PERSECUTION AND ECCLESIASTICAL TYRANNY.
It has been shown that the Augustinian system, teaching as it does man’s
depraved nature and destitution of any principles of right guidance in his
own mind, makes him wholly dependent not only on revelations from his
Creator, but on infallible interpreters.
Thus we find that wherever this system became dominant there has coëxisted
the claim that _the people_ are not to decide, each one for himself, what
are the teachings of reason, experience and revelation as to truth and
duty. Instead of this, first it was popes and councils, in which the laity
had no voice; next, as among the Puritans, it was the church, including
both the clergy and the regenerated portion of their flocks.
From this resulted religious persecutions, in this manner: Men are to obey
God as their first duty. _The church_ is God’s mouth‐piece to interpret
his commands to mankind. If men refuse to obey God, speaking through his
church, they must be forced to do so by pains and penalties. And as in
view of eternal happiness and eternal misery, all earthly interests are as
nothing, every temporal consideration must be put out of account.
Moreover, whoever leads men to disobey the church and thus to disobey God,
and so to peril not only their own eternal welfare, but that of others,
commits a greater crime than is done by violating any human ordinances.
Therefore, the heaviest penalties should be employed to enforce obedience
to the church, and the church must take precedence of the civil
government.
Thus it came to pass that the more sincere, conscientious and benevolent a
person was, while holding these views, the more surely would he become a
persecutor.
The pages of history give many mournful illustrations of this truth. One
of the most striking will be here introduced.
Isabella of Spain, by whose generosity this western world was discovered,
was one of the most gentle, conscientious, benevolent and lovely
characters that ever adorned a throne.
She was trained to believe the church to be the representative of God on
earth, and her father confessor, Torquemada, the originator of the
Inquisition, was the guide of her conscience. By his commands the
Inquisition reared its horrid dungeons. By his counsel the industrious,
cultivated and chivalrous Moors, the most useful of all her subjects, were
driven from their native soil. By his commands the Jews were brought to
the cruel alternative of giving up their religion or relinquishing all
that made life dear. And thus the historian narrates this dreadful tale of
religious persecution:
“The experiment of conversion was tried upon the Jews, and it
utterly and totally failed. In the first place, their position in
Christian society was a source of continual discussion. ‘If we
admit them to public offices, we have gained nothing,’ said the
mercantile classes. ‘If we exclude them,’ said the clergy, ‘what
motive is held out for the rest to join us?’ But as a religious
experiment, the failure was even more complete. The fathers were
nominal converts, and nominal converts the children continued to
be. Ostentatiously they attended mass; but in their own houses
their Sabbath was kept, their ritual was read, their psalms were
sung. Meantime, intercourse and intermarriage with Christians
became more fatally easy than it had been before. Shunned by the
middle classes, they intermarried with the ’blue blood’ of the
nobility, they entered the priesthood, and ascended the highest
steps of the Catholic hierarchy. Nay, they became, more than once,
inquisitors, and wielded against their foes with cynical hatred
the terrors of the Holy Office. Of the Inquisition there is no
space to speak here;(21) sufficient to say that the ‘New
Christians’ were the chief cause of its institution, and that
during the eighteen years that Torquemada held office, ten
thousand persons were burned alive.
“But two thirds of the Jews of Spain had remained unconverted; and
with them the Inquisition had nothing to do; for they were under
special laws and under royal protection. But Torquemada had not
forgotten them. Working on the pride of Ferdinand, on the
conscience of Isabella, he persuaded them to sign the celebrated
Edict of Exile. They were to leave Spain in three months. They
were to take neither silver nor gold with them. If it pleased God
to change their hearts, the church would most willingly receive
them.
“Ruinous alike to banisher and banished, this edict had cost a
struggle. Isaac Abarbenel, wealthy, learned, high in royal favor,
rushed into the queen’s audience‐chamber, on hearing what till
then had been carefully concealed from his nation, threw himself
at her feet, and doubtless won her over for the moment. To
Ferdinand he offered thirty thousand ducats. But, in the wavering
of debate, Torquemada appeared suddenly. ‘Judas,’ he said, ‘sold
his master for thirty pieces. Your Majesties, it seems, want
thirty thousand. Here He is; take Him; and what ye do, do
quickly!’ Dashing a crucifix on the table, he left them. The omen
was clear, and the die was cast.
“To the Jews one road of deliverance was still left. To renounce
the outward garb of their religion, never again to pass the
threshold of a synagogue, never to chant a Hebrew hymn nor keep a
Hebrew Sabbath; to change every household custom, to break all the
rules of life, dear from the nursery and clung to on the bed of
death; to repeat a false creed, to enter an idolatrous temple, to
kneel down with God’s enemies;—this road was open, though treading
it they would have trampled on their fathers’ tombs. Yet, on the
other hand, thousands had taken that course; and would tell them
that strict adherence to the laws of the land they lived in,
abstinence from all that might offend, performance of harmless
superstitions, bowing down for a season in the house of Rimmon,
that this was a course plainly marked out by Providence. The loss,
too, that they would suffer in exile was immense; and we must
estimate this loss before we can estimate the worth of those who
chose to suffer.
“We have seen the Jews of France leave it, enter it, leave it
again, and count the value of their sojourn at exactly the price
at which reëntrance could be bought. It was a market‐stall, a
field for acquisition; but it was not the seat of Jewish learning,
it was not the resting place of their fathers for many
generations.
“Now Spain was something more to them than this. It was no foreign
soil, passed and repassed with the indifference of a stranger.
They had lived there for twelve hundred years. They had seen the
Teutonic forest‐creeds moulded and melted into the new faith of
Rome. They had seen the Ishmaelite sweep that faith away. By him
they had been welcomed as brothers. With him they had lit the lamp
of science when all the world was dark. Then they had seen the
Cross rise from the northern mountains, and the Crescent wane and
wane before it. By the kings of Christian Spain their worth had
been acknowledged; they had fostered their trade; they had called
them to their councils; they had befriended and loved them.
Persecution and jealousy had driven many of their brethren to
accept another creed; but the new Christians were Jews still; they
had married their daughters to the proudest nobles of a race where
the peasant was proud; and not a duke in all Spain could despise
them without despising his own mother’s blood. Spain, too, was the
land where Jewish wisdom had unfolded and blossomed. Their
physicians and their astronomers were the first in Europe. Their
poets and their philosophers were eminent among their nation. The
psalms of Jehuda Halevi were sung in the synagogues of the Rhine.
Aben Esra had eclipsed the fame of the great Eastern school of
Pombeditha; above all, Spain claimed the son of Maimon, the great
prophet of the Exile, famed from the Seine to the Euphrates as the
second Moses.
“Such, besides escape from utter ruin, were the temptations to
apostacy. And those who issued the decree fully hoped that
apostacy would have been its result. Every means was taken. ‘In
the public squares, in the synagogues, Catholic preachers
thundered forth invective against the Hebrew heresy.’ They might
thunder—they were not heard.
“ ‘Come,’ said their priests and elders, ‘let us strengthen
ourselves in our faith and in the teachings of our God, against
the voice of the oppressor, and the scorn of the enemy. If they
destroy us—well; if they will let us live—well; but we will not
depart from the Covenant, neither make our hearts froward; but we
will go forth in the name of the Lord our God, who saved our
fathers from Egypt, and brought them through the Red Sea.’
“The spirit of Moses and of Joshua rested on the aged rabbis, and
their words prevailed. Few in number and bold in cowardice were
those who yielded. They made ready for this second Exodus where no
Canaan glistened in the distance. Forced to sell their possessions
in three months, forbidden to sell them for gold, they were glad
to exchange large houses or estates for an ass or mule, or for
such trifling articles of travel as the wish to be first at the
spoiling might induce purchasers to supply.
“Eastward, westward, northward—to Africa, to Portugal, to Italy
and the Levant,—half a million Jews went forth. Eighty thousand
sought shelter in Portugal, but did not find it. Thousands fell
into the hands of the barbarians of Fez. They were sold for
slaves; they were left to starve on desert isles; their bodies,
yet living, were ripped open for the hidden gold. Thus writes
Rabbi Josef:
“ ‘And there were among them who were cast into the isles of the
sea, a Jew and his old father, fainting from hunger, begging
bread; and there was none to break unto them in a strange country.
And the man went and sold his little son for bread, to restore the
soul of the old man; and when he returned to his father, he found
him dead; and he rent his clothes. And he went back to the baker
to take his son; but the baker would not give him back; and he
cried out with a sore and bitter cry for his son, but there was
none to deliver. All this befell us in the year Rabbim—for the
sons of the desolate are “Many”—yet have we not forgotten thee,
neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant. Hasten to help us,
O Lord! For thy sake we are killed all the day; we are counted as
sheep appointed for the slaughter. Make haste to help us, O God of
our salvation.’
“Or listen to the chronicler of Genoa, who saw them as they
drifted eastward:
“ ‘This expulsion,’ he says, ‘seemed to me at first a praiseworthy
act, done in the cause and for the honor of God. Yet, when we
remember that they were not brute beasts after all, but men made
by God, surely it must be owned that some little cruelty was
shown. Their woes were very piteous to see. The first who starved
were the infants at the breast; then the mothers, carrying their
dead children till they fell down and died with them. Many
perished of cold and of squalor. Unused to the sea, countless
numbers died from sickness; many were drowned by the sailors for
their wealth; the poor, who could not otherwise pay their passage,
sold their children. Lean, pale, with eyes deep‐sunken, like
ghosts from the dead, hardly moving enough to show that they were
alive, they came into our city to find shelter for three days; for
our ancient laws forbade a longer stay. Yet for the repair of
their ships, and for health’s sake, a short respite was granted.
They were allowed to live on the Mole, while they made ready for
their long voyage eastward. Thus the winter passed, and many of
them died. The spring came, and ulcers broke out that had been
hitherto kept under by the cold, and all that year there was a
plague in that city.’ ”
This mournful narrative exhibits one of the most sublime examples of
religious faith and conscientious self‐sacrifice to what was deemed truth
and duty in the persecuted. At the same time, when the avaricious
Ferdinand relinquished thirty thousand ducats, and the tender and
benevolent Isabella turned a deaf ear to such prayers and sufferings from
her people, there can be no doubt that conscience ruled the persecutors
also. Even Torquemada himself may have been acting from the most
conscientious and benevolent motives in all the disastrous influences he
brought to bear on his royal mistress.
This passage of history also teaches that honesty, and sincerity, and
conscientiousness will not avail without a _knowledge of the truth_. Nay,
more; had these persecutors been less conscientious, the natural instincts
of humanity or personal interests would have mitigated or withheld the
cruel doom.
It is in this light that we are enabled, in spite of their mistakes in
opinions, to look upon theologians as among the noblest sufferers and
confessors for what they believed to be truth. From the time of Augustine
and Pelagius to the present day nothing can be more clear than that the
combatants on both sides were actuated by a sincere love to God and to
man, each believing, as sincerely as did Saul of Tarsus, that in these
conflicts they were verily doing God service, and that all they were
called to suffer was for the true church of God and the salvation of their
fellow‐men.
But the main purpose for which this record of history now appears is to
illustrate the natural tendency of the Augustine theory in leading to
dogmatism, persecution and ecclesiastical tyranny.
The tendency of the common‐sense system can not be illustrated by history,
for unfortunately Christendom has never yet had an opportunity to test by
a fair experiment its true tendencies. We can only imagine what would be
the results were all ecclesiastical restraints and teachings based on the
Augustine theory removed from our pulpit ministries, our hymns and
prayers, our religious literature, and, most of all, from long established
habits of thought and feeling.
Then all our religious organizations would have for their leading aim, not
to maintain some outward rite or modes of organization, but to promote
free discussion for the discovery of truth and harmonious coöperation to
promote happiness according to the laws of God.
Then the ministry of the Word would be committed to men distinguished not
only by natural endowments, acquired knowledge and skill in debate, but
also ensamples to their flocks in the virtues of humility, meekness, and a
gentle and teachable spirit. Then the points that would divide men into
parties would be chiefly _practical_ questions, so that where no agreement
in opinion could be secured, each would peaceably try a fair experiment
and eventually bring the results forward for the general good.
Then every individual would be free to protest against all that he
believes to be injurious and wrong, in regard to individuals, to the
family, to the church and to the state, and be met in his efforts as a
benefactor rather than an opposer or an enemy.