John Locke 『The Reasonableness of Christianity』

The Reasonableness of Christianity, and A Discourse of Miracles (Library of Modern Religious Thought)

• The Preface

The little satisfaction and consistency that is to be found in most of the systems of divinity I have met with, made me betake myself to the sole reading of the Scripture (to which they all appeal) for the understannding the Christian religion.
What from thence, by an attentive and unbiassed search, I have received, reader, I here deliver to thee.
If by this my labour thou receivest any light, or confirmation in the truth, join with me in thanks to the Father or lights, fo his codescension to our understandings.
If, upon a fair and unprejudiced examination, thou findest I have mistaken the sense and tenor of the gospel, I beseech thee, as a true Christian, in the spirit of the gospel(Whisch is that of charist) and in the words of sobriety, set me right, in the doctorine of salvation.

• 1

It is obvious to any one, who reads the New Testament, that the doctrine of redemption, and consequently of the gospel, is founded upon the supposition of Adam's fall.
To understand therefore what we are restored to by Jesus Christ, we must consider what the scripture shews we lost by Adam.
This I thought worthy of a diligent and unbiassed search: since I found the two extremes, that men run into on this point, either on the one hand shook the foundations of all religion, or on the other made Christianity almost nothing.
For whilst some men would have all Adam's posterity doomed to eternal infinite punishment, for the transgression of Adam, whom millions had never heard of, and no one had authorized to transact for him, or be his representative; this seemed to others so little consistent with the justice or goodness of the great and infinite God, that they thought there was no redemption necessary, and consequently that there was none, rather than admit of it upon a supposition so derogatory to the honour and attributes of that infinite being; and so made Jesus Christ nothing but the restorer and preacher of pure natural religion; thereby doing violence to the whole tenor of the New Testament.
And, indeed, both sides will be suspected to have trespassed this way, against the written Word of God, by any one, who does but take it to be a collection of writings, designed by God, for the instruction of the illiterate bulk of mankind, in the way to salvation; and therefore, generally, and in necessary points, to be understood in the plain direct meaning of the words and phrases, such as they lived; without such learned, artificial, and forced senses of them, as are sought out, and put upon them, in most of the systems of divinity, according to the notions that each one has been bred up in.

• 2

To one that, thus unbiassed, reads the Scriptures, what Adam fell from, is visible, was the state of perfect obedience, which is called justice in the New Teastament, though the words, which in the original signifies justice, be translated righteousness: and, by this fall, he lost paradise, wherein was tranquillity and the tree of life, i.e.he lost bliss and immortality.
The penalty annexed to the breach of the law, with the sentence pronounced by God upon it, shews this.
The penalty stands thus, Gen.ii.17, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”.
How was this executed?
He did eat, but in the day he did eat, he did not actually die, but was turned out of paradise from the tree of life, and shut out for ever from it, “lest he should take thereof and live for ever”.
This shews that the state of paradise was a state of immortality, of life without end, which he lost that very day that he eat: his life began from thence to his actual death, was but like the time of a prisoner between the sentence passed and the execution, which was in view and certain.
Death then entered, and shewed his face, which before was shut out, and not known, so St.Paul, Rom. v.12, “By one man sin entered into the world, nad death by sin”;i.e. by reason of his transgression, all men are mortal, and come to die.

• 3

This is so clear in these cited places, and so much the current of the New Testament, that nobody can deny, but that the doctrine of the gospel is, that death came on all men by Adam's sin; only they differ about the signification of the word death: for some will have it to be a state of guilt, wherein not only he, but all his posterity was so involved, that every one descended of him deserved endless torment, in hell-fire.
I shall say nothing more here, how far, in the apprehensions of men, this consists with the justice and goodness of God, having mentioned it above: but it seems a strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest and directest words, that by death should lose his life, but kept alive in perpetual exquisite torments?
And would any one think himself fairly dealt with, that was so used?

[翻訳]

服部知文『キリスト教の合理性』
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