Parrhesia, or Christian and Ministerial Freedom of Speech [pp. 312-336]

Freedom of Speech.
thing very different from personality. The difference is this,
that in the one case the statement of truth, or the description
of character, being derived from inspiration, suits the case of
every individual to whom it was intended to apply, and commends itself at once to every man's conscience in the sight of
God. In the other case, the uninspired preacher sets out from
an individual subject and endeavours to describe it in accordance with the teachings of God's word.
To this method there are two objections. In the first place,
it provokes a just resentment, which effectually seals the heart,
and even steels the conscience, against the truth which is really
presented. Nothing more certainly protects men from the
power of the truth than a sense of injustice or of any other
moral defect in the mode of its administration. And in the
case supposed, there is a ground for this resistance, in the
actual departure of the preacher from the scriptural method of
procedure, and his presumptuous exchange of what is there laid
down by an infallible authority, for the precarious dictates of
his own uninspired reason or experience. Forgetting that
"the foolishness of God is wiser than men," we are too apt to
endeavour to improve upon the truth as he has given it, in the
hope of making it more searching and effective.
But in the next. place, this hope is a vain one. All experience teaches that the consciences of men are most effectually
reached, not by descriptions made expressly for them, in the
exercise of a mere human wisdom, but by the presentation of
more general truths, revealed in Scripture, and applied to the
individual subject by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a
fact easily established, that while pulpit personalities most commonly rebound without effect, or any but a bad one, from the
objects at which they were specifically aimed, the strongest
impressions ever made upon the conscience are produced without a special or immediate reference to the person thus affected.
A striking illustration of this statement is afforded by the fact,
familiar to the readers of religious biography, that men have
frequently supposed themselves to be the objects of a personal
attack, when the person charged with making it was not so
much as aware of their presence, or perhaps of their existence,
or when the imaginary libel was delivered, without any change
1852.]
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