happiness and national prosperity: I find it everywhere sadly neglected;
here in prison, out in church, at the theatre, in public and private
business, in families, in pursuit of pleasure, in the army--everywhere.
It can be scarcely said, that there is anything solid in our actions;
frivolity prevails everywhere, and is mixed up with our most serious
professions. I cannot look back to Pagan times without seeing that they
were a superior people to ourselves, and that we have fallen, through
the management of our religion and politics, from, rather than risen,
above them: we exceed them in nothing but hard and lengthy labour for
small wages, insufficient for the necessaries of life. We have not
learnt from Seneca, "that he lives longest who has made the best use of
his time."
Be it your study to seek to give us some sound moral reforms, and sink
party politics in the moral of public good; withdraw all licences from
houses of intoxication and late hours; let there be no public resort,
in Parliament or elsewhere, after ten at night; if it would be no
abridgement of general liberty, confine shop business to limited
hours, that the conductors and assistants may have due time for mental
improvement. Some of the young men and women in London shops, bitterly
lament the want of more time for rational recreation, for health and
improvement. They are among the veriest of slaves in confinement. Let
knowledge be once legislatively encouraged, remove all taxes from it,
and then a hundred minor arrangements, by legislation, may be made
conducive to public good, and a bar be set against injurious, offensive,
and slavish competition. It is the Tory fear--and, in justice, I will
add, Whig fear too--of knowledge that has produced all the present
wrongs and evils of the country; for if cunning men have legislated,
it has not been done for the public good; because there has not been
sufficient public responsibility.
This is all Church as well as State business that I am proposing. The
clear distinction as to Church and State is--that the Church means the
people, congregated for mental improvement; and the State means the
exercise of that mental improvement in their public business: so true it
is, that Church must precede and give character to the State.
Tithes are a recognition of the original proprietorship of the
whole people in the land; a rent paid under that consideration,
appropriate-able to the sustenance of the poor, and the mental
improvement of all.
Church Property is the property of the whole people who constitute the
Church; and not, as now, of the ministers, who profess to be, and ought
to be, the servants of the Church. At present, the servants are set
above, defy, and tyrannize over the masters. All public officers in
Church and State, from the King to the Beadle, should be subject to the
periodical election of an intelligent people: without this, there can be
no just and dignified authority--no proper public officers,--all will be
tyranny, corruption, and inefficiency!
In thus stating my subject, I am not insensible to the state of mind
and conflicting interests with which you have to deal: but you are in
a dilemma, from which nothing but wisdom and honesty can relieve you;
every false or inefficient step will weaken you; any attempt to patch
the holes made by Time in the mystery of the Church, will be like the
tinker's work of mending one and making two: it is rusty and rotten,
and must be knocked to pieces and burnt up, to produce the brilliant
revelation from its ashes! There can be no mixture of the mystery with
the revelation. The latter is a spirit that will explode the former;
and, if you be a good Christian, let me tell you that the advent of the
revelation will be the fulfilment of the promise of the gospel. We have
had nothing but the mystery, nothing but the dark ages of ignorance and
superstition: the mystery is not Christianity; the revelation alone,
which we have not had, is Christianity. The mystery and the revelation
are as unlike each other, as the grossest superstition is unlike reason.
What a delightful state of society do I see before me, when the
watchword of all shall be--GET KNOWLEDGE! The Bible abounds with this
exhortation; tells us all our disorders are lack of knowledge; and yet
we have been through centuries, almost through millenia, studiously and
tyrannically keeping each other blind and ignorant. This has been the
reign of the devil, Anti-Christianity, and not Christianity. When the
portico of each Church-build-ing shall bear the inscription of--KNOW
THYSELF, AND ENTER HERE TO GET KNOWLEDGE, the communicant will see a
friend in his minister, and the minister will strive to raise up wisdom
in his communicant.
Now what do we see? Studied ignorance, and suppression of knowledge with
both: each ashamed to look in the face of the other. And wherever a
man advances beyond the existing state of mind, and publishes his
sentiments, he is persecuted as an outcast, and unrelentingly subjected
to prison-discipline, since the law has ceased to make the "offence"
capital.
The unrevealed mystery of religion has been the curse and moral devil
of the human race. A statesman cannot be wise and honest without
setting his face against it, and seeking to rid of it the minds of
his countrymen. With it, a state can have no permanent peace, nor can
statesmanship be an honour. If you are not master of this subject, I am;
if you will not press it upon the attention of the country, I will;
and I have not a doubt, but that, by its superior moral power, it will
enable me to succeed you in office. I invite you to take the task in
your hands, and I will be content to be anything, to remain in prison,
if this great reform be but put in motion while I live.
It is simply to begin to teach the people something useful in the
Church, to give them useful knowledge, as easy in practicability as it
is for a ripe scholar to become a schoolmaster to uninstructed youth. We
have teachers all prepared for the purpose in the Clergy themselves. You
have now to deal with a suspected and not a respected clergy. Though the
great mass of the people do not understand where the fault theologically
lies, yet they have instinctive discernment enough to see, that the
relation of their condition to that of the Clergy is not founded in
honesty and social utility. As sure as I, who see through the whole
subject, the people feel that they are not fairly dealt with by the
Clergy; and thus feeling, with such a Clergy, there can be no social
peace. The feeling will increase as they get knowledge on the subject,
and I have thrown that knowledge into the market, in defiance of all the
power you have possessed or can possess; and that knowledge you cannot
withdraw from the market of human intellect: the whole people will get
at it in time.
Your boast is now that of being chief or leader of the CONSERVATIVES.
This is not what the nation wants. It needs purgation of error,
abuse and wrong, and a restoration of all the first principles of its
Institutions. It is a fair question to put to you and your party, if
you know the first principles of the Institutions of this country? You
certainly have seen none of them in practice; for your scholarship and
administration have been full of error and wickedness. As I told Sir
Allan Park, that the Church had dissented from itself, so I now tell
you, that every Institution in this country that is a thousand years
old in name, has dissented from itself, and has, in fact, been changed
diabolically--which means directly opposite, or from good to evil; and
there never was a country whose cup of iniquity was more filled.
Conservation means preservation, and there is nothing in the present
Institutions of this country but public wrongs and private abuses to
be preserved. The name of a Destructive is far more honourable, in
the present state of the country; the only name indeed that can be
honourable, if it be interpreted, an intended destruction of error and
abuses, of which the country is brim-full, and the fermentation pouring
over.
I dislike all these names. They are all dishonestly used. They form no
real distinction between man and man. The word Radical has always been
to me an offensive word; the more particularly so as I have seen some
very bad and ignorant men making a great noise under it and about it. We
want knowledge and honesty to make it practicable, and no names by which
to be distinguished: such names spring from ignorance and dishonesty.
The origin of our ancient Institutions has its foundation laid in the
moral of law springing from the law of morals; and the restoration would
be easy, if existing authority would resign itself to the change, or
if it could be overpowered and made so to do. One or the other of these
changes is necessary, before anything can be done, and the first the
wisest and to be preferred. I believe there was a time when they existed
without a mixture of any kind of deception practised upon the people,
and that is just what I desire to see restored; and which, I am sure,
from the growth of knowledge and criticism, is the one thing needful to
keep the country in a state of inward peace.
Knowledge is the only spiritual interest of the people: it should be
fostered, promoted and increased in the Church, so as to be equalized
as far as possible among the mass or greater number. The ignorance of
the people has been an excuse for many an act of hypocrisy, deception
and tyranny: its continuance is now the fault of the Church, and of
those who have its direction. Cunning cannot invent an assumption that
any qualification can better serve the spiritual and temporal interests
of the people than knowledge. Their degree of knowledge is the all that
is spiritual or of good within them. It is an affair, too, where honest
brokerage is scarcely probable; because no check can be kept upon it.
What, therefore, is not to be defended as knowledge is not of God but of
the devil. In that sense, I arraign the whole Church as now constituted,
and challenge it to stand a trial. I fear it is now too corrupt even to
be militant.
Let us suppose you about to attempt a reconciliation with the present
Dissenters, as to the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church. To please
the advocates of adult baptism, you must exchange the infant for adult
baptism, and then you will displease those who are not pleased with
adult baptism. To please the Unitarians, you must give up the doctrine
of the Trinity; and then you will displease all the Trinitarians. What
is to be done to satisfy the Wesleyans or Methodists? They will have
irregular prayers and preachings, which are contrary to the discipline
of the Church. What is to be done with the Swedenborgians, the
Muggletonians, and Southcotians? How can you furnish spirit and noise
enough for the Unknown Tongues of the Irvingites? And what but the
spirit of silence will conciliate the Quakers? All of them will require
the abolition of your bishopricks and other offices, while none of them
will object, and all will claim if a chance offer, to divide the Church
Property among them. The spirit of dissent, in matters of religion,
prevailing in this country, is nothing more than an infectious mental
disease: with it, there is no reason mixed. The moment it becomes a
profit to lead such a congregation, men of comparative talent as to
capability will take it up and lead; and thus the thing has gone on
to confusion and mental distraction, because the Church was not in a
condition to defend itself and set a better example. You cannot please
one sect of the Dissenters, without increasing the displeasure of the
other: and thus your task is hopeless, on any other ground than
that which I propose, to beat them in the superior communication of
knowledge.
On the other hand, let us suppose the Church of England to begin to
reveal the mystery of Jesus Christ, which I define, and maintain, to
consist of a cultivation of the human mind, with all possible knowledge
and reason; all other Churches must instantly bow to its superiority.
The effect among men throughout the earth would be wonderful and
intellectually electric. It is the only system that can be imagined to
be a Catholic Christianity, and the very thing that is meant by the word
Catholic, something alike suited to the welfare of every man, and which
presents the principle of a moral equality, which is the only foundation
for true liberty, and the only guarantee for an improvement of public
morals; one that would make the Church an attraction to the wisest
as well as to the most ignorant of men; those as teachers, these as
learners.
We may carry the idea farther; and as in the present state of
mind, millions in Europe and America are attached to an idea of the
superiority of the Church authorities at Rome, through ignorance and
custom I grant, but not less attached,--I would, to humour that conceit
and turn it to good, consent to make the Pope of Rome the centre of
communication from all parts of the earth for discovered knowledge, as
it would be desirable to have such a central recipient and fountain to
give it forth again in the best possible manner. This would accelerate
the reconciliation of the dissenting race, without an idea of
dishonourable submission on the part of an individual. Indeed, the
perfection of my proposition is, that no man can feel injury or
degradation in the change. It is an overthrow of nothing, but simply
the development and better understanding of the mystery that has
existed since the world of human intellect began: the revelation of that
mystery; and, consequently, the completion or carrying out of the true
Christian scheme.
It is not to be expected, that, in a pamphlet letter, I can do more than
briefly notice a few leading points of this important subject; but I am
quite prepared to extend it through volumes, and shall go on so to do. I
am quite prepared to meet or be one of any commission on the subject.
I would willingly put my life upon the hazard of verifying my present
views of original Christianity. It would have been done in former ages,
had the printing press existed. Its doing now is consequent on the
gradual power of criticism which the Press has brought with it into
existence. It is the truth, and must prevail. It is the God in man.
It is the Church of Christ, against which the gates of Hell shall not
prevail. They have certainly prevailed against every other existing
Church, and the whole of the past is a wreck.
When speaking of the original Christian Religion, or of the revelation
of the mystery, I wish to be understood, as not meaning that the
revelation was ever before preached or openly taught to the human race
on any part of the earth. We have no evidence of it beyond the reasoning
and moral precepts of the philosophical world, which were not put forth
as a scheme or system of religion. But when it is confessedly the fact,
that something called a Christian scheme has been talked about for
eighteen hundred years; and when we can trace the fac simile of that
something, even in its whole nomenclature, principle and practice,
through Greeks and Romans, Persians and Hindoos, up to the Celtic Druids
and earliest known universal worship of Budha, the first personation of
Jesus Christ now on record;--I mean, that the mystery has been the only
general public part of it, and that the knowledge of the revelation was
confined to the learned class and ancient mysteries of all countries,
was the esoteric doctrine of the initiated into those mysteries; and
the breaking up of those mysteries, from the time of Alexander to the
Augustan era, was the cause of the first publication in writing of the
books or traditions handed down through the agency of those secret and
sacred Associations, bearing the mystery only on its surface and by the
letter; and that after the mystery was so published, the very ministers
of it lost the revelation, which is what the Freemasons profess to be
in search of, the lost word, the word that I have found and now declare,
that the salvation by Jesus Christ is only to be found in the increasing
cultivation of the human mind with all attainable knowledge; that the
true worship of God has no other meaning, the root of the word worship
being to cultivate, and the field to be cultivated the human mind; that
repentance is reflection for improvement; the second birth is the birth
of mind, as distinguished from physical birth or birth of body, the one
describing the man Adam, the other the God Christ; and that the kingdom
of Heaven is to be established upon a general knowledge and practice of
this revelation, is to be upon this earth, in successive generations
of the human race, and not reasonably to be sought under any other
speculation, calculation or hope. These are not only possibilities but
probabilities, and immediate practicabilities, if the existing Devil
will be pleased to retire: if not, we must resist him, and, as we are
promised, on that condition, he will flee.
Such is the foundation of a Catholic Church, from which there can be no
dissent; for what is understood cannot be dissented from: the existing
dissent is ignorance dissenting from ignorance. In the common use of the
word, I am not a Dissenter; but a trier, prover, teacher, revealer of
that which is the true meaning of the mystery that has been through
ignorance the cause of the dissent. The personation of Deity in the
written mystery has been nothing more than a drama prepared for stage
effect, which, to the initiated only, would be matter of instruction or
refreshment of memory. The ancient mystery meant a play, a drama, in our
modern sense; but was first called a mystery, then a morality; was first
private, and afterwards made common to the public, and is now for
the first time revealed to the general understanding, through the
instrumentality of the printing press.
In my lecturings and discussions, both in town and country, I find this
revelation has a great charm among all classes who have good temper and
good manners to hear patiently. It is pure reason, pure knowledge, pure
translation of language; it clashes with no other man's knowledge, and
I have not found the man who can raise an argument against it. Of its
final and complete success in regenerating the world, I have not a
doubt; it is only a question of time. It is now a question, if you and
the Parliament will look at it. I know you well enough to know, that you
will not like its propounder; but who else has been ripe and bold enough
to do it? Who else deserves the honour of being its propounder; but
I, its honest martyr and zealous student, through a ten years'
imprisonment? I call you to witness my fidelity in this matter. I was
your prisoner through four years; you sanctioned the two years I had
suffered before you came to the Home Department: you sanctioned my
imprisonment by Lord Melbourne, through thirty-two months: and, by
virtue of your office, you are sanctioning my present imprisonment. I
do not say this in anger. I am retaliating upon you, as I would have you
retaliate upon the Dissenters, by superior knowledge. If you do not
now or early take me by the hand, I shall drive you out of the field of
politics, and all who may succeed of your disposition.
It is not to be denied, that there are moral exhortations put forth in
every Church; the mystery would not pass on the people without them. But
it is a truth, that, in all of them, morals are treated as a secondary
consideration; and in some of the madder dissenting Churches, are
counted as of no weight in the question of religion. The truth, as it is
in Jesus, is, that morals are every thing as to practice, and knowledge
with succeeding reason, the principles of speculation, the WORD to be
sought, or the prize to be gained, the crown of glory, the spiritual
and immortal life, which is emphatically the language of Saint John's
Gospel; and this is the totality of the root and principle of the
Christian Religion, the promotion of which is the only proper business
of the ministration in the Church. No mystery: down with mystery. It
is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or
confessing to know, nothing. There is no Christ in the mystery. "How can
we reason, but from what we know?" The knowledge must be first. Nothing
precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. Nothing is required after;
but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. Unknown
worlds, unknown spirits, unknown matter, is nothing to us, until the
knowledge is obtained. Our knowledge is our all, in moral power, and we
can have nothing of a religious nature but our knowledge. Superstitious
fears, we know to be the property or sensation of ignorance and
misconception. We are morally responsible for nothing but an improper
use of our knowledge. It is wickedness to teach ignorance any other
doctrine.
My Christian proposition for the Reform of the Church harmonizes with
all science, and clashes with nothing but positive error and wicked
policy; and I venture to tell you, that you can find no other scheme to
produce the same effect, and to give satisfaction to the present and to
all future generations of men, to make the Church "meet the respect and
affections of the people."
Each paltry sect now considers its tenets as a Catholic Faith; but
the truth is, as Dr. Oeddes well observed, "that what is Christian
is Catholic, and what is Catholic must be Christian;" but then, this
follows, that neither Christianity nor Catholicity will bear a union
with the word dissent, unless the dissenter be an intelligent corrector
at the same time: they are adverse to every admissible idea of
undiscussed dissent. All standing dissent is of the devil; while
Christianity and Catholicity are of God and Heaven. The multiplication
table, the elements of Euclid, the doctrines of the Trinity and
Transubstantiation, the proved analysis and composition of all known
substances, are Catholic doctrines, from which nothing but ignorance can
dissent. The whole of the present Church Ritual is a mass of words
that conceal a truth; but that truth is not known in the Church, cannot
therefore be used or worshipped, and the words can only be deemed the
lumber of the memory: treating man as man treats a parrot, teaching him
constantly to exclaim "pretty Poll," without giving him understanding
whom or what "Poll" personates.
If I were to sit in Church through a morning or evening service, I
should have a perfect understanding of all the words used, and,
consequently, should be worshipping according to the limit of THE WORD
there presented; because I have in me the spirit of revelation.
But this is not the case with those who now attend the Church, their
attendance is upon form, ceremony, mystery, hypocrisy, which is the
real meaning of the whole present business of the Church: hypocrisy,
or dramatical acting, set forth in a mystery, without a mixture or
accompanying revelation; and like the flimsy gildings of a theatre,
or the spangles of an actress' dress, gilded over with a little moral
exhortation, that you may observe or not, as you please, so as you are
a cheerful payer of all dues, rates, and oblations. The first revision
wanted in the Church is a translation of the revelation from the dead
language of its mystery, into language comprehensible by all. Consequent
upon such a revision would be, that the parishioners would take the
management of their own Church Property into their own hands, and
recover and hold THEIR MOST SACRED RENT OF TITHE, on recovery of the
knowledge that they are the first and inalienable proprietors of the
land.
My subject is so far novel as to justify a little repetition. That twice
two is four need not be repeated; but where the human being is enveloped
in a cloud of verbose mystery, that cloud can only be dispelled by
continued flashes of moral lightning. So I will return to methodical
statement.