_person_, in relation to theology: it never was meant to express beings
in the image of you and me; but the dramatic manner of presenting a
description of the principles of nature in the theatre, _per sonantem_,
by sound or song, by fiction, by disguise, by allegory, by mask or
mystery, by representative action: the revelation of which would be to
understand the principles of nature so personated on the stage, as I
have defined the Trinity. And it is in this, and no other sense, that
I read the names of Deity in the Old or New Testament, as brought
apparently on the stage of human affairs, in person, by the authors;
that _personating_ meaning nothing more than a present picture or
representation of an absent or infinite power, by sounds or voice,
and sometimes by masks, as was the earliest known practice in dramatic
exhibition, which explains everything about gods and oracles, and makes
the Hymns of Orpheus as sacred as the Psalms of David; as they are as
certainly beautiful in poetic composition, and equally useful to human
welfare.
You, Sir, if you enter the House of Commons next month, may be said to
personate the Electors of Tamworth; a power in the abstract greater than
you, because many and supposed qualified to reject your personation
and to elect another. Therefore, the personation is not the power
personated. As the King's chief Minister, you will also personate the
King's Government in the House of Commons; but you are not in reality
that governing power; because, it is something distinct from you, and
greater than can be concentrated in your person. You, as plain Robert
Peel, and I, as Richard Carlile, are not persons; and though it is a
custom so to use the word and so to describe us, yet it is a mistake and
misuse of the word, unless the body may be said to personate the mind,
soul, &c. I hope you see that much of the error of our Church has turned
upon this point; because a person was never the reality of the power,
and consequently the persons of the Trinity are not to be considered
the reality of the Trinity: and hence the Unitarian Dissenter has
no reasonable ground of dissent. The doctrine of the Trinity, as a
description of Deity, is a valid theological and philosophical doctrine,
admitting of no rational dissent.
I wish the Bishops to learn this before the Dissenters, so that the
Church may be taught how to call back her errant and ignorant children,
that her property may be held together for useful purposes, and not be
wasted at the shrine of dissenting ignorance or bankrupt government.
And now, Sir, can you yet see your way with me, "to remove every abuse
that can impair the efficiency of the establishment; extend the sphere
of its usefulness, and strengthen and confirm its just claims upon
the respect and affections of the people?" If you cannot, I beg you to
follow me farther.
It is not only in physics that the doctrine of the Trinity is
theologically and scientifically correct, but in morals also; and this
is the foundation of the Christian Religion.
As God, the Father, personates all science, under the attribute of
omniscience; that is, personates all existence, both omnipotence and
omnipresence, and is, in that reality, the fountain of knowledge--the
all and every part that can be known; so God the Son, Christ or
Logos, personates the human mind, as the existence or manifestation of
knowledge and reason, as Jesus or the principle of salvation from evil,
in possessing that knowledge, and as the true God, in us and with us, in
and with whom we live, and move, and have our being.
So God the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter to come, to
complete the happiness of the human race, personates that spirit of
free communication of knowledge which should be found in the Church,
the theatre, not of any superstition or dramatic ceremony, but of the
freedom of the human mind, and all its emanations of free enquiry, free
discussion, mutual instruction, which are the necessary elements of
brotherly love and peace, in the proving of all things and holding fast
that which is good. And thus I prove the truth of the doctrine of the
Trinity.
This, Sir, is a true picture or effigies of the moral Trinity of the
Christian Church, which you will find to be a key to every mysterious
sentence of the Bible; and I ask you seriously, as between man and man,
is any thing of this kind known or practised in the present Church?
Are not the ministers of that Church afraid of every new discovery in
science? Have they not, as far as they could, persecuted every man who
has attempted to publish any criticism, enquiry, or objection to their
mysterious subjects? History says--Yes. And I say that they have known
nothing of the subject for themselves, and that they have dreaded all
knowledge of, all enquiry into, the subject. Will their pride let them
learn of me? Well may I say:--"Come unto me, all that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me: for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto
your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." That is the
language of the personated Logos, or Principle of Reason, addressed to
the present state of British mind, as it was formerly addressed to the
general state of the human mind.
The doctrine of the transubstantiation of bread and wine, as the
elements of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, into the real body and
blood of Christ, has been another stumbling-block in the Church. On this
head, our law-established Church has dissented from its former self,
which when I mentioned on my last jury trial, the Judge, Sir Allan Park,
called it a vilifying of the Church. I knew better; but saw that the
Judge was not a man to be reasoned with, and so I did not press the
subject: but through this letter and your name, Sir, I desire to teach
him how it has been done. Transubstantiation is no stumbling-block to my
mind.
The twenty-eighth article of the Church says on this
subject:--"Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread
and wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but
is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of
a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions. The body of
Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after an heavenly
and spiritual manner; and the mean whereby the body of Christ is
received and eaten in the Supper, is Faith."
It is very clear to me that the Bishops of that time, the sixteenth
century, did not know how to read Holy Writ. I could defend the entire
doctrine of transubstantiation, in its fullest application, from the
language of the Gospel according to Saint John. This subject affords
me another proof, that the doctrine of transubstantiation is much older
than any of the books of the New Testament: for, where understood,
there is nothing in theology more dear than this doctrine, or that comes
nearer to a physical and moral truth.
First, let us understand that the root of the word _Sacrament_ is a
secret in the mind; and _Transubstantiation_ is a change of substance
from one to another thing. Now the secret in the mind is, where
understood, and where not understood there is no Sacrament, that,
like the Trinity, all the appearances of God are in the principle
of transubstantiation or change from one to another thing. All
is motion.--Nature knows no rest. All is change, all is
transubstantiation. It is like the Trinity,--one of the attributes of
Deity, one not to be doubted,--because everywhere visible. The present
Church of England calls it a damnable doctrine; but it is so called
through ignorance. Like that of the Trinity, it is a doctrine much older
than the Christian era; and so also was that of the Lord's Supper, as a
practised ceremony.
When the name of Christ was set up to personate all the attributes of
Deity, the various names of the Pagan gods were decried. It had become
a matter of wisdom thus to set up the name of Christ as a personation
of all the gods and goddesses: it was a concentration of philosophy, to
unite mankind in one form of religion and for one great purpose, that
of progressive and perpetual improvement. The plan was good; but the
principle has never been rightly developed. Teaching by mystery is a bad
system. The mass of the people are not so to be taught. We must begin
and teach by revelation. The Christian Religion, when revealed, will be
eternal, and realise all its real promises of peace on earth, good-will
among men, and a land flowing with milk and honey.
Before the name of Christ was used, Bacchus was called a Saviour, as
were many other if not all the gods, as Jehovah is declared the only
Saviour in the Old Testament. And this Bacchus had the name of Jesus,
or Saviour, inscribed on his altar pieces, in the very letters now
inscribed in our Churches, the three Greek letters Iota, Eta, Sigma,
I.H.S., not Jesus Hominum Salvator, in initials, though so in meaning;
but Yes, which is the same as Jesus, and signifies Saviour. Isis is of
the same root, one of whose names was Ceres. Ceres personated corn or
bread, and Bacchus personated wine. It was a Pagan custom, in religious
ceremonies, to break and eat bread in honour of Ceres, and to pour and
drink wine in honour of Bacchus, as the bread and wine or body and blood
of salvation, of both physical and moral salvation.
Christ being made all, both physical and moral Saviour, was intended to
swallow up all the various Pagan honours and ceremonies, every one
of which, in part or whole, is still retained in our law-established
Church; and so Christ personated both the elements, bread and wine, as
his body and blood, as before they had been called body of Ceres and
blood of Bacchus.
Be it remembered, that the Pagans had no other ideas of these matters,
than those of dramatic effect. The origin of the drama was in and with
the religion of the human race. And we must come back or come up to this
for a right understanding and use of the Christian Religion.
As food, bread and wine are the best elemental representatives of the
body and blood of the human being, and will sustain human life in health
and vigour. As bread and wine, they are elements of the physical nature
of God; and when taken into the human body, they transubstantiate in
that body, and, in making blood, become the blood which is necessary
to sustain the moral god or reason in the godly man: so, through the
transubstantiation, they do not cease to be the body and blood of
Christ. This is what is meant in the matter, and this solves the
language of Saint Augustine, cited in the twenty-ninth article, that
though the wicked eat the consecrated bread and drink the wine, they do
not eat the real body and blood of Christ, because in leading bad
lives they do not improve themselves, and so eat and drink but for new
condemnation.
The revelation of the mysterious word sin, in the Sacred Scriptures,
is generally applicable to the ignorance of the human race; and so of
original sin, which is not to be otherwise reasonably understood. Man
is born without knowledge, but may, by due care, be made a member of the
Church of Christ; that is, may be made a scholar, as the foundation of a
wise and good man.
I shrink not from a full and reasonable explanation of every part of
the mysterious doctrine of the Christian Church, in this way; and I am
prepared to maintain, before all men, that this is the true revelation
of the mystery, the true spirit of the letter, both of the Old and New
Testament: "the truth as it is in Jesus"--in nature: the truth, by God.
This beautiful and deeply-woven allegory embraces, in its mystery,
almost every known process of nature; and must, in my opinion, have
been the labour of the united science of many generations of the wisest
men---of truly inspired men. This very doctrine of transubstantiation
in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is descriptive, and is in fact
and principle, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ in. man.
The bread and wine are swallowed, are buried in the human stomach, there
decomposed or transubstantiated, formed into chyle, rise again into
blood, and form the spirit of the man: which is, in reality, a death of
the body and resurrection of the spirit: and the brain being the chief
of the sentient principle, there becomes an ascension into that kingdom
of heaven, which it is in a reasonable man, and than; which there can
be, by law of nature, no other. The same or similar explanation applies
to the first and second birth; the birth of the physical body in its
original sin, the second the birth of the spiritual mind or inward man,
which is the Lord Christ Jesus. It is a divine riddle, and such is the
solution.
The riddle is of larger comprehension than the mere relations of God to
man. It is an astronomical almanack, a written and dramatized picture
of the celestial globe; and is, in truth, a most perfect allegory of all
known nature, both in physics and morals, in matter and spirit.
There are no such men in the Church now as the writers of the Sacred
Scriptures; none even with sufficient knowledge to understand them. We
have fallen; yes, we have fallen into the dark ages; and the revelation,
when known, is to be the millennium. We have fallen by that Scarlet
Whore, the Babylon of Mystery; and have to rise again, by getting a
knowledge of Christ, which is not now in the Church, nor yet among any
of the Dissenters so called. Nothing can be imagined more anti-Christian
in spirit and character, than that which has been called the Christian
Church of the last fifteen hundred years.
Christ, in his physical character, personates the sun and solar year,
while his twelve disciples personate the twelve months, or the signs of
the zodiac; and; in this sense, we have a death, descent, resurrection
and ascension, once a year. It is in that sense he performs the miracle
of turning the water of the pot of Aquarius (January or Winter) into the
wine of Autumn; the story, of course, is told, in the gospel, after the
form of a personated narrative of a dramatic incident. So the product of
the corn-seed of five small loaves and two fishes, becomes sufficient,
in the season, to feed five thousand. The knowledge and ingenuity of the
state of mind, that could so construct the allegory, as an harmonious
picture of the works of nature, is absolutely wonderful, and has my
admiration, even my ejaculatory adoration; and I am not a little proud
of my own ingenuity, in having penetrated thus far into so deep and
mysterious a subject. It has brought me perfect peace of mind, as to the
general system of nature, and left me burning with the desire to acquire
more knowledge.
In the Church now existing, is there aught but mystery that can be
called its religion? And in mystery unexplained, unrevealed, can
there be aught but impudent knavery in the ministration, with general
hypocrisy or credulous folly in the reception? I have penetrated
the subject so deeply as not to shrink from saying, that the present
ministration of the Church is an impudent and mischievous imposture,
sanctioned by the custom of antiquity, that neither instructs nor
moralizes the people; for, notwithstanding all the pretences to
religion, greater immorality than is here found cannot be supposed to
exist among a people holding or held together as a community, in daily
danger of disruption, and utterly without a code of moral guidance or
guides: and this not so much among the poor as among the rich. Even this
city is in danger, from its ill-assorted and ill-conditioned
population, of all the disasters that befell Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome,
Constantinople or Paris. And almost every village in the Island groans
under want, and courts even the desolation of contested revolution for a
change. And that very feeling and profession, which is now miscalled
the religion of peace, will, from its state of ignorant dissension,
only serve to whet the appetite for contention and slaughter, and make
another war in the name of God.
I call upon you to repent, by which I mean reflection. I ask you to be
honest, and that, too, because the season of profitable dishonesty is
exhausted, and you have wealth enough: save it. It is never too late
to reform and do justly; but the later the reform is deferred, the more
necessity that the justice be rigid and prompt. I feel that if I had
your authority, I could save the Church and its property, not for a
farther career of its iniquity and error, but as a noble institution for
the good of the people, a sufficient school for all, and a hospital for
the infirm; to which, I add, that this, or nothing good, must have been
the purpose of its first institution. I believe, from what I now see
of the foundation of the Christian Religion, that this was the first
purpose of its institution. Banish the superstition of the Church, plant
the tree of knowledge there, and you will quickly overthrow the
morally pestilent Dissenters. I mean, of course, by moral means, by
the exhibition of more knowledge and wisdom and utility than they. This
would be salvation and reform to every good institution in the country;
for when knowledge becomes the nation's religion and moral pole-star,
everything good is safe, everything evil will vanish before a discussion
of its merits. This or blood-thirsty contention is your choice. You may
delay for a while; but you cannot otherwise reform. You, by delay, will
merely bid the people wait until they are strong enough to combat your
authority. Delay will be a challenge to them of physical combat.
What can confer more dignity on the "Dignitaries of the Church" than
for the Legislature to say to them:--"Feed the people with knowledge
and no longer fill them with superstition?" If I understand human nature
rightly, it has more pleasure in honesty than in dishonesty.
Would the experimental lectures of a Faraday, desecrate the building?
Or a beautifully reflected picture of the heavens and its explanation
lessen true devotion? Would moral; science profane the pulpit or injure
the congregation? Would the real catechism; and instruction, of children
in matters of physical and moral science be of less importance than the
parrotlike catechism of the language of the present mystery? There
would then be some ground for a bishop's or overseer's examination
and confirmation; but what does confirmation now mean? All that I can
remember of it is a learn-ing to repeat from memory a prayer and a
creed, perhaps a few commandments, which are studied to-day, to be gone
through tomorrow, and neglected ever after. Give the people something
which they can feel and know to be useful, which they can reduce to
practice, and they will emulate each other in flocking to Church at
the appointed times. You will then have need of still more churches to
receive the increasing population. It will be an emulative pleasure
to children, a new delight to parents, a mutual gratification to be at
school together in church.
I can say from observation, comparison and experience, that among the
most moral of the working people in the metropolis, will be found
those who have attended scientific lectures on the Sunday, and who have
thereby been taught, to contemn superstition. You find them not in the
house of intoxication; but passing soberly in the evening from their
homes to the school; and gratifiedly after the lecture from the school
to their homes. The greatest error that toryism and superstition have
fallen into has been to suppose that knowledge will make a people
disorderly. Bacon's aphorism is true, that superstition is the _primum
mobile_ of sedition, the great agitator; and ignorance the great
disorderer of States. Is it not so in Ireland? Is it not your greatest
trouble in this island? The wisest act of the life of the late Lord
Castlereagh was to propose to send _Paine's Age of Reason_ among the
Roman Catholics of Ireland. If it had been so thoroughly done, when he
proposed it, they would have been all quiet enough by this time. Real
knowledge is the water-cup of sobriety for a people: with that they
will seek to rid themselves of nothing but error and evil that cannot be
morally defended.
Make the change that I propose in the business and ceremony of the
Church, and you instantly make a Christian Religion, eminently Catholic,
that will not only annihilate the Dissenters, but convert Jew, Mahometan
and Pagan. It will be irresistible to all mankind. They cannot argue
against science; but each argues against the superstition of the other.
Science is the essence of Judaism, but the men called Jews understand it
not. It is the foundation of their name, the ground on which they have
been considered a chosen people, it is the only sign of God in man, the
only proof of true religion. Science and morals are the whole duty and
all needful to man; beyond which he can gain nothing but superstition,
error and evil. Science and morals, then, are the only proper business
of the Church. Let us have our National Education in the Church. Let
the Church be the fountain of knowledge, and all be there baptized, as a
true sign of mental birth and membership of Christ.
Gather together all the property that was ever ecclesiastical; get
it back from whoever may hold it; take it out of the hands of the
priesthood or the ministers of the Church, tithes and all; and give
it into the hands of its true owners, the people, each parish with its
separate share, and let the majority of the parishioners make the best
use of it they can for ecclesiastical, that is scholastical purposes;
and with it, also, provide for their infirm and accidentally poor. This
one act of public justice and public good would go far toward settling
the affairs of this distracted and unsettled nation, and do injury to no
one. Let the State Parliament be also the Church Convocation, which may
be well done when there are no superstitious disputes, all will go on
smoothly with due and sufficient authority and order, and Britain look
forward to happy days. It would be the regeneration of the whole earth
in a few years. This is what is meant by the promise of the knowledge of
the Lord covering the earth as the waters fill the ocean.
Somebody must publicly break through the trammels of superstition, I
have done it as far as a private man can do it; but wo public man in
England has yet dared to approach the subject. Be you the first. No
other circumstance could bring you a more imperishable name and fame.
Of wealth you have enough. I ask nothing more than that you fulfil the
promise of your administration made to the Electors of Tamworth. If you
say, that you did not mean what I express, I shall answer you, that you
could have no other meaning. Were I in Parliament, I would carry the
subject in spite of prejudice; so strong is my faith in the power of
knowledge. I would move, in such a clear and simple way, that a man
should not hold up his face to his fellow man after voting against me.
Give us a commission, with power to enquire into this subject. I will be
content to wait all the time that justice to all concerned may require.
If religion be any thing more than I make it--mental cultivation from
infancy to death, it must be the private business of every man's life
and nothing national; like national sobriety, it must be made up of
the sobriety of each individual, and cannot rest on social forms and
ceremonies. Ceremonial sobriety would be but the mockery of a good
principle. I care not how much repenting and proving we have, how much
trial, let us but have free, full, and fair enquiry and discussion, in
Parliament and out of Parliament. Giving a man knowledge cannot be a
disqualification for true religion. Feeding him with science can have no
tendency to injure his morals. Occupying his time well can be no source
of bad habits. Spurring him on to a moral emulation in the acquisition
of equal or more knowledge than his neighbour, will not create ill will
toward that neighbour.