death of Locke, a single instance of so rash an enterprise, besides that of Dr Lorimer himself. While religious liberty was still a question even among Protestants no argument was more frequently employed by the advocates of despotism than this very one,-That the right of private judgment would, if conceded to all, sanction every species of crime, sedition, and immorality, which knaves or enthusiasts might pretend or imagine to fall within the sphere of their religious duties. How strenuously and effectively the inference was repudiated, may be learned from the controversies of the day;* and in particular from the following passage in Locke's conclusive Letter concerning Toleration, a work in which the whole subject of men's religious rights is handled with consummate ability. "As the magistrate," says he, " has no power to impose by his laws, the use of any rites and ceremonies in any church, so neither has he any power to forbid the use of such rites and ceremonies as are already received, approved, and practised by any church: because if he did so, he would destroy the church itself; the end of whose institution is only to worship God with freedom, after its own manner. "You will say, by this rule, if some congregations should have a mind to sacrifice infants, or, as the primitive Christians were falsely accused, lustfully pollute themselves in promiscuous uncleanness, or practice any other such heinous enormities, is the magistrate obliged to tolerate them, because they are committed in a religious assembly? I answer, No. These things are not lawful in the ordinary course of life, nor in any private house; and therefore neither are they so in the worship of God, or in any religious meeting. But indeed if any people congregated upon account of religion, should be desirous to sacrifice a calf, I deny that that ought to be prohibited by a law. Melibœus, whose calf it is, may lawfully kill his calf at home, and burn any part of it that he thinks fit. For no injury is thereby done to any one, no prejudice to another man's goods. And for the same reason he may kill his calf also in a religious meeting. Whether the doing so be well-pleasing to God or no, it is their part to consider that do it. The *See, for instance, Apollonii Jus Majestatis circa Sacra, tom. i., pp. 26, 56, 58, quoted in Dr M'Crie's Miscellaneous Writings, p. 478; Letter from Faustus Socinus to Martinus Vadovitz, 14th June 1598, in Toulmin's Memoirs of Socinus, pp. 103, 105, 111; Dr John Owen's Works, xv., 74, 201, 239, 241, 242; Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, Epistle Dedicatory, and Sect. xiii., § 2; Sect. xvi., § 3; Sect. xix., passim (Heber's edition of his Works, vii., 403, 411; viii. 118, 142, 212); Bishop Barlow's Case of a Toleration in Matters of Religion, pp. 21, 31; Barclay's Apology for the Quakers, Prop. 14; and Locke's Letter concerning Toleration, ed. 1765, p. 51. Among later writers, see Dr Benjamin Ibbot's Sermons on the Right and Duty of Private Judgment, in the Boyle Lectures, ii., 806; Dr Balguy's Third Charge (on Religious Liberty) delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Winchester, in his Nine Discourses, &c., p. 208, 2d edit., 1817; Dr Furneaux's Letters to Blackstone concerning his Exposition of the Act of Toleration, &c., pp. 158, 160 (London, 1770); Dr Parr's Works, vol. iii., pp. 710, 715; Bishop Heber's Life of Taylor, pp. 216, 217, 318; Sismondi's Review of the Progress of Religious Opinions during the Nineteenth Century, p. 32 (Lond. 1826); Samuel Bailey's Essay on the Formation and Publication of Opinions, 2d ed., p. 316 (Lond. 1826); and an admirable article on the Right of Private Judgment in the Edinburgh Review, vol. lxxvi., p. 412. The last is from the pen of Mr Henry Rogers, and is reprinted among his Essays selected from that periodical, vol. ii., p. 1. part of the magistrate is only to take care that the commonwealth receive no prejudice, and that there be no injury done to any man, either in life or estate. And thus what may be spent on a feast, may be spent on a sacrifice. But if peradventure such were the state of things, that the interest of the commonwealth required all slaughter of beasts should be forborne for some while, in order to the encreasing of the stock of cattle, that had been destroyed by some extraordinary murrain; who sees not that the magistrate, in such a case, may forbid all his subjects to kill any calfs for any use whatsoever? Only it is to be observed, that in this case the law is not made about a religious, but a political matter: nor is the sacrifice, but the slaughter of calves, thereby prohibited. "By this we see what difference there is between the church and the commonwealth. Whatsoever is lawful in the commonwealth, cannot be prohibited by the magistrate in the church. Whatsoever is permitted unto any of his subjects for their ordinary use, neither can nor ought to be forbidden by him to any sect of people for their religious uses. If any man may lawfully take bread or wine, either sitting or kneeling in his own house, the law ought not to abridge him of the same liberty in his religious worship; though in the church the use of bread and wine be very different, and be there applied to the mysteries of faith, and rites of divine worship. But those things that are prejudicial to the common weal of a people in their ordinary use, and are therefore forbidden by laws, those things ought not to be permitted to churches in their sacred rites. Only the magistrate ought always to be very careful that he do not misuse his authority, to the oppression of any church, under pretence of public good." The magistrate, then, ignoring men's motives altogether, attends merely to their actions. When these infringe the rights of any whom he is bound to protect, he steps in and punishes the aggressor; and when the injurious act happens to be part of a religious ceremony, the punishment is for the civil injury or crime, and not for the theological error. Of this he has no right to take the slightest cognizance; it is entirely beyond his jurisdiction. Now, what is true in such cases of the magistrate as the representative of the community, is true of the individual members of the community; and what is true of sacred rites in churches, is true of sacred duties in railway meetings. As the Sabbatarians may, without hindrance from any human law, kill, by way of sacrifice, any calf belonging not to "Melibus" but to themselves, so may they lawfully (whether wisely or unwisely is not here the question) put a stop to the running of all coaches, cabs, and other vehicles, belonging to themselves, and all railway trains under their control (whether plying on Sunday or Saturday), by which other men HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE CARRIED. In the foregoing Plea, it has been shewn that the public are entitled to be carried on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway on Sundays; and what I affirm is, that neither the magistrate, nor Dr Lorimer and his associates, nor the Directors, are at liberty to deprive us of the enjoyment of that right, on the ground that they are doing what is (i. e. what they think) acceptable to God. If the reverend gentleman deny the right, let him demonstrate the inconclusiveness of the grounds on which it is maintained. "Logical truth," says Dr Campbell, "consisteth in the conformity of our conceptions to their archetypes in the nature of things."* This is absolute truth, or God's truth; and its expression in words is verbal truth: "Those propositions," says Wollaston, are true, which express things as they are: or, truth is the conformity of those words or signs by which things are expressed, to the things themselves."+ The other kind of truth, which in the text is distinguished from absolute and eternal truth, and to which the appellation of man's truth may be fitly applied, is that described by Dr Beattie where he says "I account that to be truth which the constitution of our nature determines us to believe, and that to be falsehood which the constitution of our nature determines us to disbelieve. . . . We often believe what we afterwards find to be false: but while belief continues, we think it true: when we discover its falsity, we believe it no longer. Truths are of different kinds; some are certain, others only probable; and we ought not to call that act of the mind which attends the perception of certainty, and that which attends the perception of probability by one and the same name. Some have called the former conviction, and the latter assent. All convictions are equally strong; but assent admits of innumerable degrees, from moral certainty, which is the highest degree, downward, through the several stages of opinion, to that suspense of judgment which is called doubt."† Of the eternal relations and fitnesses of things," says the same writer, "we know nothing; all that we know of truth and falsehood is, that our constitution determines us in some cases to believe, in others to disbelieve; and that to us is truth which we feel that we must believe; and that to us is falsehood which we feel that we must disbelieve."§ "We are here," says he, treating of the nature and immutability of truth, as perceived by human faculties. Whatever intuitive proposition, man, by the law of his nature, must believe as certain, or as probable, is, in regard to him, certain or probable truth; and must constitute a part of human knowledge, and remain unalterably the same, as long as the human constitution remains unaltered."]] "While man continues in his present state, our own intellectual feelings are, and must be, the standard of truth to us. All evidence productive of belief, is resolvable into the evidence of consciousness; and comes at last to this point, I believe because I believe, or because the law of my nature determines me to believe. This belief may be called implicit; but it is the only rational belief of which we are capable: and to say that our minds ought not to Philos. of Rhetoric, B. I., ch. 5, at the beginning. †The Religion of Nature Delineated, Sect. I., par. 4. + 66 Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, Part I., ch. 1, pp. 18, 19. Lond. 1810. § Ib., Part II., ch. 1, § 2, p. 134. Ib., Part II., ch. 1, § 3, p. 148. submit to it, is as absurd as to say that our bodies ought not to be nourished with food. Revelation itself must be attended with evidence to satisfy consciousness, or common sense; otherwise it can never be rationally believed. By the evidence of the gospel, the rational Christian is persuaded that it comes from God. He acquiesces in it as truth, not because it is recommended by others, but because it satisfies his own understanding."* It thus appears that a doctrine which, when uttered by me, is "monstrous" and dangerous, has for three quarters of a century stood harmless and admired in the principal work written in opposition to the sceptical philosophy of Hume!" Our own intellectual feelings," says Dr Beattie, "are, and must be, the standard of truth to us." "The opinions a man adopts," say I, " are the truth to him." These two propositions are identical; and if it be true that mine asserts (as Dr Lorimer says it does) that "there is no such thing as a standard of truth," then is Dr Beattie's chargeable with the same enormity. But every discriminating reader will see that both Dr Beattie and I assert merely the fundamental doctrine of Protestantism, that each man's own judgment is to himself, though to nobody else, the standard of truth. Whoever denies this, and affirms that there is another standard, is bound to tell what the true standard is, and to prove that it really possesses the character which is claimed for it. Many will say that the revealed declarations of God are the standard of religious truth. Admitting this to be the fact, a standard must still be found to determine, 1st, where the revealed declarations of God are to be found; and, 2dly, what is the true meaning of the records containing them. Now, it is only by the exercise of the intellectual faculties in the act of private judgment that these questions can be answered; so that private judgment is in fact the su Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, Part III., ch. 1, p. 264. In the following lines of Butler, the word truth is used in the sense of man's truth; in other words, belief, persuasion, or opinion : "Th' Egyptians worshipp'd dogs, and for For that church suffer'd martyrdom; Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth: Hudibras, Part I., Canto I., v. 773-780. "Our opinions," says Dr Ibbot, " do not alter the nature of things, and make them true or false as we believe or disbelieve them. Things are true or false in themselves antecedently to, and exclusively of, our opinions about them. So that though every man's religion be true to himself, yet it does not therefore follow that it is true in itself because he believes it to be so. He may have made a wrong choice, and embraced his religion before he had duly weighed the proofs of it."-Boyle Lectures, ii., 818; Sermon entitled, "The Objections against Private Judgment answered." Besides "God's truth" and "man's truth," above explained, there is "moral truth," which is the verbal expression of the latter, and is defined by Locke to be "speaking of things according to the persuasion of our own minds, though the proposition we speak agree not to the reality of things."—Essay, B. IV., ch. v., § 11. preme arbiter here as in every thing else.* In regard to the question, What are the revealed declarations of God? there is a pretty general * "For what," says the most eminent of Scottish theologians," is every man's immediate standard of orthodoxy but his own opinions? Should ye object, that the standard is not any thing so fleeting as opinion; it is the word of God, and right reason: this, if ye attend to it, will bring you back to the very same point which ye seek to avoid. The dictates both of scripture and of reason, we see but too plainly, are differently interpreted by different persons, of whose sincerity we have no ground to doubt. Now to every individual, that only, amongst all the varieties of sentiments, can be his rule, which to the best of his judgment, that is, in his opinion, is the import of either. Nor is there a possibility of avoiding this recurrence at last. But such is the presump tion of vain man (of which bad quality the weakest judgments have commonly the greatest share), that it is with difficulty any one person can be brought to think that any other person has, or can have, as strong conviction of a different set of opinions as he has of his."-(Dr Campbell's Lectures on Eccl. Hist., Lect. 25.) This subject is excellently illustrated by Mr Blanco White, in his Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy. "What," says he, " do divines understand by Christian truth? The answer at first appears obvious. 'Christian truth (it will be said) is what Christ and his apostles knew and taught concerning salvation under the Gospel.' Thus far we find no difficulty: but (let me ask again) where does this exist as an object external to our minds? The answer appears no less obvious than the former: In the Bible.'-Still I must ask, Is the MATERIAL Bible the Christian truth about which Christians dispute? 'No (it will be readily said): not the MATERIAL Bible, but the SENSE of the Bible.'-Now (I beg to know) is the SENSE of the Bible an object external to our minds? Does any sense of the Bible, accessible to man, exist anywhere but in the mind of each man who receives it from the words he reads? The Divine Mind certainly knows in what sense those words were used; but as we cannot compare our mental impressions with that model and original of all truth, it is clear that by the sense of the Bible we must mean our own sense of its meaning. When, therefore, any man declares his intention to defend Christian truth, he only expresses his determination to defend his own notions, as produced by the words of the Bible. No other Christian truth exists for us in our present state. "I feel confident that what I have now stated is a fact, which every reflecting person may ascertain beyond doubt, by looking into his own mind: yet I know that few will attempt the mental examination necessary for the acknowledgment of this fact. A storm of feeling will rise at the view of the preceding argument; and impassioned questions, whether Christianity is a dreamwhether Christ could leave us in such a state of uncertainty-whether there is no difference between truth and error, with many others more directly pointed at myself, will bring the inquiry to the end of all theological questions-abuse, hatred, and (were it not for the protection, alas! of the great and powerful multitude who, caring not for these things,' take, nevertheless, more interest in the public peace than Gallio) severe bodily suffering, and perhaps death. "The mental fact which I have stated is, nevertheless, as unchangeable as the intellectual laws to which God has subjected mankind; as fixed as the means employed by God himself to address his revelation to us. The Christian truth, which man can make an object of defence, is an impression which exists in his own mind: it is his own Christian truth which he wilfully identifies with the Christian truth which is known to the Divine Mind. That each individual is bound to hold that Christian truth which he conscientiously believes to have found; that it is the great moral duty of every man to prepare himself conscientiously for the undisturbed reception of the impression which he is to revere and to follow as Christian truth, I cannot doubt at all. I acknowledge, also, the duty of every man to assist others (without intrusion), as much as it may be in his power, in receiving a mental impression similar to that which he venerates as Christian truth. But it is at this point that a fierce contest arises; and the reason is this: certain men wish to force all others to reverence (at least externally), not the mental impression, the sense, which each receives from the Bible-not the conviction at which each has arrived-but the im C |