We read in the life of Locke that "there was a meeting of the heads of
the houses of Oxford, where it was proposed to censure and discourage
the reading of this essay (On the Human Understanding) and after
various debates, it was concluded that without any public censure
each head of a house should endeavor to prevent its being read in
his own college." (Spencer's "Social Statics," p. 375.)
"With respect to the last, the grandest of all human undertakings
(that is the circumnavigation of the earth) it is to be remembered
that Catholicism had irrevocably committed itself to the dogma of a
flat earth, with the sky as a floor of heaven, and hell in the under
world." (Draper's "Conflict," p. 294.)
The clergy for years have ridiculed Darwinism, and scouted the
philosophy of evolution, even after the best minds of Europe had
accepted it. But after all their ridicule of Darwinism, when Darwin
had passed away the great heart of England did not fail to show the
esteem in which the people at large held him, but lovingly laid his
remains to rest in Westminster abbey with the dust of her noblest dead.
It is in the very nature of Christianity to persecute. It cannot
live on terms of equality with anything on earth. It must rule. It
must be supreme, and all institutions and all individuals must
obey its mandates. It has in all of its vocabulary no such word as
liberty. Every knee must bow to it, every tongue confess its authority,
and every pocket--pay it tithes. And so gigantic has been its power
that obedience in every age has been almost universal. Millions
have professed to obey the despot who have had no idea of what
they were professing, and hence had not so much even an a dream of
liberty. Poor man has been trampled in the dust, and sometimes used
as food for cannon, to satisfy the ambition of pope or king, and when
not serviceable in that way, he was forced to worship God and serve
the priests.
"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers." (Rom. 13 :
1.) That is, the higher powers are the priests. The commandments of
these higher powers are expressed in such words as "submit," "obey,"
"serve," "pay tithes," "believe,"--and to heed them is to lose the
higher opportunities of manhood.