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

Freedom of Speech.
inquire; nor what specific declaration of the truth is here referred to, as the cause of this effect, whether real or supposed.
It is sufficient for our purpose to regard Paul as asserting, or at
least assuming, that the speaking of the truth may be a cause
or an occasion of hostility; a fact which, even in its vaguest and
most general form, may claim our serious attention and suggest
important subjects of inquiry.
The very statement of this proposition must remind us of
our Saviour's solemn and repeated declarations, that he came
not to bring peace, but a sword, to kindle flames of discord
among men, to be the author of division in communities and
families, to set parents against their children, and children
against their parents, so that a man's enemies should be those
of his own household. These and other like expressions partake largely of a quality, by which our Lord's instructions were
distinguished, and which cannot perhaps be better described
than by the use of the word paradox, as properly denoting
that which shocks men's prepossessions, and appears, at first
sight, to do violence to essential and acknowledged principles.
The paradoxes, by which some now seek to gain distinction,
are the affectations of vanity or weakness, the abuses of a
method, which is not without its uses in the hands of an infallible instructor, as appears from the example of our Lord himself, who often roused attention and excited to inquiry, by
adopting that form of expression least adapted in itself to conciliate the prejudices of his hearers. And that this was done
with a deliberate design, is clear from the unquestionable fact,
that when his discourses of this kind were cavilled at, instead
of explaining away the cause of the dissatisfactioni, he enhanced
it by the use of terms still stronger. A remarkable example of
this usage is afforded by the long discourse recorded in the
sixth of John, in which the figurative exhibition of himself as
food to the believer is repeated and enforced, after every
expression of surprise and incredulity, until it reaches what his
hearers reckoned a revolting and incredible extreme, so that
even some who had been known as his disciples, pronounced it
"a hard saying," and walked no more with him. This is only
one marked instance of a practice which may be described as
characteristic of our Saviour's method of instruction, and to
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