"The Church, far from hindering the pursuit of the sciences, fosters and promotes them in many ways." (CE. xiii, 609.)
"When a dogma contradicts a scientific assertion, the latter has to be revised"! (CE. xiii, 607.)
The Middle Ages, as generally understood, "is a term used to designate that period of European history between the Fall of the Roman Empire and about the middle of the fifteenth century," (CE. x, 235), -- the era of the discovery of printing, -- a full thousand years. The highly significant and evidently unstudied explanation is made: "The Middle Ages have become an interlude, clearly bounded on both extremities by a more civilized or humane idea of life, which men are endeavoring to realize in politics, education, manners, literature, and religion." (CE. xii, 765.)
Those two clearly bounded extremities are the Pagan civilization of the dying Roman Empire and the secular, skeptical, rationalistic "Renaissance of Knowledge," which CE. clerically complains embodied "the ideas and spirit of classic paganism." (i, 34.) We have just seen that during this Millennium "thoroughly saturated with Christianity" there was, in Christendom, no literature, other than theological treatises, monkish chronicles and Saint-tales, and no science of whatever category, -- except "sacred science" or theology: "Theology is the very science of faith itself" (CE. xiii, 598); and we have seen to what intellectual status that sacred science led the human mind.
The zeal with which the Church pursued its propagation of the Faith as the central feature of its educational system, with all other branches of human knowledge as an indifferent "side line," we have noted, in the language of the ecclesiastical scientists. The Church maintains that it "fosters and promotes sciences in many ways," and inferentially always has encouraged and protected science in all its manifold forms of utilitarian humanism. But Holy Church has some naive notions of science and of the ecclesiastical limitations imposed upon it. While thus fostering and promoting the sciences, "Yet", says CE., "while acknowledging the freedom due to them, she tries to preserve them from falling into errors contrary to Divine doctrine, and from overstepping their boundaries and throwing into confusion matters that belong to the domain of faith"! (Vatican Decrees, Sess. III, De Fide, ch. 4; CE. xiii, 609.)
The priestly principle of the subordination of scientific fact to dogmatic faith is thus naively posed:
"Science is limited by truth, which belongs to its very essence. Should science ever have to choose between truth and freedom (a choice not at all imaginary), it must under all circumstances decide for truth, under the penalty of self- extermination. ... Ethics is more important for mankind than science. Those who believe in revelation, know that the Commandments are the criteria by which men will be judged. (Matt. xxv, 35-46.) ...
"The demand for unlimited freedom in science is unreasonable and unjust, because it leads to license and rebellion. ... To submit one's understanding to a doctrine supposed -- [is that all?] -- to be Divine and guaranteed to be infallible is undoubtedly more consistent than to accept prevailing postulates of science. ... br>
"When a clearly defined dogma contradicts a scientific assertion, THE LATTER HAS TO BE REVISED"! (CE. xiii, 598-607, passim.)
Than this last sentence, a more palpable and ridiculous untruth has never been tittered by the clerical Liars of the Lord. No single scientific fact ever discovered and proclaimed, in all the struggling history of Science in defiance of Church, has ever been "revised," altered or withdrawn in deference to religious Dogma. Every fact of science has proudly and triumphantly defied and refuted Dogma and Church, and made them both cheap and ridiculous. Faith hates facts; they are forever divorced on grounds of congenital incompatibility. The Church, True Church, and Protestant, has screamed and reviled at every truth of Science which was ever discovered; with high priestly anathema, the curse of God, with prison, rack, and stake, it has sought to suppress and kill every thought of the human mind, every bold thinker, whose truths for the benefit of mankind have contradicted and ridiculed it and its holy dogmas. Every single one; I challenge the production of a solitary instance of exception.
The catalogue is too vast to even summarize here; for details and proofs the monumental works of Dr. Andrew D. White, The Warfare between Science and Theology, and Dr. John W. Draper's Conflict between Science and Religion, -- (the latter on the Church's Index of Prohibited Books), may be profitably consulted and are cheerfully recommended in refutation of this example of priestly mendacity. We have read what happened to that "singular exception," the Irish monk Bishop Vergilius.
But let the false pretense be exposed by a few examples given by the American apologist for "the Holy See, deservedly known as the nursing mother of schools and universities," such as we have above admired. Until these "universities" began, about the year 1211 (CE. xii, 766) of the Christian epoch, no one had dared to think; Christendom was too steeped in ignorance and credulity to think. These Middle Ages, says CE. (xii, 38), were "a civilization thoroughly saturated with Christianity," and therefore incapable of scientific thought or feeling. "All Greek learning [had been] lost for a thousand years in Western Christendom. ... The loss of Greek authors and the decline of Church Latin [as well as the Latin Church] into barbarism were misfortunes in a universal ruin." (CE. xii, 765.) But men's minds could not forever be kept in the chains of priestly dominance; Gulliver began to wake and rouse and to struggle against the multiplied strands of theological cobwebs with which the Lilliputs of Faith had fast bound him while in his millennial sleep of the Christian Dark Ages of Faith. "Under these circumstances," admits CE,. "a revival of learning so soon as the West was capable of it, might have been foreseen." (CE. xxi, 765.)
The Church was keen and hostile, and did forsee what was coming. The first University was founded in 1211; in identically that time the Holy Inquisition was established by His Holiness Innocent III to guard against heretics and "other innovators." "The taking of Constantinople in 1204, the introduction of Arabian, Jewish, and Greek works into the Christian schools, the rise of the universities -- these are the events which led to the extraordinary intellectual activity of the thirteenth century. ... Even in the Christian schools there were declared Pantheists ... who bade fair to prejudice the cause of Aristotelianism. These developments were suppressed by the most stringent disciplinary measures during the first few decades of the thirteenth century. ... Roger Bacon demonstrated by his unsuccessful attempts to develop the natural sciences the possibilities of another kind which were latent in Aristotelianism." (CE. xiii, 548, 549.)
Roger Bacon (1214-1294), the "Doctor Mirabilis," whose "attempts to develop the natural sciences" were so drastically suppressed, was the genius of the dawning "Revival of Learning" -- the Renaissance. He wrote over eighty books, a number of the most important in a secret cryptogram for fear of the ecclesiastical consequences -- which he finally suffered. "It is in these treatises that Bacon speaks of the reflection of light, mirages, burning-mirrors, of the diameters of the celestial bodies and their distances from one another, of their conjunction and eclipses; that he explains the laws of ebb and flow, proves the Julian calendar to be wrong; he explains the composition and effects of gunpowder, discusses and affirms the possibility of steam-vessels and aerostats, of microscopes and telescopes, and some other inventions made many centuries later. ... 'Pope Nicholas IV, on the advice of many brethren condemned and rejected the doctrine of the English brother Roger Bacon, Doctor of Divinity, which contains many suspect innovations, by reason of which Roger was imprisoned' 12 or 14 years" (CE. xiii, 112), until death released him from the strangling clutches of the "nursing-mother of schools and Universities," -- which always "encourages Science"!
Roger's great German contemporary "Blessed Albertus Magnus" (c. 1206-1280), was "accused of magic and of neglecting the sacred sciences. ... Albert respected authority and traditions, was prudent in proposing the results of his investigations. ... sometimes he hesitates and does not express his own opinion, probably because he feared that his theories, which were 'advanced' for those times -- [when Church was "far from hindering the pursuit of the sciences"], -- would excite surprise and occasion unfavorable comment." Among the products of his "magic," Blessed Albert "gives an elaborate demonstration of the sphericity of the earth. ... More important than Albert's development of the physical sciences was his influence on the study of philosophy and theology. 'All inferior (i.e. natural) setences should be servants (ancellas) of Theology, which is superior and the mistress' (Aquinas)." (CE. i, 265-6.) Thus the Church thwarted and prevented what would have been the much earlier "triumph of scientific discovery, with which, as a rule, ... the seats of academic authority had too little sympathy." (CE. xiii, 549.)
The criminal ignorance and bigotry of the Church are nowhere more convincingly evident than in its repression of medical science through the ages when pestilence and plague swept unchecked through Christendom, while holy priests and monks chanted litanies and scared devils as the sole means of staying the ravages of Disease and Death. Listen to the same old story: "Modern medical science rests upon a Greek foundation. ... The secret of the immortality of Hippocrates rests on the fact that he pointed out the means whereby medicine became a science. ... Hippocratic medical science celebrated its renascence in the eighteenth century. ... Arabian medical science forms an important chapter in the history of the development of medicine, [largely] because it preserved Greek medical science. ... With the decline of Arabian rule [and Christian rise, in Spain] -- began the decay of medicine. ... In 1085 Toledo was taken from the Moors, and Spain became the transmitter of Arabian medicine."
Here comes in the first medical scientist to defy the Church and escape its Holy Inquisition. Vesalius (born 1511), became physician to the Emperor Charles V; "his eagerness to learn went so far that he stole corpses from the gallows to work on at night in his room. ... The supreme service of Vesalius is that he for the first time [in 1500 years of Church cherishing of Science], with information derived from the direct study of the dead body, attacked with keen criticism the hitherto unassailable Galen, and thus brought about its overthrow. Vesalius is the founder of scientific anatomy and of the technique of modern dissection. Unfortunately, he himself destroyed a part of his scripts on learning that his enemies intended to submit his work to ecclesiastical censure"! (CE. x, 123-130, passim.)
Indeed, "at that era a scholar ... who generally struck out so many new ideas in opposition to the commonly held opinion, could easily be accused of heresy. So many of his relations with Protestant scholars appeared suspicious. ... Personally he avoided expressing his opinion, in order not to fall under suspicion of heresy"! (CE. xv, 379.) In defiance of the ban of the Holy Ghost on dissection and anatomy, Vesalius dissected the stolen corpses: his work disproved the Luz, or "Resurrection Bone," the nucleus of the heavenly restoration of the human body, and disclosed that Adam's missing rib, lost since Eve was carved from it some 4500 years previously, was still there. These impious refutations of the Church's sacred science so enraged the clerical savants that it required all the efforts of the Emperor to save his great physician from the Dogs of the Lord and the Holy Inquisition.
A word only may be added on the highly significant question of hospitals and asylums in the Ages of Faith. "The idealism of medieval theological beliefs led to the founding of orphan asylums and hospitals. But the impracticability and 'other-worldliness' of the Middle Ages prevented effective treatment of the diseases of the inmates. Such hospitals were merely dark, crowded, and unsanitary places of refuge for the needy and sick, who received no rational medical attention. ... The Middle Ages, which some profess to admire, were in reality times of low civilization." For a shocking account of the hospitals, lying-in dens and insane pens of medieval Christian idealism, reference must be made to Dr. Henry W. Haggard's Devils, Drugs and Doctors; (cf. CE. vii, 492; x, 125). Such as these miserable lazzaretti were, they were for the superstitious Faithful only: "The bigoted Pius V actually directed that no medical assistance should be given to any person who declined spiritual attendance"! (Macauley, Const. Essays; Church and State, p. 136.)
But for the benighted theological repression of thought and of discovery of the secrets and powers of Nature, here barely hinted, the germs of modern science and invention which lay latent and struggling in the fertile minds of these great pioneers, would have quickly developed and would have recreated civilization and enriched humanity centuries before they did, when Holy Church got too feeble and discredited longer to enchain the minds of men. But, as it was, the "sacred science of Christianity" must be protected by force and proscription against the facts and knowledge of Nature and the quickening minds of men. To guard its precious Bible "revelations," the Church upheld the Bible and forced all men to close their minds when they opened its sacred pages. At last, Galileo fitted two bits of glass into an old Church organ-pipe, poked it at the "firmament of heaven" which had cost Jehovah a whole day's work, and, Lo! the whole of the "sacred science" of the Church collapsed into universal ruin! The truth of God's revelation became an exploded myth, and its inspired Bible a book of Fable.
The holy Church screeched in terror its unholy anathemas. "What, more than all," confesses the CE., "raised alarm [over the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo], was anxiety for the credit of Holy Scripture, the letter of which was then universally believed to be the supreme authority in matters of SCIENCE, as in all others." (CE. vi, 344.) The Church made monstrous efforts to murder the new thought: "we know from the calendar of saints and other sources how much had been done to cheek the wild license of thought and speech in the Peninsula. Giordano Bruno, renegade and pantheist, was burnt in 1600; Campanella spent [27] long years in prison. The different measures meted out to Copernicus by Clement VII and to Galileo by Paul V need no comment [its shame chokes the Church]! The papacy aimed henceforth at becoming an 'ideal government under spiritual and converted men.'" (CE. xii, 768.) The Church missed this aim; but with the unholy aid of its Holy Inquisition, which in 1542 it declared to be "the supreme tribunal for the whole world" (CE. xiii, 137), and its sacred "Index of Prohibited Books," instituted in 1557, it murdered men and thought for yet several centuries. The up-to-date edition of 1929 closes the minds of the "Faithful" to over 5,000 books of the highest intellectual merit -- as partially catalogued in the news dispatches. (N.Y. Herald-Tribune, Nov. 11, and Dec. 1, 1930).
This precious Proscription for preserving the "purity and genuineness of her Apostolic doctrine" intact for the "guileless and innocent hearts" of the Babes of Faith, and to prevent them from learning anything which might put them "on inquiry" as to the "purity and genuineness" of these holy "Apostolic" myths, includes the immortal works of Gibbon, Sterne, Dumas, Victor Hugo, our own Dr. Draper, Anatole France, La Fontaine, Lamartine, Balzac, Rousseau, Steele, Addison, Talleyrand, Henry Hallam, Voltaire, Zola, Maeterlincki -- (this my Book will probably be added by special Decree); -- in a word every book by -- (mine excluded) -- the brilliant and fearless thinkers of the world who have scorned Holy Church, and have been laureated by winning inclusion in this Holy Index of Inspired Ignorance. It is a vain and foolish gesture of Bigotry, defeating its own malicious purpose: "Prohibited Books illuminate the world; words suppressed or condemned are repeated from one end of the world to the other," as Emerson admirably has expressed. But no wonder that "a [Faithful] Christian child knows more of the important truths [of a certain brand] than did Kant, Herbert Spencer, or Huxley," as is the "sour grapes" sneer of CE. (xiii, 607) at those whose minds are free to seek and find the truths of Nature and work from them true Miracles of Science; for the boundless benefit of Man.
This enlightened Index, established at the behest of the Holy Ghost for keeping men ignorant, dates from the foundation of the Faith; it deserves a word of admiration, which may be spoken by its learned apologist: "Before the art of printing was discovered, it sufficed to burn a few manuscript copies to prevent the spreading of a doctrine. So it was done at Ephesus in the presence of St. Paul (Acts xix, 19). It is known that the other Apostles, the Fathers of the Church, and the Council of Nice (325) exercised the same authority; [citing] the various censures, prohibitions, and indexes issued by cities, universities, bishops, provincial councils, and popes, through the Christian centuries." (CE. xiii, 607.) Who wonders that they were "The Dark Ages"?
With the final childish, senile sneer of the Church we will. dismiss this phase of examination of the paralyzing efficiency of Faith. Says our guardian of the archaic fossils embedded in the Rock of Faith: "It is true, the believer is less free in his knowledge than the unbeliever, but only because he [which one?] knows more. Hence it is, that a well-instructed Christian child knows more of the important truths than did Kant, Herbert Spencer, or Huxley. Believing scientists -- [a self-stultification] do not wish to be free-thinkers just as respectable people do not wish to be vagabonds"! (CE. xiii, 607.)
So be it! But the vagabonds of Freethought are those who, at infinite cost of torture and blood, through all the centuries of Creed and Crime of the Church, and in heroic scorn of the Church and her "sacred science," have made our dearly-earned civilization what even it is to-day. Step by step, from contest to ultimate conquest, in every single conflict of Fact with Faith, the Church has been defeated and has retreated -- put to shaming rout. It has been a slow and tortuous progress, --
"For faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last"!
But fantastic Faith has wondrous powers of "accommodation" and specious tenacity of false pretense of being forever inspiredly right. The process of adjustment has throughout a thousand instances been the same: Faith is confronted with a discrediting Fact; it curses it and denies it. When the fact is crammed down its throat and it is forced to recognize it, it lyingly denies that it had ever denied it. Then when all mankind has united in joyful acceptance of the new fact, the arch hypocrite declares that it is entirely in accord with its "sacred science," and tries to steal all credit for it as one of its very own grand contributions to "Christian civilization," and sanctimoniously wheezes, "How much grander a concept it gives of the infinite knowledge and glory of Gawd in His wonderful process of Nature"! Oh, Hypocrisy! Thou art the Church of God! "Semper eadem" -- lying and shameless!
A thrilling retrospect, and inspirational look into the Future, are thus expressed: "It is to scientific devotion more than to any other cause that man owes his present position on a new earth and under new heavens. Nothing else has so immeasurably enlarged his conception. Everywhere his experiments have opened up stretches of infinity ... Personified Science might indeed be proud to have begun so humbly and to have achieved so much. By the use of her method men have weighed the planets as in scales, they have read the secrets of the animal and vegetable world. They have discovered 'what is in man,' not wholly, but in some large and wonderful degree. Instead of the burnt-out lamp of dogmatism Science has given to humanity 'the light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.' In an effort to minimize drudgery and misery her great discoveries have attained to concrete availability in useful arts that have remade the world and increased immeasurably the comfort of men and their joy. ... Scientific devotion has broadened the horizon of man at every step. In the course of time humanity must leave the shrines of its cherished idols behind and push steadily on! Sensing the poetic nature of this truth, James Russell Lowell spoke in verse to those of his fellow men who could understand:
'New times demand new measures and new men;
The world advances, and in time outgrows
The laws which in our father's times were best;
And, doubtless, after us, some purer scheme
Will be shaped out by wiser men then we,
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.'" ...
(Dr. Ernest R. Trattner: The Autobiography of God, pp. 289 et seq., passim. Scribners; 1930. Cf. Science Remaking the World: Caldwell and Slosson; Doubleday, Page; 1924; Two Thousand Years of Science: Harvey-Gibson; Macmillan; 1929).
In glorious contrast to the murderous principles, and practices of Faith --
"Reason did never sentence or condemn
Faith to the torture. Freedom all she claims
For larger understanding of her aims;
Hers no evasion, sleight, or stratagem,
But only fearless quest our ignorance to stem."
"The RENAISSANCE -- the achievements of the modern spirit in opposition to the spirit which prevailed during the Middle Ages"! (CE. xii. 765.)
During the Dark Ages of Faith men were born into the world with the same capacities and potentialities of intellect as were the Sages of Greece and the Jurisconsults and Statesmen of Rome. The poles are not farther apart, however, day and night not more different in volume of light, than the prechristian and Christian eras in point of intellectual product. Why so vast a difference? Simply -- that the pre-Christian mind was free, and explored unfettered and unafraid the boundless zones of Nature, in search of the Supreme Good and the practical benefits to be wrung from the world in which Pagan man lived for the benefit of himself and of his kind: while the Christian mind was bound by what it regarded as revealed Truth and shackled by theology and priestcraft, which closed every highway and bypath of approach to Nature with the warning sign: "No Thoroughfare. Moses." "When one has once believed, search should cease," as Father Tertullian said. The ban of Eden -- "Of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge thou shalt not eat," was enforced by the Priest by ecclesiastical censorship and burning of books, by the Inquisition of Faith, the Index, the rack, the stake. The ingrained aim and end of Man was Heaven; for that other-worldly destiny alone was he taught and trained; that was the whole Christian scheme of education and outlook on life; the things of this world were contemned and ignored.
Through these Ages of Faith two careers only were open to men -- priestcraft and military. With rarest exception only clerical persons could read or write; the great masses of the peoples were utterly illiterate, ignorant, superstitious, devout slaves of priestcraft; their civil status serfs; they lived in filth and squalor unbelievable, wearing their coarse fabric or leathern garments until they rotted off their unwashed bodies, the victims of disease, plagues and famines which often killed off near half the population, and aided by wars and rapine incessant, greatly incited and waged by the political Church to further its corrupt greed and ambition, keep the squalid population of Europe at a standstill, so that it took a century to double the miserable masses, fed on black rye bread and slops, and on lying saint-tales, martyr-myths and forged relics for increase of stupid and credulous devotion to its faithless Faith and Priests, the while they were brutalized and kept savage by the almost daily free spectacles furnished by Holy Church of public torturings and burnings by slow priest-set fires of countless heroic men and women who were unafraid to despise and defy the priests.
Faith thus flourished on ignorance and credulity, which the Church diligently fostered and exploited for its unholy purposes of wealth and power, of rule by ruin. As none but priests could read and write, while kings and public men were mere soldiers and illiterates, and public business must be carried on through written documents, the public offices of State, from the King's chancellor and ambassadors to the lowliest clerks, were priests, and thus Priestcraft and Church increased their sinister power and dominance and wealth. These facts explain the sinister motive of the priestly monopoly of literacy, and fully account for the crass ignorance of Christendom which the vaunted Teaching Mission of the Church entailed.
For a long dark span of centuries Holy Church, as sole and unique, Divinely inspired and guided Teacher of Christendom, plied the gentle art of Pedagogy for the Faithful. The net result of the intellectual efforts of the Inspired Teacher may be summed up and made luminous by a couple of descriptions of the wonderful "benefit of clergy" as a Teaching Institution. Says first Dr. James Harvey Robinson: "For six or seven centuries after the overthrow of the Roman government in the West [476], very few outside of the clergy ever dreamed of studying, or even of learning to read and write. Even in the Thirteenth Century an offender who wished to prove that he belonged to the clergy in order that he might be tried by a church court, had only to show that he could read a single line; for it was assumed by the judges that no one unconnected with the church could read at all. It was therefore inevitable that all the teachers were clergymen, that almost all the books were written by priests and monks, and that the clergy was the ruling power in all intellectual, artistic, and literary matters -- the chief guardians and promoters of civilization. Moreover, the civil government was forced to rely upon churchmen to write out the public documents and proclamations. The priests and monks held the pen for the king. Representatives of the clergy sat in the king's councils and acted as his ministers; in fact, the conduct of government largely devolved upon them." (Robinson, The Ordeal of Civilization, pp. 157-8.)
This "benefit of clergy," in the legal sense in which it is above used, and the degraded state of ignorance which gave occasion for it and the presumptions of the clergy enforcing it, are defined and explained by the clergy: "Benefit of Clergy. -- The exemption from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, which ... was accorded to clergymen. ... When a clerk was brought before a court, he proved his claim to benefit of clergy by reading, and he was turned over to the ecclesiastical court, as only the clergy were generally able to read. This gave rise to the extension of the benefit of clergy to all who could read. [It is added, for historical interest]: The privilege of benefit of clergy was entirely abolished in England in 1827. In the Colonies it had been recognized, but by Act of Congress of 30 April, 1790, it was taken away in the Federal courts of the United States. Traces of it are found in some courts of different States, but it has been practically outlawed by statutes or by adjudication." (CE. ii, 446-7.) All this serves to confirm the truth of the statement, that the Church and the clergy imposed and perpetuated Ignorance as the basis of their sordid greed for power and control over the Ignorant.
But -- for a wonder under such conditions, and after a thousand years, a slow but portentous change began to manifest itself in sodden Christendom. Note this pregnant statement: "Up to this time (1250) almost wholly absorbed in the supernatural, [men now] took more interest in worldly things. Unconditional renunciation of the world came to an end, and men grew more matter- of-fact and practical." (CE. vi, 493.) As the result of this "extraordinary change ... education found its way among laymen, and it developed trade." (Ib.) This confirms the fact that only priests could read and write or had any sort of "education," in all those Church-taught ages when "scholar and priest meant one and the same thing." Indeed, it is stated: "Only the clergy were generally able to read." (CE. ii, 446.) About that time it was that the feeling of nationality first began to stir in minds of civil rulers and of people able to realize the imperial schemes of Holy Church for one great Empire under the rule of the Vicar of God.
To forestall and check this dangerous restlessness of peoples, Kings, and nascent nationality, the Church devised that since time- honored scheme of joining restless factions in war on some common enemy, thus to avert domestic difficulties: here was born the gigantic folly and crime of the Crusades, for the pretended rescue of the empty and apocryphal "Sepulchre of Christ from the Infidel." This titanic scheme and its purposes are naively thus confessed: "The idea of the Crusades corresponds to a political conception which was realized in Christendom only from the eleventh to the fifteenth century: this supposes a union of all peoples and sovereigns under the direction of the popes. ... The history of the Crusades is therefore intimately connected with that of the popes and the Church. These Holy Wars were essentially a papal enterprise. The idea of quelling all dissensions among Christians, of uniting them under the same standard and sending them forth against the Mohammedans was conceived in the eleventh century, at a time when there were as yet no organized states in Europe." (CE. iv, 543, 556.)
A more gigantic crime and overwhelming failure of ambitious design was probably never recorded in history. But far different and more transcendent results for civilization were brought about. Indeed, the Crusades were the beginning of European civilization. Says CE.: "The Crusades brought about results of which the popes had never dreamed, and which were perhaps the most important of all. They reestablished traffic between the East and West which, after having been suspended for several centuries, was then resumed with even greater energy; they were the means of bringing from the depths of their respective provinces and introducing into the most civilized Asiatic countries Western knights, to whom a new world was thus revealed, and who returned to their native land filled with novel ideas. ... Moreover, as early as the end of the twelfth century, the development of general culture was the direct result of these Holy Wars. ... If, indeed, the Christian civilization of Europe has become universal culture, in the highest sense, the glory redounds, in no small measure, to the Crusades"! (CE. iv, 556.) "The original aim of the Crusades, it is true, was not attained. But the civilization of Western Europe gained from the Orient the best the East had to give and thus was greatly aided in its development" (CE. v, 612). The yet quasi- barbarian rulers and rabbles of Christendom were thus brought into direct contact with a real civilization; had their first glimpse of Arabian culture and civilized refinements of life, saw the men with whom they were in deadly conflict who were vastly their superiors in every ideal and practical accomplishment, and infinitely more humane.
One instance will illustrate the difference between Christian brutality and Moslem humanity. When the Christian Crusaders of Christ captured Jerusalem in 1099 and rushed in to rescue the tomb of their dead God from the Infidel, the streets of the Holy City ran with human blood up to the horses' bridles; "the Christians entered Jerusalem from all sides [July 15, 1099] and slew its inhabitants regardless of age or sex"! (CE. iv, 547.) When nearly a century later (September 17, 1187), Saladin and his "Infidel hosts" recaptured the City and overthrew the Christian. Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a murder nor act of violence or outrage was committed on the inhabitants, and the murderous hordes of Christ were allowed to depart in peace. The Christians began to learn what civilization was.
Thus "the Crusades -- those magnificent expeditions which, inspired and supported by the Church, brought huge masses of people into contact with the Orient. ... They were the means of spreading ... the theories and methods of Arabian scholarship, at that time quite advanced, and thereby placing the researches of Western scholars on entirely new bases, and putting before them new aims and objects." (CE. vi, 448.) An immense confession of Christian failure!
As very pertinent to an understanding of the Rebirth of Learning, a paragraph will be devoted to a summary notice of Arabian culture and its saving influence on Christian ignorance; for it was, the Arabs who brought learning, literature and science to benighted,Christendom and created the Renaissance which ended the Dark Ages of Faith.
"When the Arabs came in contact with other civilizations (in the eighth century), notably with that of Persia, their speculative and scientific activities were stimulated into action. About A.D. 750 the Abassides, an enlightened line of Caliphs, came to the throne, who encouraged learning, and patronized the representatives of foreign culture. ... They made ample use of Greek philosophy, and in their free inquiries into the secrets of nature, in which they soon outstripped the Greeks themselves, they paid little attention to the precepts of the Koran. The Arabians translated [the works of Plato, Galen, and Aristotle]. ... The Arabians developed Greek philosophy in its relation to medicine, and in this regard they exerted the most far-reaching influence in Europe. ... The Arabian philosophy, as is well known, exercised a profound influence on the Scholastic philosophy of the twelfth and succeeding centuries." (CE. i, 675-6.) "The Arabian conquerors had learned from the Syrians the arts and sciences of the Greek world. They became especially proficient in medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, for the study of which they erected in every part of their domain schools and libraries. In the twelfth century -- [the first Christians ones were in the thirteenth] -- Moorish Spain had nineteen colleges, and their renown attracted hundreds of Christian scholars from every part of Europe. Herein lay a grave menace to Christian orthodoxy.
"The BIBLE had been set up as an infallible source of knowledge not only in matters of religion, but of history, chronology, and physical science. The result was a reaction against the very essentials of Christianity. ... Biblical chronology, as then [19th century] understood, and the literal historic interpretation of the Book of Genesis were thrown into confusion by the advancing sciences -- astronomy, with its grand nebular hypothesis; biology, with its even more fruitful theory of evolution; geology, and prehistoric archaeology. ... But able apologists were forthcoming to assay a conciliation of science and religion"! (CE. i, 621, 622.) Be it noted, that it was not until late nineteenth century, when natural Science had made the "sacred science" of the Bible ridiculous, that the "conciliators" came forth with the Big False Pretense that "the Holy Bible was never intended as a Book of Science, but only of moral and religious edification"!
Why then, one wonders, does Holy Bible teach "Science" -- abound in what is -- though false and ridiculous -- essentially teachings of "science": e.g. the origin and form of the earth, and its fixity in space at the center of the universe as the "footstool of God"; the position and movements of sun and stars in the phony "firmament of heaven"; the origin and "Fall of Man" and the "special creation" of animals; the geographical absurdities of the Garden of Eden and its Four Rivers, the Flood and the Divine original and purpose of the Rainbow; the differentiation of languages at Babel; the cause of disease as the reactions to malignant devils in the inner works of men, and the Divine prescriptions for cure of the "Great Physician," the "Lord who healeth thee," by spit-salve, prayers of faith, ointment, holy water, and devil-exorcism by ignorant priests? If the Holy Ghost of God wrote or inspired the Bible, funny it is that it talked such foolishness, which was exactly what ignorant priests would have written out of the ignorance and superstitions of their times, without any inspiration of God to confirm them in the nonsense.
If the All-Wise God who dictated the Blessed Bible and its foolish "science falsely so called," had just spoken the facts of his own divine Creation, truthfully, -- had just once said that the earth is round instead of flat, and revolves on its axis and around the sun instead of standing still while the sun went around it; that disease is caused by dirt and germs, instead of by devils; and had given sensible precepts of prophylaxis and of cure; in a word, had "revealed" out of his supposed Infinite Wisdom some of the things which are just now, after some thousands of years of Bible-worship and bloody Church-repression, being painfully and dearly worked out by heroic human effort, -- Who would not gladly and proudly hail the "Holy Bible, Book Divine," and for a certainty know that it was truly the intellectual work of a God? But! The priests and the parsons pretend yet that it is Divine; men of science and the coming generation know that it is ignorant priestly Imposture.
But to return to the Arabs, who "in their free inquiries into the secrets of Nature paid little attention to the precepts of the Koran," and were destined to "throw into confusion" the "sacred science" of the Blessed Bible. "It cannot be exactly said when the first translations of Arabic writings began to be received by the Christians of the West: probably about 1000. In the beginning of the twelfth century the contributions of Mohammedan science and philosophy to Latin Christendom became more and more frequent and important. ... About 1134 John of Luna translated Al-Fergani's treatise 'Astronomy,' which was an abridgement of Ptolemy's 'Almagest,' thereby introducing Christians to the Ptolemaic system," -- followed by a page of other Arabian works translated for the Christians. (CE, xii, 49; cf. ib. xv, 184.)
Thus Christendom got even its grand fable of the earth as the center of the universe from the Greek Ptolemy through the Arabs, -- and damned Copernicus and martyred Galileo for daring to disprove it. "In 1085 Toledo was taken from the Moors, and Spain became the transmitter of Arabian medicine." (CE. x, 130.) Gerard of Cremona (died 1187), "a twelfth century student of Arabic science and translator from Arabic into Latin, went to Toledo, and soon acquired a great proficiency in Arabic; he translated not only the 'Almagest,' but also the entire works of Avicenna, into Latin; he translated 76 books from Arabic into Latin. His activities, and that of a group of men who formed a regular college of translators at Toledo, brought the world of Arabian learning within reach of the scholars of Latin Christendom, and prepared the way for that conflict of ideas out of which sprang the Scholasticism of the thirteenth century." (CE. vi, 468.) At this late period of Christian intellectual awakening, now for the first time "Aristotle's philosophy was finding its way through Moorish and Jewish channels into the Christian schools of Europe." (CE. vi, 555.) Even "the compass was invented in the East and brought to Europe by the Arabs." (CE. i, 379.) And so of scores of inventions and branches of learning which were known to and cultivated by the Infidel Arabs, which through them became elements of the slow civilizing of quasi-barbarian Christendom so long under the divine tutelage of Holy Church and the priests.
Thus Christendom had wallowed through a thousand years of Christian ignorance until it was awakened by the shock of contact with Araban civilization and learning through the Crusades. Then, slowly and dangerously, "as might have been foreseen, a revival of learning, so soon as the West was capable of it," occurred. (CE. xii, 765.) One can only wonder why the Christian West, instructed by God's own Teacher, was not sooner capable of learning anything but monkish lore or religious lies. The Church apologizes, that "the middle Ages occupy those tumultuous years when barbarians turned Christians were learning slowly to be civilized, from 476 [the end of the Roman Empire] to 1400." (CE. xii, 765.) But, the Eastern Empire, dominated by the original "Orthodox" Eastern Catholic Church, was never "overthrown by the barbarians," but remained in quiet and undisputed possession of its Faith and "Christian Civilization"; but its whole history is almost as foul and besotted, blood-reddened and Christian-barbarous as the Western Empire. And, since the closing of the Pagan schools in 529 at Christian behest, "the Church had no rival" as sole and inspired civilizer and instructor of Christendom.
The poor Arabs were at that time disunited and ever-warring tribes of idolatrous barbarians, steeped in ignorance and "sin." Mohammed fled from their fury in the Great Hegira in 622; he died ten years later, in 632. Yet, in exactly 100 years, even before they were checked by the Christian Charles Martel at the battle of Tours in the heart of France, in the year 732, the Mohammedan Arabs became and remained the most highly civilized people in the world, the masters of an illustrious Empire of far greater extent than Christendom, -- and which embraced the greater part of Christendom; and minions of good Christians quickly dropped God and Christ and became worshippers of Allah and his Prophet Mohammed. A strange Providence of the Christian God! This leads to a moment's disposal of one of the most pretentious and specious clerical claims, that the "divinity" of the Christian religion is proved by its "miraculous spread and preservation."
One of the Church's most precious platitudes is its oft-used plea of "the demonstration of the truth of Christianity based on the wonderful propagation of His religion." (CE. i, 621.) Starting with a handful of Galilean peasants, in three centuries, up to the time of Constantine, it claims to have been "preached to every creature which is under heaven" (Gal. i, 23), and to have won maybe a million or two out of the hundred millions of the Roman Empire. We have seen the mode and manner of "conversion" of very many of these comers to the Christ; as well as of the most dubious Christian efficacy of the hordes of "barbarians" later won by the missionary sword. This "rapid spread" and propagation of the Faith is a "triumphant proof of the divinity and truth of Christianity"! It is also a familiar and threadbare "proof," the "miraculous" persistence and preservation of the Christian religion through some nineteen centuries. If this be a proof, many "false" religions are even more divine and true; for the religions of Brahma, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, have existed and persisted, all for many centuries, some for a millennium, before Christianity, and ever since until now, and they embrace together countless millions more of devout worshippers than does Christianity. And we have seen the conditions of ignorance in which Christianity flourished and the terror by which it was preserved during the ages of Faith; and all world knows what the Church has become, and is faster becoming, with the advent and advance of the Age of Reason.
But if the slow and tortuous spread of Christianity by force and arms is proof of its "miraculous" character, what shall we say of Mohammedanism? "Its uninterrupted spread, from the seventh century to the present time, among all the races of the continent, is one of the most remarkable facts of history. Today a Mussulman may travel from Monrovia to Mecca, and thence to Batavia without once setting foot on 'infidel' soil. Three phases in this movement of expansion may be distinguished. In the first (638-1050) the Arabs, in a rapid advance, propagated Islam along the whole Mediterranean coast, from Egypt to Morocco, a conquest greatly aided by the exploitation of the country by Byzantine [Christian] governors, the divisions among the Christians, and political disorganization.
The second period (1050-1750) -- all Africa except Ethiopia. ... The last period of the Mohammedan expansion extends to the present time. ... Daily, one may say, Islam spreads." (CE. i, 187.) Christianity retrogresses. Aye, worse than that, for the vaunted miraculous nature and preservation of Christianity: "The one dangerous rival with which Christianity had to contend in the Middle Ages was the Mohammedan religion. Within a century of its birth, it had torn from Christendom some of its fairest lands, and extended like a huge crescent from Spain over Northern Africa, Egypt, PALESTINE, Arabia, Persia, and Syria, to the eastern part of Asia Minor. The danger which this fanatic religion offered to Christian faith, in countries where the two religions come in contact, was not to be lightly treated." (CE. i, 620-1.) Thus at the first onrush of the champions of Mohammed the Impostor, of a notoriously false Faith, the "Infidels" wrested from the devotees of the True Faith their holiest shrines, the empty Sepulchre of their dead God, the sites of his birth, crucifixion and resurrection; and they hold them unto this day.
During three hundred years of bloody and fanatic "Holy Wars" united Christendom lost millions of lives and treasure in efforts to "rescue" this empty grave of its Christ from the impudent impostors; but for three hundred years the armies of the Cross were beaten and driven away from their sacred goal. "This immense fact," says Ingersoll, "sowed the seeds of distrust throughout Christendom, and millions began to lose confidence in a God who had been vanquished by Mohammed. ... At that time the world believed in trial by battle -- that God would take the side of the right -- and there had been a trial by battle between the Cross and the Crescent, and Mohammed had been victorious." In their Westward course of conquest, "the Moslems even crossed the Pyrennees, threatening to stable their horses in St. Peter's at Rome, but were at last defeated by Charles Martel at Tours, in 732, just one hundred years from the death of Mohammed.
This defeat arrested their western conquests and saved Europe. ... They were finally conquered by the Mongols and Turks, in the thirteenth century, but the new conquerors adopted Mohammed's religion, and in the fifteenth century, overthrew the tottering Byzantine Empire (1453). From that stronghold (Constantinople) they even threatened the German Empire, but were successfully defeated at the gates of Vienna, and driven back across the Danube, in 1683." (CE. x, 425.) The Christian God had failed to protect and save the vast majority of his own people. As Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes aptly says: "If the test of the validity of a religion is to be its growth, spread and proselyting capacity, then Mohammedanism can make a more impressive appeal than Christianity. Christianity had the advantage of being launched six and a half centuries before Mohammedanism. Yet today the Mohammedans far outnumber the Christians, and the Mohammedans have, moreover, reconquered the very areas in which Christianity arose and established its first strongholds." (Barnes, The Twilight of Christianity, p. 416.) This may close with a quaint specimen of medieval Christian historical learning, from that great literary light of the Church, Monk Matthew Paris (died 1259), who, says CE., "as an historian holds the first place among English chroniclers." In "his great work, 'Chronica Majora,' from the Creation until the year of his death," the erudite Monk explains the unworthy motives why Mohammed quit the True Church and became an impious Infidel: "It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and became heretic because he failed to be elected pope. Also having drunk to excess, he fell by the roadside, and in this condition was killed by swine. And for that reason, his followers abhor pork even unto this day"! This notable occurrence was probably later than the time when Buddha was canonized a Catholic Saint.
"And the Beast was taken ... which deceived them that had received the Mark of the Beast ... and both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." (Rev. xix, 20.)
The Apocalyptic Marks of the Beast are translated by ecclesiastical sophism into the pretended "Four Marks of the Church": Apostolicity, Sanctity, Unity, Catholicity, as branded upon the "Visible Body of Christ" by the Formula of the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. (CE. iii, 450-758). The first two of these Marks we have seen totally obliterated by the processes of the review of the Record which we have made, and by the seas of blood and clouds of smoke of burning human bodies which have stained them beyond recognition; and the third is simply a frayed figure of clerical speech. Probably no one will envy The Church the fourth and only remaining of its holy Marks. As for "Unity," it is a very relative term; as long as even two units cohere there is unity -- of those two.
Christendom was once coextensive with the Roman Empire, and was then by force and arms further extended over all the north of Europe; we have seen the process. Then came the Arab incursion, and within one century the Church lost its most splendid fields and Churches, the vast Christian territories of Asia and Africa, and Spain. The "Great Schism" between East and West tore the immense Eastern Empire from the "Unity" of the True "Catholic" Church. The Turks, turned Mohammedan, in turn wrested the lost Eastern Empire from Christianity and it became Infidel, as mostly it remains today. Then came the "so-called Reformation" revolt of Luther: "The effect of the Reformation was to separate from the Church all the Scandinavian, most of the Teutonic, and a few of the Latin-speaking populations of Europe." (CE. iii, 704.) To these must be added England, Scotland, Wales, a good part of "Ever Faithful" Ireland; much of the Americas followed in the train of disaster. The age-long causes of this last destruction are well known; they have cried out on nearly every page of this book. Succinctly: "Since the twelfth century, the Church was losing much of its influence on the thoughts of men. ... The faults and wealth of the clergy must have contributed something. ... The growth of national divisions, the increased secularism of everyday life, the diminished influence of the Church and the papacy, all these interdependent influences had broken up the spiritual unity of Christendom at least two centuries before the Reformation. ... At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Christendom was weary of religious war and persecution. ... Religious divisions were too deep-seated to permit the reconstruction of a Christian polity." (CE. iii, 704.)
The final note of despair of the Church, -- of rejoicing for all freed from it, -- is the conclusion of its review of Christendom: "The word Christian has come in recent times to express our common civilization rather than a religion which so many Europeans now no longer profess"! (Ib.) Let us be rid of the hateful Word!
In a word, men had long since come painfully to realize the incontrovertible truth stated by the historian of Civilization in England: "The prosperity of nations depends upon principles to which the clergy, as a body, are invariably opposed." (Buckle, Vol. 11, Pt. 1, p. 42.) What of the divine mark of "unity" is thus left in the Church is the fast disappearing coherence of decaying particles in face of the general debacle attendant upon the Articles of Death.
"They which minister about holy things, live of the things of the Temple; and they which wait at the Altar are partakers of the things of the Altar." Paul.
"The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." Anon.
All ancient religions we have seen are admittedly false, all Pagan priestcrafts fraudulent. The Pagan priestcraft held the lavished wealth of millions of superstitious dupes, and ruled the minds and destinies of men and nations. The motive and raison d'etre of priestcraft, confessedly, was greed and graft, wealth and power and privilege. When Paganism later was called Christianity, -- No man can deny history by alleging any difference: we have seen too many analogies and identities.
At the advent of Christianity, scores of religions flourished throughout the Roman Empire; the Roman world was thick covered with sumptuous Temples and swarmed with plutocratic Priestcraft. So rich were the "pickings" from the superstitious masses and rulers and so alluring the "Get-rich- quick" possibilities of religion, that new creeds and cults were ever in the making. Christianity came along, born in poverty and "made as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things" (I Cor. iv, 13); but even then petty faction leadership had its meed: the believers in the quick end of the world and the Second Coming in the Kingdom, pooled their poor belongings "and laid them down at the apostles' feet"; and these holy ones operated this first pool. But "the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved," and it gradually increased in strength if not in grace. As the numbers grew and prestige and contributions increased, many "false teachers" arose among the "Sheep" and brought "damnable heresies" into the Fold. Scores of the Fathers filled parchments with dreary diatribes "Against all Heresies," of which over ninety flourished in the first three centuries which CE. catalogues and describes the hair-splitting differences of doctrine which gave excuse to splitting the Fold and dividing the spoil, and for cutting throats and beating out brains until the end of the seventh century.
All these factious sects of "Christians" waxed more or less powerful and wealthy; the Arian anti-Trinity "heretics," the Donatists, Montanists, Manichaeans, Monophysites, and innumerable others divided Europe and the contributions of the credulous for centuries, until suppressed by law and sword of the Orthodox. It is the latter, the True Church, which "gathered. gear by every wile (un)-justified by honor." An authoritative summary, gleaned at random from CE., of the grafting results is instructive.
"When peace was given to the Church by Constintine, at the beginning of the fourth century, an era of temporal prosperity for the Church set in. As Europe gradually became Christian, the donations for religious purposes increased by leaps and bounds. Gifts of land and money for ecclesiastical purposes were now legally recognized, and though some of the later Roman emperors placed restrictions upon the donations of the faithful, yet the wealth of the Church rapidly increased. Whatever losses were suffered in the [incursions of the barbarians], were made up for later, when the conquering barbarians in their turn were converted to Christianity. ... The wealth of the Church at this period [the "so-called Reformation"] his sometimes been made a matter of reproach to her, ... admitting that abuses were indeed at times unquestionable." (CE. iii, 762.)
Such "abuses" and the ghoulish clerical greed were exactly why some of the later Roman emperors "placed restrictions" on grafting the Faithful. Lecky gives a graphic picture of the priests with the itching palm: "Rich widows were surrounded by swarms of clerical sycophants, who addressed them in tender diminutives, studied and consulted their every foible, and, under the guise of piety, lay in wait for their gifts or bequests. The evil attained such a point that a law was made under Valentinian depriving the Christian priests and monks of that power of receiving Legacies which was possessed by every other class of the community." (History of European Morals, ii, 151.) These shaming facts are confirmed by many of the contemporary Fathers. From the Latin text of St. Jerome I turn into English his mournful admission that the deprivation was justified: "The priests of the idols might receive inheritances; only the clergy and monks were prohibited by this law, and prohibited not by persecutors, but by Christian princes ... I grieve that we should merit this law." (Epist. lii.) We remember that already the Christian emperors, by "persecuting laws," had prohibited Pagans from making wills and from receiving bequests, and the law which declared all wills void which were not made before a priest, -- who was there to get his share. The priestly profits rolled up through the Ages of Faith. Out of hundreds of like generalizations and specific instances cited, I make these limited selections, which show the universal process of clerical greed.
"The early Christians were lavish in their support of religion, and frequently turned their possessions over to the Church. ... Towards the end of Charlemagne's reign the regenerated peoples contributed generously to the support of ecclesiastical institutions." (v, 421.) Indeed, so great had its volume then become, that "Church property excited the cupidity of the various factions, upon the death of Charlemagne." (v, 774.) Even a hundred years previously the Church estates could make a prince's rewards: "Charles Martel is charged with secularizing many ecclesiastical estates, which he took from the churches and abbeys and gave in fief to his warriors as a recompense for their services, This land actually remained the property of the ecclesiastical establishments in question." (vi, 241.) The Church grabbed all and shirked all; as a result, "Naturally there was a desire on the part of the king and princes to force the Church to take her share in the national burdens and duties." (vi, 63.) "To this age belongs the famous grant to the Church of one-tenth of his land by Ethelburt, father of Alfred the Great" (i, 507). "On the authority of the Doomsday Book [of William the Conqueror], the possessions of the Church represented 25% of the assessment in the country [England] in 1066, and 26 1/2% of its cultivated area in 1086." (v, 103.) "In 1127 Stephen gave to these monks his forest in Furness.
This grant was most munificent, for it included large possessions in woods, pastures, fisheries, and mills, with a large share in the salt works and mines of the district." (vi, 324.) "The see of Exeter was one of the largest and richest in England. The diocese was originally very wealthy." (v, 708-9.) "The English people at large complained of the enormous revenue which the pope and the Italians drew from their country, ... the financial demands of the Curia." (vii, 38.) "Bitterness existed for a considerable time between the monks and the people of F., who complained of the abbey's imposts and exactions." (vi, 20.) "Vast sum of money extorted from the English clergy in 1531." (iv, 26.)
In France the clergy formed "a wealthy body of men, gradually extending their possessions throughout the kingdom" during the Middle Ages. (i, 795.) "In 1384 almost a third of the land in the kingdom of Bohemia belonged to the Church." (ii, 613.) In Germany, twelfth century, "the difficulty of administering the vast landed possessions caused the abbots to grant certain sections in fief." (vi, 314.) "The gifts of German princes, nobles, and private individuals increased the landed possessions of the abbey so rapidly that they soon extended over distant parts of Germany," -- long list of provinces. (vi, 313.) "In parts of Germany [in 1770] the number and wealth of the religious houses, in some instances their uselessness, and occasionally their disorders, tempted the princes to lay violent and rapacious hands on them." (iv, 38.) "The luxury of bishops and the worldly possessions of monks" led to violent rebellion in Italy, in twelfth century. (i, 748.) At this and most times, the "prelates were the most powerful and the wealthiest subjects of the State." (ii, 186.) "The steady growth of power and wealth of the Church, since the beginning of the twelfth century, introduced an ever-increasing spirit of worldliness." (vii, 129.) "The liberality of the faithful was a constant incitement to depart from the rule of poverty.
This liberality showed itself mainly in gifts of real property, for example, in endowments for prayers for the dead, which were then usually founded with real estate. In the fourteenth century began the land wars and feuds (e.g. the Hundred Years' War in France), which relaxed every bond of discipline and good order." (vi, 284.) To all this and these, "the faults and wealth of the clergy must have contributed something. The spiritual ruler seemed almost merged in the sovereign of Rome and the feudal lord of Sicily. Money was needed, and in order to obtain it funds had to be raised ... and by means which aroused much discontent and affected the credit of Rome. ... Even in the twelfth century complaints of venality were frequent and bitter." (iii, 703.) "Simony, the most abominable of crimes ... was the evil so prevalent daring the Middle Ages." (xiv, 1, 2.) Hundreds of instances are recited in CE. of the teeming wealth wrung by the Church and clergy from the fears of the Faithful; of the inordinate riches of popes and prelates, abbots and monks, Churches and their plethoric treasuries. The Church existed for riches and it got, rather ill-got them in inestimable enormity of amount. From the cradle to the grave of every faithful who had anything to get, the Church wheedled, extorted or coerced it. Fear was ever the foundation of the Faith and of the "liberality" of contributions to it.
Among the greatest and greediest mints of ecclesiastical finance, were Simony, several times above mentioned, -- the sale of every kind of hierarchical office and dignity, from the popedom to the jobs of the meanest servitors of the Servants of God; and the sale of Indulgences, or remissions of the pains of Purgatory. This non-existent place of expiation of "Sin," acquired or "Original," to fit the befouled soul for Heaven, was first charted if not invented by His holiness Gregory the Great, about 600 A.D. "An indulgence offers the penitent sinner the means of discharging this debt [to God] during the life on earth" (CE. vii, 783), -- provided that "debt" is adequately liquidated by cash into the coffers of God's Vicars on earth. These indulgences are of various kinds, efficacy and price: "The most important distinction, however, is that between plenary indulgences and partial. By a plenary indulgence is meant the remission of the entire temporal punishment due to sin so that no further expiation is required in Purgatory.
A partial indulgence commutes only a certain portion of the penalty. ... Some indulgences are granted in behalf of the living only, while others may be applied in behalf of the souls of the departed" (Ib. 783-4). Leo X, he who perpetrated the celebrated aphorism -- "What profit has not that Fable of Christ brought us," rose in defense of the revenues, and in his Bull "Exurge Domine," 1520, "condemned Luther's assertions that 'Indulgences are pious frauds of the faithful'; ... the Council of Trent, 1563, pronounces anathema against those who either declare that indulgences are useless or deny that the Church has power to grant them" (Ib.). The flimsy basis of the traffic is thus referred to the forged "famous Petrine text" which we have seen is itself a huge fraud: "Once it is admitted that Christ left the Church the power to forgive sins, the power of granting indulgences is logically inferred" (p. 785); but logically perfect inferences can readily be made from false premises; the premises must be true to yield valid and truthful "inference" or conclusion. Not only were genuine but false indulgences hawked throughout Christendom, resulting in immense revenues -- and abuses, for "one of the worst abuses that of inventing or falsifying grants of indulgence. Previous to the Reformation, such practices abounded" (p. 787). The Council of Trent sought to stop outside profits from this traffic, declaring it to be "a grievous abuse among Christian people, and of other disorders arising from superstition, (etc.) ... on account of the widespread corruption" (Ib.); though it seems that now "with the decline in the financial possibilities of the system, there is no danger of the recurrence of the old abuses" (p. 788). But still they sell well and net fine revenues; the writer has invested in them several times in Mexico, for souvenirs, -- there being no Purgatory for unbelievers in that fiery near-Hell.
A graphic picture is drawn by the great historian of the Middle Ages, which shows Avarice as the cornerstone and effective motive of the Church. Hallam, Von Ranke, and many historians, give revolting examples in the concrete through many ages; here is their summary:
"Covetousness, especially, became almost a characteristic vice. ... Many of the peculiar and prominent characteristics in the faith and discipline of those ages appear to have been either introduced or sedulously promoted for the purposes of sordid fraud. To these purposes conspired the veneration for relies, the worship of images, the idolatry of saints and martyrs, the religious inviolability of sanctuaries, the consecration of cemeteries, but, above all, the doctrine of purgatory and masses for the relief of the dead. A creed thus contrived, operating upon the minds of barbarians, lavish though rapacious, and devout though dissolute, naturally caused a torrent of opulence to flow in upon the Church. ... Even those legacies to charitable purposes. ... were frequently applied to their own benefit. They failed not, above all, to inculcate upon the wealthy sinner that no atonement could be so acceptable to Heaven as liberal presents to its earthly delegates.
To die without allotting of worldly wealth to pious uses was accounted almost like suicide, or a refusal of the last sacraments; and hence intestacy passed for a sort of fraud upon the Church, which she punished by taking the administration of the deceased's effects into her own hands. ... And, as if all these means of accumulating what they could not legitimately enjoy were insufficient, the monks prostituted their knowledge of writing to the purpose of forging charters in their own favor, which might easily impose upon an ignorant age, since it has required a peculiar science to detect them in modern times. Such rapacity might seem incredible in men cut off from the pursuits of life and the hopes of posterity, if we did not behold every day the unreasonableness of avarice and the fervor of professional attachments." (Hallam, History of the Middle Ages, Vol. 1, Bk. vii, passim.)
Ambitious and avaricious Christians who had been unable to get their hands into the "orthodox" Treasury of the Lord, were incited by the vision of the seas of easy money which flowed into it and by the ostentatious opulence of the partakers of the Lord's Altar, to emulate the zeal for riches displayed by the truly Faithful. A lengthy article under the title Impostors -- [or is it "Stop! Thief!"?] -- is devoted by CE. to the long line of hypocrites with itching palms who broke away from the True Fold the better to fleece the Faithful by their impostures. The period of the Great Schism of the West, particularly, "was also an epoch when many fanatical or designing persons reaped a rich harvest out of the credulity of the populace." (CE. vii, 699.) Many thousands left the True Church and flocked after religious Pretenders of every sort, pouring treasures into their uncanonical coffers, to the great pecuniary deprivation of Holy Church. Dozens of these perverters of the Sacred Revenue through the succeeding centuries are catalogued, coming down to our own near-secular times. Invidiously included under the opprobrious designation of "Impostors" are the inspired Prophet of the Mormons, Joseph Smith, and the inspired Prophetess, Mother Mary Baker-Glover-Patterson-Eddy, -- the immense financial success of whose respective religions may well excite envy, and bring them within the terminology of Orthodox Odium Theologicum -- a "BITTER ENEMY, THE HEAD OF THE RIVAL RELIGION," as is the approved form, to credit CE. (vii, 620), in speaking of one's religious rivals. The point of the moral is, that according to Orthodox criteria all these Harvesters in the Vineyard of the Lord are unscrupulous Impostors for revenue only, and batten only by preying on "the credulity of the populace," -- which is the by- product of Religion, as we have seen it exemplified. When Ignorance is ended Credulity ceases, and Ecclesiastical Pelf and Power languishing die. If, as profanely jibed, "Without Hell Christianity isn't worth a damn," a fortiori -- without Revenue, is not Religion with out Reason to be?
Made wise by the history of the past, in modern times most constitutions and governments, all in which the Church is not still powerful, have put just restrictions on the rapacity of the Church and have forbidden direct subsidies of support to it and its ministers. Indeed, "In most European countries the civil authority restricts in three ways the right of the Church to receive donations: by imposing forms and conditions; by reserving the right to say what institutions may receive donations, and by requiring the approval of the civil authority." (CE. v, 117.)
In this country, Federal and State constitutions ordain separation of State and Church, forbid the establishment of any religion, and prohibit grants of money in support of it. But withal, so inveterate is the force of grafting habit, so prone yet the politicians to cater to "The Church" upon the specious pretext that the Church and religion are of some utility for "moral" purposes and as "the Big Policeman" for the restriction of vice and crime -- the politicians not being familiar with the "moral record" of the Church, that the Church evades the principle and often the letter of the law, and is yet largely supported and kept alive by the people through the secular State. Some nine billions of dollars of deadhand and deadhead property thus escapes taxation in the United States, and the idle and vicious priestcraft and its system are supported by the State its constitution and laws notwithstanding. For every dollar of tax- exempt property, the taxpayer pays double. The vast majority of the people supports thus a small but vocal minority, which but for such public favors would soon perish off the land, for its own membership could not and would not keep it going if it had to pay the taxes, the burden of which it now shifts to the unbelieving or indifferent majority. The system is unjust and undemocratic, is immoral. In his Annual Message to Congress in 1875, President Grant pointed out that the tax-free property of Churches was at the time about one billion dollars; that "by 1900, without check, it is safe to say this property will reach a sum exceeding three billions of dollars"; and he added:
"So vast a sum, receiving all the protection and benefits of Government without bearing its proportion of the burdens and expenses of the same, will not be looked upon acquiescently by those who have to pay the taxes. In a growing country, where real estate enhances so rapidly with time, as in the United States, there is scarcely a limit to the wealth that may be acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise, if allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration without constitutional authority and through blood. I would suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation." (Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. vii, p. 334-5.)
Sequestration and blood have been required to put a curb on Church greed in many modern and "Christian" countries, even in Italy, Spain and France, the "most favored nations" of Holy Church. Russia and Mexico have followed suit; they had been ground into desperation by the luxurious exactions of their respective Churches, and the debased ignorance and poverty which were thus imposed on their peoples. Every country of Europe, even the "Most Christian," where the Society of Jesus has grasped wealth and power, has been forced to expel the parasites; and to "padlock" the vast establishments of religious orders. If one would take a census of illiteracy and poverty, just in those countries where the Church has had or yet has most power and wealth, the people are most ignorant and impoverished. It may be a "coincidence," but it is a very suspicious matter of fact. All these things are of the "fruits," moral and educational, of Christianity.
Until now the "damning things of the Church" arrayed in these pages, have been known only as the result of laborious research by a limited number: I broadcast them now so that they may be known to all. Even the "Man of God" may plead ignorance heretofore of the frauds of his Church and the falsity of his religion. Here it is demonstrated to him. To beg money now on the plea that the giver "lendeth to the Lord," that money paid for prayers for the dead relieves the souls in Purgatory, -- both these coin-cajoling pleas are now known to be false; obtaining money by these false pretenses, now, is Larceny. This is timely and serious warning, which it may be salutary to heed.
"If any man is ignorant, let him be ignorant." Paul.
"Were we can understand, it is a moral crime to cherish the un-understood." Shotwell.
These two quotations represent the difference between the viewpoints of the cleric and the scholar. "A mere recital of facts is of little avail unless certain fundamental principles be kept in view," says our oft-quoted Defender of the Faith, -- a truth which I would now drive home to the reader -- but in a very different sense than is expressed in the clerical conclusion of the sentence, -- "and unless the fact of Christian revelation be given its due importance." The False Pretense of "Christian revelation" has been exposed and exploded by the real revelations of falsity and fraud in every pretended one of them, by this same Apologist for Christian imposture. Contrasting the wondrous results of "Christian" training -- such as we have seen exemplified -- with those suffered by the poor Pagan without any revelation, the same Apologist makes this deprecatory comment: "That he should learn to think for himself was of course out of the question. With such a training, the development of free personality was of course out of the question." (CE. v, 296.) Such a disparaging verdict much rather condemns the Christian system and its aims and results, which obviously are, that its devotees, or victims should be "able to believe automatically a number of things which -- [in reason] -- they know are not true," and which they must therefore accept "of faith," subjecting their reason to the priest-instilled Faith. It is to the awakening of Reason, in the light of the facts herein presented, that I appeal against the preoccupations or prejudices of Faith, -- those "superstitions drunk in with their mother's milk," and never since questioned with open mind.
The ex-Pagan Fathers of Christianity now turned Defenders of the new Faith, and propagandists of it among their fellow Pagans, were very fervid and eloquent in their appeals to the reason of the Pagans as against their mother-inherited superstitions. In his First Apology to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, Father Justin Martyr makes a fine appeal for the use of reason in defiance of tradition and authority, -- a fine gesture to the Pagan, -- but a principle seldom applied by a Christian in point of his own imposed creeds: "Reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophical to honor and love only what is true, declining to follow the opinions of the ancients, if these be worthless." (Chap. ii, ANF. i, 63.) As the preceding review has shown the opinions of the ancient Fathers to be worthless with respect to the "facts" of the Christian religion, and that that religion is quite worthless either as divine truth or effective police, it should therefore be discarded, except for such good moral precepts as are to be found in it as in all religions and all moral systems.
In those times the Christian Church was small and feeble, and had not yet snatched the cynical power whereby, ever since, it "requires the acceptance and practice not of the religion one may choose, but of that which God prescribes ... to be the only true one," as asserted by His Holiness Leo XIII, in the Encyclical Immortale Dei, of November 1, 1885. (CE. xiv, 764.) Whereupon, the "choosers" of their religion became "heretics," and were quite "justly burned," as that same Pope admits. But before the successors of Constantine gave the Church the sword and the stake for persuasions unto faith, it was necessary that the Christian Apologists should appeal to reason with the intelligent classes of Pagans. Father Lactantius uses argument in his great Apology addressed to Constantine and intended for the learned Pagans of the imperial entourage, which I would earnestly address now to those who yet hesitate in their inherited Christianity:
"It is therefore right, especially in a matter on which the whole plan of life turns, that every one should place confidence in himself, and use his own judgment and individual capacity for the investigation and weighing of the truth, rather than through confidence in others to be deceived by their errors, as though he himself were without understanding. God has given wisdom to all alike, that they might be able both to investigate things which they have not heard, and to weigh things which they have heard. Nor. because they (our ancestors) preceded us in time, did they also outstrip us in wisdom; for if this is given equally to all, we can not be anticipated in it by those who precede us." (Lact., Divine Institutes, II, viii; ANF. VII, 51.)
If no one, upon reason, or even by caprice, ever changed his opinion, belief, status, we would all be savages still. In matter of religion, the ancestors of every one of us were once Pagans, and those who became Christians were dubbed "atheists" by those remaining faithful to the old gods, -- until they too changed to the new. Then these ex-Pagan ancestors of ours were Catholics, of the "orthodox" or one of the ninety-odd "heretic" brands which finally perished or conformed by Grace of God and the Orthodox sword. Others many of our good Catholic ancestors just a few hundred years ago became "heretics" of the Protestant brands, and so continue or until lately continued, -- and then threw off the old tradition of faith, and became Rationalists. Every gradation of change was due to one pregnant cause: increasing intelligence of the individual. Each advance sloughed off sundry inherited articles of faith, which then became discarded superstitions. Dean Milman spoke truly of the reason for the decadence of the Pagan religions; his reasons apply as aptly to the Christian: "The progress of knowledge was fatal to the religions of Greece and Rome. ... Poetry had been religion; religion was becoming mere poetry." (Hist. of Christianity, I, 33.)
Father Lactantius has a Chapter entitled "Cicero and Other Men of Learning Erred in not Turning Away the People from Error." It is a moral crime, as Dr. Shotwell says, to cling to error when we can come to understand it as error. Not only that, urges Lactantius, it is wrong for those who know a vital truth to refrain from striving to turn men away from harmful error. His argument was much applauded by the Church, and is the argument of every missionary to the "heathen" today. Lactantius thus justly chides:
"Cicero was well aware that the deities which men worshipped were false. For when he had spoken many things which tended to the overthrow of religious ceremonies, he said nevertheless that these matters ought not; to be discussed by the vulgar, lest such discussion should extinguish the system of religion which was publicly received. ... Nay, rather, if you have any virtue, Cicero, endeavor to make the people Wise: that is a befitting subject, on which you may expend all the powers of your eloquence ... in the dispersion of the errors of mankind, and the recalling of the minds of men to a healthy state." (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, II, iii; ANF. VII, 43.)
To this ideal of the use of Reason, which Lactantius and the earlier Fathers of the weakling Church held before the intelligent Pagans to incite them to discard the errors and superstitions of Paganism, this book is devoted in the earnest hope and purpose to evoke the use of Reason to the discard of the identical errors and superstitions of "that newer Paganism later called Christianity," which yet persist among the priest-taught masses of Christendom.
That Christian Appeal to Reason was not with the intelligent classes of Pagandom very effective; more persuasive methods must, therefore, be divised to bring the Pagans to the Altar and Treasury of the Lord. We have read the succession of laws of the now "Christian Emperors," which at the behest of the Priests proscribed Paganism upon pain of death and confiscation, made outlaws of all who refused to take the name of Christian, or continued to offer incense to the old gods, or became "heretics" to the official Faith; all who were guilty of these "crimes -- let them be stricken by the avenging sword." As the newer "barbarian"' nations came upon the Christian scene, "the Catholic Faith was spread by the sword" among and upon them, and all who hesitated or backslid were murdered by Christian law and sword. Crass ignorance, credulity and superstition were then imposed and enforced upon Christendom in order to "preserve the purity of the faith" in the unthinking minds of unknowing dupes of the Church and the Priests who waxed in wealth and in dominion over witless Christendom. When after a millennium during which men were too ignorant to be heretic, the light of thought and reason began to dawn upon the horizon of the Dark Ages of Faith, the Inquisition and the Index, the tortures of the rack and the stake, were providentially provided for the further preservation of Faith by augment of Ignorance and Terror. In all these holy Ages of Faith, in this "civilization thoroughly saturated with Christianity," the Siamese Twins of Creed and Crime, Faith and Filth, popular Poverty and Ecclesiastical Opulence, stalked hand in hand -- "the inseparable companions of Religion."
The Renaissance and the Reformation came to enfranchise men from Authority and blind Obedience, and the way was blazed for Rationalism and the Age of Reason. The unquestionable record of all this we have read in the amazing and unblushing confessions of Holy Church itself.
At the time of the Reformation admitted conditions existed which today are infinitely more active and more thoroughgoing: "The Christian religious ideal -- [never a matter of practice] -- was to a great extent lost sight of; higher intellectual culture, previously confined in great measure to the clergy, but now common among the laity, assumed a secular character. ... Only a faint interest in the supernatural life survived." (CE. xii, 703.) Education is now becoming universal; the hateful history of the Church and of Religion is becoming general knowledge; the Church, forced by ever-growing Secularism and Rationalism, has lost the power of compulsion and all but that of persuasion to belief in its forged and fatuous creeds, with all but the unthinking minority, and is itself almost secularized, held together as a sort of social center for the masses without other social contacts, and as matter of "good form" for the pretentiously pious, were infantile hymns are vocalized to an empty Heaven, and the unco gude chorus their petitions to the inhering and unheeding Throne of Grace, "beseeching the Lord upon the universal prayer-theme of 'Gimme!'" Universally, too, as old John Duffy poetizes it, "The rich they pray for pounds, and the poor they pray for pence."
The utter futility of prayer in objective sense for the obtaining of the subject-matter of the supplication, even of the "Give us this day our daily bread," -- which many do get and many and more others miserably go without, is confessed by CE., which frankly attributes all these things to the operation of the Law of Chance: "The apparent success which so often attends superstition can mostly be accounted for by natural causes, although [it piously adds] it would be rash to deny all supernatural intervention (e.g. in the phenomena of Spiritualism). When the object is to ascertain, or to effect in a general way, one of two possible events, the law of probabilities gives an equal chance to success and failure; and success does more to support than failure would do to destroy superstition, for, on its side, there are arrayed the religious instinct, sympathy and apathy, confidence and distrust, encouragement and discouragement, and, -- perhaps strongest of all -- the healing power of nature." (CE. xiv, 341.) There, in a nutshell, is the profound psychology of the priest-instilled "religious instinct," and of the hit-or-miss "efficacy of prayer" for the cajoling of "heavenly gifts" of earthly benefits and of the eversion of the heaven-sent or devil-inflicted evils whereof suffering humanity is the sport and prey, -- to the utter indifference of their Celestial Pater!
The last sentence of the clerical admission above -- "the healing power of nature," bears destructively upon one of the most insistent of religious superstitions, the efficiency of prayers, and saints, and relies, and shrines, and pious mummeries, to which millions of the afflicted and deluded of God's children resort for the relief of their torments and the cure of their diseases, -- which their loving Father God inflicts or prevents. From the earliest times of priestcraft until this very year of grace, the priests and parsons and charlatans of every stripe preach and encourage this ancient heathen superstition, -- and reap rich rewards through the imposture. The perfectly natural cause and explanation of numerous occasional instances of success at the game, which incites to further superstition and greater abuses, is curiously but truly confessed: "There are few religions in which recourse is not had to supernatural aid for miraculous cures. The testimony of reliable witnesses and the numerous ex-votos that have come down to us from antiquity leave no doubt as to the reality of these cures. It was natural that they should have been viewed as miraculous in an age when the remarkable power of suggestion to effect cures was not understood. Modern science recognizes that strong mental impressions can powerfully influence the nervous system and through it the bodily organs, leading in some instances to sudden illness or death, in others to remarkable cures. Such is the so-called mind cure or cure by suggestion. It explains naturally many extraordinary cures recorded in the annals of many religions. Still it has its recognized limits. It cannot restore of a sudden a half-decayed organ, or heal instantly a gaping wound caused by a cancer." (CE. xii, 743.)
This thus confesses the huge false pretense of "miracle of God" in such cases of relief or cure of nervous or mental maladies as are claimed for the impostures of Lourdes, St. Anne's, Maiden, the Calvary Baptist Holy Rollers and all such shrines of religious imposture and superstition. In antiquity, the fictitious Pagan gods did not exist, -- the cures attributed to them and paid for to the priests were entirely due to nature, and the claims of the priests were frauds. The Christians now confess the "recognized limits" of their God to do more than Nature did under the Pagan gods: the pretense of "miracle," of "supernatural intervention" is seen to be as fraudulent in modern times as it is admitted to have been in ancient. The Pagans believed, and prayed, and paid the priests, and some by auto-suggestion found relief or were cured, many others believed, and prayed, and paid -- and their natural sufferings were enhanced by their disappointment. But did they cease therefore to believe and pray and pay? Probably then the pious apologetics of defeatism were the same as now. If the thing prayed for cometh to pass -- "the gods have -- God has -- answered our prayers; blessed be their -- His -- holy name!" and the fortunate results are noised abroad. If by equal chance the prayed-for benefit is unattained, then "God knows better than we what is best for us," and the less said about the failure the better for childlike Faith. When exposed to danger or death we escape, it is "the wonderful Providence of God," -- nothing being thought or said about those so curiously designated "Acts of God" which permitted or inflicted the disaster; whereas, if we die or continue in suffering, why, "God's ways are not our ways"; "the ways of God are beyond our finite understanding," et cetera of pious apologies for the silence and failure of God to help his suffering and neglected children.
It would seem that every fossil of credulity embedded in the ancient Rock of Faith has in the course of this review been picked out and the Rock itself drilled through and through for the easy task of final demolition. For nigh two thousand years it has cast its baleful shadow upon civilization, stunting and dwarfing the minds and faculties of men clouded by its worthless bulk. Though vastly undermined and hacked and tottering, the blighting effects of Church and religious superstition are yet in many odious respects persistent; humanity and civilization yet suffer under the lingering disease of priest-imposed delusions and the hateful miasma of religious intolerance in every land cursed yet by priestcraft, parsonate, and the odium of theology.
"When the Devil was sick, the Devil a Saint would be!" The Church is dying now; has been forced despite itself and its enginery of torture and murder, to desist from the worst of its deviltry, to appear a bit civilized; some of its partizans and dupes think it "reformed," pure-minded and clean-handed. It is only measurably so perforce, and reluctantly. Even today the Law of God, conserved in the latest Edition of the holy Canon Law, commands murder for unbelief; these infamous "principles are in their own nature irreformable; ... owing to changed conditions [forced upon it by secular civilization] are to all practical intents and purposes obsolete ... The custom of burning heretics is really not a question of justice, but a question of civilization"! (CE. xiv, 769.) Thus the Church confesses itself uncivilized; it retains and insists upon the God-ordained justice of burning and murder; but is forced by heretic civilization, acquired in bloody despite of the Church, to conform to the decrees of Civilization. But as -- however -- Holy Church is impotent, dying, and will soon be dead -- then only De mortuis nil nisi bonum! -- Speed its hastening Death!
Founded in fraud by avarice and ambition, propagated by sword and fire, perpetuated by ignorance and fear; by increase of knowledge and free expression of thought rendered now all but impotent except in will and malice, priestcraft yet grasps for power and dominion over mind and spirit of men. In present default of rack and stake, it struggles yet to impose itself through such unholy means as it can still partially command, -- fines and imprisonment under ridiculous medieval laws for the absurd priestly "crimes" of blasphemy and sacrilege, "desecration of the Lord's Day" by innocent diversions instead of attending dull preachings and paying the priests by the gift upon the Altar or in the contribution plate. Odious laws for the repression of human liberty; for the outlawing of honest men who refuse the superstitious forms of Religious Oath imposed in courts and legal proceedings, of which several shocking instances have recently occurred, depriving men of liberty and property, and potentially of life through refusal of their testimony in court. Religious Intolerance flames through the land, as notorious instances have lately made evident. Good Christians yet cordially dislike and distrust all others of differing brands of Faith, which sentiments Christians and Jews religiously reciprocate in holy hatred and intolerance of each other, while all unite in utter abhorrence and damnation of the Liberal and the Unbeliever, condemned alike by private Christian spite and public obloquy, of a vocal and intolerant minority; by political disqualifications for public office wherever this or that Sect is yet in a majority and can enforce its intolerance by law. "A careful study of the history of religious toleration," says the historian of Civilization, "will prove, that in every Christian country where it has been adopted, it has been forced upon the clergy by the authority of the secular classes.
At the present day it is still unknown to those nations among whom the ecclesiastical power is stronger than the temporal power." In quite half the countries of Latin America and several of Europe -- the most backward and poverty-stricken and priest-ridden of them -- yet today public office and honors can be attained only by the votaries of the Sect in power, and the free and public practice of any other than the official cult is prohibited by law. I have the codes of these "Christian" countries.
Even in our own "tolerant" country today, religious fanaticism succeeds in its attacks, to impose by law the "sacred science of Genesis" in the universities and schools to the outlawry of the teachings of the truths of Nature. Preachers and teachers who dare express honest opinions of liberalism or unbelief are by pious religionists discharged and their families deprived of bread and support. Religious Pharisees seek to seize the public schools to disseminate their obsolete superstitions in the minds of youth -- the hope of the future, and the last chance of the Church. Individual peace and friendliness, public peace and good understanding are often jeopardized and destroyed by Religion. Corrupt and insulting ecclesiastical government is rampant in many of our large cities and in a number of entire States. In a word, and despite all, the Twentieth Century is still under the hang-over spell of medieval theology and an the holy spites and intolerance of rancorous Religiosity.
The fatal work of Church and Priest through the Christian Era -- as herein revealed, has wrought ignorance, superstition and vice: it has been and remains a supreme failure. Faith is become obsolete before Facts. Christianity is proved to be a fraudulent Bankrupt; this is its final adjudication before the bar of Civilization.
The Christian Religion -- shown to be a congeries of revamped Pagan Superstitions and of Priestly Lies -- is not respectable for belief: every honest and self-respecting mind must repudiate it in disgust. We can all "Do good, for good is good to do"!
Faith -- fondly called "the most precious heritage of the race," is not a thing whereof to be proud; it is not Intelligent or of Reason. Not a flicker of intelligence is required to believe: millions of the most illiterate and ignorant of earth's teeming populations are the firmest in their "faith" in every form of religious superstition known to the priests of the world, the most devout believers of this or that imposture, -- "most assured of what they are most ignorant" withal. Indeed, as aptly quoted: "Unbelief is no crime that Ignorance was ever capable of being guilty of." Buckle truly says, that to the secular and skeptical spirit European civilization owes its origin: that "it is evident, that until doubt began, progress was impossible" (Ch. vii, 242); and CE. has confessed, as is also self-evident, -- "Toleration only came in when Faith went out." What a boon then to humanity to hasten and complete its going!
Disbelief, doubt, inquiry of truth, rejection of superstition, is distinctly an act of Intelligence; it often requires heroic virtue of bravery and independence of mind to disbelieve, to revolt against and reject the creeds and credulities of the ignorant community, -- as evidenced by the whole holy bloody history of religious rancor and intolerance which has so inadequately but shockingly been reviewed. It is the bravest men and the finest minds, with high courage to dare and defy Holy Church, whom that unholy Hoodlum has murdered, but who have saved and recreated Civilization, as even yet inadequately it has been achieved.
Think to what Civilization might have attained by this Twentieth Century. For nigh two thousand years Christianity has held sway and thrall over the most dominant part of the world and portion of the human race. In each generation for most of the two thousand years there have been hundreds of thousands of men and women -- Priests, monks, nuns, and "religious" nondescripts, devoted through life to the unrealities of "Other-worldliness" to the utter neglect of the world in which they lived, resolved, all too oft, "to make of earth a hell that they might merit heaven." In the pursuit of such impracticalities. and to force all others to believe, doubtless millions of books and sermons of sophistry have been their output, not to mention ignorance, wars, famines, plagues and bestialities innumerable that they have brought about to the destruction of civilization. Thus, in aggregate, millions of human beings -- many of them of very high mental capacity, have devoted some millions of years of labor or of sloth to Theology and Religion, -- lives, years and labor wasted! If these years and labors had but been devoted to pure and applied Science, to the discovery and conquest of the powers of Nature, to Knowledge of the Worth While -- medicine, surgery anesthetics, antiseptics, sanitation -- the catalogue is endless; to the outlawry of War and the establishment of universal Peace; the abolition of Crime, Poverty, and Disease -- in a word, to the Social Sciences and Service, to Humanism and the Humanities, instead of to Theism and Theology -- to what glorious heights would not Civilization and Humanity have scaled!
The timorous Religionist -- affrighted at the threatened loss of the "opiate" and "crutches" of Faith, often asks: "What are you going to give us in its place?" A cure! -- so that you will not need these artificial aids. When the surgeon excises a dangerous tumor, or the physician heals a mental or physical disease, -- he restores to health of body or mind, -- does not inflict some other form of disease in place of the one cured. So with the fictitious mental disorder of Religion, -- for that it is a mental disorder of most malignant kind is proved by the inveterate hates and crimes it has caused the sufferers from it to be guilty of through all the Ages of Faith, as disclosed in this review. The sufferer goes through life, actually -- or what is the same thing, under the delusion of disability, -- hobbling on crutches, or with frequent injections of "dope" to allay real or imagined pain. Either by material means or by "mind cure" he is healed of the real or imaginary ailment: he throws away his crutches, discards his daily narcotic; health and strength come to his members and his whole body; the faculties of the mind are freed from the inhibitions of disease and disability. The sufferer goes through life, actually -- or what is the same thing, under the delusion of disability, -- hobbling on crutches, or with frequent injections of "dope" to allay real or imagined pain. Either by mental means or by "mind cure" he is healed of the real or imaginary ailment: he throws away his crutches, discords his daily narcotic; health and strength come to his members and his whole body; the faculties of the mind are freed from the inhibititions of disease and disability. The grandest cure ever wrought in the man and in humanity is free the mind from Superstition, to release all the energies of mind and body for the glorious work for Mankind. The noblest and most blest worker for Humanity is the Humanist.
Religious Toleration and freedom of thought and of beneficent research, came in only as religious Faith went out; Civilization began only as the Dark Ages of Faith came to an end. The Church has had its long Night -- those Dark Ages of Faith. Therein it shed its boasted refulgence of "sweetness and light" -- in the Dark. The Church is very like the fire-fly -- the homely lightning Bug, -- it needs darkness in which to shine. But the Day is come; the supernatural Light of the Cross is faded and paled before the luminous truths of Nature discovered now and exploited by free men for the good of mankind.
It remains yet to complete the good work for civilization and humanity by destroying the last lingering works and delusions of decadent and decayed priestcraft; through the universal triumph of Rationalism to fully and finally Ecraser l'Infame. Truly and prophetically spoke Zola: "Civilization will not attain to its perfection, until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest!"
A new and free Civilization rises from the ruins of the Ages of Faith; with heart aglow and high purpose set on the attainment of the ancient "Supreme Good," it hails the glorious possibilities of the scientific Age of Reason, which will redeem humanity from the blight of the centuries of Unreason. Men may now know and freely and unafraid make known the truth: and the Truth shall make mankind Free.
In the fine imagery of Dr. Trattner, his autobiographic God looks into the now not so distant Future, and thus communes: "Before Me is the Scroll of Destiny. See! Man has already scaled the foot-hills. Not one man alone, or two, or three, but all the nations. Everywhere men and women together are now leading their children forward consecrated to the Ideal. ... I am satisfied. It is the day -- the day of complete Emancipation!"