set forth and caused the belief of a temporal and local existence of the
personated principles of Deity, as distinct and separate from ourselves,
in imitation of the Pagan Mythology, and not as simulated beings; it
is requisite, as matter of proof, sooth and truth, that a case of clear
human history of the circumstances be first made out, the doing of which
my knowledge, after trial, challenges; and if that could be done,
the more difficult task would remain, to prove, that such beings, the
authors of such circumstances, as could be historically proved, were
super-human. If the first cannot be done, the clumsy mystery falls to
the ground, as the Dagon of the day, before historical criticism: and
if the first be done, and the second cannot bear the light of scientific
and philosophical criticism, the mystery is still but a mummery, which
belief can no longer prop, nor physical power farther propagate; it is
thrown into the crucible of moral criticism, and men will not longer
consent to believe that the same causes will demonstrate differing
effects, nor that varying causes may be made to demonstrate the same
effect.
I have read in public prints of your creditable attendance at the Royal
Institution of Albemarle Street, on the demonstrative Lectures of Mr.
Faraday in the Science of Chemistry. When there, were you asked to
believe anything?
Was not everything demonstrated, so that the words were verified by the
acts of the Lecturer? If Mr. Faraday had played you _hocus pocus_ or
legerdemain tricks, as a pretence of chemistry, would you have been
satisfied? If he had told you of strange and incomprehensible things,
which he could not demonstrate, would you have believed?--I think not:
I give you credit for a better state of mind. Take a lesson from the
inference, and grasp this truth, that the Royal Institution in Albemarle
Street is the best Church in the country, and is, in reality, the
nearest existing approach to the Catholic Church of Christ. It would be
rational, it would be wisdom, if all were spending their Church time at
such lectures, who are old enough to receive such instruction.
I hope it will not offend you, nor be an untruth, to say, that you
learnt something on every occasion of attending Mr. Faraday; that you,
a Secretary of State, there found you had something to learn; and that
a field was there opened to knowledge, which would, had it pleased you,
before all other occupation, have wisely and usefully engaged the whole
time of your remaining life. On the other hand, in the spirit of truth
and charity, but of free enquiry, allow me to ask, if you could ever
say the same, after an attendance at Church, on leaving, that you had
learned something that was, without pretence, matter of real learning,
an acquisition in knowledge possessed, that was not previously known in
your school-hours and as a matter of school-business, or that might not
have been learned from a book at home?
I extend the question, in asking, whether anything that may be taught
a boy at seven years of age, is improved on, by an attendance on the
present state of the Church to seventy or four score years of age?
If not, and I say--No, to what good purpose does this expensive
establishment exist? Or, may it not be put to a better purpose? and if
it may, why not? To talk about Church Reform, without doing something
that shall tend to a full amount of practical and permanent good, is to
insult the Nation; because the existing state of the Church is really a
burthen and a grievance, and of no general utility.
No Church was ever reformed by and with the consent of its Priesthood.
I am of opinion that the Bishops and Clergy ought not to be consulted in
this affair:--they are not the Church; but the ministers or servants
of the people, which form, or ought to form, the Church. A Royal or
Parliamentary Commission, with unlimited powers of enquiry, is the first
power necessary with which to commence this subject of Reform in the
Church.
If we did not know human nature, history affords the warrant, that the
Bishops and Clergy generally will follow the profits of the Church:
those in the reign of the Tudors changed back and forward five times
from Catholic to Protestant. But under this proposition of mine,
what dignity is evident in the change! Instead of making the Bishops
overseers and the Clergy generally actors of a drama, I purpose to put
the whole structure of the human mind under their superintendance and
guidance: not to be dealt with as now, but really to be educated in all
attainable knowledge. My purpose is as practicable as that any other
person can teach any kind of knowledge. Give the human being a better
occupation of time, let the human mind expand where it may, and you
guarantee perpetual peace and improvement, with dignity to every class
of men, with injury to none.
The change which I propose will be tantamount to a national change from
diseased and crippled infancy to healthy adolescence. General man has
not yet had fair play. No Nation, the history of which is known, has
made a real effort to promote the happiness of all its members. Class
has preyed upon class; idleness has been claimed as a privilege on one
side, and slavery, through force, been made an inevitable duty on the
other. For the furtherance of such a state of society, superstition
has been encouraged, that a pompous class might be decorated to preach
submission among the labourers to the Spirit of Tyranny and Imposture
that was riding riotously over them. There can be no liberty and solid
happiness among a superstitious people; and all attempts, at what is
called political reform, that leave the people mentally rotting in
superstition, will be abortive. I take credit for one fact--that there
has been no change made in the political spirit of this country through
any other medium than warfare with superstition; for the baneful and
blighting spirit of that superstition admitted not of the thought of any
other change.
There is a glimpse of light latent to show that all the monastic
institutions, the temples, the abbeys, priories, convents, nunneries,
the mysteries, the churches, synagogues, and oratories, were originally
instituted as schools of useful knowledge; and for what other good
purpose could they have been instituted? The better part of the human
mind is now making an effort to restore the purity of that state of
things. Nothing short of this can tend to harmonize the human race in
their several nations, with this improvement upon the past, that all,
and not a class only, be educated. It was this education of a class only
that has created all the mischief of superstitious society. The class
educated has imposed untruths upon the uneducated class, until education
itself to that class became swallowed up in imposture; and now both
preacher and hearer may be truly said to be alike ignorant of all the
great truths that are important to man, and necessary to social welfare.
In the way in which the Bible is now read, after being printed, no
preachers or teachers are necessary: to have been taught to read
is sufficient. Give every man his Bible from Church Property, after
teaching him to read, and the present Church business is completed: but
much otherwise is my view of the subject. There is not a man living
that has now a thorough understanding of the contents and meaning of the
Bible. Many are working for the restoration of its lost science; and it
is a subject worthy of a Church.
It may startle a First Lord of the Treasury into new thought, to
be told, that neither of the Books of the Bible is a piece of human
history, not a history of beings like you, me, or any one else. I have
given up all idea of the kind as untenable and indefensible. It may
startle the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is supposed to have the
counting or reckoning of millions of money yearly, and contemplating
that Giant of Despair--the Debt, to be told, that the Bible is
fundamentally a mathematical book; and that he who does not so
understand it, understands it not at all, or but in a very small degree,
as to its moral bearing. The Duke of Sussex can give you an opinion on
this head, as to the Bible being a book of algebraical science; though,
perhaps, he would not like to say it applied to astronomical motion,
and was a record of time so calculated through myriads of ages. A Bishop
should understand this. It is a book of much more importance than has
been made of it in the last thousand years in England. If the Bishops
were required to have studied this book before they took office, we
should find them generally as lean and as sallow as a lawyer who has to
wade through the statutes at large, and law reports as large, for his
sort of knowledge; a knowledge that I do not like, and will have none
of, but what is forced upon me. No kind of knowledge is requisite to
make a modern Bishop. The very origin of the title of a Bishop is that
of an astronomical seer, a looker-out or overseer of the subordinate
offices of science. There is a plenty of work, so as to allow of no
idleness in any office of the Church, if justice be done to the
people; and I will not grudge a thousand pounds a-year as a salary to a
competent Bishop, or even more than that, if the Property of the Church
will afford it. Ignorant fools they must have been, to have allowed so
important, so honourable and dignified an office to become corrupt, and
to fall into disrepute among the people.
This algebraical reading of the Bible subdues all idea of contradiction
to any science, geology for instance, chemistry or any other science,
as well as of the apparent language of the book in letter to letter. For
instance, the letter-objecting Infidels have laid great stress on
Moses being set forth as having seen God; when the author of the Gospel
according to Saint John says "No man hath seen God at any time." This is
ignorantly set down as a clear contradiction. The explanation is, that
_Moses was not a man_; and then there is no appearance of contradiction.
One is mythologically, and the other morally, true.
The Hebrew and Greek alphabets, being numerical as well as literal
signs, which was probably the case with all other ancient languages, and
these accumulating large numbers, by additional points, it is impossible
that we can have a clear understanding of the meaning of their
mythological sacred books, without a full algebraical knowledge of the
language; and this explains how the letter killeth or stupifieth, while
the spirit or knowledge of the entire meaning alone giveth life or
understanding. The deepest investigators of the Hebrew Bible of this
day maintain that it should be algebraically understood as a book of
astronomical science--as a record of time by astronomical motion, which,
physically speaking, can alone be the WORD OF THE WORKS OF GOD.
The only true religion must be founded in man's reasonable
comprehension; all other pretences to it are presumptions and nonsense
to be condemned. We may as properly speak of religious horses and cows,
as of men who are ignorant of the subject, substance and meaning, of
what is religion. Saint Anthony's preaching to fishes is not without its
simile in the practical part of that which has been mistakenly called
the Christian Religion. That which is in practice, under the name of the
Christian Religion, among many grades of Dissenters, is a disgrace to
the government of the country, and to the name of civilized society: it
grows worse and worse. Madness is beginning to be added to mystery; or
is now produced by the mystery without the key of revelation. Through
revelation there can be healthy excitement and enthusiasm; but none
through mystery.
Our King is not now the head of a Church, nor the King of a People: he
can only be truly described as the head or King of Dissenters, which is
an office much more troublesome and dangerous than honourable. To his
Ministers, the present state of religious mind must be a prolific
source of trouble; and has, I believe, made them persecutors, where the
inclination of their own hearts was not coincident with the act. The
Dissenters are now much less tolerant than the law-established Church;
and if they are not undermined by my proposition, it will not take
them many years to undermine that Church, or to demand a share of
its property. To be able to see this, it is only necessary that we
be acquainted with the workings of human nature, where not under the
controul of knowledge.
I am not content that the Established Church shall stand merely as one
among Dissenting Churches; no Minister of State should be so content:
the King is thereby dishonoured, and the State in disorder. I would
have it a Church morally dominant and militant against all error, as
it always should be, and as it was in the beginning. The meaning of the
word militant has been entirely lost, in the growth of mystery and decay
of revelation in the Church. There is a great talk now about revelation,
or of something revealed in the Church; but there is no reality in the
revelation. There is a mystery pregnant with revelation; but not in
itself the revelation. It is a fountain of knowledge, but the genius of
man must draw it out. It is good for nothing, but has caused a world of
mischief, where read and understood as merely by the letter, as we read
an ordinary book of history. The Church now wants the revelation or
spirit. Not one of those existing has a particle of spirit.
My proposition for a Reform will annihilate infidelity as well as
dissent. There is no infidelity toward knowledge. It has been ignorance
all through, on both sides, that has raised the cry of infidelity: each
has been unequal to teaching. The Infidel has rejected that literal
reading which the professing believer could not defend; because he did
not understand its relation, as mystery to revelation. Both, in fact,
have been alike Infidels. If I have been the chief of Infidels, I will
atone for it in becoming the chief defender of revelation, and the
faith, as it is in Christ Jesus, and not as it is in any Dissenting
Church. Already the ignorant Infidels murmur at what they mistakenly
call my apostacy, while no member of any existing Church holds out a
hand to my welcome.
As the Church goes now, it is not required that its Ministers be learned
men: they have nothing to do for which talent is requisite--it is a mere
school-boy's task; and even among the Dissenters, where the prayer and
preaching is extemporaneous, it is not learning, but memory and habit,
that are required. In the Church, as I would have it reformed, not only
learning but talent to teach would be necessary; and the Ministers
would rise to Bishoprics, not through family or political interest, but
through preparation and capability to fill the office; for it would be
required of them to be first-rate scholars and practical men in display
of science, that sort of science, too, of which they are now so much
afraid--the unlimited knowledge of things, rather than of languages.
In what class of ages do we place the dark ages of man's history? To
whose account are they placed? To the Pagan, Jew, Mahometan, Infidel, or
whose? I blush for the Church when I consider it--to the account of that
_misnomer_, the _Christian Church!_ So your pretended light to lighten
the Gentiles, made them all darker, did it? Yes, it did and does, as
your Church has mistaken it! And none of you are yet out of the
fog created by the mystery. Not one of you has gained light of mind
sufficient to dispel a particle of that fog of the dark ages. You are
all, as Churchmen, as dark as any of those who lived in the tenth,
eleventh, twelfth, or any other century; talk about your Reformation,
Printing Press, Bible Societies, Dissenters, or what you please! The
admission which has been made, not by the adversary, but by the Church
itself, that the dark ages are within its reign, is decisive of the
question as between me and any who may oppose me. Let it not be said,
that the fault was in the Roman Catholic Church, and that it has been
removed. I deny the assumption; the fault is not removed, nor has any
Church made the least improvement on that called Roman Catholic. The
fault lies in the remaining unrevealed mystery of the Church and the
Sacred Scriptures. As far as Church is in question, this Nation is as
dark as ever it was, and such is the case throughout Europe. There
is much thick darkness to be yet dispelled; before our gentility is
enlightened. We are precisely in the same error as the Hindoos, to whom
we send Missionaries; and though we talk about civilization, we have it
not. Our general state of society would shock the moral feelings of
an American Indian. There are, in reality, but two distinct states of
society: the superstitious and the civilized, the dark and the light.
Can any man reasonably say, that we have yet passed the superstitious
state? Are we not rather in the very depth of it; the light of a few
individuals, now and then visible, acting upon the whole like flashes of
lightning on a dark night, are seen and spent quickly, lost or buried
in the general darkness, though effects may be left? The liberty which I
have won in prison, to make the printing press bear upon this darkness,
is the first unextinguished light that has been set up and kept burning.
I now desire to light the seven candles of the English Church from
my lighted torch. I would not be presumptuous if I saw any other man
putting himself forward to propose this necessary business. It is not in
me conceit: it is a passionate desire to do good and to leave the world
better than I found it. So many years of imprisonment (this being the
tenth) must shorten the period of my life, so I grow the more anxious
to do the more while I remain a bubble on the sea of matter borne. Not
that I despair of eternal life, but I learn from the Gospel that I must
provide it for myself.
In the present state of the Church, there is no sufficient and
satisfactory motive given for keeping holy the sabbath-day; there is
no reason given for holding a sabbath. I state it as a necessary civil
institution for the improvement of the human mind, since labour to live
is the condition of life. While the honest labourer is following his
social avocation through six days, I would have his children going
through a course of education by the Ministers in the Church, their
especial office--"suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid
them not; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven"--and on the seventh, or
sabbath day, I would have such discourses, such teaching in the Church,
as should be suitable to the united presence of both old and young. This
would be a satisfactory motive to keep that day holy; and such, as
far as I can see, was the evident purpose of the Sabbath and of the
Christian Church. No other use of the Church can be more hallowed; no
purpose more sacred; no employment more dignified to the minister as
well as to the people. When Peter, in the Gospel, is called upon to feed
the lambs of Christ, what was meant?--to feed them with grass? No! to
feed the infants of the Church with true and useful knowledge; not to do
which is treason to society and breach of trust in the Ministers of the
Church. Oh! here is a fine field open, in which the lambs may gambol and
grow up in spiritual stature, without living to be led like sheep to
the slaughter! Knowledge is the proper business of the Church, and
the people's only spiritual interest; and this is the foundation of a
Catholic Church and of a Christian Religion, that is to bring peace
on earth and good-will among men, which have not yet been seen,
notwithstanding the supposed promise of the mistaken mystery for the
last seventeen hundred years, so many centuries of a sinking state of
things, of a fall of man from the light into dark ages! Let there be
light in the Church and the people shall be enlightened. The true Church
is now eclipsed by the mystery, and is a dark body. The knowledge of
the revelation will be the extinction of the mystery, the light of the
Church, and the salvation of the people from war, pestilence and famine.
That revelation, according to the gospel itself, I take to be, that, as
knowledge is the only distinction between man and any other animal, the
more can be accumulated for him in the Church, the more good will be
done, and the more he will be saved from evil. Existing things can alone
be the subject of man's knowledge, and it is of more importance to him
to know their properties than their time or history. Now, nothing of the
properties of existing things is taught in the Church; but through the
medium of the mystery remaining unrevealed, unexplained, or untranslated
in our language, every thing is falsified to man's credulous view and
consideration, by the ministers of the Church; nature appears to him
distorted, and he lives without certainty, and dies deceived as to the
future. Knowledge is as infinite as existing things, and man's power of
acquisition illimitable. It is, then, a proper labour and business, and
moral duty, of each generation of men, to leave behind them, for their
successors, the largest possible amount of knowledge. This is true
wealth, and will increase the value of all other wealth: without
knowledge, other wealth is mere animal gratification. The spirit of
knowledge gives life and new properties to everything, as far as man's
use of it be in question. The Church is the proper fountain of this
knowledge; should be the public library, the parish laboratory for
investigations, the school for infants and adults, and everything that
is auxiliary to the acquisition and extension of knowledge. From all I
can trace, I verily believe that such was the original purpose and
construction of the Christian Church; and that back to this it may be
easiest and best reformed.
I am confirmed in the opinion, that putting knowledge under the form of
an allegorical mystery, for the purpose of confining it to a class, has
been the cause of the mistake and its declension, and of the scholar's
fall from a former higher estate of knowledge. Decidedly do I conclude,
that our stock of knowledge is much below the quantity possessed some
two or three thousand years ago, when the holders of the sacred books
held the revelation with the mystery. I am sure it may be recovered, if
fairly and earnestly sought. I see an impulse gathering over both
Europe and America for the recovery of that knowledge. The Church was
instituted to become the repository of knowledge; and all would have
gone on well, but for the ancient system of deceiving what were and
are called the vulgar--of having a double doctrine, the exoteric and
esoteric, telling the people one thing and understanding quite another
among themselves. Such were deceivers and not teachers of the people;
and though the revelation has really been lost, lost I may say, as
a just punishment for the wickedness of so deceiving the people, the
successive Clergy has been ignorantly deceivers and not teachers of the
people. They have inherited the exoteric or mysterious doctrine, and
have not inherited the esoteric doctrine or the revelation of the
mystery. This they have to learn, before they can reform their Church,
or, before any one can reform it for them.
I am confident enough to say, that you have no other ground on which to
reform the Church, than that which I am proposing. Whatever other step
you take will only be an aggravation of the evil of which you have now
to complain; or of which others complain. If the Bishops have one item
of wisdom among them, they will take me by the hand, and put their
houses in order this way: if not, you and they may dissipate the
existing Church Property, which you say you will not do; and after,
we shall begin to form such a-new, and recover what we can of that
property. I shall not despair of taking an active part in this thorough
Reform of the Church while life remains: the People can do it for
themselves, if Clergy, Ministers and King will not consent. It is what I
began to do in my house in the year 1828, in critical and philosophical
lectures and free discussion on the Sunday: an example which I am happy
to see followed in many parts of this metropolis, and which will go on,
if it be not cordially met, until it swallows up the Church and all the
Churches.