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

Freedom of Speech.
left in frigid contact with the memory and judgment, or in
warm but inert contact with the fancy or the sensibilities,
there may be strength and clearness, there may be brilliancy
and beauty; but there is not apostolical -ii plainness,
boldness, or freedom of speech.
Again, it is essential to this character, that men should be
constrained to view the truth, as connected not only with their
obligations but their destiny-not only with their present
standing in the sight of God, but with their everlasting state
as suspended on his justice or his mercy. Here the pride of
man revolts, and the insidious desire of pleasing men begs hard
for some suppression or some softening of the odious truth.
And this prayer is seconded by plausible appeals to the extravagant and dangerous excess to which some go in their
description of the future state, and in their constant threatenings of hell-fire and damnation. But such errors can in no
wise change the truth of God, or the duty of those who are
commissioned to proclaim it. We are bound to practise the
same wise reserve that is characteristic of the Scriptures in
relation to this awful subject. We have no right to indulge a
meretricious fancy, or to feed a morbid curiosity with wild
imaginations of realities so fearful and unutterable, that the
word of God affords only passing and imperfect glimpses of
them. But if in avoiding this extreme, we rush into the other
of allowing men to think that the effects of sin are limited to
this life, and that the awful retributions of eternity have no
reality, at least in reference to them, however loud, or paradoxical, or personal our statement of the truth may be, we do
not, after all, speak the word of God with boldness.
The errors which we have described may spring from various
sources; from defective views of truth in those who undertake
to teach it-from their shallow experience in religion —from a
false view of the end to be attained by preaching-or an error
of judgment as to the best means of attaining it. But the same
effects may also spring from outward causes, and of these we
shall name one, both on account of its extensive influence, and
as a means of bringing this whole subject home to ourselves,
and to our readers, as a matter not of mere official and professional, but personal and universal interest.
1852.]
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