Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, established Nov. 12, 1824.
Twenty-four plain questions to honest men.
These are two broadsides of August and November, 1826, signed by Robert
Taylor,[597] A.B., Orator of the Christian Evidence Society. This gentleman
was a clergyman, {271} and was convicted of blasphemy in 1827, for which he
suffered imprisonment, and got the name of the _Devil's Chaplain_. The
following are quotations:
"For the book of Revelation, there was no original Greek at all, but
_Erasmus_ wrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516. Bishop
Marsh,[598] vol. i. p. 320."--"Is not God the author of your reason? Can he
then be the author of anything which is contrary to your reason? If reason
be a sufficient guide, why should God give you any other? if it be not a
sufficient guide, why has he given you _that_?"
I remember a votary of the Society being asked to substitute for _reason_
"the right leg," and for _guide_ "support," and to answer the two last
questions: he said there must be a quibble, but he did not see what. It is
pleasant to reflect that the _argumentum a carcere_[599] is obsolete. One
great defect of it was that it did not go far enough: there should have
been laws against subscriptions for blasphemers, against dealing at their
shops, and against rich widows marrying them.
Had I taken in theology, I must have entered books against Christianity. I
mention the above, and Paine's _Age of Reason_, simply because they are the
only English modern works that ever came in my way without my asking for
them. The three parts of the _Age of Reason_ were published in Paris 1793,
Paris 1795, and New York 1807. Carlile's[600] edition is of London, 1818,
8vo. It must be republished when the time comes, to show what stuff
governments and clergy were afraid of at the beginning of this century. I
should never have seen the book, if it {272} had not been prohibited: a
bookseller put it under my nose with a fearful look round him; and I could
do no less, in common curiosity, than buy a work which had been so
complimented by church and state. And when I had read it, I said in my mind
to church and state,--Confound you! you have taken me in worse than any
reviewer I ever met with. I forget what I gave for the book, but I ought to
have been able to claim compensation somewhere.