suppress a feeling of sorrow and surprise at seeing this document dragged out for defence in the nineteenth century; this mixture of monkish metaphysics and scholastic bigotry, a production which multitudes of the orthodox themselves conspire to repudiate, and of which many of the best and highest minds in the Church of England have been most heartily ashamed—of which they desire to be well rid. Were the defence of such a creed to be taken as a true sign of the times, there would be cause indeed for pain to think that we had been rolled back again into the dark ages; but it is not so; such things are rather marks that show us how far the advancing tide has moved beyond them. In the course of the present Lecture I desire it to be distinctly understood, that I oppose creeds in their very principle: it is not alone such as I think false, but though I believed them true, I would yet oppose their use. My opposition is directed against the spirit of creeds, and if my own opinions were attempted to be forced in that form, my opposition would be the same. I am in this place to maintain a principle, the principle of intellectual, moral, and Christian freedom, and because creeds, as I think, are at variance with this, I denounce them. I intend nothing against individual professors. If I should give them offence, I have no wrong motive with which to charge myself, and must attribute it to the necessity of plain speaking on a subject by no means agreeable; but whether pleasant or not, I have a duty to perform, and I must as far as my power goes, endeavour to do it honestly and faithfully.

The title of this Lecture is, that creeds are the foes of heavenly faith, and the allies of worldly policy. It is my object to show that this accusation is not lightly or unjustly advanced; and in making good this two-fold charge, the greatest perplexity which attends it, is the multifarious and abundant evidence whereby it can be established.

I. I proceed first to prove them the foes of heavenly faith.

Creeds disqualify the mind for the pursuit of truth. This is my first assertion, and I shall establish its correctness in several particulars. Creeds generate mental apathy and mental dependence, and this is.fatal in the very outset. To a spirit of inquiry there is needed an impulsive intellectual activity, and to this activity there is needed a desire for the thing to be attained, and a sense of its importance. There is no labour without motive, and if in religious belief, the creed has defined before-hand all that is necessary for my salvation, I have no necessity to take any more trouble in the matter. If I am to rest on authority at last, it is just as well for me to be satisfied with it at first-if after toilsome inquiry, at the peril of my soul's eternal peace, the dogmas of the creed are those to which my conclusions must return, I had better be at once content-if I must believe as the Church believes, if I must believe as the Creed says I should believe, if I must believe as the priest declares my hope of heaven requires, if after criticism and research, long and patient, I must arrive at but one exposition of the Bible, it is but wisdom to spare myself from such a pressure of useless labour. But indolence in this case is not merely allowable, it is, in fact, the safest. If to doubt be danger, and if to disbelieve be sin, then the curiosity which stimulates examination may lead me into ruin, whilst implicit submission, that receives all and questions nothing, is a condition of peaceful security. The incitements to mental labour are analogous to those to any other sort of labour; it is that one shall be the richer and the better for it, and that what he acquires he may justly possess. But, if by independent inquiry I may become morally poorer and spiritually worse, if I shall have no right to my own thoughts, and must be despoiled of my convictions, or punished for them, when I have worked them out

with the struggle of every faculty, it is exceeding folly to risk the misery and irritation of being torn between my opinion and my creed, conscience forcing me to acquiesce, and reason compelling me to doubt. This view is no supposition; it is fact. Submission to Creeds and Churches, is the true cause of that wide spread moral torpor in every country where Creeds and Churches have dominion. There is nothing so rare as intelligent, independent religious conviction; and how can it be otherwise, when each leans upon his priest, and the priest gives him ready-made opinions, as they were formed a thousand years ago. There is a general and profound ignorance of the sources of opinion, the history of opinion, of the philosophy of opinion, and of the Bible, both in its letter and in its spirit. Speak to multitudes of religion, in any broad or liberal sense, and it seems to them as if it were an unknown tongue. To have any chance of attention, you must use terms which Creeds have sanctified, you must address them in traditionary phrases, which have the sectarian or sacerdotal currency. This never could have been had religion been recommended as a subject of individual and independent study, leaving the mind free, both in its pursuit and its conclusion. That I have stated nothing but what fact justifies, I may appeal to any one who has considered the religious condition of this country, or of Europe generally, and considered it in every rank of society. I speak not of the Spaniard, who has not yet rid himself from the palsy of the Inquisition, who can go from the prostration of the confessional to scenes of the wildest crime; I speak not of the Italian, that compound of profaneness and credulity, of sin and devotion, who can bow before an image, and with the same hand cross himself, by which a minute before he plunged his stiletto in his fellow-creature's heart. I speak not of our own peasantry, who Sunday after Sunday, walk statedly to church or chapel, and know little more than that they went there and came back again; I speak not of the fashionable wealthy, who, on this point, are commonly as

ignorant as the boor, and choose religion as they choose every thing else, as it happens to be the mode; I pass these by, because it may be said, that pleasure and gaiety leave them no time for study; but I will refer to multitudes who are esteemed devout and serious Christians, whose minds passively receive the mould of their teachers, and to whom religion never presents itself as a system of various thought and of independent examination. Now, this ignorant apathy has bad effects, which are not merely negative; and at the risk of anticipating, I will allude in a few words to one or two of them: it gives stability to every error and corruption, and holds to them with an obstinacy, against which wisdom has no power; it is the very soil in which priestcraft grows darkest and foulest; and the hierarchy in any age or country has never risen to its full stature of lordliness, until the people have lain lowest in torpid submission. And, in addition to this, there is no uncharitableness so inveterate, there is no bigotry so intolerant, as that which this species of character matures, for as it is unable to comprehend an opposite opinion, it is equally inadequate and unwilling to weigh the arguments in its favour, or to estimate the evidence on which it is maintained. Having no conception of independence itself, independence in another appears presumption, if not something worse, and never having imagined that other opinions could possibly be true except its own, to hold any different could only be explained by supposing a want of honesty or a want of grace.

L

I might dwell upon the fear by which Creeds paralyse the faculties of weak or sensitive natures, by which they deprive them of all power for calm and deliberate examination, by the fear of being excluded from their Church, by the fear of being discarded by their friends, by the fear of being cast into hell, above all these, by the fear of losing the favour of God, and the friendship of Jesus, and with right and true minds, this is the greatest of all fears. In the midst of so many terrors,

it is too much to expect that our weak humanity could be calm, that it could look with unmoved heart at the appalling indications of so many and dire threatenings, it is like examining a man on the terms of his faith, while the officials of persecution are arranging the faggots or putting screws in the rack. From this topic, disagreeable in any shape, I pass on, and assert, that Creeds are enemies to truth, because, by preconception and prejudice, they disqualify the mind to seek or apprehend it. This is my second, and in this section, my last position.

The statement of the Church of England respecting the three Creeds, is this: that they "ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture."* The Catholic doctrine, with equal decision, asserts that the Infallibility of the Romish Church may also be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture. Suppose then a Church of England Christian with the Bible before him; he has been previously indoctrinated in the three Creeds, and these ideas pre-occupying his mind will so far influence his interpretation. Suppose a Roman Catholic in a like position; he has ever present to his mind the Infallibility of his Church, and her decisions must be the limits of his conclusions. Intellectually or morally, no position can be conceived worse than this for the pursuit or discovery of truth. The mind is biassed from the first; its calmness and its candour are subverted, and it is no longer a judge, but a partizan; it is not to decide on evidence, but, (to use a legal term) to act on the instruction of its brief. That Creeds have the tendency to distort and fetter the intellectual workings of the mind, we know from the fact, too palpable to need proof, that Theologians have always been the most obstinate in resisting the discoveries of science, and ever the last to yield. Astro

* Art. 8.