they hurled against each other with equal fury and devotion. The hard necessity of censuring either a pope, or a saint and martyr, distresses the modern Catholics, whenever they are obliged to relate the particulars of a dispute, in which the champions of religion indulged such passions as seem much more adapted to the senate or to the camp.* The progress of the ecclesiastical authority gave birth to the memorable distinction of the laity and of the clergy, which had been unknown to the Greeks and Romans.† The former of these appellations comprehended the body of the Christian people; the latter, according to the signification of the word, was appropriated to the chosen portion that had been set apart for the service of religion; a celebrated order of men which has furnished the most important, though not always the most edifying, subjects for modern history. Their mutual hostilities sometimes disturbed the peace of the infant church, but their zeal and activity were united in the common cause, and their love of power, which (under the most artful disguises) could insinuate itself into the breasts of bishops and martyrs, animated them to increase the number of their subjects, and to enlarge the limits of the Christian empire. They were destitute of any temporal force, and they were for a long time discouraged and oppressed, rather than assisted, by the civil magistrate; but they had acquired, and they employed within their own society, the two most efficacious instruments of government, rewards and punishments; the former derived from the pious liberality, the latter from the devout apprehensions, of the faithful. I. The community of goods, which had so agreeably amused the imagina. tion of Plato, and which subsisted in some degree among the austere sect of the Essenians,§ was adopted for a short time in the primitive church. The fervour of the first proselytes prompted them to sell those worldly possessions, which they despised, to lay the price of them at the feet of the apostles, and to content themselves with receiving an equal share out of the general distribution. The progress of the Christian religion relaxed, and gradually abolished this generous institution, which, in hands less pure than those of Concerning this dispute of the re-baptism of heretics, see the epistles of Cyprian, and the seventh book of Eusebius. For the origin of these words, see Mosheim, p. 141. Spanheim, Hist. Ecclesiast., p. 633. The distinction of Clerus and Laicus was established before the time of Tertullian, The community instituted by Plato, is more perfect than that which Sir Thomas More had imagined for his Utopia. The community of women, and that of temporal goods, may be considered as inseparable parts of the same system. § Joseph. Antiquitat. xviii, 2. Philo, de Vit. Contemplativ. See the Acts of the Apostles, c. 2, 4, 5, with Grotius's Commentary. Mosheim, in a particular dissertation, attacks the common opinion with very inconclusive arguments, the apostles, would too soon have been corrupted and abused by the returning selfishness of human nature; and the converts who embraced the new religion were permitted to retain the possession of their patrimony, to receive lega. cies and inheritances, and to increase their separate property by all the lawful means of trade and industry. Instead of an absolute sacrifice, a moderate proportion was accepted by the ministers of the gospel; and in their weekly or monthly assemblies, every believer, according to the exigency of the occasion, and the measure of his wealth and piety, presented his voluntary offering for the use of the common fund.* Nothing, however inconsiderable, was refused; but it was diligently inculcated that, in the article of Tythes, the Mosaic law was still of divine obligation; and that since the Jews, under a less perfect discipline, had been commanded to pay a tenth part of all that they possessed, it would become the disciples of Christ to distinguish themselves by a superior degree of liberality, and to acquire some merit by resigning a superfluous treasure, which must so soon be annihilated with the world itself. * Justin Martyr, Apolog. Major, c. 89. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 39. To Correspondents. RECEIVED.-Salvator.-F. Y., Diss.-Janvier, North Shields.-R. A., Maryport. BOOKS RECEived. - Chapters on Policy v. Straightforwardness.'— The Lever, Part I.-Our usual quantity of newspapers, for which our friends are thanked; and to other friends of progress who are in the habit of wasting their periodicals and newspapers, if sent to the editor when done with, they will be of service. All communications for this periodical are to be addressed to the Editor of the Freethinker's Magazine, care of J. Watson, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster-row, London. We have received a number of communica tions from good and true friends of the cause on the subject of subscrip tions towards this attempt at propagandism. We thank them most sincerely; and while declining their kind offers as regards this work, beg to suggest the formation in every town of a committee to collect subscriptions, &c., the proceeds to be devoted to supplying the local priesthood with copies of works of progress as fast as they come out. To such communi. ties we promise, on our part (and fancy can guarantee on the part of seve ral other publications), such a reduction on the cost, as shall enable the various committees to distribute a larger quantity than under ordinary circumstances they would be enabled to do. The Editor begs to intimate, it would forward the cause of progress were he furnished with the names and addresses of the clergy of all denominations in their several localities. Printed by Holyoake Brothers, 3, Queen's Head Fassage, Paternoster-row; and published by James Watson, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster-row, London. THE FREETHINKER'S MAGAZINE, AND Review of Theology, Politics, and Literature. Oceans of ink, and reams of paper, and disputes infinite might have been spared, if wranglers had avoided lighting the torch of strife at the wrong end; since a tenth part of the pains expended in attempting to prove the why, the where, and the when certain events have happened, would have been more than sufficient to prove that they never happened at all.-REV. C. C. COLTON, A.M. No. 8.] JANUARY 1, 1851. [PRICE 6d. THE INCONSISTENCIES OF THE CHURCH. AFTER a storm, the proverb says, comes a calm; but in the theological horizon, though there may be a lull from pure exhaustion in the ecclesiastical belligerents, we doubt if such a thing as a calm is at all within the bounds of possibility, or even probability. A feud engendered by robbery, injustice, or blood, may in time be healed, but one created by religious madness is as undying as that fabled bird the Phoenix, which merely cheats us into the idea of extinction, while young Phoenixes in reality spring from its ashes. Religion (that is, sectarian religion) is a many-headed monster that there is no killing. Mere spilling its blood does but perpetuate and create it: therefore let not the friends of freethought think the dread hour is past, Another struggle is yet to come: Puseyism is braver than mere Church of Englandism or mere Catholicism. They felt that sentiment must be enlisted on its side, or otherwise the matter-of-fact spirit of the age would turn Episcopalianism into a mere rule-of-three system, that would make the Church too low a concern for aristocratic sprigs to crave after. Puseyism overlooked the fact that its high mission would leave them in the slough of Catholicism; and through the similarity of its views with that hated church, the dragon of dissent and the scarlet lady of fanatics bring upon its devoted head the united force of all the isms combined. But let the incongruous bodies the tyrannised over and the tyrants, dissenters and episcopaliansbeware. Many a freebooter, when hope was lost, has been known to set fire to the magazine, and engulph victor and vanquished in a common death. So may be at the present eventful period in theological history. The Bishop of London, the great bellows-blower of this fiery Pandemonium, is now showing signs of fright at the monster he has contributed to bring into being, and in a paper war attacks his late protegé Mr. Bennett, of St. Barand that individual, with much more consistency than his lordly it nabas; H superior, feeling that his religious views, to whatever absurd lengths they may impel him, are still matters between himself and his God-resigns his office in that church that inculcates foolish and exploded theories, and then punishes any man who carries them out to their logical termination. Mr. Bennett justly feels that if the advantages, the necessity of the offertory are demonstrated in the book of Common Prayer, there cannot be any harm in going through the ceremony once or twice each service. And as that church teaches the actual though mystical presence of the real flesh and positive blood of Jesus Christ, in certain compounds called bread and wine, adminis. tered at what is called the Lord's Supper, which is taught is efficacious in procuring a remission of hell torments to the consumer-then it is not much of a stretch of imagination to suppose that there may possibly be similar virtues in the wafers administered by the Romanists in what they term extreme unction. The Church, instead of being honest, and placing full reliance on the truths she teaches (if they be truths), actually is herself the first to persecute those who conscientiously and practically work out those doctrines. At every service, by the ritual in the Common Payer book, the officiating priest is made to call upon the people to confess, which he does for them aloud in a supposed catalogue of sins, the people repeating the same aloud after him; on the conclusion of which he declares that by the power given him by Almighty God, as they have confessed their sins, he there and then remits and pardons them all-in other words, he outbids the Church of Rome, for he grants absolution without inflicting a penance. Well, all this farago is laid down in the Prayer Book, and is publicly taught in all the churches in England-pro forma, I must think; because the moment a Mr. Bennett, or any body else, actually confesses people, and actually pardons their sins, then the Bishop, who is not honest enough to acknowledge the absurdities and incongruities of the system over which he is presiding, drops down the upon devoted head of his more logical inferior merely because he is more consistent than his bishop. If the Church of England, by their breviary, lay it down that no children are in a state of safety until by them baptised, then that amiable specimen of religious ignorance and intolerance who asserted there were 'children in hell not a span long,' was at least a consistent, if a bloody-minded man; and were it not for the shilling fee attached to the baptismal ceremony, we might almost be led to believe that, like certain conjurors, the clergy have so long deluded their followers, that they have almost themselves arrived at a belief in the value of their own juggling. At all events, any clergyman who does believe an infant's reward for eternity to be eternal damnation, if it dies before baptism, is quite consistent in saying he has saved it from such an awful fate, although it does seem there are other circumstances that do appear to the uninitiated as having some influence in modifying, if not preventing, this dreadful punishment. For instance, a child is born, seeming not likely to live-parents Puseyite in belief; the husband is bundled off for the parson, and the errand-boy for the doctor: parsons Nos. 1, 2, and 3 are called on, and all are found at some sick bedside or other. The boy, after one or two games at marbles, finds his way to the doctor's. He arrives; some slight medicine is given, and the child survives: but remember its chances for hell were doubled. First it was on the high road thither, through a parson not being like a house-surgeon at a hospital-always on the premises; secondly, had the errand-boy's game lasted a little longer, or had the doctor not been at home, then the poor innocent was certainly doomed. Now the questions should be before a child is sent to hell, was it the child's fault that he or she was not baptised? Could an infant an hour old take any steps in the matter? Would it be its fault if the parson was at somebody else's bedside, or that the errand-boy played instead of fetching the doctor? Or was it through its negligence that the gin bottle was left about, through which the nurse got a little crochetty, and insisted that a double dose of Godfrey was an infallible cure for convulsions, which it was, for it settled convulsions and life together? None of these accidents, chances, contingencies-call them what you will-depend on the child; yet the church condemns the innocent and helpless to eternal fire and brimstone because of these circumstances entirely beyond its control; and though I find great fault with the inculcation of such bloodthirsty doctrines, yet I should find much more did they not benevolently and kindly step forward, and for the small charge of one shilling and a little mumbling, redeem children from awful and unmerited punishment. But the fact is, the church, as a body, do not believe a single word of the theories they teach; they view religion but as a means by and through which they fetter man's intelligence, and are enabled to live in splendid idleness; outwardly, therefore, they must pretend to believe, and live a life of imposture, for, like Archdeacon Paley, they cannot afford to have an independent belief. The church is, in fact, a joint stock company, and has an interest distinct from that of the community. By imposture they obtained their power and emoluments, and by ignorance they retain it. When will the time come that mankind will be wise enough to do without these theological go-betweens? Until that day arrives, it is hopeless to expect harmony or concord in the world. R. L. B. RECIPE FOR A HIGHLAND SERMON.-'We dinna care muckle for a man that throws off his matter as if he were spinning-this will not do wi' a real Highlander, Na, na, sir; we maun hae something mau than this, sir: we maun hae a man that can speak out, sir, a man that can fecht in the poopit, sir; a man that can flyte, sir, a man that can shake his nieves at ye, sir, a man that can ca' ye names, sir; in fact, sir, a man that can fricht ye!' |