i never read hume on miracles; i did not need to do so; but i have always thought that the man must be very difficult to please who could not be thoroughly satisfied with the one—the unutterably great one—the miracle of the universe: made up, indeed, of millions of other miracles of its component parts, which will for ever excite the astonishment of reasoning creatures, and draw forth their adoration to the great author of the whole, as long as it shall please him to gift them with the power to do so.
those who think for themselves, and can believe in one god, and reverence, adore, and worship him, must ever feel disgusted to dwell on the endless modes of faith with which mankind have been pestered and stultified for ages past, and also feel grieved to think upon the evils—the persecutions—the wars—and the miseries, these have from time to time inflicted upon the half-civilized world. brother has been set in enmity against brother, neighbour against neighbour, and nation against nation, fully charged with vengeance to destroy each other, and by which rivers of blood have been spilt. jesus christ, i believe, never said one word that could be construed into any such meaning, or to countenance any such doings; neither did any man possessed of the spirit of the christian religion and its attendant humanity ever view all this otherwise than with horror.
it would be a tedious and an irksome task to give even a list of all the religions, as they are called, from the days of paganism, down to the present time. truth long struggled with error, before system after system passed away. notwithstanding the exertions of power to keep them up, they exist now only in story. but do the laws of nature ever alter? do the sun, moon, and stars shine in any other way than they did to the votaries of jupiter? do the human passions operate in any other manner than they did thousands of years ago? no, indeed! let us, then, rejoice that true religion is independent of human caprice; it is founded upon the immutable principles of truth, reason, and common sense, and therefore must be durable as nature itself. it is not vague and mutable: it is acquired by experience, not merely the creature of chance, habit, and prejudice: it is capable of demonstration like the principles of mathematics, and its necessity is evinced by the very nature of man in society. there is a rational and an irrational belief, and how can we distinguish the one from the other without reference to the reason of the thing? if reason be abandoned, then sense and nonsense are just the same: religion becomes a chaos, and faith has no merit. i therefore believe that no faith can be acceptable to god which is not grounded on reason; nothing but truth brings us lasting and solid advantage.
but it would appear that the teachers of mankind, in this important concern, have too seldom been actuated by these pure principles, and the “caring for men’s souls” has been made only a secondary consideration. their leading objects have been the establishment of a system of revenue and aggrandisement; and, to ensure the accomplishment of these ends, they began with children, well knowing that, when creeds and catechisms were once instilled into the infant mind, they would grow with their growth, and would acquire a firm-rooted footing; for, when early impressions and prejudices are once fixed in the mind by ignorance, they can seldom or ever be eradicated. in this state, these victims to deception might have been made pagans in india, mahometans in turkey, or disciples of confucius in china: or, have been moulded into any of the various sects of misled christians which have, like wens and carbuncles, often disfigured the comely face of religion, and the pure and plain doctrines of christianity.
the next important step taken by these teachers, was to get this their religion, of whatever kind it might be, interwoven deeply into all the various governments of the different countries under their influence; but, preparatory to their religion becoming firmly established, the heads of it, who were called “saints” and “fathers of the church,” were gathered together to judge and determine upon the creeds and doctrines which were to be obeyed. some of them might, indeed, be actuated by good and others of them by impure motives, but it always appeared to me like their own “act of parliament” to oblige people to offer to omnipotence that kind of worship only which they had been pleased to dictate, and which by many is considered as arrogant presumption. but, when these doctrines were thus interwoven into all the different governments, they then became “part and parcel of the law of the land;” and, thus fenced, barricaded, and fortified, few ever dared to say that anything these laws promulgated was wrong; and, if any man whose mind happened to rise superior to superstition, ventured to publish his opinions of any of them, to show that they were absurd, then racks, tortures, inquisitions, and death, or fine and imprisonment, with attendant ruin, stared him in the face in this world and threatenings of eternal misery in the next. it is thus that the free exercise of the understanding, and the full use of all the means of advancing in religion, virtue, and knowledge, is checked and debarred; for, unless the free use of writing and publishing the well-digested opinions and plans of the lovers of mankind is allowed to go on without risk, all public improvement, which is or ought to be the chief end of every government to promote, is for want of this liberty, taken away. but in this business, government itself being entangled and bound by oaths to support present establishments, may perhaps be afraid to meddle or countenance any writing tending to a reform, or that may have the appearance of militating against this order of things.
but to dwell on this, the gloomy side of the picture, without noticing the other side, may be unfair; for the framers of unaccountable creeds set mankind a-thinking generally upon these and many other matters, which perhaps they would not otherwise have done; and, besides this, it is on all hands allowed that the monks and friars of old, amidst all their superstitions, preserved in their monasteries many records and much valuable knowledge, which, without their care, would have been lost to the world. add to these, their charities to the destitute and their constant best endeavours to teach the grossly ignorant, and to reclaim the equally grossly wicked, part of the community, and in examining impartially into the change effected by the reformation,—it amounts only to a lessening or setting aside a portion of the bigotry and superstition by which the old doctrines were enforced. although one may lament that a more rational view of religion, and its very important concerns, had not been fully contemplated upon, yet even under its guidance, and with all its defects before the mighty change of the reformation was effected, it would appear that the moral conduct of the common people was generally good, and they were in some respects happier and better off than they have ever been since. the romish clergy, or priests, in those times, though they took the tithes (according to an old jewish custom), yet these were more usefully and justly divided than they are in the present time; for they in their day took only a third part of these to themselves, and the other two-thirds were expended in building and repairing their churches and supporting all the poor. there was then no church cesses, nor poor laws, nor the sickening, harassing, and continual gathering of the enormous sums of the poor-rate.
the established clergy are also bound, in a similar way, by old laws and oaths which have been imposed upon them, to swear to their belief in a certain string of creeds before they are allowed to enter upon the clerical office; and all this, backed and encouraged by the lures of enormous stipends or livings attached to their church, which is furthermore made sure of by these livings being, as it were, held out as a provision for the unprovided part of the younger branches of the families of all the poor gentry of the land. thus situated, any alteration or improvement may be looked for in vain, while self-interest and pride continue so powerfully to guide the actions of mankind.
time, indeed, may bring about wonders, and the example and influence of north america can perhaps alone be looked up to to lead the way as the regenerator of the old world. there they have none of the old protecting laws, nor the old prejudices of europe, asia, and south america, to contend against, and must see the errors these have fallen into, and may move forward upon clear ground. “the rites and ceremonies of all nations” will serve them as a kind of text, and also as a beacon and a guide-post, to show them the way they ought to pursue, so as to steer clear of the absurdities—to say no worse of them—by which mankind have been so long led, hoodwinked, into so many egregious follies.
it must, furthermore, be observed and conceded on behalf of the present religious establishment of this enlightened and comparatively happy land, notwithstanding the spots and blemishes which bar the approach to rationality and perfection, that the regular clergy, with few exceptions, and taken as a whole—from their learning, their acquirements, and their piety—are real and valuable ornaments to our country, without whose help and the example they set, it is to be feared the people would soon retrograde into barbarism, or, into what is nearly as bad—fanaticism. to keep down or prevent this latter growing evil from rising to a height will require the utmost exertions of the regular clergy, as well as the united wisdom and prudence of the legislature to discountenance it. to attempt using force would only serve to unite its votaries and increase their numbers; for as long as ignorance is stalking abroad, multitudes will be found in every country who see things with an obliquity of intellect, and are thus ready prepared to adopt anything new, however stupid; and the reveries of johanna southcote, and the ravings of ranters, do not appear to them sufficiently absurd.
