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

Freedom of Speech.
for surprise or disappointment, since the man must be conscious
of his failure even while engaged in the attempt. The same
strength of mind, soundness of judgment, and extent of knowledge, that enable him to estimate the value of the end proposed, and would enable him to reach it but for the impediments in question, must disclose to him at every step how far
he comes short of his purpose. He feels that he is not accomplishing even what he wishes, much less what he owes to God,
to truth, and to his fellow-men. He feels, too, that he cannot
plead the want of knowledge or the want of skill, in palliation
of his failure; for at times he has these at command, and when
obstructed by no moral causes, they perform their office.
When they fail to do so, he needs no one to inform him that the
failure springs from his infirmities of temper, from an unavoidable admixture of the truth, of what belongs to God with a
foreign element, with something pertaining to himself, and partaking of his own corruption. Of all this he may be conscious
even while engaged in the attempt, and cannot therefore be so
easily surprised by the event as those who fail through inadvertence or through want of skill; for these may anticipate success until the moment that decides it to be hopeless. But
though less surprised, he may be equally concerned, and even
more so, since the very points in which he is supposed to be
superior, imply a clearer apprehension and a higher estimate of
that which like the others he has failed to accomplish. It is
often, therefore, with a bitter sense of disappointment, rendered
the more painful by a consciousness of culpable deficiency, that
such are forced at last to say, in thought if not in word, to
those whom they have laboured to convince and to instruct:
"Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?"
But different as these three cases are from one another in the
proximate occasion of the failure which is common to them all,
they are alike in this, that they all suppose the failure to conciliate or make the truth acceptable to be in opposition to the
teacher's wishes and in disappointment of his hopes. In this
respect they differ wholly from a fourth case which we now
.proceed to mention, and in which the same regret arises, not
from inadvertence, want of skill, or infirmity of temper, but
from a deliberate attempt to produce it under the guidance of
1852.]
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