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XII.

Christian Morals.

"Until the end of the fourth century, those who were legally divorced were allowed to marry again, the second marriage being considered no farther objectionable than in other cases; but in the fifth century, the marriage of a divorced person was forbidden during the life of the other party. So prevalent was now the spirit of monachism, that the married state began to be considered impure, and only a tolerated evil. Certain articles of food also were forbidden.

"The introduction of such laws, for which no foundation could be shown in the consciousness (conscience?) of mankind, gave to Christian morals the aspect of an arbitrary set of divine rules; whilst it prepared the way for the unfortunate distinction between a higher kind of virtue for the monks, and a lower, which was sufficient for common Christians.

"It seems, at first sight, difficult to reconcile with this great external strictness, and yet is in fact intimately therewith connected, that we find in the Church-fathers of this age, principles concerning veracity, which undermine the very foundation of all true virtue.” *

These observations of a man profoundly versed in the history of Christianity, and rather inclined to extenuate the faults of Christians, led my mind to Thee, my God, as is usual with me whenever the obscure purposes of thy Providence raise a cloud of difficulty over my understanding. With our narrow comprehension of this infinite WHOLE, of which we are a part, with our limited knowledge of Thee, and

* Gieseler, c. vi. § 100. Cunningham's Translation.

with our natural avidity to perceive the Reason of things so intimately connected with us, it is not surprising that men rush into vague conjecture. What is indeed astonishing is, that rational beings should be more ready to embrace absurd theories, than to endure the austerity of well-grounded doubt. Not to see wisdom, order, and purpose in the course of events, is blindness; to perceive light in the explanations of the pretended depositaries of thy Revelation, is a symptom of deranged mental vision. What conjecture shall ever explain the reason why, when the religion of the most civilized part of mankind was to be changed, thy Providence should allow the new religion to attack, without discrimination, the principles which, under Paganism, had produced the most noble fruits; introducing instead an enthusiasm which, on the one hand, led directly to a pitiful system of painful abstinence and degrading humility, and on the other, to the most outrageous arrogance, and most artful hypocrisy ?

These are fruits which Christianity has produced under every variety of circumstances. It is true that it has encouraged benevolence; but it is also fearfully true that it has sanctified the most barbarous cruelty. The intolerance of Church Christianity has inflicted more pain, more bitter anguish, than the fiercest civil wars. Christianity, from its earliest days, has indeed been a civil war, of the most inveterate kind-that kind of civil war which, pervading the whole frame of society, carries its flames into the

recesses of domestic life. Whoever it was that attributed to Jesus the declaration that he was not come to send peace on earth but a sword, and represented him dwelling, without pain or dissatisfaction,* on that horrible picture of the state to which his disciples would reduce domestic life, must have lived at a period when the spirit of intolerance had already begun to work.† To make such a prediction the effect of a divine spirit dwelling in the prophet, is a sad perversion of the reasoning powers. No supernatural knowledge was required to perceive that the dreadful effects of the controversial spirit which Rabbinism had already displayed, even when kept under the severe yoke of the Romans, would be produced among the earliest professors of a modification of Judaism, which by the addition of the doctrines of a resurrection of the body and the reign of Christ during one thousand years with the elect upon earth, was apt to fire up enthusiasm into madness. Such fanaticism would at first lead to the sacrifice of the enthusiast's own life; but the time would soon

If the passage, "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?" (Luke xii. 49,) be a parallel to that in Matthew, (x. 34,) Jesus is made to appear as enthusiastically anxious for the state of discord he predicts. But the metaphor of Fire may express merely an active principle.

Matt. x. 34-"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law: and a man's foes shall be they of his own household."

[ The prediction, it would seem, expressed not the object of his coming, but a partial result of it.]

arrive when the class which afforded the early victims would cover the earth with tyrants, the cruel oppressors of all who would not join with them in the pursuit and maintenance of power. No: I have too much respect for the historical character of Jesus of Nazareth, to recognize that frantic feeling of joy at the contemplation of the dreadfullest evils, because they coincided with his proselyting views. Such a declaration would have neutralized upon my mind, such as Thou, my God, hast given it to me, the effect of the most striking miracle. If I had seen Lazarus come out of the grave, having previously seen his body under the power of corruption, the recollection of such a desire as that of beholding the tenderest ties of nature converted into sources of the bitterest hatred, would have shown me that there must be some delusion in the miracle, because I am most certain that there is no possibility of such delusion in the moral principle which that enthusiastic desire opposes.*

What wonder, then, if a religion which sacrifices the holiest feelings and moral principles to dogmatic

That passage in the Mosaic books where the Israelites are commanded to put to death any prophet who, on the ground of having truly predicted an event, should desire them to change their worship, (if we put aside the question as to the propriety of punishment, which, on the peculiar ground of the Jewish Constitution, is not without defence,) is profoundly philosophical, and proceeds exactly on the principles of Hume's well known argument. In what I have just stated I proceed upon similar grounds. The Unity of God should not be considered as shaken by any of the ten thousand wonders which have so frequently deceived mankind.

notions, reduce its professors to the state described in the passage which has suggested these reflections! A wonder indeed, and a miracle, it would have been, to see it produce what churchmen pretend to be its natural result—"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men."

Oh my God! why Thou hast permitted such power for evil to what is called Christianity, I have not sufficient knowledge to explain; but this I firmly believe, that without the regular interposition of Thy Providence, working chiefly through men's experience, desires, and faculties, the horrible state to which Europe was reduced by the Papal power, as it exhibited itself under the most ambitious of those pretended Vicars of Christ, would have maintained itself triumphant to this very day. I am fully persuaded the prevalent Christianity is so far from helping our civilization, that it is civilization which has purified it, checked the ambition of the Church ministers, and is daily opening the eyes of thousands to the superstition which still deprives thy true Gospel of its beneficial influence. Oh! that I had a giant's strength to carry on that work! But Thou, my God, hast better instruments in reserve. I thank Thee, nevertheless, for having enabled me to oppose superstition front to front, and to die under the conviction that I have not spared myself!

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