he mentions in his Apology with so much veneration. He certainly deserves as much respect and honor as any of them, for the part he has acted. Perhaps few of them exceeded him in learning and piety. I venerate him as I would any of your confessors. As to his particular sentiments, they are nothing to me. An honest pious man, who makes such a sacrifice to truth and conscience as he has done, is a glorious character, and deserves the respect, esteem, and veneration of every true Christian.' We have no scruple in asserting that this unqualified encomium is repugnant to reason, to Scripture, and to the sentiments of the best and purest ages of the Christian church. To pass over the absurdity of denominating Mr. L. a silenced and ejected minister, merely on account of his voluntary withdrawment from a community whose distinguishing tenets he had abandoned, we are far from conceiving that the merit attached to his conduct on this occasion, was of such an order as to entitle him for a moment to rank with confessors and martyrs. To the praise of manly integrity for quitting a situation he could no longer conscientiously retain, we are ready to acknowledge Mr. L. fully entitled. We are cordially disposed to admire integrity, wherever we perceive it; and we admire it the more in the present instance, because such examples of it, among beneficed ecclesiastics, have been rare. But we cannot permit ourselves to place sacrifices to error on the same footing as sacrifices to truth, without annihilating their distinction. If revealed truth possess any thing of sanctity and importance, the profession of it must be more meritorious than the profession of its opposite; and, by consequence, sacrifices made to that profession must be more estimable. He who suffers in the cause of truth is entitled to admiration; he who suffers in the defence of error and delusion, to our commiseration; which are unquestionably very different sentiments. If truth is calculated to elevate and sanctify the character, he who cheerfully sacrifices his worldly emolument to its pursuit, must be supposed to have participated, in no common degree, of its salutary operation. He who suffers equal privations in the propagation of error, evinces, it is confessed, his possession of moral honesty; but unless persuasion could convert error into truth, it is impossible it should impart to error the effects of truth. Previous to the profession of any tenets whatever, there lies an obligation on all to whom the light of the gospel extends, to believe the truth. We are bound to confess Christ before men, only because we are bound to believe on him. But if, instead of believing on him, we deny him in his essential characters, which is the case with Socinians, the sincerity of that denial will indeed rescue us from the guilt of prevarication, but not from that of unbelief. It is possible, at least, since some sort of faith in Christ is positively asserted to be essential to salvation, that the tenets of the Socinians may be such as to exclude that faith that it does exclude it, no orthodox man can consistently deny; and how absurd it were to suppose a man should be entitled to the reward of a Christian confessor, merely for denying, bona fide, the doctrine which is essential to salvation! The sincerity which accompanies his profession, entitles him to the reward of a confessor; the error of the doctrine which he professes exposes him, at the same time, to the sentence of condemnation as an unbeliever! If we lose sight of Socinianism for a moment, and suppose an unbeliever in Christianity in toto, to suffer for the voluntary and sincere promulgation of his tenets, we would ask Mr. Orton, in what rank he would be inclined to place his infidel confessor? Is he entitled to rank with any of the confessors? If he is, our Saviour's terms of salvation are essentially altered, and though he pronounces an anathema on him who shall deny him before men, the sturdy and unshaken denial of him in the face of worldly discouragement, would answer, it seems, as well as a similar confession. Men are left at their liberty in this respect, and they are equally secure of eternal happiness, whether they deny, or whether they confess the Saviour, providing they do it firmly and sincerely. If these consequences appear shocking, and he be forced to assert the negative, then it is admitted that the truth of the doctrine confessed, enters essentially into the inquiry, whether he who suffers for his opinions, is to be, ipso facto, classed with Christian confessors. Let it be remembered, that we are not denying that he who hazards his wordly interest, rather than conceal or dissemble his tenets, how false or dangerous soever they may be, is an honest man, and, quoad hoc, acts a virtuous part; but that he is entitled to the same kind of approbation with the champion of truth. That the view we have taken of the subject is consonant to the Scriptures, will not be doubted by those who recollect that St. John rests his attachment to Gaius and to the elect lady, on the truth which dwelt in them; that he professed no Christian attachment, but for the truth's sake; and that he forbade Christians to exercise hospitality, or to shew the least indication of friendship, to those who taught any other doctrine than that which he and his fellow Apostles had taught. The source of the confusion and absurdity which necessarily attach to the opinions of Mr. Orton and others, here expressed on this subject, consists in their confounding together moral sincerity and Christian piety. We are perfectly willing to admit, that the latter cannot subsist without the former; but we are equally certain that the former is by no means so comprehensive as necessarily to include the latter. We should have imagined it unnecessary to enter into an elaborate defence of so plain a position as this, that it is one thing to be what the world styles an honest man, and another to be a Christian; a distinction, obvious as it is, sufficient to solve the whole mystery, and to account for the conduct of Mr. L. without adopting the unmeaning jargon of his biographer, who styles him, in innumerable places, the venerable confessor. How repugnant the language we have been endeavoring to expose, is to that which was held in the purest and best ages of the church, must be obvious to all who are competently acquainted with ecclesiastical history. The Marcionites, we are informed by Eusebius, boasted of their having furnished a multitude of martyrs, but they were not the less on that account considered as deniers of Christ. Hence, when orthodox Christians happened occasionally to meet at the places of martyrdom with Montanists and Manichæans, they refused to hold the least communion with them, lest they should be supposed to consent to their errors. In a word, the nature of the doctrine professed must be taken into consideration, before we can determine that profession to be a Christian profession; nor is martyrdom entitled to the high veneration justly bestowed on acts of heroic piety, on any other ground than its being, what the term imports, an attestation of the truth. It is the saint which makes the martyr, not the martyr the saint. * Euseb. L. 5. C. 14. * |