I cannot take leave of my reader without desiring him to acknowledge his obligations to the late venerable Dean of Carlisle, Dr. Isaac Milner, to whose completion of his brother’s valuable history I am indebted, almost exclusively, for my account of Luther. It is a work of great research in which, by ransacking a vast body of original documents, and drawing light from sources which former historians had been content to leave unexplored, he has vindicated, illustrated, and adorned this dauntless standard-bearer of the Reformation.
Postscript on Plato and Augustine
It has been my endeavour to assist the unlearned and those who may not have access to books, by giving some account of the various persons named in this work. There are two capital writers I would aim at: PLATO is one of these; AUGUSTINE is the other. Not only their celebrity, but the frequent reference made to them by Luther (especially to the latter), would render my omission inexcusable.
- The great PLATO, then (for such he truly was), seems to have been no favourite with Luther, who was deeply conscious of the mischievous tendency of his writings as fostering a spirit of proud self-sufficiency, and as having cooperated with other sources of error to contaminate the truth, by exhibiting some semblances of its glory and beauty. In Part iv. Sect. lii. he speaks contemptuously of his ‘Chaos;’ and in Part ii. Sect. v. of his ‘Ideas.’ This Plato, however, appears to have been led into some vast conceptions of God (whence he derived them, is another question) — His nature, will, power, and operations into some exalted aspirations after communion with him — and into some elaborate attempts to purify and elevate the morals of his countrymen. Like others who speculated upon God without God’s guidance, he made matter eternal as well as God, though he gave God a supremacy over it, and ascribed to him both the modelling of the world, and commanding it into being.
Doubtless, it is a strange jumble which he makes — the world having a soul, indeed a compound soul; man with his two souls, and second causes placing a material body round a germ of immortality! — but in his ‘chaos,’ wild as it is, and that universal soul which was plunged into it, and by its agitation brought out order, we see the vestige of corrupted truth; in his ‘ideas,’ or ‘first forms of things,’ we see something yet more nearly approaching reality — even the eternal God devising, ordaining, and protruding everything which exists. And in his ideal world, with God reigning in its highest height, as compared with the visible system and its sun, we catch a faint glimpse of the invisible glory, and of that repose which will be found in the uninterrupted contemplation of the reposing God. I am not for bringing men back to Platonism, but for letting them see, that even pagan Plato had a conception and a relish beyond many on whom the true light has shone; and for leading them to understand, that revelation and tradition have extended much more widely than they are aware of; so that it should not appear strange, if even heathens are dealt with on a ground of knowledge which we may falsely have supposed they did not have the means of possessing. (See Part iii. Sect, xxviii. note v . Part v. Sect. xxvi. note c .)
‘The notion of a Trinity, more or less removed from the purity of the Christian faith, is found to have been a leading principle in all the ancient schools of philosophy, and in the religions of almost all nations; and traces of an early popular belief of it appear even in the abominable rites of idolatrous worship. If reason was insufficient for this great discovery, what could be the means of information but what the Platonists themselves assign, qeoparadotov qeologia; (theoparadotos theologia) “a theology delivered from the Gods,” i.e., a revelation. This is the account which Platonists, who were no Christians, have given of the origin of their master’s doctrine.
But from what revelation could they derive their information, who lived before the Christian, and had no light from the Mosaic? For whatever some of the early Fathers may have imagined, there is no evidence that Plato or Pythagoras were at all acquainted with the Mosaic writings: not to insist that the worship of a Trinity is traced to an earlier age than that of Plato or of Pythagoras, or even of Moses. Their information could only be drawn from traditions founded upon earlier revelations; from the scattered fragments of the ancient patriarchal creed — that creed which was universal before the defection of the first idolaters, which the corruptions of idolatry, gross and enormous as they were, could never totally obliterate.’ —
‘What Socrates said of him, what Plato wrote, and the rest of the heathen philosophers of several nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the sun of it was set in the race of Noah.’ (See Horsley’s Letters to Priestley, pp. 49, 50.)
I am rather surprised that Luther should fleer 65 so roughly at Plato, because his beloved Augustine acknowledged obligations to him.
‘And first, as you should show me how you resist the proud, and give grace to the humble; and how great your mercy is shown to be in the way of humility; you procured for me, by means of a person highly inflated with philosophical pride, some of the books of Plato translated into Latin, in which I read passages concerning the divine word similar to those in the first chapter of St John’s Gospel; in which his eternal divinity was exhibited, but not his incarnation, his atonement, his humiliation, and glorification of his human nature. For you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes; that men might come to you weary and heavy laden, and that you might refresh them…. Thus, I began to form better views of the divine nature, even from Plato’s writings, as your people of old spoiled the Egyptians of their gold, because, whatever good there is in anything, is all your own.
And at the same time, I was enabled to escape the evil which was in those books, and not attend to the idols of Egypt.’ —
His historian remarks upon this,
‘There is something divinely spiritual in the manner of his deliverance. That the Platonic books should also give the first occasion, is very remarkable; though I apprehend the Latin translation which he saw, had improved on Plato by the mixture of something scriptural, according to the manner of the Ammonian philosophers.’ 66
Thus Plato, it seems, could hold the candle to an Augustine, while he was himself far from the light. But there was truth, we see, and discriminating truth, mixed and blended with his falsehood.
- AUGUSTINE’S errors were those of Luther, increased by an ignorance of the doctrine of justification. He had the elements of this doctrine, it is said, but he never put them together.
His case was a very remarkable one. After a profligate youth, in which he had run to great excess of riot; after having infected himself with the poison of the Manichees (see Part iv. Sect. ix. note v. Sect. xi. note h); after having sold himself into the service of vain-glory, lasciviousness, pride and atheism, he was made to bow down before the true God, and to kiss his Son. God had hereby signally and specially prepared him to be the champion of grace in opposition to Pelagianism, which started up in his days a many-varied monster. By degrees, he was led to use his own experience as an interpreter of Scripture. And though, as his historian tells us, St. Paul’s doctrine of predestination was a doctrine that, with him, followed experiential religion, as a shadow follows the substance — it was not embraced for its own sake — yet follow him it did. And he was persuaded of it, and embraced it, and maintained it in much, though not all of its vigour, against its antagonists. In fact, how could he defend the doctrine of grace, as his historian terms it (not meaning grace in its fulness, but only the gift of the Spirit), without it?
If his historian is correct, we have in Augustine a confirmation of the salutary effect of controversy. It was Pelagianism which made Augustine understand what he did about predestination. We have it also exemplified that, not to know the root and outline of truth is not to know any branch or feature of it thoroughly. His historian would commend him for his moderation, which here is another name for his ignorance. But the reality is, not thoroughly understanding predestination, which is the root “of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ,” he did not understand justification, he did not understand redemption, he did not understand man’s state, he did not understand that grace of which he was the strenuous and honoured defender.
Grace of the Spirit (properly so called) is but a part
