Produced by David Widger
HERESY: ITS UTILITY AND MORALITY
A PLEA AND A JUSTIFICATION
By Charles Bradlaugh
London: Austin & Co., 17, Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
Price Ninepence.
HERESY: ITS MORALITY & UTILITY
A PLEA and A JUSTIFICATION.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION
What is heresy that it should be so heavily punished? Why is it that
society will condone many offences, pardon many vicious practices, and
yet have such scant mercy for the open heretic, who is treated as though
he were some horrid monster to be feared and hated? Most religionists,
instead of endeavouring with kindly thought to provide some solution
for the difficulties propounded by their heretical brethren,
indiscriminately confound all inquirers "in one common category of
censure; their views are dismissed with ridicule as sophistical and
fallacious, abused as infinitely dangerous, themselves denounced as
heretics and infidels, and libelled as scoffers and Atheists." With some
religonists all heretics are Atheists. With the Pope of Rome, Garibaldi
and Mazzini are Atheists. With the Religious Tract Society, Voltaire
and Paine were Atheists. Yet in neither of the above-named cases is
the allegation true. Voltaire and Paine were heretics, but both were
Theists. Garibaldi and Mazzini are heretics, but neither of them is an
Atheist. With few exceptions, the heretics of one generation become
the revered saints of a period less than twenty generations later. Lord
Bacon, in his own age, was charged with Atheism, Sir Isaac Newton with
Socinianism, the famous Tillotson was actually charged with Atheism, and
Dr. Burnet wrote against the commonly received traditions of the fall
and deluge. There are but few men of the past of whom the church
boasts to-day, who have not at some time been pointed at as heretics
by orthodox antagonists excited by party rancour. Heresy is in itself
neither Atheism nor Theism, neither the rejection of the Church of Rome,
nor of Canterbury, nor of Constantinople; heresy is not necessarily of
any ist or ism. The heretic is one who has selected his own opinions, or
whose opinions are the result of some mental effort; and he differs from
others who are orthodox in this:--they hold opinions which are often
only the bequest of an earlier generation unquestioningly accepted; he
has escaped from the customary grooves of conventional acquiescence, and
sought truth outside the channels sanctified by habit.
Men and women who are orthodox are generally so for the same reason that
they are English or French--they were born in England or France,
and cannot help the good or ill fortune of their birth-place. Their
orthodoxy is no higher virtue than their nationality. Men are good and
true of every nation and of every faith; but there are more good and
true men in nations where civilisation has made progress, and amongst
faiths which have been modified by high humanising influences. Men are
good not because of their orthodoxy, but in spite of it; their goodness
is the outgrowth of their humanity, not of their orthodoxy. Heresy is
necessary to progress; heresy in religion always precedes an endeavour
for political freedom. You cannot have effectual political progress
without wide-spread heretical thought. Every grand political change in
which the people have played an important part, has been preceded by the
popularisation of heresy in the immediately earlier generations.
Fortunately, ignorant men cannot be real heretics, so that education
must be the hand-maiden to heresy. Ignorance and superstition are twin
sisters. Belief too often means nothing more than prostration of the
intellect on the threshold of the unknown. Heresy is the pioneer, erect
and manly, striding over the forbidden line in his search for truth.
Heterodoxy develops the intellect, orthodoxy smothers it. Heresy is the
star twinkle in the night, orthodoxy the cloud which hides this faint
gleam of light from the weary travellers on life's encumbered pathway.
Orthodoxy is well exemplified in the dark middle ages, when the mass of
men and women believed much and knew little, when miracles were common
and schools were rare, and when the monasteries on the hill tops held
the literature of Europe. Heresy speaks for itself in this nineteenth
century, with the gas and electric light, with cheap newspapers, with
a thousand lecture rooms, with innumerable libraries, and at least a
majority of the people able to read the thoughts the dead have left, as
well as to listen to the words the living utter.
The word heretic ought to be a term of honour; for honest, clearly
uttered heresy is always virtuous, and this whether truth or error;
yet it is not difficult to understand how the charge of heresy has
been generally used as a means of exciting bad feeling. The Greek word
[------] which is in fact our word heresy, signifies simply, selection
or choice. The he etiq philosopher was the one who had searched and
found, who, not content with the beaten paths, had selected a new road,
chosen a new fashion of travelling in the inarch for that happiness all
humankind are seeking.
Heretics are usually called "infidels," but no word could be more
unfairly applied, if by it is meant anything more than that the heretic
does not conform to the State Faith. If it meant those who do not
profess the faith, then there would be no objection, but it is more
often used of those who are unfaithful, and then it is generally
a libel. Mahomedans and Christians both call Jews infidels, and
Mahomedans and Christians call each other infidels. Each religionist
is thus an infidel to all sects but his own; there is but one degree
of heresy between him and the heretic who rejects all churches. Each
ordinary orthodox man is a heretic to every religion in the world except
one, but he is heretic from the accident of birth without the virtue of
true heresy.
In our own country heresy is not confined to the extreme platform
adopted as a standing point by such a man as myself. It is rife even
in the state-sustained Church of England, and to show this one does
not need to be content with such illustrations as are afforded by
the Essayists and Reviewers, who discover the sources of the world's
education rather in Greece and Italy than in Judea, who reject the
alleged prophecies as evidence of the Messianic character of Jesus;
who admit that in nature and from nature, by science and by reason,
we neither have, nor can possibly have any evidence of a deity working
miracles; but declare that for that we must go out of nature and beyond
science, and in effect avow that Gospel miracles are always _objects_,
not _evidences_, of faith; who deny the necessity of faith in Jesus as
saviour to peoples Who could never have such faith; and who reject
the notion that all mankind are individually involved in the curse
and perdition of Adam's sin; or even by the Rev. Charles Voysey, who
declines to preach "the God of the Bible," and who will not teach that
every word of the Old and New Testament is the word of God; or by the
Rev. Dunbar Heath, who in defiance of the Bible doctrine, that man has
only existed on the earth about 6,000 years, teaches that unnumbered
chiliads have passed away since the human family commenced to play at
nations on our earth; or by Bishop Colenso, who in his impeachment of
the Pentateuch, his denial of the literal truth of the narratives of
the creation, fall, and deluge, actually impugns the whole scheme of
Christianity (if the foundation be false, the superstructure cannot be
true); or by the Rev. Baden Powell, who declared "that the whole tenor
of geology is in entire contradiction to the cosmogony delivered from
Mount Sinai," and who denied a "local heaven above and a local hell
beneath the earth;" or by the Rev. Dr. Giles, who, not content with
preceding Dr. Colenso in his assaults on the text of the Pentateuch,
also wrote as vigorously against the text of the New Testament; or
by the Rev. Dr. Wall, who, unsatisfied with arguments against the
admittedly incorrect authorised translation of the Bible, actually wrote
to prove that a new and corrected Hebrew text was necessary, the Hebrew
itself being corrupt; or by the Rev. Dr. Irons, who teaches that not
only are the Gospel writers unknown, but that the very language in which
Jesus taught is yet to be discovered, who declares that prior to the
Esraic period the literal history of the Old Testament is lost, who
does not find the Trinity taught in Scripture, and who declares that
the Gospel dees not teach the doctrine of the Atonement; or by the
late Archbishop Whately, to whom is attributed a Latin pamphlet raising
strong objections against the truth of the alleged confusion of tongues
at Babel.
We may fairly allege, that amongst thinking clergymen of the Church of
England, heresy is the rule and not the exception. So soon as a
minister begins to preach sermons which he does not buy ready
lithographed--sermons which are the work of his brain--so soon heresy
more or less buds out, now in the rejection of some church doctrine or
article of minor importance, now in some bold declaration at variance
with major and more essential tenets. Even Bishop Watson's so famous for
his Bible Apology, declared that the church articles and creeds were
not binding on any man. "They may be true, they may be false," he wrote.
Today scores of Church of England clergymen openly protest against,
or groan in silence under the enforced subscription of Thirty-nine
unbelievable Articles. Sir William Hamilton declares that the heads of
Colleges at Oxford well knew that the man preparing for the Church "will
subscribe Thirty-nine Articles which he cannot believe, who swears to
do and to have done a hundred articles which he cannot or does not
perform."
In scientific circles the heresy of the most efficient members is
startlingly apparent. Against members of the Anthropological Society
charges of Atheism are freely levelled, and although such a charge does
not seem to be justified by any reports of their meetings, or by their
printed publications, it is clear that not only out of doors, but even
amongst their own circle it is felt that their researches conflict
seriously with the Hebrew writ. The Society has been preached against
and prayed against, and yet it is simply a society for discovering
everything possible about man, prehistoric as well as modern. It has,
however, an unpardonable vice in the eyes of the orthodox--it encourages
the utterance of facts without regard to their effect on faiths.
The Ethnological Society is kindred to the last named in many of its
objects, and hence some of its most active members have been direct
assailants of the Hebrew Chronology, which, limits man's existence
to the short space of 6,000 years; they have been deniers(sp.) of the
origin of the human race from one pair, of the confusion of tongues
at Babel, and of the reduction of the human race to one family by the
Noachian deluge.
Geological science has a crowd of heretics amongst its professors, men
who deny the sudden origin of fauna and flora; who trace the gradual
development of the vegetable and animal kingdoms through vast periods of
time; and who find no resting place in a beginning of existence, but
are obliged to halt in face of a measureless past, inconceivable in
its grandeur. Geology, to quote the words of Dr. Kalisch, declares "the
utter impossibility of a creation of even the earth alone in six days."
Mr. Goodwin says in the "Essays and Reviews:" "The school-books of the
present day, while they teach the child that the earth moves, yet assure
him that it is a little less than six thousand years old, and that it
was made in six days. On the other hand, geologists of all religious
creeds are agreed that the earth has existed for an immense series of
years--to be counted by millions rather than by thousands; and that
indubitably more than six days elapsed from its first creation to the
appearance of man upon its surface."
Astronomy has in the ranks of its professors many of its most able minds
who do not believe in the sun and moon as two great lights, who cannot
accept the myriad stars as fixed in the firmament solely to give light
upon the earth, who refuse to believe in the heaven as a fixed firmament
to divide the waters above from the waters beneath, who cannot by their
telescopes discover the local heaven above or the local hell beneath,
although their science marks each faint nebulosity crossing, or
crossed by the range of the watcher's vision. To quote again from Mr.
Goodwin:--"On the revival of science in the sixteenth century, some of
the earliest conclusions at which philosophers arrived, were found to
be at variance with popular and long established belief. The Ptolemaic
system of astronomy, which had then full possession of the minds of men,
contemplated the whole visible universe from the earth as the immovable
centre of things. Copernicus changed the point of view, and placing
the beholder in the sun, at once reduced the earth to an inconspicuous
globule, a merely subordinate member of a family of planets; which the
terrestrials had, until then, fondly imagined to be but pendants and
ornaments of their own habitation. The Church, naturally, took a lively
interest in the disputes which arose between the philosophers ot the
new school, and those who adhered to the old doctrines, inasmuch as the
Hebrew records, the basis of religious faith, manifestly countenanced
the opinion of the earth's immobility, and certain other views of the
universe, very incompatible with those propounded by Copernicus. Hence
arose the official proceedings against Galileo, in consequence of which
he submitted to sign his celebrated recantation, acknowledging that 'the
proposition that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable from
its place, is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical,
because it is expressly contrary to the Scripture;' and that 'the
proposition that the earth is not the centre of the world, nor
immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is absurd,
philosophically false, and at least erroneous in faith.'"
Why is it that society is so severe on heresy? Three hundred years ago
it burned heretics, till thirty years ago it sent them to jail; even in
England and America to-day it is content to harass, annoy, and slander
them. In the United States a candidate for the Governorship of a State,
although otherwise admittedly eligible, was assailed bitterly for his
suspected Socinianism. Sir Sidney Waterlow, standing for a Scotch seat,
was sharply catechised as to when he had last been inside the Unitarian
Chapel, and only saved his seat by not too boldly avowing his opinions.
Lord Amberley, who was "unwise" enough to be honest in some of his
answers, did not obtain his seat for South Devon in consequence of the
suspicion of heresy excited against him. It is chiefly to the _odium
theologicum_ that Mr. Mill may attribute his rejection at Westminster;
and it is supposed to have also damaged Sir John Lubbock in West Kent.
I only refrain from enlarging on my own case, because I learn from the
Press that it is chiefly the vulgarity and coarseness of my heresy with
which they are indignant. To reply that I have sought to avoid being
coarse and vulgar is worse than useless, I am judged untried, condemned
unheard; evidence is unnecessary in the case of a man who thus puts
himself outside the pale.
Sir William Drummond says, "Early associations are generally the
strongest in the human mind, and what we have been taught to credit as
children we are seldom, disposed to question as men. Called away from
speculative inquiries by the common business of life, men in general
possess neither the inclination, nor the leisure to examine _what_ they
believe or _why_ they believe. A powerful prejudice remains in the mind;
ensures conviction without the trouble of thinking; and repels doubt
without the aid or authority of reason. The multitude then is not very
likely to applaud an author, who calls upon it to consider what it had
hitherto neglected, and to stop where it had been accustomed to pass on.
It may also happen that there is a learned and formidable body, which,
having given its general sanction to the literal interpretation of the
Holy Scriptures, may be offended at the presumption of an unhallowed
layman, who ventures to hold, that the language of those Scriptures is
often symbolical and allegorical, even in passages which both the Church
and the Synagogue consider as nothing else than a plain statement of
fact. A writer who had sufficient boldness to encounter such obstacles,
and to make an appeal to the public, would only expose himself to
the invectives of offended bigotry, and to the misrepresentations of
interested malice. The press would be made to ring with declamations
against him, and neither learning, nor argument, nor reason,
nor moderation on his side, would protect him from the literary
assassination which awaited him. In vain would he put on the
heaven-tempered panoply of truth. The weapons which could neither pierce
his buckler nor break his casque, might be made to pass with envenomed
points through the joints of his armour. Every trivial error which
he might commit, would be magnified into a flagrant fault; and every
insignificant mistake into which he might fall, would be represented by
the bigotted, or by the hireling critics of the day as an ignorant, or
as a perverse deviation from the truth." Both by the Statute Law and
Common Law, heresy is punishable, and many are punished for it even in
the second half of the nineteenth century. A man who has been educated
in, or made profession of Christianity, and who shall then deny any of
the Thirty-nine Articles, is liable to indictment and imprisonment,
but this course is seldom pursued; the more common practice is for the
Christian to avail himself of the heretic's want of belief in order to
object to his competency as a witness. Repeated instances have
occurred recently in which the proposed witness has been rejected as
untrustworthy, because he was too honest to pretend to hold a faith he
in truth denied. Besides such open persecution, there is the constant,
unceasing, paltry, petty persecuting spirit which refuses to trade with
the heretic; which declines to eat with him; which will not employ him;
which feels justified in slandering him, which seeks to set his wife's
mind against him, and to take away the affection of his children from
him.
For those who do not believe this, I will instance two clergymen of
the Church of England: one (who as my teacher when a boy) set a kind
father's heart against me, and drove me further in heresy than I then
dreamed of marching; and the other, who in cruel wickedness tried to
wound me as a man through the feelings of my wife and children, whom
he most vilely and basely slandered. The first is yet unpunished, the
second escaped condign punishment only by writing himself down libeller,
and praying pardon for the slanderous coinage of his brain. And yet
this latter Church of England clergyman, who had written a strong letter
thanking me for my generous forbearance, and who from his own pulpit
pretended to express his sorrow, is actually the first and only man in
my neighbourhood to cry "Atheist" against me, when I mingle in political
life, and he thinks the phrase may wound and injure me.