CHAPTER XLI. TENDENCIES OF THE TWO SYSTEMS IN REGARD TO DOGMATISM,

PERSECUTION AND ECCLESIASTICAL TYRANNY.

It has been shown that the Augustinian system, teaching as it does man’s depraved nature and destitution of any principles of right guidance in his own mind, makes him wholly dependent not only on revelations from his Creator, but on infallible interpreters.

Thus we find that wherever this system became dominant there has coëxisted the claim that _the people_ are not to decide, each one for himself, what are the teachings of reason, experience and revelation as to truth and duty. Instead of this, first it was popes and councils, in which the laity had no voice; next, as among the Puritans, it was the church, including both the clergy and the regenerated portion of their flocks.

From this resulted religious persecutions, in this manner: Men are to obey God as their first duty. _The church_ is God’s mouth‐piece to interpret his commands to mankind. If men refuse to obey God, speaking through his church, they must be forced to do so by pains and penalties. And as in view of eternal happiness and eternal misery, all earthly interests are as nothing, every temporal consideration must be put out of account. Moreover, whoever leads men to disobey the church and thus to disobey God, and so to peril not only their own eternal welfare, but that of others, commits a greater crime than is done by violating any human ordinances. Therefore, the heaviest penalties should be employed to enforce obedience to the church, and the church must take precedence of the civil government.

Thus it came to pass that the more sincere, conscientious and benevolent a person was, while holding these views, the more surely would he become a persecutor.

The pages of history give many mournful illustrations of this truth. One of the most striking will be here introduced.

Isabella of Spain, by whose generosity this western world was discovered, was one of the most gentle, conscientious, benevolent and lovely characters that ever adorned a throne.

She was trained to believe the church to be the representative of God on earth, and her father confessor, Torquemada, the originator of the Inquisition, was the guide of her conscience. By his commands the Inquisition reared its horrid dungeons. By his counsel the industrious, cultivated and chivalrous Moors, the most useful of all her subjects, were driven from their native soil. By his commands the Jews were brought to the cruel alternative of giving up their religion or relinquishing all that made life dear. And thus the historian narrates this dreadful tale of religious persecution:

“The experiment of conversion was tried upon the Jews, and it utterly and totally failed. In the first place, their position in Christian society was a source of continual discussion. ‘If we admit them to public offices, we have gained nothing,’ said the mercantile classes. ‘If we exclude them,’ said the clergy, ‘what motive is held out for the rest to join us?’ But as a religious experiment, the failure was even more complete. The fathers were nominal converts, and nominal converts the children continued to be. Ostentatiously they attended mass; but in their own houses their Sabbath was kept, their ritual was read, their psalms were sung. Meantime, intercourse and intermarriage with Christians became more fatally easy than it had been before. Shunned by the middle classes, they intermarried with the ’blue blood’ of the nobility, they entered the priesthood, and ascended the highest steps of the Catholic hierarchy. Nay, they became, more than once, inquisitors, and wielded against their foes with cynical hatred the terrors of the Holy Office. Of the Inquisition there is no space to speak here;(21) sufficient to say that the ‘New Christians’ were the chief cause of its institution, and that during the eighteen years that Torquemada held office, ten thousand persons were burned alive.

“But two thirds of the Jews of Spain had remained unconverted; and with them the Inquisition had nothing to do; for they were under special laws and under royal protection. But Torquemada had not forgotten them. Working on the pride of Ferdinand, on the conscience of Isabella, he persuaded them to sign the celebrated Edict of Exile. They were to leave Spain in three months. They were to take neither silver nor gold with them. If it pleased God to change their hearts, the church would most willingly receive them.

“Ruinous alike to banisher and banished, this edict had cost a struggle. Isaac Abarbenel, wealthy, learned, high in royal favor, rushed into the queen’s audience‐chamber, on hearing what till then had been carefully concealed from his nation, threw himself at her feet, and doubtless won her over for the moment. To Ferdinand he offered thirty thousand ducats. But, in the wavering of debate, Torquemada appeared suddenly. ‘Judas,’ he said, ‘sold his master for thirty pieces. Your Majesties, it seems, want thirty thousand. Here He is; take Him; and what ye do, do quickly!’ Dashing a crucifix on the table, he left them. The omen was clear, and the die was cast.

“To the Jews one road of deliverance was still left. To renounce the outward garb of their religion, never again to pass the threshold of a synagogue, never to chant a Hebrew hymn nor keep a Hebrew Sabbath; to change every household custom, to break all the rules of life, dear from the nursery and clung to on the bed of death; to repeat a false creed, to enter an idolatrous temple, to kneel down with God’s enemies;—this road was open, though treading it they would have trampled on their fathers’ tombs. Yet, on the other hand, thousands had taken that course; and would tell them that strict adherence to the laws of the land they lived in, abstinence from all that might offend, performance of harmless superstitions, bowing down for a season in the house of Rimmon, that this was a course plainly marked out by Providence. The loss, too, that they would suffer in exile was immense; and we must estimate this loss before we can estimate the worth of those who chose to suffer.

“We have seen the Jews of France leave it, enter it, leave it again, and count the value of their sojourn at exactly the price at which reëntrance could be bought. It was a market‐stall, a field for acquisition; but it was not the seat of Jewish learning, it was not the resting place of their fathers for many generations.

“Now Spain was something more to them than this. It was no foreign soil, passed and repassed with the indifference of a stranger. They had lived there for twelve hundred years. They had seen the Teutonic forest‐creeds moulded and melted into the new faith of Rome. They had seen the Ishmaelite sweep that faith away. By him they had been welcomed as brothers. With him they had lit the lamp of science when all the world was dark. Then they had seen the Cross rise from the northern mountains, and the Crescent wane and wane before it. By the kings of Christian Spain their worth had been acknowledged; they had fostered their trade; they had called them to their councils; they had befriended and loved them. Persecution and jealousy had driven many of their brethren to accept another creed; but the new Christians were Jews still; they had married their daughters to the proudest nobles of a race where the peasant was proud; and not a duke in all Spain could despise them without despising his own mother’s blood. Spain, too, was the land where Jewish wisdom had unfolded and blossomed. Their physicians and their astronomers were the first in Europe. Their poets and their philosophers were eminent among their nation. The psalms of Jehuda Halevi were sung in the synagogues of the Rhine. Aben Esra had eclipsed the fame of the great Eastern school of Pombeditha; above all, Spain claimed the son of Maimon, the great prophet of the Exile, famed from the Seine to the Euphrates as the second Moses.

“Such, besides escape from utter ruin, were the temptations to apostacy. And those who issued the decree fully hoped that apostacy would have been its result. Every means was taken. ‘In the public squares, in the synagogues, Catholic preachers thundered forth invective against the Hebrew heresy.’ They might thunder—they were not heard.

“ ‘Come,’ said their priests and elders, ‘let us strengthen ourselves in our faith and in the teachings of our God, against the voice of the oppressor, and the scorn of the enemy. If they destroy us—well; if they will let us live—well; but we will not depart from the Covenant, neither make our hearts froward; but we will go forth in the name of the Lord our God, who saved our fathers from Egypt, and brought them through the Red Sea.’

“The spirit of Moses and of Joshua rested on the aged rabbis, and their words prevailed. Few in number and bold in cowardice were those who yielded. They made ready for this second Exodus where no Canaan glistened in the distance. Forced to sell their possessions in three months, forbidden to sell them for gold, they were glad to exchange large houses or estates for an ass or mule, or for such trifling articles of travel as the wish to be first at the spoiling might induce purchasers to supply.

“Eastward, westward, northward—to Africa, to Portugal, to Italy and the Levant,—half a million Jews went forth. Eighty thousand sought shelter in Portugal, but did not find it. Thousands fell into the hands of the barbarians of Fez. They were sold for slaves; they were left to starve on desert isles; their bodies, yet living, were ripped open for the hidden gold. Thus writes Rabbi Josef:

“ ‘And there were among them who were cast into the isles of the sea, a Jew and his old father, fainting from hunger, begging bread; and there was none to break unto them in a strange country. And the man went and sold his little son for bread, to restore the soul of the old man; and when he returned to his father, he found him dead; and he rent his clothes. And he went back to the baker to take his son; but the baker would not give him back; and he cried out with a sore and bitter cry for his son, but there was none to deliver. All this befell us in the year Rabbim—for the sons of the desolate are “Many”—yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant. Hasten to help us, O Lord! For thy sake we are killed all the day; we are counted as sheep appointed for the slaughter. Make haste to help us, O God of our salvation.’

“Or listen to the chronicler of Genoa, who saw them as they drifted eastward:

“ ‘This expulsion,’ he says, ‘seemed to me at first a praiseworthy act, done in the cause and for the honor of God. Yet, when we remember that they were not brute beasts after all, but men made by God, surely it must be owned that some little cruelty was shown. Their woes were very piteous to see. The first who starved were the infants at the breast; then the mothers, carrying their dead children till they fell down and died with them. Many perished of cold and of squalor. Unused to the sea, countless numbers died from sickness; many were drowned by the sailors for their wealth; the poor, who could not otherwise pay their passage, sold their children. Lean, pale, with eyes deep‐sunken, like ghosts from the dead, hardly moving enough to show that they were alive, they came into our city to find shelter for three days; for our ancient laws forbade a longer stay. Yet for the repair of their ships, and for health’s sake, a short respite was granted. They were allowed to live on the Mole, while they made ready for their long voyage eastward. Thus the winter passed, and many of them died. The spring came, and ulcers broke out that had been hitherto kept under by the cold, and all that year there was a plague in that city.’ ”

This mournful narrative exhibits one of the most sublime examples of religious faith and conscientious self‐sacrifice to what was deemed truth and duty in the persecuted. At the same time, when the avaricious Ferdinand relinquished thirty thousand ducats, and the tender and benevolent Isabella turned a deaf ear to such prayers and sufferings from her people, there can be no doubt that conscience ruled the persecutors also. Even Torquemada himself may have been acting from the most conscientious and benevolent motives in all the disastrous influences he brought to bear on his royal mistress.

This passage of history also teaches that honesty, and sincerity, and conscientiousness will not avail without a _knowledge of the truth_. Nay, more; had these persecutors been less conscientious, the natural instincts of humanity or personal interests would have mitigated or withheld the cruel doom.

It is in this light that we are enabled, in spite of their mistakes in opinions, to look upon theologians as among the noblest sufferers and confessors for what they believed to be truth. From the time of Augustine and Pelagius to the present day nothing can be more clear than that the combatants on both sides were actuated by a sincere love to God and to man, each believing, as sincerely as did Saul of Tarsus, that in these conflicts they were verily doing God service, and that all they were called to suffer was for the true church of God and the salvation of their fellow‐men.

But the main purpose for which this record of history now appears is to illustrate the natural tendency of the Augustine theory in leading to dogmatism, persecution and ecclesiastical tyranny.

The tendency of the common‐sense system can not be illustrated by history, for unfortunately Christendom has never yet had an opportunity to test by a fair experiment its true tendencies. We can only imagine what would be the results were all ecclesiastical restraints and teachings based on the Augustine theory removed from our pulpit ministries, our hymns and prayers, our religious literature, and, most of all, from long established habits of thought and feeling.

Then all our religious organizations would have for their leading aim, not to maintain some outward rite or modes of organization, but to promote free discussion for the discovery of truth and harmonious coöperation to promote happiness according to the laws of God.

Then the ministry of the Word would be committed to men distinguished not only by natural endowments, acquired knowledge and skill in debate, but also ensamples to their flocks in the virtues of humility, meekness, and a gentle and teachable spirit. Then the points that would divide men into parties would be chiefly _practical_ questions, so that where no agreement in opinion could be secured, each would peaceably try a fair experiment and eventually bring the results forward for the general good.

Then every individual would be free to protest against all that he believes to be injurious and wrong, in regard to individuals, to the family, to the church and to the state, and be met in his efforts as a benefactor rather than an opposer or an enemy.