To jump at conclusions on no other authority than their own ignorant assumptions, and to Deify errors on no other authority than their own heated imaginations, has in all ages been the practice of Theologians. Of that practice they are proud, as was the mouse of our Fabulist. Clothed in no other panoply than their own conceits; they deem themselves invulnerable. While uttering the wildest incoherencies their self-complacency remains undisturbed. They remind one of that ambitious crow who, thinking more highly of himself than was quite proper, strutted so proudly about with the peacock's feathers in which he had bedecked himself.—Like him, they plume themselves upon their own egregious folly, and like him should get wellpluckedfor their pains.
Let any one patiently examine their much talked of argument from design, and he will be satisfied that these are no idle charges. That argument has for its ground-work beggarly assumptions and for its main pillar, reasoning no less beggarly. Nature must have had a cause, because it evidently is an effect. The cause of Nature must have been one God; because two Gods, or two million Gods, could not have agreed to cause it. That cause must be omnipotent, wise, and good, because all things are double one against another, and He has left nothing imperfect. Men make watches, build ships or houses, out of pre-existing metals, wood, hemp, bricks, mortar, and other materials, therefore God made nature out of no materials at all. Unassisted nature cannot produce the phenomena we behold, therefore such phenomena clearly prove there is something supernatural. Not to believe in a God who designed Nature, is to close both ears and eyes against evidence, therefore Atheists are wilfully deaf and obstinately blind.
These are samples of the flimsy stuff, our teachers of what nobody knows, would palm upon us as argument for, yea demonstration of, the Being and Attributes of God.
Design, said Shelley, must be proved before a designer can be inferred—the matter in controversy, is the existence of design in the universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the matter in dispute. Insidiously to employ the words contrivance, design and adaptation, before these circumstances are apparent in the universe, thence justly inferring a contriver, is a popular sophism against which it behoves us to be watchful.
To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, that matter is inert, that every combination is the result of intelligence, is also an assumption of the matter in dispute.
Why do we admit design in any machine of human contrivance? simply because innumerable instances of machines having been constructed by human art are present to our mind—because we are acquainted with persons who could construct such machines; but if having no previous knowledge of any artificial contrivance, we had accidently found a watch upon the ground, we should have been justified in concluding that it was a thing of nature, that it was a combination of matter with whose cause we were unacquainted, and that any attempt to account for the origin of its existence would be equally presumptuous and unsatisfactory. [64:1]
The acuteness and, accuracy of this reasoning can only be disputed by persons wedded to system, who either lack capacity to understand what is advanced in opposition to it, or,
Being convinced against their will,Are of the same opinion still.
Experience, the only safe guide on religious as well as other topics, lends no sanction to belief in design apart from material agency. By artfully taking for granted what no Atheist can admit and assuming cases altogether dissimilar to be perfectly analogous, our natural theologians find no difficulty in proving that God is, was, and ever will be; that after contemplating His own perfections, a period sufficiently long for 'eternity to begin and end in,' He said, let there be matter, and there was matter; that with Him all things are possible, and He, of course, might easily have kept, as well as made, man upright and happy, but could not consistently with his own wisdom, or with due regard to his own glorification. Wise in their generation, these 'blind leaders of the blind' ascribe to this Deity of their own invention, powers impossible, acts inconceivable, and qualities incompatible; thus erecting doctrinal systems on no sounder basis than their own ignorance; deifying their own monstrous errors, and filling the earth with misery, madness, and crime.
The writer who declared theologyignorance of natural causes reduced to system, did not strike wide of the true mark. It is plain that the argument from design, so vastly favoured by theologians, amounts to neither more nor less than ignorance of natural causes reduced to system. An argument to be sound must be soundly premised. But here is an argument whose primary premise is a false premise—a mere begging of the very question in dispute. Did Atheistsadmitthe universe was contrived, designed, or adapted, they could notdenythere must have been at least one Being to contrive, design, or adapt; but they see no analogy between a watch made with hands out of something, and a universe made without hands out of nothing—Atheists are unable to perceive the least resemblance between the circumstance of one intelligent body re-forming or changing the condition of some other body, intelligent or non-intelligent, and the circumstance of a bodiless Being creating all bodies; of a partless Being acting upon all parts; and of a passionless Being generating and regulating all passions. Atheists consider the general course of nature, though strangely unheeded, does proclaim with 'most miraculous organ,' that dogmatisers about any such 'figment of imagination,' would, in a rational community, be viewed with the same feelings of compassion, which, even in these irrational days, are exhibited towards confirmed lunatics.
The Author was recently passing an evening with some pleasant people in Ashton-under-Lyne, one of whom related that before the schoolmaster had much progress in thatdevil dustedneighbourhood, a labouring man walking out one fine night, saw on the ground a watch, whose ticking was distinctly audible; but never before having seen anything of the kind he thought it a living creature, and full of fear ran back among his neighbours, exclaiming that he had seen a most marvellous thing, for which he could conceive of no better name than CLICKMITOAD. After recovering from their surprise and terror, this 'bold peasant' and his neighbours, all armed with pokers or ether formidable weapons, crept up to the ill-starred ticker, and smashed it to pieces.
The moral of this anecdote is no mystery. Our clickmitoadist had never seen watches, knew nothing about watches, and hearing as well as seeing one for the first time, naturally judged it must be an animal. Readers who may feel inclined to laugh at his simplicity, should ask themselves whether, if accustomed to see watches growing upon watch trees, they would feel more astonished than they usually do when observing crystals in process of formation, or cocoa-nuts growing upon cocoa-nut trees; and if as inexperienced with respect to watches, or works of art, more or less analogous to watches, they would not under his circumstances have acted very much as he did. Admirably is it said in the unpublished work before referred to, that the analogy which theologians attempt to establish between the contrivances of human art and the various existences of the universe is inadmissable. We attribute these effects to human intelligence, because we know beforehand that human intelligence is capable of producing them. Take away this knowledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed. Our entire ignorance therefore of the Divine Nature leaves this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.
Supposing, however, that theologians were to succeed in establishing an analogy between 'the contrivances of human art and the various existences of the universe,' is it not evident that Spinoza's axiom—of things which having nothing in common one cannot be the cause of the others—is incompatible with belief in the Deity of our Thirty-Nine Articles, or, indeed, belief inanyunnatural Designer or Causer of Material Nature. Only existence can have anything in common with existence.
Now an existence, properly so called, must have at least two attributes, and whatever exhibits two or more attributes is matter. The two attributes necessary to existence are solidity and extension. Take from matter these attributes, and matter itself vanishes. This fact was specially testified to by Priestley, who acknowledged the primary truths of Materialism though averse to the legitimate consequences flowing from their recognition.
According to this argument, then, nothing exists which has not solidity and extension, and nothing is extended and solid but matter, which in one state forms a crystal, in another a blade of grass, in a third a butterfly, and in other states other forms. Theessenceof grass, or theessenceof crystal, in other words, those native energies of their several forms constituting and keeping them what they are, can no more be explained than can theessentialityof human nature.
But the Atheist, because he finds it impossible to explain the action of matter, because unable to state why it exhibits such vast and various energies as it is seen to exhibit, is none the less assured itnaturallyand thereforenecessarilyacts thus energetically. No Atheist pretends to understand how bread nourishes his frame, but of thefactthat bread does nourish it he is well assured. He understands not how or why two beings should by conjunction give vitality to a third being more or less analogous to themselves, but thefactstares him in the face.
Our 'sophists in surplices,' who can no otherwise bolster up their supernatural system than by outraging all such rules of philosophising as forbid us to choose the greater of two difficulties, or to multiply causes without necessity, are precisely the men to explain everything. But unfortunately their explanations do for the most part stand more in need of explanation than the thing explained. Thus they explain the origin of matter by reference to an occult, immense, and immensely mysterious phantasm without body, parts or passions, who sees though not to be seen, hears though not to be heard, feels though not to be felt, moves though not to be moved, knows though not to be known, and in short, does everything, though not to bedoneby anything. Well might Godwin say the rage of accounting for what, like immortal Gibbs, is obviously unaccountable, so common among 'philosophers' of this stamp, has brought philosophy itself into discredit.
There is an argument against the notion of a Supernatural Causer which the Author of this Apology does not remember to have met with, but which he considers an argument of great force—it is this. Cause means change, and as there manifestly could not be change before there was anything to change, to conceive the universe caused is impossible.
That the sense here attached to the word cause is not a novel one every reader knows who has seen an elaborate and ably written article by Mr. G.H. Lewes, on 'Spinoza's Life and Works,' [68:1] where effect is defined as cause realised, thenatura naturansconceived asnatura naturata; and cause or causation is defined as simply change. When, says Mr. Lewis, the change is completed, we name the result effect. It is only a matter of naming.
These definitions conceded accurate, the conclusion that neither cause nor effectexist, seems inevitable, for change of being is not being itself, any more than attraction is the thing attracted. One might as philosophically erect attraction into reality and fall down and worshipit, as change, which is in very truth, a mere "matter of naming." Not so the things changing or changed:theyare real, the prolific parent of all appearance we behold, of all sensation we experience, of all ideas we receive; in short, of all causes and of all effects, which causes and effects, as shown by; Mr. Lewis, are merely notional, for "we call the antecedent cause, and the sequent effect; but these are merely relative conceptions; the sequence itself is antecedent to some subsequent change, and the former antecedent was once only a sequent to its cause, and so on." Now, to reconcile with this theory of causation, the notion of an
Eternal, mighty, causeless God,
may be possible, but the Author of this Apology cannot persuade himself that it is. His poor faculties are unequal to the mighty task of conceiving the amazing Deity in question, whom Sir Richard Blackmore, in his Ode to Jehovah, describes as sitting on an 'eternal throne'—
Above the regions of etherial space,And far extended frontier of the skies;Beyond the outlines of wide nature's face,Where void, not yet enclosed, uncultivated lies;Completely filling every placeAnd far outstretching all imaginary space.
Still less has he the right to pretend acquaintance with a process of reasoning by which such
Eternal, mighty, causeless God
can be believed in consistently with the conviction that cause is effect realised, and means only CHANGE.
Ancient Simonides, when asked by Dionysius to explain the nature of Deity, demanded a day to 'see about it,' then an additional two days, and then four days more, thus wisely intimating to his silly pupil, that the more men think about Gods; the less competent they are to give any rational account of them.
Cicero was sensible and candid enough to acknowledge that he found it much easier to say what God was not, than what he was. Like Simonides, he wasmerePagan, and like him, arguing from the known course of nature, was unable, with all his mastery of talk, to convey positive ideas of Deity. But how should he convey to others what he did not, could not, himself possess? To him no revelation had been vouchsafed, and though my Lord Brougham is quite sure, without the proof of natural Theology, revelation has no other basis than mere tradition, we have even better authority than his Lordship's for the staggering fact that natural Theology, without the prop of revelation, is a 'rhapsody of words,' mere jargon, analogous to the tale told by an idiot, so happily described by our great poet as 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' We have a Rev. Hugh M'Neil 'convinced that, from external creation, no right conclusion can be drawn concerning themoralcharacter of God,' and that 'creation is too deeply and disastrously blotted in consequence of man's sin, to admit of any satisfactory result from an adequate contemplation of nature.' [69:1] We have a Gillespie setting aside the Design Argument on the ground that the reasonings by which it is supported are 'inapt' to show such attributes as infinity, omnipresence, free agency, omnipotency, eternality, or unity,' belong in any way to God. On this latter attribute he specially enlarges, and after allowing 'the contrivances we observe in nature, may establish a unity ofcounsel, desires to be told' how they can establish a unity ofsubstance. [69:2] We have Dr. Chalmers and Bishop Watson, whose capacities were not the meanest, contending that there is no natural proof of a God, and that we must trust solely to revelation.' [69:3] We have the Rev. Mr. Faber in his 'Difficulties of Infidelity,' boldly affirming that no one ever did, or ever will 'prove without the aid of revelation, that the universe was designed by a single designer.' Obviously, then, there is a division in the religious camp with respect to the sufficiency of natural Theology, unhelped by revelation. By three of the four Christian authors just quoted, the design argument is treated with all the contempt it merits. Faber says, 'evident design must needs imply a designer,' and that 'evident design shines out in every part of the universe.' But he also tells us 'we reason exclusively, if with the Deist we thence infer the existence of one andonlyone Supreme Designer.' By Gillespie and M'Neil, the same truth is told in other words. By Chalmers and Watson we are assured that, natural proof of a God there is none, and our trust must be placedsolelyin revelation; while Brougham, another Immense Being worshipper, declares that revelation derives its chief support from natural Theology, without which it has 'no other basis than vague tradition.'
Now, Atheists agree with Lord Brougham as to the traditionary basis of Scripture; and as they also agree with Chalmers and Watson with respect to their being no natural proof of a God, they stand acquitted to their own consciences of 'wilful deafness' and 'obstinate blindness,' in rejecting as inadequate the evidence that 'God is' drawn either from Nature, Revelation, or both.
It was long a Protestant custom to taunt Roman Catholics with being divided among themselves as regards topics vitally important, and to draw from the fact of such division an argument for making Scripture the only 'rule of faith and manners.' Chillingworth said, 'there are Popes against Popes, councils against councils, some fathers against others, the same fathers against themselves—a consent of fathers of one age against a consent of fathers of another age, the church of one age against the church of another age. Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended, but there are few or none to be found. No tradition but only of scripture can derive itself from the fountain, but may be plainly proved, either to have been brought in in such an age after Christ; or that in such an age it was not in. In a word, there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only for any considering man to build on. [70:1] And after reading this should 'any considering man' be anxious to know something about the Scripture on which alone he is to build, he cannot do better than dip into Dr. Watt's book on the right use of Reason, where we are told 'every learned (Scripture) critic has his own hypothesis, and if the common text be not favourable to his views a various lection shall be made authentic. The text must be supposed to be defective or redundant, and the sense of it shall be literal or metaphorical according as it best supports his own scheme. Whole chapters or books shall be added or left out of the sacred canon, or be turned into parables by this influence. Luther knew not well how to reconcile the epistle of St. James to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and so he could not allow it to be divine. The Papists bring all their Apocrypha into their Bible, and stamp divinity upon it, for they can fancy purgatory is there, and they find prayers for the dead. But they leave out the second commandment because it forbids the worship of images. Others suppose the Mosaic history of the creation, and the fall of man, to be oriental ornaments, or a mere allegory, because the literal sense of those three chapters of Genesis, do not agree with their theories.
These remarks are certainly not calculated to make 'considering men' put their trust in Scripture. Coming from a Protestant Divine of such high talent and learning, they may rather be expected to breed in 'considering men' very unorthodox opinions as well of the authenticity as the genuineness ofboth Testaments, and a strong suspicion that Chillingworth was joking when he talked about their "sufficient certainty." The author of this Apology has searched Scripture in vain for 'sufficient certainty,' with respect to the long catalogue of religious beliefs which agitate and distract society. Laying claim to the character of a 'considering man,' he requires that Scripture to beprovedthe word of a God before appealed to, as His Revelation; a feat no man has yet accomplished. Priests, the cleverest, most industrious, and least scrupulous, have tried their hands at the pious work, but all have failed. Notwithstanding the mighty labours of our Lardner's and Tillemont's and Mosheim's, no case is made out for the divinity of either the Old or New Testament. 'Infidels' have shown the monstrous absurdity of supposing that any one book has an atom more divinity about it than any other book. Those 'brutes' have completely succeeded in proving that Christianity is a superstition, no less absurd than Mohammedanism, and to the full as mischievous. To us, we candidly avow that its doctrines, precepts, and injunctions appear so utterly opposed to good sense, and good government, that we are persuaded even if it were practicable to establish a commonwealth in harmony with them at sun-rise it would infallibly go to pieces before sunset. The author has read that Roman augurs rarely met to do the professional without laughing at each other, and he is bothered to understand how Christian priests contrive to keep their countenances, amid the many strong temptations to mirth, by which, in their official capacity they are surrounded. No doubt very many of them laugh immoderately in private, by way of revenge for the gravity they are constrained to assume in public. It is well known that hypocrites are most prone to an affectation of sanctity; which marvellously steads them in this world, happen what may in the world to come. Nine-tenths of those who make a parade of their piety, are rotten at heart, as that Cardinal de Crema, Legate of Pope Calixtus 2nd, in the reign of Henry 1st, who declared at a London Synod, it was an intolerable enormity, that a priest should dare to consecrate, and touch the body of Christ immediately after he had risen from the side of a strumpet, (for that was the decent appellation he gave to the wives of the clergy), but it happened, that the very next night, the officers of justice, breaking into a disorderly house, found the Cardinal in bed with a courtezan; an incident, says Hume, [72:1] "which threw such ridicule upon him, that he immediately stole out of the kingdom; the synod broke up, and the canons against the marriage of its clergymen, were worse executed than ever."
Christian practice is after all, the best answer to Christian theory. Men who think wisely, do not it is true, always act wisely; but generally speaking, the moral, like the physical tree, is known by its fruit, and bitter, most bitter, is the fruit of that moral tree, the followers of Jesus planted. Notwithstanding their talk about the pure and benign influence of their religion, an opinion is fast gaining ground, that Bishop Kiddor was right, when he said, 'were a wise man to judge of religion by the lives of its professors, perhaps, Christianity is the last he would choose.'
No unprejudiced thinker who is familiar with the history of religion will deny, that of all priests in this priest-ridden world Christian priests are the worst. Though less potent they are not much less proud or ambitious than when Pope Pascal II. told King Henry I. that all ecclesiastics must enter into the church through Christ and Christ alone, not through the civil magistrate or any profane laymen. Nor are they less jealous of such as would fain reduce the dimensions of their 'spiritual jurisdiction,' than when that haughty Pope reminded his king that 'priests are called God in Scripture as being the vicars of God;' while in consideration for the poor and the oppressed, modern priests are disadvantageously distinguished, from those 'vicars of God,' who trod upon the necks of emperors and kings, made or unmade laws at pleasure, and kept Europe, intellectual Europe, in unreasoning, unresisting subjection. The reader who agrees with Milton that
To know, what every day before us lies,Is the prime wisdom,
will in all likelihood not object to cast his eyes around and about him, where proofs of modern priestly selfishness are in wonderful abundance. By way of example may be cited the cases of those right reverend Fathers in God the Bishops of London and Chester, prelates high in the church; disposers of enormous wealth with influence almost incalculable; the former more especially. And how stand they affected towards the poor? By reference to theTimesnewspaper of September 27th, 1845, it will be seen that those very influential and wealthy Bishops are supportersen chefof a 'Reformed Poor Law,' the 'virtual principle' of which is 'to reduce the condition of those whose necessities oblige them to apply for relief, below that of the labourer of thelowest class.' A Reformed Poor Law, having for its 'object,' yes reader, its object, the restoration of the pauper to a position below that of the independent labourer.' This is their 'standard' of reference, by rigid attention to which they hope to fully carry out their 'vital principle,' and thus bring to a satisfactory conclusion the great work of placing 'the pauper in a worse condition than the independent labourer.' It appears, from the same journal, that in reply to complaints against their dietary, the Commissioners appointed to work the Reformed Poor Law, consider that twenty-one ounces of food daily 'is more than the hard working labourer with a family could accomplish for himself by his own exertions.' This, observes a writer in theTimes, being the Commissioners' reading of their own 'standard,' it may be considered superfluous to refer to any other authority; but, as the Royal Agricultural Society of England have clubbed their general information on this subject in a compilation from a selection of essays submitted to them, we are bound to refer to such witnesses who give the most precise information on the actual condition of theindependent labourer, with minute instructions for his general guidance, and the economical expenditure of his income. 'He should,' they say, 'toil early and late' to make himself 'perfect' in his calling. 'He shouldpinch and screwthe family, even in thecommonest necessaries,' until he gets 'a week's wages to the fore.' He should drink in his work 'water mixed with some powdered ginger,' which warms the stomach, and is 'extremely cheap.' He should remember that 'from three to four pounds of potatoes are equal in point of nourishment to a pound of the best wheaten bread, besides having the great advantage offillingthe stomach. He is told that 'a lot of bones may always be got from the butchers for 2d., and they are never scraped so clean as not to have some scraps of meat adhering to them.' He is instructed to boil these two penny worth of bones, for the first day's family dinner, until the liquor 'tastessomethinglike broth.' For the second day, the bones are to be again boiled in the same manner, but fora longer time. Nor is this all, they say, 'that the bones, if again boiled for astill longertime, willonce moreyield a nourishing broth, which may be made into pea soup.'
This is the system and this the schoolmastership expressly sanctioned by the Bishops of London and Chester. In piety nevertheless these prelates are not found wanting. They may starve the bodies but no one can charge them with neglecting the souls of our 'independent labourers.' Nothing can exceed their anxiety to feed and clothe the spiritually destitute. They raise their mitred fronts, even in palaces, to proclaim and lament over the spiritual destitution which so extensively prevails—but they seldom condescend to noticephysicaldestitution. When the cry of famine rings throughout the land they coolly recommend rapid church extension, thus literally offering stone to those who ask them for bread. To get the substantial and give the spiritual is their practical Christianity. To spiritualise the poor into contentment with the 'nourishing broth' from thrice boiled bones, and to die of hunger rather than demand relief, are their darling objects. Verily, if these and men like these do not grind the faces of the poor, the Author of this Apology is unable to conceive in what that peculiar process consists. In Scripture we are told, the bread of the poor is his life, and they who defraud him thereof are men of blood; and by whom are the poor defrauded of their bread if not by those who, like the Bishops of London and Chester, legislate for poverty as if it were a crime, and lend theft sanction to a system which, while it necessitates the wholesale pinching and screwing even in the commonest necessaries of life 'of independent labourers,' does also necessitate the wholesale starvation of still more wretched paupers? Formerly our 'surplus populations' were 'killed off' by bullet and sabre, now they are got rid of in Poor Law Unions by a process less expensive perhaps, but not less effectual.
Did Atheists thus act, did they perpetrate, connive at, or tolerate such atrocities as were brought to light during the Andover inquiry, such cold blooded heartlessness would at once be laid to the account of their principles. Oh yes, Christians are forward to judge of trees by their fruit, except the tree called Christianity. Their great 'prophet' argued that if the tree is good the fruit will be good; but when their own religion is in question they give such argument the slip. The vices of the Atheist they ascribe to his creed. The vices of the Christian to anything but his creed. Let professors of Christianity be convicted of gross criminality, and lo its apologists say such professors are not Christians. Let fanatical Christians commit excesses which admit not of open justification, and the apologist of Christianity coolly assures us such conduct is mere rust on the body of his religion—moss which grows on the stock of his piety.
It has been computed that the Spaniards in America destroyed in about forty-five years ten millions of human creatures, and this with a view of converting them to Christianity. Bartholomew Casa, who made this computation, affirms that they (the Spaniards) hanged those unhappy peoplethirteen in a row, in honour of thethirteen Apostles, and that they also gave their infants to be devoured by dogs. [75:1]
Corsini, another religious author, tells us the Spaniards destroyed more than fifteen millions of American aborigines, and calculates that the blood of these devoted victims, added to that of the slaves destroyed in the mines, where they were compelled to labour, would weigh as much as all the gold and silver that had been dug out of them.
If these or similar horrors were perpetrated by Atheists, who can doubt that Roman Catholics would at once ascribe them to the pestiferous influence of Atheistical principles. And the Author of this Apology is of opinion that they would be justified in so doing. When whole nations of professed irreligionists shall be found conquering a country, and hanging the aborigines of that country thirteen in a row, in honour of some thirteen apostles of Atheism, their barbarity may fairly be ascribed to their creed. Habit does much, and perhaps much of our virtue, or its opposite is contingent on temperament; but no people entertaining correct speculative opinions could possibly act, or tolerate, atrocities like these. But strange to say, neither Roman Catholic, nor any other denomination of Christians, will submit to be tried to the same standard they deem so just when applied to Atheists. Now sauce for the goose every body knows is equally sauce for the gander, and it is difficult to discover the consistency or the honesty of men, who trace to their creed the crimes or merest peccadilloes of Atheists, and will not trace to their creed the shocking barbarity of Christians. To understand such men is easy; to admire them is impossible; for their conduct in this particular palpably shocks every principle of truth and fairness. Why impute to Atheism the vices or follies of its Apostles, while refusing to admit that the vices or follies of Christians should be imputed to Christianity. Of both folly and vice it is notorious professing Christians have 'the lion's share.' Yet the apologists of Christianity, who would fain have us believe the lives of Atheists a consequence of Atheism, will by no means believe that the lives of Christians are a consequence of Christianity.
Let no one suppose the Author of this Apology is prepared to allow that Atheists are men of cruel dispositions or vicious. He will not say with Coleridge that only men of good hearts and strong heads can be Atheists, but he is quite ready to maintain that the generality of Atheists are men of mild, generous, peaceable studious dispositions, who desire the overthrow of superstition, or true religion as its devotees call it, because convinced a superstitious people never can be enlightened, virtuous, free, or happy. Their love of whatever helps on civilisation and disgust of war are testified to even by opponents. We may learn from the writings of Lord Bacon not only hisopinionthat Atheism leaves men to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which, he justly observes, may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but thefactthat 'the times inclined to Atheism (as the times of Augustus Caesar) were civil times.' Nay, he expressly declared 'Atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves as looking no further.' [76:1] Can the same be said of religion? Will any one have the hardihood to say religion did never perturb states, or that the times inclined to religion (as the times of Oliver Cromwell) were civil times, or that it makes man wary of themselves as looking no further? During times inclined to religion more than one hundred thousand witches were condemned to die by Christian tribunals in accordance with the holy text, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. During times inclined to religion it was usual to burn, broil, bake, or otherwise murder heretics for the glory of God, and at the same time to spare the vilest malefactors. During times inclined to religion, it has been computed that in Spain alone no less than 32,382 people were, by the faithful, burnt alive; 17,690 degraded and burnt in effigy; and all the goods and chattels of the enormous number of 291,450 consigned to the chancery of the Inquisition. [77:1] In short, during those 'good old times,' men yielded themselves up to practices so strangely compounded of cruelty and absurdity, that one finds it difficult to believe accounts of them, however well authenticated.
Speaking of the bigotted fury of certain ecclesiastics, Hippolyto Joseph de Costa, in his 'Narrative of the persecution' he suffered while lodged gratis by the Portuguese Inquisition for the pretended crime of Free Masonry, says, it would exceed the bounds of credulity, had not facts in corroboration of it been so established by witnesses, that nothing can shake them. Among ecclesiastics of this denomination we may mention that Pontiff, who, from a vile principle of hate for his predecessor, to whom he had been an enemy, as soon as he ascended the Papal chair directed the corpse to be taken out from the grave, had the fingers and the head cut off and thrown into the sea, ordered the remainder of the body to be burnt to ashes and excommunicated the soul. Could revenge be carried farther than in this instance? The institution itself of the inquisition and the cruelty with which its members persecute those whom they suspect of tenets different from their own, may well excite surprise. In their eyes the tortures and the death of their fancied enemies are a mere amusement. They burn some of their prisoners alive, render their memories infamous, and prosecute their children and all the connections of these unhappy sufferers; they deprive orphans of the inheritance of their parents, dishonour families in every possible shape, and at length have recourse to the auto da fe, [77:2] on which occasion, while the miserable wretches are lingering in torments, the members of the inquisition not only feast their eyes with this Infernal spectacle, but regale themselves with their friends at the expense of their unhappy victims. Such are the practises of the Inquisition.
When those Spanish Christians who amused themselves by hanging poor wretches, thirteen in a row, in honour of the thirteen apostles, were taunted with cruelty, they boldly affirmed that as God had not redeemed with his blood the souls of the Indians, no difference should be made between them and the lowest of beasts. In Irvings history of New York is a letter written, we are told, by a Spanish priest, to his superior in Spain, which, 'among other curiosities, contain this question—'Can any one have the presumption to say these savage pagans have yielded anything more than an inconsiderable recompense to their benefactors, in surrendering to them a little pitiful tract of this dirty sublunary planet in exchange for a glorious inheritance hereafter.'
Such is the conceit as well as cruelty of men who imagine themselves the vicegerents and avengers of Deity. In His name they burn, and slay, and rob without compunction or remorse; nay, when like Sir Giles Overreach, their ears are pierced by widows cries, and undone orphans wash with tears their thresholds, they only think what 'tis to make themselves acceptable in the sight of God. Believing pious ends justify any means, they glory in conduct the most repugnant to every principle of decency, equity, and humanity.
In the cathedral of Saragossa, is a magnificent tomb, raised, in honor of a famous inquisitor; around it are six pillars, to each of which is chained a Moor preparatory to his being burnt. And if additional evidence were needed of human folly, and stupid disposition, like dray horses to go perpetually, on 'one's nose in t'others tail,' we have it in the astounding fact, that when the Spanish Cortes proposed the abolition of the Inquisition, the populace of Spain considered such proposal, 'an infringement of their liberties.' [78:1] We have it on respectable authority, that Torquemada in the space of fourteen years that he wielded the chief inquisitorial powers, robbed, or otherwise persecuted eighty thousand persons, of whom about six thousand were committed to the flames.
Inquisitors made no secret of their hatred towards heretics; to destroy them they considered a sacred duty. Far from ashamed of their cruelty towards heretics, they gloried in it, as undeniable evidence of their enthusiasm in the cause of Christ. Simoncas, one of their most esteemed writers, said, 'the heretics deserve not merely one death, but many deaths; because a single death is the punishment of an ordinary heretic; but these (the heretics) are deserving of punishment without mercy, and particularly the teachers of the Lutheran heresy, who must by no means be spared.' Pegma, another of their writers, insists, that dogmatical heretics should be punished with death, even though they gave the most unequivocal proof of their repentance.
That eminently pious monarch, Phillip the Second of Spain, so loved to hear heretics groan, that he rarely missed Auto da Fes; at one of which several distinguished persons were to be burnt for heresy; among the rest Don John de Cesa, who while passing by him, said,' Sire, how can you permit so many unfortunate persons to suffer? How can you be witness of so horrid a sight without shuddering?' Phillip coolly replied, 'If my son, sir, were suspected of heresy, I should myself hand him over to the Inquisition.' 'My detestation,' continued he, 'of you and your companions is so great, that I would act myself as your executioner, if no other could be found.'
Phillip the Fifth, as may be seen in Coxe's Memoirs of the Kings of Spain, 'presented about the year 1172, three standards taken from 'infidels' to our lady of Atocha; and sent another to the Pope, as the grateful homage of the Catholic King to the head of the Church. He also, for the first time, attended the celebration of an Auto da Fe, at which in the commencement of his reign he had refused with horror to appear, and witnessed the barbarous ceremony of committing twelve Jews and Mohammedans to the flames.' So great during times inclined to religion was inquisitorial power, that monarchs and statesmen of liberal tendencies were constrained to quail before it. It is related that a Jewish girl, entered into her seventeenth year, extremely beautiful, who in a publicact of faith, at Madrid, June 30th, 1680, together with twenty others of the same nation of both sexes, being condemned to the stake, turned herself to the Queen of Spain, then present, and prayed, that out of her goodness and clemency she might be delivered from the dreadful punishment of the fire. 'Great Queen,' said she, 'is not your presence able to bring me some comfort under my misery? Consider my youth, and that I am condemned for a religion which I have sucked in with my mother's milk.' The Queen turned away her eyes, declaring, she pitied the miserable creature, but did not dare to intercede for her with a single word.
Not only have Roman Catholic writers defended these inquisitorial abominations, but, with what every Protestant must needs consider daring and blasphemous impiety, laboured to prove that the first Inquisitor was God himself. Luis de Paramo, for instance, in his book 'De Origine et Progressu Officii Sanctoe Inquisitionis, ejusque dignitate et utilitate,' proves God to be the first Inquisitor, and that in the Garden of Eden was the first auto da fe.
Nor do these most pious casuists discover anything in Scripture which forbids the burning of heretics, notwithstanding such texts as 'Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed,' which they contend inquisitors do never violate the true meaning or spirit of, it being evident that to burn men is not to shed their blood—thus eluding the maxim Ecclesia non novit sanguinem. And if their right to burn heretics was questioned they triumphantly cited the text (as given in the 'Beehive' of the Romish Church) 'Whosoever doth not abide in me, shall be cast out of the vineyard as a branch and there wither; and men gather those branches and cast them into the fire and burn them.'
On this text John Andreas, Panormitamis, Hostraensii, Bernardus Leizenburgen, and others of the Roman Catholic casuists built up their proof that heretics, like grape branches, should be cast into the fire and burnt.
The execrable duplicity of these men is by Protestant priests made the theme of unsparing invective, as if the burning of heretics and its justification by Scripture were crimes peculiar to Roman Catholics, when in point of fact both have been shamelessly committed by Christians rejoicing in the name of Protestants. John Calvin burnt Servetus, and Robert Hall, as we have seen, applauded the act. England, to say nothing of other countries, has had its auto da fe, as well since as before the Reformation. Heretics were first made bonfires of in England during the reign of Henry the Fourth, who permitted the abomination in order to please certain bishops he was under obligation to for assisting him to depose Richard the Second and usurp his throne. But that the practice of committing heretics to the flame prevailed in England long after Popery ceased to be the dominant religion is notorious. If heretics were thus sacrificed by Henry the Fourth to please Popish Bishops, they were also sacrificed by Elizabeth with a view to the satisfaction of Protestant Bishops. Cranmer literally compelled her brother, the amiable Edward, to send a half crazed woman named Joan Boacher to the stake. Elizabeth herself caused two Dutch Anabaptists to be burnt in Smithfield, though it is but just to admit that, unlike her sullen sister, she preferred rather to hang than to burn heretics. Lord Brougham has recently done mankind another valuable piece of service by painting the portrait of that Protestant princess in colours at once so lively and faithful that none, save the lovers of vulgar fanaticism and murderous hypocrisy, will gaze on it without horror. [81:1]
'Mary, honoured with the title of "bloody," appears to me a far more estimable character than her ripping-up sister Elizabeth, who, when Mary, on her death-bed, asked her for a real avowal of her religion, "prayed God" that the earth might open and swallow her up if she was not a true Roman Catholic.' She made the same declaration to the Duke of Ferria, the Spanish Ambassador, who was so deceived that he wrote to Philip, stating no change in religious matters would take place on her accession, and soon afterwards began ripping up the bellies of Catholics. That was quite the fashionable punishment in this and the succeeding reign. I have the account, with names, dates, and reference of no less than 101 more Catholics who were burnt, hung, ripped up, &c., by Elizabeth, and on to Charles the Second's end, than there were Protestants in Mary's, and all the reigns which preceded her, letting lying Fox count all he has got. Elizabeth, too, was by law a bastard, and is to this day; and so soon did her intentions appear of changing the religion, that all the bishops but one refused to crown her; and when this was done, it was by the Catholic ritual. However the Act-of-Parliament religion was set up again; the prayer book of Cranmer was set up again, after sundry alterations: it was altered too, in Edward's reign, yet when first made, it was duly declared to come from the 'Holy Ghost;' so it was after its second polishing under Elizabeth. To refuse the Queen's supremacy was death; it was death to continue in that religion, which, at her coronation she had sworn to firmly believe and defend. It was high treason to admit or harbour, or relieve a priest, and hosts of these were ripped up, for, in the piety of their hearts, risking all to afford the consolations of their religion to the Catholics of England. Victim after victim came to the sacrifice, mostly from the college of Douay. It is really horrible to read of these good and faithful champions of their religion being hung, cut down instantaneously, their bellies ripped up, their hearts cut out, their bodies chopped in pieces with every insult and indignity added to injury, all through this reign, and then to be talked to about 'bloody Mary,' and the 'Good Queen-Bess.' Verily, countrymen, you are vilely deceived. Taking into account the rippings, and burnings, and roastings, and hanging; the racks, whips, fines, imprisonments, and other horrors of the reign of this 'Good Bess,' there was a hundred times more human misery inflicted in her reign than in that of' Bloody Mary.' [82:1]
The second Catherine of Russia, though remarkable for rigid and scrupulous adherence to the ceremonial mummeries of her 'true church,' was at the same time as remarkable for liberality of sentiment. It is said, that upon a certain occasion, being strongly advised by her ministers to deal out severe punishment on some heretics of Atheistical tendencies, who had given offence by rather freely expressing their opinions, she laughingly said, 'Oh, fie, gentlemen fie, if these heretics are to be eternally miserable in the other world, we really ought to let them be comfortable in this.'
Few religious persons are liberal as this empress, whose strong good sense seems to have been fully a match for her bad education: that education was Christian. She was taught to loathe the opinions, aye, and the persons, of heretics, under which denomination may be included all dissenters from religious truth as it was in her, or rather in the church of which she was chief member. No other kind of teaching is accounted orthodox in our 'land of Bibles' than that of state paid priests of law established religion. Look at the true Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles. Do they not abound in anathema, and literally teem with the venom of intolerance? Do they not shock the better feelings even of those who believe them divine? The truth is, all priests teach religion which no wit can reconcile with reason, and very many of them make their followers believe, and perhaps believe themselves, that to villify, abuse, and hunt down 'infidels,' are acts acceptable in the sight of God. The idea of compensating poor unbelievers in this world by an extra quantum of comfort for the torments they are doomed to suffer in the next, never enters their head. Indeed, not a few of them gloat with satisfaction over the prospect of 'infidels' gnashing their teeth in that fiery gulph prepared for the devil and his angels. By this odious class of fanatics neither the worm that dieth not, nor the flame never to be extinguished, is deemed sufficient punishment for the wretch whose thoughts concerning religion are not as their thoughts. By them the imagined 'Creator of the Heavens and the earth' is dressed, up in attributes the most frightful. Witness the character of Him implied in the conceit of that popular preacher who declared 'there are children in hell not a span long'—a declaration which could only be made by one whose humanity was extinguished by divinity.
Our pulpits can furnish many such preachers of 'a religion of charity,' while a whole army of Christian warriors might be gathered from metropolitan pulpits alone, who deeming it impious to say their God of mercy would permit the burning of infants not a span long, do nevertheless, firmly believe that 'children of a larger growth' may justly be tormented by the great king of kings; and asignorantia legis non excusatis a maxim ofhuman law, so, according to them, ignorance ofdivinelaw is no excuse whatever, either for breaking or disregarding it.
The Author of this Apology was recently in Scotland, where a vast number of religious tracts were put into his hand, one of which contains the following among other striking paragraphs:—
'Man could, notcreatehimself, and far less can he save himself. When God made him, he brought him out of nothing; when God. saves him, he brings him out of a state far lower and worse than nothing. If in the one case, then, everything depended, upon God's will and decree, much more in the other. There can be no injustice here. Had God pleased, He might have saved the whole world. But he did not; and thousands are now in hell, and shall be to all eternity.'
'Hell is peopled already with millions of immortal souls doomed to fiery wrath; while Heaven is filled with ransomed sinners as vile, yea perhaps viler than they.' [83:1]
If the writer of this horrid nonsense do not blaspheme, there surely can be no possibility of blaspheming. If he do not impute to his God of mercy cruelty and injustice the most monstrous that can enter into human conception, all language is void of meaning, and men had far better cease 'civilising,' and betake themselves to woods and wilds and fastnesses, to enjoy the state of mere brutishness so infinitely preferable to thatreasonablestate in which they are shaken and maddened by terrible dreams of a vengeful cruel God.
Better be with the deadThan on the tortures of the mind to lieIn restless ecstacy.
Better, far better, roam the desert or the forest like any other brutes, than educate ourselves and others into the monstrous belief in a God who might have saved the world and would not; who predestinates to endless and unutterable agonies; who has with the one hand peopled Hell with millions of immortal creatures, while with the other has filled Heaven with millions of ransomed sinners, as vile, yea perhaps viler than they.
In justice however to the large class of Christians under the despotic and truly lamentable influence of this belief, the Author is bound to admit that they are far more consistent and logical in their notions of Deity than perhaps any other section of Theists, for it cannot properly be denied that the doctrine of an Omnipotent and Prescient God destroys all distinction of virtue and vice, justice and injustice, right and wrong, among men. Let the omnipotency and prescience of a First Cause be granted, the corollary of 'whatever is, is right,' is one of the most obvious that can flow from any proposition: the distance of any link in the eternal sequence cannot lessen the connection with a First Cause, admitting its Omnipotency and Prescience.
The author of these detestable paragraphs admits both. He is a rigid Predestinarian, which no one can be who doubts the all powerfulness or foreknowledge of that God whom Christians worship. Taking Scripture as his guide, the Predestinarian must needs believe some are foredoomed to Hell, and some to Hell, irrespective of all merit; it being manifestly absurd to suppose one man can deserve more or less than another, in a world, where all are compelled to believe, feel, and act, as they do believe, feel, and act. The disgrace attached to the memory of Judas, supposing him really to have betrayed his Divine Master, has no foundation in human justice, for 'surely as the Lord liveth,' he was foredoomed, and therefore compelled to betray him. Luther saw that truth, and had the good sense to avow it. No more rational or just are the denunciations of Judas than those so unsparingly heaped upon the Jews for crucifying the Redeemer of the world, when every body must, or at least, should know, that admitting the world's redemption depended upon the Crucifixion of Christ, if the Jews hadnotcrucified him the world could not have been redeemed. So far then from blackguarding Judas and the Jews for doing, what in the Gospel they are represented to have done, we should consider them rather as martyrs in the cause of Divine Providence than as villains worthy only of abhorrence and execration. To the Author of this Apology it seems certain that if there is a God, such as the Christian delighteth to honour, nothing happens, nothing has happened, nothing can happen contrary to His will. And is it not absurd to say that what He pre-ordains mere mortals can hinder coming to pass? Even the Devil, believed in by Christians, is a creature—how then could he be anything else than the Creator thought fit to make him? Grant he is the Father of Lies, and then he will appear worthy of compassion, if you reflect that he was made so by the Father of Truth. In the Tract to which such special reference has been made, it is contended that Adam was made not because he chose to be made, but because God chose to make him, and surely the same may be contended on the part of Judas, the Jews, and last, though, assuredly, not least, the Devil himself. He who is without God cannot run into absurdities and blasphemies like these, whereas he who is with one cannot keep clear of them. If consistent he must clothe Him with Calvinistic attributes. To present Him stripped of foreknowledge, or omnipotency would outrage all just conception of that 'Immense Being' who brought his worshippers out of nothing. And yet if we allow him these attributes there is no help for us, headlong we go into the dark and fathomless doctrine of predestination, than which no religious doctrine is so consistent or so revolting. Receive it, and at once you find yourself bound heart and brain to belief in a supernatural MONSTER—'a vengeful, pitiless, and Almighty Fiend, whose mercies are a nickname for the rage of hungry tigers.'
The believers in this terrible offspring of heated imagination, naturally aim at imitating, and thus rendering themselves acceptable, to Him. Here is the source, whence for ages have flowed the bitter waters of religious intolerance. If Calvin had not worshipped a cruel God, he never could have hoped to please Him by the murder of Servetius. If Cranmer had wanted lively faith in a God who people's Hell 'with millions of immortal souls,' he never would have brought Joan Bocher to the stake. Full of that Christian zeal, so 'apt to tarn sour,' these men lived like the hermit Honorius, 'in hopes of gaining heaven by making earth a hell.'
The savage bigotry of an Elizabeth or a Mary, naturally resulted from the notion that monarchs unquestionably ruling by Divine right, were called upon by every earthly, as well as heavenly consideration, to prove their zeal in the cause of God, by destroying His adversaries. Heretics have been consigned to dungeon and to name, for His glory, and His satisfaction. All inquisitors from St. Dominic downward, have indignantly repelled the charge that they have punished heretics just to glut their own appetite for cruelty. Worshippers of a God who saith, 'vengeance is mine,' they have felt themselves mere instruments in His hands; of themselves, and for themselves, they did nothing; all was for God. To please Him, the Jew and the Heretic shrieked amid the flames. They are not ashamed, why should they? to perform His behests. When the late Duke of York was about to leave Lisbon, its Inquisitor-General waited upon him, with a humble request that he would delay his departure for a few days, in order to make one at an Auto da Fe, where it was kindly promised, some Jews should be burnt for his diversion: so cruel and so blind are the superstitious.
Queen Mary has long been the mark at which our most eloquent Protestant Divines have aimed their shafts, while of her no less 'bloody' sister's reputation, they have been most watchful and tender. With respect toherpersecution of heretics, they preserve a death-like silence. Fear of damaging Protestantism deters them from exposing the enormous abomination of Protestant monarchs. Against the bigotry of Catholics they hurl the fiercest denunciations; but if called upon to denounce as fiercely the bigotry of Protestants, they make us understand 'the case being altered, that alters the case.' A Popish Inquisition they abhor, but see no evil in Inquisitions of their own. Smithfield Auto da Fe's, according to these consistent Christians, were wrong during the reign of Mary, and right during the reign of her pious sister, 'Good Queen Bess.' Such is the justice of superstition. Its votaries knowing themselves the favoured of heaven, feel privileged to outrage and trample under foot the great principles of sense, propriety, and honour. Between Catholics and Protestants as regards these principles there is little to distinguish; for in the race of abomination, they have kept pretty nearly neck and neck. The author of this Apology has no sympathy with either, but of the two much prefers Popery. There is about it a breadth of purpose, a grandeur, and a potency which excites some respect, even in the breast of an enemy. Unreasonable it assuredly is, but Christians who object to it on that ground, may be told—religion was never meant to be reasonable; and that an appeal to rational principles will as little avail one religion as another, as little avail Protestant as Roman Catholic faith. All religion is unreasonable, and, moreover, to rationalize would be to destroy it. Hobbes could discover nothing in superstition essentially different from religion, nor can we. He deemed true religion as the religion which is fashionable, and superstition as the religion which is not fashionable.
So do we, so do all absolute Atheists. The notion that false religion implies the true, just as base coin implies the pure, will have weight with those, and only those, who cannot detect the sophistry of an argumenta rubii toto caelo differentibus; or in plain English, from things entirely different presumed to be similar. Between coin and religion there is no precise analogy. False coin implies true coin, because none are sceptical as to the reality of true coin, but false religion does not necessarily imply true religion, because the reality of true religion is not only questionable, but questioned. It is not usual for money-dealers to be at issue as to the quality of their cash. The genuine article will stand the test, and always passes muster. A practised ear can easily decide between the rival claims of two half-crowns, one genuine, the other spurious, thrown upon a tradesman's counter. But where are the scales in which we can weigh to a nicety true and false religions? Where is the ear so well practised and so delicately sensitive as to distinguish the true from the 'number without number' of false voices raised in their behalf? Where the eye so perfectly theologic, so sharp, piercing, and free of that film called prejudice, as to see which of our religions is the genuine article? All are agreed as to the genuineness of current money. All are at 'daggers drawn' as to the genuineness of any one religion. That Christianity is true no Christian denies, but which is the true Christianityhas notand we thinkcannotbe determined.
The knot of old fashioned politicians who call themselves Young England, are enamoured of 'graceful superstition.' Alarmed at the march of reason, and admirers of 'blind faith in mystery,' they sigh for a renewal of those times when no one doubted the propriety of drowning witches, or being touched for the king's evil.Cui bonois the question repeatedly put to the proselytising Atheist by this modern antique class of persons, who cannot see the utility of destroying the vital principle of all religions. But if that principle is false, no sane man can doubt the expediency of proving it so. Falsehood may be useful to individuals, but cannot tend to the moral and political advancement of nations. Apologists of error find the presumed unfitness of their fellow creatures to appreciate truth a sufficient reason for not teaching it. To raise up the populace to their own intellectual level they deem impracticable, and therefore speak down to their lowest passions and prejudices: like Varro they contend there are some truths the vulgar had better think falsehoods, and many falsehoods they had better think truths. The consequences of such 'moral swindling' are everywhere visible: on all sides superstition, wild, unreasoning, senseless superstition rears its hateful front, and vomits forth anathema on the friend of progress, humanity, and social justice. Look at Ireland: see to what a Pandaemonium superstition has converted 'the first flower of the land and first gem of the sea.' In that unhappy country may be seen seven or eight millions of people cheated, willingly defrauded of their substance, by a handful of designing priests, who, dead to shame, erect the most stupid credulity into exalted virtue —battle in support of ignorance because knowledge is incompatible with their 'blood-cemented pyramid of greatness,' and to aggrandise themselves, perpetuate the vilest as well as most palpable delusions that ever assumed the mask of divine truth. Daniel O'Connell may object to have them called 'surpliced ruffians,' not so the philosopher, who sees in pious fraud on a gigantic scale, the worst species of ruffianism that ever disgraced the earth.
These are no new tangled or undigested notions. From age to age the wisest among men have abhorred and denounced superstition. It is true that only a small section of them treated religion as ifnecessarilysuperstition, or went quite so far as John Adams, who said,this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it. But an attentive reading of ancient and modern philosophical books has satisfied the Author of this Apology that through all recorded time, religion has beentoleratedrather thanlovedby great thinkers, who hadwill, but notpowerto wage successful war upon it. Gibbon speaks of Pagan priests who, 'under sacerdotal robes, concealed the heart of an Atheist.' Now, these priests were also the philosophers of Rome, and it is not impossible that some modern philosophical priests, like their Pagan prototypes, secretly despise the religion they openly profess. Avarice, and lust of power, are potent underminers of human virtue. The mighty genius of Bacon was not proof against them, and he who deserves to occupy a place among 'the wisest and greatest' has been 'damned to eternal fame' as the, 'meanest of mankind.'
Nor are avarice and lust of power the only base passions under the influence of which men, great in intellect, have given the lie to their own convictions, by calling that religion which they knew to be rank superstition. Fear of punishment for writing truth is the grand cause why their books contain so little of it. If Bacon had openly treated Christianity as mere superstition, will any one say that his life would have been worth twenty-four hours purchase. He lived at a time when heresy, to say nothing of Atheism, wasrewardedwith death. Bacon was not the man to be ambitious of such a reward. Few great geniuses are. Philosophers seldom covet martyrdom, and hence it came to pass that few of them would run the terrible risk of provoking bigotted authority by the 'truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' concerning religion. In our own day the smell of a faggot would be too much for the nostrils of, that still unamiable but somewhat improved animal, called the public. One delightful as well as natural consequence is, that philosophical writers do ever and anon deal much more freely with religion than its professors aredisposed, thoughcompelled, to tolerate. But, even now, with all our boasted liberty of conscience, not one in one thousand of those whothinktruth about religion dare express it. Philosophy still exhibits, in deference to popular prejudice and fanaticism, what the great French maximist defined as 'the homage that vice pays to virtue.' Such is the rule to which, most fortunately for the pause of truth, there are many, and some splendid, exceptions. One of these is worth citing not only because of its intrinsic merit, but because the thing to be cited includes an opinion of religion, and a marked distinction between what ispiousand what is honest, that calls for especial notice. The exception referred to is a paragraph from a paper on Saint Simonianism, written by Colonel Thompson, and originally published in the Westminster Review, of April 1, 1832, containing these remarkable words:—'The world wantshonestlaw-givers, not pious ones. If piety will make men honest, let them favour us with the honesty and keep the piety for God and their own consciences. There never was a man that brought piety upon the board when honesty would do, without its being possible to trace a transfusion in the shape of money or money's worth, from his neighbour's pocket into his. The object of puzzling the question with religion is clear. You cannot quarrel for sixpences with the man who is helping you the way to heaven. The man who wants your sixpences, therefore, assumes a religious phraseology, which is cant, and cant is fraud, and fraud is dishonesty, and the dishonest should have a mark set on them.'
There is an old story about a certain lady who said to her physician, 'Doctor, what is your religion?' 'My religion, madam,' replied the Doctor, 'is the religion of all sensible men.' 'What kind of religion is that?' said the lady. 'The religion, madam,' quoth the Doctor, 'that no sensible man will tell.'
This doctor may be taken as a type of the class of shrewd people who despise religion, but will say nothing about it, lest by so doing they give a shock to prejudice, and thus put in peril certain professional or other emoluments. Too sensible to be pious, and too cautious to be honest, they must be extremely well paid ere they will incur the risk attendant upon a confession of irreligious faith. Like Colonel Thompson, they know the world needshonestlawgivers not pious ones, but unlike him, they won't say so. Animated by a vile spirit of accommodation, their whole sum of practical wisdom can be told in four words—BE SILENT AND SAFE. They are amazed at the 'folly' of those who make sacrifices at the shrine of sincerity; and while sagacious enough to perceive that religion is a clumsy political contrivance, are not wanting in the prudence which dictates at least a warning conformity to prevailing prejudices.
None have done more to perpetuate error than these time serving 'men of the world,' for instead of boldly attacking it, they preserve a prudent silence which bigots do not fail to interpret as consent. Mosheim says, [90:1] 'The simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times (fifth century) furnished the most favourable occasion for the exercise of fraud; and the impudence of imposters, in contriving false miracles, was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar; while the sagacious and the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes, if they should expose the artifice. Thus,' continues this author, 'does it generally happen, when danger attends the discovery and the profession of the truth, the prudent aresilent, the multitudebelieve, and impostorstriumph.'
Beausobre, too, in his learned, account of Manicheism reads a severe lesson to the 'sensibledummies, who, under the influence of such passions asfearandavarice, will do nothing to check the march of superstition, or relieve their less 'sensible,' but more honest, fellow-creatures from the weight of its fetters. After alluding to an epistle written by that 'demi-philosopher,' Synesius, when offered by the Patriarch the Bishopric of Ptolemais, [91:1] Beausobre says, 'We see in the history that I have related a kind of hypocrisy, which, perhaps, has been far too common in all times. It is that of ecclesiastics, who not only do not say what they think, but the reverse of what they think. Philosophers in their closet, when out of them they are content with fables, though they know well they are fables. They do more; they deliver to the executioner the excellent men who have said it. How many Atheists and profane persons have brought holy men to the stake under the pretext of heresy? Every day, hypocrites consecrate the host and cause it to be adored, although firmly convinced as I am that it is nothing more than a piece of bread.'
Whatever may be urged in defence of such execrable duplicity, there can be no question as to its anti-progressive tendency. The majority of men are fools, and if such 'sensible' politicians as our Doctor and the double doctrinising persecuting ecclesiastics, for whose portraits we are indebted to Mosheim and Beausobre, shall have the teaching of them, fools they are sure to remain. Men who dare not be 'mentally faithful' to themselves may obstruct, but cannot advance the interests of truth. Colonel Thompson is right. In legislation, in law, in all the relations of life, we wanthonesty, not piety. There is plenty of piety, and to spare, but of honesty—sterling, bold, uncompromising honesty—even the best regulated societies can boast a very small stock. The men best qualified to raise the veil under which truth lies concealed from vulgar gaze, are precisely the men who fear to do it. Oh, shame upon ye self-styled philosophers, who in your closets laugh at 'our holy religion,' and in your churches do them reverence. Were your bosoms warmed by one spark of generous wisdom,silenceon the question of religion would be broken, the multitude cease tobelieve, and imposters totriumph. But the desire to enlighten others is lost in regard for yourselves, and what Mrs. Grundy may say, is sufficient to frighten ye from the enunciation truth.
Is superstition no evil? Is there nothing hateful, nothing against which unceasing war should be waged, in the degradation of those unhappy persons who worship idols of their own imagination? Can error be fraught with good and truth with evil, that we should shrink from doing justice to both? Everywhere are learnedly ignorant or basely cunning men, who would scare us from dealing with religious error, as all error deserves to be dealt with, by high-sounding jargon about the danger of freeing vulgar minds from the wholesome restraints of certain antiquated beliefs. Themselves essentially vulgar by habit and in feeling, their estimate of human tendencies is of the meanest, the most grovelling description. Measuring thechaffof other men by their own bushel, they arrive at the pious but false conclusion that without fear of God there can be no genuine love of man, and that without faith in some one of our five hundred and odd true religions, all the thoughts of our hearts would be evil continually. They insist upon it that the 'absolute Atheist,' if virtuous, is so by accident not design; that he can neither love truth, justice, nor his neighbour, except by sheer luck, and that, if bad as his principles, would cut the throat of every man, woman, and child who might have the misfortune to fall in his way. They argue as if none can think good thoughts or purposely perform good acts unless so far eaten up by superstition as always to keep in view the probablerewards, or equally probablevengeanceof some supernatural Being. Faith in human goodness, irrespective of reward and punishment, either here or hereafter, sophists of this bigotted class have literally none. Influenced by fanaticism and stimulated by cupidity they let slip no opportunity of dealing out upon such as oppose their hideous doctrines the choicest sort of vituperative blackguardism. The reader knows this is no idle or ill-considered charge. He has seen at the commencement of this Apology verbatim extracts, affecting the moral character of Atheists, from books written by pious Christians, so utterly disgusting that only those in whom every sense of delicacy, truth, and justice has been obliterated, by a worse than savage creed, can peruse them without horror.
Not inaptly, we conceive, has religion been likened to a madman's robe, for the least puff of reason parts it and shows the wearer's nakedness. This view of religion explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that eminent piety is usually associated with eminent imbecility. Such men as Newton, Locke, and Bacon are not remembered and reverenced on account of their faith. By all but peddling narrow-thoughted bigots they are held in honour for their science, their matter-of-fact philosophy; not their puerile conceits about 'airy nothings,' to which half crazed supernaturalists have assigned 'a local habitation and a name.' Lord Bacon laid down principles so remote from pious, that no man can understand and philosophise in strict accordance with them, if he fears to embrace Atheism. From hisNovum Organum Scientiarummay be extracted an antidote to the poison of superstition, for it is there we are told thataiming at divine things through the human, breeds only an odd mixture of imaginations. There we are told thatMan, the servant and interpreter of Nature, can only understand and act in proportion as he observes or contemplates the order of nature—more he cannot do.There too is set down the wise lesson that truth is justly to be called the daughter, not of Authority, but Time. Bacon abhorred superstition. He denounced it as the 'confusion of many states,' and for a 'religious philosopher' wrote most liberally of Atheism. No one who has read his Essay on Superstition can doubt that he thought it a far greater evil than Atheism. Any man who should now write as favourably of Godlessness would be suspected of a latitudinarianism quite inimical to the genius and spirit of 'true religion.' The orthodox much prefer false piety to no piety at all. Mere honesty does not satisfy them. They insist on faith in their chimerical doctrines and systems, as 'the basis of all excellence.' To please them we must sacrifice truth as it is in Nature, at the shrine of truth as it is in Jesus, and believe what derives no sanction from experience. Bacon taught us to 'interpret nature,' and that 'aiming at the divine through the human breeds only an odd mixture of imaginations;' but these hair-brained fanatics who would have us believe himone of them, care little for natural knowledge, and affect contempt for all that concerns most intimately our 'earthly tabernacles.' Bacon taught us toconsider as suspicious every relation, which depends in any degree upon religion, [93:1] but wiser than that 'wisest of mankind,' ourrealChristians execrate such teaching, and will have nothinggoodto do with those who walk in the light and honestly act in the spirit of it. How dare they then pretend to sympathise with the opinions of Bacon? It is true he announced himself willing to swallow all the fables of the Talmud or the Koran, rather than believe this Almighty frame without a Mind; but who is now prepared to determine the precise sense in which our illustrious philosopher used the words 'without a mind.' We believe his own interpretation altogether unchristian. 'To palter in a double sense' has ever been the practice of philosophers who, like Bacon, knew more than they found it discreet to utter. But with all their discretion, Locke, Milton, and even Newton did not succeed in establishing an orthodox reputation. The passages from Locke given in this Apology do at least warrant our opinion that it may fairly be doubted whether he was either a Christian or a Theist. Had he been disposed to avow Atheistical sentiments, he could not have done so, except at the imminent hazard of his life. Speculative philosophers do not usually covet the crown of martyrdom, and are seldom unwilling to fling down a few religious sops to the Cerberus of popular bigotry. It was the boast of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, that when communing with himself, he was always a philosopher, but when dealing with the mass of mankind, he was always a priest. Who knows how far John Locke followed thesafeexample. That he was a materialist his writings prove; and every far sighted Theist will admit that Atheism is the natural termination of Materialism. John Locke may have been a devout believer in 'thingless names,' to which no merely human creature can attach clear and distinct ideas: he may have thought the Bible had one of the said 'thingless names' for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without mixture of error for its matter; though very probable he affected such belief, to shield himself from persecution; but it is quite certain, and may be affirmed without injustice, that he should to have professed Atheism; for his own rule of philosophising is inconsistent with belief in any thing supernatural. While living he was often charged with Atheism, by opponents who understood the tendencies of his philosophy better than he appeared to do himself. But the Author of this Apology has no such mean opinion of John Locke, as to suppose him ignorant that Materialism, as he taught it, is totally irreconcileable with that God, and that Religion in which he professed to believe. Belief in inconceivable entities cannot be reconciled with disbelief of all entities, save those of which we can frame clear and distinct ideas. Nor is it easy to persuade oneself that Locke could so far have done violence to his own principles as to feel 'lively faith' in a 'science' with no other aim, end, or ground-work, than 'the knowledge and attributes of the unknown.'