Part 26

How many mortals have been frightened out of their senses by the false alarm of fire in the next world. Preachers have pictured to mothers their children who died without the sacraments of the church being administered to them, as rolling on the fiery billows of hell. Parents have been demented by such descriptions, and have gone to lunatic asylums, or to their graves in consequence. Millions thus frightened have joined the church, and confessed belief in the creed, although they may not have known the meaning of a single article of it. But once having avowed their adherence to the church have lived lives of hypocrisy ever afterward because they had not the honor and the courage to break away from their bondage. What stories the pulpit has related of Infidels being struck dead for profanity and blasphemy. These holy pulpit alarmists will have much to answer for if there is any such thing as a judgment day or a God in Israel.

It is plain that Jesus taught the doctrine of future, if not endless punishment. It was endless punishment to those who committed the unpardonable sin: "And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." (Mat. 12 : 32.)

Other passages may be cited to show that Jesus taught the horrible doctrine of eternal torment, and all efforts on the part of modern commentators to explain away hell are in vain. "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." (Mat. 25 : 46.)

If these words do not teach the doctrine of endless torment, it would be a hard matter to express it in the vernacular.

Pictures of Hell.

John Bunyan describes this interesting locality, and its inhabitants thus: "All the devils in hell will be with thee howling and roaring, screeching and yelling in such a manner that, thou wilt be at thy wits end, and be ready to run stark mad from anguish and torment. * * * Here thou must lie and fry, and scorch, and broil, and burn forevermore."

The father of New England theology, Jonathan Edwards, portrays his own imagination after this fashion:

"The saints in glory will be far more sensible, how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the sufferings of the damned are, yet this will be no occasion of grief to them, but rejoicings. They will not be sorry for the damned: it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them, but on the contrary when they see this sight, it will occasion rejoicing, and excite them to joyful praises."

Dr. Emmons reveals his own "true inwardness" by giving it the following description:

"The happiness of the elect in heaven will in part consist of watching the torment of the damned in hell. Among these it may be their own children, parents, husbands, wives and friends on earth. One part of the business of the blest is to celebrate the doctrine of reprobation. While the decree of reprobation is eternally executing on the vessels of wrath, the smoke of their torment will be eternally ascending in view of the vessels of mercy who instead of taking the part of those miserable objects will sing, Amen, hallelujah: praise the Lord."

Again, he says: "When they (the saints) see how great the misery is from which God hath saved them and how great a difference he hath made between their state and the state of others who were by nature, and perhaps by practice no more sinful and ill deserving than they, it will give them more a sense of the wonderfulness of God's grace to them in making them so to differ. The sight of hell-torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever."

"Where saints and angels from their blest abode, Chanting loud hallelujahs to their God. Look down on sinners in the realm of woe And draw fresh pleasures from the scenes below."

The Rev. Thomas Button, describes the bottomless character of his fancies thus:

"The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the judge in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly husband shall say, Amen! to the damnation of her who lay in his bosom. The godly parent shall say hallelujah! at the passing of the sentence upon the ungodly child. And the godly child, shall from his heart, approve the damnation of his wicked parents who begot him, and the mother who bore him."

Thomas Vincent, a reverend, raves after this fashion: "This will fill them, the saints, with astonishing admiration and joy, when they see some of their near relatives going to hell; their fathers, their mothers, their children, their husbands, their wives, their human friends, and companions while they themselves are saved. * * * Those affections they now have for relatives out of Christ will cease, and they will not have the least trouble to see them sentenced to hell and thrust into the fiery furnace."

My thoughts on awful subjects roll, Damnation and the dead; What horrors seize the guilty soul Upon a dying bed.

Where endless crowds of sinners lie, And darkness makes their chains; Tortured with keen despair they cry, Yet wait for fiercer pains.

Then swift and dreadful she descends Down to the fiery coast Amongst abominable fiends, Herself a frighted ghost.

Adore and tremble, for your God Is a consuming fire; His jealous eyes with wrath inflame, And raise his vengeance higher. Almighty vengeance, how it burns! Vast magazines of plagues and storms Lie treasured for his foes.

These grisly rhymes full of horrors are found in one of Watt's hymn books written in England in the early part of the last century, but they are omitted from all modern hymn books.

Tertullian finds great joy in the idea of seeing his enemies in hell.

"What shall be the magnitude of that scene! How shall I laugh! How shall I rejoice! How shall I triumph when I behold so many and such illustrious kings, who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter their god, in the lowest darkness of hell." (Quoted by Lecky, "Rationalism in Europe," vol. 1, p. 329.)

"One great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have been commanded by God, but all the cruelties recounted in the Old Testament ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the portal of the tomb. He never threatened to avenge himself upon the dead; and not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi, contains the slightest intimation that God will punish in another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the frightful doctrine of eternal pain. It was the teacher of universal benevolence who rent the veil between time and eternity, and fixed the horrified gaze of man on the lurid gulfs of hell. Within the breast of non-resistance was coiled the worm that never dies." (Ingersoll's Reply to Black.)

"Is it necessary that heaven should borrow its light from the glare of hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens, debases, and pollutes the soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no perfectly good being can be perfectly happy. Against the heartlessness of this doctrine every grand and generous soul should enter its solemn protest. I want no part in any heaven where the saved, the ransomed, and the redeemed drown with merry shout the cries and sobs of hell--in which happiness forgets misery--where the tears of the lost increase laughter and deepen the dimples of joy. The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear, cowardice, and revenge. This idea tends to show that our remote ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves--only from mouths filled with cruel fangs--only from hearts of fear and hatred--only from the conscience of hunger and lust--only from the lowest and most debased, could come this most cruel, heartless, and absurd of all dogmas." (Ingersoll's Reply to Black.)

"A religion that teaches a mother that she can be happy in heaven, with her children in hell--in everlasting torment--strikes at the very roots of family affection. It makes the human heart stone. Love that means no more than that, is not love at all. No heart that has ever loved can see the object of its affection in pain, and itself be happy. The thing is impossible. Any religion that can make that possible is more to be dreaded than war or famine or pestilence or death. It would eat out all that is great and beautiful and good in this life. It would make life a mockery and love a curse." (Helen H. Gardener's "Men, Women, and Gods.")

"They divided the world into saints and sinners, and all the saints were going to heaven, and all the sinners yonder. Now, then, you stand in the presence of a great disaster. A house is on fire, and there is seen at a window the frightened face of a woman with a babe in her arms, appealing for help; humanity cries out, "Will some one go to the rescue?" They do not ask for a Methodist, Baptist, or a Catholic; they ask for a man. All at once there starts from the crowd one that nobody ever suspected of being a saint; one may be, with a bad reputation; but he goes up the ladder and is lost in the smoke and flame; and a moment after he emerges, and the great circles of flames hiss around him; in a moment more he has reached the window; in another moment, with the woman and child in his arms, he reaches the ground and gives his fainting burden to the by-standers, and the people all stand hushed for a moment, as they always do at such times, and then the air is rent with acclamations. Tell me that that man in going to be sent to hell, to eternal flames, who is willing to risk his life rather than a woman and child should suffer from the fire one moment! I despise that doctrine of hell! Any man that believes in eternal hell is afflicted with at least two diseases; petrifaction of the heart and putrefaction of the brain." (Ingersoll's "Ghosts.")

The Church Opposed to Progress.

"The church has opposed every reform and until quite recently, almost every useful invention. In the England of Elizabeth it was declared from the pulpit that the introduction of forks would demoralize the people and provoke the divine wrath." ("Martyrdom of Man," p. 38.)

In the year 1444 Caxton published the first book ever printed in England. In 1474 the then bishop of London, in a convocation of his clergy, said, "If we do not destroy this dangerous invention it will one day destroy us." That bishop was a prophet.

Hume says: "It was remarkable that no physician in Europe, who had reached the age of forty years, ever to the end of his life adopted Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood, and that his practice in London diminished extremely, from the reproach drawn on him by that great and signal discovery. So slow is the progress in every science even when not opposed by factitious and superstitious prejudices." (Hume's "History of England.")

When Buffon had published Natural History, in which was included his "Theory of the Earth," he was officially informed by the faculty of theology in Paris that several of his propositions were "reprehensible and contrary to the creed of the church."

And when Columbus asserted the rotundity of the earth, he was ridiculed by the clergy, who maintained that "everything would roll off on the other side and be consumed in the fires of hell, if the world should turn over."

Benjamin Franklin's experiments with the lightning, were condemned, as he was only invoking upon himself the wrath of an angry God.

Professor Morse was freely ridiculed by the clergy for his attempt to construct a telegraph.

Roger Bacon, who invented spectacles and improved the telescope, was accused of having "sold himself to the devil."

It is scarcely necessary to recall the persecutions of Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo on account of their discoveries in astronomy.

At Eaton, in Shelly's time, "Chemistry was a forbidden thing."

We read in the life of Locke that "there was a meeting of the heads of the houses of Oxford, where it was proposed to censure and discourage the reading of this essay (On the Human Understanding) and after various debates, it was concluded that without any public censure each head of a house should endeavor to prevent its being read in his own college." (Spencer's "Social Statics," p. 375.)

"With respect to the last, the grandest of all human undertakings (that is the circumnavigation of the earth) it is to be remembered that Catholicism had irrevocably committed itself to the dogma of a flat earth, with the sky as a floor of heaven, and hell in the under world." (Draper's "Conflict," p. 294.)

The clergy for years have ridiculed Darwinism, and scouted the philosophy of evolution, even after the best minds of Europe had accepted it. But after all their ridicule of Darwinism, when Darwin had passed away the great heart of England did not fail to show the esteem in which the people at large held him, but lovingly laid his remains to rest in Westminster abbey with the dust of her noblest dead.

It is in the very nature of Christianity to persecute. It cannot live on terms of equality with anything on earth. It must rule. It must be supreme, and all institutions and all individuals must obey its mandates. It has in all of its vocabulary no such word as liberty. Every knee must bow to it, every tongue confess its authority, and every pocket--pay it tithes. And so gigantic has been its power that obedience in every age has been almost universal. Millions have professed to obey the despot who have had no idea of what they were professing, and hence had not so much even an a dream of liberty. Poor man has been trampled in the dust, and sometimes used as food for cannon, to satisfy the ambition of pope or king, and when not serviceable in that way, he was forced to worship God and serve the priests.

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers." (Rom. 13 : 1.) That is, the higher powers are the priests. The commandments of these higher powers are expressed in such words as "submit," "obey," "serve," "pay tithes," "believe,"--and to heed them is to lose the higher opportunities of manhood.

PROTESTANT PERSECUTIONS.

William Cobbett on the English Church.--A Letter to Lord Tenderten, Lord Chief Justice of England, April 6, 1829.

"My Lord: I have read the report of your lordship's speech made on the 4th inst. on the second reading of the Catholic bill; and there is one passage of it on which I think it my duty thus publicly to remark. The passage to which I allude relates to the character of the law established church, and also to the probable fate that will, in consequence of this bill, attend her in Ireland.

"First, then, my lord, let us take your proposition 'that there in no church so tolerant as this.' I am sure your lordship has never read her history; I am sure you have not. If you had you never would have uttered these words. Not being content to deal in general terms, I will not say she has been, and was from the outset, the most intolerant church that the world ever saw; that she started at first armed with halters, ripping-knives, axes, and racks; that her footsteps were marked with blood, while her back bent under the plunder of her innumerable innocent victims; and that for refinement in cruelty and extent of rapacity she never had an equal, whether corporate or sole. I will not thus speak of her in general terms, but I will lay before your lordship some historical facts, to make good that contradiction which I have given to your words. I assert that this law-church is the most intolerant church I ever read or heard of; and this assertion I now proceed to make good.

"This church began to exist in 1547, and in the reign of Edward VI. Until now the religion of the country had been for several years, under the tyrant Henry VIII., a sort of mongrel; but now it became wholly Protestant by law. The Articles of Religion and the Common Prayer-book were now drawn up, and were established by acts of Parliament. The Catholic altars were pulled down in all the churches; the priests, on pain of ouster and fine, were compelled to teach the new religion, that is to say, to be apostates; and the people who had been born and bred Catholics were not only punished if they heard mass, but were also punished if they did not go to hear the new parsons; that is to say, if they refused to become apostates. The people, smarting under this tyranny, rose in insurrection in several parts, and, indeed, all over the country. They complained that they had been robbed of their religion, and of the relief to the poor which the old church gave; and they demanded that the mass and the monasteries should be restored, and that the priests should not be allowed to marry. And how were they answered? The bullet and bayonet at the hands of German troops slaughtered a part, caused another part to be imprisoned and flogged, and the remainder to submit, outwardly, at least, to the law-church. And now mark this tolerant and merciful church. Many of the old monastics and priests, who had been expelled from their convents and livings, were compelled to beg their bread about the country, and thus found subsistence among the pious Catholics. This was an eye-sore to the law-church, who deemed the very existence of these men, who refused to apostatize, a libel on her. Therefore, in company, actually in company with the law that founded the new church came forth a law to punish beggars, by burning them in the face with a red-hot iron and by making them slaves for two years, with power in their masters to make them wear an iron collar. Your lordship must have read this act of Parliament, passed in the first year of the first Protestant reign, and coming forth in company with the Common Prayer-book. This was tolerant work, to be sure; and fine proof we have here of this church being 'favorable to civil and religious liberty.' Not content with stripping these faithful Catholic priests of their livings; not content with turning them out upon the wide world; this tolerant church must cause them to perish with hunger or be branded slaves.

"Such was the tolerant spirit of this church when she was young. As to her burnings under Cranmer (who made the prayer book), they are hardly worthy of particular notice, when we have before us the sweeping cruelties of this first Protestant reign, during which, short as it was, the people of England suffered so much that the suffering actually thinned their numbers; it was a people partly destroyed, and that, too, in the space of about six years; and this is acknowledged even in acts of Parliament of that day. But this law-church was established in reality during the reign of Elizabeth, which lasted forty-five years; that is, from 1558 to 1603; and though this church has always kept up its character, even to the present day, its deeds during this long reign are the most remarkable.

"Elizabeth established what she called 'a court of high commission' consisting chiefly of bishops of your lordship's 'most tolerant church,' in order to punish all who did not conform to her religious creed, she being 'the head of the church.' This commission was empowered to have control over the 'opinions' of all men, and to punish all men according to their 'discretion, short of death.' They had power to extort evidence by prison or the rack. They had power to compel a man (on oath) to 'reveal his thoughts,' and to 'accuse his friend, brother, parent, wife, or child;' and this, too, on 'pain of death.' These monsters, in order to 'discover priests,' and to crush the old religion, 'fined, imprisoned, racked,' and did such things as would have made Nero shudder to think of. They sent hundreds to the rack in order to get from them confessions, 'on which confession many of them were put to death.'

"I have not room to make even an enumeration of the deeds of religious persecution during this long and 'tolerant' reign; but I will state a few of them:

1. It was death to make a new Catholic priest within the kingdom.

2. It was death for a Catholic priest to come into the kingdom from abroad.

3. It was death to harbor a Catholic priest coming from abroad.

4. It was death to confess to such a priest.

5. It was death for any priest to say mass.

6. It was death for any one to hear mass.

7. It was death to deny, or not to swear, if called on, that this woman was the head of the church of Christ.

8. It was an offense (punishable by heavy fine) not to go to the Protestant church. This fine was £20 a lunar month, or £250 a year, and of our present money £3,250 a year. Thousands upon thousands refused to go to the law-church; and thus the head of the church sacked thousands upon thousands of estates! The poor conscientious Catholics who refused to go to the 'most tolerant church,' and who had no money to pay fines, were crammed into the jails until the counties petitioned to be relieved from keeping them. They were then discharged, being first publicly whipped, and having their ears bored with a red-hot iron. But this very great 'toleration' not answering the purpose, an act was passed to banish for life all these non-goers to church, if they were not worth twenty pounds, and, in case of return they were to be punished with death.