The charge of blasphemy, which is put upon the record against the
publisher of this publication, is not an accusation of the servants of
the crown, but comes before you sanctioned by the oaths of a grand jury
of the country. It stood for trial upon a former day; but it happening,
as it frequently does, without any imputation upon the gentlemen named
in the panel, that a sufficient number did not appear to constitute
a full special jury, I thought it my duty to withdraw the cause from
trial, till I could have the opportunity of addressing myself to you
who were originally appointed to try it.
I pursued this course from no jealousy of the common juries appointed
by the laws for the ordinary service of the court, since my whole
life has been one continued experience of their virtues; but because
I thought it of great importance that those who were to decide upon a
cause so very momentous to the public, should have the highest possible
qualifications for the decision; that they should not only be men
capable from their educations of forming an enlightened judgment, but
that their situations should be such as to bring them within the full
view of their country, to which, in character and in estimation, they
were in their own turns to be responsible.
Not having the honor, gentlemen, to be sworn for the king as one of his
counsel, it has fallen much oftener to my lot to defend indictments
for libels than to assist in the prosecution of them; but I feel no
embarrassment from that recollection. I shall not be bound to-day to
express a sentiment or to utter an expression inconsistent with those
invaluable principles for which I have uniformly contended in the
defence of others. Nothing that I have ever said, either professionally
or personally, for the liberty of the press, do I mean to-day to
contradict or counteract. On the contrary, I desire to preface the
very short discourse I have to make to you, with reminding you that
it is your most solemn duty to take care that it suffers no injury in
your hands. A free and unlicensed press, in the just and legal sense
of the expression, has led to all the blessings, both of religion
and government, which Great Britain or any part of the world at this
moment enjoys, and it is calculated to advance mankind to still higher
degrees of civilization and happiness. But this freedom, like every
other, must be limited to be enjoyed, and, like every human advantage,
may be defeated by its abuse.
Gentlemen, the defendant stands indicted for having published this
book, which I have only read from the obligations of professional duty,
and which I rose from the reading of with astonishment and disgust.
Standing here with all the privileges belonging to the highest counsel
for the crown, I shall be entitled to reply to any defence that shall
be made for the publication. I shall wait with patience till I hear it.
Indeed, if I were to anticipate the defence which I hear and read of,
it would be defaming by anticipation the learned counsel who is to
make it; since, if I am to collect it from a formal notice given to
the prosecutors in the course of the proceedings, I have to expect
that, instead of a defence conducted according to the rules and
principles of English law, the foundation of all our laws, and the
sanctions of all justice, are to be struck at and insulted. What gives
the court its jurisdiction? What but the oath which his lordship, as
well as yourselves, has sworn upon the gospel to fulfil? Yet in the
King’s Court, where his Majesty is himself also sworn to administer
the justice of England—in the King’s Court—who receives his high
authority under a solemn oath to maintain the Christian religion, as
it is promulgated by God in the Holy Scriptures, I am nevertheless
called upon as counsel for the prosecution to “produce a certain book
described in the indictment to be the Holy Bible.” No man deserves to
be upon the rolls, who has dared as an attorney to put his name to such
a notice. It is an insult to the authority and dignity of the court of
which he is an officer; since it calls in question the very foundations
of its jurisdiction. If this is to be the spirit and temper of the
defence; if, as I collect from that array of books which are spread
upon the benches behind me, this publication is to be vindicated by
an attack of all the truths which the Christian religion promulgates
to mankind, let it be remembered that such an argument was neither
suggested nor justified by any thing said by me on the part of the
prosecution.
In this stage of the proceedings, I shall call for reverence to the
Sacred Scriptures, not from their merits, unbounded as they are, but
from their authority in a Christian country; not from the obligations
of conscience, but from the rules of law. For my own part, gentlemen,
I have been ever deeply devoted to the truths of Christianity; and my
firm belief in the Holy Gospel is by no means owing to the prejudices
of education, though I was religiously educated by the best of parents,
but has arisen from the fullest and most continued reflections of
my riper years and understanding. It forms at this moment the great
consolation of a life, which, as a shadow passeth away; and without it,
I should consider my long course of health and prosperity, too long
perhaps and too uninterrupted to be good for any man, only as the dust
which the wind scatters, and rather as a snare than as a blessing.
Much, however, as I wish to support the authority of Scripture from a
reasonable consideration of it, I shall repress that subject for the
present. But if the defence, as I have suspected, shall bring them
at all into argument or question, I must then fulfil a duty which I
owe not only to the court, as counsel for the prosecution, but to the
public, and to the world, to state what I feel and know concerning the
evidences of that religion, which is denied without being examined, and
reviled without being understood.
I am well aware that by the communications of a free press, all the
errors of mankind, from age to age, have been dissipated and dispelled;
and I recollect that the world, under the banners of reformed
Christianity, has struggled through persecution to the noble eminence
on which it stands at this moment, shedding the blessings of humanity
and science upon the nations of the earth.
It may be asked, then, by what means the reformation would have been
effected, if the books of the reformers had been suppressed, and the
errors of now exploded superstitions had been supported by the terrors
of an unreformed state? or how, upon such principles, any reformation,
civil or religious, can in future be effected? The solution is easy:
let us examine what are the genuine principles of the liberty of the
press, as they regard writings upon general subjects, unconnected with
the personal reputations of private men, which are wholly foreign to
the present inquiry. They are full of simplicity, and are brought as
near perfection, by the law of England, as perhaps is attainable by any
of the frail institutions of mankind.
Although every community must establish supreme authorities, founded
upon fixed principles, and must give high powers to magistrates
to administer laws for the preservation of government, and for the
security of those who are to be protected by it; yet as infallibility
and perfection belong neither to human individuals nor to human
establishments, it ought to be the policy of all free nations, as
it is most peculiarly the principle of our own, to permit the most
unbounded freedom of discussion, even to the detection of errors in
the constitution of the very government itself; so as that common
decorum is observed, which every state must exact from its subjects and
which imposes no restraint upon any intellectual composition, fairly,
honestly, and decently addressed to the consciences and understandings
of men. Upon this principle I have an unquestionable right, a right
which the best subjects have exercised, to examine the principles
and structure of the constitution, and by fair, manly reasoning, to
question the practice of its administrators. I have a right to consider
and to point out errors in the one or in the other; and not merely
to reason upon their existence, but to consider the means of their
reformation.
By such free, well-intentioned, modest, and dignified communication of
sentiments and opinions, all nations have been gradually improved,
and milder laws and purer religions have been established. The same
principles which vindicate civil controversies, honestly directed,
extend their protection to the sharpest contentions on the subject
of religious faiths. This rational and legal course of improvement
was recognized and ratified by Lord Kenyon as the law of England,
in the late trial at Guildhall, where he looked back with gratitude
to the labors of the reformers, as the fountains of our religious
emancipation, and of the civil blessings that followed in their train.
The English constitution, indeed, does not stop short in the toleration
of religious opinions, but liberally extends it to practice. It
permits every man, even publicly, to worship God according to his own
conscience, though in marked dissent from the national establishment,
so as he professes the general faith, which is the sanction of all our
moral duties, and the only pledge of our submission to the system which
constitutes the state.
Is not this freedom of controversy and freedom of worship sufficient
for all the purposes of human happiness and improvement? Can it be
necessary for either, that the law should hold out indemnity to those
who wholly abjure and revile the government of their country, or the
religion on which it rests for its foundation? I expect to hear in
answer to what I am now saying, much that will offend me. My learned
friend, from the difficulties of his situation, which I know from
experience how to feel for very sincerely, may be driven to advance
propositions which it may be my duty with much freedom to reply to; and
the law will sanction that freedom. But will not the ends of justice
be completely answered by my exercise of that right, in terms that
are decent, and calculated to expose its defects? Or will my argument
suffer, or will public justice be impeded, because neither private
honor and justice nor public decorum would endure my telling my very
learned friend, because I differ from him in opinion, that he is a
fool, a liar, and a scoundrel, in the face of the court? This is just
the distinction between a book of free legal controversy, and the book
which I am arraigning before you. Every man has a right to investigate,
with decency, controversial points of the Christian religion; but no
man consistently with a law which only exists under its sanctions has a
right to deny its very existence, and to pour forth such shocking and
insulting invectives as the lowest establishments in the gradation of
civil authority ought not to be subjected to, and which soon would be
borne down by insolence and disobedience, if they were.
The same principle pervades the whole system of the law, not merely
in its abstract theory, but in its daily and most applauded practice.
The intercourse between the sexes, which, properly regulated, not only
continues, but humanizes and adorns our natures, is the foundation
of all the thousand romances, plays, and novels, which are in the
hands of everybody. Some of them lead to the confirmation of every
virtuous principle; others, though with the same profession, address
the imagination in a manner to lead the passions into dangerous
excesses; but though the law does not nicely discriminate the various
shades which distinguish such works from one another, so as to suffer
many to pass, through its liberal spirit, that upon principle ought
to be suppressed, would it or does it tolerate, or does any decent
man contend that it ought to pass by unpunished, libels of the most
shameless obscenity, manifestly pointed to debauch innocence and to
blast and poison the morals of the rising generation? This is only
another illustration to demonstrate the obvious distinction between
the work of an author who fairly exercises the powers of his mind
in investigating the religion or government of any country, and him
who attacks the rational existence of every religion or government,
and brands with absurdity and folly the state which sanctions, and
the obedient tools who cherish, the delusion. But this publication
appears to me to be as cruel and mischievous in its effects, as it
is manifestly illegal in its principles; because it strikes at the
best—sometimes, alas!—the only refuge and consolation amidst the
distresses and afflictions of the world. The poor and humble, whom it
affects to pity, may be stabbed to the heart by it. They have more
occasion for firm hopes beyond the grave than the rich and prosperous
who have other comforts to render life delightful. I can conceive a
distressed but virtuous man, surrounded by his children looking up
to him for bread when he has none to give them; sinking under the
last day’s labor, and unequal to the next, yet still, supported by
confidence in the hour when all tears shall be wiped from the eyes
of affliction, bearing the burden laid upon him by a mysterious
Providence which he adores, and anticipating with exultation the
revealed promises of his Creator, when he shall be greater than the
greatest, and happier than the happiest of mankind. What a change
in such a mind might be wrought by such a merciless publication?
Gentlemen, whether these remarks are the overcharged declamations of
an accusing counsel, or the just reflections of a man anxious for the
public happiness, which is best secured by the morals of a nation, will
be soon settled by an appeal to the passages in the work, that are
selected by the indictment for your consideration and judgment. You are
at liberty to connect them with every context and sequel, and to bestow
upon them the mildest interpretations. [Here Mr. Erskine read and
commented upon several of the selected passages, and then proceeded as
follows:]
Gentlemen, it would be useless and disgusting to enumerate the other
passages within the scope of the indictment. How any man can rationally
vindicate the publication of such a book, in a country where the
Christian religion is the very foundation of the law of the land, I am
totally at a loss to conceive, and have no ideas for the discussion of.
How is a tribunal whose whole jurisdiction is founded upon the solemn
belief and practice of what is here denied as falsehood, and reprobated
as impiety, to deal with such an anomalous defence? Upon what principle
is it even offered to the court, whose authority is contemned and
mocked at? If the religion proposed to be called in question, is not
previously adopted in belief and solemnly acted upon, what authority
has the court to pass any judgment at all of acquittal or condemnation?
Why am I now or upon any other occasion to submit to his lordship’s
authority? Why am I now or at any time to address twelve of my equals,
as I am now addressing you, with reverence and submission? Under what
sanction are the witnesses to give their evidence, without which there
can be no trial? Under what obligations can I call upon you, the jury
representing your country, to administer justice? Surely upon no other
than that you are sworn to administer it, under the oaths you have
taken. The whole judicial fabric, from the king’s sovereign authority
to the lowest office of magistracy, has no other foundation. The whole
is built, both in form and substance, upon the same oath of every one
of its ministers to do justice, as God shall help them hereafter. What
God? And what hereafter? That God, undoubtedly, who has commanded kings
to rule, and judges to decree justice; who has said to witnesses, not
only by the voice of nature but in revealed commandments, “Thou shalt
not bear false testimony against thy neighbor”; and who has enforced
obedience to them by the revelation of the unutterable blessings which
shall attend their observance, and the awful punishments which shall
await upon their transgression.
But it seems this is an age of reason, and the time and the person are
at last arrived that are to dissipate the errors which have overspread
the past generations of ignorance. The believers in Christianity
are many, but it belongs to the few that are wise to correct their
credulity. Belief is an act of reason, and superior reason may,
therefore, dictate to the weak. In running the mind over the long list
of sincere and devout Christians, I can not help lamenting that Newton
had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled up with
this new flood of light. But the subject is too awful for irony, I
will speak plainly and directly. Newton was a Christian; Newton, whose
mind burst forth from the fetters fastened by nature upon our finite
conceptions; Newton, whose science was truth, and the foundations
of whose knowledge of it was philosophy; not those visionary and
arrogant presumptions which too often usurp its name, but philosophy
resting upon the basis of mathematics, which, like figures, can not
lie; Newton, who carried the line and rule to the uttermost barriers
of creation, and explored the principles by which all created matter
exists and is held together. But this extraordinary man, in the mighty
reach of his mind, overlooked, perhaps, the errors which a minuter
investigation of the created things on this earth might have taught
him. What shall then be said of Mr. Boyle, who looked into the organic
structure of all matter, even to the inanimate substances which the
foot treads upon? Such a man may be supposed to have been equally
qualified with Mr. Paine to look up through nature to nature’s God;
yet the result of all his contemplations was the most confirmed and
devout belief in all which the other holds in contempt, as despicable
and drivelling superstition. But this error might, perhaps, arise from
a want of due attention to the foundations of human judgment, and
the structure of that understanding which God has given us for the
investigation of truth. Let that question be answered by Mr. Locke,
who to the highest pitch of devotion and adoration was a Christian;
Mr. Locke, whose office was to detect the errors of thinking, by going
up to the very fountains of thought, and to direct into the proper
track of reasoning the devious mind of man, by showing him its whole
process, from the first perceptions of sense to the last conclusions of
ratiocination; putting a rein upon false opinion, by practical rules
for the conduct of human judgment.
But these men, it may be said, were only deep thinkers, and lived
in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the world, and to
the laws which practically regulate mankind. Gentlemen, in the place
where we now sit to administer the justice of this great country,
the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Mathew Hale presided; whose faith in
Christianity is an exalted commentary upon its truth and reason, and
whose life was a glorious example of its fruits; whose justice, drawn,
from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, will be, in all
ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration. But it is said
by the author, that the Christian fable is but the tale of the more
ancient superstitions of the world, and may be easily detected by a
proper understanding of the mythologies of the heathens. Did Milton
understand those mythologies? Was he less versed than Mr. Paine in the
superstitions of the world? No; they were the subject of his immortal
song; and, though shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them
forth from the stores of a memory rich with all that man ever knew, and
laid them in their order as the illustration of real and exalted faith,
the unquestionable source of that fervid genius which has cast a kind
of shade upon most of the other works of man:
“He pass’d the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw, but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.”
But it was the light of the body only that was extinguished: “The
celestial light shone inward, and enabled him to justify the ways of
God to man.” The result of his thinking was, nevertheless, not quite
the same as the author’s before us. The mysterious incarnation of our
blessed Saviour, which this work blasphemes in words so wholly unfit
for the mouth of a Christian, or for the ear of a court of justice,
that I dare not, and will not, give them utterance. Milton made the
grand conclusion of his “Paradise Lost,” the rest from his finished
labors, and the ultimate hope, expectation, and glory of the world.
“A virgin is his mother, but his sire,
The power of the Most High; he shall ascend
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign
With earth’s wide bounds, his glory with the heavens.”
The immortal poet having thus put into the mouth of the angel the
prophecy of man’s redemption, follows it with that solemn and beautiful
admonition, addressed in the poem to our great first parent, but
intended as an address to his posterity through all generations:
“This having learn’d, thou hast attain’d the sum
Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars
Thou knew’st by name, and all th’ ethereal powers,
All secrets of the deep, all nature’s works,
Or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea,
And all the riches of this world enjoy’dst,
And all the rule, one empire; only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love,
By name to come call’d charity, the soul
Of all the rest; then wilt thou not be loth
To leave this paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far.”
Thus, you find all that is great, or wise, or splendid, or illustrious,
amongst created things; all the minds gifted beyond ordinary nature, if
not inspired by its universal Author for the advancement and dignity of
the world, though divided by distant ages, and by clashing opinions,
yet joining as it were in one sublime chorus, to celebrate the truths
of Christianity; laying upon its holy altars the never-fading offerings
of their immortal wisdom.
Against all this concurring testimony, we find suddenly, from the
author of this book, that the Bible teaches nothing but “lies,
obscenity, cruelty, and injustice.” Had he ever read our Saviour’s
sermon on the mount, in which the great principles of our faith and
duty are summed up? Let us all but read and practise it, and lies,
obscenity, cruelty, and injustice, and all human wickedness, will be
banished from the world!
Gentlemen, there is but one consideration more, which I cannot possibly
omit, because I confess it affects me very deeply. The author of this
book has written largely on public liberty and government; and this
last performance, which I am now prosecuting, has, on that account,
been more widely circulated, and principally among those who attached
themselves from principle to his former works. This circumstance
renders a public attack upon all revealed religion from such a writer
infinitely more dangerous. The religious and moral sense of the people
of Great Britain is the great anchor which alone can hold the vessel
of the state amidst the storms which agitate the world; and if the
mass of the people were debauched from the principles of religion, the
true basis of that humanity, charity, and benevolence, which have been
so long the national characteristic, instead of mixing myself, as I
sometimes have done, in political reformations, I would retire to the
uttermost corners of the earth, to avoid their agitation; and would
bear, not only the imperfections and abuses complained of in our own
wise establishment, but even the worst government that ever existed in
the world, rather than go to the work of reformation with a multitude
set free from all the charities of Christianity, who had no other
sense of God’s existence, than was to be collected from Mr. Paine’s
observations of nature, which the mass of mankind have no leisure to
contemplate, which promises no future rewards to animate the good in
the glorious pursuit of human happiness, nor punishments to deter the
wicked from destroying it even in its birth. The people of England are
a religious people, and, with the blessing of God, so far as it is in
my power, I will lend my aid to keep them so.
I have no objections to the most extended and free discussions upon
doctrinal points of the Christian religion; and though the law of
England does not permit it, I do not dread the reasonings of deists
against the existence of Christianity itself, because, as was said by
its divine author, if it be of God, it will stand. An intellectual
book, however erroneous, addressed to the intellectual world upon so
profound and complicated a subject, can never work the mischief which
this indictment is calculated to repress. Such works will only incite
the minds of men enlightened by study, to a closer investigation of a
subject well worthy of their deepest and continued contemplation. The
powers of the mind are given for human improvement in the progress of
human existence. The changes produced by such reciprocations of lights
and intelligencies are certain in their progression, and make their
way imperceptibly, by the final and irresistible power of truth. If
Christianity be founded in falsehood, let us become deists in this
manner, and I am contented. But this book has no such object, and no
such capacity; it presents no arguments to the wise and enlightened;
on the contrary, it treats the faith and opinions of the wisest with
the most shocking contempt, and stirs up men, without the advantages
of learning, or sober thinking, to a total disbelief of every thing
hitherto held sacred; and consequently to a rejection of all the laws
and ordinances of the state, which stand only upon the assumption of
their truth.
Gentlemen, I can not conclude without expressing the deepest regret
at all attacks upon the Christian religion by authors who profess to
promote the civil liberties of the world. For under what other auspices
than Christianity have the lost and subverted liberties of mankind in
former ages been reasserted? By what zeal, but the warm zeal of devout
Christians, have English liberties been redeemed and consecrated? Under
what other sanctions, even in our own days, have liberty and happiness
been spreading to the uttermost corners of the earth? What work of
civilization, what Commonwealth of greatness, has this bald religion of
nature ever established? We see, on the contrary, the nations that have
no other light than that of nature to direct them, sunk in barbarism,
or slaves to arbitrary governments; whilst under the Christian
dispensation, the great career of the world has been slowly but clearly
advancing, lighter at every step from the encouraging prophecies of
the gospel, and leading, I trust, in the end to universal and eternal
happiness. Each generation of mankind can see but a few revolving links
of this mighty and mysterious chain; but by doing our several duties in
our allotted stations, we are sure that we are fulfilling the purposes
of our existence. You, I trust, will fulfil yours this day.[36]