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

Freedom of Speech.
In the next place, we have no right to exaggerate, or magnify, or make unduly prominent those features in the system
of divine truth which experience has shown to be peculiarly offensive to the unrenewed heart. The reason is not,
because human tastes are to be gratified at all costs and all
hazards, but because God knows best how far it is desirable to
shock the prepossessions of the minds to be enlightened, and
has adjusted the proportions of the system of revealed truth
accordingly, and any attempt to improve upon this method, as
revealed in Scripture, is of course both impious and absurd.
That'relative position and degree of prominence which he has
himself given to the several doctrines of religion, may be safely
assumed to be the best, not only in itself, or in relation to the
system of divine truth as a whole, but also as a means to the
attainment of the highest practical or moral ends. And he
who, on a contrary hypothesis, attempts to reconstruct or rearrange the system, so as to effect more good than the divine
plan could produce, will learn hereafter, to his cost, if not to
his undoing, that in this, as in all other cases where comparison
is possible, "the foolishness of God is wiser than men." 1 Cor.
i. 25.
In the third place, we have no right so to regulate the
circumstances or the manner of presenting truth as to offend
the prejudices, even of the wicked, much less of our brethren,
any further than the nature of the truth itself may render
unavoidable. This is important, as a distinct caution, because
both the others may be scrupulously followed, and the same
effect result from the neglect of this. A man may think he has
discharged his conscience by avoiding all unauthorized additions
to the truth, and all exaggeration or distortion of its parts; but
if he so contrive the time, the place, the tone, the spirit of his
teachings, as to call forth enmity which would not have been
called forth by the exhibition of the very same truth in a
different manner or in other circumstances, he has no right to
appeal to the purity or orthodoxy of his doctrines, in justification of his method of propounding them, and still less right to
say, as an expression of surprise or indignation at the indocility of those whom he has laboured to enlighten: "Am I then
become your enemy because I tell you the truth?"
VOL. XXIV.-NO. II. 43
1852.]
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