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It is perfectly true that it would be a very good thing if all the members of
all the associations in the world were men of sound religious views. We have no
doubt that a good Christian will be under the guidance of Christian principles,
in his conduct as director of a canal company or steward of a charity dinner. If
he were, to recur to a case which we have before put, a member of a stage-coach
company, he would, in that capacity, remember that "a righteous man regarded the
life of his beast." But it does not follow that every association of men must,
therefore, as such association, profess a religion. It is evident that many
great and useful objects can be attained in this world only by co-operation. It
is equally evident that there cannot be efficient co-operation, if men proceed
on the principle that they must not co-operate for one object unless they agree
about other objects. Nothing seems to us more beautiful or admirable in our
social system than the facility with which thousands of people, who perhaps
agree only on a single point, can combine their energies for the purpose of
carrying that single point. We see daily instances of this. Two men, one of them
obstinately prejudiced against missions, the other president of a missionary
society, sit together at the board of a hospital, and heartily concur in
measures for the health and comfort of the patients. Two men, one of whom is a
zealous supporter and the other a zealous opponent of the system pursued in
Lancaster's schools, meet at the Mendicity Society, and act together with the
utmost cordiality. The general rule we take to be undoubtedly this, that it is
lawful and expedient for men to unite in an association for the promotion of a
good object, though they may differ with respect to other objects of still
higher importance.
It will hardly be denied that the security of the persons and property of men is
a good object, and that the best way, indeed the only way, of promoting that
object, is to combine men together in certain great corporations which are
called States. These corporations are very variously, and, for the most part
very imperfectly organized. Many of them abound with frightful abuses. But it
seems reasonable to believe that the worst that ever existed was, on the whole,
preferable to complete anarchy.
Now, reasoning from analogy, we should say that these great corporations would,
like all other associations, be likely to attain their end most perfectly if
that end were kept singly in view: and that to refuse the services of those who
are admirably qualified to promote that end, because they are not also qualified
to promote some other end, however excellent, seems at first sight as
unreasonable as it would be to provide that nobody who was not a fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries should be a governor of the Eye Infirmary; or that nobody
who was not a member of the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews
should be a trustee of the Literary Fund.
It is impossible to name any collection of human beings to which Mr. Gladstone's
reasonings would apply more strongly than to an army. Where shall we find more
complete unity of action than in an army? Where else do so many human beings
implicitly obey one ruling mind? What other mass is there which moves so much
like one man? Where is such tremendous power entrusted to those who command?
Where is so awful a responsibility laid upon them? If Mr. Gladstone has made
out, as he conceives, an imperative necessity for a State Religion, much more
has he made it out to be imperatively necessary that every army should, in its
collective capacity, profess a religion. Is he prepared to adopt this
consequence?
On the morning of the thirteenth of August, in the year 1704, two great
captains, equal in authority, united by close private and public ties, but of
different creeds, prepared for a battle, on the event of which were staked the
liberties of Europe. Marlborough had passed a part of the night in prayer, and
before daybreak received the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of
England. He then hastened to join Eugene, who had probably just confessed
himself to a Popish priest. The generals consulted together, formed their plan
in concert, and repaired each to his own post. Marlborough gave orders for
public prayers. The English chaplains read the service at the head of the
English regiments. The Calvinistic chaplains of the Dutch army, with heads on
which hand of Bishop had never been laid, poured forth their supplications in
front of their countrymen. In the meantime, the Danes might listen to their
Lutheran ministers and Capuchins might encourage the Austrian squadrons, and
pray to the Virgin for a blessing on the arms of the Holy Roman Empire. The
battle commences. These men of various religions all act like members of one
body. The Catholic and the Protestant general exert themselves to assist and to
surpass each other. Before sunset the Empire is saved: France has lost in a day
the fruits of eighty years of intrigue and of victory: and the allies, after
conquering together, return thanks to God separately, each after his own form of
worship. Now, is this practical atheism? Would any man in his senses say that,
because the allied army had unity of action and a common interest, and because a
heavy responsibility lay on its Chiefs, it was therefore imperatively necessary
that the Army should, as an Army, have one established religion, that Eugene
should be deprived of his command for being a Catholic, that all the Dutch and
Austrian colonels should be broken for not subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles?
Certainly not. The most ignorant grenadier on the field of battle would have
seen the absurdity of such a proposition. "I know," he would have said, "that
the Prince of Savoy goes to mass, and that our Corporal John cannot abide it;
but what has the mass to do with the taking of the village of Blenheim? The
Prince wants to beat the French, and so does Corporal John. If we stand by each
other we shall most likely beat them. If we send all the Papists and Dutch away,
Tallard will have every man of us." Mr. Gladstone himself, we imagine, would
admit that our honest grenadier would have the best of the argument; and if so,
what follows? Even this; that all Mr. Gladstone's general principles about
power, and responsibility, and personality, and conjoint action, must be given
up, and that, if his theory is to stand at all, it must stand on some other
foundation.
We have now, we conceive, shown that it may be proper to form men into
combinations for important purposes, which combinations shall have unity and
common interests, and shall be under the direction of rulers entrusted with
great power and lying under solemn responsibility, and yet that it may be highly
improper that these combinations should, as such, profess any one system of
religious belief, or perform any joint act of religious worship. How, then, is
it proved that this may not be the case with some of those great combinations
which we call States? We firmly believe that it is the case with some States. We
firmly believe that there are communities in which it would be as absurd to mix
up theology with government, as it would have been in the right wing of the
allied army at Blenheim to commence a controversy with the left wing, in the
middle of the battle, about purgatory and the worship of images.
It is the duty, Mr. Gladstone tells us, of the persons, be they who they may,
who hold supreme power in the State, to employ that power in order to promote
whatever they may deem to be theological truth. Now, surely, before he can call
on us to admit this proposition, he is bound to prove that those persons are
likely to do more good than harm by so employing their power. The first question
is, whether a government, proposing to itself the propagation of religious truth
as one of its principal ends, is more likely to lead the people right than to
lead them wrong? Mr. Gladstone evades this question; and perhaps it was his
wisest course to do so.
"If," says he, "the government be good, let it have its natural duties and
powers at its command; but, if not good, let it be made so. . . . We follow,
therefore, the true course in looking first for the true idea, or abstract
conception of a government, of course with allowance for the evil and frailty
that are in man, and then in examining whether there be comprised in that idea a
capacity and consequent duty on the part of a government to lay down any laws or
devote any means for the purposes of religion,--in short, to exercise a choice
upon religion."
Of course, Mr. Gladstone has a perfect right to argue any abstract question,
provided that he will constantly bear in mind that it is only an abstract
question that he is arguing. Whether a perfect government would or would not be
a good machinery for the propagation of religious truth is certainly a harmless,
and may, for aught we know, be an edifying subject of inquiry. But it is very
important that we should remember that there is not, and never has been, any
such government in the world. There is no harm at all in inquiring what course a
stone thrown into the air would take, if the law of gravitation did not operate.
But the consequences would be unpleasant, if the inquirer, as soon as he had
finished his calculation, were to begin to throw stones about in all directions,
without considering that his conclusion rests on a false hypothesis, and that
his projectiles, instead of flying away through infinite space, will speedily
return in parabolas, and break the windows and heads of his neighbors.
It is very easy to say that governments are good, or if not good, ought to be
made so. But what is meant by good government? And how are all the bad
governments in the world to be made good? And of what value is a theory which is
true only on a supposition in the highest degree extravagant?
We do not, however, admit that, if a government were, for all its temporal ends,
as perfect as human frailty allows, such a government would, therefore, be
necessarily qualified to propagate true religion. For we see that the fitness of
governments to propagate true religion is by no means proportioned to their
fitness for the temporal end of their institution. Looking at individuals, we
see that the princes under whose rule nations have been most ably protected from
foreign and domestic disturbance, and have made the most rapid advances in
civilization, have been by no means good teachers of divinity. Take for example,
the best French sovereign, Henry the Fourth, a king who restored order,
terminated a terrible civil war, brought the finances into an excellent
condition, made his country respected throughout Europe, and endeared himself to
the great body of the people whom he ruled. Yet this man was twice a Huguenot
and twice a Papist. He was, as Davila hints, strongly suspected of having no
religion at all in theory, and was certainly not much under religious restraints
in his practice. Take the Czar Peter, the Empress Catharine, Frederick the
Great. It will surely not be disputed that these sovereigns, with all their
faults, were, if we consider them with reference merely to the temporal ends of
government, above the average of merit. Considered as theological guides, Mr.
Gladstone would probably put them below the most abject drivellers of the
Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon. Again, when we pass from individuals to
systems, we by no means find that the aptitude of governments for propagating
religious truth is proportioned to their aptitude for secular functions. Without
being blind admirers either of the French or of the American institutions, we
think it clear that the persons and property of citizens are better protected in
France and in New England than in almost any society that now exists, or that
has ever existed; very much better, certainly, than in the Roman Empire under
the orthodox rule of Constantine and Theodosius. But neither the Government of
France, nor that of New England, is so organized as to be fit for the
propagation of theological doctrines. Nor do we think it improbable that the
most serious religious errors might prevail in a state which, considered merely
with reference to temporal objects, might approach far nearer than any that has
ever been known to the idea of what a state should be.
But we shall leave this abstract question, and look at the world as we find it.
Does, then, the way in which governments generally obtain their power make it at
all probable that they will be more favorable to orthodoxy than to heterodoxy? A
nation of barbarians pours down on a rich and unwarlike empire, enslaves the
people, portions out the land, and blends the institutions which it finds in the
cities with those which it has brought from the woods. A handful of daring
adventurers from a civilized nation wander to some savage country, and reduce
the aboriginal race to bondage. A successful general turns his arms against the
State which he serves. A society made brutal by oppression, rises madly on its
masters, sweeps away all old laws and usages, and when its first paroxysm of
rage is over, sinks down passively under any form of polity which may spring out
of the chaos. A chief of a party, as at Florence, becomes imperceptibly a
sovereign, and the founder of a dynasty. A captain of mercenaries, as at Milan,
seizes on a city, and by the sword makes himself its ruler. An elective senate,
as at Venice, usurps permanent and hereditary power. It is in events such as
these that governments have generally originated; and we can see nothing in such
events to warrant us in believing that the governments thus called into
existence will be peculiarly well fitted to distinguish between religious truth
and heresy.
When, again, we look at the constitutions of governments which have become
settled, we find no great security for the orthodoxy of rulers. One magistrate
holds power because his name was drawn out of a purse; another, because his
father held it before him. There are representative systems of all sorts, large
constituent bodies, small constituent bodies, universal suffrage, high pecuniary
qualifications. We see that, for the temporal ends of government, some of these
constitutions are very skillfully constructed, and that the very worst of them
is preferable to anarchy. We see some sort of connection between the very worst
of them and the temporal well-being of society. But it passes our understanding
to comprehend what connection any one of them has with theological truth.
And how stands the fact? Have not almost all the governments in the world always
been in the wrong on religious subjects? Mr. Gladstone, we imagine, would say
that, except in the time of Constantine, of Jovian, and of a very few of their
successors, and occasionally in England since the Reformation, no government has
ever been sincerely friendly to the pure and apostolically Church of Christ. If,
therefore, it be true that every ruler is bound in conscience to use his power
for the propagation of his own religion, it will follow that, for one ruler who
has been bound in conscience to use his power for the propagation of truth, a
thousand have been bound in conscience to use their power for the propagation of
falsehood. Surely this is a conclusion from which common sense recoils. Surely,
if experience shows that a certain machine, when used to produce a certain
effect, does not produce that effect once in a thousand times, but produces, in
the vast majority of cases, an effect directly contrary, we cannot be wrong in
saying that it is not a machine of which the principal end is to be so used.
If, indeed, the magistrate would content himself with laying his opinions and
reasons before the people, and would leave the people, uncorrupted by hope or
fear, to judge for themselves, we should see little reason to apprehend that his
interference in favor of error would be seriously prejudicial to the interests
of truth. Nor do we, as will hereafter be seen, object to his taking this
course, when it is compatible with the efficient discharge of his more especial
duties. But this will not satisfy Mr. Gladstone. He would have the magistrate
resort to means which have a great tendency to make malcontents, to make
hypocrites, to make careless nominal conformists, but no tendency whatever to
produce honest and rational conviction. It seems to us quite clear that an
inquirer who has no wish except to know the truth is more likely to arrive at
the truth than an inquirer who knows that, if he decides one way, he shall be
rewarded, and that, if he decides the other way, he shall be punished. Now, Mr.
Gladstone would have governments propagate their opinions by excluding all
Dissenters from all civil offices. That is to say, he would have governments
propagate their opinions by a process which has no reference whatever to the
truth or falsehood of those opinions, by arbitrarily uniting certain worldly
advantages with one set of doctrines, and certain worldly inconveniences with
another set. It is of the very nature of argument to serve the interests of
truth; but if rewards and punishments serve the interests of truth, it is by
mere accident. It is very much easier to find arguments for the divine authority
of the Gospel than for the divine authority of the Koran. But it is just as easy
to bribe or rack a Jew into Mahometanism as into Christianity.
From racks, indeed, and from all penalties directed against the persons, the
property, and the liberty of heretics, the humane spirit of Mr. Gladstone
shrinks with horror. He only maintains that conformity to the religion of the
State ought to be an indispensable qualification for office; and he would,
unless we have greatly misunderstood him, think it his duty, if he had the
power, to revive the Test Act, to enforce it rigorously, and to extend it to
important classes who were formerly exempt from its operation.
This is indeed a legitimate consequence of his principles. But why stop here?
Why not roast Dissenters at slow fires? All the general reasonings on which this
theory rests evidently lead to sanguinary persecution. If the propagation of
religious truth be a principal end of government, as government; if it be the
duty of a government to employ for that end its constitutional Power; if the
constitutional power of governments extends, as it most unquestionably does, to
the making of laws for the burning of heretics; if burning be, as it most
assuredly is, in many cases, a most effectual mode of suppressing opinions; why
should we not burn? If the relation in which government ought to stand to the
people be, as Mr. Gladstone tells us, a paternal relation, we are irresistibly
led to the conclusion that persecution is justifiable. For the right of
propagating opinions by punishment is one which belongs to parents as clearly as
the right to give instruction. A boy is compelled to attend family worship: he
is forbidden to read irreligious books: if he will not learn his catechism, he
is sent to bed without his supper: if he plays truant at church-time a task is
set him. If he should display the precocity of his talents by expressing impious
opinions before his brothers and sisters, we should not much blame his father
for cutting short the controversy with a horse-whip. All the reasons which lead
us to think that parents are peculiarly fitted to conduct the education of their
children, and that education is the principal end of a parental relation, lead
us also to think that parents ought to be allowed to use punishment, if
necessary, for the purpose of forcing children, who are incapable of judging for
themselves, to receive religious instruction and to attend religious worship.
Why, then, is this prerogative of punishment, so eminently paternal, to be
withheld from a paternal government? It seems to us, also, to be the height of
absurdity to employ civil disabilities for the propagation of an opinion, and
then to shrink from employing other punishments for the same purpose. For
nothing can be clearer than that, if you punish at all, you ought to punish
enough. The pain caused by punishment is pure unmixed evil, and never ought to
be inflicted, except for the sake of some good. It is mere foolish cruelty to
provide penalties which torment the criminal without preventing the crime. Now
it is possible, by sanguinary persecution unrelentingly inflicted, to suppress
opinions. In this way the Albigenses were put down. In this way the Lollards
were put down. In this way the fair promise of the Reformation was blighted in
Italy and Spain. But we may safely defy Mr. Gladstone to point out a single
instance in which the system which he recommends has succeeded.
And why should he be so tender-hearted? What reason can he give for hanging a
murderer, and suffering a heresiarch to escape without even a pecuniary mulct?
Is the heresiarch a less pernicious member of society than the murderer? Is not
the loss of one soul a greater evil than the extinction of many lives? And the
number of murders committed by the most profligate bravo that ever let out his
poniard to hire in Italy, or by the most savage buccaneer that ever prowled on
the Windward Station, is small indeed, when compared with the number of souls
which have been caught in the snares of one dexterous heresiarch. If, then, the
heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as
proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can give a reason, a
reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil
which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort the
sort against which it is the end of government to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone,
who considers the evil which the heresiarch produces as evil of the sort against
which it is the end of government to guard, can escape from the obvious
consequence of his doctrine, we do not understand. The world is full of parallel
cases. An orange-woman stops up the pavement with her wheelbarrow; and a
policeman takes her into custody. A miser who has amassed a million suffers an
old friend and benefactor to die in a workhouse, and cannot be questioned before
any tribunal for his baseness and ingratitude. Is this because legislators think
the orange-woman's conduct worse than the miser's? Not at all. It is because the
stopping up of the pathway is one of the evils against which it is the business
of the public authorities to protect society, and heartlessness is not one of
those evils. It would be the height of folly to say that the miser ought,
indeed, to be punished, but that he ought to be punished less severely than the
orange-woman.
The heretical Constantius persecutes Athanasius; and why not? Shall Caesar
punish the robber who has taken one purse, and spare the wretch who has taught
millions to rob the Creator of His honor, and to bestow it on the creature? The
orthodox Theodosius persecutes the Arians, and with equal reason. Shall an
insult offered to the Caesarean majesty be expiated by death; and shall there be
no penalty for him who degrades to the rank of a creature the almighty, the
infinite Creator? We have a short answer for both: "To Caesar the things which
are Caesar's. Caesar is appointed for the punishment of robbers and rebels. He
is not appointed for the purpose of either propagating or exterminating the
doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son." "Not so," says Mr.
Gladstone, "Caesar is bound in conscience to propagate whatever he thinks to be
the truth as to this question. Constantius is bound to establish the Arian
worship throughout the empire, and to displace the bravest captains of his
legions, and the ablest ministers of his treasury, if they hold the Nicene
faith. Theodosius is equally bound to turn out every public servant whom his
Arian predecessors have put in. But if Constantius lays on Athanasius a fine of
a single aureus, if Theodosius imprisons an Arian presbyter for a week, this is
most unjustifiable oppression." Our readers will be curious to know how this
distinction is made out.
The reasons which Mr. Gladstone gives against persecution affecting life, limb,
and property, may be divided into two classes; first, reasons which can be
called reasons only by extreme courtesy, and which nothing but the most
deplorable necessity would ever have induced a man of his abilities to use; and,
secondly, reasons which are really reasons, and which have so much force that
they not only completely prove his exception, but completely upset his general
rule. His artillery on this occasion is composed of two sorts of pieces, pieces
which will not go off at all, and pieces which go off with a vengeance, and
recoil with most crushing effect upon himself.
"We, as fallible creatures," says Mr. Gladstone, "have no right, from any bare
speculations of our own to administer pains and penalties to our
fellow-creatures, whether on social or religious grounds. We have the right to
enforce the laws of the land by such pains and penalties, because it is
expressly given by Him who has declared that the civil rulers are to bear the
sword for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the encouragement of them that
do well. And so, in things spiritual, had it pleased God to give to the Church
or the State this power, to be permanently exercised over their members, or
mankind at large, we should have the right to use it; but it does not appear to
have been so received, and consequently, it should not be exercised."
We should be sorry to think that the security of our lives and property from
persecution rested on no better ground than this. Is not a teacher of heresy an
evil-doer? Has not heresy been condemned in many countries, and in our own among
them, by the laws of the land, which, as Mr. Gladstone says, it is justifiable
to enforce by penal sanctions? If a heretic is not specially mentioned in the
text to which Mr. Gladstone refers, neither is an assassin, a kidnapper, or a
highwayman: and if the silence of the New Testament as to all interference of
governments to stop the progress of heresy be a reason for not fining or
imprisoning heretics, it is surely just as good a reason for not excluding them
from office.
"God," says Mr. Gladstone, "has seen fit to authorize the employment of force in
the one case and not in the other; for it was with regard to chastisement
inflicted by the sword for an insult offered to himself that the Redeemer
declared his kingdom not to be of this world:-- meaning, apparently in an
especial manner, that it should be otherwise than after this world's fashion, in
respect to the sanctions by which its laws should be maintained."
Now here Mr. Gladstone, quoting from memory, has fallen into an error. The very
remarkable words which he cites do not appear to have had any reference to the
wound inflicted by Peter on Malchus. They were addressed to Pilate, in answer to
the question, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" We can not help saying that we
are surprised that Mr. Gladstone should not have more accurately verified a
quotation on which, according to him, principally depends the right of a hundred
millions of his fellow-subjects, idolaters, Mussulmans, Catholics, and
dissenters, to their property, their liberty, and their lives.
Mr. Gladstone's humane interpretations of Scripture are lamentably destitute of
one recommendation, which he considers as of the highest value: they are by no
means in accordance with the general precepts or practice of the Church, from
the time when the Christians became strong enough to persecute down to a very
recent period. A dogma favorable to toleration is certainly not a dogma quod
semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus. Bossuet was able to say, we fear with too
much truth, that on one point all Christians had long been unanimous, the right
of the civil magistrate to propagate truth by the sword; that even heretics had
been orthodox as to this right, and that the Anabaptists and Socinians were the
first who called it in question. We will not pretend to say what is the best
explanation of the text under consideration; but we are sure that Mr.
Gladstone's is the worst. According to him, Government ought to exclude
Dissenters from office, but not to fine them, because Christ's kingdom is not of
this world. We do not see why the line may not be drawn at a hundred other
places as well as that which he has chosen. We do not see why Lord Clarendon, in
recommending the act of 1664 against conventicles, might not have said, "It hath
been thought by some that this classis of men might with advantage be not only
imprisoned but pilloried. But methinks, my Lords, we are inhibited from the
punishment of the pillory by that Scripture, 'My kingdom is not of this world."'
Archbishop Laud, when he sate on Burton in the Star-Chamber, might have said, "I
pronounce for the pillory; and, indeed, I could wish that all such wretches were
delivered to the fire, but that our Lord hath said that His kingdom is not of
this world." And Gardiner might have written to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire "See
that execution be done without fall on Master Ridley and Master Latimer, as you
will answer the same to the Queen's grace at your peril. But if they shall
desire to have some gunpowder for the shortening of their torment, I see not but
you may grant it, as it is written, Regnum meum non est de hoc mundo; that is to
say, My kingdom is not of this world."
But Mr. Gladstone has other arguments against persecution, arguments which are
of so much weight, that they are decisive not only against persecution but
against his whole theory. "The Government," he says, "is incompetent to exercise
minute and constant supervision over religious opinion." And hence he infers,
that "a Government exceeds its province when it comes to adapt a scale of
punishments to variations in religious opinion, according to their respective
degrees of variation from the established creed. To decline affording
countenance to sects is a single and simple rule. To punish their professors,
according to their several errors, even were there no other objection, is one
for which the State must assume functions wholly ecclesiastical, and for which
it is not intrinsically fitted."
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