Church Reform Part 3

Christ being made all, both physical and moral Saviour, was intended to swallow up all the various Pagan honours and ceremonies, every one of which, in part or whole, is still retained in our law-established Church; and so Christ personated both the elements, bread and wine, as his body and blood, as before they had been called body of Ceres and blood of Bacchus.

Be it remembered, that the Pagans had no other ideas of these matters, than those of dramatic effect. The origin of the drama was in and with the religion of the human race. And we must come back or come up to this for a right understanding and use of the Christian Religion.

As food, bread and wine are the best elemental representatives of the body and blood of the human being, and will sustain human life in health and vigour. As bread and wine, they are elements of the physical nature of G.o.d; and when taken into the human body, they transubstantiate in that body, and, in making blood, become the blood which is necessary to sustain the moral G.o.d or reason in the G.o.dly man: so, through the transubstantiation, they do not cease to be the body and blood of Christ. This is what is meant in the matter, and this solves the language of Saint Augustine, cited in the twenty-ninth article, that though the wicked eat the consecrated bread and drink the wine, they do not eat the real body and blood of Christ, because in leading bad lives they do not improve themselves, and so eat and drink but for new condemnation.

The revelation of the mysterious word sin, in the Sacred Scriptures, is generally applicable to the ignorance of the human race; and so of original sin, which is not to be otherwise reasonably understood. Man is born without knowledge, but may, by due care, be made a member of the Church of Christ; that is, may be made a scholar, as the foundation of a wise and good man.

I shrink not from a full and reasonable explanation of every part of the mysterious doctrine of the Christian Church, in this way; and I am prepared to maintain, before all men, that this is the true revelation of the mystery, the true spirit of the letter, both of the Old and New Testament: "the truth as it is in Jesus"--in nature: the truth, by G.o.d.

This beautiful and deeply-woven allegory embraces, in its mystery, almost every known process of nature; and must, in my opinion, have been the labour of the united science of many generations of the wisest men---of truly inspired men. This very doctrine of transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is descriptive, and is in fact and principle, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ in. man.

The bread and wine are swallowed, are buried in the human stomach, there decomposed or transubstantiated, formed into chyle, rise again into blood, and form the spirit of the man: which is, in reality, a death of the body and resurrection of the spirit: and the brain being the chief of the sentient principle, there becomes an ascension into that kingdom of heaven, which it is in a reasonable man, and than; which there can be, by law of nature, no other. The same or similar explanation applies to the first and second birth; the birth of the physical body in its original sin, the second the birth of the spiritual mind or inward man, which is the Lord Christ Jesus. It is a divine riddle, and such is the solution.

The riddle is of larger comprehension than the mere relations of G.o.d to man. It is an astronomical almanack, a written and dramatized picture of the celestial globe; and is, in truth, a most perfect allegory of all known nature, both in physics and morals, in matter and spirit.

There are no such men in the Church now as the writers of the Sacred Scriptures; none even with sufficient knowledge to understand them. We have fallen; yes, we have fallen into the dark ages; and the revelation, when known, is to be the millennium. We have fallen by that Scarlet Wh.o.r.e, the Babylon of Mystery; and have to rise again, by getting a knowledge of Christ, which is not now in the Church, nor yet among any of the Dissenters so called. Nothing can be imagined more anti-Christian in spirit and character, than that which has been called the Christian Church of the last fifteen hundred years.

Christ, in his physical character, personates the sun and solar year, while his twelve disciples personate the twelve months, or the signs of the zodiac; and; in this sense, we have a death, descent, resurrection and ascension, once a year. It is in that sense he performs the miracle of turning the water of the pot of Aquarius (January or Winter) into the wine of Autumn; the story, of course, is told, in the gospel, after the form of a personated narrative of a dramatic incident. So the product of the corn-seed of five small loaves and two fishes, becomes sufficient, in the season, to feed five thousand. The knowledge and ingenuity of the state of mind, that could so construct the allegory, as an harmonious picture of the works of nature, is absolutely wonderful, and has my admiration, even my ejaculatory adoration; and I am not a little proud of my own ingenuity, in having penetrated thus far into so deep and mysterious a subject. It has brought me perfect peace of mind, as to the general system of nature, and left me burning with the desire to acquire more knowledge.

In the Church now existing, is there aught but mystery that can be called its religion? And in mystery unexplained, unrevealed, can there be aught but impudent knavery in the ministration, with general hypocrisy or credulous folly in the reception? I have penetrated the subject so deeply as not to shrink from saying, that the present ministration of the Church is an impudent and mischievous imposture, sanctioned by the custom of antiquity, that neither instructs nor moralizes the people; for, notwithstanding all the pretences to religion, greater immorality than is here found cannot be supposed to exist among a people holding or held together as a community, in daily danger of disruption, and utterly without a code of moral guidance or guides: and this not so much among the poor as among the rich. Even this city is in danger, from its ill-a.s.sorted and ill-conditioned population, of all the disasters that befell Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople or Paris. And almost every village in the Island groans under want, and courts even the desolation of contested revolution for a change. And that very feeling and profession, which is now miscalled the religion of peace, will, from its state of ignorant dissension, only serve to whet the appet.i.te for contention and slaughter, and make another war in the name of G.o.d.

I call upon you to repent, by which I mean reflection. I ask you to be honest, and that, too, because the season of profitable dishonesty is exhausted, and you have wealth enough: save it. It is never too late to reform and do justly; but the later the reform is deferred, the more necessity that the justice be rigid and prompt. I feel that if I had your authority, I could save the Church and its property, not for a farther career of its iniquity and error, but as a n.o.ble inst.i.tution for the good of the people, a sufficient school for all, and a hospital for the infirm; to which, I add, that this, or nothing good, must have been the purpose of its first inst.i.tution. I believe, from what I now see of the foundation of the Christian Religion, that this was the first purpose of its inst.i.tution. Banish the superst.i.tion of the Church, plant the tree of knowledge there, and you will quickly overthrow the morally pestilent Dissenters. I mean, of course, by moral means, by the exhibition of more knowledge and wisdom and utility than they. This would be salvation and reform to every good inst.i.tution in the country; for when knowledge becomes the nation's religion and moral pole-star, everything good is safe, everything evil will vanish before a discussion of its merits. This or blood-thirsty contention is your choice. You may delay for a while; but you cannot otherwise reform. You, by delay, will merely bid the people wait until they are strong enough to combat your authority. Delay will be a challenge to them of physical combat.

What can confer more dignity on the "Dignitaries of the Church" than for the Legislature to say to them:--"Feed the people with knowledge and no longer fill them with superst.i.tion?" If I understand human nature rightly, it has more pleasure in honesty than in dishonesty.

Would the experimental lectures of a Faraday, desecrate the building?

Or a beautifully reflected picture of the heavens and its explanation lessen true devotion? Would moral; science profane the pulpit or injure the congregation? Would the real catechism; and instruction, of children in matters of physical and moral science be of less importance than the parrotlike catechism of the language of the present mystery? There would then be some ground for a bishop's or overseer's examination and confirmation; but what does confirmation now mean? All that I can remember of it is a learn-ing to repeat from memory a prayer and a creed, perhaps a few commandments, which are studied to-day, to be gone through tomorrow, and neglected ever after. Give the people something which they can feel and know to be useful, which they can reduce to practice, and they will emulate each other in flocking to Church at the appointed times. You will then have need of still more churches to receive the increasing population. It will be an emulative pleasure to children, a new delight to parents, a mutual gratification to be at school together in church.

I can say from observation, comparison and experience, that among the most moral of the working people in the metropolis, will be found those who have attended scientific lectures on the Sunday, and who have thereby been taught, to contemn superst.i.tion. You find them not in the house of intoxication; but pa.s.sing soberly in the evening from their homes to the school; and gratifiedly after the lecture from the school to their homes. The greatest error that toryism and superst.i.tion have fallen into has been to suppose that knowledge will make a people disorderly. Bacon's aphorism is true, that superst.i.tion is the _primum mobile_ of sedition, the great agitator; and ignorance the great disorderer of States. Is it not so in Ireland? Is it not your greatest trouble in this island? The wisest act of the life of the late Lord Castlereagh was to propose to send _Paine's Age of Reason_ among the Roman Catholics of Ireland. If it had been so thoroughly done, when he proposed it, they would have been all quiet enough by this time. Real knowledge is the water-cup of sobriety for a people: with that they will seek to rid themselves of nothing but error and evil that cannot be morally defended.

Make the change that I propose in the business and ceremony of the Church, and you instantly make a Christian Religion, eminently Catholic, that will not only annihilate the Dissenters, but convert Jew, Mahometan and Pagan. It will be irresistible to all mankind. They cannot argue against science; but each argues against the superst.i.tion of the other.

Science is the essence of Judaism, but the men called Jews understand it not. It is the foundation of their name, the ground on which they have been considered a chosen people, it is the only sign of G.o.d in man, the only proof of true religion. Science and morals are the whole duty and all needful to man; beyond which he can gain nothing but superst.i.tion, error and evil. Science and morals, then, are the only proper business of the Church. Let us have our National Education in the Church. Let the Church be the fountain of knowledge, and all be there baptized, as a true sign of mental birth and members.h.i.+p of Christ.

Gather together all the property that was ever ecclesiastical; get it back from whoever may hold it; take it out of the hands of the priesthood or the ministers of the Church, t.i.thes and all; and give it into the hands of its true owners, the people, each parish with its separate share, and let the majority of the paris.h.i.+oners make the best use of it they can for ecclesiastical, that is scholastical purposes; and with it, also, provide for their infirm and accidentally poor. This one act of public justice and public good would go far toward settling the affairs of this distracted and unsettled nation, and do injury to no one. Let the State Parliament be also the Church Convocation, which may be well done when there are no superst.i.tious disputes, all will go on smoothly with due and sufficient authority and order, and Britain look forward to happy days. It would be the regeneration of the whole earth in a few years. This is what is meant by the promise of the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as the waters fill the ocean.

Somebody must publicly break through the trammels of superst.i.tion, I have done it as far as a private man can do it; but wo public man in England has yet dared to approach the subject. Be you the first. No other circ.u.mstance could bring you a more imperishable name and fame.

Of wealth you have enough. I ask nothing more than that you fulfil the promise of your administration made to the Electors of Tamworth. If you say, that you did not mean what I express, I shall answer you, that you could have no other meaning. Were I in Parliament, I would carry the subject in spite of prejudice; so strong is my faith in the power of knowledge. I would move, in such a clear and simple way, that a man should not hold up his face to his fellow man after voting against me.

Give us a commission, with power to enquire into this subject. I will be content to wait all the time that justice to all concerned may require.

If religion be any thing more than I make it--mental cultivation from infancy to death, it must be the private business of every man's life and nothing national; like national sobriety, it must be made up of the sobriety of each individual, and cannot rest on social forms and ceremonies. Ceremonial sobriety would be but the mockery of a good principle. I care not how much repenting and proving we have, how much trial, let us but have free, full, and fair enquiry and discussion, in Parliament and out of Parliament. Giving a man knowledge cannot be a disqualification for true religion. Feeding him with science can have no tendency to injure his morals. Occupying his time well can be no source of bad habits. Spurring him on to a moral emulation in the acquisition of equal or more knowledge than his neighbour, will not create ill will toward that neighbour.

The best occupation of time is a question at the very root of individual happiness and national prosperity: I find it everywhere sadly neglected; here in prison, out in church, at the theatre, in public and private business, in families, in pursuit of pleasure, in the army--everywhere.

It can be scarcely said, that there is anything solid in our actions; frivolity prevails everywhere, and is mixed up with our most serious professions. I cannot look back to Pagan times without seeing that they were a superior people to ourselves, and that we have fallen, through the management of our religion and politics, from, rather than risen, above them: we exceed them in nothing but hard and lengthy labour for small wages, insufficient for the necessaries of life. We have not learnt from Seneca, "that he lives longest who has made the best use of his time."

Be it your study to seek to give us some sound moral reforms, and sink party politics in the moral of public good; withdraw all licences from houses of intoxication and late hours; let there be no public resort, in Parliament or elsewhere, after ten at night; if it would be no abridgement of general liberty, confine shop business to limited hours, that the conductors and a.s.sistants may have due time for mental improvement. Some of the young men and women in London shops, bitterly lament the want of more time for rational recreation, for health and improvement. They are among the veriest of slaves in confinement. Let knowledge be once legislatively encouraged, remove all taxes from it, and then a hundred minor arrangements, by legislation, may be made conducive to public good, and a bar be set against injurious, offensive, and slavish compet.i.tion. It is the Tory fear--and, in justice, I will add, Whig fear too--of knowledge that has produced all the present wrongs and evils of the country; for if cunning men have legislated, it has not been done for the public good; because there has not been sufficient public responsibility.

This is all Church as well as State business that I am proposing. The clear distinction as to Church and State is--that the Church means the people, congregated for mental improvement; and the State means the exercise of that mental improvement in their public business: so true it is, that Church must precede and give character to the State.

t.i.thes are a recognition of the original proprietors.h.i.+p of the whole people in the land; a rent paid under that consideration, appropriate-able to the sustenance of the poor, and the mental improvement of all.

Church Property is the property of the whole people who const.i.tute the Church; and not, as now, of the ministers, who profess to be, and ought to be, the servants of the Church. At present, the servants are set above, defy, and tyrannize over the masters. All public officers in Church and State, from the King to the Beadle, should be subject to the periodical election of an intelligent people: without this, there can be no just and dignified authority--no proper public officers,--all will be tyranny, corruption, and inefficiency!

In thus stating my subject, I am not insensible to the state of mind and conflicting interests with which you have to deal: but you are in a dilemma, from which nothing but wisdom and honesty can relieve you; every false or inefficient step will weaken you; any attempt to patch the holes made by Time in the mystery of the Church, will be like the tinker's work of mending one and making two: it is rusty and rotten, and must be knocked to pieces and burnt up, to produce the brilliant revelation from its ashes! There can be no mixture of the mystery with the revelation. The latter is a spirit that will explode the former; and, if you be a good Christian, let me tell you that the advent of the revelation will be the fulfilment of the promise of the gospel. We have had nothing but the mystery, nothing but the dark ages of ignorance and superst.i.tion: the mystery is not Christianity; the revelation alone, which we have not had, is Christianity. The mystery and the revelation are as unlike each other, as the grossest superst.i.tion is unlike reason.

What a delightful state of society do I see before me, when the watchword of all shall be--GET KNOWLEDGE! The Bible abounds with this exhortation; tells us all our disorders are lack of knowledge; and yet we have been through centuries, almost through millenia, studiously and tyrannically keeping each other blind and ignorant. This has been the reign of the devil, Anti-Christianity, and not Christianity. When the portico of each Church-build-ing shall bear the inscription of--KNOW THYSELF, AND ENTER HERE TO GET KNOWLEDGE, the communicant will see a friend in his minister, and the minister will strive to raise up wisdom in his communicant.

Now what do we see? Studied ignorance, and suppression of knowledge with both: each ashamed to look in the face of the other. And wherever a man advances beyond the existing state of mind, and publishes his sentiments, he is persecuted as an outcast, and unrelentingly subjected to prison-discipline, since the law has ceased to make the "offence"

capital.

The unrevealed mystery of religion has been the curse and moral devil of the human race. A statesman cannot be wise and honest without setting his face against it, and seeking to rid of it the minds of his countrymen. With it, a state can have no permanent peace, nor can statesmans.h.i.+p be an honour. If you are not master of this subject, I am; if you will not press it upon the attention of the country, I will; and I have not a doubt, but that, by its superior moral power, it will enable me to succeed you in office. I invite you to take the task in your hands, and I will be content to be anything, to remain in prison, if this great reform be but put in motion while I live.

It is simply to begin to teach the people something useful in the Church, to give them useful knowledge, as easy in practicability as it is for a ripe scholar to become a schoolmaster to uninstructed youth. We have teachers all prepared for the purpose in the Clergy themselves. You have now to deal with a suspected and not a respected clergy. Though the great ma.s.s of the people do not understand where the fault theologically lies, yet they have instinctive discernment enough to see, that the relation of their condition to that of the Clergy is not founded in honesty and social utility. As sure as I, who see through the whole subject, the people feel that they are not fairly dealt with by the Clergy; and thus feeling, with such a Clergy, there can be no social peace. The feeling will increase as they get knowledge on the subject, and I have thrown that knowledge into the market, in defiance of all the power you have possessed or can possess; and that knowledge you cannot withdraw from the market of human intellect: the whole people will get at it in time.

Your boast is now that of being chief or leader of the CONSERVATIVES.

This is not what the nation wants. It needs purgation of error, abuse and wrong, and a restoration of all the first principles of its Inst.i.tutions. It is a fair question to put to you and your party, if you know the first principles of the Inst.i.tutions of this country? You certainly have seen none of them in practice; for your scholars.h.i.+p and administration have been full of error and wickedness. As I told Sir Allan Park, that the Church had dissented from itself, so I now tell you, that every Inst.i.tution in this country that is a thousand years old in name, has dissented from itself, and has, in fact, been changed diabolically--which means directly opposite, or from good to evil; and there never was a country whose cup of iniquity was more filled.

Conservation means preservation, and there is nothing in the present Inst.i.tutions of this country but public wrongs and private abuses to be preserved. The name of a Destructive is far more honourable, in the present state of the country; the only name indeed that can be honourable, if it be interpreted, an intended destruction of error and abuses, of which the country is brim-full, and the fermentation pouring over.

I dislike all these names. They are all dishonestly used. They form no real distinction between man and man. The word Radical has always been to me an offensive word; the more particularly so as I have seen some very bad and ignorant men making a great noise under it and about it. We want knowledge and honesty to make it practicable, and no names by which to be distinguished: such names spring from ignorance and dishonesty.

The origin of our ancient Inst.i.tutions has its foundation laid in the moral of law springing from the law of morals; and the restoration would be easy, if existing authority would resign itself to the change, or if it could be overpowered and made so to do. One or the other of these changes is necessary, before anything can be done, and the first the wisest and to be preferred. I believe there was a time when they existed without a mixture of any kind of deception practised upon the people, and that is just what I desire to see restored; and which, I am sure, from the growth of knowledge and criticism, is the one thing needful to keep the country in a state of inward peace.

Knowledge is the only spiritual interest of the people: it should be fostered, promoted and increased in the Church, so as to be equalized as far as possible among the ma.s.s or greater number. The ignorance of the people has been an excuse for many an act of hypocrisy, deception and tyranny: its continuance is now the fault of the Church, and of those who have its direction. Cunning cannot invent an a.s.sumption that any qualification can better serve the spiritual and temporal interests of the people than knowledge. Their degree of knowledge is the all that is spiritual or of good within them. It is an affair, too, where honest brokerage is scarcely probable; because no check can be kept upon it.

What, therefore, is not to be defended as knowledge is not of G.o.d but of the devil. In that sense, I arraign the whole Church as now const.i.tuted, and challenge it to stand a trial. I fear it is now too corrupt even to be militant.

Let us suppose you about to attempt a reconciliation with the present Dissenters, as to the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church. To please the advocates of adult baptism, you must exchange the infant for adult baptism, and then you will displease those who are not pleased with adult baptism. To please the Unitarians, you must give up the doctrine of the Trinity; and then you will displease all the Trinitarians. What is to be done to satisfy the Wesleyans or Methodists? They will have irregular prayers and preachings, which are contrary to the discipline of the Church. What is to be done with the Swedenborgians, the Muggletonians, and Southcotians? How can you furnish spirit and noise enough for the Unknown Tongues of the Irvingites? And what but the spirit of silence will conciliate the Quakers? All of them will require the abolition of your bishop.r.i.c.ks and other offices, while none of them will object, and all will claim if a chance offer, to divide the Church Property among them. The spirit of dissent, in matters of religion, prevailing in this country, is nothing more than an infectious mental disease: with it, there is no reason mixed. The moment it becomes a profit to lead such a congregation, men of comparative talent as to capability will take it up and lead; and thus the thing has gone on to confusion and mental distraction, because the Church was not in a condition to defend itself and set a better example. You cannot please one sect of the Dissenters, without increasing the displeasure of the other: and thus your task is hopeless, on any other ground than that which I propose, to beat them in the superior communication of knowledge.

On the other hand, let us suppose the Church of England to begin to reveal the mystery of Jesus Christ, which I define, and maintain, to consist of a cultivation of the human mind, with all possible knowledge and reason; all other Churches must instantly bow to its superiority.

The effect among men throughout the earth would be wonderful and intellectually electric. It is the only system that can be imagined to be a Catholic Christianity, and the very thing that is meant by the word Catholic, something alike suited to the welfare of every man, and which presents the principle of a moral equality, which is the only foundation for true liberty, and the only guarantee for an improvement of public morals; one that would make the Church an attraction to the wisest as well as to the most ignorant of men; those as teachers, these as learners.

We may carry the idea farther; and as in the present state of mind, millions in Europe and America are attached to an idea of the superiority of the Church authorities at Rome, through ignorance and custom I grant, but not less attached,--I would, to humour that conceit and turn it to good, consent to make the Pope of Rome the centre of communication from all parts of the earth for discovered knowledge, as it would be desirable to have such a central recipient and fountain to give it forth again in the best possible manner. This would accelerate the reconciliation of the dissenting race, without an idea of dishonourable submission on the part of an individual. Indeed, the perfection of my proposition is, that no man can feel injury or degradation in the change. It is an overthrow of nothing, but simply the development and better understanding of the mystery that has existed since the world of human intellect began: the revelation of that mystery; and, consequently, the completion or carrying out of the true Christian scheme.

It is not to be expected, that, in a pamphlet letter, I can do more than briefly notice a few leading points of this important subject; but I am quite prepared to extend it through volumes, and shall go on so to do. I am quite prepared to meet or be one of any commission on the subject.

I would willingly put my life upon the hazard of verifying my present views of original Christianity. It would have been done in former ages, had the printing press existed. Its doing now is consequent on the gradual power of criticism which the Press has brought with it into existence. It is the truth, and must prevail. It is the G.o.d in man.

It is the Church of Christ, against which the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail. They have certainly prevailed against every other existing Church, and the whole of the past is a wreck.

When speaking of the original Christian Religion, or of the revelation of the mystery, I wish to be understood, as not meaning that the revelation was ever before preached or openly taught to the human race on any part of the earth. We have no evidence of it beyond the reasoning and moral precepts of the philosophical world, which were not put forth as a scheme or system of religion. But when it is confessedly the fact, that something called a Christian scheme has been talked about for eighteen hundred years; and when we can trace the fac simile of that something, even in its whole nomenclature, principle and practice, through Greeks and Romans, Persians and Hindoos, up to the Celtic Druids and earliest known universal wors.h.i.+p of Budha, the first personation of Jesus Christ now on record;--I mean, that the mystery has been the only general public part of it, and that the knowledge of the revelation was confined to the learned cla.s.s and ancient mysteries of all countries, was the esoteric doctrine of the initiated into those mysteries; and the breaking up of those mysteries, from the time of Alexander to the Augustan era, was the cause of the first publication in writing of the books or traditions handed down through the agency of those secret and sacred a.s.sociations, bearing the mystery only on its surface and by the letter; and that after the mystery was so published, the very ministers of it lost the revelation, which is what the Freemasons profess to be in search of, the lost word, the word that I have found and now declare, that the salvation by Jesus Christ is only to be found in the increasing cultivation of the human mind with all attainable knowledge; that the true wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d has no other meaning, the root of the word wors.h.i.+p being to cultivate, and the field to be cultivated the human mind; that repentance is reflection for improvement; the second birth is the birth of mind, as distinguished from physical birth or birth of body, the one describing the man Adam, the other the G.o.d Christ; and that the kingdom of Heaven is to be established upon a general knowledge and practice of this revelation, is to be upon this earth, in successive generations of the human race, and not reasonably to be sought under any other speculation, calculation or hope. These are not only possibilities but probabilities, and immediate practicabilities, if the existing Devil will be pleased to retire: if not, we must resist him, and, as we are promised, on that condition, he will flee.

Such is the foundation of a Catholic Church, from which there can be no dissent; for what is understood cannot be dissented from: the existing dissent is ignorance dissenting from ignorance. In the common use of the word, I am not a Dissenter; but a trier, prover, teacher, revealer of that which is the true meaning of the mystery that has been through ignorance the cause of the dissent. The personation of Deity in the written mystery has been nothing more than a drama prepared for stage effect, which, to the initiated only, would be matter of instruction or refreshment of memory. The ancient mystery meant a play, a drama, in our modern sense; but was first called a mystery, then a morality; was first private, and afterwards made common to the public, and is now for the first time revealed to the general understanding, through the instrumentality of the printing press.

In my lecturings and discussions, both in town and country, I find this revelation has a great charm among all cla.s.ses who have good temper and good manners to hear patiently. It is pure reason, pure knowledge, pure translation of language; it clashes with no other man's knowledge, and I have not found the man who can raise an argument against it. Of its final and complete success in regenerating the world, I have not a doubt; it is only a question of time. It is now a question, if you and the Parliament will look at it. I know you well enough to know, that you will not like its propounder; but who else has been ripe and bold enough to do it? Who else deserves the honour of being its propounder; but I, its honest martyr and zealous student, through a ten years'

imprisonment? I call you to witness my fidelity in this matter. I was your prisoner through four years; you sanctioned the two years I had suffered before you came to the Home Department: you sanctioned my imprisonment by Lord Melbourne, through thirty-two months: and, by virtue of your office, you are sanctioning my present imprisonment. I do not say this in anger. I am retaliating upon you, as I would have you retaliate upon the Dissenters, by superior knowledge. If you do not now or early take me by the hand, I shall drive you out of the field of politics, and all who may succeed of your disposition.

It is not to be denied, that there are moral exhortations put forth in every Church; the mystery would not pa.s.s on the people without them. But it is a truth, that, in all of them, morals are treated as a secondary consideration; and in some of the madder dissenting Churches, are counted as of no weight in the question of religion. The truth, as it is in Jesus, is, that morals are every thing as to practice, and knowledge with succeeding reason, the principles of speculation, the WORD to be sought, or the prize to be gained, the crown of glory, the spiritual and immortal life, which is emphatically the language of Saint John's Gospel; and this is the totality of the root and principle of the Christian Religion, the promotion of which is the only proper business of the ministration in the Church. No mystery: down with mystery. It is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or confessing to know, nothing. There is no Christ in the mystery. "How can we reason, but from what we know?" The knowledge must be first. Nothing precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. Nothing is required after; but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. Unknown worlds, unknown spirits, unknown matter, is nothing to us, until the knowledge is obtained. Our knowledge is our all, in moral power, and we can have nothing of a religious nature but our knowledge. Superst.i.tious fears, we know to be the property or sensation of ignorance and misconception. We are morally responsible for nothing but an improper use of our knowledge. It is wickedness to teach ignorance any other doctrine.

My Christian proposition for the Reform of the Church harmonizes with all science, and clashes with nothing but positive error and wicked policy; and I venture to tell you, that you can find no other scheme to produce the same effect, and to give satisfaction to the present and to all future generations of men, to make the Church "meet the respect and affections of the people."

Each paltry sect now considers its tenets as a Catholic Faith; but the truth is, as Dr. Oeddes well observed, "that what is Christian is Catholic, and what is Catholic must be Christian;" but then, this follows, that neither Christianity nor Catholicity will bear a union with the word dissent, unless the dissenter be an intelligent corrector at the same time: they are adverse to every admissible idea of undiscussed dissent. All standing dissent is of the devil; while Christianity and Catholicity are of G.o.d and Heaven. The multiplication table, the elements of Euclid, the doctrines of the Trinity and Transubstantiation, the proved a.n.a.lysis and composition of all known substances, are Catholic doctrines, from which nothing but ignorance can dissent. The whole of the present Church Ritual is a ma.s.s of words that conceal a truth; but that truth is not known in the Church, cannot therefore be used or wors.h.i.+pped, and the words can only be deemed the lumber of the memory: treating man as man treats a parrot, teaching him constantly to exclaim "pretty Poll," without giving him understanding whom or what "Poll" personates.

If I were to sit in Church through a morning or evening service, I should have a perfect understanding of all the words used, and, consequently, should be wors.h.i.+pping according to the limit of THE WORD there presented; because I have in me the spirit of revelation.