to reconcile Christianity and Pantheism, by connecting and tempering the one with the other. * The eagerness of Servetus to escape from pantheism is manifest. He reproaches Zoroaster and Trismegistus for having admitted too immediate a union between Nature and God; he endeavours to preserve the ideas of creation and Creator. "All beings," says he, 66 are without doubt consubstantial with God; but they are so by the intervention of ideas, that is, by the intervention of Christ." Christ alone is the Son of God immediately begotten from his substance; other beings are only sons of God by adoption and grace on the mediation of Christ. Christ is the bond between earth and heaven, the bridge which surmounts the abyss between time and eternity, between the finite and the infinite, between Nature and God.† What were God without Christ? An inaccessible principle, retired within himself in the silent depths of an absolute existence,-a cause without effect, a sun without light. Christ is the light of God, his most perfect manifestation, his purest image, his person. In this sense, Christ is equal to God; he is God himself, but God become visible, partaker of the creature,§ containing in himself the human race and all the beings of the universe. It is from Christ that all emanates, towards him that all returns. He is the cause, the model and the end of all beings; all becomes one (s'unifie) in him, and he makes all one with God. Servetus develops this idea with genuine enthusiasm; it is the hinge of all his doctrine. By it he professes to restore Christianity to its primitive purity, to explain all its dogmas, and harmonize them with a purified pantheism, with the traditions of all peoples, the symbols of all modes of worship, the formulas of all systems, the maxims of all sages. Whatever judgment we may pass upon his enterprize in itself, neither the sincerity of his faith, nor the nobleness of his enthusiasm, nor a certain depth and originality in his ideas, can be disputed without injustice. It remains to make out how this ideal Christ can become real, make himself flesh, without losing his divine attributes, his eternity, his medio altitudinum et profunditatum Dei apparuit ejus oraculum, Jesu Christi persona."-P. 99. "Zoroaster quoque patrem omniformis mundi dixit esse omniformem Deum, nihil de Christo cogitans, quem nec angeli tum cognoscebant.”—Christ. Rest., p. 212, seq. + "In solo Christo est Deus."-Dial de Trin., p. 281.-"Primario tamen in Christo ipse videtur Deus. In re quavis pene palpatur Deus (Act. apost., 17), sed primario in Christo."-Ibid., p. 282. "Deus est, quia forma Dei, species Dei, habens potentiam et virtutem Dei. Dicitur Deus per virtutem, sicut homo per carnem.' Christ. Rest., lib. i. p. 12. "Primum exemplar in archetypo illo superiori mundo fuit homo Christus Jesus." Ibid., lib. iii. p. 91 of Mead.-"In Christo vero conjunguntur Deus et homo in unam substantiam, unum corpus, et unum novum hominem."-" "Atque ita Christus omnis mixtionis et unionis specimen et prototypus: qui non solum in se ipso humana commiscet et unit, sed et divina humanis in unam veram substantiam."-Christ. Rest., p. 264. § "Verus ille Messias Jesus crucifixus, Dei et hominis participationem habet, ut non poterit dici creatura, sed particeps creaturarum."-Christ. Rest., p. 233, of Mead. universality, his unchangeableness. Servetus here meets inextricable difficulties, and, far from unravelling them, he seems to delight in complicating them by conceptions startlingly whimsical. Till this moment we have seen him hold fast by the abstractions of his metaphysical system. His Christianity is as yet a mere philosophy; but it must now become a history, a positive and precise recital, in which we have no longer to do with an idea, but with a man, with a real, living, individual person. Servetus, in fact, is not a pure rationalist like Spinoza, nor an idealist in the manner of Hegel. He takes the gospel literally; he acknowledges explicitly the miraculous birth of Christ, conceived in the womb. of a virgin by a supernatural operation of the Divine Spirit. The Church has thrown over this birth a thick veil of mystery, and it is a sign of wisdom on her part to have done so. Servetus undertakes to explain the birth of Jesus; and, what is more, to find in it the key to all natural births.* He tells us that the body of Jesus Christ is formed of four elements; the Virgin Mary furnished only the earthly element; the other three came from heaven.t Christ, before being born, already had a body, but a body in some degree spiritual, invisible, infinite, every where present. He put on that other heavy and visible body, to teach us how to leave it, to deliver us from those bonds in which nature and sin enchain us, and to conduct us hereafter, free and transfigured, into the higher region.§ Here Servetus is no longer either a philosopher or a theologian; he seems like a sort of alchemist and conjuror, and his motley speculations on theology and medicine, on physics and astrology, would only inspire a profound contempt, if we did not consider that in the 16th century such dreams were the common infirmity of the greatest minds; and if we did not also see some bright flashes of light in the midst of this chaos: sometimes specific views, full of boldness and prophetic of future discoveries, on circulation and on generation; sometimes general glimpses of the secret harmony between the laws of intellect and the laws of nature, and of the analogies which connect together all the degrees in the scale of beings. It is clear that this theory respecting Christ was utterly destructive of the doctrine of the incarnation; just as the views of Servetus on the absolute indivisibility of God abolished the doctrine of the Trinity, and as his notion of an ideal world emanating from God by a necessary law and eternally reflecting itself in the visible world, sapped to the foundation the doctrine of the creation. Thus the whole metaphysical system of Christianity is reversed. Will Servetus shew any more respect to the Christian moral system, the root of which is the dogma of redemption? So far from it,-Servetus admits, indeed, a fall of our first parents, and an abasement of human nature in Adam; but he rejects the idea ¶ of an hereditary transmission of original sin, and con "Christi generatio aliarum generationum omnium specimen et prototypus." Christ. Rest., lib. iv. p. 123 of Mead.-" Etiam thesauri scientiæ naturalis sunt in Christo absconditi."-Christ. Rest., p. 251. † Christ. Rest., lib. iv.-Ibid., De Trin. Dial., ii. Christ. Rest., p. 279. § Christ. Rest., lib. v.-Ibid., De Trin. Dial., ii. #Christ. Rest., lib. iv. and v.-Ibid., De Trin. Dial., ii. p. 250, seq. sequently gives up the baptism of infants* He does not acknowledge the necessity of grace for salvation, nor of faith in order to attain the promises of Jesus Christ. So he saves Mahometans, Pagans, and all who shall have lived according to the law of nature. To sum up what we have said: the Trinity reduced to three different aspects of the Divine Being; Christ made into an idea, the eternal idea of humanity; the incarnation reduced to a superior form of this idea; the fall of Adam to an abasement of human nature; redemption to the return of this human nature towards its primitive purity;-such is the Christianity of Servetus. Put out of view the pantheistical metaphysics which he borrows from the Neo-platonist school, and which serves as his instrument for this radical denial of all the Christian doctrines,— keep only the negative result itself,—and you have Socinianism. Only on this condition could the doctrine of Michael Servetus become popular. While embarrassed with the depth and subtlety of his abstruse conceptions, it is, in Servetus himself, a mere philosophy; if separated from this accompaniment, and reduced to its simplest consequences, it will become, as with the Socini, a religion. Thus an irresistible logical process was hurrying on the movement of the Reformation. Luther at first did not wish to meddle with any thing but indulgences and ceremonies; but very soon, taking in hand the doctrine of grace, he deeply modified the whole economy of Christian morals. To purify worship and morality, while preserving the foundations of Christianity, is the end proposed by Calvin; it is the idea of which his Christian Institutes remain the immortal monument. But what can genius and even greatness of character avail against the force of thought? Calvin had declared Christianity to be corrupted in its moral aspect. Servetus declared it to be corrupted in its metaphysics, and undertook to new-mould it from its base to its summit. Well, then, in proportion as he revised each doctrine, he denied it. Socinus put together these negations and made a Christianity from which the divinity of Jesus, that is to say the soul of Christianity, was absent. One step more, and this shadow of Christianity is dissipated, to make room for the religion of the Curate of Savoy. The doctrine of the Socini beyond that of Michael Servetus, and beyond Socinianism itself, Deism,-this was the view present to the piercing eye of Calvin. It was Socinianism and Deism that he pursued and assailed and wished to exterminate in Michael Servetus. The execution of this unfortunate man has been explained by the hatred of Calvin; but the hatred of Calvin needs explanation also. No doubt it was a personal hatred; we shall presently give irrefragable proofs of that; but it was also a doctrinal hatred. What Calvin detested in Servetus was, not merely an opponent, obstinate, resolute, proud, indomitable, but the man who would hurry on the Reformation into the abyss of Socinianism, and give colour of reason to those who declared it incapable of furnishing a rule of faith, and of restraining the rashness of independent thought,-in one word, the man who would destroy the work of his life. It is necessary to realize this, in order, I do not say to justify the * Christ. Rest.—De Regen. Sup., lib. iv. Compare Epist. ad Calv., passim. t. Ibid., De Fide et Just., lib. iii. conduct of Calvin in the prosecution of Michael Servetus, but to explain it and to judge of it with the lofty impartiality of history. [It is satisfactory to find that Emile Saisset's proofs of the Pantheism of Servetus rest on a few mystical passages, which, in the mouth of one devoted to the Platonic philosophy, might mean any thing but Pantheism. He proves the Pantheism of Servetus as much by logic from the Deity of Christ as the datum, as by induction of passages from his writings. Servetus's principle of the indivisibility of the Divine Nature is in reality as directly opposed to Pantheism as light to darkness. Germany presents us at the present day with the sight of Pantheism combined with all the dogmas of the "orthodox" faith.-ED. C. R.] SONNET, COMPOSED ON THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. CLOUD, mist, gloom, winter, snow and icicle, Yet here Religion and soft Charity High o'er all Europe's homes have ta'en their stand, And, for the wanderers watching sleeplessly, Who o'er this perilous pass their journey make, And bid the fainting heart fresh courage take: FOSTER'S ESTIMATE OF "DAMNATION WRITERS." I SHOULD be very reluctant to appear conspicuously in the class of what have been denominated "damnation writers." With the exception of Baxter and a few more, I am afraid that those who have expatiated most on infernal subjects, have felt them the least. A predilection for such subjects, and a calm, deliberate, minute exhibition of them, always strikes me as a kind of Christian cruelty, the spirit of an auto da fé. I sincerely doubt the utility of a laborious, expanded display of the horrors of hell, as far as I have had the means of observing the usual effect. I have found it far the greatest where one would anxiously wish it might not exist at all-in the minds of the timid, scrupulous and melancholic. The utmost space I would allot in my writings to this part of the revelations of our religion, should not at any rate exceed the proportion which, in the New Testament, this part of truth bears to the whole of the sacred books, the grand predominant spirit of which is love and mercy.-(Letter to Dr. Ryland, dissuading him from publishing a Sermon on Isaiah xiv. 10.)-Life and Correspondence, Vol. I. p. 137. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.* THE long-expected Memoir of the venerated Channing is at length in our hands. We have turned over its pages with eager curiosity, and rejoice to be able to pronounce it a fitting monument of a truly noble man. Its Editor is Rev. William H. Channing,† an Unitarian clergyman residing at West Roxbury, who, though not engaged in parochial duty, is known to those who observe the religious history of Massachusetts as one actively promoting various religious and social movements. He states in a brief and modest Preface that the duty of writing the Memoir fell on him because no other person, who knew his uncle so well, could or would undertake it. He apologizes for the long delay of the publication, attributing it in part to design, that some time might elapse before he attempted to speak of one with whom he had lived in very intimate relations, and in part to accidental causes, of which "prolonged and repeated illness" is the chief. He describes his work as "rich in documents illustrative of Dr. Channing's inner and outward life." Of the former the documents are more abundant than of the latter, and they present to us the impressive spectacle of a pure and lofty mind devoting all its energies to holiness, piety and philanthropy. High as our conceptions of Channing's moral and spiritual nature were from familiarity with his writings, they have greatly risen with the perusal of this instructive and delightful Memoir. It will deservedly take rank with the best biographical works in the English language expository of Christian duty and practice, and will be found in the library by the side of the delightful Memoirs of George Herbert, Jeremy Taylor, John Milton, Arnold and Henry Ware. No truly religious man, be his creed what it may, can read this history of Channing's mind and heart without deep emotion and frequent sympathy. The chords struck by the biographer will often vibrate to the innermost recesses of the religious heart. We can scarcely imagine the degree of bigotry that would enable a man to contemplate the picture of Channing's inner life as there set forth, and not to admit that holiness and piety are, to say the least, compatible with the Unitarian creed. The merely intellectual and literary critic may possibly be disappointed by these volumes. We would not conceal there are faults on which he may fasten. The style is sometimes wanting in simplicity and definiteness; the arrangement of the materials is not always the best; and there is a deficiency in the power of grouping and presenting the subject of the Memoir surrounded by those with whom he carried on the daily intercourse of life. This may perhaps result in part from the peculiarities of Channing's social character. He acted on masses Memoir of William Ellery Channing, with Extracts from his Correspondence and Manuscripts. In 3 vols. post 8vo. London-John Chapman. 1848. By a very strange blunder, the advertisement inserted in last month's periodicals (our own amongst the number) assigned the editorship to another nephew, bearing the same name as his distinguished uncle, known chiefly as the author of a volume of verses, of which insufferably bad poetry is not the only fault. It would have been lamentable indeed if the literary remains of Dr. Channing had been entrusted to one incapable of appreciating his highest qualities of mind and heart. |