism that goes always with the popular party, or the loyalty that deserts to the enemy the moment that his forces appear to be the most numerous. We know the moral order is supreme, and shall we fear to say it, lest siniiers tremble, the wicked gnasli their teetb, and the mtiltitud(, threaten? We know our Church is God's Church; that she is the judge of God's law, and has tli(,, right to denounce, w from the jtidgment-seat of the Aliniglity, whoever violates it, and to place king or peasant under her anathema, if he refuses to obey it. She has the right, the divine right, to denounce moral wrong, spiritual wrong, political wrono- kvranny and oppression, wheresoever or by whomsoever thev are practised, and to vindicate the rights of God, and, in so doing, the rights of man, let who will dare threaten or invade them. We are subject to God, but to him only; and are we afraid to assert the fact? Are we not free before all men?
The Church is the Divinely appointed guardian of truth, virtue, liberty, because she is the representative of the Divine sovereignty on earth. Kings and potentates, commonwealths and mobs, may rise up, as they have often risen up, against bei, ; politicians may murmiir or denounce, the timid may quake, the fainthearted miy fail, the cowardly shrink away, and the disloyal join her persecutors ; but that can neither justify them, nor unmake her rights, nor depose her from her sovereignty under God,-caunot make it not true that she represents the moral order, and that the moral order is supreme. That su 13 290 premacy is a fact in God's universe, an eternal and primal truth, and let no man dare denv it, who would not be branded on his forehead traitor to God, and therefore to man ; and let him who fears to assert it in the hour of thickest danger be branded poltroon. It is the glory of the Church that she has always asserted it. She asserted it in that noble answer of her inspired Al)ostles to the magistrates,-" We must obey God rather than men ;" she asserted it in her glorious army of martyrs, who chose rather to die at the stake, in the amphitheatre, under the most cruel and lingering tortures, than to offer incense to Jupiter or to the statue of C.Tsar ; she asserted it by the mouth of holy Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, when he foi-bade the emperor Theodosius the Great to enter the Church till he had done public penance for his tyrannical treatment of his subjects, and ]rove him from the sanctuary, and bade him take his place with @be laity, where be belonged ; she asserted it in the person of her sovereign Pontiff, St. Gregory the Seventh, when he made the tyrant and brutal Henry the Fourth of Germany wait for three davs shivering with cold and bunger at his door, before lie would grant him absolution, and when he finally smote him with the sword of Peter and Paul for his violation of his oatlis, his wars against religion, and his oppression of his subjects; and she asserted it, again, in the person of her glorious Pontiff, Gregory the Sixteenth, who, standing with one foot in the grave, confronted the tyrant of the North, and made the Autocrat of all the Russias tremble and weep as a child. Never for one moment has she ceased to assert it in face of crowned and uncrowned beads,-Jew, Pagan, Arian, Barbarian, Saracen, Protestant, Infidel, Monarchist, Aristocrat, Democrat; and gloriously is she asserting it now in her noble confessor, the Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva, and in her exiled Pontiff, Pius the Ninth.
You talk of religious liberty. Know you what the word means? Know ye that religious liberty is all and entire in the supremacy of the moral order? The Church is a spiritual despotisin, is she? Bold blasphemer, miserable apologist for tyrants and tyranny, go trace her track through eighteen hundred 291 V.@,4rs, and behold it marked with the blood of her free and no. ble-hearted children, whom God loves and honors, shed in defeiice of religious liberty. From the first moment of her existence has she foukybt, ay, fou(rht as no other power can fl(rht, for liberty of reli,)-ioii. Every land has been reddened with the blood and whitened with the bones of her martyrs, in that sacred cause; and now, rash upstart, you date in the face of day proclaim her the friend of despotism! Alas! my brother, may God forgive you, for you know not -what you do.
But we have said enough to show the unchristian as well as the unl)bilosophical character of our author's thought, which we are willing to believe he does not fully comprehend, and from the lo(rical consequences of wl)i(,,h, were lie to see them, we are anxious to believe he is prepared to recoil with horror. His thought is unpliilosophical, because it conceives authority and liberty as aiitao-onists ; it is unchristian, because it reduces Christianitv to mere Ilationalisni, and revives Alexandrian Gentilism; because it denies the Divine sovereignty, and the supremacy in all thin of the spiritual or moral order; because it denies moral accountability, and involves uni-niti,,Tated despotism or unbounded license as the inevitable doom of the human race. As a philosopher, eve bold his work in contempt; as an historian, we deny its authenticity; as a Christian, we abhor it; as a friend of liberty, civil and religious, we denounce its principles, as fit only for despots or libertines.
There are matters of detail in the work to which we seriously object, but, as we have shown the unsoundness of the book in its principles, it is not worth while to waste time or argument in exposing them. The author has expanded no inconsiderable thought and labor in constructing his work, but, like all the works which rank under the bead of philosophy of history, it is shallow, vague, confused, worthless. The wri@i-s of philosophy of history may have great natural talents, thev may have varied and extensive learnitig, but they start wrong, @liey attempt what is impossible, and Dever go to the bottom of things or rise to ,their first principles. They never reach the ultimate ; they never 292 attain to science; and only amuse or bewilder us with vague generalities, crude speculations, or unmeaning verbiage. There is an order Vi thouoht of which they have no conception, infinitely more profound than theirs, which, when once attained to, in@tk-es all their views appear heterogeneous, confused, weak, and childish.
We have no disposition to treat our young Kentuckian rudely, or to discourage him by an unkind reception. We know him only through his book. His book is bad, but we every day receive works which are far worse. We do not believe that he means to be a Paoan; we do not believe that he even means to be a Rationalist; we are sure that he does not mean to deny the moral order; and this is much for him personally, but it is nothing for his book. In judging the man, we look to his intention; in judgino, the author, we look only to the principles lie inculcates. If these are unsound or dangerous, we have.no inercy for the author, tbouoh we may abound in charity for the man. Mr. Nourse does not understand his own principles; be has not seen them in all their relations, and does not suspect their logical consequences. He has undertaken, without other guide than a few books which, themselves unsa.fe guides, he has read, but not digested, to do.. after the study of a few months, wl)at no mortal man could accomplish with all the libraries in the world, were he to live longer than the world has stood. How could he expect to succeed? We hold him accountable for his rashness in undertaking such a task, not for having f@e@j in its accomplishment.
Adapted from
Essays and Reviews p. 262
Brownson's Quarterly Review (April, 1849)
Works, Vol. X, p. 111
Revised January 8, 2005.