Dr. Johnson, during his tour to the Hebrides,
met with a person who like many in the present day was vehemently opposed to
creeds and confessions of faith. His principal objection to them was that they
are inconsistent with mental freedom. The human mind, he said, is confined by
them, and they ought not to be imposed upon it. To this the hard head and
robust common- sense of Johnson made answer, that what the objector called
imposition is only a voluntary declaration of agreement in certain articles of
faith which a church has a right to require, just as any other society can
insist upon certain rules being observed by its members. Nobody is compelled to
belong to the church, as nobody is compelled to enter a society. This, however,
did not satisfy the pertinacious opponent of creeds; and he continued his
objections in the same general strain as before. Johnson then silenced him with
the remark: "Sir, you are a bigot to laxness."
Bigotry is a blind and unreasonable devotion to
an opinion. It may be found in the ranks of infidelity as frequently as in
those of politics or religion. The political and especially the theological
bigot has had a full share of attention and criticism. The latitudinarian bigot
is a species that has been somewhat overlooked, and taking the text we have
quoted from Dr. Johnson, we propose to preach a short sermon upon the subject
of Liberal Bigotry. Our first remark is, that the liberal thinker, as he styles
himself, is a bigot in finding fault with a religious denomination to which he
does not be long, for making an honest and manly statement of what it believes.
The zeal with which he at tacks a society with which he is not identified, because
it holds certain tenets as the condition of membership, is certainly both blind
and unreasonable. By what right does he complain of a body of his fellow-men
because, in the exercise of their own judgment, they have come to the
conclusion that the creed of Calvin or the creed of Arminius is the truth, and
that the doctrine of Socinus or of Swedenborg is error? What reason is there in
demanding of a large society that they surrender their convictions respecting
such subjects as the trinity, the incarnation, the apostasy, and the
redemption, and take in lieu of them the opinions of an individual who styles
himself a liberal thinker? There might be some reason in this objecting to
distinct statements of religious truth, if the objector were himself concerned
in the origin and formation of the society adopting them. If it were still an
open question, and the disputant were entitled to a voice, then his zeal
against creeds would not necessarily be bigoted. But the churches are already
in existence. Neither the latitudinarian nor the downright sceptic had anything
to do with their origin or constitution, and they have no more part or lot in
them than an American democrat has in the monarchy of England. It is the height
of bigotry, therefore, when the unbeliever represents the terms of communion
which religious denominations have established not for him, but for themselves,
as being bigoted and intolerant.
Our second remark is, that the bigot to laxness
is himself an inquisitor, and a foe to freely-formed opinion. He is uneasy upon
seeing that others have fixed and settled views, and attempts to unsettle them
by attacks upon all definite statements of doctrine. Why is he not content with
the liberty which he himself enjoys of adopting no particular sentiments, and
of maintaining, like the ancient sophists, that there is no absolute truth, and
that one thing is just as valid as another? He is allowed his own dislike and
rejection of a creed, why should he disallow another man's liking for and
adoption of a creed? His complaint over the freely-formed conviction of his
fellow-men that the evangelical system is the truth of God, is in reality a
protest against their right of private judgment, and a demand that they adopt
his opinions upon this point. But this is bigotry. If he would be content with
his criticism and attack upon a particular creed, no fault would be found with
him. But when, after the criticism and attack, he pronounces the advocate of
the creed to be a bigot because he still remains unconvinced by his reasonings
and still retains his belief, he passes the line of free and fair discussion,
and enters the province of intolerance and bigotry. He does not meet with this
treatment from the defender of the faith once delivered to the saints. The
charge of bigotry is not often made by the orthodox against the heterodox, but
always by the heterodox against the orthodox. Perhaps we are the first since
Dr. Johnson to direct attention to the bigotry of laxness. And we do not charge
bigotry upon the latitudinarian merely because he attacks the evangelical
creed, but because he calls those bigots who are not converted by his arguments.
It is curious to notice how extremes meet. The
latitudinarian will be found to be narrow, when he comes to be examined; and
the dogmatist will be found to be liberal, when his real position is seen. The
former is restless and uneasy upon discovering that his fellow -men in large
masses are holding fixed opinions, and are ready to live and die by them. He
complains and quarrels with them for so doing. The latter is calm and
self-possessed, being satisfied with his freely- formed convictions and his
self-consistent creed, and while he does his best to convert to his own views
those whom he regards as being in error, yet if he finds himself to be
unsuccessful, he enters no querulous complaint and indulges in no bitter intolerance,
because he commits all judgment to God and the final day.
The gentle and fair-minded Addison, in one of
the Spectators (No. 185), directs attention to what he denominates infidel
bigotry. "After having treated of these false zealots in religion, I
cannot," he says, "forbear mentioning a monstrous species of men who
one would not think had any existence in nature, were they not to be met with
in ordinary conversation. I mean the zealots in atheism. Infidelity is
propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as
if the safety of mankind depended upon it. There is something so ridiculous and
perverse in this kind of zealots, that one does not know how to set them out in
their proper colors. They are a sort of gamesters who are eternally upon the
fret, though they play for nothing. They are perpetually teasing their friends
to come over to them, though at the same time they allow that neither of them
shall get anything by the bargain. In short, the zeal of spreading atheism is,
if possible, more absurd than atheism itself. I would fain ask one of these
bigoted infidels: Supposing all the great points of atheism, such as the casual
or eternal formation of the world, the materiality of a thinking substance, the
mortality of the soul, the fortuitous organization of the body, the motions and
gravitation of matter, and the like particulars, were laid together and formed
into a kind of creed, according to the opinions of the most celebrated atheists,
I ask, supposing such a creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one
people in the world, whether it would not require an infinitely greater measure
of faith, than any set of articles which they so violently oppose. Let me therefore
advise this generation of wranglers, for their own and for the public good, to
act at least so consistently with themselves, as not to burn with zeal for
irreligion, and with bigotry for nonsense."
The present attack upon the Calvinistic creed
by the so-called "liberal" and "progressive" parties in
Protestantism, is an example of the zeal of bigotry. The particular opponents
of Calvinism of whom we are now speaking are not atheists. They are believers
in a deity and the principles of morality, and some of them accept a vague form
of evangelical doctrine. But the language of Johnson and Addison nevertheless
applies to them. In respect to the five points of Calvinism, and the general
type of doctrine contained in the Westminster standards, they are bigoted partisans.
The zeal which they exhibit in opposition to this intellectual and powerful
theology, is as unintelligent and passionate as anything to be found in any annals
whatever. And what is worse, it is an unscrupulous zeal not seen among the
orthodox. When did the orthodox ever stoop to the method of the "liberal"
theologian? When did Calvinists ever attempt to sap and destroy "progressive"
theology, by the plan recommended by some "progressive" theologians
for sapping and destroying the Calvinistic faith: the plan of remaining in a
denomination after changing one's belief, and trying to subvert the creed of
the denomination? What Calvinists ever advised Calvinists publicly to subscribe
an anti-Calvinistic creed, and then teach and defend Calvinism within an anti-
Calvinistic denomination? What Calvinist ever advised Calvinists to hold office
and take emoluments on anti-Calvinistic foundations? What orthodox body has
ever put to its own use endowments that were given for the spread of
"progressive " theology? The history of religious endowments shows
without an exception, if we are not mistaken, that it is the looser creed that
filches from the stricter, not the stricter from the looser. Whatever else may
be laid to the charge of the advocates of orthodoxy, covert movements, concealed
opinions, and double dealing cannot be. They have never burrowed underground;
and they have never pretended to be what they are not. And they have insisted
that all who join them shall do so in good faith, and hold a common creed. For
this they are charged with narrowness and bigotry! The charge falls upon the
other party.
– W.G.T.
Shedd, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
