freely and impartially; good encouragement given them to go through the labour and difficulties of such a study, not slightly and superficially, but with such application and diligence as the nature of the thing requires, and have leave to speak their sense with all manner of safety; that their opinions may be examined fairly and with temper; that their names be not unjustly loaded with calumny and slander; that their words and actions may be interpreted with the same candour as is shewn to those that differ from them: that, if what they advance be right, it may be received; if wrong, their errors may be refuted, as the mistakes of learned men on other subjects; if doubtful, and the Scriptures say so little or speak so obscurely that nothing can certainly he decided either way, that then nobody may be obliged to take either side as necessary; that, whether their notions be right or wrong, their persons may, in all events, be safe, and their maintenance not affected by it; that, as long as they live virtuously, and write with all due modesty and good manners, and advance nothing that breaks in upon morality and government, they may be treated in all respects as those are, or ought to be, who employ themselves in any other part of useful learning. I must add, let them be never so much in the wrong, I can apprehend no danger from it to the Church; or that the errors of a few men can have any considerable influence in opposition to a great body of a vigilant and learned clergy, who will be always able and ready to defend the received notions, if they can be defended; and, if they cannot, it must be allowed they ought not. But, if some inconveniences would arise from the liberty I contend for, they are nothing in comparison of those that must follow from the want of it. Till there is such a liberty allowed to clergymen; till there is such a security for their reputations, fortunes and persons; I fear I must add, till so difficult a study meets with proportionable encouragement, it is impossible a sincere, impartial and laborious application to it should generally prevail. And, till it does, it is as impossible the Scriptures should be well understood; and, till they are, they are a rule of faith in name only. For it is not the words of scripture, but the sense, which is the rule; and, so far as that is not understood, so far the Scriptures are not our rule, whatever we pretend, but the sense that men have put on them; men fallible as ourselves, and who were by no means so well furnished as the learned at present are with the proper helps to find out the true meaning of scripture. And while we take the sense of the Scriptures in this manner upon content, and see not with our own eyes, we insensibly relapse into the principles of Popery, and give up the only ground on which we can justify our separation from the Church of Rome. It was a right to study and judge of the Scriptures for themselves, that our first Reformers asserted with so good effect; and their successors can defend their adherence to them on no other principle. If, then, we are concerned for the study of the Scriptures further than in words; if we in earnest think them the only rule of faith, let us act as if we thought so. Let us heartily encourage a free and impartial study of them; let us lay aside that malignant, arbitrary, persecuting, Popish spirit; let us put no fetters on men's understandings, nor any other bounds to their inquiries but what God and Truth have set. Let us, if we would not give up the Protestant principle, that the Scriptures are plain and clear in the necessary articles, declare nothing to he necessary but what is clearly revealed in them. Then may we hope to see the study of these divine books so happily cultivated by the united labours of the learned, when under no discouragements, that all may, in the main, agree in the true meaning of them. Places that can be understood, they will agree in understanding alike—such at least as are of consequence to the faith. And for such as are too obscure to be cleared up with any certainty, those likewise they will agree about, and unanimously confess they are such as no article of faith can be grounded upon or proved from. Next to the understanding a text of scripture, is to know it cannot be certainly understood. When the clear and dark parts of scripture are thus distinguished, an unity may then reasonably be hoped for among Protestants in necessary points; and a difference of opinion, in such as are not necessary, can have no manner of ill consequence, nor any way disturb the peace of the Church, since there will then be nothing left in its doctrines to inflame men's passions, or feed their corrupt interests, when we are all agreed about what is essential to religion, and what is not essential is looked on as indifferent, so that a man may take one side or the other, or neither, or may change, as he sees reason, without offence. Upon the whole, a free and impartial study of the Scriptures either ought to be encouraged or it ought not. There is no medium; and therefore those who are against one side, which ever it be, are necessarily espousers of the other. Those who think it ought not to be encouraged will, I hope, think it no injury to be thought to defend their opinion upon such reasons as have here been brought for it, till they give better. On the other hand, those who think these reasons inconclusive, and cannot find better, will find themselves obliged to confess that such a study ought to be encouraged, and consequently must take care how they are accessary to such practices as in their natural consequence cannot but tend to its discouragement, lest they come into the condemnation of those who love darkness rather than light, and, for their punishment, be finally adjudged to it. There is, in this case, no other medium between encouraging and discouraging, but what there is between light and darkness. Every degree of darkness is a want of so much light; and all want of light is a certain degree of darkness. To refuse, then, a greater degree of light, where it can be had, is, in truth, to prefer darkness; which, in my humble opinion, can never be reasonable or excusable. Those who are of another mind, plainly distrust themselves or their cause; which if it can bear the light, why should it not be shewn in it?—but if it cannot, it is not the cause of God, or of the Son of God. For God is light, and in him is no darkness; and the Son of God is the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. An Anecdote in illustration of Bishop Hare's Argument, from Whiston's Memoirs of Dr. Samuel Clark, 8vo, 1748, p. 142. WHISTON relates that he waited on one occasion upon Dr. SMALRIDGE, Bishop of Bristol, to urge him "to write a little book, to recommend a fair and impartial review of Christian antiquity to the world, in order to the correction of such errors as might have crept into the Church," and says,-"His Lordship's answer, as near as I can remember the words, and that with great emotion of mind and body, was this,—Mr. Whiston, I dare not examine, I dare not examine. For if we should examine, and find that you are in the right, the Church has then been in an error so many hundred years!-I asked him, how he could say so, and still be a Protestant. He replied, Yes, he could. This I testify under my hand. 66 June 14, 1722. WILL. WHISTON." |