MILLENNIAL HARBINGER,

&c.

No. VII.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1835.

VOL. I.

THE FATHERS, THE MODERNS, THE POPULAR PREACHERS, AND THE HERETICS. [From the Christian Baptist, Vol. VI.]

"Our Fathers, where are they? and the Prophets, do they live for ever?"

At one time we speak of our remote ancestors as if they had been mere children in understanding in comparison of ourselves and our contemporaries; at another, we represent their views and their authority as paramount to all our compeers. If their views were congenial with our own, then they were the wisest and the best of men; but if we differ far from them, then, as duteous sons, we only wish they had been more wise and less superstitious. Thus their authority rises or sinks in our estimation as they happen to coincide with our sentiments, or differ from us in their views. In all our comparisons we are wont to make ourselves the standard of perfection. If we at all admit that we are imperfect, we are sure to make our "failings lean to virtue's side;" and, when compared with the faults we see in others, our frailties are to be attributed to circumstances beyond our control, and so completely eclipsed by the splendour of our virtues, as rather to represent the dark spots in the sun, or the shade in the picture, as necessary to the brilliancy of the whole.

But if we were to use that reason of which we boast, a little more, and submit less to the suggestions of self-love and self-admiration, we should not only think more humbly of ourselves, but we should do more justice to the merits of others. In that case neither the names nor authority

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of our ancestors would be pleaded as a justification of our sentiments or practices, nor would their weaknesses be urged in extenuation of our own. They were men constitutionally like ourselves, and only circumstantially different. Whether they were wiser or better than ourselves or our coevals depends not upon any constitutional superiority, but rather upon the superiority of their or our circumstances. Their opportunities may have been better or worse than ours, and all the difference of a moral or intellectual nature between them and us must be resolved into their or our superior attention and devotion to truth and goodness.

Many Doctors of the Church of Rome would have made first-rate Puritans, and many morose Dissenters would have made hierarchical tyrants, in other times and other countries. Many, in this age, whose illiberality and religious wrath are fully vented in bold invectives and ungenerous detractions, would, had they lived a few centuries ago, have found no gratification to their religious vengeance but in the racks and tortures of inquisitorial cruelty.

They who are now sated with burning men's writings would then have consumed their persons. Those, too, who, in this century, are pleased to prove their faith and practice by an appeal to the Fathers, would, in the days of Luther, have maintained the infallibility of the Pope and the sovereign arbitrements of clerical councils. And they

who would now bind men's conciences to a covenant and creed framed by the Fathers of modern traditions, would have argued, in the days of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, that the Bible was not to be read by the ignorant laity.

While, in this age of invention, the winds and the waves, the rivers and the deserts, the mountains and the vallies, are made to yield to scientific and mechanical skill,-while the human mind is bursting through the shackles and restraints of a false philosophy, and developing the marvellous extent of its powers, it is not to be supposed strange and unaccountable that the moral and religious systems of antiquity should be submitted to the scrutiny of enlightened intellects, and that men of reflection and independence should dare to explore the creed and the rubrics of ages of less light

and more superstition. Truth has nothing to fear from investigation. It dreads not the light of science, nor shuns the scrutiny of the most prying inquiry. The one, conscious of spotless innocence and uncontaminated purity, challenges the fullest, the ablest, and the boldest examination. On the other hand, Error, as if aware of its flimsy pretensions and of the thin veil which conceals its deformity, flees from the torch of reason, and dares not approach the tribunal of impartial inquiry. She hides herself in the fastnesses of remote antiquity, and garrisons herself in the fortifications erected by those she honours with the title of "the Fathers." When she dares to visit the temples of human resort, she attires herself in the attractions of popular applause, and piques herself upon the number, influence, and respectability of her admirers. But, with all her blandishments, she is an impudent impostor, and is doomed to destruction with all her worshippers. But Truth, immortal Truth! the first-born of Heaven! by the indisputable rights of primogeniture, shall inherit all things, and leave her antagonist, Error, to languish for ever in the everlasting shame and contempt of perfect and universal exposure.

To Truth, eternal and immortal, the wise and good will pay all homage and respect. Upon no altar will they offer her as a victim! but at her shrine will sacrifice everything. What, then, is Truth? Momentous question! She is Reality herself. 'Tis not merely the exact correspondence of words with ideas. This is but verbal Truth. 'Tis not the mere agreement of the terms of any proposition with logical arrangement. This is logical Truth. But it is the correspondence, the exact agreement of our ideas with things as they are. So that the representations of Truth are the exact pictures of all the realities about which we are conversant, or in which we are interested. She leads to happiness all who obey her; but those that disdain her precepts destroy themselves for ever.

But "the Fathers" are often urged as decisive evidence, superseding the necessity of farther inquiry. All sects have their Fathers, to whom they are wont to appeal. There are Fathers Irenæus, Origen, Ambrose, Austin, Tertullian, Athanasius, of high repute amongst the more ancient sects. There are Fathers Calvin, Luther, Zuinglius, &c. among the

moderns. There are Fathers Wesley, Fletcher, Asbury, and Coke, amongst the more recent. There are, also, Fathers Gill, Fuller, and Booth, amongst those who say they have no father on earth. Yea, even amongst these are already enrolled some whose graves are not green, and whose errors are not yet forgotten. Thus, one of our Stars of the first magnitude, if we are to enumerate the square inches of its surface, has recently quoted, in support of the popular schemes of ostentatious benevolence, Fathers Baldwin, Furman, and other Doctors, concerning whose standing in the unseen world we have as yet heard nothing. How long it may be before Drs. Holcomb, Rogers, and Allison are enrolled amongst the Fathers, we cannot guess; but, from the spirit of some of our father-making writers, already exhibited, it can be but a few days. But, methinks, those reputed wise and pious, who are yet with us, should here be admonished to take good heed to what schemes they lend their names and the weight of their influence. In this way they may see that good or evil of wide and long extent must result to posterity from the application of their reputation, however well or ill earned it may be, to those schemes which almost every month gives birth to. The good or ill that men do generally long survives them. The defects and weaknesses of great men are more frequently appealed to, in justification of errors and mistakes, than their more wise and excellent actions. And such is the relaxing influence of the bad examples of men reputed great and good, that their admirers are much more wont to transcend their defects than their virtues. They are content with falling a little short of their excellencies; and, without much compunction, can go a little beyond their infirmities. One good example is worth a thousand lectures, but a bad one defeats the objects of many admonitions.

"Our Fathers, where are they?" Some of those looked up to as Fathers in Israel were doubtless ignorant and evil men. And who in remote ages and countries can tell which of those men were real saints, and now in the presence of God? And, before their names can sanction anything, it ought to be ascertained whether God has approved of their views and behaviour, and whether they have been rewarded with a place at His right hand: for would it not appear

worse than ridiculous for us to quote as authority, for any religious tenet or practice, men whose names are not found enrolled in the records of Heaven, but are now the associates of those who are reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day? The mere suspicion that such may be the unhappy fate of some canonized saints, forbids any appeal to the Fathers as decisive of any question affecting the faith or practice of Christians.

A few men in the United States, not more perhaps than half a dozen Doctors of Divinity, have done more within forty years to divest the Baptists of their ancient simplicity and love for the Bible, than all the Doctors of modern Divinity among them will restore in one century. Scarcely a relic of the ancient simplicity of the Waldenses, Albigenses, and those persecuted Christians, from whom the Baptists in these United States are proud to reckon their descent, or to identify with themselves as fellow-professors of the same gospel and order of worship, now remains. These modern good, and wise, and leading men, being intoxicated with titles and worldly respectability, have co-operated to become imitators of their more respectable neighbours, the Presbyterians and Episcopalians. They have formed a young St. Giles for every old St. Giles amongst the Pædobaptists, and have actually got the whole machinery of the popular establishments in full employment to build up great meeting-houses, parsonages, and colleges; to have a learned priesthood, tithes, and offerings, conventions, missionaries, tracts, and education societies, with all the "benevolent schemes" of the day. And those who will not say Amen to the whole paraphernalia are heretics, unregenerated sinners, like myself. Their more fortunate and respectable neighbours are pleased to see them follow in the rear, for they want to see them of the same spirit with themselves, knowing full well that they can always keep them in the rear! Yes, they have the money and the learning on their side, and this train of things going on for two centuries. When they wish to make a new levy for a new theological school, they can enforce their claims with a new argument. Yes, they say, "See, brethren, all Christendom is awaking from its slumbers to the importance of marshalling an army of effective clergymen. Even the Baptists are now con