CONTROVERSIAL THEOLOGY..
IN the battle of the Church Mr. Hansel and Mr. Maurice have come forward each in vindication of his own views of Revealed Religion, and in opposition to those of his antagonists. The capital axiom of the inconceivableness of the Infinite, asserted by the Hampton lecturer, was felt by Mn, Maurice to be fatal to the first principle of the theology of which he is the champion, no less than to that of the German philosophy of the Absolute, against which it was mainly directed. Mr. Maurice maintains a direct communion of the Spirit of man with the Spirit of God ; he be- lieves that we can "know God " ; that we can realize the mys- teries of Deity, and attain to an actual intellection of transcenden- tal existence. Mr. Manse! on the contrary preaches the incapacity
• An Examination of the Reverend F. D. Maurice's Strictures on the Bampton Lectures of 1858. By the Lecturer. Published by John Murray.
of the human mind ; he asserts that the Infinite as such is not a direct object of our knowledge, all our thought being subject to limitations ; and that there is no faculty by which, in its specula- tive exercise, we can decide independently:of external Revelation, what is the true nature of God, and what is the mode of his mani- festation to the world. Mr. Maurice affirms that there is an In- tuition of the Infinite ; Mr. Mansel affirms that there is no Intuition of the Infinite. Mr. Maurice aims to humanize and purify Christian dogmas, by making the Spirit of man a final arbiter of the true and the false ; Mr. Manse! tries to put human "reason" out of court by showing that it is the parent of an unavoidable mental illusion ; soluble if we regard it as an "im- potence of the Understanding," but if we look on it as a "special faculty," then cognizable only as a faculty of lies created for the express purpose of deluding those who trust to it. The Professor rejects, in virtue of this intuitional power of discrimination, some elements in the popular theology which, itis said, militate against the moral sense of the ago : such as the "Anger" of God ; the punishment of the innocent for the redemption of the guilty ; the eternal torture of the greater portion of mankind ; "the confusion of our God and Father with Moloch and Siva." The Lecturer, convinced of the incapacity of human reason, takes the "popular theology" under his protection, and is prepared to ad- vocate, in a greater or less degree, the prevailing views on endless punishment, satisfaction, and substitution, which his opponent would scornfully attribute to the "religious dowager, with the newspaper, from which she derives her faith and her charity, on the ottoman, beside her."
We have briefly sketched the point at issue between Mr. Mau- rice and Mr. Mengel. Of the moral tone of the two clerical com- batants we shall say little. Mr. Maurice evidently writes with vehemenoy, fiery earnestness, and an Elijah-like power of sar- casm we are far from apologizing for his ` invective " but we are inclined to think that his antagonist sometimes mistakes the Pro- fessor's ridicule of what he sincerely believes to be "line lady" re- ligion, for personal satire. Mr. Mansel, however, gives Mr. Maurice as good as he gets ; and the lay world is edified by a gladiatorial exhibition, in which the rival champions of two op- posing methods assail each other, or each other's speculations, ith a truly theological pugnacity. The secular intelligence probably sides with Mansel in his rejection of the philosophy of the Infinite, and with Maurice in his estimate of the newspaper and ottoman theology ; the religious dowager reads and lolls on, satisfied with her faith and charity made easy ; and infirm belief or religious unbelief, yearning to become belief, saddens as it sees two "masters in Israel," each declaring the other's truth falsehood, and each stigmatizing the other's method as unsound.
However much they differ in philosophical method or their principles of exegesis both these controversialists agree in their acceptance of the (weeds of the Church. Very different is the case with Mr. Lancelot Shadwell, the translator of The Gospel according to Matthew,f as regards at least one of the three symbols of the Church—the Athanasian creed, which he daringly asserts ought to be thrown into the fire. The Nicene creed also, he says, is not free from error ; and he undertakes "to expose the folly and wickedness of Pearson's Exposition of the (Apostles') creed." Mr. Shadwell is a devout believer in the verbal in- spiration of Scripture. He complains that the Established Ver- sion is a very bad translation indeed, and asserts that the " Translators knew nothing of Greek, and were under Royal Mandate to translate wrong." Bad, however, as the authorized version is there is no reason he thinks to suppose that a departure from it will be a change for the better. In proof of this Mr. Shadwell points to a work now in progress which professes to be a revision of the Established Version, the published portion of which he characterizes as the feeble performance of five clergy- men. One of these five clergymen, the Dean of Canterbury, is known as the editor of a Greek Testament with notes ; a work which enjoys a considerable reputation. Mr. Shadwell, however, pronounces him utterly incompetent for the task which he has taken on himself, and says that "of Greek criticism Alford ab- solutely knows nothing." In the pamphlet which accompanies his own translation of St. Matthew's Gospel, he attacks the Dean. of Canterbury, in a harebrained boisterous fashion and, as we think, succeeds in showing that his scholarship is sometimes faulty. Mr. Shadwell is an Ishmaelite in controversy. Following the Irishman's advice to his friend in a row, "wherever he sees a head he hits out." Not only Alford and Pearson' but the Bishop of Exeter and his Grace of Canterbury, the See of Rome and the Church of England, alike stimulate his pugilistic tendencies. He has especial abhorrence of Popery, but hefi.nds it in the Anglican Church as well as in that of Rome. If the visible miracles are rejected the invisible are retained ; as the consecration of the elements in the Communion Service ; the Regeneration of Infants in the Bap- tismal Service ; the Absolution of Sins in the Order for the Visi- tation of the Sick ; the Gift of the Holy Ghost in the Ordination Services. Mr. Shadwell strongly reprobates the practice of trans- lating the name Jehovah by its usual equivalent, "The Lord "; al- ledging that he himself is called the Lord upon his own manor. He not only employs the "peculiar name " in translation but even in his own critical comments, as when he tells us that " Alford's work is a sample of the way in which Jehovah is served by the Dignitaries
+ The Gospel aceording to Matthew, faithfully rendered into English from a revised Greek text, with Notes. By Lancelot Shadwell, Esq., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Published by Arthur Hall and Co. Introduction to a new translation of the Greek Testament, with Notes. . By Lancelot Shadwell, Esq., late Fellow of St. Julia's College, Cambridge. Published by Arthur Hall and Co.
of the Church of England." He refuses also to render the cor- responding Greek word for " Church " by that term, and invari- ably translates it" Congregation." His emendations are sometimes excellent, and his version is genuine and intelligible English. It is made from a revised Greek Text, constructed by collating the °Emmen texts of Stephens and of Mill with the two editions of Tischendorf, Lips. 1849-1859, the reprint of the Vatican in Lon- don 1859, and Wordsworth's uncompleted edition. His notes are learned and copious. His application of the Parables ingenious, but perfectly illusory. He sees the Fall of the Romish Church and the Progress of the Reformation in the Parable of the Sower ; and in Revelations x. 2, he finds in the "little book open" the invention of printing "distinctly alluded to." With Alford and Cumming he evades or answers one startling objection to the reality of prophecy by explaining the word generation, in reference to the Messianic advent, of the Jewish nation or race, which has not yet passed. away. His explanation of difficulties of this kind is usually contemptible. With the author of the Great Tribulation Mr. Shadwell supposes that the Seventh Apocalyptic Vial has already begun to flow, and that the final explosion of the Apoca- lyptic Babylon is near. Mr. Sha.dwell seems to us to read Greek very well. His rollicking madcap commentary is highly amusing. Thus he says : "After the birth of Jesus Mary is never called virgin ; and for this simple reason, that she was no more a virgin than anybody else ; for every woman was once a virgin." Mr. Shad- well is evidently a very "muscular Christian" indeed !
Equally embittered against the Church of Rome, Mr. Brewer has published a work on "Jesuitism," being a review of the Comte de Montalembert's treatise, L'Avenir Politigue de l'Angleterre. He challenges the French critic on his own ground, who, he says, "asserts that there is nothing in the annals of any modern people which equals the political degradation of England under the des- potism of Henry vm., and the nation that bore the baseness of parties during Charles IL's reign cannot be endued with any superior virtues." Mr. Brewer, on his part, avers that the Papal hierarchy has always tampered with the civil government of na- tions, so as to make the people's wealth an easy prey to the ava- ricious demands of the Romish Church ; that the Priesthood were libidinous, cruel, hypocritical, and mercenary wretches, perpe- tuating ignorance wherever it became dominant; that Popery contains the rudiments of Heathenism and Judaical tradition ; that it has ever been a system of persecution ; and that the "es- sentials of Roman Catholicism are idolatry and ignorance des- potism and cruelty'," &c. This indictment against the Catholic system of the Middle Ages is really an indictment against hu- manity itself. It is a rabid and inveracious statement, none the more true because there is truth in it. An institution is to be judged by the good that it has effected, as well as the evil that it has evolved ; by its noble efforts in the cause of mankind, when it led the civilization of the world, as well as its unavoidable de- fects during the season of its power, or its repressive reaction, When placed in antagonism to the new order which was to supersede its authority ; or the infirmities and frenzies which mark it in a later stage when it "lies dying and all its faults come out." Little qualified, however, as Mr. Brewer may be to interpret the historical developments of the human race, he may have done ser- vice in collecting and arranging the criminal records of the Church of Rome, and presenting those who are curious in the Newgate Calendar literature of religion, with ready evidence of the mis- demeanours,- cruelties, felonies, and murderous persecutions, ad- duced against the Jesuits and the Church of which they are the sworn defenders. A similar bill might be made out against Pro- testantism, against Paganism, against Philosophism ; still leaving the 44 bad preeminence" with Romanism, in whose Aceldama, or field of blood, Mr. Brewer enumerates no fewer than 3,638,032 human beings, variously tortured and destroyed. If we have no other point of sympathy with the author of Jesuitism, we can at least join with him in the condemnation of intolerance and the desire for the social emancipation of the people. The varieties of Mysticism are numerous. Of modern mystics the most remarkable appears to have been Emanuel Swedenborg, whose scientific culture contrasts strangely with his subjection to ecstatic reverie. A voluminous letter addressed by the Reverend Augustus Clissold to the Archbishop of Dublin contains an ex- position of the Swedenborgian system as well as a vindication of the practical nature of its doetrines. Again we have the concep- tion of the Infinite examined, the Bampton Lecturer quoted and criticized, and an Internal Sense proclaimed. "The limit of the spirituel sight is the same with the limit of the spiritual life." So too the Apocalypse is cited in proof of the reasonableness of a New Revelation, a New Dispensation and a New Church upon Earth. The distinguishing doctrine of the Swedenborg Gos- pel is negatively, a protest against the Tritheistic, that is, the Trinitarian idea of the Godhead ; and affirmatively, an assertion of the Divine and Infinite Humanity of Christ, in whose person the Trinity subsists, so that he is the sole God, "being Creator -from Eternity, Redeemer in Time, and Regenerator in Eternity." An exhibition of this and its related doctrines is contained in the first division of Mr. Clissold's Letter ; the internal sense of the Word of God is treated in the second part ; the Spiritual World is the subject of the third ; and the visions and revelations of Swedenberg of the fourth and concluding portion. Mr. Clissold writes agreeably and temperately ; and the Prophet of the New Dispensation was a man of undoubted genius, with a power of symbolism that reminds us of Dante, and an insight into the moral relations of life not unworthy of a poet or a seer.
Previous page
