In connection with the Charge of the Bishop of Lincoln, reported at considerable length in The Times of Wednesday, it may be interesting to state at greater detail his Lordship's views on the Colenso controversy :
RATIONALISM.—BISHOP COLENSO.
Referring next to the prevalence of what he termed an egoistic scepticism, which he had to deplore on the last occasion, the right rev. prelate remarked that though the practical English mind might, indeed, he unwilling to examine and easily to admit the first principles of a philosophy which resolved all being thought and personality into impersonal reason realizing itself in one's own conscience, yet the corollaries from them, that in the thinking self resided the good, the beautiful, and the true; that in self, therefore, and its intuitions was their measure to be found, and by self and its intuitions their claims to be solved; that whatever contradicted and was at variance with what we believed could be right and ought not to be true; that, therefore, a revelation from God to man if not impossible was at least improbable, inasmuch as all necessary truth was already in man's own being, and that, at all events, all claims to revelation must be tried by the light of one's conscience—all this was go flattering to the pride of the natural heart, so congenial to the habits of intellectual self-confidence which had been fostered by the rapid triumphs of science, and so soothing to minds which had rebounded from high hard assertions of authority, that it was not surprising that such doctrines, more or less developed and disguised, had found a wide acceptance and exercised a powerful influence. Whenever man's subjective judgment was set up under any system or any form as the ultimate standard of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, to the depreciation of external evidences and the contradiction of the teachings of revelation,the result was invariably scepticism or infidelity, whatever name might be given to it. When they last met the most startling manifestation of the sceptical spirit of the day had been the publication of a volume of seven essays, six of which were written by as many clergymen of the Church of England. A more melancholy, though, perhaps, less dangerous example, of its influence had since been exhibited by a Bishop of the Colonial Church, from whose high mathematical attainments and zeal for the missionary cause much had been expected, but whose unhappy adoption of the first principles of scepticism had led him on with characteristic rapidity to a rejection of the fundamental doctrines of our faith. In this case the foundation of the superstructure was not concealed in a haze of ambiguities, but was laid distinctly open. After quoting some sentences of Bishop Colenso laying down the doctrine of the supremacy of the 'divine light ' in every matter, spiritual or otherwise, the bishop observed that before such a self-constituted tribunal revelation, which would no longer be a necessity but a mere surplusage, was arraigned to be questioned and to be judged. To a mind which had thus cordially accepted the first principle of all heresy and unbelief and constituted itself the paramount judge of truth and falsehood, it was a matter of mere circumstance and accident in what direction its career or error happened to turn. In this instance, having been led to comment on the first epistle to the Romans, in what was strangely called a missionary commentary, he arrived at a denial of the original depravity of man, then of the atonement and vicarious sacrifice of Christ, and of justification by faith, which, as the author said, was made, after all, an affair of works, and to assert on the other hand the universal justification of all men, the universal teaching and indwelling of the Spirit in all men, and ultimately, it would seem, the universal salvation of all men. There might be a probation, indeed, after judgment—a purifying chastisement which sinners needed—and so the joys of heaven might admit of progression and decrease; but as regarded the future of the wicked, ' eternal ' did not mean endless, nor if they went into everlasting fire need it be believed that they were to remain there. It hardly needed to be added that in such a system the Sacraments were no necessary signs of grace, and although the Lord's Supper was admitted to be an actual means of grace to all devout receivers, yet it was superstition to fancy that by partaking of the consecrated bread and wine we were made partakers of it more truly than by any other act of faith, whether wrought in our secret chambers, or in the daily duties of life,or amidst the prayers and praises of the congregation. Thus was built up another Gospel—a rival to the revealed Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The same principle of the supremacy of the individual judgment over the revelation of God was next carried to the study of the Old Testament,and to a mind already indisposed to accept the miracles or to acquiesce in the stern reality of a dispensation in which the Almighty was pleased to work, not by the hidden laws of His Providence, but personally with His arm bare, the German neology found ready access, and a series of rapid attacks followed on the authenticity of the Pentateuch, the authorship of which was denied and the morality of which was pronounced unworthy of the Divine Being. Exodus was declared to have been compiled from conflicting traditions, or invented by Samuel; and the Book of Deuteronomy to have been composed in the reign of Josiah, most likely by the prophet Jeremiah. These assaults led by one whose office and vows should have placed him among the first of the defenders of the faith, naturally excited anxiety and uneasiness. He (the Bishop of Lincoln) would not deny the ingenuity of some of his (Dr.Colenso's) speculations, the industry and clearness with which they were worked out, or the sincerity of his convictions, evinced by the triumph and satisfaction displayed at each successive blow he struck at doctrines which lately were solemnly believed by himself, and which were so deeply rooted in the faith of Christendom. By degrees, however, the excitement had subsided. The objections were found to be misapprehensions capable of solution, and no objection was a refutation unless it was insoluble. The attack on the authenticity of the Pentateuch and on the early date of its composition was made with a critical apparatus so uncertain in its basis, so complex in its operations, and depending for its application so much on the tastes and prepossessions of the individual who employed it, that scarcely any two critics who had used it had arrived at the same results, while the theories offered as a substitute for the belief of all ages were so improbable that there was little fear that they would be accepted widely or held long even by the proverbial credulity of scepticism.
On the whole it might be anticipated, after a careful review of the attack and of those replies which it had called forth, and these volumes which caused so much alarm, and which could never be received by a Christian or Churchman without pain and sorrow, would soon sleep on neglected shelves by the side of the Tolands and the Chubbs of the past. Nevertheless, the utterance of such opinions from such a quarter afforded reasonable ground for anxiety. In addition to the contagion of the example thus set by a man holding high office in the Church, there was the influence of a portion of the popular press, and though the great body of the people of England were, thank God, sound in their faith, there was too much reason to believe that the poison was working even in the quietest and remotest parishes, and among a class of persons where the pastor least suspected. Nor could he (the Bishop) believe that the evil had reached its highest. Hitherto the authenticity and veracity of the Old Testament only had been questioned, Dr. Colenso, indeed, had admitted that the same spirit of inquiry must undoubtedly be carried into the writings of the New Testament, and if there were any part of the Church's teachings depending on the New Testament which would not bear the 'test of truth'—that is, what his 'light of the inner man ' considered truth—'we shall,' he said, 'of course be bound to reject that also.' It was most important, then, to hear in mind that the authority and veracity of the Old and New Testaments were closely entwined together—that not only did our Lord appeal to that collection of our sacred documents, and specifically to the writings of Moses, and not only did his Apostles quote from them as an ultimate authority, and attribute to the Holy Ghost the words they quoted from them, but both they and their Divine Master had set the seal of Divine testimony precisely to those facts which rationalistic scepticism rejected, so that the history of man's creation and fall, of the translation of Enoch, of the fall of Sodom, of the fate of Lot's wife, the story of Balaam, and the miracle of Jonah, came to us on the authority not merely of the old Testament, but also of the New, and a further and very solemn meaning was imported to our Saviour's warning—' If you believe not Moses, how shall ye believe my words ?' Nor must we forget, in estimating the dangers of the present or the conflicts of the future, that scepticism usually melted into unreasoning credulity, and its ordinary recoil was a blind refuge in the fixed and unbending authority of a Church like that of Rome. Our only hope was in that Power whose breath could dispel the clouds around us. Meanwhile there was an instrument which He had put into our hands, and made it our duty to use—the greater diligence of those to whom the cure of souls was intrusted in prayer, in the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and in such studies as helped to the knowledge of the same, in the patient and earnest inculcation, of the Gospel, its evidences, doctrines, and duties, on their people, and in the framing of their own outer and inner lives that they might be proofs of the power of religion which no sceptics could gainsay—an argument which the most unlearned could understand, and which convinced those who were too indolent or too prejudiced to reason.
Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Wednesday 28 December 1864, page 2
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