Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 34

Legalistic religion, or the "covenant of works," is much of a piece with superst.i.tion. It, again, is always a burden to be borne. Its mark is "drudgery and servility." It is a "lean and lifeless form of external performances." Its "law" is always something outside the soul itself. It is a way of acquiring "merit," of getting reckoned among "heaven's darlings," but it is not a way of life or expansion or power or joy.[18]

This "dead" legalistic form of religion is, however, not merely a thing of antiquity, of some early "dispensation" in the long stretch of years called "B.C." Like superst.i.tion, legalistic religion also has "crept into our clothes" and "twined about our secret devotions." The "gospel" can be made, and has often enough been made, "as legal as ever the religion of the Jews was." The gospel becomes legal, in Smith's sense, wherever it is treated "as something onely without us," "as a meer historical story or account," or as a collection of book-facts, or "as _credenda_ propounded for us to believe," or when we attempt to "make Christ's righteousness serve onely as our outward _covering_."[19] "Some of our {310} _Dogmata_," he thinks, "and Notions of Justification puff us up in far higher and goodlier conceits of ourselves than G.o.d hath of us; and we _profanely_ make the unspotted righteousness of Christ serve only as a _covering_ to wrap up our foul deformities and filthy vices in."[20] This tendency, wherever it appears, is but legal religion. Men adopt it because it does not "pinch their sins." It gives them a "sluggish and drowsie Belief, a lazy Lethargy to hugg their supposed acceptation with G.o.d"; it enables them "to grow big and swell with a mighty bulk with airy fancies and presumptions of being in favour with Heaven," and it fans up "a pertinacious Imagination that their Names are enrolled in the Book of Life, or crossed off in the Debt-Book of Heaven." But it is all "a meer Conceit or Opinion," for such men are "never the better in reality in themselves and G.o.d judges all things as they are." "While men continue in their wickedness, they do but vainly dream of a device to tie the hands of Almighty Vengeance."[21]

True religion, on the other hand, is absolutely another thing, sundered by the width of the sky from either superst.i.tion or legalistic religion. It is a reception and a.s.similation of the Life of G.o.d within the soul of man which is predisposed by its fundamental nature to the influx and formative influence of the Spirit of G.o.d, who is the environing Life and inner atmosphere of all human spirits: "_Spiritual Life comes from G.o.d's breath within us and from the formation of Christ within the soul_."[22]

Like all of his kind, Smith begins with what to him is an axiomatic fact, that the human soul has a "royal pedigree and n.o.ble extraction,"

that, "as the best philosophers have alwaies taught, we must enquire for G.o.d within ourselves," that "Principles of Divine Truth have been engraven on man's Heart by the finger of G.o.d," that we can find "a clear impression of some Eternal Nature and Perfect Being stamped upon our own souls," that there are "Radical Principles of Divine Knowledge"

{311} and "Seeds of Divine Nature" hidden within us and that a Divine Spirit blows and breathes upon men's hearts, a.s.sisting the soul to partic.i.p.ate in the Life of G.o.d.[23] In one of his bold sayings this position is summed up as follows: "Religion is a Heaven-born thing, the Seed of G.o.d in the spirits of men, whereby they are formed to a similitude and likeness of Himself. A true Christian is every way of a most n.o.ble extraction, of an heavenly and divine pedigree."[24]

He finds the mark of man's excelling dignity in the inexhaustible depth of his nature and in his n.o.ble discontent with every finite and mutable thing. The soul of man is "too big for earthly designs and interests."

There is forever a restless appet.i.te within man for some infinite Good without which he can never be satisfied. Everything which he attains or achieves still leaves him in "pinching penury," unsatiated with "the thin and spare diet which he finds in his finite home." His soul, "like the daughters of the Horseleach is always crying: 'Give, give.'" No happiness worth having ever arises, nor through a whole eternity could arise, for any soul sequestered like a hermit in the narrow confines of its own private cell, sundered from "the Fountain-Goodness," for which it was created. The immortal Principle within forever drives it to seek its Original, and it lives only when it "lives above itself," and follows "its own proper motion upward."[25]

The real Gospel in contrast to the "legal gospel," is "the formation of a Christlike Nature in a man's soul by the mighty power of the Divine Spirit."[26] It is no new set of opinions; no body of Notions about Truth; "no system of saving Divinity, cast in a Pedagogical mould"; it is, from its Alpha to its Omega, Spirit and Life, or, to put it in Smith's own words, it is "a vital or energetical Spirit or Power of Righteousness," "a Principle of Life working in man's spirit," "a quickening ministration," "a Seed of G.o.d," "a vital Influx, spreading through all {312} the powers of the soul and bringing it into a Divine Life."[27] There are many close imitations of this real Gospel which on the outside look exactly like it, but they only a.s.sume "the garish dress and attire of religion," they put on "the specious and seemingly-spiritual Forms" without the inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords them"--only, however they "cunningly fas.h.i.+on out their religion by Book-skill," they cannot get "the true and living thing," which creates a new spirit and produces a new inward joy: "True Religion is no piece of artifice; it is no boiling up of our Imaginative powers nor the glowing heats of Pa.s.sion; though these are too often mistaken for it, when in our jugglings in Religion we cast a mist before our eyes.

But it is a new Nature informing the souls of Men; it is a G.o.dlike frame of Spirit, discovering it self most of all in serene and clear Minds, in deep Humility, Meekness, Self-denial, Universal Love of G.o.d and all true Goodness, without Partiality and without Hypocrisie; whereby we are taught to know G.o.d, and knowing Him to love Him and conform ourselves as much as may be to all that Perfection which s.h.i.+nes forth in Him."[28]

Heaven and h.e.l.l for John Smith, as for Boehme and for Whichcote, "have their foundation laid in Men's own souls."[29] They are rather something within us than something without us. Sin and h.e.l.l have the same origin, "the same lineage and descent." "The Devil is not only the name of one particular thing, but a _nature_. He is not so much a particular Being designed to torture wicked men in the world to come as a h.e.l.lish and diabolical {313} nature seated in the minds of men. . . .

Could the Devil change his foul and impure nature, he would neither be a Devil nor miserable. . . . All Sin and Wickedness in man's spirit hath the Central force and energy of h.e.l.l in it, and is perpetually pressing down towards it as towards its own place. There needs no fatal necessity or Astral influences to tumble wicked men down forcibly into h.e.l.l: No, Sin itself, hastened by the mighty weight of its own nature, carries them down thither with the most swift and headlong motion."[30] "Would wicked men dwell a little more at home, and _descend into the bottom of their own Hearts_ they would soon find h.e.l.l opening her mouth wide upon them, and those secret fires of inward fury and displeasure breaking out upon them."[31] So, too, the Kingdom of Heaven is within. It lies not so much in external things, golden streets and crowns, as in the quality and disposition of a man's mind.

The enjoying of G.o.d consists not so much in a change of place as in partic.i.p.ation in the nature of G.o.d and in a.s.similation to G.o.d. Nothing can stand firm and sure, nothing can have eternal establishment and abiding permanence that "hath not the everlasting arms of true Goodness under it."[32]

In a very fine pa.s.sage, in the n.o.ble discourse on "True Religion,"

Smith says: "I wish there be not among some such a light and poor esteem of Heaven, as makes them more to seek after _a.s.surance of Heaven onely in the Idea of it as a thing to come than after Heaven it self_; which indeed we can never be well a.s.sured of untill we find it rising up within ourselves and glorifying our own souls. When true a.s.surance comes, Heaven it self will appear upon the Horizon of our souls, like a morning light chasing away all our dark and gloomy doublings before it.

We shall not then need to light up our Candles to seek for it in corners; no, it will display its own l.u.s.tre and brightness so before us that we may see it in its own light, and our souls the true possessours of it." "Should a man hear a Voice from Heaven or see a Vision from the Almighty to testifie unto him the Love of G.o.d towards him [and the {314} a.s.surance of his Salvation]; yet methinks it were more desirable to find a Revelation of all _from within_, arising up from the Bottome and centre of a man's own soul, in the Reall and Internal impressions of a G.o.dlike nature upon his own spirit; and thus to find the Foundation and Beginning of Heaven and Happiness within himself; it were more desirable to see the crucifying of our own Will, the mortifying of the meer Animal life and to see a Divine life rising up in the room of it, as a sure Pledge and Inchoation of Immortality and Happiness, the very Essence of which consists in a perfect conformity and cheerful compliance of all the Powers of our Souls with the Will of G.o.d."[33]

The consciousness of Immortality rises or falls with the moral and spiritual height of the soul. Nothing makes men doubt or question the Immortality of their souls so much as their own "base and earthly loves," and so, too, inward goodness "breeds a sense of the Soul's Immortality": "Goodness and vertue make men know and love, believe and delight in their Immortality. When the soul is purged and enlightened by true sanct.i.ty it is more capable of those Divine irradiations whereby it feels it self in conjunction with G.o.d. It knows that Almighty Love, by which it lives, is stronger than death. It knows that G.o.d will never forsake His own life which He has quickened in the soul. Those breathings and gaspings after an Eternal partic.i.p.ation of Him are but the energy of His own breath within us."[34]

Smith finds the world in which he lives a fair world, everywhere full of "the Prints and Footsteps of G.o.d," the finite creatures of which are "Gla.s.ses wherein G.o.d reflects His glory." There are many "golden links that unite the world to G.o.d," and good men, "conversing with this lower world and viewing the invisible things of G.o.d in the things that are made in the outward Creation, may many times find G.o.d secretly flowing into their souls and leading them silently out of the Court of the Temple into the Holy Place."[35]

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The outward world is thus not something stubbornly foreign to the spirit; it is not the enemy's country, but every finite good and everything of beauty is "a Blossom of the First Goodness, a Beam from the Father of Lights." The spiritual person discovers that the whole creation is spiritual. He learns to "love all things in G.o.d and G.o.d in all things, and he sees that G.o.d is All in all, the Beginning and Original of Being, the Perfect Idea of their goodness and the end of their motion." In the calming illumination of this clarified vision, the good man, in whose soul religion has flowered, "is no longer solicitous whether this or that good thing be mine, or whether my perfections exceed the measure of this or that particular Creature, for whatever good he beholds anywhere he enjoys and delights in as much as if it were his own, and whatever he beholds in himself he looks upon not as his _property_ but _as a common good_; for all these Beams come from one and the same Fountain and Ocean of Light in whom he loves them all with an universal Love. When his affections run along the stream of any created excellencies, whether his own or any one's else, yet they stay not here but run on until they fall into the Ocean; they do not settle into a fond love and admiration either of himself or any other's excellencies, but he owns them as so many Pure Effluxes and Emanations from G.o.d, and in any particular Being loves the Universal Goodness. Thus a good man may walk up and down the world as in a Garden of Spices and suck a Divine Sweetness out of every flower.

There is a twofold meaning in every Creature: a Literal and Mystical; a good man says of everything that his Senses offer to him: it speaks to his lower part but it points out something above to his Mind and Spirit. . . . True Religion never finds it self out of the Infinite Sphere of Divinity and wherever it finds Beauty, Harmony, Goodness, Love, Ingenuity, Wisdom, Holiness, Justice, and the like, it is ready to say: _Here is G.o.d_. Wheresoever any such Perfections s.h.i.+ne out, an holy Mind climbs up by these Sunbeams and raises up it self to G.o.d. . . . A good man finds every place he {316} treads upon _Holy Ground_; to him the world is G.o.d's Temple."[36]

The supreme instance of the revelation of the Universal through the particular, of the invisible through the visible, the Divine through the human, is seen in Christ. It was precisely such an event as might have been expected, for "the Divine Bounty and Fulness has always been manifesting Itself to the spirits of men." Those who have lived by inward insight have perpetually found themselves "hanging upon the arms of Immortal Goodness." At length, in this One Life the Divine Goodness blossomed into perfect flower and revealed its Nature to men. In Him divinity and humanity are absolutely united in one Person. In Christ we have a clear manifestation of G.o.d and in Him, too, "we may see with open face what human nature can attain to."[37] This stupendous event, however, was no "gracious contrivance," no scheme to restore lapsed men in order that G.o.d might have "a Quire of Souls to sing eternal Hallelujahs to Him"; it was just "the overflowing fountain and efflux of Almighty Love bestowing itself upon men and crowning Itself by communicating Itself."[38] The Christ who is thus divine Grace become visible and vocal is also at the same time the irresistible attraction, "strongly and forcibly moving the souls of men into a conjunction with Divine Goodness," which is what Smith always means by the great word, _Faith_. It is something in the hearts of men which by experience "feels the mighty insinuations of Divine Goodness"; complies with it; perpetually rises into co-operation with it, and attains its true "life and vivacity" by partaking of it.[39] Christ is thus the Node, or Centre, of both Grace and Faith.

With this apprehension of Faith as a vital thing--a new and living way--Smith thinks very lightly of "notions" and what he calls "a knowledge of Divinity [Theology] which appears in systems and models."[40] This is but a poor way, he thinks, to "the Land of Truth." {317} "It is but a thin and aiery knowledge that is got by meer speculation." "This is but spider-like to spin a worthless web out of one's own bowels." "Jejune and barren speculations may unfold the Plicatures of Truth's garment, but they cannot discover her lovely Face." "To find Truth," he says in another figure, "we must break through the outward sh.e.l.l of words and phrases which house it," and by _experience and practice_ discover the "inward beauty, life and loveliness of Truth."[41]

This hard "sh.e.l.l of words and phrases" which must be broken before Truth is found, is one of Sebastian Franck's favourite sayings, and we find Smith also repeating Franck's vivid accounts of the weakness of Scripture when it is treated only as external history, or as words, texts, and phrases. "Scripture," he says, in the exact words and figures of the German Humanist, "is a Sealed Book which the greatest Sophist may be most acquainted with. It is like the Pillar of fire and cloud that parted between the Israelites and Egyptians, giving a clear and comfortable light to all those that are under the manuduction and guidance thereof [_i.e._ those who have the inner experience] but being full of darkness and obscurity to those that rebel against it."[42]

"The dead letter," he says, "is a sandy foundation" for religion, because it is never in books and writings but rather in the human soul that men must seek for G.o.d.[43] Action and not words; life and not motions; heart and not brain, hold the key to Truth: "They cannot be good at Theorie that are bad at Practice."[44] "Our Saviour," he says, "would not draw Truth up into any System, nor would He lay it out into Canons or Articles of Faith, because He was not so careful to stock the world with Opinions and Notions as to make it thrive with true piety, G.o.dlike purity and spiritual understanding"; and in a very happy pa.s.sage, he reminds us that there are other ways of propagating religion besides writing books: "They are not alwaies the best Men who blot the most paper; Truth is not so {318} voluminous nor swells into such a mighty bulk as our Bookes doe. Those minds are not alwaies the most chaste that are the most parturient with learned Discourses."[45]

I have, I believe, now given a true account of Smith's type of Christianity, It was no new message. It was a re-expression of ideas and ideals that had already been often proclaimed to the dull ears of the world. He, however, is never a repeater of other men's ideas.

What he offers is always as much his own as was the life-blood which coursed through his heart. He fed upon the literature which was kindred to his growing spirit, and his books helped him find the road which he was seeking; but he was n.o.bly true to his own theory that the way of Life is discovered by spiritual experience rather than by "verbal description," and this quiet, sincere scholar and prophet of the soul found it thus. He once said that "Truth is content, when it comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language and to conform itself as it were to our dress and fas.h.i.+ons";[46] that is to say, prophets speak in their own dialect and use the modes of their own culture, but they are prophets through their own temporal experience of that one eternal Reality which s.h.i.+nes into their souls in its own Light.[47]

What impressed his contemporary friends most was the beauty of his spirit, and that is what still most impresses the reader of his Discourses. He has succeeded in preserving some of the strong elixir of his life in the words which survive him, and we know him as a valiant soldier in that great army of soldier-saints who have fought with spiritual weapons. "This fight and contest," he himself has told us, "with Sin and Satan is not to be known by the rattling of Chariots or the sound of an alarm: it is indeed alone transacted upon the inner stage of men's souls and spirits--but it never consists in a sluggish kind of doing nothing that so G.o.d might do all."[48] A Life is always battle, and the true Christian is always "a Champion of G.o.d" clad in the armour of Light for the defeat of {319} darkness and the seed of Satan. In this battle of Armageddon John Smith took a man's part, and his affectionate disciple Simon Patrick was quite right in saying, as the master pa.s.sed away, "My father, my father, The chariot of Israel and the hors.e.m.e.n thereof."

The other members of this impressive group of Cambridge Platonists, especially Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, Nathaniel Culverwel and John Norris, might well be studied, and they would furnish some additional aspects of religious thought, but the teachings of the two exponents whom I have selected as representative of the school have brought the central ideas and the underlying spirit of this seventeenth century religious movement sufficiently into view. Their intimate connection with the currents of thought which preceded them has also been made adequately clear. This volume does not pretend to be exhaustive, and it cannot follow out all the interesting ramifications of the complicated historical development which I have been tracing. I have been compelled to limit myself to the presentation of typical specimens and examples of this continuously advancing spiritual movement which found one of its n.o.blest figures in John Smith.

[1] Simon Patrick uses this phrase in his funeral sermon on his friend John Smith. _Select Discourses_ (1673), p. 472.

[2] _Rational Theology_, ii. p. 122.

[3] Patrick's Sermon, _Select Discourses_, p. 496.

[4] Worthington's Sketch is given in the Preface to the Reader in _Select Discourses_, pp. iii-x.x.x, and Patrick's Sermon is given as an Appendix to the same volume, pp. 471-512.

[5] Preface, p. vi.

[6] Patrick, _op. cit._ p. 498.

[7] Preface, p. xxviii.

[8] Patrick, _op. cit._ pp. 471 and 472.

[9] _Ibid._ p. 484.

[10] _Ibid._ p. 477.

[11] _Ibid._ p. 474.

[12] _Ibid._ pp. 480-481.

[13] _Ibid._ p. 486.

[14] Preface, p. iii.

[15] This portrait is made up entirely of pa.s.sages gathered out of Patrick's Sermon, and but slightly altered.

[16] _Op. cit._ p. 509.

[17] "A Short Discourse on Superst.i.tion," in _Select Discourses_, pp.

24-36.

[18] "Discourse on Legal Righteousness, etc.," _ibid._ pp. 273-338.

[19] Smith uses this phrase in precisely the same manner as Jacob Boehme.

[20] _Select Discourses_, p. 316.

[21] _Ibid._ pp. 319-321, quoted freely.

[22] _Ibid._ p. 21, quoted freely.

[23] _Select Discourses_, pp. 13, 14, 57, 61, and 118.

[24] _Ibid._ p. 370.

[25] _Ibid._ pp. 375, 393, 395, 403, 407-408.