Chapter 4 of 6

Henry More's Theological Works1

Henry More's Theological Works¹

There are three principal causes to which the imperfections and errors in the theological schemes and works of our elder divines, the glories of our Church, — men of almost unparalleled learning and genius, the rich and robust intellects from the reign of Elizabeth to the death of Charles II, — may, I think, be reasonably attributed. And striking, unusually striking, instances of all three abound in this volume; and in the works of no other divine are they more worthy of being regretted: for hence has arisen a depreciation of Henry More's theological writings, which yet contain more original, enlarged, and elevating views of the Christian dispensation than I have met with in any other single volume. For More had both the philosophic and the poetic genius, supported by immense erudition. But unfortunately the two did not amalgamate. It was not his good fortune to discover, as in the preceding generation William Shakspeare discovered, a

mordaunt

or common base of both, and in which both the poetic and the philosophical power blended in one.

These causes are, —

First

, and foremost, — the want of that logical

, that critique of the human intellect, which, previously to the weighing and measuring of this or that, begins by assaying the weights, measures, and scales themselves; that fulfilment of the heaven-descended

nosce teipsum

, in respect to the intellective part of man, which was commenced in a sort of tentative broadcast way by Lord Bacon in his

Novum Organum

, and brought to a systematic completion by Immanuel Kant in his

Kritik der reinen Vernunft, der Urtheilskrajt, und der metaphysiche Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft

From the want of this searching logic, there is a perpetual confusion of the subjective with the objective in the arguments of our divines, together with a childish or anile overrating of human testimony, and an ignorance in the art of sifting it, which necessarily engendered credulity.

Second

, — the ignorance of natural science, their physiography scant in fact, and stuffed out with fables; their physiology imbrangled with an inapplicable logic and a misgrowth of

entia rationalia

, that is, substantiated abstractions; and their physiogony a blank or dreams of tradition, and such "intentional colours" as occupy space but cannot fill it. Yet if Christianity is to be the religion of the world, if Christ be that Logos or Word that

was in the beginning

, by whom all things

became

; if it was the same Christ who said,

Let there be light

; who in and by the creation commenced that great redemptive process, the history of life which begins in its detachment from nature, and is to end in its union with God; — if this be true, so true must it be that the book of nature and the book of revelation, with the whole history of man as the intermediate link, must be the integral and coherent parts of one great work: and the conclusion is, that a scheme of the Christian faith which does not arise out of, and shoot its beams downward into, the scheme of nature, but stands aloof as an insulated afterthought, must be false or distorted in all its particulars. In confirmation of this position, I may challenge any opponent to adduce a single instance in which the now exploded falsities of physical science, through all its revolutions from the second to the seventeenth century of the Christian æra, did not produce some corresponding warps in the theological systems and dogmas of the several periods.

The

third

and last cause, and especially operative in the writings of this author, is the presence and regnancy of a false and fantastic philosophy, yet shot through with refracted light from the not risen but rising truth, — a scheme of physics and physiology compounded of Cartesian mechanics and empiricism (for it was the credulous childhood of experimentalism), and a corrupt, mystical, theurgical, pseudo-Platonism, which infected the rarest minds under the Stuart dynasty. The only not universal belief in witchcraft and apparitions, and the vindication of such monster follies by such men as Sir M.Hale, Glanville, Baxter, Henry More, and a host of others, are melancholy proofs of my position. Hence, in the first chapters of this volume, the most idle inventions of the ancients are sought to be made credible by the most fantastic hypotheses and analogies.

To the man who has habitually contemplated Christianity as interesting all rational finite beings, as the very

spirit of truth

, the application of the prophecies as so many fortune-tellings and soothsayings to particular events and persons, must needs be felt as childish — like faces seen in the moon, or the sediments of a teacup. But reverse this, and a Pope and a Buonaparte can never be wanting, — the molehill becomes an Andes. On the other hand, there are few writers whose works could be so easily defecated as More's. Mere omission would suffice; and perhaps one half (an unusually large proportion) would come forth from the furnace pure gold; if but a fourth, how great a gain!

Index p. 2

Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness

Dedication.

Servorum illius omnium indignissimus.

Servus indignissimus,

omnino indignus

, or any other positive self-abasement before God, I can understand; but how an express avowal of unworthiness, comparatively superlative, can consist with the Job-like integrity and sincerity of profession especially required in a solemn address to Him, to whom all hearts are open, this I do not understand in the case of such men as Henry More, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter were, and by comparison at least with the multitude of evil doers, must have believed themselves to be.

Ib.

V. c. 14. s. 3.

This makes me not so much wonder at that passage of Providence, which allowed so much virtue to the bones of the martyr Babylas, once bishop of Antioch, as to stop the mouth of Apollo Daphneus when Julian would have enticed him to open it by many a fat sacrifice. To say nothing of several other memorable miracles that were done by the reliques of saints and martyrs in those times.

Strange lingering of childish credulity in the most learned and in many respects enlightened divines of the Protestant episcopal church even to the time of James II! The Popish controversy at that time made a great clearance.

Ib.

s. 9.

At one time Professor Eichorn had persuaded me that the Apocalypse was authentic; that is, a Danielitic dramatic poem written by the Apostle and Evangelist John, and not merely under his name. But the repeated perusal of the vision has sadly unsettled my conclusion. The entire absence of all spirituality perplexes me, as forming so strong a contrast with the Gospel and Epistles of John; and then the too great appearance of an allusion to the fable of Nero's return to life and empire, to Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana on the one hand (that is the Eichornian hypothesis), and the insurmountable difficulties of Joseph Mede and others on to Bicheno and Faber on the other. In short, I feel just as both Luther and Calvin felt, — that is, I know not what to make of it, and so leave it alone.

It is much to be regretted that we have no contemporary history of Apollonius, or of the reports concerning him, and the popular notions in his own time. For from the romance of Philostratus we cannot be sure as to the fact of the lies themselves. It may be a lie, that there ever was such or such a lie in circulation.

Ib.

c. 15. s. 2.

Fourthly. The little horn, Dan. vii, that rules for a time and times and half a time, it is evident that it is not Antiochus Epiphanes, because this little horn is part of the fourth beast — namely, the Roman.

Is it quite clear that the Macedonian was not the fourth empire;

the Assyrian;
the Median;
the Persian;
the Macedonian?

However, what a strange prophecy, that,

e confesso

having been fulfilled, remains as obscure as before!

Ib.

s. 6

And ye shall have the tribulation of ten days, — that is, the utmost extent of tribulation; beyond which there is nothing further, as there is no number beyond ten.

means, I think, the very contrary.

Decent dierum

is used even in Terence for a very short time

. In the same way we say, a nine days' wonder.

Ib.

c. 16. s. 1.

But for further conviction of the excellency of Mr. Mede's way above that of Grotius, I shall compare some of their main interpretations.

Hard to say which of the two, Mede's or Grotius', is the more improbable. Beyond doubt, however, the Cherubim are meant as the scenic ornature borrowed from the Temple.

Ib.

s. 2.

That this rider of the white horse is Christ, they both agree in.

The

white horse

is, I conceive, Victory or Triumph — that is, of the Roman power — followed by Slaughter, Famine, and Pestilence. All this is plain enough. The difficulty commences after the writer is deserted by his historical facts, that is, after the sacking of Jerusalem.

Ib.

s. 5.

It would be no easy matter to decide, whether Mede plus More was at a greater distance from the meaning, or Grotius from the poetry, of this eleventh chapter of the Revelations; whether Mede was more wild, or Grotius more tame, flat, and prosaic.

Ib.

c. 17. s. 8.

The Old and New Testament, which by a prosopopœia are here called the two witnesses.

Where is the probability of this so long before the existence of the collection since called the New Testament?

Ib.

vi. c. l. s. 2.

We may draw from this passage (1

Thess

. iv. 16, 17.) the strongest support of the fact of the ascension of Christ, or at least of St. Paul's (and of course of the first generation of Christians') belief of it. For had they not believed his ascent, whence could they have derived the universal expectation of his descent, — his bodily, personal descent? The only scruple is, that all these circumstances were parts of the Jewish

cabala

or idea of the Messiah by the spiritualists before the Christian æra, and therefore taken for granted with respect to Jesus as soon as he was admitted to be the Messiah.

Ib.

s. 6.

But light-minded men, whose hearts are made dark with infidelity, care not what antic distortions they make in interpreting Scripture, so they bring it to any show of compliance with their own fancy and incredulity.

Why so very harsh a censure? What moral or spiritual, or even what physical, difference can be inferred from all men's dying, this of one thing, that of another, a third, like the martyrs, burnt alive, or all in the same way? In any case they all die, and all pass to judgment.

Ib.

c. 15.

With his

semi

-Cartesian,

semi

-Platonic,

semi

-Christian notions, Henry More makes a sad jumble in his assertion of chronochorhistorical Christianity.

One

decisive reference to the ascension of the visible and tangible Jesus from the surface of the earth upward through the clouds, pointed out in the writings of St. Paul or in the Gospel, beginning as it certainly did, and as in the copy according to Mark it now does, with the baptism of John, or in the writings of the Apostle John, would have been more effective in flooring Old Nic of Amsterdam

and his familiars, than volumes of such "maybe's," "perhapses," and "should be rendered," as these.

Ib.

viii. c. 2. c. 6.

I must confess our Saviour compiled no books, it being a piece of pedantry below so noble and divine a person, &c.

Alas! all this is woefully beneath the dignity of Henry More, and shockingly against the majesty of the High and Holy One, so very unnecessarily compared with Hendrick Nicholas, of Amsterdam, mercer!

Ib.

x. c. 13. s. 5, 6.

A new sect naturally attracts to itself a portion of the madmen of the time, and sets another portion into activity as alarmists and oppugnants. I cannot therefore pretend to say what More might not have found in the writings, or heard from the mouth, of some lunatic who called himself a Quaker. But I do not recollect, in any work of an acknowledged Friend, a denial of the facts narrated by the Evangelists, as having really taken place in the same sense as any other facts of history. If they were symbols of spiritual acts and processes, as Fox and Penn contended, they must have been, or happened; — else how could they be symbols?

It is too true, however, that the positive creed of the Quakers is and ever has been extremely vague and misty. The deification of the conscience, under the name of the Spirit, seems the main article of their faith; and of the rest they form no opinion at all, considering it neither necessary nor desirable. I speak of Quakers in general. But what a lesson of experience does not this thirteenth chapter of so great and good a man as H. More afford to us, who know what the Quakers really are! Had the followers of George Fox, or any number of them collectively, acknowledged the mad notions of this Hendrick Nicholas? If not — —

Index p. 2

Inquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity

Part II. ii. c. 2.

Confutation of Grotius on the 17th chapter of the Apocalypse.

Has or has not Grotius been overrated? If Grotius applied these words (

magnus testis et historiarum diligentissimus inquisitor

) to Epiphanius in honest earnest, and not ironically, he must have been greatly inferior in sound sense and critical tact both to Joseph Scaliger and to Rhenferd. Strange, that to Henry More, a poet and a man of fine imagination, it should never have occurred to ask himself, whether this scene, Patmos, with which the drama commences, was not a part of the poem, and, like all other parts, to be interpreted symbolically? That the poetic — and I see no reason for doubting the real — date of the Apocalypse is under Vespasian, is so evidently implied in the five kings preceding (for Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, were abortive emperors) that it seems to me quite lawless to deny it. That [Greek: Lateinos] is the meaning of the 666, (c. xiii. 18.) and the treasonable character of this, are both shown by Irenæus's pretended rejection, and his proposal of the perfectly senseless

Teitan

instead.

Footnote 1:

Folio. 1708. — Ed.

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Footnote 2:

Decem dierum vix mihi est familia

. Heaut. v. i. — Ed.

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Footnote 3:

Hendrick Nicholas and the Family of Love. — Ed.

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