Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 32

"The Truths of G.o.d are connatural to the soul of man, and the soul of man makes no more resistance to them than the air does to light."[34]

"Religion makes us live like men."[35]

"We worship G.o.d best when we resemble Him most."[36]

"Religion is intelligible, rational and accountable: It is not our burden but our privilege."[37]

Something is always wrong, he thinks, if Religion becomes a burden: "It is imperfection in Religion to _drudge_ in it, and every man drudges in Religion if he takes it up as a task and carries it as a burden."[38]

The moment we follow "the divine frame and temper" of our inmost nature we find our freedom, our health, our power, and our joy; as one of the Aphorisms puts it: {298} "When we make nearer approaches to G.o.d, we have more use of ourselves."[39]

This view is beautifully expressed in Whichcote's Prayer printed at the end of the _Aphorisms_: "Most Blessed G.o.d, the Creator and Governor of the World; the only true G.o.d, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We thy Creatures were made to seek and find, to know and reverence, to serve and obey, to honour and glorify, to imitate and enjoy Thee; who art the Original of our Beings, and the Centre of our Rest. Our Reasonable Nature hath a peculiar Reservation for Thee; and our Happiness consists in our a.s.similation to, and Employment about, Thee. The nearer we approach unto Thee, the more free we are from Error, Sin, and Misery; and the farther off we are from Thee, the farther off we are from Truth, Holiness, and Felicity. Without Thee, we are sure of nothing; we are not sure of ourselves: but through Thee, there is Self-Enjoyment in the mind, when there is nothing but Confusion, and no Enjoyment of the World."

Religion is thus thought of as the normal way of life, as the true fulfilment of human nature and as complete inward health. "Holiness," he says, "is our right const.i.tution and temper, our inward health and strength."[40] Sin and selfishness carry a man below the n.o.ble Creation which G.o.d made in him, and Religion is the return to the true nature and capacity of G.o.d's Creation in man: "The Gospel, inwardly received, dyes and colours the soul, settles the Temper and Const.i.tution of it and is restorative of our Nature. . . . It is the rest.i.tution of us to the state of our Creation, to the use of our Principles, to our healthful Const.i.tution and to Acts that are connatural to us."[41]

As soon as man returns to "his own healthful Const.i.tution" and to "the state of his Creation," he finds that Religion has its evidence and a.s.surance in itself. G.o.d made man for moral truths, "before He declared {299} them on Sinai," or "writ them in the Bible,"[42] and so soon as the soul comes into "conformity to its original,"[43] that is "into conformity to G.o.d according to its inward measure and capacity,"[44] and lives a kind of life that is "self-same with its own Reason,"[45] the Divine Life manifests itself in that man and kindles his spirit into a blazing candle of the Lord. Those who are spiritual "find and feel within themselves Divine Suggestions, Motions and Inspirations; . . . a light comes into the Mind, a still Voice."[46]

This direct and inward revelation is, however, for Whichcote never "a revelation of new matter," never a way to the discovery of truths of a private nature. The revelations which the guidance of the Divine Spirit breathes forth within our souls are always truths of universal significance, truths that are already implicitly revealed in the Bible, truths that carry their own self-evidence to any rational mind. But these revelations, these discoveries of what G.o.d means and what life may become, are possible only to those who prepare themselves for inward converse and who centre down to the deeper Roots of their being: "Unless a man takes himself sometimes out of the world, by retirement and self-reflection, he will be in danger of losing _himself_ in the world."[47] Where G.o.d is not discovered, something is always at fault with man. "As soon as he is abstracted from the noise of the world, withdrawn from the call of the Body, having the doors of the senses shut, the Divine Life readily enters and reveals Itself to the inward Eye that is prepared for it."[48] "Things that are connatural in the way of Religion," he once said, "the Illapses and Breakings in of G.o.d upon us, require a mind that is not subject to Pa.s.sion but is in a serene and quiet Posture, where there is no tumult of Imagination. . . . There is no genuine and proper effect of Religion where the Mind is not composed, sedate and calm."[49]

{300}

There is no tendency in Whichcote to undervalue Scripture. Inward revelations are for him not a subst.i.tute for the Bible nor an appendix to it. Through the Divine Light in the soul and through Scripture, Divine communications are imparted to men. These he calls respectively "truth of first inscription" and "truth of after-revelation,"[50] and they no more conflict than two luminaries in the physical world conflict.

"Morals," he says, "are inforced by Scripture, but they were before Scripture: they were according to the nature of G.o.d,"[51] and, as he always claims, according to the deiform nature in man's reason.[52] As soon as a person interprets the Light within him--the candle of the Lord in his own heart--by the Light of revelation his inward illumination becomes clearer; and contrariwise, as soon as one brings an enlightened spirit to the Bible its message becomes clarified--"the Spirit within leads to a right apprehension of those things which G.o.d hath declared."[53] But Truth is always vastly more than "Notions," or conceptual formulation of doctrine. "Religion," as he says in his wisdom-proverbs, "is not a System of Doctrine, an observance of Modes or a Form of Words"--it is "a frame and temper of mind; it shows itself in a Life and Action conformable to the Divine Will"; it is "our resemblance to G.o.d."[54] Bare knowledge does not sanctify any man; "Men of holy Hearts and Lives best understand holy Doctrines."[55] We always deceive ourselves if we do not get beyond even such high-sounding words as conversion, regeneration, divine illumination, and mortification; if we do not get beyond names and notions of every sort, into a real holiness of life that is a conformity of nature to our original. His most important pa.s.sage on this point is one which is found in his Sermon on the text: "Of this man's seed hath G.o.d, according to His promise, raised up unto {301} Israel a Saviour, Jesus" (Acts xiii. 23). "Religion," he says in this pa.s.sage, "is not satisfied in Notions; but doth, in deed and in reality, come to nothing unless it be in us not only matter of Knowledge and Speculation, but doth establish in us a Frame and Temper of Mind and is productive of a holy and vertuous Life. Therefore let these things take effect in us; in our Spirituality and Heavenly-mindedness; in our Conformity to the Divine Nature and _Nativity from above_. For whoever professes that he believes the Truth of these things and wants the Operation of them upon his Spirit and Life doth, in fact, make void and frustrate what he doth declare as his Belief. He doth receive the Grace of G.o.d in vain unless this Principle and Belief doth descend in his Heart and establish a good Frame and Temper of Mind and govern in all Actions of his Life and Conversation."[56] This translation of Light and Truth and Insight into the flesh and blood of action is a necessary law of the spiritual life: "Good men spiritualize their bodies; bad men incarnate their souls";[57] or, as he expresses it in one of his Sermons: "To be [spiritually] well and unactive do not consist together. No man is well without action."[58]

Religion is, thus, with him always a dynamic principle of Life, working itself out in the frame and temper of the man and producing its characteristic effects in his actions. It does not operate "like a charm or spell"--it operates only as a vital principle[59] and we become eternally the self which we ourselves form. "We naturalize ourselves,"

to use his striking phrase, "to the employment of eternity."[60] We are lost, not by Adam's sin, but by our own; and we are saved, not by Christ's historical death, but by our own obedience to the law of the Spirit of Life revealed in Him and by our own death to sin;[61] and the beginning of Heaven is one with the beginning of conformity to the will of G.o.d and to our nativity from above. "Heaven is a temper of spirit, before it is a place."[62] {302} There is a Heaven this side of Heaven and there is as certainly a h.e.l.l this side of h.e.l.l. The most impressive expression of this truth is given in one of his Sermons: "All misery arises out of _ourselves_. It is a most gross mistake, and men are of dull and stupid spirits who think that the state which we call h.e.l.l is an incommodious place only; and that G.o.d by His sovereignty throws men therein. h.e.l.l ariseth out of a man's self. And h.e.l.l's fewel is the guilt of a man's conscience. It is impossible that any should be so miserable as h.e.l.l makes a man and as there a man is miserable by his own condemning of himself: And on the other side, when they think that Heaven arises from any place, or any nearness to G.o.d or Angels, that is not princ.i.p.ally so; but Heaven lies in a refined Temper, in an inward Reconciliation to the Nature of G.o.d. So that both h.e.l.l and Heaven have their Foundation within Men."[63] The evil and punishment which follow sin are "consequential" and inseparable from sin, and so, too, eternal life is nothing but spiritual life fulfilling itself in ways that are consequential and necessary in the deepest nature of things: "That which is our best employment here will be our only employment in eternity."[64]

The good old Puritan, Tuckney, suspected that Whichcote was promulgating a type of Christianity which could dispense with ordinances--"as though in this life wee may be above ordinances,"--and it must be confessed that there was some ground for this suspicion. He was no "enthusiast" and he in no way shared the radical anti-sacramentarian spirit of the small sects of the Commonwealth, but it belonged to the very essence of this type of religion, as we have seen in every varied instance of it, to hold lightly to externals. "The Spirit," as Whichcote once said, "makes men consider the Inwards of things,"[65] and almost of necessity the grasp slackens on outward {303} forms, as the vision focusses more intently upon inward and eternal realities. It is one of his foundation principles that "we worship G.o.d best when we resemble Him most,"[66] and if that is true, then the whole energy of one's being should concentrate upon the cultivation of "the deiform nature," "the nativity from Above."

The real matters of religion, as he keeps insisting, are matters of life and inner being, the formation of disposition and the right set of will.

But these vital things have been notoriously slighted, and "men's zeal is employed in usages, modes and rites of parties"; in matters that are divisive and controversial rather than in "things that are lovely in the eyes of all who have the Principles of Reason for their rule."[67] The great differences in religion have never been over necessary and indispensable Truth; on the contrary the disturbing differences have always been and still are "either over Points of curious and nice Speculation, or about arbitrary modes of worship."[68] Just as fast as men see that religion is a way to fullness of life, a method of attaining likeness to G.o.d, and just as soon as they realize that G.o.d can be truly worshipped only by acts and att.i.tudes that are moral and spiritual, _i.e._ acts and att.i.tudes that attach to the deliberate consent of the inner spirit, Whichcote thinks that "rites and types and ceremonies, which are all veils," will drop away and religion will become one with a rich and intelligent life.[69]

We can well understand how this presentation of Christianity as "a culture and discipline of the whole man--an education and consecration of all his higher activities"[70]--would seem, to those accustomed to dualistic theologies, "clowdie and obscure." It was, however, "no newe persuasion." In all essential particulars it is four-square with the type of religion with which the spiritual Reformers of Germany and Holland had for more than a century made the world acquainted. But, {304} in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, somewhat adapted: "all these, having had the witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise in full, G.o.d having provided some better, _i.e._ fuller, thing, that they should not be made complete, apart from those who succeeded them and fulfilled their hopes."

[1] This interesting phrase occurs in _A Brief Account of the New Sect of Lat.i.tude-Men_, by S. P. (probably Simon Patrick), 1662.

[2] S. P. in his _Sect of Lat.i.tude-Men_ says: "A Lat.i.tude-Man is an image of Clouts [a man of straw] that men set up to encounter with, for want of a real enemy; it is a convenient name to reproach a man that you owe a spite to."

[3] Letters of Tuckney and Whichcote in the Appendix to Whichcote's _Aphorisms_ (London, 1753), p. 2.

[4] _Aphorisms_, Appendix, p. 53.

[5] Culverwel, _Elegant Discourses_ (1654), p. 6.

[6] Burnet, _History of His Own Times_ (London, 1850), p. 127.

[7] We are dependent, for the few facts which we possess concerning Whichcote's life, on the Sketch of him written by Dr. Samuel Salter, as a Preface to his edition of Whichcote's _Aphorisms_, published in 1753.

[8] _Select Sermons_ (1698), p. 30.

[9] Salter's Preface, pp. xxii-xxiii.

[10] _Ibid._ p. xx.

[11] Appendix to _Aphorisms_ (1753), p. 2.

[12] Ibid. p. 4.

[13] Ibid. p. 7.

[14] Ibid. pp. 8 and 13.

[15] Ibid. pp. 13 and 14.

[16] Appendix to _Aphorisms_, pp. 37-38.

[17] _Ibid._ p. 27.

[18] Appendix to _Aphorisms_, pp. 53-54.

[19] _Ibid._ p. 57.

[20] _Ibid._ p. 60.

[21] Appendix to _Aphorisms_, p. 125.

[22] _Ibid._ p. 127.

[23] _Ibid._ pp. 133-134.

[24] _Select Sermons_ (1698), p. 149.

[25] _Ibid._ pp. 131-133.

[26] _Ibid._ p. 88.

[27] _Ibid._ p. 109.

[28] _Ibid._ p. 74.

[29] Proverbs xx. 27.

[30] _Aphorism_ 861.

[31] _Aphorism_ 934.

[32] _Aphorism_ 847.