Church Reform Part 2

Know you not, Sir, that knowledge is power? You must have read that celebrated axiom of Bacon's; but have you considered it, have you reflected, have you repented and proved that axiom? I may add, by way of explanation, that knowledge is the only moral power. What seeks your Church to be? Or what should it seek to be, other than a moral power? On what rock, then, must the Church of Christ be built, so that the gates of h.e.l.l, or of evil design, or of dissent, may not prevail against it?

On what, but KNOWLEDGE? Is it now so built? Is not, rather, the present ministry of the Church more afraid of knowledge than of the people's ignorant dissent; more of "Carlile and his crew," than of all the dissenters; more of free discussion, than of any kind of superst.i.tion?

The dissent of knowledge and the dissent of ignorance, though disunited, are becoming too powerful for your knowledgeless Church; and you, at last, have consented to speak of its necessary reform! To which will you yield, or whom will you join? Those who dissent by knowledge, or those by ignorance? If you take the former, your work will be perfected at once; if the latter, your work will never be done, and you will become weaker and weaker; for I know not one body of worshipping a.s.sociated dissenters, whose ground of a.s.sociation and dissent is better than that of the Established Church. Find me the minister of one of them, who will stand up in discussion before a public audience with me, so as to have his language reported. I have not yet found him in England or Scotland.

The pretences of the kind that have been made, have been so deficient in respectability of character and of good manners, that I do not think them worth a recognition.

I am not insensible to the circ.u.mstance, that you have a difficult task to perform, and I am not sure that you are equal to it: I hope you are; that is, I would have you so, or any other who may be the King's adviser, and the real head of the Church. Nothing is wanted for this reform but honesty and moral courage. Where the will and the power exist, the task is an easy one. _I desire to save the Church and its property, and to annihilate the Dissenters_. I would have the present dignities of the Church dignify themselves in a triumph over the Dissenters. A collusion with the Dissenters will be a hugging of pestilence and death to the bosom of the Church. There can be no co-existence: there was proof enough of that in the seventeenth century, and still in Scotland. A revolution in the affairs and manners of the Church must take place, even by your own confession, in language admitting of the inference; and I desire that good may be educed from that revolution. I would make the Church triumph in the correction of every mental error in the country, and n.o.ble would be that triumph!

You may ask, how is this to be done? I will tell you. Let the Church become the oracle of truth, the fountain of knowledge, the mistress and dispenser of all science. Let its ministers declare this great truth:--_that, hitherto, the mystery of Christ has alone been taught in the Church, without the revelation of that mystery; that the Church has been the depository of that sacred mystery, until the fulness of time, in which it is promised, that all people shall be prepared to partake of the revelation; that the mystery has been kept up in outward form and without any spiritual grace; that the spiritual grace and all the pro-mises are to be fulfilled in the understanding of the revelation; that the spirit or revelation has been buried in a resting on the letter of the Sacred Scriptures; that Christ is only now risen or beginning to rise, after thousands of years, we may say three thousand years, rather than three days of crucifixion, death and burial_. In me, he has risen indeed, as, in me, he has been last crucified; and I crave the pleasure of seeing his principles rise in the Church; for that craving is the nature of Christ. Let the Church declare _that the time is now come to reveal the mystery of Christ_. Exhibition has not been revelation.

What, then, is the revelation of the mystery of Christ?

It is, that Christ is G.o.d and not man, that it is G.o.d in man; that it is knowledge, reason, or all its essences in moral principle; and that it is not an idol to be worshipped as a statue, but a principle to be taught and inherited by the human race. The mystery sets forth Christ as a statue or image to be worshipped after the fashion of the Pagan world.

The revelation teaches, that it is the principle of knowledge, to be gained by labour, by asking, seeking and knocking, or prayer; by repentance, that is, reflection; by enquiry, that is, proving all things, and holding fast that which is good; by mutual instruction, by free discussion, by whatever const.i.tutes a school for useful knowledge, and that const.i.tution is a Church of Christ: all the rest is mistake or imposture, whether it be established by law, or ignorantly dissented from; whether it have a King for its head, or be carried on in a garret or a cellar.

I must go to the root of my subject, and leave no excuse for evasion.

The root of religion is the relation of G.o.d to man, and man to G.o.d.

What does man know of G.o.d?

Books can teach him nothing, unless those books be written pictures of existing things and things that have existed. Things that have existed have no source of trial or test, but in the similarity of things that do exist.

Man's knowledge of existence is of a twofold nature: the things that do exist, and the power by which he has that knowledge. The first is distinguished as material existence; the second, as spiritual existence.

Material and spiritual existence are the only two positive existences of which man can speak or write, to which no inspiration can add; for inspiration is only knowledge; and the recognition of material and spiritual existence is the limitation of knowledge. The details of knowledge can be nothing more than definitions and descriptions of existing things,--the plantings of art upon nature.

All knowledge is matter of art. Nature is the thing known--art the knowledge of the thing. This art can not only know nature, but can invent descriptions of unreal things; can describe things by types, and principles by figurative allegories; can imitate nature by appearances, such as pictures, statues, &c.; and can, by mysterious constructions of language, make the appearance of a thing to represent a principle or describe qualities in the absence of the thing: this is spiritual power.

Nothing of the kind is seen beyond human life; certainly not beyond animal life. We may, therefore, reasonably speak of spiritual power or spiritual existence as confined to the human race--speech and language being a primary necessity to its existence: the art of other animals extending not beyond their wants.

Man, then, is the creator of spirit; and, beyond man, spirit is not known. Man is not known to be the creature, but the creator of art; not the creature, but the creator of spirit, soul, mind, reason, knowledge, or whatever other term relates to the mental phenomena.

I maintain, because it is a truth of the deepest importance to the human race, and without the knowledge of which nothing can work well in human society, that man is the creator of all spiritual existence; and in the sense in which G.o.d is a spirit, man is the creator of that G.o.d, and has been the creator of every description of existence that has been made of such a G.o.d.

We may also correctly speak of this two-fold existence as physical and moral. The physical, its forms and compositions excepted, is eternal and immutable--the moral is evanescent, mortal, and mutable in its personal existence, but immutable and immortal as to principle. The root of G.o.d, therefore, as of man, is in physical power, which is correctly described as almighty, immutable and omnipresent: it is only omniscient, as being the fountain of knowledge--the all that can be known. Science is art; therefore, there can be no science in an infinite or eternal sense, as we can speak of the physical power of Deity; but science, as art, is limited to human power,--the all that is known, and not the all that exists to be known.

This is evidence, that man has created not only all the descriptions that have been made of spiritual existence, but that existence itself: and so it is true, that man has been the inventor of a spiritual G.o.d; that religion and all its appurtenances have been the offspring of the art of man; and that man alone is capable of correcting any of its errors,--which is to be done in the same way by which I propose to put down the Dissenters--the acquisition and communication of knowledge by the Church.

I pa.s.s by the Pagan mythology, which, in its understood personifications and allegories, is as beautiful a picture of physical and moral nature, as the Christian Religion itself; and I rest on the Christian, as, when understood, the only religion for human improvement that has been presented to the notice of the human race.

As man is the inventor of the Spiritual Deity, which is peculiarly the Deity of the Christian Religion, so I infer, by evidence to come, that the Deity of the Christian Religion is no other, nothing more, than a personification of the mental phenomena of the human race, which was the work of the philosophers and scientific men of the Pagan world: and n.o.ble was their task--important for man was their production. Not the thing called the Christian Religion now in existence, which is no other than a religion mistaken, a corruption and Pagan superst.i.tion, the dregs and drivellings of the gross ignorance and superst.i.tion of the dark ages; something two thousand times worse than the Paganism of the Millenium before the so-called Christian era. But a personification after deifications of the mental phenomena, is a sounding, preaching, writing, carving or painting G.o.d, as the perfection of knowledge; Christ, as the perfection of reason; and the Holy Spirit of communication, as the perfection of all attainable moral power by the human race: making those perfections to be things sought, the things worshipped, the best religion, as it undoubtedly is, for the whole human race. It was the best plan of scholastic improvement, when acted upon, that human wisdom could have devised, and to this I would have you bring our Church.

There is a two-fold way of reading the Bible, which I have before described, as it is described in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. iii. v. 6, a reading or a ministration according to the letter, and another according to the spirit. The Apostle or author of that Epistle declares himself to have been a minister of the New Testament according to the spirit, and complains, that the Jews, in his time, did not know how to read the Old Testament. I declare that the Church now existing ministers to nothing but the letter of the Bible, which is a ministration not to life, but to death; and such is the evidence of the whole era of such a ministration; such has been the cause of the dark ages, on which no dissenting sect has yet thrown a ray of light; and the reform that is now required throughout the Church, that established by law and all others, is the understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, that shall cause them to be taught according to the spirit, the spirit of knowledge, reason and constant human improvement. I now see, that none of the people called Jews or Christians know how to read either Old or New Testament according to the spirit.

To read the Bible according to the letter, is to make it a piece of human history; to make a creation of the world, and an attempt to account for everything past, present and future. I proclaim this conduct to be the folly of ignorance, opposed by all real history of the human race, and by all the developments of science, in relation to the earth's existence, its qualities, and its relation to the general planetary system.

I challenge the proof of any one apparent historical fact, in either Old or New Testament. I challenge the production of the existing mention of any one of the supposed facts about the personal or material Jesus Christ, within one hundred years of the time at which it is said to have happened, putting the disputed pa.s.sages of Josephus and Tacitus out of the question.

I challenge the proof of the existence of the Jews, in any country, as a distinct nation, before the time of Alexander the Great.

No other contemporaneous history recognizes such an a.s.sumed history as that which I challenge.

And farther, I am prepared to prove that Christianity existed among Romans, Greeks, Persians, Hindoos, and Celtic Druids, or the northern nations, before the Christian era.

The present ministration of the Church entirely depends on the necessity of a clear historical proof of the literal contents of the Old and New Testaments.

But a spiritual reading of that volume solves every difficulty, and teaches us how to extract the truth, the system of religion that is a necessary and sure salvation for the human race, when reduced to practice, and to see it as a part of the wisdom of all ancient men of all times and countries.

It is ten years and upwards since I sent a pet.i.tion to you, Sir, to be laid before the King, asking for a commission to examine my oppugnancy to the religion and administration of the existing Church. Will you now grant that commission? If you will not, you, while you remain in power, will blunder on in and through growing troubles and difficulties, until you, or some other person, be compelled to come to my school for information. It may be a galling pain, a conscience-smitten task to you to do so; but you have no alternative with honesty and wisdom. It is not a little of this cry for Church Reform, that has sprung out of my labours and sufferings. And here am I, though still in prison through that Church's iniquity, in the proud and triumphant position, clearly seeing that you can reform nothing in the Church that will satisfy the people without coming to my ground.

Your pledge is so to reform the Church as to make it meet the respect and affection of the people. I rejoiced when I read that sentiment; for I saw and felt, that I alone had proposed a reform equal to that end; and mine, as well as others, by the glorious power of the printing press, must come into consideration. I a.s.sure you that the correspondence with the Bishop of London, which I shall append to this letter, has been sold to the extent of many thousands, and is in great demand. This is but an enlargement of my second letter to the Bishop. So that my lamp has been constantly trimmed for your advent as a Reformer of the Church. It is not what you and others call "the rabble," "the destructives," "the mob," that I seek. I seek you and the Bishops, all the learned men in the country, as in application of mind to mind, learning to learning, and wisdom to wisdom.

I will now proceed to explain the distinction between the mystery and the revelation of Christ, between the letter and the spirit of the books of the Old and New Testament, between false and true religion, between superst.i.tion and idolatry on one side, and reason with growing knowledge in the Church on the other. I begin with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

The Church of the dark ages has taught the doctrine professedly founded upon the letter of the Sacred Scriptures: of G.o.d, as consisting of three persons in one person, coexistent, co-equal, and co-eternal, which, in expression, has been abridged, under the name of Trinity, and described as the Holy Trinity; and, in definition or distinction, as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This doctrine has always been dissented from while dissent has been tolerated. It is no more a physical absurdity than the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, or the changing of water to wine, or the feeding of five thousand with five small loaves and two fishes, or any other narrated miracle: still it has been dissented from, and when dissented from, no defence could be made of it. In every other case of dissent, the Church could make no defence and no other apology than ancientness of the doctrine in the Church. Truly this has been a verification of the blind leading the blind, until both fell into the ditch together.

With a doctrine of personality in Deity, including the ideas of physical and moral power, this of the Trinity has been declared a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind; and I declare that a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind, pressed upon human attention, as of importance, is an absurdity, and must be an imposture; for who has comprehended it so to state? This is the matter-of-fact view of the subject.

But the subject being a declared mystery in the theological sense, there is a spiritual interpretation to be put upon the language of the letter; and that I take to be thus:--

That the Trinity is not to be considered as of persons, but of principles; and then we shall find it a philosophical doctrine, true to nature, and proved by science; true to physical and to moral science.

All the ideas that physical science can bring us of creation is the root of three in one. Whatever admits of a.n.a.lysis sets forth the truth and doctrine of the Trinity. Water, the great parent of production on this planet, is known to be composed of two gases--hydrogen and oxygen. They become water through contact and decomposition by electric action. Thus, in the order of a Trinity in Unity, we may describe it as of hydrogen, oxygen, electric contact=water. I do not mention this as any thing new; but it is new in application to a definition of the doctrine of the Trinity. Water had not been made but by the electric contact of hydrogen with oxygen, by the power of a Trinity in Unity. Chemistry teaches us, that this power of a Trinity in Unity is an all-creating power; and so far it is man's comprehension of the creating power or Deity, and not a thing or principle incomprehensible: it is a doctrine older than the Christian era; was a doctrine among the Pagan Philosophers, and is true as to principles or powers; but not true in our modern sense of persons, as identical and separate beings.

A great mistake, too, has been made in the understanding of the word _person_, in relation to theology: it never was meant to express beings in the image of you and me; but the dramatic manner of presenting a description of the principles of nature in the theatre, _per sonantem_, by sound or song, by fiction, by disguise, by allegory, by mask or mystery, by representative action: the revelation of which would be to understand the principles of nature so personated on the stage, as I have defined the Trinity. And it is in this, and no other sense, that I read the names of Deity in the Old or New Testament, as brought apparently on the stage of human affairs, in person, by the authors; that _personating_ meaning nothing more than a present picture or representation of an absent or infinite power, by sounds or voice, and sometimes by masks, as was the earliest known practice in dramatic exhibition, which explains everything about G.o.ds and oracles, and makes the Hymns of Orpheus as sacred as the Psalms of David; as they are as certainly beautiful in poetic composition, and equally useful to human welfare.

You, Sir, if you enter the House of Commons next month, may be said to personate the Electors of Tamworth; a power in the abstract greater than you, because many and supposed qualified to reject your personation and to elect another. Therefore, the personation is not the power personated. As the King's chief Minister, you will also personate the King's Government in the House of Commons; but you are not in reality that governing power; because, it is something distinct from you, and greater than can be concentrated in your person. You, as plain Robert Peel, and I, as Richard Carlile, are not persons; and though it is a custom so to use the word and so to describe us, yet it is a mistake and misuse of the word, unless the body may be said to personate the mind, soul, &c. I hope you see that much of the error of our Church has turned upon this point; because a person was never the reality of the power, and consequently the persons of the Trinity are not to be considered the reality of the Trinity: and hence the Unitarian Dissenter has no reasonable ground of dissent. The doctrine of the Trinity, as a description of Deity, is a valid theological and philosophical doctrine, admitting of no rational dissent.

I wish the Bishops to learn this before the Dissenters, so that the Church may be taught how to call back her errant and ignorant children, that her property may be held together for useful purposes, and not be wasted at the shrine of dissenting ignorance or bankrupt government.

And now, Sir, can you yet see your way with me, "to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the establishment; extend the sphere of its usefulness, and strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people?" If you cannot, I beg you to follow me farther.

It is not only in physics that the doctrine of the Trinity is theologically and scientifically correct, but in morals also; and this is the foundation of the Christian Religion.

As G.o.d, the Father, personates all science, under the attribute of omniscience; that is, personates all existence, both omnipotence and omnipresence, and is, in that reality, the fountain of knowledge--the all and every part that can be known; so G.o.d the Son, Christ or Logos, personates the human mind, as the existence or manifestation of knowledge and reason, as Jesus or the principle of salvation from evil, in possessing that knowledge, and as the true G.o.d, in us and with us, in and with whom we live, and move, and have our being.

So G.o.d the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter to come, to complete the happiness of the human race, personates that spirit of free communication of knowledge which should be found in the Church, the theatre, not of any superst.i.tion or dramatic ceremony, but of the freedom of the human mind, and all its emanations of free enquiry, free discussion, mutual instruction, which are the necessary elements of brotherly love and peace, in the proving of all things and holding fast that which is good. And thus I prove the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity.

This, Sir, is a true picture or effigies of the moral Trinity of the Christian Church, which you will find to be a key to every mysterious sentence of the Bible; and I ask you seriously, as between man and man, is any thing of this kind known or practised in the present Church?

Are not the ministers of that Church afraid of every new discovery in science? Have they not, as far as they could, persecuted every man who has attempted to publish any criticism, enquiry, or objection to their mysterious subjects? History says--Yes. And I say that they have known nothing of the subject for themselves, and that they have dreaded all knowledge of, all enquiry into, the subject. Will their pride let them learn of me? Well may I say:--"Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." That is the language of the personated Logos, or Principle of Reason, addressed to the present state of British mind, as it was formerly addressed to the general state of the human mind.

The doctrine of the transubstantiation of bread and wine, as the elements of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, into the real body and blood of Christ, has been another stumbling-block in the Church. On this head, our law-established Church has dissented from its former self, which when I mentioned on my last jury trial, the Judge, Sir Allan Park, called it a vilifying of the Church. I knew better; but saw that the Judge was not a man to be reasoned with, and so I did not press the subject: but through this letter and your name, Sir, I desire to teach him how it has been done. Transubstantiation is no stumbling-block to my mind.

The twenty-eighth article of the Church says on this subject:--"Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superst.i.tions. The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner; and the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is Faith."

It is very clear to me that the Bishops of that time, the sixteenth century, did not know how to read Holy Writ. I could defend the entire doctrine of transubstantiation, in its fullest application, from the language of the Gospel according to Saint John. This subject affords me another proof, that the doctrine of transubstantiation is much older than any of the books of the New Testament: for, where understood, there is nothing in theology more dear than this doctrine, or that comes nearer to a physical and moral truth.

First, let us understand that the root of the word _Sacrament_ is a secret in the mind; and _Transubstantiation_ is a change of substance from one to another thing. Now the secret in the mind is, where understood, and where not understood there is no Sacrament, that, like the Trinity, all the appearances of G.o.d are in the principle of transubstantiation or change from one to another thing. All is motion.--Nature knows no rest. All is change, all is transubstantiation. It is like the Trinity,--one of the attributes of Deity, one not to be doubted,--because everywhere visible. The present Church of England calls it a d.a.m.nable doctrine; but it is so called through ignorance. Like that of the Trinity, it is a doctrine much older than the Christian era; and so also was that of the Lord's Supper, as a practised ceremony.

When the name of Christ was set up to personate all the attributes of Deity, the various names of the Pagan G.o.ds were decried. It had become a matter of wisdom thus to set up the name of Christ as a personation of all the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses: it was a concentration of philosophy, to unite mankind in one form of religion and for one great purpose, that of progressive and perpetual improvement. The plan was good; but the principle has never been rightly developed. Teaching by mystery is a bad system. The ma.s.s of the people are not so to be taught. We must begin and teach by revelation. The Christian Religion, when revealed, will be eternal, and realise all its real promises of peace on earth, good-will among men, and a land flowing with milk and honey.

Before the name of Christ was used, Bacchus was called a Saviour, as were many other if not all the G.o.ds, as Jehovah is declared the only Saviour in the Old Testament. And this Bacchus had the name of Jesus, or Saviour, inscribed on his altar pieces, in the very letters now inscribed in our Churches, the three Greek letters Iota, Eta, Sigma, I.H.S., not Jesus Hominum Salvator, in initials, though so in meaning; but Yes, which is the same as Jesus, and signifies Saviour. Isis is of the same root, one of whose names was Ceres. Ceres personated corn or bread, and Bacchus personated wine. It was a Pagan custom, in religious ceremonies, to break and eat bread in honour of Ceres, and to pour and drink wine in honour of Bacchus, as the bread and wine or body and blood of salvation, of both physical and moral salvation.