ON
INDIFFERENCE IN RELIGION.
One of the common objections of
Romanists against the church of England is founded on the existence of
religious indifference among some of her members, or the persuasion that all
sects and doctrines are equally secure, and that no particular belief or communion
is necessary to salvation. Bossuet, Milner, and others, have asserted that this
system is extensively prevalent amongst us, and have employed it as a proof
that our churches are not Christian.
The origin of religious
indifference may be traced indirectly to the denial of all church authority,
and the assertion of the unlimited right of private judgment, which arose among
the Socinians, and were sometimes incautiously maintained even by members of
the foreign reformed societies; whence the Independents and dissenters also
derived them. It is plain however, that although, in the imagined exigencies of
controversy for defence of the truth, some individuals during the time of the
Reformation may have let fall expressions, which, in their legitimate
consequences, might actually remove the necessity of adhering to particular
tenets, those consequences were not known or allowed by them ; for all the
reformed communities subscribed and imposed confessions of faith, in which the
absolute necessity of believing certain doctrines is asserted, and heretics are
consigned to perdition. There can be no doubt indeed, that in the sixteenth
century, any one who had advanced openly the doctrine of indifference, would
have been regarded by the reformed as an infidel, and most probably experienced
the fate of Servetus. Chillingworth, in practically denying to the church
all authority in matters of faith, leaving each man to form his own religion
from the Bible only, by his independent inquiries, removed some of the
strongest barriers against the intrusion of heresy; and his doctrine, that
Scripture was so clear in all necessary matters, that he who received it as his
rule of faith, could not be a heretic, opened a way for the doctrine of
indifference. Still, as he did not draw the conclusions which led to this
result, his principles were unsuspectingly adopted by many, who would have
shrunk with horror from the conclusions which others afterwards deduced from
them. The history of indifference, in England, properly begins with Hoadly;
who, in the early part of the eighteenth century, first rendered this system
known. The doctrines maintained by him and his disciples, were as follows:–
I. That the true church of Christ
being invisible, it is not a matter of necessity to be of any particular
visible church.
II. That Christ being the only
lawgiver and judge in his church, there is no other authority in the church in
matters of faith and practice, affecting salvation. That it is therefore
needless to hold any particular creed or interpretation of Scripture, and
sinful to require from others the belief of any.
III. That sincerity, or our own
persuasion of the correctness of our opinions (whether well or ill-founded), is
the only condition of acceptance with God.
IV. That the apostolical
succession of the clergy, ministerial benedictions, and generally the
sacraments and rites of the church, are trifling, ridiculous, or unnecessary.
V. That Christ's kingdom not
being of this world, all temporal support of the church is contrary to the
Gospel. (William Palmer, A Treatise on the Church of Christ: Designed
Chiefly for the Use of Students in Theology, 2 vols. [3d ed.; London: J. G.
F. & J. Rivington, 1842], 1:207-9, emphasis in bold added)
