PASTORAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
EXPERIENCES
"Two things have set the church on fire and been the plagues of it above one thousand years: 1. Enlarging our creed, and making more fundamentals than ever God made.
"2. Composing, and so imposing, our creeds and confessions in our own words and phrases.
"When men have learned more manners and humility than to accuse God's language as too general and obscure, as if they could mend it, and have more dread of God, and compassion on themselves, than to make those to be fundamentals or certainties which God never made so; and when they reduce their confessions, 1. to their due extent, and 2. to scripture phrase, that dissenters may not scruple subscribing, then, and, I think, never till then, shall the church have peace about doctrinals. It seems to me no heinous Socinian motion which Chillingworth is blamed for, viz., Let all men believe the Scripture, and that only, and endeavor to believe it in the true sense, and promise this, and require no more of others; and they shall find this not only better, but the only means to suppress heresy and restore unity." - RICHARD BAXTER'S Works, vol. xxii. p. 236.
IN 1853 Bushnell preached a commemorative sermon, in which, he reviewed his ministry of twenty years. Like all great preachers, he usually refrained from allusion to himself in the pulpit. His sermons were immensely charged with personal experience, but it was not put in a personal form. This is the more significant in view of the fact that the accusations made against him were calculated to disturb his relations to his people; hut he would not use his pulpit for personal defense. For the most part, and in all the larger relations of life, his fine sense of propriety was seldom overborne by provocation, or by opportunities to strengthen his own side of the question. He made few apologies and asked no favors. But a pastorate of twenty years justified and even called for a review, and he took occasion to unbosom himself, not so much for defense, as to acknowledge the affection and confidence of his people.
The publication of his books each more heretical than the previous one had left him but a small following among his clerical brethren, but his church stood by him from first to last with full-hearted allegiance. In this sermon, parts of
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which have been quoted in previous chapters, he takes his people into his confidence, rehearses the stages of his mental history as he passed "into the vein of comprehensiveness," tells them why he preached on slavery and other political questions, and why he wrote "Christian Nurture" and "God in Christ" and "Christ in Theology." Of the last two volumes he spoke as follows: -
"Regretting some things which I had hereto-fore published, not as unjust to others, but as too violent in the manner to be just to myself and the meekness of the Christian spirit, I had determined, from the first, to have no controversy over these discourses, - a determination to which I have resolutely adhered, though perceiving, every day, the advantage taken of my silence. A consider-able time after the investigation instituted by my brethren, I concluded that it might be my duty to my friends and the churches, as a contribution for the sake of peace, and not for controversy, to publish the substance of my argument before the Association, which I did in a second volume. And the final result of the whole matter in issue, I think, may be discovered in the fact that, instead of the whole bushel of attacks on my first volume which I gathered up a few days ago, no one article of review or hostile criticism has ever to this hour been published against a volume quite as heretical as the first, more adequately stated, and confirmed in every point by appeal to the accepted standards of the church. . . .
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"You have been immovable and true in your fidelity to me. . . You have never been a captious people. It is a long time since I have heard any complaint of nay preaching but two: one, that I preach too long sermons, which is sometimes true; and the other, that I preach Christ too much, which I cannot think is a fault to be repented of; for Christ is all, and beside him there is no gospel to be preached or received. . . .
"I wish it were possible, also, to speak of the way in which God has led me on out of the difficulties and reserved questions which encompassed my early ministry. I will only say that Christianity is opened to me now as a new heaven of truth, a supernatural heaven, wide as the firmament, possible only to faith, to that luminous, clear, and glorious. This one thing I have found, that it is not in man to think out a gospel, or to make a state of light by phosphorescence at his own centre. He can have the great mystery of godliness only as it is mirrored in his heart by an inward revelation of Christ. Do the will and you shall know the doctrine, this is the truth I have proved by my twenty years of experience."
In June, 1853, a third effort was made by the Fairfield West Association to bring Bushnell to trial. The form of attack was a demand, signed by fifty ministers, that the Hartford Central Association be excluded from the general body, on the ground that by protecting Bushnell it had sanctioned a scheme, which "is a corruption of God's
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holy truth, a subversion of all vital and fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and destructive of confidence in revelation itself." It also accused the Hartford Central of "subverting the doctrinal basis of our union and fellowship in the General Association."1 The Hartford Association had become aware of this measure before the meeting was held, and had prepared a reply drawn up by Drs. Porter and Patton protesting "against this invasion of our rights," and reaffirming that Dr. Bushnell's opinions, as expressed in his books, might be erroneous, but are not fundamentally so, and are not liable to the charge of subverting the doctrinal basis of the General Association. A long and bitter debate was brought to a close by an adroit resolution presented by Dr. Leonard Bacon, which satisfied the Hartford Central, and secured a majority that defeated the Fairfield West Association. The resolution an admirable illustration of the hindering force of general phrases was substantially as follows: -
"With the opinions imputed to Dr. Bushnell by the complainants, we have no fellowship. Candidates for the ministry who profess them should not be approved. Ministers reasonably charged with holding them are properly subject to discipline, in due form and order. But whether these opinions are justly imputed to Dr. Bushnell, or not, depends upon the construction given to cer-
1 See Dr. E. P. Barker's pamphlet on The Hartford Central Association and the Bushnell Controversy, p. 21.
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tain quotations from his books; and upon that question we have nothing to say."
Each sentence was a door of escape from trial, and the key word in each was so commanding and so dear to Congregationalists that hesitation was impossible. It was a triumph of sagacity and common sense. Resolutions were then offered advising the General Association to secure a trial of Bushnell before a mutual Council, but they were promptly tabled. A protest was entered against such action, as closing the door to all redress; this was met by a declaration that there was no further need of action.
The final effort of the Fairfield West was made the next year, 1854, at the annual meeting in New Haven, Resolutions were introduced requesting the General Association "to cease from appointing persons to certify to the standing of ministers in its connection, and submitting that if such certificates are given, we cannot be responsible for them." It was also intimated that its own future appearance in the body would depend upon the adoption of these resolutions. It overshot the mark in this proposed action, and the only question raised in the Association was whether to table the resolutions, or to unseat the delegates for introducing so destructive and schismatic a proposal. Bushnell, by an unexpected stroke, opposed either course, and urged that the resolutions "be entered on the records and published with the minutes of the association." He supported his resolution in a
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speech of great ability, but too full of the technicalities of the case to be of general interest. They are the last words in a noisy but not useless controversy. It not only enforced a study of Bushnell's positions, but those of the conservative side. The re-definitions of orthodoxy were made with ability and clearness, but it is to be doubted if they strengthened the cause they championed. Bushnell won slowly and never wholly, but his critics as slowly and more surely lost ground. Both were passing on to a new order.
The ecclesiastical side of the controversy is interesting as being probably the last effort that will be made in New England, as has already been said, to bring an author to trial for his theological opinions. Churches may still call councils to advise them what action to take in view of the preaching of the pastor, but the day has gone by when ecclesiastical bodies will sit in judgment on books. The effort in Bushnell's case did not reach a trial; that it failed was due to several causes, chief of which was the tenuous, elastic, and in-tensely democratic form of the Congregational system. It was made for fellowship and spiritual freedom, and not for guarding a dogmatic faith. However it may have been used for enforcing a formal orthodoxy, it was not constructed for that purpose. Its efforts in securing dogmatic platforms have been neither useful nor successful. Hence, in late years, trials for heresy have chiefly been carried on by the religious newspaper, a
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faded image of the inquisition, as unreasoning and relentless, but less fatal than fagots. Another reason for the failure was the invincible common sense of the majority of the ministers forming the General Association. It ran ahead of their orthodoxy and held them in check. They did not agree with Bushnell, but to thrust him out of their ranks for making "improvements in theology" a thing which began, with Edwards, and had been going on ever since, and in no place so rapidly as at New Haven, where most of them had been educated- was not to be thought of. Their action, or rather refusal to act, was clue not to approval or sympathy, except in a few cases, but to the absurdity of doing otherwise. The result was also due to the man himself. He had had a legal training, and - with all his mysticism - he had a legal mind. He planted himself upon the Congregational order, and his rights in it as they were defined in the functions of the local Association. If it had presented him for trial, he would not have held back, but he neither courted, nor shunned it. When forced into the conflict at the meetings of the General Association, he showed himself a stout but dignified antagonist. We cannot find that his Christian character was impeached except in the form of accusations of presumption in handling his great themes, a strange charge to come from those who did not hesitate to define the interior nature of the Godhead as against one who refused to define it. Bushnell was a bold and
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venturesome, but not a presumptuous thinker; nearly every contention was a protest against presumption.
But there were two sides to this controversy. Bushnell was an accused but hardly a persecuted man, as he himself recognized in the felicitous dedication of his first volume of sermons to his church, "who have adhered to me in days of accusation." He had no reason to expect other treatment than that he received, and he came well out of it. One has only to recall the hold dogmatic belief had on the clergy and people of New England in the first half of the century, and the violence of Bushnell's attack upon it, to under-stand why he encountered so vigorous criticism. Two centuries before, the Legislature of Massachusetts had ordered Pynchon's book on the "Meritorious Price of our Redemption" to be burned, and he himself probably underwent an analogous process at the hands of Rev. John Norton, who was appointed to reply to it.1
Compared with this, the treatment of Bushnell
1 "His book of 1650 denied that Christ suffered the torments of hell, or was under the wrath of God, or paid the exact penalty of our sins divinely imputed to him; and affirmed that the price of our salvation was his mediatorial obedience, the voluntary offering of himself, which disposed the Father to forgive sin. Thoughts similar to some of these were to appear in a modified form in that conception of Christ's work which the younger Jonathan Edwards was so successfully to advocate in the closing years of the eighteenth century, that it has become known as the 'New England Theory;' but New England was not ripe for such speculators in 1650." (Professor Williston Walker, History of Congregational Churches, p. 216.)
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was gentle, while his offense was more irritating. He questioned the prevailing orthodoxy at all points, - inspiration, regeneration, trinity, atonement, miracles, and otherwise challenged the common ways of thinking. Criticism so wholesale was fully equal to any that he himself encountered, and one would be an over-partial advocate who should put in a plea for sympathy. It was, indeed, many against one, but Bushnell knew that he was on the winning side. Nor was he careful to placate his orthodox brethren by gentle treatment; he might have gone further in that direction with good results. What could be expected after such words as these: "I do peremptorily refuse to justify myself, as regards this matter of trinity, before any New England standard. We have no standard better than a residuary tritheistic compost, such as may be left us after we have cast away that which alone made the old historic doctrine of trinity possible. I know not whether you design to make a standard for me of this decadent and dilapidated orthodoxy of ours; but if you do, then I appeal to Caesar; I even undertake to arraign your standard itself before the tribunal of history." 1
These are not irenic words; moreover, his critics knew that with all his claims of an older orthodoxy, the past belonged to them rather than to him. Bushnell himself did not claim to be its champion; he simply knew, after a late discovery,
1 Christ in Theology, p. 175.
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that some of its statements of doctrine were better than those made later. They also knew that his study of the past had not been closer or more careful than their own. Bushnell appealed to the past when it sustained him, but his reliance was upon himself. It was the modern tone, and the suspicion that it was an echo from Germany, and a presage of Boston Unitarianism, that disturbed them and lent urgency to their complaints. Their infelicities in method were not exceptional in the ecclesiastical world, and simply followed immemorial precedent. It only remains for us to throw the mantle of charity over their unhappy and misguided contention, and one corner of it must be made to cover him who was the occasion of it.
The action of the General Association in 1854 made it certain that Bushnell could never be tried for heresy. The relief it brought to him may be inferred from a letter to Mr. Chesebrough written several months before the final issue. It is introduced here as of possible interest to those who may be inclined to engage in the business of defending the kingdom of God by trying the authors of theological books for alleged heresy.
HARTFORD, January 23, 1854.
May God in his mercy deliver me, so long as He lets me stay in this life, from all this ecclesiastical brewing of scandals and heresies, the wire pulling, the schemes to get power or to keep it, the factions got up to vent wounded pride and get
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compensation for the chagrin oŁ defeat, - all, the whole from Alpha to Omega, Lord save me from, it! The mournful thing of it is, that no man can be in it and be in the love of God, I think I am certain of it. How can a manager in this field he in the peace also of the Spirit? How can a heart hum with the holy fire when the unholy and earthly is burning so fiercely in it?
The last phase of his ecclesiastical troubles was perhaps the most annoying of all. A dissatisfied minority in his Association withdrew and formed another Association. The feeling of one member extended to a rupture of all personal relations, but was overcome at last by Bushnell's friendly overtures and irenic explanations of his opinions.1
1 The reference is to the Rev. Joel Hawes, D. D., the pastor of the Centre Church in Hartford. The grounds of agreement stated by Bushnell were his assent to the Nicene doctrine of the trinity, and to the "equivalent expression" doctrine of the work of Christ as commonly held in New England. Bushnell's sermons frequently indicate his assent to the latter doctrine, though not in a dogmatic sense; it was an idea to which any one would assent, if it were not offered as a full theory of the atonement. It was by no means Bushnell's doctrine on the subject. Whether it was just to offer "equivalent expression" to Dr. Hawes as a sufficient ground of orthodoxy on the atonement is a question of casuistry upon which we shall not enter further than to say that he offered all that was asked, and withheld what he knew would find no acceptance. Dr. Hawes was equal to the occasion, and showed himself a shrewd and kindly man by accepting the basis stated and again rejecting the book. The strained relations gradually came to an end, and a sincere friendship followed. One is tempted to imagine, however, that when they met, it was sometimes with the soothsayer's smile. We could wish that the reconciliation had not involved theology.
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More irritating was the charge that he had yielded to the pressure and gone back to orthodoxy. He refers to the matter in a letter to Dr. Bartol: -
HARTFORD, June 7, 1855.
Our friend Bellows, whom I saw and dined with on my way to Cuba, told me quite frankly that he, and I think you also, were unable to look on my letter of reconciliation with Dr. Hawes as being less than a recantation. This quite surprised me, for Hawes himself looks upon it in no such manner, and all the notices I have seen from my orthodox friends I don't say my orthodox enemies, have said plainly that my letter is no recantation, or in any wise different from the published sentiments of my books. I think you have fallen into this error by not attending as closely as you might to certain references, and taking Hawes' construction of some things, where he goes beyond them.
The charge of recantation was not strange, but it was unjust. It is possible that it was due in part to disappointment over what was considered Bushnell's tendency. He certainly cut off all expectation that he would enter the Unitarian ranks. But his acceptance of the Nicene doctrine of the trinity was not a denial or recall of what he had said, but only a qualification. He had discovered what it meant, and reinterpreted it in his own broad way. The Unitarians were still reading it
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in the light of their Arian sympathies, and had not learned to regard it as a protest and break-water against Eastern polytheism, and as an assertion of the oneness of God and humanity, a view of it that did not escape such men as Drs. Frederick Hedge and James Walker, the foremost theologians in the Unitarian communion.