Читать книгу Watson Refuted - Francis Samuel Ward - Страница 2

MY LORD,

You have thought it not inconsistent with your dignity as a Bishop, to oppose the Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, and I, as a member of the community, find myself called upon to expose your reasoning, and stop the career of error. You disclaim controversy; but if your candour is any thing more than a vain boast, I entertain hopes of seeing the defender of Christianity again step forward to answer my arguments, if he deems them of sufficient weight to disturb his quiet. I am sincerely glad to find a dignified churchman begin a dispute with men, whom formerly the pious members of the Church would have deemed fit victims for the fire or the gallows; at the same time, I feel deep regret, that the Bishop has not yet altogether laid aside the clerical passion for the extermination of the heterodox. I hope, says Dr. Watson, that there is no want of charity in wishing, that Mr. Paine's life had been terminated long before his publication. This may be consistent with Christian charity, but nature and reason teach us ugly unbelievers another doctrine: and, however inveterate I may be against those of the clergy who persecute and deceive the multitude, I confess, that the death of a person, whom I conceive to be acting for what he thinks the public good, would give me no pleasure; and the Bishop allows the purity of Mr. Paine's motives. The wish of the philosopher is, let reason guide us, and all parties have freedom of debate. No dogmatical dictates of bigotted priests, no passive obedience to the mandates of inquisitors, nor to the persecutions so often fomented by churchmen. To the progress of letters, during this century, we owe the mildness and condescension of clergymen: till philosophy taught us, the clergy never discovered, that persecutions for heresy and witchcraft, or inquisitions and popery, were horrid institutions. Dares Dr. Watson affirm, that freedom of inquiry was ever suffered on religious subjects? that people were allowed to examine the grounds of the doctrines taught by the Church? No, Sir, your predecessors of all beliefs have ever persecuted philosophers and inquirers into truth, both in science and in religion. Neither Galileus nor Rousseau escaped the malevolence of the opposers of science; and in the Bible they found authorities for their inveterate opposition to the progress of truth and knowledge. The New Testament informs us, that the wisdom of God is foolishness to man, that human learning produces nothing but pride1, and that the poor in spirit gain the kingdom of heaven.

Under these and other similar pretences, have barbarous priests led their credulous followers to massacres in the name of their God; by means of that touchstone word, Faith, they made the multitude forget that their leaders were but men. Now, Sir, we have grown bolder: knowledge being no longer confined to clerical seminaries, priests are not kings. The church totters; and a single pamphlet, you say, "has unsettled the faith of thousands." Now, that you cannot stifle reason, you pretend to liberality of sentiment.

The natural historian, or the astronomer, fears not the publication of opinions contrary to his own, except from a scholastic habit, learned in the clerical seminaries, which still disgrace almost every country. The chemist eagerly peruses all theories; the divine alone refuses to argue with his opponents, and trembles at the very name of reason. I differ in my philosophical opinions from Mr. Paine; my principles extend so much farther than his, that I suspect I come under the class which you are pleased to call madmen, and every clergyman would affect to despise, but dare not argue with, before an unprejudiced tribunal. These, Sir, are the effects of superstition, and the cunning policy of the Church. The Bible is hardly suffered to be read in Catholic countries. The English reformers could not go so far; their revolution sprung from a dawn of philosophy. The English clergy, however, would confine us to the reading of that unintelligible farrago, and the still more insufferable commentaries upon it. So did the scholastics with Aristotle; their bigotted partiality to this author was nearly of the same force with the priestly attachment to the Bible. They retarded science; but the motives of the clergy are stronger. By the Bible they live; and it is not uncommon to hear the parson deride in private what he preaches from the pulpit.

But to your first letter.

After the pious wish for Thomas Paine's death, you proceed to state how miserable the adoption of his doctrines would render the "unhappy virtuous." Fear not such a dire event: the pious are few in number, and of those, few have the courage to open a book controverting their opinions, and which, they are taught to believe, contains nothing but blasphemies But, should chance lead them to a detection of their errors, they would only become less devout, and more useful citizens. Freed from the prospect of hell and heaven, they will have leisure to think of this world, in which they live somewhat like hermits, loving only their priests, and ready to sacrifice victims to credulity.

You say, that guillotine massacres were not the effect of the Popish religion, but of the disbelief of this system. This deserves some consideration. It is not true, that the majority of the people of Paris were unbelievers. No, Sir, they swore to the miracles of Abbe Paris, and were as ready to give testimony to the wonderful cures and prodigies operated by his intercession, as the Jews or Christians have been to vouch for theirs. The fact is this: the lively disposition of the French, the unintelligibility of their religion, and the shameful conduct of the priests, turned their attention to the more serious object of politics; but this event could not immediately change the nature of the murderers of the Protestants on St. Bartholomew's day. Does your Lordship imagine, that the peasants of La Vendee are models of morality? If you think so, I must undeceive you. Nothing but ignorance prevails in that district; like the ancient crusaders, they are led solely by their priests, who, by means of certain words which early habits and superstition have made their followers respect, and, together with want of communication with the rest of France, have inflamed them, and driven them to slaughter: even miracles have not been wanting in that part of the country; but in this, as in many other instances, they have disappeared, on the arrival of incredulous troops, whose hearts are perhaps hardened by God, like the Egyptians of old. Since God diminishes men's faith in proportion as he gives them human wisdom, let us not endeavour to controvert this heavenly will, by endeavouring to make the enlightened people of the eighteenth century so credulous as in the former days of ignorance. The Bishop allows, that the higher classes of every country all lean towards infidelity; they are more guided by reason, and reason is the avowed enemy of faith, it being the criterion of faith, that it contains natural impossibilities. It is unfortunate that so many sects pretend to faith, and differ so much among themselves; and that to explain their faiths, they use the weapons of reason against one another. This of itself proves, that faith is but a cant word, since the faithful argue about what comes not under human knowledge. Thus all religious sectaries, whether Christians, Jews, Mahometans, Boodzoists, or Bramins, as staunchly believe contradictory doctrines, while, in the inquiries that depend on their reason, we find that, wherever men have long been civilized, they have, in astronomy, in physics, or ethics, come in general to the same conclusions. The language of the philosopher is understood in Pekin as well as in Rome; but the religious fanatics of every country differ in their opinions, and consider all but themselves as dreamers and impostors. The Bramin laughs at the story of Noah and the ark, the stopping of the sun, and the incarnation of God; while the Christian shows the same contempt for the incarnation of Vishnu, and other articles of the Braminical faith. The exercise of reason alone shows us the true limits of our intellectual faculties. Ignorance of this is the cause of all reveries in science, as in religion; it is only superstition that incites men to launch beyond their conceptions.

You accuse of infidelity all those who commit crimes against society. When we answer, that the Jewish and Christian religions have deluged the world with blood, you reply, that it is not as being Jews and Christians, but because they were wicked. At the same time, I hope you allow, that the Spartans, the Athenians, the Romans, the Chinese, did not commit half the atrocities which disgrace Jewish history, the aera of the crusades and the Christian persecutions, of the invasion of America, the massacres of heretics, &c. The candid observer must therefore conclude, that right and wrong is not confined to sects; that the Christian religion, whatever its precepts may be, has not been able to prevent crimes, while nations who knew not so much as the name of Moses or Christ, produced a Confucius, an Aristides, a Socrates, an Epaminondas, a Cincinnatus. Among these nations, who knew not the Lord Jehovah, we find Archimedes, Epicurus, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, while the chosen people of God, and their successors, the Christians, borrowed their language, the very names of their gods, and the little science they knew, from these despised infidels. It was not the oracle of Delphos, the augurs, or the sybils, that enlightened the Greeks and Romans. The rabble credited them, as the ignorant Jews and Christians did their prophets and apostles. In short, morals cannot be invented; there cannot be two systems of morality. The precepts must be directed to principles existing in the heart of man. Ignorance conceals from nations the rule of conduct, in the same manner that it prevents them from knowing geometry; the moment they study either, they are put in the road of truth. No wonder, then, that in the times of the greatest oppression, when frightened into certain doctrines by the stories of nurses and parents, many learned men should not have been able to conquer their first prejudices. You certainly know the time when astrology and the philosopher's stone were in fashion; the believers in these reveries were men of science. Van Helmont, Stahl, Boyle, and innumerable others were possessed of this madness. You can be no stranger to the numerous wretches that suffered for witchcraft and necromancy, and, upon the very brink of death, confessed they were guilty.

The next reflection the Doctor makes, is respecting gospel moderation, for which purpose he quotes, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth." Yet has this been done by all Christian rulers; and the clergy are at this moment, in express defiance of this maxim, about to send missionaries to disseminate principles that have ever produced internal dissensions, and without which infidels have lived in perfect happiness. It is, perhaps, an excess of piety; but cool observers pretend, that it is the high priest, not the High God, that they are going to preach: to fill their knapsacks is the first object of these pilgrims, and their God is made subservient. Unluckily for the Bishop, he could not adduce a more detestable maxim, to show his charity, than that which I have just quoted: it is the pivot of Oriental despotism; it teaches passive obedience to all classes; the father is the tyrant of his children, the nabob of his subjects, the emperor of all: it is a maxim whose tendency is to root in men's minds, that we are the property of one another, and may be inherited as cattle. To those of my readers who are pleased with it, I wish a thorough experience of its effects.

The remainder of your first letter contains observations to which I perfectly accede. Your conclusion against Thomas Paine is perfectly fair. Any apparent deviation from moral justice in the world must prove as much against the goodness of God, as a similar inconsistency in his immediate actions and commands proves against revealed religion. My Lord, we are in the abyss of error; your question with Thomas Paine is about the comparative absurdity of the two Opinions. The deistical notions of your adversary do not agree with his reasonable tenets; but I readily grant, that, to a religious person, nothing is incredible; and that the greater the inconsistencies, the more sublime the system. But let me ask your Lordship, what you conclude against one, who, like myself, is not a Deist? and repeats, with the first philosopher of the age, that there are only four possible hypotheses upon the causes of the universe: 1st. That they are purely good. 2dly. That they are malicious. 3dly. That they are a mixture of good and evil. And, lastly, That they neither possess benevolence, nor any other passions. The two first hypotheses are equally contradicted by daily experience, the mixture of good and evil is too apparent: the third is denied, by the steadiness of the laws of nature: the last, then, only is admissible.

You next proceed to justify several actions of the Jews, which you and the Bible are pleased to call God's commands. I must decline following your reasoning; for the very existence of such crimes as the Jews ascribe to their enemies, and which, they say, were so repugnant to God, would of themselves prove against the goodness of that Being. His frequent threats, and the extermination of so many miserable nations, is a poor expedient; like that of a man, who, attempting to make a machine, and foiled in his endeavours, gloried in breaking it in a thousand pieces. How much more ridiculous is that sublime Artificer, who employs the same means which impotence or malevolence give rise to in his wretched children. I am glad you have no recourse to the silly causes of atheism, as given by that illustrious dreamer, Plato.

The world has too long been imposed upon by ridiculous attempts to vilify atheists, and show their nonexistence. That name has been a cant word, like Jacobin in France, and Whig and Tory in England, which every person applies to his neighbour as it best suits him. In Catholic countries, all who dare think are heretics; among Protestants, they are atheists. Being a word of opprobrium, it has ever been used as a powerful engine in the hands of the clergy. The question is upon the truth of systems, not upon the character of those who profess them. If this were the discrimination, and the palm given to that religion that has had the greatest number of honest men, the Christian system would certainly lose the contest.

The Bishop seems to think, that savages have not so perfect a notion of God as we imagine: religion, he supposes, begins as it were in express revelation. This is but the fancy of a clergyman, unsupported by any proofs; but at least it shows, that the Bishop involuntarily acknowledges, that reason alone can hardly give us the idea of a ruling Being. The savage, it is true, does not discourse in a metaphysical jargon; he wants expressions: but I wish the Doctor would inform me in what our Catechism definition of God is clearer than the notions of the rudest savage, who, trembling at the approach of thunder and violent convulsions of nature, or enjoying the genial sun and fertilizing inundations, imagines all the world to be animated with his own passions. The thunder is a mark of wrath, while the blessings are signs of a propitious genius. To conciliate these imaginary beings, to avert their wrath, is the grand object of superstition. Schoolmen conceal, under their mystical jargon, the real materials which their gods are made of; they conceal that the Supreme Artificer is the offspring of fancy, the figurative and unphilosophical symbol of nature, to which they give human dispositions: in all religious systems men are the type of their gods. Your letter concludes with a remark sufficiently extraordinary, that most Deists of your acquaintance disbelieve the mysterious conversations of God, his miracles, and such other stories, because they are too wonderful, and against the order of nature. Your reply is curious: because we never have seen the like of them, does it follow that they are untrue? Give me leave to tell you, my Lord, that you have forgotten the rules of logic: you know, that in all cases, but of demonstration, the philosopher does nothing but weigh probabilities. Any thing that is conceivable is possible: but are we therefore to believe in the existence of witches or necromancers? Are we to give credit to the world having sprung from an egg? That Mahomet divided the moon? That the sun stood still? That astrology is a science? Yet what reason have we to disbelieve them? The respective supporters of these opinions may say with the Doctor, that nothing can be too wonderful, and that, because these things have not happened in our time, it does not follow they should be untrue. I acknowledge, with the Doctor, that many Deists admit a Being as inconceivable as any religious mystery; therefore it may seem ridiculous in them to stop their credulity; since we call God just, when nothing but a concatenation of causes and effects can be perceived in the world; when we proclaim him benevolent, while the world is full of vice, while millions perish in misery, and continual calamities befal mankind; while, in short, most men have the gloomy prospect of damnation before them. These are greater miracles than an universal deluge, making a woman from a rib, or God's countenancing the atrocious murders of Jews. He that will believe one wonder, has no plea for doubting the rest.