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CHAPTER VII
THE "TRIUMPH" OF CHRISTIANITY
"Destruction to the Triumphant Beast!"
Giordano Bruno.
"Ecrasez l'Infame!"
Voltaire.
Even MORE INDUCIVE than its own sweet reasonableness and
persuasive truth, as accredited by the records and vouchers we have
examined, were several very effective forcible aids to the
propagation of the new Faith in the hearts and minds -- and upon
the bodies -- of the Pagan populations. The strange phenomenon of
the persistence of Christianity into the XXth Century can be
understood only by consideration of the means employed for, and the
medium of un-culture permitting, the propagation of this forged
faith through the centuries of the Dark Ages of Faith, with its
medieval "hangover" into the present scientific era.
PRIESTLY TERRORISM
GOD-ORDAINED MURDER FOR UNBELIEF
The Jewish forgers of the near-sacred Books of Enoch, Esdras,
etc., had pilfered from the Sacred Books and System of Zoroaster of
Persia, their superstitions of angels and devils and hell-fire, and
had invented the infernal doctrines of Original Sin and eternal
damnation therefor, -- all which counterfeit passed to and became
current among the religious zealots of the debased Judaism then in
vogue. Attributing their "revelation" or invention to Jesus Christ
himself, the second-century forging Fathers of the new Faith bodily
plagiarized these ready-made Pagan-Jewish superstitions, and by the
potent "Sign of the Cross" metamorphosed them into holy
"revelations" and inspired truths, the which to doubt was to be
damned.
The fanatic Hebrew religion and its derivative Christianity
are the only religions ever known on earth based on and maintained
by systematic persecution and murder. God-given laws of murder for
disbelief were decreed at Sinai. A holy monopoly of priests was
founded, and the divine ukase ordained: "They shall keep their
priesthood, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to
death." (Num. iii, 10.) Murder was God-decreed: "The man that will
do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest. ... even
that man shall die." (Deut. xvii, 12.) Again the Jealous God
decrees: "He that sacrificeth to any other god -- [thus admitting
the other gods] -- save unto Yahweh alone, he shall be utterly
destroyed." (Ex. xxii, 20; Deut. xvii, 2-5.) The ne plus ultra of
inspired atrocity of Divine legislation is this infamy devised by
priests and attributed to their mythic God: "If thy brother, the
son of thy mother, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or
thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly,
saying, Let us go serve other [more civilized] gods, ... Thou shalt
not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shalt thine eye
pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
But thou shalt surely kill him: thine hand shall be the first upon
him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die"! (Deut. xiii, 6,
8-10; xvii, 2-7.) Old Elijah murdered by his God's help two
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companies of soldiers and their captains by calling down fire from
heaven, and 450 priests of Baal and 400 priests of the phallic
Asherahs, to prove by these 850 murders "if I be a man of the
gods." (2 Kings, i, 12.) His old side-partner Elisha stood by and
watched God-sent bears which he had invoked tear and eat forty
small children who ill-manneredly thumbed their noses at his old
bald pate; and throughout the blessed Old Testament of God some
hundreds of thousands of people were murdered by God outright and
by his holy priestly agents, simply for differences of opinion or
of conduct with respect -- or disrespect -- to the holy Hebrew God
and religion. Only, fortunately, probably little of it is true.
The Son of the Hebrew God came in course of time to Jewry
ostensibly to make amends for some of his Father's damning
vengeances. He came "to fulfill the law"; not only that, he overdid
it and added to it sundry fiery climaxes of cursing and damnation,
religious bigotry and intolerance unique to the "Gospel of Love"
and of redemptive salvation. For sanctions ad terrorem of the new
preachments of Christ who "came to bring not peace but the sword,"
Jesus himself kindled the fires of Hell and decreed eternal
damnation for unbelief: "He that believeth not shall be damned";
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire"; "Except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish"; "He that believeth not the
Son, the wrath of God abideth on him"! These genial persuasions to
belief in the priests were added to by Paul the Persecutor; harking
back to his God's Law of Sinai: "He that despised Moses' law died
without mercy; ... Of how much sorer punishment ... shall he be
thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God?" -- "The
same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and shall be
tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy
angels and of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment aseendeth
forever and ever: and they shall have no rest day or night" from
"the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God"! All this is for the
happy Hereafter; but the pious deviltry begins by Hell-on-earth, as
the gentle Jesus himself prescribed: "Those mine enemies, which
would not that I reign over them, bring hither, and slay them
before me." (Luke, xix, 27.) The whole body of Apostles appealed
for Divine permit, that "we command fire to come down from heaven,
and consume them" (Luke ix, 54), who sought to imitate their pious
devil-enchantments. Peter, Prince of Apostles, takes up the bloody
cue: Every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be
destroyed" (Acts, iii, 23); and Bigot Paul enjoins persecution,
boycott and murder for the dissentient: "For there are many unruly
and vain talkers ... whose mouths must be stopped" (Titus, i, 10,
11): and "He that troubleth you ... I would they were even cut off"
(Gal. v, 10, 12), The Church Persecutrix is thus amply warranted of
its holy task of "preserving the purity of the Faith" by fire and
sword. Right quickly it began to "deal damnation 'round the land on
all they deemed the foe" of the Faith and its priests. The rule of
death to heretics was proclaimed by the "Prince" and executed by
sword and stake by his holy "Successors" so long as they were let:
"There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring
in heresies, ... and bring upon themselves swift destruction" (2
Peter, ii, 1); and his arch-coadjutor Paul continued to go up and
down the land "breathing out threatenings and slaughter" against
all who despised his holy preachments.
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As we shall hear confessed: "Toleration came in only when
Faith went out; lenient measures were resorted to only where power
to apply more severe measures was wanting"! (CE. vii, 262.) The
infernal fact that Intolerance is the "natural accompaniment" of
Religion, and that obsessed religionists are no different from a
man-burning mob of lynchers, is thus again confessed: "A kind of
iron law would seem to dispose mankind to religious intolerance.
(p. 35.) ... When Christianity became the religion of the Empire,
and still more when the peoples of Northern Europe became Christian
nations, the close alliance of Church and State. ... heresy, in
consequence, was a crime which secular rulers were bound in duty to
punish. ... The heretic, in a word, was simply an outlaw whose
offense, in the popular mind, deserved and sometimes received a
punishment as summary as that which is often dealt out in our day
by an infuriated populace to the [supposed] authors of justly
detested crimes. That such intolerance was not peculiar to
Catholicism, but was the NATURAL ACCOMPANIMENT OF DEEP RELIGIOUS
CONVICTION in those, also, who abandoned the Church, is evident
from the measures taken by some of the Reformers -- [ex-children of
True Church, who were there schooled and drilled in the infamies]
-- against those who differed from them in matters of belief. ...
Moreover, ... the spirit of intolerance prevalent in many of the
American colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
may be cited in proof thereof." (CE. viii, 35, 36.) The only way to
kill the pernicious flower of Faith is to uproot and destroy the
noxious weed with truth!
THE GOSPEL OF FEAR AND TREMBLING
Such as this, repeated ad infinitum for terror, coupled with
the threats of the quick "Second Coming," when the Unbelievers
should receive reward "unto the resurrection of damnation" (John v,
29), effectively seared the Gospel of fear and trembling into the
superstitious Pagan dupes of Christianity.
Hear for a moment the zealous Father Tertullian throw the fear
of Hell into the trembling Pagan patrons of the theater and the
circus. As quoted by Gibbon from the De Spectaculis (Ch. 30), they
are introduced with some pertinent words descriptive of the spirit
of bigoted Christianity: "These rigid sentiments, which had been
unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of
bitterness into a system of love and harmony. The ties of blood and
friendship were frequently torn asunder by the difference of
religious faith; and the Christians, who, in this world, found
themselves oppressed by the power of the Pagans, were sometimes
seduced by resentment and spiritual pride to delight in the
prospect of their future triumph. 'You are fond of spectacles,
exclaims the stern Tertullian; 'expect the greatest of all
spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How
shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so
many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss
of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the
Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against
Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames
with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling
before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many
tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings;
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so many dangers --.' But the humanity of the reader will permit me
to draw a veil over the rest of this infernal description, which
the zealous African pursues in a long variety of affected and
unfeeling witticisms." (Gibbon, Ch. xv, p. 146-7.)
UNBORN BABES TO BURN FOREVER
The damnable doctrine of Infant Damnation was one of the most
terrifying and effective impostures of the Church to drive helpless
victims into the fold of Christ. Infamous enough was the earlier
doctrine of exclusive salvation, that the unbaptized adult, the
individual outside Church was the heir to eternal damnation. But
soon the terror was extended to the just-born infant, to even the
fetus in its womb. St. Augustine affirmed this atrocity with all
his vehemence; all the Fathers without exception dinned it
eternally, -- as yet today. A treatise of the greatest authority,
De Fide, long attributed to Augustine, but now known to be the work
of Bishop St. Fulgentius (CE. vi, 317) thus states the horrid
doctrine: "Be assured, and doubt not, that not only men who have
attained the use of their reason, but also little children who have
begun to live in their mothers' womb and have there died, or who,
having been just born, have passed away from the world without the
sacrament of holy baptism, administered in the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, must be punished by the eternal torture of
undying fire; for although they have committed no sin by their own
will, they have nevertheless drawn with them the condemnation of
original sin, by their carnal conception and nativity." (sec. 70.)
Lecky, who quotes the passage, thus comment the effects as
witnessed in practice throughout the Middle Ages: "Nothing indeed
can be more curious, nothing more deeply pathetic, than the record
of the many ways by which the terror-stricken mothers attempted to
evade the awful sentence of their Church. Sometimes the baptismal
water was sprinkled upon the womb; sometimes the still-born child
was baptized, in hopes that the Almighty would antedate the
ceremony; sometimes the mother invoked the Holy Spirit to purify by
His immediate power the infant that was to be born; sometimes she
received the Host or obtained absolution, and applied them to the
benefit of her child. For the doctrine of the Church had wrung the
mother's heart with an agony that was too poignant for even that
submissive age to bear." (Rationalism in Europe, i, 362-364.) And
all this on account of an apple eaten four thousand years before
they were born; willed by the Deity who had foreordained their
birth and premature death, before His Holy Church could come at the
Baptismal fees!
A CONTRAST IN TOLERANCE
With the miraculous "conversion of Constantine" -- to at least
the practical advantages of Christianity as providing numerous
partisans to his ambitious cause and great numbers of recruits to
his armies, the Church of Christ emerged from obscurity and
catacombs; by dint of servile flatteries, bold impostures, and
shameless forgeries, of which we have seen examples, it quickly
insinuated itself into imperial favor and popular regard, and soon
dominated the superstitious court and populace. This was a signal
triumph for Faith, which now became popular and the means to
preferment; the truth of the Christ did now more rapidly spread and
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abound. That such considerations, much more of this material world
worldly than of the other-world of the spiritual, best further the
cause of Christ and are its most powerful propaganda, is thus
delicately confessed: "When a Government, for instance, reserves
its favors and functions for the adherents of the State religion,
the army of civil servants becomes a more powerful body of
missionaries than the ordained ministers"! (CE. vii, 259.) Thus
began that fullest League with Death and Covenant with Hell between
State and Church, persistent yet to this day!
THE EDICT OF MILAN (313)
But until the Christian priests poisoned his mind with their
arrogant pretensions, Constantine was truly liberal in his policy
of "religious indifferentism" or toleration. His broad-minded and
states-man-like grasp of the principles of liberty of belief in any
and all forms of religious superstition, or in none at all, rose to
heights never since attained until Thomas Jefferson's Virginia
Statute for Religious Freedom, reflected in Art. VI and Amendment
I of the Federal Constitution. Constantine's Edict of Milan, of
313, was the first charter of religious freedom and toleration,
securing equality and liberty of worship to the Christians, -- and
very quickly repudiated by them as against all others; it is
preserved and thus quoted by Lactantius:
"Not many days after the victory, Licinius ... on the
ides of June (13th), while he and Constantine were consuls for
the third time, he commanded the following edict for the
restoration of the Church, directed to the president of the
province, to be promulgated --
"When we, Constantine and Licinius, emperors, had an
interview at Milan, and conferred together with respect to the
good and security of the commonweal, it seemed to us that,
amongst those things that are profitable to mankind in
general, the reverence paid to the Divinity merited our first
and chief attention, and that it was proper that the
Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that
mode of religion which to each of them appeared best; so that
God, who is seated in heaven, might be benign and propitious
to us, and to everyone under our government. And therefore we
judged it a salutary measure, and one highly consonant to
right reason, that no man should be denied leave of attaching
himself to the rites of the Christians, or to whatever other
religion his mind directed him, that thus the supreme
Divinity, to whose worship we freely devote ourselves, might
continue to devote His favor and beneficence to us. ... For it
befits the well-ordered State and the tranquillity of our
times that each individual be allowed, according to his own
choice, to worship the Divinity; and we mean not to derogate
aught from the honor due to any religion or its votaries."
(Lact., Of the Manner in Which the Persecuters Died, ch.
xlviii; ANF. VII, 320; Eusebius, HE. viii, 17.)
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CHRISTIAN INTOLERANCE
But no sooner had the priests of the new Superstition foisted
themselves securely into power, and by their threats of hell-fire
dominated the superstitious minds of the ex-Pagan Constantine and
his sons and successors, than the old decrees of persecution under
which the Christians had themselves suffered, were revamped and
with fiendish ferocity turned by them into engines of fearful
torture and destruction of Pagans, Jews, and "heretic" Christians
alike; and religious intolerance became the corner-stone of the
Church Persecutrix. In the famous Code of Theodosius, about 384, it
was at priestly instigation enacted:
"We desire that all the people under our clemency should
live by that religion which divine Peter the apostle is said
to have given the Romans. ... We desire that heretics and
schismatists be subjected to various fines. ... We decree also
that we shall cease making sacrifices to the gods. And if
anyone has committed such a crime, let him be stricken with
the avenging sword." (Cod. Theod. xvi, 1, 2; v, 1; x, 4.)
What a shaming Christian contrast to the Pagan Edict of Milan,
granting religious liberty and tolerance to all! In these laws of
the now "Christian" empire priestly intolerance is made the law of
the land; the accursed words "Inquisition of the Faith" and
"Inquisitors" first appear in this Christian Code. "Theodosius I
was called the Great because he was the first Emperor to act
against heathenism, and also because he contributed to the victory
over the Arians." (CE. iii, 101.)
Even the "Infidel" Moslem, in his crude Koran, teaches a
doctrine of tolerance to shame the Bible and the Christians: "Those
who follow the Jewish religion, the Christians, the Sabeans, and
whatever others believe in God and practice doing good, all these
shall receive their recompense from the Lord. ... Virtue does not
consist in turning the face towards the East nor towards the West
to pray, but in being tolerant." (Quran, ix, 59, 76; -- from
Spanish text.)
FAITH ENFORCED BY LAWS OF MURDER
Holy Fraud and Forgery having achieved their initial triumph
for the Faith, the "Truth of Christ" must now be maintained and
enforced upon humanity by a millennial series of bloody brutal
Clerical Laws of pains and penalties, confiscations, civil
disabilities, torture, and death by rack, fire and sword, which
constitute the foulest chapter of the Book of human history -- the
History of the Church!
When the Christians were weak and powerless and subjected to
occasional persecutions as "enemies of the human race," they were
vocal and insistent advocates of liberty of conscience and freedom
to worship whatever God one chose; the Christian "Apologies" to the
Emperors abound in eloquent pleas for religious tolerance; and this
was granted to them and to all by the Edict of Milan and other
imperial Decrees. But when by the favor of Constantine they got
into the saddle of the State, they at once grasped the sword and
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began to murder and despoil all who would not pretend to believe as
the Catholic priest commanded them to believe. When today the
Church screams "Persecution!" and "Bigotry!" at every criticism and
every attempt to restrict it in some of its presumptuous
usurpations, let it recall a few of the laws of intolerance,
plunder and death which it procured and enforced from the moment it
got the prostituted power, so long as that power lasted.
Beginning with Constantine, and under succeeding "Christian"
emperors, there is a series of scores of laws which the Christians
procured to be enacted for the suppression and persecution to death
of Pagans, heretics and Jews. These laws and edicts are to be found
in the Codes of Theodosius and of Justinian, the two famous
codifleations of Roman Law. To exhibit the progressive and
persistent system of proscription to which all but themselves were
persecutingly subjected by the "Orthodox" Christians, I shall
simply quote the titles of some of these laws, with indication of
the names of the Emperors issuing them, the dates and number of the
laws, and the Code or other source in which it is preserved.
LAWS OF CONSTANTINE
The earliest laws of Constantine were those granting religious
toleration, as the Edict of Milan (313) already quoted, and laws
for the redress of injuries done to Christians; such as release of
prisoners and those in servitude, and the restoration of property;
chapter 36 declares that "The Church is the heir of those who leave
no kindred; and free gifts to it are confirmed"; chapter 41: "Those
who have purchased property belonging to the Church or received it
as a gift, are to restore it." (Eusebius, Vita Constantine, N&amp;PNF.
Bk. II, chs. xxiv-xliii.)
"Edict to the People of the Provinces Concerning the Error of
Polytheism." (Ib. chs. xlviii-xlix.)
"Granting Money to the Churches." (Ib. Bk, x, ch. vi.)
"Catholic Clergy exempt from Certain Civic Duties." (Code
Theod. xvi, 2, 1; 313.) "The Catholic Church freed from Tribute."
(Id. xi, 1, 1; 815.) "Clergymen freed from Financial Burdens." (Id.
xvi, 2, 2; 319.) "The Church allowed to Receive Bequests." (Id.
xvi, 2, 4; 321.)
"Bishop's Powers as Judges and Witnesses": "Whatever may be
settled by a sentence of bishops shall ever be held as sacred and
venerable ... All testimony given, even by a single bishop, shall
be accepted without hesitation, by every judge, neither shall the
testimony of any other witness be heard, when the testimony of a
bishop is brought forward by either party"! (Const. Sirm. i; 333.)
"The Day of the Sun a Time of Rest." "All judges, and city
folk and all craftsmen shall rest on the venerated day of the Sun."
(Cod. Just. iii, 12, 2; 321.)
"As it has seemed most unworthy that the Day of the Sun,
famous by its venerable character, ... Therefore on the festive
day." (Cod. Theod. ii, 8, 1; 321.)
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A number of laws follow in favor of the Pagans, and while
prohibiting "private divination and soothsaying," and "Malevolent
Magic Prohibited, but Beneficial Magic Encouraged"; also exempting
Pagan Flamens, priests and magistrates from sundry restrictions and
disabilities. No law of Constantine seems to be preserved which
prescribes active persecution; he seems to have sought to hold an
even balance of toleration to Pagans and Christians. But that he
did enact such laws seems to be proved by recital in the first of
the laws of his sons, Constantius and Constans, who were Arian
heretics.
LAWS OF CONSTANTIUS AND CONSTANS
"Sacrifice Prohibited.": "Let superstition cease and the folly
of sacrifices be abolished. Whoever has dared in the face of the
law of the divine prince, our father [Constantine] ... to make
sacrifices, shall have appropriate penalty, and immediate sentence
dealt to him." (Cod. Theod. xvi, 10, 2; 341.)
"All Temples Closed and Sacrifices Forbidden." "but if any one
commit any offense of this sort, let him fall by the avenging
sword," and his property forfeited; judges neglecting to "mete out
penalties for these offenses, they shall be similarly punished."
(Cod. Theod. xvi, 10, 4; 846.)
"Sacrificing and Idolatry Punishable by Death." "We order that
all found guilty of attending sacrifices or of worshipping idols
shall suffer capital punishment." (Id. xvi, 10, 6; 356.)
LAWS OF GRATIAN AND THEODOSIUS
"Wills of Apostate Christians to be Set Aside": "The right of
making a will shall be taken from Christians who become pagans; and
if such persons make wills, they shall be set aside without regard
to circumstances." (Cod. Theod. xvi, 7, 1; 381:
cf. Cod. Justin. i, 7, 2; 382.)
"The Right to Bequeath or Inherit Property Denied Apostates":
"We deny to Christians and the faithful who have adopted pagan
rites and religion all power of making a will in favor of any
person whatsoever, in order that they may be without the Roman law
[outlaws]; ... even of enjoying a will with the power of acquiring
an inheritance." (Cod. Theod. xvi, 7, 2; 383.) "The Right of Making
a Will Denied Christians Who enter Temples." ( Id. xvi, 7, 3; 383.)
LAWS OF THEODOSIUS AND VALENTINIAN
"Testamentary Disqualification for Christian Apostates," and
Outlawry as Witnesses. -- "Those who betray the sacred faith and
profane holy baptism are shut off from association of all and from
giving testimony. ... They may not exercise the right of making a
will, nor enter upon any inheritance; they may not be made anyone's
heir." (Id. xvi, 7, 4; 391.)
"Sacrificing and Visiting Shrines Prohibited." (Id. xvi, 10,
10; 391.) -- "Sacrifices Forbidden and Temples Closed." (Id. xvi,
10, 11; 391.)
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"PAGANISM OUTLAWED." -- "IF any one dares [to sacrifice,
etc.], let any man be free to accuse him and let him receive, as
one guilty of lese majeste, ... for it is sufficiently a crime."
(Id. xvi, 10. 12; 392.)
LAWS OF HONORIUS AND ARCADIUS
"Pagan Holidays Abolished." (Cod. Theod. ii, 8, 22; 895.) --
"Privileges of Pagan Priests Abolished." (Id. xvi, 10, 14; 396.) --
"Rural Temples to be Destroyed." (Id. xvi. 10, 16; 399.) --
"Temples to be Appropriated by the Churches." (Id. xvi, 5, 43;
408.) -- "Temples to be Appropriated by the Churches. Temple
Buildings and their Revenues to be Confiscated and idols and
Shrines to be Destroyed." (Id. xvi, 5, 43; xvi, 10, 19; 407.)
"Only Catholics to Serve as Palace Guards." (Cod. Theod. xvi.
5, 42; 408.)
"Laws Against the Pagans to be Enforced": "The Donatists and
other vain heretics and those others who cannot be converted to the
worship of the Catholic communion, Jews and Gentiles who are
vulgarly known as pagans; ... Let all judges understand, and not
fail to carry out all decrees against such persons." (Id. xvi,. 5,
46; 409.)
"Pagans Barred from Civil and Military Offices." (Id. xvi, 10,
21; 416.)
"Existing Laws against Pagans to be Enforced." (Id. xvi, 10,
22; 423.) -- "Pagans Who Sacrifice Shall Lose their Property and be
Exiled"' (Id. xvi, 10, 23; 423.)
"Pagan Superstition to be Rooted Out": "We are extirpating all
heresies and all falsehoods, all schisms and all superstitions of
the pagans and all errors that are inimicable to the Catholic
religion. ... And since all attempt at supplication is denied
forever, they will be punished with the severity befitting crimes."
(Id. xvi, 5, 63; 423.)
"Pagans Barred from Pleading a Case or Serving as Soldiers":
"... and every sect unfriendly with the Catholics should be driven
out of every city in order that they may not be sullied by the
contagious presence of criminals. We deny to Jews or pagans the
right of pleading a case in court or of serving as soldiers."
(Const. Sirm. No. 6; 425.)
LATER LAWS AGAINST PAGANISM
"Pagan Rites Forbidden and Bequests for Pagan Cults
Prohibited." (Cod. Just. i, 11, 9; 472.)
"Baptized Persons who follow Pagan Practices to Suffer Death.
Provisions for the Conversion of the Unbaptized. Pagans Forbidden
to Give Instruction." (Cod. Just. 1, 11, 10; no date given.)
"Pagans Barred from Office and their Real Property
Confiscated." "The Emperors Justin and Justinian. ... It is our
intention to restore the existing laws which affect the rest of the
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heretics of whatever name they are, (and we label as heretic
whoever is not a member of the Catholic Church and of our orthodox
and holy faith); likewise the pagans who attempt to introduce the
worship of many gods, and the Jews and the Samaritans. ... We
forbid any of the above-mentioned persons to aspire to any dignity
or to acquire civil or military office or to attain to any rank."
(Id. i, 5, 12; 527.)
Thus was Pagan Superstition proscribed and destroyed by
Christian law and sword; and the identical Pagan Superstitions
under the veneer of the name of Christian established and
enthroned. The subject is thoroughly examined by Prof. Maude A.
Huttmann, in The Establishment of Christianity Through the
Proscription of Paganism; (Columbia University Press, 1914).
BLOODY RECORD BOASTED
A graphic sketch of the origin, the universal scope, and the
crushing effect of the early imperial laws, supplemented and
expanded by those of medieval and more modern times, is given by
CE., related with all the sinister and cynical insolence, sophistry
and hypocrisy of intolerant bigotry. To its Christ it imputes the
horrid justification of the sword and the infernal principles of
butchery whereby the Church Murderess has "made a hell of earth to
merit heaven." This recital is not alone of ancient sacred history;
CE. admits: "These primitive views on heresy have been faithfully
transmitted and acted on by the Church in subsequent ages; there is
no break in the tradition from St. Peter to Pious X." (vii, 259.)
The principles are yet alive and cherished, their practical
application has only for the time being "fallen into abeyance,"
only, for the reason that in these modern times "the power to apply
more severe measures is wanting." he admitted ecclesiastical record
of repression and murder in its forged and fraudulent faith:
Constantine had taken upon himself the office of lay
bishop (episcopus externus) and put the secular arm at the
service of the Church, the laws against heretics became more
and more rigorous. Under the purely ecclesiastical discipline
no temporal punishment could be inflicted on the obstinate
heretic, except the damage which might arise to his personal
dignity through being deprived of all intercourse with his
former brethren. But under the Christian emperors rigorous
measures were enforced against the goods and persons of
heretics. From the time of Constantine to Theodosius and
Valentinian III (313-424) various penal laws were enacted
against heretics as being guilty of crime against the State.
In both the Theodosian and Justinian codes they were styled
infamous persons; all intercourse was forbidden to be held
with them; they were deprived of all offices of profit and
dignity in the civil administration, while all burdensome
offices, both of the camp and of the curia, were imposed upon
them; they were disqualified from disposing of their own
estates by will, or of accepting estates bequeathed to them by
others; they were denied the right of giving or receiving
donations, of contracting, buying, and selling; pecuniary
fines were imposed upon them; they were often proscribed and
banished, and in many cases scourged before being sent into
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exile. In some particularly aggravated cases sentence of death
was pronounced upon heretics, though seldom executed in the
time of the Christian emperors of Rome. Theodosius is said to
be the first who pronounced heresy a capital crime; this law
was passed in 382 against [several named sects of heretics].
Heretical teachers were forbidden to propagate their
doctrines, publicly or privately; to hold public disputations;
to ordain bishops, presbyters, or other clergy; to hold
religious meetings; to build conventicles or to avail
themselves of money bequeathed to them for that purpose.
Slaves were allowed to inform against their heretical masters
and to purchase their freedom by coming over to the Church.
The children of heretical parents were denied their patrimony
and inheritance unless they returned to the Catholic Church.
The books of heretics were ordered to be burned. (Vide Codex
Theodosianus, lib. XVI, tit. 5, "De Hereticism")
"This legislation remained in force and with even greater
severity in the Kingdoms formed by the victorious barbarian
invaders on the ruins of the Roman Empire in the West. The burning
of heretics was first decreed in the eleventh century. The Synod of
Verona (1184) imposed on bishops the duty to search out heretics in
their dioceses and hand them over to the secular power. Other
Synods, and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) under Pope Innocent
III, repeated and enforced this decree, especially the Synod of
Toulouse (1229), which established inquisitors in every parish (one
priest and two laymen). Everyone was bound to denounce heretics,
the names of the witnesses were kept secret; after 1243, when
Innocent III sanctioned the laws of Emperor Frederick, II and of
Louis IX against heretics, torture was applied in trials; the
guilty persons were delivered up to the civil authorities and
actually burnt at the stake.
"Paul III (1542) established, and Sixtus V organized, the
Roman Congregation of the Inquisition, or Holy Office, a regular
court of justice [!] dealing with heresy and heretics. (See Roman
Congregations.) The Congregation of the Index, instituted by St.
Pius V, has for its province the care of faith and morals in
literature; it proceeds against, printed matter very much as the
Holy Office proceeds against persons (see Index of Prohibited
Books). The present pope, Pius X (1909), has decreed the
establishment in every diocese of a board of censors and of a
vigilance committee whose functions are to find out and report on
writings and persons tainted with the heresy of Modernism (Encycl.
'Pascendi,' 8 Sept. 1907). -- [At another place the pious clerical
reason for this flagrant attempt against the mind and its liberty
of inquiry is thus with unctuous priestly speciousness stated: "for
it is notorious that clever sophistry coated with seductive
language may render even gross errors of faith palatable to a
guilele and innocent heart"! (CE. xiv, 766).] -- The present-day
legislation against heresy has lost nothing of its ancient
severity; but the penalties on heretics are now only of the
spiritual order; all the punishments which require the intervention
of the secular arm have fallen into abeyance. ...
"The Church's legislation on heresy and heretics is often
reproached with cruelty and intolerance. Intolerant it is; in fact
its raison d'etre is intolerance of doctrines subversive of the
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Faith. Cruelty only comes when the punishment exceeds the
requirements of the case. ... It suffices to remark that the
inquisitors only pronounced on the guilt of the accused and then
handed him over to the secular power to be dealt with according to
the laws framed by emperors and kings -- [at the instigation of the
Church!].
"Toleration came in only when faith went out; lenient measures
were resorted to ONLY WHERE POWER TO APPLY MORE SEVERE MEASURES WAS
WANTING. ... Christ says: 'Do not think that I am come to send
peace upon earth,: I came not to send peace, but a sword.' The
history of heresy verifies this prediction"! (CE. vii, 256-262,
passim.)
The Church Persecutrix, under this forged Christ-Lie, has shed
oceans more of blood than of its boasted "light" upon religion-
cursed Christendom. The only "light" it has diffused has been from
the flames of "heretic" cities, and the lurid fires of myriads of
Autos-da-Fe, kindled by hypocrite priests, burning in agony the
bodies of countless heroic men and women who scorned to prostitute
their minds to the sinister lies of priestcraft, and who have dared
defy with their lives the blighting "rule and ruin" dominion of the
power-lusting Church.
With a shudder of undying loathing for the cruel cynical
Hypocrite, we may admire the sweet charity of tender mercy
displayed by the Holy Church of the Christ, exampled in the
sanctimonious Formula of Judgment whereby its Holy Inquisition
handed over the racked and broken errant Child of Faith to the
prostituted Secular Arm for the final Act of Murder -- the blessed
Auto-da-Fe, with a prayer for the hated heretics: "Ut quam
clementissime et sine sanguinis effusionem puniretur -- should be
punished as mildly as possible and without the shedding of blood"!
The while Their Holinesses kept a standing Decree of Indulgences
from the pangs of Purgatory for all the hoodlum Faithful who would
please and glorify God by attending the sacred ceremonials of
Burning, and especially to those who would aid God and the priests
by fetching fagots for the consecrated fires, and throw water on
the wood so that the priest-set flames would be slower in their
purifying work and allow the wrathing "Obstinate" longer time to
make Peace with God and Holy Church by meet Repentance; in which
event, the "reconciled" Child of Faith would be dragged from the
flames only partly cremated, and returned to prison cell there to
agonize out the remainder of his life in rapt contemplation of the
beauties and sweetness of the blessed Christian Religion, crooning
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"
The foregoing loathsome boasted record of the Church, sinister
and infamous as it is, may be complemented by the following cynical
and sophistical recital of the mental and moral debauch of
ignorance imposed by the Church, concluding with the formal
admission that "the theocratic State was called upon [by its
prostituted mistress the Church] to avenge with the pyre" defiance
of the lying fraudulent pretensions of the Church:
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"During the Middle Ages the Church guarded the purity and
genuineness of her Apostolic doctrine through the institution
of the ecclesiastical (and State) Inquisition. ... Following
the example of the Apostles, the Church today watches
zealously over the purity and integrity of her doctrine, since
on this rests her whole system of faith and morals, the whole
edifice of Catholic thought, ideals, and life. For this
purpose the Church instituted the Index of Prohibited Books,
which is intended to deter Catholics from the unauthorized
reading of books dangerous to faith or morals, for it is
notorious that clever sophistry coated with seductive language
may render even gross errors of faith palatable to a guileless
and innocent heart. (p. 766.) ... Now, formal heresy was
likewise strongly condemned by the Catholic Middle Ages; and
so the argument ran: Apostacy and heresy are, as criminal
offenses against God, far more serious crimes than high
treason, murder, or adultery. ... But, according to Romans
xiii, 11, seq., the secular authorities have the right to
punish, especially grave crimes, with death; consequently,
heretics may be not only excommunicated, but also justly
(juste) put to death' (St. Thomas, II-II, Q; xi, a, 3). ...
The earliest example of the execution of a heretic was the
beheading of the ring leader of the Priscillianists by the
usurper Maximum at Trier (385). Even St. Augustine, towards
the end of his life, favored State reprisals against the
Donatists. ... Influenced by the Roman code, which was rescued
from oblivion, Frederick II introduced the penalty of burning
for heretics by imperial law of 1224. The popes, especially
Gregory IX, favored the execution of this imperial law, in
which they saw an effective means for the preservation of the
Faith. ... Unfortunately, neither the secular nor the
ecclesiastical authorities drew the slightest distinction
between dangerous and harmless heretics, seeing forthwith in
every (formal) heresy a 'contumelia Creatoris,' which the
theocratic State was called upon to avenge with the pyre."
(CE. xiv, 766, 768.)
"THE SECULAR ARM"
"Hypocrites! Ye compass land and sea to make one proselyte,
and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell
than yourselves!" Jesus. (Matt. xxiii, 15.)
"The barbarous penal forms of the Middle Ages are to be
credited, not to the Church, but to the State"! (CE. xiv, 768.) It
is a monstrous hypocritical perversion of truth to pretend, as the
Church ever does, that these inhuman and devastating legal
enactments and deeds of fire and blood, which ad horrendum we have
just read in faint outline from secular and ecclesiastical history,
and which brought several "Most Christian" nations to utter ruin,
moral and economic, were the voluntary and spontaneous expressions
of the social policy of Secular rulers, enacted and wrought against
their subjects in order to preserve the peace and safety of the
State and to regulate the civil and political conduct of their
peoples. The Church, by fraud and fear, brought the secular rulers
under her ignominious domination, and forced them by her threats,
as we have seen proved and admitted, to make and enforce these
infernal enactments and destructions. "This is the stale pretense
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of the Clergy in all countries, after they have solicited the
government to make penal laws against those they call heretics, or
schismaties, and prompted the magistrates to a vigorous execution,
then to lay all the odium on the civil power; for whom they have no
excuse to allege, but that such men suffered, not for religion, but
for disobedience to the laws." (Somers Tracts, vol. xii, p. 534;
cited by Buckle, Hist. of Civilization in England, i, p. 246.):
But the Church waited not for the secular rulers to obey her
murderous behests to "avenge with the pyre" the crime of
disbelieving and deriding the Faith, nor did she lose time while
watching the execution of her commands of murder by the secular
arm. The Church was then itself a secular ruler over vast
territories, the stolen "Patrimony of Peter" or States of the
Church; and for those territories their Royal-Holinesses set the
example of murder and burning of their own heretics. His Holiness
Pope Gregory IX (1227-41) was, we are told" "very severe towards
heretics, who in those times were universally looked upon as
traitors and punished accordingly. ... When in 1224 Frederick II
ordered that heretics in Lombard should be burnt at the stake,
Gregory IX, then Papal Legate, approved and published the imperial
law. In 1231 the Pope enacted a law for Rome that heretics
condemned by an ecclesiastical court should be delivered to the
secular power to receive their 'due punishment.' This 'due
punishment' was death by fire for the obstinate and imprisonment
for life for the penitent. In pursuance of this law a number were
arrested in Rome, burnt at the stake, and imprisoned." (CE. vi,
797.) And it was in Rome, by law and command of His Royal-Holiness
Clement VIII, that the defier of 'the "Triumphant Beast," Giordano
Bruno, was burned alive in Rome in 1600.
The hypocritical lie is repeated -- and in the same breath
belied. "Officially it was not the Church that sentenced
unrepenting heretics to death, more particularly to the stake ...
Gregory IX ... admitted the opinion, then prevalent among legists,
that heresy should be punished with death, seeing that it was
confessedly no less serious an offense than high treason. ... [The
succeeding popes went from opinions to acts.] In the Bull 'Ad
Extirpanda' (1252) Innocent IV says: 'When those adjudged guilty of
heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his
representative, or the Inquisition, the podesta or chief magistrate
of the city shall take them at once, and shall within five days at
the most, execute the laws made against them.' Moreover, he directs
that this Bull and the corresponding regulations of Frederick II
[for burning heretics] be entered in every city among the municipal
statutes under pain of excommunication, which was also visited on
those who failed to execute both the papal and the imperial
decrees. ... The passages [of the imperial decrees] which ordered
the burning of impenitent heretics were inserted in the papal
decretals. ... The aforesaid Bull 'Ad Extirpanda' remained
thenceforth a fundamental document of the Inquisition, renewed or
reinforced by several popes, Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV
(1265-68), Nicholas IV (1288-92), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and
others. The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the
popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences
that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake. It is to be noted
that excommunication itself was no trifle, for, if the person
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excommunicated did not free himself from excommunication within a
year, he was held by the (papal) legislation of that period to be
a heretic, and incurred all the penalties that affected heresy."
(CE. viii, 34.)
Here it may be remarked, that prescription or statute of
limitations runs not against the murderer. Thus Holy Church, who
has murdered and procured the murder of millions, can never escape
the just verdict and fatal sentence for her crimes before the bar
of Civilization. Impotent now, senile, but venomous still in
intention, she reeks yet with the blood of her slain; their ghosts,
like Banquo's, will never down. They cry yet to Humanity: Ecrasez
l'Infame!
We have just read from CE. the confession that "the theocratic
State was called upon to avenge with the pyre" all forms of heresy
-- or hate for the Church -- as a "contumelia Creatoris." Again it
says -- again contradicting its false pretense that the State is
alone to be "credited?' with these pious infamies: "After the
Christianized Roman Empire had developed into a theocratic
(religious) State, it was compelled -- [by whom but by the Church
with its terrorizing threats to the superstitious rulers] -- to
stamp crimes against faith (apostasy, heresy, schism) as offenses
against the State. (cf. Cod. Justin., 1, 5, de Haer.: 'Quod in
religionem divinam commttitur, in omnium fertur injuriam.')
Catholic and citizen of the State became identical terms.
Consequently crimes against faith were high treason, and as such
were punishable with death." (CE. xiv, p. 768.) A truer statement
of the direful consequences of this enforced prostitution of the
"secular arm" of the State to the criminal purposes of the Church
in coercing its false and accursed religion upon humanity, cannot
be made than this confession, in specious and unctuous words: "The
role of heresy in history is that of evil generally. Its roots are
in corrupted human nature. It has come over the Church as predicted
by her Divine Founder; it has rent asunder the bonds of charity in
families, provinces, states, and nations; the sword has been drawn
and pyres erected both for its defense and its repression; misery
and ruin have followed in its track"! (CE. vii, 261.) The confessed
accursed record of Christianity!
The utter dependence of the Church for the beginnings and for
the persistence of its bloody dominance, upon the extorted favors
and support of the prostituted "Secular Arm" of the State to do its
dirty work of subjection, is confessed and illustrated by two
instances, one with respect to the overthrow of Paganism, the other
accounting for the ultimate suppression of the early heretical
sects. Of the former, it is "credited" to the Emperor Gratian: "In
the same year, 375, he abolished all the privileges of the pagan
pontiffs and the grants for the support of the pagan worship.
Deprived of the assistance of the State, paganism rapidly lost
influence. ... He made apostasy a crime punishable by the State."
(CE. vi, 729.) With a clerical slur at the "fanciful speculations
of the Eastern sects so dear to the Eastern mind," oblivious of the
equally fanciful "Oriental speculations" which are the only source
of the holy dogmas of Western Christianism, it is cynically
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oblivion] -- under the anathema of the guardians of the
deporecorded: "but, lacking the support of the temporal power, they
sank -- [just as "orthodox" Christianity would have sunk to situm
fidei" -- holding the sword. (CE. vii, 259.)
As elsewhere suggested, it is pertinent to remark, that
history would quickly repeat itself in this highly-to-be-desired
respect, with the withdrawal of "the support of the temporal
power," through the immense and illegal support yet given to the
Beggar Church through deadhead tax exemption on its thousands of
millions of dollars of ill-gotten, idle and hoarded properties.
"St. Augustine seems to have originated the application of the
words 'Compel them to enter in,' to religious persecution.
Religious liberty he emphatically cursed: 'Quid est enim pejor,
mors animae quam libertas erroris? -- For which is worse, the death
of the soul than the liberty of error?' (Epistle clxvi.) Boniface
III decreed excommunication of any magistrate who either altered
the sentence of the Inquisition, or delayed more than six days in
carrying it into execution. In the beginning of the thirteenth
century, Innocent III instituted the Inquisition, and issued the
first appeal to princes to employ their power for the suppression
of heresy. In 1209, De Montfort (at Innocent's instigation), began
the massacre of the Albigenses. In 1215, the Fourth Council of the
Lateran enjoined all rulers, 'as they desired to be esteemed
faithful, to swear a public oath that they would labor earnestly,
and to the full extent of their power, to exterminate from their
dominions all those who were branded as heretics by the Church.'
The Council of Avignon, in 1209, enjoined all bishops to call upon
the civil power to exterminate heretics. The Bull of Innocent III
threatened any prince who failed to extirpate heretics from his
realm with excommunication, and with the loss of his realm."
(Lecky, History of the Rise and Progress of Rationalism in Europe,
vol. II, chap. iv, passim.)
As confessedly "tolerance came in only when faith went out,"
eternal gratitude and glory are the due meed of RATIONALISM, which
has struck the sword and the stake from the armory of Faith, and
left it a jaded sycophant begging "tolerance" of and for its bloody
self.
England was rather distant from Rome and the English spirit
did not yield so debasedly as some others did to the orders and
dominion of priestcraft; but so early as Alfred the Great, so
vaunted by the Church for his piety and learning, we have this
picture of prostitution of State to Church; and the effects on
both: "In the joint code of laws published by Alfred and Guthrum,
apostasy was declared a crime, the payment of Peter's Pence was
commanded, and the practice of heathen rites was forbidden. ... But
the clergy, ... discharging in each district the functions of local
state officials, seem never to have quite regained the religious
spirit." (CE. i, 507.)
Out of scores of instances of legal enactments made by
superstitious rulers under the terrors of papal threats, I cite
here but one, in the quaint words of a militant philosopher:
"Consequent to this claim of the Pope to be the Vicar Generall of
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Christ in the present Church is the doctrine of the fourth Counsell
of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent the third (Chap. 3, de
Haereticis), That if a King at the Popes admonition, doe not purge
his Kingdom of Haeresies, and being excommunicate for the same, doe
not give satisfaction within a year, his Subjects are absolved of
the bond of their obedience. Where, by Haeresies are understood all
opinions which the Church of Rome hath forbidden to be maintained."
(Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. iv, ch. 44, p. 333; 1651.) The infallible
but presumptuous claim of the Vicars of God may be stated in the
terms of the famous Bull of the "Two Swords":
"Under the control of the Church are two swords, that is,
two powers. ... Both swords are in the power of the Church,
the spiritual and the temporal; the spiritual is wielded in
the Church by the hand of the clergy; the secular is to be
employed for the Church by the hand of the civil authority,
but under the direction of the spiritual power. The one sword
must be subordinate to the other; the earthly power must
submit to the spiritual authority, as this has precedence of
the secular on account of its greatness and sublimity; for the
spiritual power has the right to establish and guide the
secular power, and also to judge it when it does not act
rightly. ... This authority, although granted to man, and
exercised by man, is not a human authority, but rather a
Divine one granted to Peter by Divine commission and confirmed
in him and his successors. Consequently, whoever opposes this
power ordained of God opposes the law of God." (Bull Unam
Sanctam, Boniface VIII, Nov. 18, 1302; CE. xv, 126.)
Our review of the Forgery Founded Church having demonstrated
the monstrous falsity of every divine premise of this "Bull," the
hollow sham of these sonorous braggart phrases is ghastly apparent.
They are priestly lies!
COMPULSORY AND WHOLESALE CONVERSION
"And the Lord said unto his servant, Go into the highway
and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be
filled." Jesus. (Luke xiv, 28.)
Disparaging the commands of its Lord to force them in, his
Vicarate apologizes: "Instances of compulsory conversions such as
have occurred at different periods of the Church's history must be
ascribed to the misplaced zeal of autocratic individuals." (CE. xi,
703.) The facts of history, as cited by CE. itself, belie this
apologetic clerical passing of the odium for such felonious duress
to autocratic individuals uninfluenced by the "moral" constraint of
the Church-beneficiary and unswayed by its anathemas and threats of
formal excommunication. A criminal who resorts to murder to prevent
the escape of the victims who support him, would readily threaten
murder to add greatly to the number of his supporting victims. It
was St. Augustine himself, greatest pillar and authority of the
Church Persecutrix, who first invoked, the Christ's fatal fanatic
command, "Compel them to come in," as complementary to the bloody
edicts of the earlier "Christian" emperors and of his own fatuous
fulminations against the "liberty of error," as above noticed. The
first temptation to come to Christ was by bribes, as when
Constantine offered a gold coin and a clean baptismal robe to all
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who would undergo that process; and the example of the Emperor in
favoring Christianity drew great numbers of servile subjects to the
feast of the Lord. We have read the cynical confession: that when
governments favor a religious sect by giving its adherents all the
offices and honors of the State and excluding all opponents, "the
army of civil servants becomes a more powerful body of missionaries
than the ordained ministers." When Clovis came to Christ he tolled
3000 of his retainers into the baptismal font with him at one time.
Pepin "had been filled with this lofty conception, consequently
extraordinary success attended the missionary labors of the Church.
... The conversion of the Avars had been attempted by the Bavarian
Duke; after their subjugation, they were placed under the
jurisdiction" of high prelates of the Church. (CE. v, 611.) "When
the conversion of their prince was publicly known, the (people) of
his kingdom are said to have flocked in crowds to receive the
Christian faith." (CE. i, 669.)
When Charlemagne spent those seven days in Rome with His
Holiness, who tricked him into believing that "his imperial dignity
was an act of God, made known, of course, through the agency of the
Vicar of Christ" (CE. iii, 615), and they together formed those
"many great designs for the glory of God and the exaltation of the
Church," due execution of the command of the Christ, "Compel them
to come in," was one of the great designs conspired with His Vicar:
"True to his own and his father's understanding with the pope, he
invariably insisted on baptism as the sign of submission, punishing
with appalling barbarity any resistance, as when, in cold blood, he
beheaded in one day 4500 persons at Verdun, in A.D. 782. Under such
circumstances it is not wonderful that clerical influence extended
so fast. Always bearing in mind his engagement with the papacy,
that Roman Christianity should be enforced upon Europe wherever his
influence could reach, he remorselessly carried into execution the
penalty of death that he had awarded to the crimes of: 1. refusing
baptism; 2. false pretense of baptism; 3. relapse to idolatry; 4.
the murder of a bishop or priest; 5. human sacrifice; 6. eating
meat in Lent. To the pagan German his sword was a grim, but
convincing missionary." (Draper, The Intellectual Development of
Europe, i, 374.) This secular authority is confirmed by this
clerical admission; that under the Carlovingian Empire, "in war
conversion went hand in hand with victory; in peace Charles ruled
through bishops. ... The Teutonic Order began the great conflict
which after more than half a century of bloodshed dealt the death-
blow to paganism in Prussia." (CE. iii, 700, 705.) Conversion by
force and arms continued through the Ages of Faith and brought
entire nations to Christ: "More lasting success followed the
attempts, patterned on the Crusades, to carry on wars of conversion
and conquest in those territories of north-eastern Europe peopled
by tribes that had lapsed from the Faith or that were still.
heathen; among such pagans were the Obotrites, Pomeranians, Wiltzi,
Serbs, Letts, Livonians, Finns, and Prussians. The preliminary work
was done in the twelfth century by missionaries. They were aided
with armed forces [by several kings and rulers]. From the beginning
of the thirteenth century Crusades were undertaken against Livonia,
Courland, Esthonia, and Prussia. In Lithuania Christianity did not
win until 1368." (CE. v, 612.) In Hungary, during the tenth and
eleventh centuries, "the new religion was spread by the sword. ...
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With these laws King St. Stephen brought over almost all his people
to the Catholic Faith. ... He [a later King] took strong measures
against those who had fallen away from the Faith." (CE. vii,
548-9.)
Thus it was that by war and bloody imposition rather than by
washing in the Blood of the Lamb, "vast tribes of savages who had
always been idolaters, who were perfectly incapable, from their low
state of civilization, of forming any but anthropomorphic
conceptions of the Deity, or of concentrating their attention
steadily on any visible objeit, and who for the most part were
converted, not by individual persuasion, but by the commands of
their chiefs, embraced Christianity in such multitudes that their
habits soon became the dominating habits of the Church. From this
time the tendency to idolatry was irresistible. The old images were
worshipped under new names." (Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i,
218.) The brand of conversion was marked by the outfit of
missionaries and military auxiliaries who first caught the
barbarians; and if the wrong kind got them first, it made all the
difference in the world in point of whether the result was the
intelligent working of the Holy Ghost or sheer ignorance. The,
great Bishop "Ulphilas (311-388) taught the Goths the Arian
theology; Arian kingdoms arose in Spain, Africa, Italy. The
Gepidae, Heruli, Vandals, Alans, and Lombards received a system
which they were as little capable of understanding as they were of
defending, and the Catholic bishops, the monks, the sword of
Clovis, the action of the papacy, made an end of it before the
eighth century." (CE. i, 707.) Arianism was very simple; it held
that there was but a One-Person God, and denied the Blessed Trinity
of Three-in-One. Thus Arianism was "an attempt to rationalize the
Creed by stripping it of mystery so far as the relation of Christ
to God was concerned" (Ib.). But this simple and de-mystified
theology, the non-Catholic barbarians were too ignorant to
understand; whereas, the other barbarians whose, minds were
enlightened by the Holy Ghost at the point of the Catholic sword,
were perfectly intelligent to comprehend the Mystery of the Holy
Trinity, -- which would have stumped Aristotle. The Arians had only
to follow the ordinary Multiplication Table -- "One times One is
One"; whereas the Orthodox. had to multiply curiously, -- "Three
times One is One!" The true formula is -- Three times Naught is
Nothing!
CONVERSION SKIN DEEP
In truth, however, "these nations were only Christianized upon
the surface, their conversion being indicated by little more than
their making the sign of the cross." (Draper, Op. cit., i, 365.)
True, indeed, it is, as is scores of times confessed: "Paganism had
not been renewed in Christ." (CE. iii, 700.) "Christians who
considered themselves faithful, held in a measure to the worship of
the sun. Leo the Great in his day says that it was the custom of
many Christians to stand on the steps of the Church of St. Peter
and pay homage to the Sun by obeisance and prayers." (CE. iv, 297;
cf, iii, 724-727.) And generally was it true: "The pagani retained
the worship of the old gods even after they were all
Christianized." (CE. vi, 12.) Among the Germans, and it is exactly
as with all others, "the acceptance of the Christian name and ideas
was at first a purely mechanical one." (CE. vi, 485.)
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As the result of the superficial veneer, in the early days
when persecution occasionally broke out, and offering incense to
the statue of Dea Roma or the Emperor was the test of Pagan
patriotism, great numbers of laity and even of clergy "flocked at
once to the altars of the heathen idols to offer sacrifice." (CE.
ix, 2.) "The apostates and the timid who had bought a certificate
of apostasy, became so numerous as to fancy that they could lay
down the law to the Church, ... a state of affairs which gave rise
to controversies and deplorable troubles. A bishop, followed by his
whole community, was to be seen sacrificing to the gods." (CE. i,
191.) At first the Church "imposed perpetual penance and
excommunication without hope of pardon" on the backsliders;
"however, the great number of Lapsi and Libellatici ... led to a
relaxation of the rigor of ecclesiastical discipline, leaving the
forgiveness of the sin to God alone" (CE. i, 624), while their easy
return to the decimated fold of Holy Church immensely increased its
sacred revenues and extended its sway. However, "when the Roman
Empire became Christian, apostates were punished by deprivation of
all civil rights. They could not give evidence in a court of law,
and could neither bequeath nor inherit property. To induce anyone
to apostatize was an offense punishable with death, under the
Theodosian Code, XVI, 7, De Apostasis." (CE. i, 625.)
Thus by centuries of fraud, fear and force was the "house of
God" filled from the highways and the hedges, the forests and the
wattle villages,, with Pagans "nominally converted to
Christianity." Heathen superstitions veneered with the Pagan
superstitions called Christianity, blended together for the further
bestialization of the Faithful of Holy Church of the Christ, and
the pall of the Dark Ages of Faith settled down over benighted,
Church-ruled Christendom, -- that "civilization thoroughly
saturated with Christianity," and "fully absorbed in the
supernatural." Two holy characteristics of the Age of Faith, the
grovelling fear of guilt and devout concern for the devil, are thus
commended: "Superstition is abject and crouching, it is full of
thoughts of guilt; it distrusts God and dreads the power of evil"
(CE. i, 555); and, with the pious Christians, "as among all
savages, disease and death were commonly ascribed to evil spirits
or witchcraft." (CE. xiv, 26.) So through the Ages of Faith!
Holy Church and Divine Christianity being now in full power
and possession over mind and body of Christendom, it had free scope
to bring forth fruits unto perfection of "Christian Civilization."
THE "FRUITS" OF CHRISTIANITY
"Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them." Jesus.
What Christianity did for [to] Civilization
The first effects of a new, and particularly an official State
Religion, are upon mind and morals, -- the state of culture or
prevailing civilizing conditions; essentially, on the system of
moral and intellectual education of the peoples subject to it. This
is recognized by the Church: "As in many other respects, so for the
work of education, the advent of Christianity is the most important
epoch in the history of mankind." (CE. v, 299.) Alas, this is
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disastrously true, as the Church's own history demonstrates. Jesus
Christ, says CE., was the "Perfect Teacher"; "to His Apostles He
gave the command, 'Going, therefore, teach ye all nations.' These
words are the charter of the Christian Church as a teaching
institution" (ib.). Here it got its Divine License to teach, and it
taught. How effective was the Church as the Divinely instituted
Pedagogue of Christendom, can be justly appreciated only through a
knowledge of what kind of education, moral and mental, previously
and at the time existed, and what educational system the Church
inherited from the "heathens" when it assumed its sacred monopoly
of teaching, and by a comparison between the pre-christian and the
Christian systems and results. By what the Church destroyed of
existing systems, and by what is produced through its own, -- by
these fruits of its zeal for Christian teaching must the success of
its execution of its Divine Commission be known and judged.
Christianity arose and finally prevailed in the Graeco-Roman
world, and there is exercised its Divine License as exclusive
teacher of faith and morals and of secular education. Before the
advent of Christianity, the nations of the Pagan Empire were -- we
are told -- "such as sit in darkness and the shadow of death"; the
"Perfect Teacher" came "to give light to them that sat in darkness
and in the shadow of death" (Luke, i, 79; cf. Matt. iv, 16). A
dismal picture is thus presented, and for centuries was touched up
with the darkest colors by Christian preachments, of the moral
depravity if not intellectual benightedness of the poor heathens
before the "Light of the World" was shed upon them from the Cross
on Calvary. The Greeks and Romans knew naught of Moses and the
Prophets, had never conned the Ten Commandments, and had never
murdered any one "who hearkeneth not unto the priest," as commanded
in Deut. xvii, 12. Deplorable indeed must have been their state
before the Divine Teacher undertook their enlightenment. The
picture of their actual moral and intellectual plight we will scan
as drawn by Christian scholars. Here is faintly a sketch of --
"THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE"
"The education of the Greeks exhibits a progressive
development. ... The ideal of Athenian education was the completely
developed man. Beauty of mind and body, the cultivation of every
inborn faculty and energy, harmony between thought and life,
decorum, temperance, and regularity -- such were the results aimed
at in the home and in the school, in social intercourse, and in
civic relations. 'We are lovers of the beautiful,' said Pericles,
'yet simple in our tastes,' and we cultivate the mind without loss
of manliness' (Thucydides, II, 40). ...
"The Greeks indeed laid stress on courage, temperance, and
obedience to law; and if their theoretical disquisitions -- [or
those of the Christians, for that matter] -- could be taken as fair
accounts of their actual practice, it would be difficult to find,
among the products of human thinking, a more exalted ideal. The
essential weakness of their moral education was the failure to
provide any adequate sanction -- [e.g., the fear of Hell and
damnation] -- for the principles they formulated and the counsels
they gave their youth. ... The practice of religion, whether in
public services or in household worship, exercised but little
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influence upon the formation of character. ... As to the future
life, the Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul; but this
belief had little or no practical significance [as to them, virtue
was its own reward]. ...
"Thus the motive for virtuous action was found, not in respect
for Divine law nor in the hope of eternal reward, but simply in the
desire to temper in due proportion the elements of human nature.
Virtue is not self-possession for the sake of duty, but, as Plato
says, 'a kind of health and good habit of the soul,' while vice is
'a disease and deformity and sickness of it.' The just man 'will so
regulate his own character as to be on good terms with himself, and
to set those three principles (reason, passion, and desire) in tune
together, as if they were verily three chords of a harmony, a
higher, a lower, and a middle, and whatever may lie between these;
and after he has bound all three together and reduced the many
elements of his nature to a real unity as a temperate and duly
harmonized man, he will then at length proceed to do whatever he
has to do' (Republic, IV, 443). This conception of virtue as a
self-balancing was closely bound up with that idea of personal
worth which has already been mentioned as the central element in
Greek life and education. ... The aim of education, therefore, is
to develop knowledge of the GOOD." (CE. v, 296-7.)
Saving their depraved want of respect for "Divine law" --
(proclaimed by priests), and their woeful neglect to provide
"adequate sanction" of "bribe of Heaven and threat of Hell"
(priest-devised), for inducement to their Nature-harmonized
character, the godless Greeks did fairly well in "developing the
knowledge of the good" and attaining the most "exalted ideal" --
outside of Jewish-Christian revelation -- to be found among
mankind, of personal and civic virtue, due alone to their high
"idea of personal worth," rather than to the revealed concept of
humanity pre-damned, "conceived in sin and born in iniquity,"
crawling through this Vale of Tears as "Vile worms of the dust," of
Christian self-confession. But then, God in his inscrutable Wisdom
had withheld his precious revelation of Total Depravity from the
Greeks, -- knowing, probably, that they did not need it, and had
bestowed it only on the obscure tribe of barbarian polygamous
Hebrews, who eminently fitted the revelation. So it was not the
Greeks' fault that they were no worse off, without the revelation,
than were the Jews with it. We will come to the Christians anon.
Though, thus, the "Sun of Righteousness" did not illumine the
revelationless skies of Greek Culture, the most splendrous Stars of
intellect and soul which ever -- (before the Star of Bethlehem
arose) -- shone down the vistas of Time, blazed in its zenith. The
name of every star in that Pagan Greek galaxy is known to every
intelligent person throughout Christendom today; the light from
these or those of them illuminates every page and every phase of
Art, Literature and Science known today to the inestimable glory of
man and boon of humanity. The living germ of some, the unsurpassed
perfection of others, is the product of the intellect and the soul
of the poor Pagan Greeks who had no Divine Revelation and were
bereft of the priceless "benefit of Clergy" as a teaching
institution.
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Let us gaze for a moment as through the telescope of Time and
scan the brilliant luminaries of the heavens of Pagan Greek genius,
undimmed then by the Light of the Cross. Beginning with those who
were about contemporary in their appearance with post-exilic Hebrew
revelation, say about 600 B.C., we will name only those immortally
known to every high-school student, skipping among the galaxies
down to the time, about 400 A.D., when they were for a thousand
years eclipsed by the Light of the Cross shining in the "Dark Ages"
of Christian Faith.
The Pagan Greeks, unfamiliar with the Hebrew revelation of the
Divine Right of Kings -- (anointed by priests) -- to rule mankind,
invented Democracy, the right of the people to rule themselves, --
a heresy recognized in the Declaration as a self-evident
proposition, that all just powers of government are derived from
the consent of the governed. News about Moses and his Divine laws
not having penetrated into Pagan Greece, a scheme of purely human
codes for human conduct was devised by the heathen Lawgivers,
Draco, Solon, Lycurgus. The revealed Mosaic History of the Hebrews
not being available as a model, the poor Pagan Greeks had to make
shift with Herodotus, "Father of History," Thucydides, Xenophon,
Strabo, Plutarch, Pausanius, Polybius, Claudius Ptolemy, Dion
Cassius. The God-drafted plans of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness
and of Solomon's Temple not being at hand to imitate, uninspired
Greeks planned and built the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, the
Prophylaea, the Temple of Diana of Ephesus, the Temple of Apollo at
Corinth, the Serapion and the Museum, "Home of all the Muses," at
Alexandria. The summit of human art in sculpture was reached in
Pagan Greece, the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Milo, the Winged
Victory, the Laocoon, the friezes of the Parthenon; consummate
masters of the "Old Masters" were the Pagans Phidias, Praxiteles,
Callimachus, Scopas, Polyclitus, with the chisel; Apelles, Zeuxis,
Polygnotus, Parrhasius, Pausias, with the brush. Statesmen and
military leaders unknown to Hebrew History, yet whose names are
immortal, led the Pagan Greeks to greatness and glory:
Themistocles, Pericles, Aristides the Just, Lycurgus, Miltiades,
Leonidas, Alexander the Great, who conquered the God-led Jews. Poor
heathen orators, who never heard Jehovah speak from Sinai, nor the
Christ on the Mount, -- their supreme eloquence has echoed down the
ages: Demosthenes, Democrates, AEschines, Lysias, Isocrates.
Literature and the Theater were born in Pagan Greece; the
"Classics" of Pagan thought and dramatic majesty came from the
minds and pens of uninspired heathen who knew no line of the
inspired "Law and Prophets" of the Hebrews, made semi-intelligible
and sonorous only by the very free treatment of skilled translators
into Elizabethan English; they are the immortal and inimitable
standards of literary form, style, culture, in every university,
high school, play-house, and cultured home in Christendom today.
For poetry: Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Anacreon, Theocritus, the
burning Sappho; for drama: Esebylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Aristophanes, besides the historians and orators named, the
delightful old resop, the philosophers and scholars yet to name.
The drama, tragedy, comedy, the chorus, melodrama; the epic, the
ode, the lyric, the elegy, poetic form and measure, the very words
for all these things, pure Pagan Greek. Philosophy -- the love of
Wisdom -- the highest reach of the uninspired human intellect into
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the mysteries, not of faith and godliness, but of mind and soul, in
search of the first principles of being, -- the "ousia of the on,"
and for the Supreme Good, the noblest rules of human conduct and
happiness: Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus,
Xenophanes, Leucippus, Democritus, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato of
the Academy, Aristotle of the Lyceum, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Zeno
the Stoic, Antisthenes the Cynic, whose lofty moral systems have
exalted mankind ever since, and whose words and works have
dominated civilization and made their names immortal, though none
of them knew of Moses, the Christ, or the Apostles, -- although
Heraclitus invented the "Logos" which St. John worked up into the
creative "Word of God" for Christian consumption.
Science, supremest handmaid of civilization, the true "God of
this world," its splendid dawn was in Pagan Greece, unshackled by
Genesis and Divine Mosaic revelation. Here Greek thought,
undeterred by priestly ban and unafrighted by Popish Inquisition,
sought to fathom the secrets of Creation and of Nature, to explain
the Riddle of the Universe, to make the forces of Nature the
obedient servitors of Man. Astronomy was born with Thales [640-546
B.C.], the first of the Seven Sages of Greece. Utterly ignorant of
the Divine handiwork of the Six Days, and of universal creation out
of universal Nothing, and not having travelled enough to verify the
four corners of the flat earth, guarded by the Four Angels of the
Corners, guardians of the Four Winds, he sought for the First
Principle, the arche', of Creation, attributing all matter to
changes in atoms; not knowing the revelation that the sun was set
in a solid "firmament" arched over the flat earth, and somehow
trundled across it daily to light Adam and his progeny, and had
been stopped still for Joshua and turned backward ten degrees for
Hezekiab, but fancying that it was governed by fixed natural law,
by unaided power of mind he calculated and predicted the eclipse of
565 B.C., and discovered the Solstices and Equinoxes; he calculated
so nearly the solar revolutions, that he corrected the calendar and
divided the year into 365 days, which it still has; he taught the
Egyptians to measure the height of the Pyramids by triangulation
from the shadow of a rod he set up near them, and invented several
of the theorems adopted by Euclid. Anaximander (610-546 B.C.), like
his master ignorant of Mosaic astronomy, discovered and taught the
obliquity of the ecliptic, due to the erratic behavior of the
equator of the earth in swinging round the sun; he approximated the
sizes and distances of the planets -- not all set on the same solid
plane; he discovered the phases of the moon, and constructed the
first astronomical globes; he was the first to discard oral
teaching, and commit the principles of natural science to writing.
Pythagoras of Samos (c. 584 B.C.), was a universal genius; he
coined the word "philosopher," according to Cicero; made
discoveries in music, which he conceived as a science based on
mathematical principles, and fancied the "music of the spheres." As
he hadn't read Genesis, he defiantly (through such ignorance)
proclaimed that the earth was a globe revolving around the sun or
central fire, and had inhabitable Antipodes, -- heathen notions
which got several Christian gentlemen into more or less trouble
some 2000 years later when they revived the idea. He speculated on
eclipses as natural phenomena rather than special dispensations of
Providence; he disputed Moses on Geology by claiming that the
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earth-surface hadn't always been just so, but that the sea had once
been land, the land sea; that islands had once formed parts of
continents; that mountains were forever being washed down by rivers
and new mountains thus formed; that volcanoes were outlets for
subterranean fires, rather than public entrances into Hell; that
fossils were the buried remains of ancient plants and animals
turned into stone, rather than theological proofs of Noah's Flood
embedded for confutation of Infidels in the Rock of Faith.;
Democritus (e. 460 B.C.), the "Laughing Philosopher," the most
learned thinker of his day and renowned for all the moral virtues;
he wrote some 72 books on physics, mathematics, ethics, grammar;
totally unlearned in Bible science, he scouted the idea of Design
in Nature, declaring it lapped in universal law; he upheld belief
in secondary physical causes, but not in a primary immaterial First
Cause, declaring that by natural law could all the phenomena of the
universe be accounted for; that there was no need of, no room for,
supernatural interference or Divine Providence. He left immortal
mark on the world of knowledge by his elaborated theory of atoms,
or constituents of matter too small to be cut or divided; boldly
and logically he applied this theory to the gods themselves,
holding that they were mere aggregates of material atoms --
(seemingly verified by the fact of eating the body of deity in
wafers) -- only mightier and more powerful than men, -- and
seemingly, to walk and talk, hate and kill, there must be something
material about them. Modern chemistry the most universal and useful
of the sciences, is founded on modifications of the atomic theory
of Democritus.
Hippocrates (c. 460 - c. 377 B.C.) is known as the "Father of
Medicine." He was the first physician to differentiate diseases,
and to ascribe them to different causes, on the basis of accurate
observation and common sense. His great axiom was: "To know is one
thing; merely to believe one knows is another. To know is science,
but merely to believe one knows is ignorance." In his days all
sickness and ailments were considered as inflicted directly by the
gods; the later revelation that it was all due to devils in the
inner works of man was not then known. But the result was the same:
all curing was the monopoly of the priests, the friends and
favorites of the gods and possessors of all godly lore. As the only
physicians, the priests had great revenues and a fine livelihood
from the offerings made by patients who flocked for relief to the
temples of Esculapius, which filled the ancient world. Hippocrates.
sought to separate medicine from religion, thus incurring the
venomous attacks of the priests and pious quacks. Never having
heard of "fig leaf poultices," or spittle to oust devils, "He laid
down certain principles of science upon which modern medicine is
built: 1. Therle is no authority except facts; 2. Facts are
obtained by accurate observation; 3. Deductions are to be made only
from facts." Not knowing the Christian art of casting out devils,
the heathen "Hippocrates introduced a new system of treatment; he
began by making a careful study of the patient's body, and having
diagnosed the complaint, set about curing it by giving directions
to the sufferer as to his diet and the routine of his daily life,
leaving Nature largely to heal herself." As about ninety percent of
all ills are such as would heal themselves if let alone, or if
treated with simple hygienic means, and many cures are greatly
aided by "faith" even in Pagan gods, the element of the miraculous
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is greatly discounted in the successes of the priests of
Esculapius, and possibly in those of Loreto and Lourdes. He had no
real successor until Vesalius, the first real surgeon; the
Inquisition nearly got him because his anatomical researches
disclosed that man had the same number of ribs as woman, not one
less to represent that taken for Eve; and he disproved the Church's
sacred science of the "Resurrection Bone."
Aristotle (384-322 iii. c.) the Stagarite, friend and tutor of
Alexander the Great, besides being one of the greatest
philosophers, was the foremost man of science of his day, and in
his encyclopedic works laid the foundation of Natural science or
physics, Natural History, meteorology or the phenomena of the
heavens, animal anatomy, to all which he applied the processes of
closest research and experiment and the principles of inductive
reasoning. By reason of the limitations of his process, and over-
dogmatism rather than experiment in some lines, be made many
curious mistakes, which ham-strung the human mind for ages. One was
the assertion that two objects of different weight, dropped from
the same height to the earth, would strike the earth at different
intervals of time, the heavier first; when Galileo denied this
theory and offered to disprove it by experiment, the pious
Christians of Pisa scouted and scorned him; when he ascended the
Leaning Tower and dropped two iron balls, one of one pound weight,
the other of one hundred, and both struck the ground at the same
instant, they refused to accept the demonstration, and drove him
out of the city; so strong was the hold of even the errors of Pagan
Aristotle on Christian credulity.
Aristotle had not read the cosmic revelations of Moses, and
was ignorant of the true history of Creation as revealed through
him. He discovered sea shells and the fossil remains of marine
animals on the tops of the mountains of Greece, and embedded far
down from the surface in the sides of the mountain gorges; he noted
that the rocks lay in great layers or strata one above another,
with different kinds of fossils in the several strata. In his Pagan
imagination Aristotle commented on this: that if sea-shells were on
the tops of mountains far from the sea, why, to get there the tops
of the mountains must once have been in the bottom of the sea, the
rocks formed under the sea, and the shells and other animal remains
embedded in them must once have lived and died in the sea and there
have been deposited in the mud of the bottom before it hardened
into rock. If Aristotle had climbed Pike's Peak be would have found
great beds of ocean coral in the rocks there; sea shell-fish and
sponges -- (which Aristotle himself first discovered to be animals)
-- in the rocky walls of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
Theophrastus (c. 373-287 B.C.), disciple and successor of
Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic School of philosophy; his
chief renown was as the first of the botanists, on which study he
left some sixteen books; for 1800 years after his death the science
lay dormant; not a single new discovery in that subject was made
until after the close of the millennium of the Christian Ages of
Faith.
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Aristarchus (c. 220-143 B.C.) was a celebrated astronomer of
the new school at Alexandria. From his predecessors he knew that
the earth revolved around the sun, and how the plane of the
ecliptic was designed; he calculated the inclination of earth's
axis to the pole as the angle of 23 1/2 degrees, and thus verified
the obliquity of the ecliptic, and explained the succession of the
seasons. Aristarchus had not read Moses on the solid firmament and
flat earth; he clearly maintained that day and night were due to
the spinning of the earth on its own axis every twenty-four hours;
his only extant work is "On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and
Moon," wherein by rigorous and elegant geometry and reasoning he
reached results inaccurate only because of the imperfect state of
knowledge in his time. By exquisite calculations he added 1/1623 of
a day to Callipsus' estimate of 365 1/2 days for the length of the
solar year; and is said to have invented a hemispherical sundial.
Hipparchus (c. 150 B.C.) made the first catalogue of stars, to
the number of over 1000; but his master achievement was the
discovery and calculation of the "precession of the equinoxes"
about 130 B.C. Without telescope or instruments, and with no Mosaic
Manual on Astronomy to muddle his thought, by the powers of
mathematical reasoning from observation he detected the complex
movements of the earth, first in rapid rotation on its own axis,
and a much slower circular and irregular movement around the region
of the poles, which causes the equator to cut the plane of the
ecliptic at a slightly different point each year; this he estimated
at not more than fifty seconds of a degree each year, and that the
forward revolution in "precession" was completed in about 26000
years. Such are the powers of the human mind untrammeled by
revelation.
Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), one of the most distinguished men
of science who ever lived. He discovered the law of specific
gravity, in connection with the fraudulent alloys put into Hiero's
crown; so excited was he when the thought struck him that, crying
"Eureka" he jumped from his bath and ran home naked to proclaim the
discovery. He discovered the laws governing the lever, and the
principles of the pulley, and the famous endless water-screw used
to this day in Egypt to raise water from the Nile for irrigation;
he was the first to determine the ratio of the diameter to the
circumference of a circle, calculating pie to be smaller than 3-1/7
and greater than 3-10/71, which is pretty close for a heathen not
having the "Book of Numbers" before him. He made other discoveries
and inventions too numerous to relate; he disregarded his
mechanical contrivances as beneath the dignity of pure science.
Euclid (c. 300 B.C.) is too well known for his "Principles of
Geometry" to need more than mention. Erastostlienes (c. 276-194
B.C.) was the Librarian of the great Library of Ptolemy II
Philadelpbus, at Alexandria, containing some 700000 volumes. He
invented the imaginary lines, parallels of longitude and latitude,
which adorn all our globes and maps to this day. Not knowing the
revelation that the earth is flat, he measured its circumference.
Noticing that a pillar set up at Alexandria cast a certain shadow
at noon on the summer solstice, while a similar pillar at Syene
cast no shadow at that time, and was thus on the tropic; he
measured the distance between the two places, as 5000 stadia,
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about 574 miles; described a circle with a radius equal to the
height of the pillar at Alexandria, found the length of the small
are formed on it by the shadow, which was 1/50 of the circle, and
represented the arc of the earth's circle between Alexandria and
Syene; multiplying the distance by 50 he obtained 28700 miles as
the circumference of the earth; a figure excessive due to mis-
measurement, but a magnificent intellectual accomplishment.
Erastosthenes was also the founder of scientific chronology,
calculating the dates of the chief political and literary events
back to the supposed time of the fall of Troy; a date quite as
uncertain as that of the later birth of Jesus Christ from which the
monk Dennis the Little essayed to fix the subsequent chronology of
Christian history.
Hero of Alexandria (c. 130 B.C.) discovered the principle of
the working-power of steam and devised the first steam-engines. In
his Pneumatica he describes the aeolipyle, which may be called a
primitive steam reaction turbine; he also mentions another device
which may be described as the prototype of the pressure engine.
(Encyc. Brit. xxi, 351-2.)
Strabo (c. 63 B.C.-19 A.D.), the most famous early geographer
and a noted historian; he left a Geography of the world, as then
known, in seventeen books, and made a map of the world; travelled
over much of it, and described what be saw. From a comparison of
the shape of Vesuvius, not then a "burning mountain," with the
active Etna, he forecast that it might some day become active, as
it did in 79 A.D. to the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum,
described by the Roman philosopher and natural historian, Pliny,
who overlooked the Star of Bethlehem, and the earthquake and
eclipse of Calvary. Strabo was ignorant of the cosmogony of Moses
and the Flood of Noah; so he declared that the fossil shells which
he discovered in rocks far inland from the sea proved that those
rocks had been formed under the sea by silt brought down by rivers,
in which living shell animals had become embedded. If Moses had
revealed this interesting fact, much human persecution and
suffering would have been avoided.
The principles of Evolution were discovered and taught by most
of the ancient Greek philosophers above named and many others, all
of whom were profoundly ignorant of the cosmogony of Genesis, and
who "endeavored to substitute a natural explanation of the cosmos
for the old myths." Anaximander (588-624 B.C.), though he had not
read Genesis, anticipated to the very word "slime" used in the True
Bible as the material of animal and human creation; "he introduced
the idea of primordial terrestrial slime, a mixture of earth and
water, from which, under the influence of the sun's heat, plants,
animals, and human beings were directly produced." Empedoeles of
Agrigentum (495-435 B.C.) "may justly be called the father of the
evolution idea. ... All organisms arose through the fortuitous play
of the two great forces of Nature upon the four elements."
Anaxagoras (500-428) "was the first to trace the origin of animals
and plants to preexisting germs in the air and ether." Aristotle
(384-322 B.C.), the first great naturalist, shows "in his four
essays upon the parts, locomotion, generation, and vital principles
of animals, that he fully understood adaptation in its modern
sense; ... he rightly conceived of life as the function of the
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organism, not as a separate principle; ... he develops the idea of
purposive progresses in the development of bodily parts and
functions." The doctrine is very substantially developed by the
Roman Lucretius, 99-55 B.C. (H.F. Osborn, From the Greeks to
Darwin, pp. 50, et seq.)
The vital germs of virtually every modern science had thus
their origin and some notable development in the fertile minds of
the Greek thinkers and in their great schools of thought, in the
centuries which preceded the Advent of the "Perfect Teacher" and
his divinely instituted successors in school-craft. If these
profound researches into Nature had been included in the Curriculum
of the Church, rather than fire and sword employed to extirpate
them and all who ventured to pursue them, Holy Church would not
have had the "Dark Ages of Faith" to record and apologize for. To
what perfection of Civilization and Knowledge might Humanity have
arrived in these 2000 years wasted on the Supernatural, and the
"Sacred Science of Christianity"!
THE POWER THAT WAS ROME
The Greeks with their brilliant culture and educational system
lay for the most part remote from the Holy See of God's Teacher-
Church at Rome; so it may be that the environment of the Teacher
was really in a region which lay in darkness and the shadow of
death, and thus its divine efforts were thwarted and rendered
desultory. Thus it becomes important to know the degree of
intellectual darkness and incapacity which whelmed the Empire of
the West. The tale may best be told in the words of its Inspired
Tutor.
"In striking contrast with the Greek character, that of
the Romans was practical, utilitarian, grave, austere. Their
religion was serious, and it permeated their whole life,
hallowing all its relations. The family, especially, was far
more sacred than in Sparta or Athens, and the position of
woman as wife and mother more exalted and influential. ...
"The ideal at which the Roman aimed was neither harmony
nor happiness, but the performance of duty and the maintenance
of his rights. Yet this ideal was to be realized through
service to the State. Deep as was the family feeling, it was
always subordinate to devotion to the public weal. 'Parents
are dear,' said Cicero, 'and children and kindred, but all
loves are bound up in the love of our common country' (De
Officiis, I. 17). ...
"Thus the moral element predominated, and virtues of a
practical sort were inculcated: first of all pietas, obedience
to parents and to the gods; then prudence, fair dealing,
courage, reverence, firmness, and earnestness. These qualities
were to be developed, not by abstract or philosophical
reasoning, but through the imitation of worthy models and, as
far as possible of living concrete examples. 'Vitae discimus,
We learn for life,' said Seneca; and this sentence sums up the
whole purpose of Roman education -- [in contrast to "We learn
for heaven," as we shall see the Christian ideal of
education].
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"In the course of time, elementary schools (ludi) were
opened, but they were conducted by private teachers and were
supplementary to the home instruction. About the middle of the
third century B.C. foreign influences began to make themselves
felt. The works of the Greeks were translated into Latin,
Greek teachers were introduced, and schools established in
which the educational characteristics of the Greeks
reappeared. Under the direction of the literatus and the
gramniaticus education took on a literary character, while in
the school of the rhetor the art of oratory was carefully
cultivated." (CE. v, 298; see p. 358-9.)
PAGAN CULTURAL RESULTS
"Pagan education, as a whole, with its ideals. successes,
and failures, has a profound significance. It was the product
of the highest human wisdom, speculative and practical, that
the world has known -- [thus confessedly, as the highest,
higher than the Christian]. It pursued in turn the ideals that
appeal most strongly to the human mind. It engaged the thought
of the greatest philosophers and the action of the wisest
legislators. Art, science, and literature were placed at its
service, and the mighty influence of the State was exerted in
its behalf. In itself, therefore, and in its results, it shows
how much and how little human reason can accomplish when it
seeks no guidance higher than itself and strives for no
purposes other than those which find, or might find, their
realization in the present phase of existence." (CE. v, 298.)
The splendors of the intellect and culture of Pagan Greece,
its whole harmonious system of education, mental, moral and
physical, which were the glory that was Greece, were transported
thus to Rome and kindled anew there the torch of Reason which
illumined and made splendid the power that was Rome. With clerical
disparagement that all this intellectual and moral grandeur was
accomplished by human reason alone with "no guidance higher than
itself," that is, without the heaven-endowed tutorship of
priestcraft, CE. yet confesses, that "Pagan education ... was the
product of the highest human wisdom ... that the world has ever
known," pursuing "the ideals that appeal most strongly to the human
mind." It was in literature and in law, in history, in government,
and in the practical arts and sciences, rather than in pure
science, that the Roman genius rose to its highest reaches. The
undimmed lustre of the Roman mind yet casts its splendors over the
world of thought; Roman law, "the action of the wisest
legislators," yet governs the actions of men and nations throughout
the civilized world. A few illustrious names of universal renown
must suffice to put into high relief the culture of Rome from the
dawn of the Christian era till the pall of the Christian Ages of
Faith fell over the Roman world. Augustus Caesar (not to mention
Julius), Cicero, Cato, Seneca, the Plinys, Tacitus, Livy, Horace,
Vergil, Lucretius, the Scipios, Gaius, Paulus, Papinian, Tribonius,
Antoninius Pius, Marcus Aurelius; the roster may be mightily
extended and every glorious name be known to every schoolboy.
Thus was the Pagan Roman world intellectually and morally
illumined when there befell --
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THE CHRISTIAN AGE OF FAITH
under the tutelage of the vicars of the Perfect Teacher. The story
again may be told by the accredited apologists who thus explain
"The Aim of Christian Education," in response to the Divine
Command. All education for practical objects of this life, for all
"purposes which might find their realization in the present phase
of existence," was piously and disdainfully rejected. For over a
millennium, as will be soon admitted, Christian "education" was
virtually limited to candidates for the priesthood and to the vain
mummeries of monks; with few and straggling exceptions no one but
a churchman was taught a word: the simple proof is, that scarce one
person in a thousand of the population of Christendom except
priests, could read or write his own name. The "education" of the
Clergy will be known by its fruits, of which we shall have some
tastes. Thus CE. discloses
THE AIM OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
"To these Apostles He gave the command, 'Going therefore,
teach ye all nations' (Matt. xxviii, 19) -- [a forged Mandate,
as we have seen]. These [forged] words are the charter of the
Christian Church as a teaching institution. While they refer
directly to the doctrine of salvation, and therefore to the
imparting of religious truth, they nevertheless, or rather by
the very nature of that truth and its consequences for life,
carry with them the obligation of insisting on certain
characteristics which have a decisive bearing on all
educational problems (p. 299-300). ...
"The Educational Work of the Church. Apart from the
preaching of the Apostles, the earliest form of Christian
instruction was that given to the catechumens in preparation
for baptism. Its object was twofold: to impart a knowledge of
Christian truth, and to train the candidate in the practice of
religion. ... Until the third century this mode of instruction
was an important adjunct to the Apostolate; but in the fifth
and sixth centuries it was gradually replaced by private
instruction of the converts, and by the training given in
other schools to those who had been baptized in infancy. The
catechumenal schools, however, gave expression to the spirit
which was to animate all subsequent Christian education: they
were open to every one who accepted the Faith, and they united
religious instruction with moral discipline. The
'catechetical' schools, also under the bishop's supervision,
prepared young clerics for the priesthood. The courses of
study included philosophy and theology, and naturally took on
an apologetic character in defense of Christian truth against
the attacks of pagan learning. ...
"Philosophy and literature were factors which had to be
contended with as well as the educational system, which was
still largely under pagan control. ... Fear of the corrupting
influence of pagan literature had more and more alienated
Christians from such studies. ...
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"[In the Middle Ages] education was provided for the
clergy in the cathedral schools under the direct control of
the bishop and for the laity in parochial schools to which all
had access -- [but few availed thereof]. In the curriculum
religion held the first place; other subjects were few and
elementary, comprising at best the trivium and the quadrivium.
... [I cannot forbear to add this -- The history of education
records no greater undertaking; for the task was not that of
improving or perfecting, [the brilliant system of pagan
education], but of creating [the dull schools of religious
instruction]; and had not the Church gone vigorously about her
business, modern civilization would have been retarded for
centuries [!]
"The monasteries were the sole schools for teaching; they
offered the only professional training; they were the only
universities of research; they alone served as publishing
houses for the multiplication of books; they were the only
libraries for the preservation of learning; they produced the
only scholars; they were the sole educational institutions of
this period. ...
"Two other movements form the climax of the Church's
activity during the Middle Ages. The development of
Scholasticism meant the revival of Greek philosophy, and in
particular that of Aristotle; but it also meant that
philosophy was now to serve the cause of Christian truth. ...
Having used the subtleties of Greek thought to sharpen the
student's mind, the Church thereupon presented to him her
dogmas without the least fear of contradiction. ...
"The same synthetic spirit took concrete form in the
universities. ... In university teaching all the then known
branches of science were represented. ... The university was
thus, in the educational sphere, the highest expression of
that completeness which had all along characterized the
teaching of the Church." (CE. v, 299-303, passim.)
All these "universities were devoted for the most part to the
development of theology." (CE. vii, 368; i, 264.) The "greatest" of
these Christian universities was that of Paris, which originated
about 1211; "legends of foundation of universities by Alfred,
Charlemagne, and Theodosius II, are myths. The students were not
boys, but mature men, many clergy. ... Barbarous Latin of the
universities and the wretched translations of Aristotle used in
commentaries and lectures: the Scholastic method of teaching with
its endless hair-splitting and disputations; much time was spent in
gaining very little knowledge or hardly any value," were the
charges made by the new school of Humanists, headed by Erasmus,
"Prince of Humanists," which destroyed the old Christian ideals of
education. (CE. xv, 194.)
The wonderful Middle Ages universities, so scorned by the
Humanists of the Renaissance, and so fondly cherished by the
Church, are not to be confounded in thought with such modernistic
institutions as Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia or Harvard -- (which
all started on a purely "Christian" standard). A revealing pen-
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sketch of them all, based on that of Paris, is drawn by Prof. James
Harvey Robinson: "There were no university buildings, and in Paris
the lectures were given in the Latin Quarter, in Straw Street, so
called from the straw strewn on the floors of the hired rooms where
the lecturer explained the text-book [a handwritten manuscript],
with the students squatting on the floor before him. There were no
laboratories, for there was no experimentation. All that was
required was a copy of the text-book. This the lecturer explained
sentence by sentence, and the students listened and sometimes took
notes.
"The most striking peculiarity of the instruction of the
medieval university was the supreme deference paid to Aristotle.
... Aristotle was, of course, a pagan. He was uncertain whether the
soul existed after death; he had never heard of the Bible and knew
nothing of the salvation of man through Christ. One would suppose
that he would have been rejected with horror by the ardent
Christian believers of the Middle Ages. But the teachers of the
thirteenth century were fascinated by his logic and astonished at
his learning. ... He was called 'The Philosopher'; and so fully
were scholars convinced that it had pleased God to permit Aristotle
to say the last word upon each and every branch of knowledge that
they humbly accepted him, along with the Bible, the Church Fathers,
and the canon and Roman law, as one of the unquestionable
authorities which together formed a complete and final guide for
humanity in conduct and in every branch of science. ... No
attention was given to the great subject of history in the medieval
universities, nor was Greek taught." (Robinson, The Ordeal of
Civilization, pp. 207-208.)
The school of Erasmus and the other great Humanists who
preceded and followed him brought the Renaissance to its fullness
of glory in emancipating the mind from the fetters of the Dark Ages
of Faith, and destroyed the rotten fruits of a millennium of
"Christian education." Thereupon, says CE., painfully confessing
the truth, with reservations, once the schools were secularized,
they fell rapidly under influences which transformed ideals,
systems and methods. Philosophy detached from theology, formulated
new theories of life and its values, that moved, at first slowly
and then more rapidly, away from the positive teachings of
Christianity. Science in turn cast off its allegiance to philosophy
and finally proclaimed itself the only sort of knowledge worth
seeking. ...
"During three centuries past, the main endeavor outside the
Catholic Church has been to establish education on a purely
naturalistic basis, whether this be aesthetic culture or scientific
knowledge, individual perfection or social service. ... The
Catholic Church has been obliged to carry on ... the struggle in
behalf of those truths on which Christianity is founded; and her
educational work during the modern period may be described in
general terms as the steadfast maintenance of the union between the
natural and the supernatural. ... It is specially the parochial
school that has served in recent times as an essential factor in
the work of religion. ... Sound moral instruction is impossible
apart from religious education. ... Catholic parents are bound in
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conscience to provide for the education of their children, either
at home or in schools of the right sort." (CE. v, 295-304, passim.)
"Parochial schools ... aimed at fostering vocations to the
priesthood." (CE. xiii, 555.)
The high Christian educational ideal of fettering Reason with
Faith, and the underlying objective of all Church teaching, is
again strongly insisted upon by our spokesman for Christian
education:
"The Christian Church, by virtue of her Divine charter,
'Going, teach ye all nations,' is essentially a teaching
organization. ... Truths which are not of their nature
spiritual, truths of science, or history, matters of culture,
in a word, profane learning -- these do not belong
intrinsically to the pregame of the Church's teaching.
Nevertheless, they enter into her work by force of
circumstances, when, namely, the Christian youth cannot attain
a knowledge of them without incurring a grave danger to faith
or morals. ... She assumes -- [therefore, not divinely
ordained to her, but self-arrogated] -- the task of teaching
the secular branches in such a way that religion is the
centralizing, unifying, and vitalizing force in the
educational process." (CE. xiii, 555.)
A. THE MORAL "FRUITS" OF CHRISTIANITY
THE CHRISTIAN "MORALITY LIE")
"Apart from Religion the observance of the Moral Law is
impossible." (CE. x, 559.)
"The wonderful efficacy displayed by the religion of Christ in
purifying the morals of Europe has no parallel." (CE. iii, 34.)
"Her holiness appears in the fruits which she brings forth."
(CE. iii, 759.)
The above gems of pious self-gratulation are culled from the
plethoric treasure-chest of like paste jewels of ecclesiastical
false pretense, and are set in high relief as tribute to the
presumptuous genius of Pharisaism. A few more out of many may be
displayed as a foil to what follows: "Sound moral instruction is
impossible apart from religious education" (CE. v, 304), -- though
this seems to be discounted by this formal admission of the entire
efficacy of purely secular ethic of Plato and the Pagans: "All
moral conduct may be summed up in the rule: Avoid evil and do good"
(CE. v, 28); and by this self-evident truth: "Material prosperity
and a high degree of civilization may be found where the Church
does not exist." (CE. iii, 760.) Whether either of these highly
beneficent conditions have been found where the Church in plenitude
of power and pride did exist, will soon be disclosed. However,
these disproofs to the contrary, "The Church has ever affirmed that
the beliefs of Theism and morality are essentially connected, and
that apart from religion the observance of the moral law is
impossible." (CE. x, 559.)
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Yet we have just read from the teeming pages of CE. the
glowing tributes to the morally "exalted ideals" of the Pagan
Greeks, and that with the Pagan Romans "the moral element
predominated"; that "Pagan education, as a whole, was the product
of the highest human wisdom that the world has ever known," -- and
withal without the Light of the Cross to illumine the Pagan mind
and conscience. Indeed, in the next sentences after the last above,
CE., waxing philosophical, belies fully its "Morality Lie" thesis,
that "apart from religion the observance of the moral law is
impossible," by this explicit admission of the natural source and
origin of Morality: "The Church admits that the moral law is
knowable to reason: for the due regulation of our free actions, in
which morality consists, is simply their right ordering with a view
to the perfecting of our rational nature. ... The Greeks of
classical times were in moral questions influenced rather by non-
religious conceptions such as that of natural shame than the fear
of the gods; while one great religious system, namely Buddhism,
explicitly taught the entire independence of the moral code from
any belief in God." (CE. x, 559.) We shall wonder, as we read the
Christian record, how far the "beliefs of Theism" make for morality
in higher or more wholesome degree than "the entire independence of
the moral code from any belief in God." Morals is from mores,
"custom"; it is social, not supernatural in origin; humanly
conventional, not of divine imposition and sanction. The "morals,"
customs, of an age or a people depend always on what is then
regarded as socially convenient, on the character of education and
example given by their preceptors and their environment.
The foregoing clerical admissions of the purely natural origin
and sanctions of morals, of the Moral Law, are perfectly valid and
convincing; a more formal and incontrovertible statement of the
fact and the principle, taken from a special study of the subject,
under the title "Ethics" in CE., by a Jesuit Professor of Moral
Philosophy, is added for the complete refutation of the Christian
"Morality Lie":
"Morality, or sum of prescriptions which govern moral
conduct. ... Ethics takes its origin from the empirical fact
that certain general principles and concepts of the moral
order are common to all peoples at all times. ... It is a
universally recognized principle that we should not do to
others what we would not wish them to do to us. ... The
general practical judgments and principles: 'Do good and avoid
evil,' 'Lead a life according to reason,' etc., from which all
the Commandments of the Decalogue are derived, are the basis
of the natural law, of which St. Paul (Rom. ii, 14) says, it
is written in the hearts of all men, made known to all men by
nature herself." (CE. v, 557, 562.)
It is because only of the nauseating persistence of the
dingdonging of this pestilent "Christian Morality Lie," by priest,
parson and press, that the loathsome record of the unparalleled
moral corruption of the Church and of Christendom under the Church,
is here in very summary and imperfect manner displayed in
refutation of this immense False Pretense. It rings false from
every pulpit and Christian apologist today as it has through all
the centuries of Creed and Crime of the Church. Here in thumbnail
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sketch is the summary of Christian results after a millennium of
undisputed moral sway: "The Church was the guide of the Western
nations from the close of the seventh century to the beginning of
the sixteenth" (CE. vii, 370); and for result: "At the beginning of
the Reformation, the condition of the clergy, and consequently of
the people, was a very sad one. ... The unfortunate state of the
clergy, their corrupt morals." (CE. vii, 387.) "The Lateran was
spoken of as a brothel, and the moral corruption of Rome became the
subject of general odium." (CE. viii, 426.) That there may be no
mistake about the insistent pretense of the Church to teach and
impose morality, "The Roman Pontiffs have always, as their office
demands, guarded the Christian faith and morals," as admitted by
the Apostolic Letter of His Holiness Pius IX, dated June 29, 1868,
by which he summoned the celebrated Vatican Council which decreed
Papal Infallibility in all matters of faith and morals. (CE. i,
176.) Therefore it was, that "the Church of the Middle Ages, having
now attained to power, continued through her priests to propagate
the Gospel. ... In the wake of religion follows her inseparable
companion, morality." (CE. xii, 418.) We shall now see the Church
at work for morality and the moral "fruits" of Christianity through
the Dark Ages of Faith. "Those were indeed golden days for the
ecclesiastical profession, since the credulity of men reached a
height which seemed to insure to the clergy a long and universal
dominion, -- until the prospects of the Church were suddenly
darkened, and human reason began to rebel ... with the rise of that
secular and skeptical spirit to which European civilization owes
its origin," as Buckle says and demonstrates and I will briefly
sketch, after first letting CE. reveal facts which are the harvest-
fruits of Christian Morality.
How, then, are we surprised to read the official confession,
that these same Middle Ages were, of all human epochs, "an age of
terrible corruption and social decadence"? (CE. i, 318.) Surely the
good cleric who penned these shaming words was a moral dyspeptic or
must have developed a pessimistic in-growing conscience. We turn
the pages of this ponderous Apology for the Faith to find the
records of Church history giving the lie to this scandalous and
disgraceful confession. There are fifteen great quarto tomes of
CE., of over 700 double-column pages each; and surely if this
confession is mistaken or untrue, the glorious facts of Church
morality, its ever-radiant and redolent "sweetness and light,"
which cannot be hid, will be made manifest for the confusion of
those who might mock over this confession. The following paragraphs
are the gleanings from just one, the first, of these fifteen
volumes, recording the sacred history of the Church, in which "her
holiness appears in the fruits which she brings forth," as therein
preserved, and unparalleled "in purifying the morals of Europe" for
fifteen centuries and more under her undisputed moral sway. In this
one sample volume is the true assay of the "fruits" conserved in
them all; a typical cross-section of Church history. Multiply by
fifteen the product of these revelations of the "fruits which she
brings forth," and even the most unregenerate critic of
Christianity must agree with CE, that "the wonderful efficacy of
the religion of Christ in purifying the morals of Europe has no
parallel" in any religion or history known to mankind. The
following passages are word for word from Volume I -- (unless
otherwise indicated), -- of the Catholic Encyclopedia, arranged
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roughly in chronological order, through part only of one letter of
the Alphabet. They give thus a sort of segmentary cross-cut and
bird's-eye-view of the moral and social conditions of Christendom
through the centuries, with quite imperfect glimpses of that sweet
charity one to another which distinguishes those who love their
enemies -- in the fashion of King Richard to his brother: "For I do
love my brother Clarence so, That I would see his sweet soul In the
bosom of good old Abraham!"
Countless instances of Christian "morality" we have already
seen in the myriad holy forgeries of the Church throughout fifteen
centuries; again are confessed "the many apocryphal [forged]
writings in the first five centuries of the Christian era." (CE. i,
132.) Whoever would forge for Christ's sake or his own profit would
as readily commit any other crime for the same ends, as we shall
see to the limit of abhorrence. But the predilect perversity of the
Christians clerical and lay, was the "lusts of the flesh," that
distinctive "crime" so proscribed and so practiced by the
expounders of "Christian virtue," and the "inseparable companion"
of the most religious. That "sex-scandals" were rampant in the
earliest days of the several infant Churches is manifest in quite
all of the second-century Epistles of the New Testament, as any one
may read unto edification. The Agape, or Christian "love feast" was
all its name implies; it was "a form of ancient Pagan funeral
feast. From the fourth century onward ... the agape gave rise to
flagrant and intolerable abuses" (i, 202). From the first century,
"the Agapeta, were virgins who consecrated themselves to God with
a vow of chastity and associated with laymen, who like themselves
had taken a vow of chastity. ... It resulted in abuses and
scandals. ... St. Jerome [about 400] asked indignantly, 'Why was
this pest of Agapette introduced into the Church?' St. Cyprian
shows that abuses of this kind developed in Africa and the East.
The Council of Ancyra, in 314, forbade virgins consecrated to God
to thus live with men as sisters. This did not correct the practice
entirely, for St. Jerome arraigns Syrian monks for living in cities
with Christian virgins. These Agapetae are sometimes confounded
with the Subintroductae, or women who lived with clerics without
marriage." (202.)
St. Cyprian, On the State of the Church, just before the
Decian persecution (e. 250), admits: "There was no true devotion in
the priests. ... That the simple were deluded, and the brethren
circumverited by craft and fraud. That great numbers of the bishops
... were eager only to heap up money, to seize people's lands by
treachery and fraud, and to increase their stock by exorbitant
usury." (Quoted by Middleton, Free Inquiry, Int. Disc. lxvii-ix.)
"Solicitation, in canon law, is the crime of making use of the
Sacrament of Penance for the purpose of drawing others into sins of
lust. Numerous popes have denounced this crime vehemently, and
decreed punishments for its commission ... in connection with the
Confessional, during or before" (xiv, 134). "The crime of abduction
was, doubtless, extremely rare among the early Christians. In the
fourth century, when men grew bolder, the number of wife-captors
became exceedingly numerous. To cheek this" -- a long line of
Church enactments listed, down to the Council of Trent (1500's) was
futile. (CE. i, 33.) While some of the following descriptions are
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applied to particular time and place, yet as is evident from the
content and ensemble, like conditions existed "always and
everywhere" through the Middle Ages, that delectable "civilization
thoroughly saturated with Christianity." Thus "even in the fourth
century, St. John Chrysostom testifies to the decline of fervor in
the Christian family, and contends that it is no longer possible
for children to obtain proper religious and moral training in their
own homes" (555), already so debased was Christianity.
Loving Christian differences of opinion, enhanced by corporal
methods of seeking each to force the other to the same opinion,
were so ubiquitous and universal that birth was given to a special
and deadly new species of human hatred and a distinctive name
coined for it: Odium Theologicum -- Theological Hatred, and the
maxim: "Hell hath no fury like an offended Saint." The Father of
Church History, Bishop Eusebius, has scathing passages, and he
refuses "to record the dissensions and follies which they exercised
against each other before the (Diocletian) persecution." (Hist.
Eccles. Bk. VIII, chap. 2.) And in Chapter 12, entitled "The
Prelates of the Church," Eusebius wordily and in figured speech
thus in substance describes them: "the different heads of the
churches, who from being shepherds of the reasonable flocks of
Christ. ... were condemned by divine justice as unworthy of such a
charge; ... moreover, the ambitious aspirings of many to office,
and the injudicious and unlawful ordinations that took place, the
divisions among the confessors themselves, the great schisms and
difficulties industriously fomented by the factious, ... heaping up
affliction upon affliction: all this I have resolved to pass by,"
as too shameful to be preserved in detail. Speaking of the Church
historian Socrates, who died about 400: "Living as he did in an age
of bitter polemics, he strove to avoid the animosities and hatreds
engendered by theological differences." (CE. xiv, 119.)
We recall the embittered and bloody strifes which waged from
the early days of the fourth century between the partizans of
Arius, who denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ and consequently the
existence of the Blessed Trinity or Three-in-One Godhead, and the
"orthodox" or "right-thinking" faction which vociferated that
Father and Son were of the same eternal age and "homoousion" or "of
the same substance," -- of which puzzle it is assured: "It is
manifest that a dogma so mysterious presupposes a divine
revelation." (CE. ix, 309.) But that "divine revelation" was let
into the clerical mind through the efficacious grace of clubs,
stones and knives, by force of fraud and deviltry, as thus
witnessed: "The great definition of the Homoousion, promulgated at
Nicaea in 325, so far from putting an end to further scussion,
became rather the occasion of keener debate and for still more
distressing confusion of statement in the formulation of theories
on the relationship of Our Lord to His Father. [Other angry
Councils with the Holy Ghost were held on the "theory"] at Ariminum
for the West, and at Seleucia for the East, in 359. At both
Councils, as the result of dishonest intrigue and an unscrupulous
use of intimidation, ... the Homoousion was given up and the Son
was declared to be merely similar to -- no longer identical in
substance with -- the Father. St. Jerome's characterization of the
issue still affords the best commentary: 'The whole world groaned
in wonderment to find itself Arian'" (CE. i, 79.) Thus are divine
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revelations made manifest! The Christian trait of love for enemies
is exemplified: "The sudden death of Arius [attributed to poison]
was looked upon by contemporary Catholics as an answer to the
prayers of the good bishop." (CE. i, 285.) All the "new nations"
except the Franks, converted under Clovis, were "Arian heretics";
and for some four centuries maybe a million throats were cut in the
name of One God or Three, before the "divine revelation" of Three-
in-One won out.
"The accession of Constantine found the African Church rent by
controversies and heresies: Catholics and Donatists contended not
only in a wordy warfare, but also in a violent and sanguinary way.
... Attempts at reconciliation, at the suggestion of the Emperor
Constantius, only widened the breach, and led to armed repression,
an ever-growing discontent, and an enmity that became more and more
embittered. ... One act of violence followed another and begot new
conflicts. ... Even in such condition of peril -- [the bitter
reprisals of the Arian Vandals which filled the fifth century], the
Christians of Africa were far from showing those virtues which
might be looked for in a time of persecution. ... Crimes of all
kinds made Africa one of the most wretched provinees in the world.
Nor had the Vandals escaped the effects of this moral corruption,
which slowly destroyed their power and eventually effected their
ruin. ... While one part of the episcopate wasted its time and
energies in fruitless theological discussions, others failed of
their duty. The last forty years of the seventh century witnessed
the gradual fall of the fragments of Byzantine Africa into the
hands of the Arabs. ... In this overwhelming disaster the African
Church was blotted out." (CE. i) 191-2.) God failed to protect his
Holy own!
If prelates and priests, the shepherds of the flocks, wallowed
in moral defilement, judge of the state of the witless sheep of the
heavenly fold. "Valence, the central see of the Kingdom, had been
scandalized by the dissolute Bishop Maximum, and the see in
consequence had been vacant for fifty years," till 486. (616.)
"Pope St. Agapetus I (535-536) was the son of a Roman priest slain
during the riots in the days of Pope Symmachus. His first official
act was to burn in the presence of the assembled clergy the
anathema which Boniface II had propounded against the latter's
rival Dioseurus" (202). St. Angilbert, Abbott, "at this period
[about 790] was leading a very worldly life. ... Angilbert
undoubtedly had an intrigue with Charlemagne's unmarried daughter
Bertha, and became by her the father of two children" (490). "On
the death of Pope Formosus (896) there began for the papacy a time
of the deepest humiliation, such as it has never experienced before
or since. After the successor of Formosus, Boniface VI, had ruled
only fifteen days, Stephen VI (properly, VII), was raised to the
Papal Chair. In his blind rage, Stephen not only abused the memory
of Formosus but also treated his body with indignity. Stephen was
strangled in prison in the summer of 897, and the six following
popes (to 904) owed their elevation to the struggles of the
political parties. Christophorus, the last of them, was overthrown
by Sergius III (904-911)." (ii, 147.) Pope Agapetus II, (946-956),
"for ten years, during what has been termed the period of deepest
humiliation for the papacy. ... He labored incessantly to restore
the decadent discipline in churches and cloisters; and in quieting
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disturbances in the metropolitan see of Rheims; and at putting an
end to anarchy in Italy" (i, 203). Such periods of "deepest
humiliation to the papacy" were quite recurrent: "The Popes
Benedict from the fourth to the ninth inclusive belong to the
darkest period of papal history (900-1048) ... Benedict VI was
thrown into prison by the anti-pope Boniface VII, and strangled by
his orders, in 974. Benedict VII was a layman and became pope by
force, and drove out Boniface VII; died 983. ... Pope Benedict IX
had long caused scandal to the Church by his disorderly life. His
immediate successor, Pope Gregory VI (1044-46) had persuaded
Benedict IX to resign the Chair of Peter, and to do so bestowed
valuable possessions on him" (31).
"There can be no doubt that at this period (800's) the law of
celibacy was ill observed by priests" (507). St. Arialdo was
'martyred at Milan in 1065, for his attempt to reform the
simoniacal and immoral clergy of that city. ... For inveighing
against abuses he was excommunicated by the bishop" (707). Pope
Alexander II (1061-73) was a leader in "that great agitation
against simony and clerical incontinence. ... A faction elected
Honorius II as pope -- public opinion clamoring for reform.
Alexander was omnipresent, through his legates, punishing
simoniacal bishops and incontinent clergy" (286). "The Church at
that time (1072) was torn by the schisms of anti-popes" (541). --
"The desperate moral barbarism of the age." (vii, 229.) ]Pope
Anacletus II (1130-38) had before his election supported the popes
in their fifty years' war for reform. If we can believe his
enemies, he disgraced his office by gross immorality and by his
greed in the accumulation of lucre. There can be no doubt that he
determined to buy or force his way into the Papal Chair. ... On the
death of Honorius, two popes, Anacletus II and Innocent II were
elected and consecrated on the same day, by the factions in the
Sacred College. ... When Anaeletus died, another anti-pope, Victor
IV, was elected by one faction" (447).
The "glorious thirteenth century," which the Faithful for some
unfathomable reason exalt proudly above all the others of the Dark
Ages of Faith, was ushered in with the murderous Holy Inquisition
and the unholy crusade against the Albigenses, tens of thousands of
whom were butchered and the fairest half of France laid desolate.
The motive for this unprecedented butchery and devastation is
naively confessed to be "their wealth ... their contempt for the
Catholic clergy, caused by the ignorance and the worldly, too
frequently scandalous lives of the latter" (268). "With the zeal of
an apostle St. Anthony [d. 1231] undertook to reform the morality
of his time; ... enormous scandals were repaired" (557). "The
barons of the Campagna fought with each other and with the Pope
and, issuing from their castles, raided the country in every
direction, and even robbed the pilgrims on their way to the tombs
of the Apostles. ... William I took captive many wealthy Greeks,
the greater number of whom he sold into slavery" (157). "A period
of decline followed after the middle of the thirteenth century,
when war and rapine did much injury ... suffered again in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from the prevailing social
disturbances" (145). "Pope Alexander IV (1254-61) was easily led
away by the whisperings of flatterers, and inclined to listen to
the wicked suggestions of avaricious persons. ... He continued
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Innocent IV's policy of a war of extermination against the progeny
of Frederick II. ... The pecuniary assistance these measures
brought him was dearly bought by the embitterment of the English
clergy and people against the Holy See. ... The unity of
Christendom was a thing of the past" (288). About 1300, "all looked
forward to the time when the religious orders, whose laxity had
been occasioned in great measure by the general looseness of the
times, would be restored to their former discipline"
Under Pope Alexander V (1409-1410) "The Great Schism (1378-
1417) rent the Church. As cardinal he had sanctioned the agreement
of the rival Colleges of Cardinals to join in a common effort for
unity. He thus incurred the displeasure of Gregory XII [who deposed
him]. At, the Council of Pisa (1409) he preached the opening
sermon, a scathing condemnation of the rival popes, and presided at
the deliberations of the theologians who declared those popes
heretics and schismatics ... in the riven Catholic world. ... His
legitimacy was soon questioned, and the world was chagrined to find
that instead of two popes it now had three. ... Whether or not
Alexander was a true pope is a question still discussed" (288-9).
Speaking of "moral" conditions in the Holy City and prevailing
in the age, CE. thus summarizes the "sweetness and light" of
Christendom in the time of His Holiness Sixtus IV (died 1484): "His
dominating passion was nepotism, heaping riches and favors on his
unworthy relatives. His nephew, the Cardinal Rafael Riario, plotted
to overthrow the Medici; the pope was cognizant of the plot, though
probably not of the intention to assassinate, and even laid
Florence under an interdict because it rose in fury against the
conspirators and brutal murderers of Giuliano dei Medici.
Henceforth, until the Reformation, the secular interests of the
papacy were of paramount importance. The attitude of Sixtus towards
the conspiracy of the Pazzi, his wars and treachery, his promotion
to the highest offices in the Church of such men as ... are blots
upon his career. Nevertheless, there is a praiseworthy side to his
pontificate. He took measures to suppress abuses in the
Inquisition, vigorously opposed the Waldenses, and annulled the
decrees of the Council of Constance Under him Rome became once more
habitable, and he did much to improve the sanitary conditions of
the city." (CE. xiv, 32, 33.)
Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) was so notoriously infamous and
his history is so large and so well known, with his six bastards,
including Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, and his numerous Vatican
mistresses and dissolute Papal Court, under whose regime again "the
Vatican was a brothel," that he is simply mentioned in his order.
When one of his bastard sons "was fished out of the Tiber with his
throat cut ... that it was a warning from Heaven to repent, no one
felt more keenly than the Pope himself. He spoke of resigning; and
proclaimed his determination to set about that reform of the Church
'in Head and members' for which the world had so long been
clamoring"; but his grief was assuaged by the attentions of his
lady loves, notably pretty Guilia Farnese, niece of the Cardinal,
and whose picture as an angel now adorns one of the great frescos
of the Vatican. "Long ago Leo the Great (440-461) declared, 'the
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dignity of Peter suffers no diminution even in an unworthy
successor.'" (289, 294, passim.) Maybe so; but, the question,
simply is, "the unparalleled purification of morals" produced by
the religion of Christ!
About this juncture, and after a thousand years of such
conditions in the Church and the Heads of the Church, popes,
prelates, priests, and monks, and rife among the degraded people,
the protests of Christendom swelling steadily for several centuries
broke into the Protestant Reformation by force and arms. A
thumbnail sketch of the culmination and the causes leading up to it
throughout the Middle Age "civilization thoroughly saturated with
Christianity," is drawn by CE. in two paragraphs here quoted:
"At the time of Gregory VII's elevation to the papacy
(1073-85), the Christian world was in a deplorable condition.
During the desolating period of transition -- the terrible
period of warfare and rapine, violence, and corruption in high
places, which followed immediately upon the dissolution of the
Carlovingian Empire [in the 800's], a period when society in
Europe seemed doomed to destruction and ruin -- the Church had
not been able to escape from the general debasement [to which
it had so signally contributed, if not caused]. The tenth
century, the saddest perhaps, in Christian annals, is
characterized by the vivid remark of [Cardinal] Baronius that
Christ was as asleep in the vessel of the Church. At the time
of Leo IX's election in 1049, according to the testimony of
St. Bruno, Bishop of Segni, 'the whole worldly in wickedness,
holiness had disappeared, justice had perished, and truth had
been buried; Simon Magus was lording it over the Church, whose
bishops were given to luxury and fornication.' St. Peter
Damien, the fiercest censor of his age, unrolls a frightful
picture of the decay of clerical morality in the lurid pages
of his 'Book of Gomorrah.' Writing in 1075, Gregory himself
laments the unhappy state of the Church. 'The Eastern Church
has fallen away from the Faith and is now assailed on every
side by infidels. Wherever I turn my eyes -- to the west, to
the north, to the south, -- I find everywhere bishops who have
obtained their office in an irregular way, whose lives and
conversations are strangely at variance with their sacred
calling; who go through their duties not for the love of
Christ but from motives of worldly gain. And those among whom
I live are worse than Jews or Pagans.' ... Gregory made every
effort to stamp out of the Church the two consuming evils of
the age, simony and clerical incontinency. ... Gregory began
his great work of purifying the Church by a reformation of the
clergy. In 1074 he enacted the following decrees [a series
aimed at the two universal vices named]. But they met with
vigorous resistance, ... called forth a most violent storm of
opposition throughout Italy, Germany, and France. And the
reason for this opposition on the part of the vast throng of
immoral and simoniacal clerics is not far to seek." (CE. vi,
793-4.) Still, nearly five centuries later:
"Churchmen in high places were constantly unmindful of
truth, justice, purity, self-denial; many had lost all sense
of Christian ideals; not a few were deeply stained by Pagan
[?] vices. ... The earlier years of AEneas Sylvius [Pope Pius
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II, 1458-64], the whole career of Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander
VI), the life of Farnese, afterwards Paul III, until he was
compelled to reform himself as well as the Curia, ... all with
disregard for the most elementary virtues. Julius II fought
and intrigued like a mere secular prince; Leo X, although
certainly not an unbeliever -- [it was His Holiness who framed
the famous "witty epigram: 'What profit has not that Fable of
Christ brought us,"; Encyc. Brit., 14th Ed. xix, 217] -- was
frivolous in the extreme; Clement VII drew on himself the
contempt as well as hatred of all who had dealings with him,
by his crooked ways and cowardly subterfuges which led to the
taking and pillage of Rome. Now, it is not unfair to trace in
these popes, as in their advisers, a certain common type, the
pattern of which was Caesar Borgia, sometime cardinal, but
always in mind and action a condottiere [bandit], while its
philosopher was Machiavelli. We may express it in the words of
Villari as a 'prodigious intellectual activity accompanied by
moral decay.' ... Not only did they fall away from monastic
severities, they lost all manly and decent self-control. ...
Worse things than Savonarola had seen were to happen. And a
catastrophe was inevitable. Erasmus laughed to scorn the
Ciceronian pedantries [of sundry Cardinals named]; he quotes
with disgust the paganizing terms in which some Roman
preachers travestied the persons and scenes of the Gospels,
... outcry against cancerous vices which were sapping the life
of Italy. ... [Some] demanded reform according to Catholic
principles [Others] taught education in principle and practice
on orthodox lines. ... The Sorbonne objected, however, to any
publication of Scripture without approved Catholic notes; and
this in a day which might be justly termed one of rebuke and
blasphemy. ... Poggio, the mocking adversary of the clergy,
was for half a century in the service of the popes. Filelfo,
a pagan unabashed and foul, was rewarded by Nicholas V for his
abominable satires. Pius II had the faults of a smart society
journalist, and took neither himself nor his age seriously.
Platina, with whom Paul II quarreled on political grounds,
wrote a vindicative slanderous book, 'The Lives of the Roman
Pontiffs,' which, however, was in some degree justified by the
project of reformation 'in Head and members' constantly put
forth and never fulfilled until Christendom had been rent in
twain." (CE. xii, 767-768.)
Speaking again of prevailing conditions at the end of a
thousand years of inspired care of the Christian morals, by
their Holinesses, the following sentences culled from one
article are a little cluster of the "fruits" of Christianity:
"The scientific and ascetic training of the clergy left much
to be desired, the moral standard of many being very low, and
the practice of celibacy not everywhere observed. Not less
serious was the condition of many monasteries of men, and even
of Women. ... The members of the clergy were in many places
regarded with scorn. ... As to the Christian people itself, in
numerous districts ignorance, superstition, religious
indifference, and immorality were rife. ... Worldly ideas,
luxury and immorality rapidly gained ground at the center of
ecclesiastical life. When ecclesiastical authority grew weak
at the fountain head, it necessarily decayed elsewhere. ... In
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proportion as the papal authority lost the respect of many,
resentment grew against both the Curia and the Papacy. ...
This vast ecclesiastical wealth, ... such riches in the hands
of the clergy. ... Higher intellectual culture was confined in
a great measure to the higher clergy. ... The parochial clergy
were to a great extent ignorant and indifferent." (CE. xii,
700-703, passim.)
The Church leaped to arms to prevent any reform of these
degrading conditions to which her holy guidance had brought
Christendom, and for over a century, until the Religious Peace of
1648, with fire and sword made Europe a slaughter-pen in the
desperate effort to suppress the revolt and force its forged faith
and its creed of love and morals, which we have just seen
exemplified, down the throats of revolted and disgusted humanity.
The Dominican "Dogs of the Lord" were let loose in all the bloody
fiery fury of the Holy Inquisition; Alva, Tilly and Wallenstein
ravaged and destroyed Europe, culminating in the glories of
Magdeburg and St. Bartholomew for which His Holiness and his Church
sang Te Dewms. "Soon the Counter-Reformation, called into life by
the Council of Trent (1545-63) to prevent the loss of the whole of
middle Europe, appeared; its success was assured by the aid of the
Society of Jesus." (CE. v, 612.) Abetted by the crafty and cruel
Society of Jesus, under its renowned leader this miracle is said to
have been wrought: "St. Ignatius, alive to the causes which had
provoked so many nations to revolt from the clergy ... did the most
astonishing feat recorded in modern history' He reformed the Church
by means of the papacy when sunk to its lowest ebb; and he took the
heathen classics from neo-pagans to make them the instruments of
Catholic education. ... In May, 1527, Rome was laid waste, its
churches profaned, its libraries pillaged, by a rabble of
miscreants.' But,' said the Cardinal Cajetan,'it was a just
judgment on the Romans.' ... It was a change so marked that
Scaliger termed the Italians generally hypocrites. ... The papacy
aimed henceforth at becoming an 'ideal government under spiritual
and converted men.' Urban VIII (1623-44) was the last who could be
deemed a Renaissance pontiff." (CE. xii, 769.) This was over one
hundred years after the boasted "reformation in Head and members."
So here the Augean stables were at length cleansed; the papacy
-- for the fourth time in Volume I recorded as "sunk to its lowest
ebb," was now to be "an ideal government under spiritual and
converted men," and the chronic millennial infamies of Holy Church
washed out by a baptism of Faith and "good works meet unto
repentance." But was it so?
Adrian VI was Holiness of Rome in 1522-1523: "Appalling tasks
lay before him in this [again] darkest hour of the Papacy. To
extirpate inveterate abuses; to reform a court which thrived on
corruption, and detested the very name of reform; to hold in leash
the young and warlike princes, ready to bound at each other's
throats, -- these were herculean labors. ... His nuncio to Germany,
Chierigati, [made the exaggerated] acknowledgment, that the Roman
Court had been the fountain-head of all the corruptions in the
Church. Cardinal Adrian of Costello (in 1517) was implicated in a
charge of conspiring with Cardinal Petrucci to poison the pope Leo
X, and confessed" (i, 160). "Under the direct orders of the pope,
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Clement VII, Archbishop B. [in 1538] caused many [Protestants in
Scotland] to ... be put to death. Modern humanity condemns the
cruel manner of their execution; but such severities were the
result of the spirit of the age (ii, 374), -- which quite as
thoroughly inspired the same Protestants and was as villainously
practiced by them when they had the chance. The sixteenth century
was "a scandalous age." (CE. ii, 375.) About 1600 a special Papal
representative "was commissioned to reform a convent at Naples,
which by the laxity of its discipline had become a source of great
scandal. Certain wicked men were accustomed to have clandestine
meetings with the nuns" (i, 472). Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667)
was "elected after a struggle of eighty days; at a time when
churchmen were being forced to realize the deplorable consequences,
moral and financial, of nepotism; ... nepotic abuses came to weigh
as heavily as ever upon the papacy ... endeavors to enrich their
families" (294). Pope Alexander VIII (1689-1691) "bestowed on his
relations the riches they were eager to accumulate; in their
behalf, and to the discredit of his pontificate, he revived
sinecure offices. Out of compassion for the poor of well-nigh
impoverished Italy, he sought to succor them by reducing the taxes"
(295).
"The eighteenth century was not an age remarkable for depth of
spiritual life" (334). "Here [in the bishopric of St. Agatha, near
Naples, in 1762] with 30000 uninstructed people, 400 mostly
indifferent and sometimes scandalous secular clergy, and 17 more or
less relaxed religious houses ... a field so overgrown with weeds
that they seemed the only crop" (337). In 1799 "people were already
rejoicing that the Papacy and the Church had come to an end. But
the priest, Count Antonio Rosmini ... published his ideas in 1848
in the treatise 'Of the Five Plagues of the Church,' in which he
also particularly recommended the reform of the Church. ... The
demand for reform in the States of the Church was in fact not
unjustified." (CE. xiv, 264, 265.) Much later like data could be
added.
Thus in our search for its sweetness and light, we have as it
were scratched the surface of the history of Holy Church, for a
thousand five hundred years, as recorded by itself; thus in one
volume out of fifteen have we verified the priestly boast: "Her
holiness appears in the fruits which she brings forth." The most
lurid features, as under long lines of Holinesses, for example,
Benedicts, Eugenes, and Johns, fall outside our limited
alphabetical scope; we have made no note of the interminable
political wars and throat-outtings joyously moted by fifteen
hundred years of Popes; nor of the infinite blood-lust and greed of
the execrated Holy Inquisition and of interminable successions of
Popes, papal Curias and blood-sodden prelates. The choice of every
Pope is guided by the Holy Ghost itself, aided indirectly but
effectively in a hundred instances by bribery and the dagger. Even
this trinity of Holy Electors of the Vicars of God has not always
kept the "Succession of Peter" in a straight line; a goodly number
of times the Spirit has descended upon numerous doublets and
triplets of Holinesses at one and the same time: "At various times
in the history of the Church illegal pretenders to the Papal Chair
have arisen, and frequently exercised pontifical functions in
defiance of the true occupant. According to Hergenrother, there are
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29 [doublet and triplet sets] in the following order," -- naming
them, beginning about 200 A.D. and extending down to 1449. (CE. i,
582.) The turmoils and scandals leading to and resulting from
these, the priestly anathemas spit at each other, the blood and
terror, and the unspeakably debased social conditions which made it
all possible -- in the name of Christ, can be but faintly imagined.
This is but a fractional and imperfect inventory of the crops of
"the fruits which she has brought forth" since her first budding
out of the graft of Forgery and Fraud upon the iron stock of Force.
What price Religion! Paganism -- and Christianity! Which --
upon the record -- has been the more shameless and debauched, and
wrought the worst for morality and civilization? If, but for the
glorious" civilizing effects" of Christianity's "civilization would
have been retarded for a thousand years" -- What would not
Civilization be today but for the "sweetness and light" of the
Church and its Dark Ages of Faith?
B. THE INTELLECTUAL "FRUITS" OF CHRISTIANITY
THE CHRISTIAN "EDUCATION LIE,"
"Of course, the beginnings of all profane knowledge can be
traced back to the time when 'Priest' and 'scholar' meant one and
the same thing." (CE. vi, 447.)
"There is nothing more despicable than an ignorant priest."
Cardinal Farness. (CE. v, 788-9.)
A panoramic view, sketched by pious clerical pens, has passed
before us, depicting in high light the outlines of moral and
intellectual culture of two civilizations: the one Pagan, secular,
brilliant, of Pre-Christian Greece and Rome; the other "a
civilization thoroughly saturated with Christianity," with
Christian morality and culture this section, added from CE., must
determine its intellectual achievements. So insistent and ever-
proclaimed are the clerical claims for the education of
Christendom, and its "Christian civilization," which, without its
glorious and heroic activities, "would have been retarded for a
thousand years," that it is but just and fair to let the Church
repeat several times what it claims to have done; then let it tell
in its own words what it did.
Here are a few of the exalted cultural claims of the Church:
"The Church, although officially the teacher of revealed truth
only, has always been interested in the cultivation of every branch
of human knowledge. But the truth unfolded by reason cannot
contradict the truth revealed by God! The Encyclical next shows, by
extracts from many Fathers of the Church, what reason helped by
revelation can do for [to] the progress of human knowledge"!
(Encyc. AEterni-Patris, Leo XIII, 1879; CE. i, 177.) "The Christian
Church during this era -- a fact of the greatest importance -- was
the guardian of the remains of classical literature." (CE. vi,
485.) "The preservation of the fragments of Greek and Roman
classics now extant is largely due to the monasteries, which for
twelve centuries after the fall of the Western Empire were the
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custodians of manuscripts of the ancient Greek philosophy and the
Latin rhetoricians." (CE. i, 696.) "In addition to their prescribed
studies, the monks were constantly occupied in copying the classic
texts." (CE. v, 303.)
THE MONKS "PRESERVED THE CLASSICS"
In the sweet-sounding music of this clerical chorus, a rudely
jarring discord is struck by these dissonant notes: "The revival of
the classics, lost for a thousand years in Western Christendom. ...
The loss of Greek authors and the decline of Church Latin into
barbarism were misfortunes in a universal ruin." (CE. xii, 277.) An
attempt by Charlemagne to establish even rudimentary education was
abortive, and "the accumulated wisdom of the past ... was in danger
of perishing," but "When the permanent renaissance of learning came
several centuries later, the light began again to pierce through
the storm-clouds of feudal strife and anarchy." (CE. i, 277.) We
shall see that every scrap of Greek and Latin learning which, after
twelve centuries, slowly filtered into Christendom, came from the
hated Arabs through the more hated Jews, after Christians first
made contact with civilization through the Crusades: "Indeed,
whatever influence came from the Mosque passed through the
Synagogue before it reached the Church." (CE. i, 676.)
In one singular and unintentional way, however, is it true
that "the preservation of fragments of Greek and Roman classics is
due to the monasteries, which were the custodians of manuscripts of
the ancient Greek philosophy," science, and literature. Such
manuscripts existed in great numbers in the age of Greek and Roman
culture; they were written on enduring parchment. When the Light of
the Cross dimmed Pagan culture, and its learning became abhorrent
to the pious Christian, the monks needed papyrus for their literary
efforts, so they gathered in the manuscripts wherever found; -- and
thus they "preserved" them: "Due to cost of vellum, old books were
scraped and used again" -- (that is the meaning of "Palimpsest") --
for the scribbling of the precious monkish chronicles and
theological folderol soon to be noticed. "In the West much use was
made of old manuscripts from the seventh to the ninth century,
when, in consequence of the disturbed state of the country, there
was some scarcity of material, and the old volumes of neglected
authors were used for more popular works. ... The practice
continued down to the sixteenth century. Many Latin and most Greek
manuscripts are on reused vellum. A manuscript in the Vatican
contained part of the 91st Book of Livy's 'Roman History.' The
famous Sinai Bible discovered by Tischendorff was written over by
lives of female saints. Parts of the Iliad and the 'Elements' of
Euclid were covered by monkish treatises. The 'De Republica' of
Cicero, was discovered under the Commentary of Augustine on Psalms,
and several of his Orations under the Acts of the Council of
Chalcedon." Other such monkish palimpsests were discovered to
contain the Institutes of Gaius; eight orations of the Roman
senator Symmachus, the Comedies of Plautus, parts of Euripides,
epistles of Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius, and
others, the 'Fasti Consolaris' of 486, the Codex Theodosianus, are
among the precious remains of Greek and Roman erudition which were
"Preserved" in this monkish fashion in the erudite monasteries.
(NIE. xvii, 762-3.) As for "monks constantly occupied in copying
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the classic texts," for the preservation and diffusion of Pagan
culture, it is a joke! They couldn't read Greek nor good Latin, and
nobody else could read at all, -- also, Holy Church and Churchmen
loathed Pagan culture and literature.
The Church, however, got an early and fair start on its
wonderful career as the organizer and creator of civilization. In
529 [by priest-prompted edict of Justinian] "the schools of
philosophy were closed. From that date Christianity had no rival."
(CE. ii, 43.) We have read the Imperial Law of Justinian with the
fatal title: "Pagans Forbidden to give Instruction"; consequently
"the State schools of the Empire had fallen into decay." (CE. xiii,
555.) Thenceforth the Church, inspired by its Holy Ghost, was the
sole Mentor and Instructor of Christendom. Before the dazzling
Light diffused by the Church blinds us to the view, let us take a
farewell look at the Pagan civilization of the Roman world, as
recorded under the Antonine Emperors and their successors, such
conditions prevailing quite up to the era of Justinian and the
Church; -- it will be a millennium and a half before we see a spark
of such like:
"The internal peace and prosperity were no less remarkable
than the absence of war. Trade and commence flourished; new routes
were opened, and new roads built throughout the Empire, so that all
parts of it were in close touch with the capital. The remarkable
municipal life of the period, when new and flourishing cities
covered the Roman world, is revealed by the numerous inscriptions
that record the generosity of wealthy patrons or the activity of
free burghers. ... Guilds and organizations of all conceivable
kinds, mainly for philanthropic purposes, came into existence
everywhere. By means of these associations the poorer classes were
in a sense insured against poverty. ... The activity of the Emperor
was not confined to merely official acts; private movements for the
succor of the poor and of orphans received his unstinted support.
The scope of the alimentary institutions of former reigns was
broadened, and the establishment of charitable foundations such as
that of the 'Puellae Faustinianae' is a sure indication of a
general softening of manners and a truer sense of humanity. The
period was also one of considerable literary and scientific
activity. ... The most lasting influence of the life and reign of
Antoninus was that which he exercised in the sphere of law. Five
great Stoic jurisconsults [named] were the constant advisers of the
Emperor, and under his protection they infused a spirit of leniency
and mildness into Roman legislation which effectually safeguarded
the weak and unprotected, slaves, wards, and orphans, against
aggressions of the powerful. ... An impulse was given in this
direction which produced the later golden period of Roman
jurisprudence under Septimus Severus, Caracalla, and Alexander
Severus." (CE. i, 587.)
For vivid contrast, we may here recall the "vivid remark" of
Bishop St. Bruno, in the year 1049, that "justice had perished"
(CE. vi, 793) and the confession, relating to the beginning of the
Reformation five hundred years later: "Churchmen in high places
were constantly unmindful of justice." (CE. xii, 767.) The "golden
period of Roman jurisprudence" had been replaced by Christian
"superstitions in the administration of justice during many
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centuries of the Middle Ages, and known as ordeals or 'judgments of
God.' ... These 'judgments of God' gave rise to new superstitions.
Whether guilty or not, persons subjected to the trials would often
put more confidence in charms, magic formulas, and ointments than
in the Providence of God." (CE. xiv, 341,) Up to as late as 1538
"the legal lore had hitherto been presented in a very barbarous
form." (CE. i, 273.) As for benevolence,: charity, the care of the
poor, the protection of the weak against the strong, the cursory
Pagan record just quoted must suffice; their continuance in the
Christian Dark Ages is sufficiently belied by the shocking social
conditions to be cursorily noticed in the general cultural sketch
to follow. As for widows and orphans, one of the proudest brags of
the clerics, the Church by sword and rack and stake, has made an
infinity more of widows and orphans that she ever scantily cared
for in her monkish lazzarettos and pestilential lying-in shambles.
With respect to slavery, which the Church boasts to have
suppressed, this pious lie is nailed by the fact of the gradual
shifting of technical slavery into universal serfdom throughout
Europe for centuries, and its persistence in "Christian" England,
America and Brazil until almost the present generation, and the
existence today of millions of slaves in very Christian Abyssinia;
and the world knows the part which the Christian soul-savers took
in the United States in upholding slavery as a God-ordained
institution of the Blessed Bible. But the Church not only aided and
abetted slavery; it owned slaves, and it actively engaged in the
most revolting forms of slave-trade: "Clement V (1309) decreed that
resisting Venetians should be sold into slavery, and Gregory XI and
Sixtus IV [of blessed memory] decreed the same for the Florentines,
and Julius II for both Florence and Bologna. The Bull by which
Nicholas V (1442) encouraged Portugal to what became the organized
trade in negro slaves. ... In 1538 Paul III decreed slavery against
all Englishmen who should dare to support Henry VIII against the
pope"! (Encyc. Brit., 14th ed. xix, 35.)
The Church mightily prides itself on its suppression of the
bloody sports of the arena, the gladiatorial combats, because the
monk Telemachus, after 400 A.D., jumped into the arena (with two
Pagan companions) and protested against them, which act incited the
Pagan throng in the Ampitheatre to urge their abolition. But for
four hundred years not Church nor Christian had raised a voice of
protest; and during as much of this period as it had the power, the
Church was merrily murdering Pagans and heretics; and the cruelties
of free combat in the arena were speedily replaced by the infamous
torturings and slow burnings of countless human beings for Christ's
sweet sake: while bull-fights adorn every holiday and holy day of
the "Most Christian" countries today. Fie for Christian "reforms"!
Following upon the Pagan cultural civilization depicted by CE.
existing in the closing epoch of the Roman Empire, we have a
lengthy account by the same clerical scholars of the Christian
culture of the ensuing Age of Faith: "The learning and opinions of
the first [Christian] few hundred years were comprehensively set
forth in the tremendous work of Isidore of Seville (d. 636). During
the next few centuries, which were comparatively barren of literary
achievements, the only men to achieve any celebrity were [five
named up to 1003]." ... Others are named up to 1280, -- "For all
these Albertus Magnus had opened the door to the rich treasure-
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house of Greek and Arabian learning." (CE. vi, 449, 450.) The
principal product of Christian erudition up to these times was
ludicrous lying legends and saint and martyr tales: "Needless to
say that they do not embody any real historical information, and
their chief utility is to afford an example of the pious popular
credulity of the times" (CE. i, 131). The state of Christian
historical lore through these ages may be appreciated by the
following summary:
"The historical literature of the Middle Ages may be
classed under three general heads: chronicles, annals, and
lives of saints. ... As a matter of fact, profane history, as
dealt with by Pagan historians, no longer appealed to
Christian writers. History, as viewed from the Christian
standpoint, took into account only the Kingdom of God, and to
the new generation [of Christians] the center of such history
was the narration of the misfortunes undergone by the Jewish
nation, a subject ignored by the Roman historians. Christians
had need of a new general history in sympathy with their
ideal. ... Under Charlemagne ... the great internal
misfortunes and dissensions of the kingdom are carefully
ignored, so as not to cast discredit on the reigning princes.
... The majority of these local chronicles reproduce the
traditions, popular or local, of the monastery which they
concern and confine themselves to recording gossip and various
kinds of information, ... without asking themselves whether
the version of these sources had been tainted with legends,
and they did not take the trouble to examine the origin and
value of their information. ... The authors were bounded by a
limited horizon, often equipped with merely a rudimentary
training. Such chronicles, moreover, were often written with
the same purpose as the lives of the saints. Those, having a
general tendency to enhance as much as possible the glory of
their hero, were nothing more than panegyric. Monastic
chronicles and annals were not free from this tendency, and
often begin with an account of the life of the saint who
founded the abbey, concerning themselves more with asceticism
than with historical facts and events, which would be of much
value to us today. In conclusion, the first part of these
chronicles, written for the most part since the eleventh
century, almost always recount legends, often based on oral
tradition, but sometimes invented for the purpose of
embellishing the early history of the monastery, and of thus
increasing the devotion of the faithful. ... Chronology
especially was often treated carelessly." (CE. 1, 531-536,
passim.)
With respect to literature and history we have thus a
millennial blank of Christian achievement: but the Church's forte
was Science, for "the Church fosters and promotes the sciences in
many ways," -- so long as they do not contradict the "sacred
science of Christianity." This we may see exemplified in the
following clerical summarization.
"Speculations concerning the rotundity of the earth and
the possible existence of human beings 'with their feet turned
towards ours,' were of interest to the Fathers of the early
Church only in so far as they seemed to encroach upon the
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fundamental Christian dogma of the unity of the human race,
and the consequent universality of original sin and
redemption. This is clearly seen from the following passage of
St. Augustine (De Civitate Dei, xvi, 9): For Scripture, which
confirms the truth of its historical statements by the
accomplishment of its prophecies, teaches no falsehood; and it
is too absurd to say ... there is a race of human beings not
descended from that one first man.' This opinion of St.
Augustine was commonly held until the progress of science ...
dissipated the scruples arising from a defective knowledge of
geography. A singular exception occurs to us in the middle of
the eighth century. From a letter of Pope St. Zachary (1 May,
748), addressed to St. Boniface, we learn that the great
Apostle of Germany had invoked the papal censure upon
Vergilius. Among other alleged misdeeds and errors was
numbered that of holding 'that beneath the earth there was
another world and other men, another sun and moon.' In reply,
the Pope directs St. Boniface to convoke a council and, 'if it
be made clear' that Vergilius adheres to this 'perverse
teaching, contrary to the Lord and to his own soul,' to expel
him from the Church, deprived of his priestly dignity'! This
is the only information that we possess regarding an incident
which is made to figure largely in the imaginary warfare
between theology and science. ... The case of the Irish monk
who suffered the penalty of being several centuries ahead of
his age remains on the page of history, like the parallel case
of Galileo, as a solemn admonition against a hasty resort to
ecclesiastical censure," as CE,. naively remarks. (CE. i,
581-2.)
Summing up the vivifying cultural achievements of over a
thousand years down to the beginning of the end of the regimen of
Church embrutishment of men, this ludicrous composite of confession
of debasement and self-laudation greets us: "The Middle Ages did
not bequeath to Rome any institutions that could be called
scientific or literary academies. As a rule, there was slight
inclination for such institutions. ... A special reason why
literature did not get a stronger foothold at Rome is to be found
in the constant politico-religious disturbances of the Middle Ages.
... Medieval Rome was certainly no place for learned academies. ...
From the earliest days of the Renaissance the Church was the
highest type of such an academy, that is, of the broadest kind of
culture"! (CE. i, 83, 84.) Yet despite this highest type of academy
as was the Church, the broadest kind of culture which, it
personified and radiated, the full splendor of the Renaissance had
been reacting upon and illuminating the Church for two or three
centuries, when we discover this amazing lack of clerical learning
and intelligence confessed by the Church. The Protestant heresy was
at its zenith; in 1559-74 the Protestants published an
Ecclesiastical History called "Centuriators," in thirteen volumes,
"showing century by century, how far the Catholic Church had
departed from primitive teaching and practices," as CE. describes
it. This heretic work caused "keen distress and dismay in Catholic
circles; and provided the Reformers with a formidable weapon of
attack on the Catholic Church. It did much harm. The feasibility of
a counter-attack appealed to Catholic scholars, but nothing
adequate was provided, for the science of history was still a thing
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of the future. Its founder was as yet but 21 years of age" --
Baronius, later Cardinal. He studied hard, and later produced his
Annales, 12 volumes, "which he had foreseen in a vision would be
the term of his work," and by which the "Centuries were eclipsed,"
-- but in which he ruthlessly destroyed by sane and fearless
criticism so many thousands of Church saint-and-martyr myths, that
"the Annals were condemned by the Spanish Inquisition" (CE. ii,
305, 306).
Such was the net -- and gross result of fifteen hundred years
of the much-boasted zeal for learning and teaching of the Divinely-
appointed sole Teacher of Christendom, in the broad fields of
historical knowledge, literature, and general intellectual culture.
In the grand realm of the Sciences, which the Church has ever
cherished and encouraged, may we hope for bigger and better
results?
CHRISTIAN "SCIENCE"
"The Church, far from hindering the pursuit of the sciences,
fosters and promotes them in many ways." (CE. xiii, 609.)
"When a dogma contradicts a scientific assertion, the latter
has to be revised"! (CE. xiii, 607.)
The Middle Ages, as generally understood, "is a term used to
designate that period of European history between the Fall of the
Roman Empire and about the middle of the fifteenth century," (CE.
x, 235), -- the era of the discovery of printing, -- a full
thousand years. The highly significant and evidently unstudied
explanation is made: "The Middle Ages have become an interlude,
clearly bounded on both extremities by a more civilized or humane
idea of life, which men are endeavoring to realize in politics,
education, manners, literature, and religion." (CE. xii, 765.)
Those two clearly bounded extremities are the Pagan civilization of
the dying Roman Empire and the secular, skeptical, rationalistic
"Renaissance of Knowledge," which CE. clerically complains embodied
"the ideas and spirit of classic paganism." (i, 34.) We have just
seen that during this Millennium "thoroughly saturated with
Christianity" there was, in Christendom, no literature, other than
theological treatises, monkish chronicles and Saint-tales, and no
science of whatever category, -- except "sacred science" or
theology: "Theology is the very science of faith itself" (CE. xiii,
598); and we have seen to what intellectual status that sacred
science led the human mind. The zeal with which the Church pursued
its propagation of the Faith as the central feature of its
educational system, with all other branches of human knowledge as
an indifferent "side line," we have noted, in the language of the
ecclesiastical scientists. The Church maintains that it "fosters
and promotes sciences in many ways," and inferentially always has
encouraged and protected science in all its manifold forms of
utilitarian humanism. But Holy Church has some naive notions of
science and of the ecclesiastical limitations imposed upon it.
While thus fostering and promoting the sciences, "Yet", says CE.,
"while acknowledging the freedom due to them, she tries to preserve
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them from falling into errors contrary to Divine doctrine, and from
overstepping their boundaries and throwing into confusion matters
that belong to the domain of faith"! (Vatican Decrees, Sess. III,
De Fide, ch. 4; CE. xiii, 609.)
The priestly principle of the subordination of scientific fact
to dogmatic faith is thus naively posed:
"Science is limited by truth, which belongs to its very
essence. Should science ever have to choose between truth and
freedom (a choice not at all imaginary), it must under all
circumstances decide for truth, under the penalty of self-
extermination. ... Ethics is more important for mankind than
science. Those who believe in revelation, know that the
Commandments are the criteria by which men will be judged.
(Matt. xxv, 35-46.) ...
"The demand for unlimited freedom in science is
unreasonable and unjust, because it leads to license and
rebellion. ... To submit one's understanding to a doctrine
supposed -- [is that all?] -- to be Divine and guaranteed to
be infallible is undoubtedly more consistent than to accept
prevailing postulates of science. ...
"When a clearly defined dogma contradicts a scientific
assertion, THE LATTER HAS TO BE REVISED"! (CE. xiii, 598-607,
passim.)
Than this last sentence, a more palpable and ridiculous
untruth has never been tittered by the clerical Liars of the Lord.
No single scientific fact ever discovered and proclaimed, in all
the struggling history of Science in defiance of Church, has ever
been "revised," altered or withdrawn in deference to religious
Dogma. Every fact of science has proudly and triumphantly defied
and refuted Dogma and Church, and made them both cheap and
ridiculous. Faith hates facts; they are forever divorced on grounds
of congenital incompatibility. The Church, True Church, and
Protestant, has screamed and reviled at every truth of Science
which was ever discovered; with high priestly anathema, the curse
of God, with prison, rack, and stake, it has sought to suppress and
kill every thought of the human mind, every bold thinker, whose
truths for the benefit of mankind have contradicted and ridiculed
it and its holy dogmas. Every single one; I challenge the
production of a solitary instance of exception. The catalogue is
too vast to even summarize here; for details and proofs the
monumental works of Dr. Andrew D. White, The Warfare between
Science and Theology, and Dr. John W. Draper's Conflict between
Science and Religion, -- (the latter on the Church's Index of
Prohibited Books), may be profitably consulted and are cheerfully
recommended in refutation of this example of priestly mendacity. We
have read what happened to that "singular exception," the Irish
monk Bishop Vergilius.
But let the false pretense be exposed by a few examples given
by the American apologist for "the Holy See, deservedly known as
the nursing mother of schools and universities," such as we have
above admired. Until these "universities" began, about the year
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1211 (CE. xii, 766) of the Christian epoch, no one had dared to
think; Christendom was too steeped in ignorance and credulity to
think. These Middle Ages, says CE. (xii, 38), were "a civilization
thoroughly saturated with Christianity," and therefore incapable of
scientific thought or feeling. "All Greek learning [had been] lost
for a thousand years in Western Christendom. ... The loss of Greek
authors and the decline of Church Latin [as well as the Latin
Church] into barbarism were misfortunes in a universal ruin." (CE.
xii, 765.) But men's minds could not forever be kept in the chains
of priestly dominance; Gulliver began to wake and rouse and to
struggle against the multiplied strands of theological cobwebs with
which the Lilliputs of Faith had fast bound him while in his
millennial sleep of the Christian Dark Ages of Faith. "Under these
circumstances," admits CE,. "a revival of learning so soon as the
West was capable of it, might have been foreseen." (CE. xxi, 765.)
The Church was keen and hostile, and did forsee what was coming.
The first University was founded in 1211; in identically that time
the Holy Inquisition was established by His Holiness Innocent III
to guard against heretics and "other innovators." "The taking of
Constantinople in 1204, the introduction of Arabian, Jewish, and
Greek works into the Christian schools, the rise of the
universities -- these are the events which led to the extraordinary
intellectual activity of the thirteenth century. ... Even in the
Christian schools there were declared Pantheists ... who bade fair
to prejudice the cause of Aristotelianism. These developments were
suppressed by the most stringent disciplinary measures during the
first few decades of the thirteenth century. ... Roger Bacon
demonstrated by his unsuccessful attempts to develop the natural
sciences the possibilities of another kind which were latent in
Aristotelianism." (CE. xiii, 548, 549.)
Roger Bacon (1214-1294), the "Doctor Mirabilis," whose
"attempts to develop the natural sciences" were so drastically
suppressed, was the genius of the dawning "Revival of Learning" --
the Renaissance. He wrote over eighty books, a number of the most
important in a secret cryptogram for fear of the ecclesiastical
consequences -- which he finally suffered. "It is in these
treatises that Bacon speaks of the reflection of light, mirages,
burning-mirrors, of the diameters of the celestial bodies and their
distances from one another, of their conjunction and eclipses; that
he explains the laws of ebb and flow, proves the Julian calendar to
be wrong; he explains the composition and effects of gunpowder,
discusses and affirms the possibility of steam-vessels and
aerostats, of microscopes and telescopes, and some other inventions
made many centuries later. ... 'Pope Nicholas IV, on the advice of
many brethren condemned and rejected the doctrine of the English
brother Roger Bacon, Doctor of Divinity, which contains many
suspect innovations, by reason of which Roger was imprisoned' 12 or
14 years" (CE. xiii, 112), until death released him from the
strangling clutches of the "nursing-mother of schools and
Universities," -- which always "encourages Science"!
Roger's great German contemporary "Blessed Albertus Magnus"
(c. 1206-1280), was "accused of magic and of neglecting the sacred
sciences. ... Albert respected authority and traditions, was
prudent in proposing the results of his investigations. ...
sometimes he hesitates and does not express his own opinion,
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probably because he feared that his theories, which were 'advanced'
for those times -- [when Church was "far from hindering the pursuit
of the sciences"], -- would excite surprise and occasion
unfavorable comment." Among the products of his "magic," Blessed
Albert "gives an elaborate demonstration of the sphericity of the
earth. ... More important than Albert's development of the physical
sciences was his influence on the study of philosophy and theology.
'All inferior (i.e. natural) setences should be servants (ancellas)
of Theology, which is superior and the mistress' (Aquinas)." (CE.
i, 265-6.) Thus the Church thwarted and prevented what would have
been the much earlier "triumph of scientific discovery, with which,
as a rule, ... the seats of academic authority had too little
sympathy." (CE. xiii, 549.)
The criminal ignorance and bigotry of the Church are nowhere
more convincingly evident than in its repression of medical science
through the ages when pestilence and plague swept unchecked through
Christendom, while holy priests and monks chanted litanies and
scared devils as the sole means of staying the ravages of Disease
and Death. Listen to the same old story: "Modern medical science
rests upon a Greek foundation. ... The secret of the immortality of
Hippocrates rests on the fact that he pointed out the means whereby
medicine became a science. ... Hippocratic medical science
celebrated its renascence in the eighteenth century. ... Arabian
medical science forms an important chapter in the history of the
development of medicine, [largely] because it preserved Greek
medical science. ... With the decline of Arabian rule [and
Christian rise, in Spain] -- began the decay of medicine. ... In
1085 Toledo was taken from the Moors, and Spain became the
transmitter of Arabian medicine." Here comes in the first medical
scientist to defy the Church and escape its Holy Inquisition.
Vesalius (born 1511), became physician to the Emperor Charles V;
"his eagerness to learn went so far that he stole corpses from the
gallows to work on at night in his room. ... The supreme service of
Vesalius is that he for the first time [in 1500 years of Church
cherishing of Science], with information derived from the direct
study of the dead body, attacked with keen criticism the hitherto
unassailable Galen, and thus brought about its overthrow. Vesalius
is the founder of scientific anatomy and of the technique of modern
dissection. Unfortunately, he himself destroyed a part of his
scripts on learning that his enemies intended to submit his work to
ecclesiastical censure"! (CE. x, 123-130, passim.) Indeed, "at that
era a scholar ... who generally struck out so many new ideas in
opposition to the commonly held opinion, could easily be accused of
heresy. So many of his relations with Protestant scholars appeared
suspicious. ... Personally he avoided expressing his opinion, in
order not to fall under suspicion of heresy"! (CE. xv, 379.) In
defiance of the ban of the Holy Ghost on dissection and anatomy,
Vesalius dissected the stolen corpses: his work disproved the Luz,
or "Resurrection Bone," the nucleus of the heavenly restoration of
the human body, and disclosed that Adam's missing rib, lost since
Eve was carved from it some 4500 years previously, was still there.
These impious refutations of the Church's sacred science so enraged
the clerical savants that it required all the efforts of the
Emperor to save his great physician from the Dogs of the Lord and
the Holy Inquisition.
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A word only may be added on the highly significant question of
hospitals and asylums in the Ages of Faith. "The idealism of
medieval theological beliefs led to the founding of orphan asylums
and hospitals. But the impracticability and 'other-worldliness' of
the Middle Ages prevented effective treatment of the diseases of
the inmates. Such hospitals were merely dark, crowded, and
unsanitary places of refuge for the needy and sick, who received no
rational medical attention. ... The Middle Ages, which some profess
to admire, were in reality times of low civilization." For a
shocking account of the hospitals, lying-in dens and insane pens of
medieval Christian idealism, reference must be made to Dr. Henry W.
Haggard's Devils, Drugs and Doctors; (cf. CE. vii, 492; x, 125).
Such as these miserable lazzaretti were, they were for the
superstitious Faithful only: "The bigoted Pius V actually directed
that no medical assistance should be given to any person who
declined spiritual attendance"! (Macauley, Const. Essays; Church
and State, p. 136.)
But for the benighted theological repression of thought and of
discovery of the secrets and powers of Nature, here barely hinted,
the germs of modern science and invention which lay latent and
struggling in the fertile minds of these great pioneers, would have
quickly developed and would have recreated civilization and
enriched humanity centuries before they did, when Holy Church got
too feeble and discredited longer to enchain the minds of men. But,
as it was, the "sacred science of Christianity" must be protected
by force and proscription against the facts and knowledge of Nature
and the quickening minds of men. To guard its precious Bible
"revelations," the Church upheld the Bible and forced all men to
close their minds when they opened its sacred pages. At last,
Galileo fitted two bits of glass into an old Church organ-pipe,
poked it at the "firmament of heaven" which had cost Jehovah a
whole day's work, and, Lo! the whole of the "sacred science" of the
Church collapsed into universal ruin! The truth of God's revelation
became an exploded myth, and its inspired Bible a book of Fable.
The holy Church screeched in terror its unholy anathemas. "What,
more than all," confesses the CE., "raised alarm [over the
discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo], was anxiety for the credit
of Holy Scripture, the letter of which was then universally
believed to be the supreme authority in matters of SCIENCE, as in
all others." (CE. vi, 344.) The Church made monstrous efforts to
murder the new thought: "we know from the calendar of saints and
other sources how much had been done to cheek the wild license of
thought and speech in the Peninsula. Giordano Bruno, renegade and
pantheist, was burnt in 1600; Campanella spent [27] long years in
prison. The different measures meted out to Copernicus by Clement
VII and to Galileo by Paul V need no comment [its shame chokes the
Church]! The papacy aimed henceforth at becoming an 'ideal
government under spiritual and converted men.'" (CE. xii, 768.) The
Church missed this aim; but with the unholy aid of its Holy
Inquisition, which in 1542 it declared to be "the supreme tribunal
for the whole world" (CE. xiii, 137), and its sacred "Index of
Prohibited Books," instituted in 1557, it murdered men and thought
for yet several centuries. The up-to-date edition of 1929 closes
the minds of the "Faithful" to over 5000 books of the highest
intellectual merit -- as partially catalogued in the news
dispatches. (N.Y. Herald-Tribune, Nov. 11, and Dec. 1, 1930). This
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precious Proscription for preserving the "purity and genuineness of
her Apostolic doctrine" intact for the "guileless and innocent
hearts" of the Babes of Faith, and to prevent them from learning
anything which might put them "on inquiry" as to the "purity and
genuineness" of these holy "Apostolic" myths, includes the immortal
works of Gibbon, Sterne, Dumas, Victor Hugo, our own Dr. Draper,
Anatole France, La Fontaine, Lamartine, Balzac, Rousseau, Steele,
Addison, Talleyrand, Henry Hallam, Voltaire, Zola, Maeterlincki --
(this my Book will probably be added by special Decree); -- in a
word every book by -- (mine excluded) -- the brilliant and fearless
thinkers of the world who have scorned Holy Church, and have been
laureated by winning inclusion in this Holy Index of Inspired
Ignorance. It is a vain and foolish gesture of Bigotry, defeating
its own malicious purpose: "Prohibited Books illuminate the world;
words suppressed or condemned are repeated from one end of the
world to the other," as Emerson admirably has expressed. But no
wonder that "a [Faithful] Christian child knows more of the
important truths [of a certain brand] than did Kant, Herbert
Spencer, or Huxley," as is the "sour grapes" sneer of CE. (xiii,
607) at those whose minds are free to seek and find the truths of
Nature and work from them true Miracles of Science; for the
boundless benefit of Man.
This enlightened Index, established at the behest of the Holy
Ghost for keeping men ignorant, dates from the foundation of the
Faith; it deserves a word of admiration, which may be spoken by its
learned apologist: "Before the art of printing was discovered, it
sufficed to burn a few manuscript copies to prevent the spreading
of a doctrine. So it was done at Ephesus in the presence of St.
Paul (Acts xix, 19). It is known that the other Apostles, the
Fathers of the Church, and the Council of Nice (325) exercised the
same authority; [citing] the various censures, prohibitions, and
indexes issued by cities, universities, bishops, provincial
councils, and popes, through the Christian centuries." (CE. xiii,
607.) Who wonders that they were "The Dark Ages"?
With the final childish, senile sneer of the Church we will.
dismiss this phase of examination of the paralyzing efficiency of
Faith. Says our guardian of the archaic fossils embedded in the
Rock of Faith: "It is true, the believer is less free in his
knowledge than the unbeliever, but only because he [which one?]
knows more. Hence it is, that a well-instructed Christian child
knows more of the important truths than did Kant, Herbert Spencer,
or Huxley. Believing scientists -- [a self-stultification] do not
wish to be free-thinkers just as respectable people do not wish to
be vagabonds"! (CE. xiii, 607.)
So be it! But the vagabonds of Freethought are those who, at
infinite cost of torture and blood, through all the centuries of
Creed and Crime of the Church, and in heroic scorn of the Church
and her "sacred science," have made our dearly-earned civilization
what even it is to-day. Step by step, from contest to ultimate
conquest, in every single conflict of Fact with Faith, the Church
has been defeated and has retreated -- put to shaming rout. It has
been a slow and tortuous progress, --
"For faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last"!
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But fantastic Faith has wondrous powers of "accommodation" and
specious tenacity of false pretense of being forever inspiredly
right. The process of adjustment has throughout a thousand
instances been the same: Faith is confronted with a discrediting
Fact; it curses it and denies it. When the fact is crammed down its
throat and it is forced to recognize it, it lyingly denies that it
had ever denied it. Then when all mankind has united in joyful
acceptance of the new fact, the arch hypocrite declares that it is
entirely in accord with its "sacred science," and tries to steal
all credit for it as one of its very own grand contributions to
"Christian civilization," and sanctimoniously wheezes, "How much
grander a concept it gives of the infinite knowledge and glory of
Gawd in His wonderful process of Nature"! Oh, Hypocrisy! Thou art
the Church of God! "Semper eadem" -- lying and shameless!
A thrilling retrospect, and inspirational look into the
Future, are thus expressed: "It is to scientific devotion more than
to any other cause that man owes his present position on a new
earth and under new heavens. Nothing else has so immeasurably
enlarged his conception. Everywhere his experiments have opened up
stretches of infinity ... Personified Science might indeed be proud
to have begun so humbly and to have achieved so much. By the use of
her method men have weighed the planets as in scales, they have
read the secrets of the animal and vegetable world. They have
discovered 'what is in man,' not wholly, but in some large and
wonderful degree. Instead of the burnt-out lamp of dogmatism
Science has given to humanity 'the light that shineth more and more
unto the perfect day.' In an effort to minimize drudgery and misery
her great discoveries have attained to concrete availability in
useful arts that have remade the world and increased immeasurably
the comfort of men and their joy. ... Scientific devotion has
broadened the horizon of man at every step. In the course of time
humanity must leave the shrines of its cherished idols behind and
push steadily on! Sensing the poetic nature of this truth, James
Russell Lowell spoke in verse to those of his fellow men who could
understand:
'New times demand new measures and new men;
The world advances, and in time outgrows
The laws which in our father's times were best;
And, doubtless, after us, some purer scheme
Will be shaped out by wiser men then we,
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.'" ...
(Dr. Ernest R. Trattner: The Autobiography of God, pp. 289 et seq.,
passim. Scribners; 1930. Cf. Science Remaking the World: Caldwell
and Slosson; Doubleday, Page; 1924; Two Thousand Years of Science:
Harvey-Gibson; Macmillan; 1929).
In glorious contrast to the murderous principles, and
practices of Faith --
"Reason did never sentence or condemn
Faith to the torture. Freedom all she claims
For larger understanding of her aims;
Hers no evasion, sleight, or stratagem,
But only fearless quest our ignorance to stem."
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THE REBIRTH OF CIVILIZATION
Gulliver Awakes
"The RENAISSANCE -- the achievements of the modern spirit in
opposition to the spirit which prevailed during the Middle Ages"!
(CE. xii. 765.)
During the Dark Ages of Faith men were born into the world
with the same capacities and potentialities of intellect as were
the Sages of Greece and the Jurisconsults and Statesmen of Rome.
The poles are not farther apart, however, day and night not more
different in volume of light, than the prechristian and Christian
eras in point of intellectual product. Why so vast a difference?
Simply -- that the pre-Christian mind was free, and explored
unfettered and unafraid the boundless zones of Nature, in search of
the Supreme Good and the practical benefits to be wrung from the
world in which Pagan man lived for the benefit of himself and of
his kind: while the Christian mind was bound by what it regarded as
revealed Truth and shackled by theology and priestcraft, which
closed every highway and bypath of approach to Nature with the
warning sign: "No Thoroughfare. Moses." "When one has once
believed, search should cease," as Father Tertullian said. The ban
of Eden -- "Of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge thou shalt not
eat," was enforced by the Priest by ecclesiastical censorship and
burning of books, by the Inquisition of Faith, the Index, the rack,
the stake. The ingrained aim and end of Man was Heaven; for that
other-worldly destiny alone was he taught and trained; that was the
whole Christian scheme of education and outlook on life; the things
of this world were contemned and ignored.
Through these Ages of Faith two careers only were open to men
-- priestcraft and military. With rarest exception only clerical
persons could read or write; the great masses of the peoples were
utterly illiterate, ignorant, superstitious, devout slaves of
priestcraft; their civil status serfs; they lived in filth and
squalor unbelievable, wearing their coarse fabric or leathern
garments until they rotted off their unwashed bodies, the victims
of disease, plagues and famines which often killed off near half
the population, and aided by wars and rapine incessant, greatly
incited and waged by the political Church to further its corrupt
greed and ambition, keep the squalid population of Europe at a
standstill, so that it took a century to double the miserable
masses, fed on black rye bread and slops, and on lying saint-tales,
martyr-myths and forged relics for increase of stupid and credulous
devotion to its faithless Faith and Priests, the while they were
brutalized and kept savage by the almost daily free spectacles
furnished by Holy Church of public torturings and burnings by slow
priest-set fires of countless heroic men and women who were
unafraid to despise and defy the priests. Faith thus flourished on
ignorance and credulity, which the Church diligently fostered and
exploited for its unholy purposes of wealth and power, of rule by
ruin. As none but priests could read and write, while kings and
public men were mere soldiers and illiterates, and public business
must be carried on through written documents, the public offices of
State, from the King's chancellor and ambassadors to the lowliest
clerks, were priests, and thus Priestcraft and Church increased
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their sinister power and dominance and wealth. These facts explain
the sinister motive of the priestly monopoly of literacy, and fully
account for the crass ignorance of Christendom which the vaunted
Teaching Mission of the Church entailed.
BENEFIT OF CLERGY
For a long dark span of centuries Holy Church, as sole and
unique, Divinely inspired and guided Teacher of Christendom, plied
the gentle art of Pedagogy for the Faithful. The net result of the
intellectual efforts of the Inspired Teacher may be summed up and
made luminous by a couple of descriptions of the wonderful "benefit
of clergy" as a Teaching Institution. Says first Dr. James Harvey
Robinson: "For six or seven centuries after the overthrow of the
Roman government in the West [476], very few outside of the clergy
ever dreamed of studying, or even of learning to read and write.
Even in the Thirteenth Century an offender who wished to prove that
he belonged to the clergy in order that he might be tried by a
church court, had only to show that he could read a single line;
for it was assumed by the judges that no one unconnected with the
church could read at all. It was therefore inevitable that all the
teachers were clergymen, that almost all the books were written by
priests and monks, and that the clergy was the ruling power in all
intellectual, artistic, and literary matters -- the chief guardians
and promoters of civilization. Moreover, the civil government was
forced to rely upon churchmen to write out the public documents and
proclamations. The priests and monks held the pen for the king.
Representatives of the clergy sat in the king's councils and acted
as his ministers; in fact, the conduct of government largely
devolved upon them." (Robinson, The Ordeal of Civilization, pp.
157-8.) This "benefit of clergy," in the legal sense in which it is
above used, and the degraded state of ignorance which gave occasion
for it and the presumptions of the clergy enforcing it, are defined
and explained by the clergy: "Benefit of Clergy. -- The exemption
from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, which ... was accorded
to clergymen. ... When a clerk was brought before a court, he
proved his claim to benefit of clergy by reading, and he was turned
over to the ecclesiastical court, as only the clergy were generally
able to read. This gave rise to the extension of the benefit of
clergy to all who could read. [It is added, for historical
interest]: The privilege of benefit of clergy was entirely
abolished in England in 1827. In the Colonies it had been
recognized, but by Act of Congress of 30 April, 1790, it was taken
away in the Federal courts of the United States. Traces of it are
found in some courts of different States, but it has been
practically outlawed by statutes or by adjudication." (CE. ii,
446-7.) All this serves to confirm the truth of the statement, that
the Church and the clergy imposed and perpetuated Ignorance as the
basis of their sordid greed for power and control over the
Ignorant.
THE CRIMINAL CRUSADES STARTED THE REVOLT
But -- for a wonder under such conditions, and after a
thousand years, a slow but portentous change began to manifest
itself in sodden Christendom. Note this pregnant statement: "Up to
this time (1250) almost wholly absorbed in the supernatural, [men
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now] took more interest in worldly things. Unconditional
renunciation of the world came to an end, and men grew more matter-
of-fact and practical." (CE. vi, 493.) As the result of this
"extraordinary change ... education found its way among laymen, and
it developed trade." (Ib.) This confirms the fact that only priests
could read and write or had any sort of "education," in all those
Church-taught ages when "scholar and priest meant one and the same
thing." Indeed, it is stated: "Only the clergy were generally able
to read." (CE. ii, 446.) About that time it was that the feeling of
nationality first began to stir in minds of civil rulers and of
people able to realize the imperial schemes of Holy Church for one
great Empire under the rule of the Vicar of God.
To forestall and check this dangerous restlessness of peoples,
Kings, and nascent nationality, the Church devised that since time-
honored scheme of joining restless factions in war on some common
enemy, thus to avert domestic difficulties: here was born the
gigantic folly and crime of the Crusades, for the pretended rescue
of the empty and apocryphal "Sepulchre of Christ from the Infidel."
This titanic scheme and its purposes are naively thus confessed:
"The idea of the Crusades corresponds to a political conception
which was realized in Christendom only from the eleventh to the
fifteenth century: this supposes a union of all peoples and
sovereigns under the direction of the popes. ... The history of the
Crusades is therefore intimately connected with that of the popes
and the Church. These Holy Wars were essentially a papal
enterprise. The idea of quelling all dissensions among Christians,
of uniting them under the same standard and sending them forth
against the Mohammedans was conceived in the eleventh century, at
a time when there were as yet no organized states in Europe." (CE.
iv, 543, 556.) A more gigantic crime and overwhelming failure of
ambitious design was probably never recorded in history. But far
different and more transcendent results for civilization were
brought about. Indeed, the Crusades were the beginning of European
civilization. Says CE.: "The Crusades brought about results of
which the popes had never dreamed, and which were perhaps the most
important of all. They reestablished traffic between the East and
West which, after having been suspended for several centuries, was
then resumed with even greater energy; they were the means of
bringing from the depths of their respective provinces and
introducing into the most civilized Asiatic countries Western
knights, to whom a new world was thus revealed, and who returned to
their native land filled with novel ideas. ... Moreover, as early
as the end of the twelfth century, the development of general
culture was the direct result of these Holy Wars. ... If, indeed,
the Christian civilization of Europe has become universal culture,
in the highest sense, the glory redounds, in no small measure, to
the Crusades"! (CE. iv, 556.) "The original aim of the Crusades, it
is true, was not attained. But the civilization of Western Europe
gained from the Orient the best the East had to give and thus was
greatly aided in its development" (CE. v, 612). The yet quasi-
barbarian rulers and rabbles of Christendom were thus brought into
direct contact with a real civilization; had their first glimpse of
Arabian culture and civilized refinements of life, saw the men with
whom they were in deadly conflict who were vastly their superiors
in every ideal and practical accomplishment, and infinitely more
humane. One instance will illustrate the difference between
Christian brutality and Moslem humanity. When the Christian
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Crusaders of Christ captured Jerusalem in 1099 and rushed in to
rescue the tomb of their dead God from the Infidel, the streets of
the Holy City ran with human blood up to the horses' bridles; "the
Christians entered Jerusalem from all sides [July 15, 1099] and
slew its inhabitants regardless of age or sex"! (CE. iv, 547.) When
nearly a century later (September 17, 1187), Saladin and his
"Infidel hosts" recaptured the City and overthrew the Christian.
Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a murder nor act of violence or outrage
was committed on the inhabitants, and the murderous hordes of
Christ were allowed to depart in peace. The Christians began to
learn what civilization was. Thus "the Crusades -- those
magnificent expeditions which, inspired and supported by the
Church, brought huge masses of people into contact with the Orient.
... They were the means of spreading ... the theories and methods
of Arabian scholarship, at that time quite advanced, and thereby
placing the researches of Western scholars on entirely new bases,
and putting before them new aims and objects." (CE. vi, 448.) An
immense confession of Christian failure!
THE "INFIDEL" REDEEMS CHRISTENDOM
As very pertinent to an understanding of the Rebirth of
Learning, a paragraph will be devoted to a summary notice of
Arabian culture and its saving influence on Christian ignorance;
for it was, the Arabs who brought learning, literature and science
to benighted,Christendom and created the Renaissance which ended
the Dark Ages of Faith.
"When the Arabs came in contact with other civilizations (in
the eighth century), notably with that of Persia, their speculative
and scientific activities were stimulated into action. About A.D.
750 the Abassides, an enlightened line of Caliphs, came to the
throne, who encouraged learning, and patronized the representatives
of foreign culture. ... They made ample use of Greek philosophy,
and in their free inquiries into the secrets of nature, in which
they soon outstripped the Greeks themselves, they paid little
attention to the precepts of the Koran. The Arabians translated
[the works of Plato, Galen, and Aristotle]. ... The Arabians
developed Greek philosophy in its relation to medicine, and in this
regard they exerted the most far-reaching influence in Europe. ...
The Arabian philosophy, as is well known, exercised a profound
influence on the Scholastic philosophy of the twelfth and
succeeding centuries." (CE. i, 675-6.) "The Arabian conquerors had
learned from the Syrians the arts and sciences of the Greek world.
They became especially proficient in medicine, mathematics, and
philosophy, for the study of which they erected in every part of
their domain schools and libraries. In the twelfth century -- [the
first Christians ones were in the thirteenth] -- Moorish Spain had
nineteen colleges, and their renown attracted hundreds of Christian
scholars from every part of Europe. Herein lay a grave menace to
Christian orthodoxy.
"The BIBLE had been set up as an infallible source of
knowledge not only in matters of religion, but of history,
chronology, and physical science. The result was a reaction against
the very essentials of Christianity. ... Biblical chronology, as
then [19th century] understood, and the literal historic
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interpretation of the Book of Genesis were thrown into confusion by
the advancing sciences -- astronomy, with its grand nebular
hypothesis; biology, with its even more fruitful theory of
evolution; geology, and prehistoric archaeology. ... But able
apologists were forthcoming to assay a conciliation of science and
religion"! (CE. i, 621, 622.) Be it noted, that it was not until
late nineteenth century, when natural Science had made the "sacred
science" of the Bible ridiculous, that the "conciliators" came
forth with the Big False Pretense that "the Holy Bible was never
intended as a Book of Science, but only of moral and religious
edification"! Why then, one wonders, does Holy Bible teach
"Science" -- abound in what is -- though false and ridiculous --
essentially teachings of "science": e.g. the origin and form of the
earth, and its fixity in space at the center of the universe as the
"footstool of God"; the position and movements of sun and stars in
the phony "firmament of heaven"; the origin and "Fall of Man" and
the "special creation" of animals; the geographical absurdities of
the Garden of Eden and its Four Rivers, the Flood and the Divine
original and purpose of the Rainbow; the differentiation of
languages at Babel; the cause of disease as the reactions to
malignant devils in the inner works of men, and the Divine
prescriptions for cure of the "Great Physician," the "Lord who
healeth thee," by spit-salve, prayers of faith, ointment, holy
water, and devil-exorcism by ignorant priests? If the Holy Ghost of
God wrote or inspired the Bible, funny it is that it talked such
foolishness, which was exactly what ignorant priests would have
written out of the ignorance and superstitions of their times,
without any inspiration of God to confirm them in the nonsense. If
the All-Wise God who dictated the Blessed Bible and its foolish
"science falsely so called," had just spoken the facts of his own
divine Creation, truthfully, -- had just once said that the earth
is round instead of flat, and revolves on its axis and around the
sun instead of standing still while the sun went around it; that
disease is caused by dirt and germs, instead of by devils; and had
given sensible precepts of prophylaxis and of cure; in a word, had
"revealed" out of his supposed Infinite Wisdom some of the things
which are just now, after some thousands of years of Bible-worship
and bloody Church-repression, being painfully and dearly worked out
by heroic human effort, -- Who would not gladly and proudly hail
the "Holy Bible, Book Divine," and for a certainty know that it was
truly the intellectual work of a God? But! The priests and the
parsons pretend yet that it is Divine; men of science and the
coming generation know that it is ignorant priestly Imposture.
But to return to the Arabs, who "in their free inquiries into
the secrets of Nature paid little attention to the precepts of the
Koran," and were destined to "throw into confusion" the "sacred
science" of the Blessed Bible. "It cannot be exactly said when the
first translations of Arabic writings began to be received by the
Christians of the West: probably about 1000. In the beginning of
the twelfth century the contributions of Mohammedan science and
philosophy to Latin Christendom became more and more frequent and
important. ... About 1134 John of Luna translated Al-Fergani's
treatise 'Astronomy,' which was an abridgement of Ptolemy's
'Almagest,' thereby introducing Christians to the Ptolemaic
system," -- followed by a page of other Arabian works translated
for the Christians. (CE, xii, 49; cf. ib. xv, 184.) Thus
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Christendom got even its grand fable of the earth as the center of
the universe from the Greek Ptolemy through the Arabs, -- and
damned Copernicus and martyred Galileo for daring to disprove it.
"In 1085 Toledo was taken from the Moors, and Spain became the
transmitter of Arabian medicine." (CE. x, 130.) Gerard of Cremona
(died 1187), "a twelfth century student of Arabic science and
translator from Arabic into Latin, went to Toledo, and soon
acquired a great proficiency in Arabic; he translated not only the
'Almagest,' but also the entire works of Avicenna, into Latin; he
translated 76 books from Arabic into Latin. His activities, and
that of a group of men who formed a regular college of translators
at Toledo, brought the world of Arabian learning within reach of
the scholars of Latin Christendom, and prepared the way for that
conflict of ideas out of which sprang the Scholasticism of the
thirteenth century." (CE. vi, 468.) At this late period of
Christian intellectual awakening, now for the first time
"Aristotle's philosophy was finding its way through Moorish and
Jewish channels into the Christian schools of Europe." (CE. vi,
555.) Even "the compass was invented in the East and brought to
Europe by the Arabs." (CE. i, 379.) And so of scores of inventions
and branches of learning which were known to and cultivated by the
Infidel Arabs, which through them became elements of the slow
civilizing of quasi-barbarian Christendom so long under the divine
tutelage of Holy Church and the priests.
Thus Christendom had wallowed through a thousand years of
Christian ignorance until it was awakened by the shock of contact
with Araban civilization and learning through the Crusades. Then,
slowly and dangerously, "as might have been foreseen, a revival of
learning, so soon as the West was capable of it," occurred. (CE.
xii, 765.) One can only wonder why the Christian West, instructed
by God's own Teacher, was not sooner capable of learning anything
but monkish lore or religious lies. The Church apologizes, that
"the middle Ages occupy those tumultuous years when barbarians
turned Christians were learning slowly to be civilized, from 476
[the end of the Roman Empire] to 1400." (CE. xii, 765.) But, the
Eastern Empire, dominated by the original "Orthodox" Eastern
Catholic Church, was never "overthrown by the barbarians," but
remained in quiet and undisputed possession of its Faith and
"Christian Civilization"; but its whole history is almost as foul
and besotted, blood-reddened and Christian-barbarous as the Western
Empire. And, since the closing of the Pagan schools in 529 at
Christian behest, "the Church had no rival" as sole and inspired
civilizer and instructor of Christendom. The poor Arabs were at
that time disunited and ever-warring tribes of idolatrous
barbarians, steeped in ignorance and "sin." Mohammed fled from
their fury in the Great Hegira in 622; he died ten years later, in
632. Yet, in exactly 100 years, even before they were checked by
the Christian Charles Martel at the battle of Tours in the heart of
France, in the year 732, the Mohammedan Arabs became and remained
the most highly civilized people in the world, the masters of an
illustrious Empire of far greater extent than Christendom, -- and
which embraced the greater part of Christendom; and minions of good
Christians quickly dropped God and Christ and became worshippers of
Allah and his Prophet Mohammed. A strange Providence of the
Christian God! This leads to a moment's disposal of one of the most
pretentious and specious clerical claims, that the "divinity" of
the Christian religion is proved by its "miraculous spread and
preservation."
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THE "MIRACULOUS ATTESTATIONS" OF CHRISTIANITY
One of the Church's most precious platitudes is its oft-used
plea of "the demonstration of the truth of Christianity based on
the wonderful propagation of His religion." (CE. i, 621.) Starting
with a handful of Galilean peasants, in three centuries, up to the
time of Constantine, it claims to have been "preached to every
creature which is under heaven" (Gal. i, 23), and to have won maybe
a million or two out of the hundred millions of the Roman Empire.
We have seen the mode and manner of "conversion" of very many of
these comers to the Christ; as well as of the most dubious
Christian efficacy of the hordes of "barbarians" later won by the
missionary sword. This "rapid spread" and propagation of the Faith
is a "triumphant proof of the divinity and truth of Christianity"!
It is also a familiar and threadbare "proof," the "miraculous"
persistence and preservation of the Christian religion through some
nineteen centuries. If this be a proof, many "false" religions are
even more divine and true; for the religions of Brahma, Buddha,
Confucius, Zoroaster, have existed and persisted, all for many
centuries, some for a millennium, before Christianity, and ever
since until now, and they embrace together countless millions more
of devout worshippers than does Christianity. And we have seen the
conditions of ignorance in which Christianity flourished and the
terror by which it was preserved during the ages of Faith; and all
world knows what the Church has become, and is faster becoming,
with the advent and advance of the Age of Reason.
But if the slow and tortuous spread of Christianity by force
and arms is proof of its "miraculous" character, what shall we say
of Mohammedanism? "Its uninterrupted spread, from the seventh
century to the present time, among all the races of the continent,
is one of the most remarkable facts of history. Today a Mussulman
may travel from Monrovia to Mecca, and thence to Batavia without
once setting foot on 'infidel' soil. Three phases in this movement
of expansion may be distinguished. In the first (638-1050) the
Arabs, in a rapid advance, propagated Islam along the whole
Mediterranean coast, from Egypt to Morocco, a conquest greatly
aided by the exploitation of the country by Byzantine [Christian]
governors, the divisions among the Christians, and political
disorganization. The second period (1050-1750) -- all Africa except
Ethiopia. ... The last period of the Mohammedan expansion extends
to the present time. ... Daily, one may say, Islam spreads." (CE.
i, 187.) Christianity retrogresses. Aye, worse than that, for the
vaunted miraculous nature and preservation of Christianity: "The
one dangerous rival with which Christianity had to contend in the
Middle Ages was the Mohammedan religion. Within a century of its
birth, it had torn from Christendom some of its fairest lands, and
extended like a huge crescent from Spain over Northern Africa,
Egypt, PALESTINE, Arabia, Persia, and Syria, to the eastern part of
Asia Minor. The danger which this fanatic religion offered to
Christian faith, in countries where the two religions come in
contact, was not to be lightly treated." (CE. i, 620-1.) Thus at
the first onrush of the champions of Mohammed the Impostor, of a
notoriously false Faith, the "Infidels" wrested from the devotees
of the True Faith their holiest shrines, the empty Sepulchre of
their dead God, the sites of his birth, crucifixion and
resurrection; and they hold them unto this day. During three
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hundred years of bloody and fanatic "Holy Wars" united Christendom
lost millions of lives and treasure in efforts to "rescue" this
empty grave of its Christ from the impudent impostors; but for
three hundred years the armies of the Cross were beaten and driven
away from their sacred goal. "This immense fact," says Ingersoll,
"sowed the seeds of distrust throughout Christendom, and millions
began to lose confidence in a God who had been vanquished by
Mohammed. ... At that time the world believed in trial by battle --
that God would take the side of the right -- and there had been a
trial by battle between the Cross and the Crescent, and Mohammed
had been victorious." In their Westward course of conquest, "the
Moslems even crossed the Pyrennees, threatening to stable their
horses in St. Peter's at Rome, but were at last defeated by Charles
Martel at Tours, in 732, just one hundred years from the death of
Mohammed. This defeat arrested their western conquests and saved
Europe. ... They were finally conquered by the Mongols and Turks,
in the thirteenth century, but the new conquerors adopted
Mohammed's religion, and in the fifteenth century, overthrew the
tottering Byzantine Empire (1453). From that stronghold
(Constantinople) they even threatened the German Empire, but were
successfully defeated at the gates of Vienna, and driven back
across the Danube, in 1683." (CE. x, 425.) The Christian God had
failed to protect and save the vast majority of his own people. As
Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes aptly says: "If the test of the validity of
a religion is to be its growth, spread and proselyting capacity,
then Mohammedanism can make a more impressive appeal than
Christianity. Christianity had the advantage of being launched six
and a half centuries before Mohammedanism. Yet today the
Mohammedans far outnumber the Christians, and the Mohammedans have,
moreover, reconquered the very areas in which Christianity arose
and established its first strongholds." (Barnes, The Twilight of
Christianity, p. 416.) This may close with a quaint specimen of
medieval Christian historical learning, from that great literary
light of the Church, Monk Matthew Paris (died 1259), who, says CE.,
"as an historian holds the first place among English chroniclers."
In "his great work, 'Chronica Majora,' from the Creation until the
year of his death," the erudite Monk explains the unworthy motives
why Mohammed quit the True Church and became an impious Infidel:
"It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and became
heretic because he failed to be elected pope. Also having drunk to
excess, he fell by the roadside, and in this condition was killed
by swine. And for that reason, his followers abhor pork even unto
this day"! This notable occurrence was probably later than the time
when Buddha was canonized a Catholic Saint.
"THE MARKS OF THE BEAST"
"And the Beast was taken ... which deceived them that had
received the Mark of the Beast ... and both were cast alive into a
lake of fire burning with brimstone." (Rev. xix, 20.)
The Apocalyptic Marks of the Beast are translated by
ecclesiastical sophism into the pretended "Four Marks of the
Church": Apostolicity, Sanctity, Unity, Catholicity, as branded
upon the "Visible Body of Christ" by the Formula of the Council of
Constantinople in 381 A.D. (CE. iii, 450-758). The first two of
these Marks we have seen totally obliterated by the processes of
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the review of the Record which we have made, and by the seas of
blood and clouds of smoke of burning human bodies which have
stained them beyond recognition; and the third is simply a frayed
figure of clerical speech. Probably no one will envy The Church the
fourth and only remaining of its holy Marks. As for "Unity," it is
a very relative term; as long as even two units cohere there is
unity -- of those two. Christendom was once coextensive with the
Roman Empire, and was then by force and arms further extended over
all the north of Europe; we have seen the process. Then came the
Arab incursion, and within one century the Church lost its most
splendid fields and Churches, the vast Christian territories of
Asia and Africa, and Spain. The "Great Schism" between East and
West tore the immense Eastern Empire from the "Unity" of the True
"Catholic" Church. The Turks, turned Mohammedan, in turn wrested
the lost Eastern Empire from Christianity and it became Infidel, as
mostly it remains today. Then came the "so-called Reformation"
revolt of Luther: "The effect of the Reformation was to separate
from the Church all the Scandinavian, most of the Teutonic, and a
few of the Latin-speaking populations of Europe." (CE. iii, 704.)
To these must be added England, Scotland, Wales, a good part of
"Ever Faithful" Ireland; much of the Americas followed in the train
of disaster. The age-long causes of this last destruction are well
known; they have cried out on nearly every page of this book.
Succinctly: "Since the twelfth century, the Church was losing much
of its influence on the thoughts of men. ... The faults and wealth
of the clergy must have contributed something. ... The growth of
national divisions, the increased secularism of everyday life, the
diminished influence of the Church and the papacy, all these
interdependent influences had broken up the spiritual unity of
Christendom at least two centuries before the Reformation. ... At
the beginning of the seventeenth century, Christendom was weary of
religious war and persecution. ... Religious divisions were too
deep-seated to permit the reconstruction of a Christian polity."
(CE. iii, 704.) The final note of despair of the Church, -- of
rejoicing for all freed from it, -- is the conclusion of its review
of Christendom: "The word Christian has come in recent times to
express our common civilization rather than a religion which so
many Europeans now no longer profess"! (Ib.) Let us be rid of the
hateful Word!
In a word, men had long since come painfully to realize the
incontrovertible truth stated by the historian of Civilization in
England: "The prosperity of nations depends upon principles to
which the clergy, as a body, are invariably opposed." (Buckle, Vol.
11, Pt. 1, p. 42.) What of the divine mark of "unity" is thus left
in the Church is the fast disappearing coherence of decaying
particles in face of the general debacle attendant upon the
Articles of Death.
WHY -- AND WHAT PRICE -- RELIGION?
"Leave thy gift upon the Altar, and go thy way." Jesus.
"They which minister about holy things, live of the things of
the Temple; and they which wait at the Altar are partakers of the
things of the Altar." Paul.
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"The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." Anon.
All ancient religions we have seen are admittedly false, all
Pagan priestcrafts fraudulent. The Pagan priestcraft held the
lavished wealth of millions of superstitious dupes, and ruled the
minds and destinies of men and nations. The motive and raison
d'etre of priestcraft, confessedly, was greed and graft, wealth and
power and privilege. When Paganism later was called Christianity,
-- No man can deny history by alleging any difference: we have seen
too many analogies and identities. At the advent of Christianity,
scores of religions flourished throughout the Roman Empire; the
Roman world was thick covered with sumptuous Temples and swarmed
with plutocratic Priestcraft. So rich were the "pickings" from the
superstitious masses and rulers and so alluring the "Get-rich-
quick" possibilities of religion, that new creeds and cults were
ever in the making. Christianity came along, born in poverty and
"made as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things"
(I Cor. iv, 13); but even then petty faction leadership had its
meed: the believers in the quick end of the world and the Second
Coming in the Kingdom, pooled their poor belongings "and laid them
down at the apostles' feet"; and these holy ones operated this
first pool. But "the Lord added to the Church daily such as should
be saved," and it gradually increased in strength if not in grace.
As the numbers grew and prestige and contributions increased, many
"false teachers" arose among the "Sheep" and brought "damnable
heresies" into the Fold. Scores of the Fathers filled parchments
with dreary diatribes "Against all Heresies," of which over ninety
flourished in the first three centuries which CE. catalogues and
describes the hair-splitting differences of doctrine which gave
excuse to splitting the Fold and dividing the spoil, And for
cutting throats and beating out brains until the end of the seventh
century. All these factious sects of "Christians" waxed more or
less powerful and wealthy; the Arian anti-Trinity "heretics," the
Donatists, Montanists, Manichaeans, Monophysites, and innumerable
others divided Europe and the contributions of the credulous for
centuries, until suppressed by law and sword of the Orthodox. It is
the latter, the True Church, which "gathered. gear by every wile
(un)-justified by honor." An authoritative summary, gleaned at
random from CE., of the grafting results is instructive.
"When peace was given to the Church by Constintine, at the
beginning of the fourth century, an era of temporal prosperity for
the Church set in. As Europe gradually became Christian, the
donations for religious purposes increased by leaps and bounds.
Gifts of land and money for ecclesiastical purposes were now
legally recognized, and though some of the later Roman emperors
placed restrictions upon the donations of the faithful, yet the
wealth of the Church rapidly increased. Whatever losses were
suffered in the [incursions of the barbarians], were made up for
later, when the conquering barbarians in their turn were converted
to Christianity. ... The wealth of the Church at this period [the
"so-called Reformation"] his sometimes been made a matter of
reproach to her, ... admitting that abuses were indeed at times
unquestionable." (CE. iii, 762.) Such "abuses" and the ghoulish
clerical greed were exactly why some of the later Roman emperors
"placed restrictions" on grafting the Faithful. Lecky gives a
graphic picture of the priests with the itching palm: "Rich widows
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were surrounded by swarms of clerical sycophants, who addressed
them in tender diminutives, studied and consulted their every
foible, and, under the guise of piety, lay in wait for their gifts
or bequests. The evil attained such a point that a law was made
under Valentinian depriving the Christian priests and monks of that
power of receiving Legacies which was possessed by every other
class of the community." (History of European Morals, ii, 151.)
These shaming facts are confirmed by many of the contemporary
Fathers. From the Latin text of St. Jerome I turn into English his
mournful admission that the deprivation was justified: "The priests
of the idols might receive inheritances; only the clergy and monks
were prohibited by this law, and prohibited not by persecutors, but
by Christian princes ... I grieve that we should merit this law."
(Epist. lii.) We remember that already the Christian emperors, by
"persecuting laws," had prohibited Pagans from making wills and
from receiving bequests, and the law which declared all wills void
which were not made before a priest, -- who was there to get his
share. The priestly profits rolled up through the Ages of Faith.
Out of hundreds of like generalizations and specific instances
cited, I make these limited selections, which show the universal
process of clerical greed.
"The early Christians were lavish in their support of
religion, and frequently turned their possessions over to the
Church. ... Towards the end of Charlemagne's reign the regenerated
peoples contributed generously to the support of ecclesiastical
institutions." (v, 421.) Indeed, so great had its volume then
become, that "Church property excited the cupidity of the various
factions, upon the death of Charlemagne." (v, 774.) Even a hundred
years previously the Church estates could make a prince's rewards:
"Charles Martel is charged with secularizing many ecclesiastical
estates, which he took from the churches and abbeys and gave in
fief to his warriors as a recompense for their services, This land
actually remained the property of the ecclesiastical establishments
in question." (vi, 241.) The Church grabbed all and shirked all; as
a result, "Naturally there was a desire on the part of the king and
princes to force the Church to take her share in the national
burdens and duties." (vi, 63.) "To this age belongs the famous
grant to the Church of one-tenth of his land by Ethelburt, father
of Alfred the Great" (i, 507). "On the authority of the Doomsday
Book [of William the Conqueror], the possessions of the Church
represented 25% of the assessment in the country [England] in 1066,
and 26 1/2% of its cultivated area in 1086." (v, 103.) "In 1127
Stephen gave to these monks his forest in Furness. This grant was
most munificent, for it included large possessions in woods,
pastures, fisheries, and mills, with a large share in the salt
works and mines of the district." (vi, 324.) "The see of Exeter was
one of the largest and richest in England. The diocese was
originally very wealthy." (v, 708-9.) "The English people at large
complained of the enormous revenue which the pope and the Italians
drew from their country, ... the financial demands of the Curia."
(vii, 38.) "Bitterness existed for a considerable time between the
monks and the people of F., who complained of the abbey's imposts
and exactions." (vi, 20.) "Vast sum of money extorted from the
English clergy in 1531." (iv, 26.)
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In France the clergy formed "a wealthy body of men, gradually
extending their possessions throughout the kingdom" during the
Middle Ages. (i, 795.) "In 1384 almost a third of the land in the
kingdom of Bohemia belonged to the Church." (ii, 613.) In Germany,
twelfth century, "the difficulty of administering the vast landed
possessions caused the abbots to grant certain sections in fief."
(vi, 314.) "The gifts of German princes, nobles, and private
individuals increased the landed possessions of the abbey so
rapidly that they soon extended over distant parts of Germany," --
long list of provinces. (vi, 313.) "In parts of Germany [in 1770]
the number and wealth of the religious houses, in some instances
their uselessness, and occasionally their disorders, tempted the
princes to lay violent and rapacious hands on them." (iv, 38.) "The
luxury of bishops and the worldly possessions of monks" led to
violent rebellion in Italy, in twelfth century. (i, 748.) At this
and most times, the "prelates were the most powerful and the
wealthiest subjects of the State." (ii, 186.) "The steady growth of
power and wealth of the Church, since the beginning of the twelfth
century, introduced an ever-increasing spirit of worldliness."
(vii, 129.) "The liberality of the faithful was a constant
incitement to depart from the rule of poverty. This liberality
showed itself mainly in gifts of real property, for example, in
endowments for prayers for the dead, which were then usually
founded with real estate. In the fourteenth century began the land
wars and feuds (e.g. the Hundred Years' War in France), which
relaxed every bond of discipline and good order." (vi, 284.) To all
this and these, "the faults and wealth of the clergy must have
contributed something. The spiritual ruler seemed almost merged in
the sovereign of Rome and the feudal lord of Sicily. Money was
needed, and in order to obtain it funds had to be raised ... and by
means which aroused much discontent and affected the credit of
Rome. ... Even in the twelfth century complaints of venality were
frequent and bitter." (iii, 703.) "Simony, the most abominable of
crimes ... was the evil so prevalent daring the Middle Ages." (xiv,
1, 2.) Hundreds of instances are recited in CE. of the teeming
wealth wrung by the Church and clergy from the fears of the
Faithful; of the inordinate riches of popes and prelates, abbots
and monks, Churches and their plethoric treasuries. The Church
existed for riches and it got, rather ill-got them in inestimable
enormity of amount. From the cradle to the grave of every faithful
who had anything to get, the Church wheedled, extorted or coerced
it. Fear was ever the foundation of the Faith and of the
"liberality" of contributions to it.
Among the greatest and greediest mints of ecclesiastical
finance, were Simony, several times above mentioned, -- the sale of
every kind of hierarchical office and dignity, from the popedom to
the jobs of the meanest servitors of the Servants of God; and the
sale of Indulgences, or remissions of the pains of Purgatory. This
non-existent place of expiation of "Sin," acquired or "Original,"
to fit the befouled soul for Heaven, was first charted if not
invented by His holiness Gregory the Great, about 600 A.D. "An
indulgence offers the penitent sinner the means of discharging this
debt [to God] during the life on earth" (CE. vii, 783), -- provided
that "debt" is adequately liquidated by cash into the coffers of
God's Vicars on earth. These indulgences are of various kinds,
efficacy and price: "The most important distinction, however, is
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that between plenary indulgences and partial. By a plenary
indulgence is meant the remission of the entire temporal punishment
due to sin so that no further expiation is required in Purgatory.
A partial indulgence commutes only a certain portion of the
penalty. ... Some indulgences are granted in behalf of the living
only, while others may be applied in behalf of the souls of the
departed" (Ib. 783-4). Leo X, he who perpetrated the celebrated
aphorism -- "What profit has not that Fable of Christ brought us,"
rose in defense of the revenues, and in his Bull "Exurge Domine,"
1520, "condemned Luther's assertions that 'Indulgences are pious
frauds of the faithful'; ... the Council of Trent, 1563, pronounces
anathema against those who either declare that indulgences are
useless or deny that the Church has power to grant them" (Ib.). The
flimsy basis of the traffic is thus referred to the forged "famous
Petrine text" which we have seen is itself a huge fraud: "Once it
is admitted that Christ left the Church the power to forgive sins,
the power of granting indulgences is logically inferred" (p. 785);
but logically perfect inferences can readily be made from false
premises; the premises must be true to yield valid and truthful
"inference" or conclusion. Not only were genuine but false
indulgences hawked throughout Christendom, resulting in immense
revenues -- and abuses, for "one of the worst abuses that of
inventing or falsifying grants of indulgence. Previous to the
Reformation, such practices abounded" (p. 787). The Council of
Trent sought to stop outside profits from this traffic, declaring
it to be "a grievous abuse among Christian people, and of other
disorders arising from superstition, (etc.) ... on account of the
widespread corruption" (Ib.); though it seems that now "with the
decline in the financial possibilities of the system, there is no
danger of the recurrence of the old abuses" (p. 788). But still
they sell well and net fine revenues; the writer has invested in
them several times in Mexico, for souvenirs, -- there being no
Purgatory for unbelievers in that fiery near-Hell.
A graphic picture is drawn by the great historian of the
Middle Ages, which shows Avarice as the cornerstone and effective
motive of the Church. Hallam, Von Ranke, and many historians, give
revolting examples in the concrete through many ages; here is their
summary:
"Covetousness, especially, became almost a characteristic
vice. ... Many of the peculiar and prominent characteristics in the
faith and discipline of those ages appear to have been either
introduced or sedulously promoted for the purposes of sordid fraud.
To these purposes conspired the veneration for relies, the worship
of images, the idolatry of saints and martyrs, the religious
inviolability of sanctuaries, the consecration of cemeteries, but,
above all, the doctrine of purgatory and masses for the relief of
the dead. A creed thus contrived, operating upon the minds of
barbarians, lavish though rapacious, and devout though dissolute,
naturally caused a torrent of opulence to flow in upon the Church.
... Even those legacies to charitable purposes. ... were frequently
applied to their own benefit. They failed not, above all, to
inculcate upon the wealthy sinner that no atonement could be so
acceptable to Heaven as liberal presents to its earthly delegates.
To die without allotting of worldly wealth to pious uses was
accounted almost like suicide, or a refusal of the last sacraments;
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and hence intestacy passed for a sort of fraud upon the Church,
which she punished by taking the administration of the deceased's
effects into her own hands. ... And, as if all these means of
accumulating what they could not legitimately enjoy were
insufficient, the monks prostituted their knowledge of writing to
the purpose of forging charters in their own favor, which might
easily impose upon an ignorant age, since it has required a
peculiar science to detect them in modern times. Such rapacity
might seem incredible in men cut off from the pursuits of life and
the hopes of posterity, if we did not behold every day the
unreasonableness of avarice and the fervor of professional
attachments." (Hallam, History of the Middle Ages, Vol. 1, Bk. vii,
passim.)
"STOP! THIEF!"
Ambitious and avaricious Christians who had been unable to get
their hands into the "orthodox" Treasury of the Lord, were incited
by the vision of the seas of easy money which flowed into it and by
the ostentatious opulence of the partakers of the Lord's Altar, to
emulate the zeal for riches displayed by the truly Faithful. A
lengthy article under the title Impostors -- [or is it "Stop!
Thief!"?] -- is devoted by CE. to the long line of hypocrites with
itching palms who broke away from the True Fold the better to
fleece the Faithful by their impostures. The period of the Great
Schism of the West, particularly, "was also an epoch when many
fanatical or designing persons reaped a rich harvest out of the
credulity of the populace." (CE. vii, 699.) Many thousands left the
True Church and flocked after religious Pretenders of every sort,
pouring treasures into their uncanonical coffers, to the great
pecuniary deprivation of Holy Church. Dozens of these perverters of
the Sacred Revenue through the succeeding centuries are catalogued,
coming down to our own near-secular times. Invidiously included
under the opprobrious designation of "Impostors" are the inspired
Prophet of the Mormons, Joseph Smith, and the inspired Prophetess,
Mother Mary Baker-Glover-Patterson-Eddy, -- the immense financial
success of whose respective religions may well excite envy, and
bring them within the terminology of Orthodox Odium Theologicum --
a "BITTER ENEMY, THE HEAD OF THE RIVAL RELIGION," as is the
approved form, to credit CE. (vii, 620), in speaking of one's
religious rivals. The point of the moral is, that according to
Orthodox criteria all these Harvesters in the Vineyard of the Lord
are unscrupulous Impostors for revenue only, and batten only by
preying on "the credulity of the populace," -- which is the by-
product of Religion, as we have seen it exemplified. When Ignorance
is ended Credulity ceases, and Ecclesiastical Pelf and Power
languishing die. If, as profanely jibed, "Without Hell Christianity
isn't worth a damn," a fortiori -- without Revenue, is not Religion
with out Reason to be?
Made wise by the history of the past, in modern times most
constitutions and governments, all in which the Church is not still
powerful, have put just restrictions on the rapacity of the Church
and have forbidden direct subsidies of support to it and its
ministers. Indeed, "In most European countries the civil authority
restricts in three ways the right of the Church to receive
donations: by imposing forms and conditions; by reserving the right
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to say what institutions may receive donations, and by requiring
the approval of the civil authority." (CE. v, 117.) In this
country, Federal and State constitutions ordain separation of State
and Church, forbid the establishment of any religion, and prohibit
grants of money in support of it. But withal, so inveterate is the
force of grafting habit, so prone yet the politicians to cater to
"The Church" upon the specious pretext that the Church and religion
are of some utility for "moral" purposes and as "the Big Policeman"
for the restriction of vice and crime -- the politicians not being
familiar with the "moral record" of the Church, that the Church
evades the principle and often the letter of the law, and is yet
largely supported and kept alive by the people through the secular
State. Some nine billions of dollars of deadhand and deadhead
property thus escapes taxation in the United States, and the idle
and vicious priestcraft and its system are supported by the State
its constitution and laws notwithstanding. For every dollar of tax-
exempt property, the taxpayer pays double. The vast majority of the
people supports thus a small but vocal minority, which but for such
public favors would soon perish off the land, for its own
membership could not and would not keep it going if it had to pay
the taxes, the burden of which it now shifts to the unbelieving or
indifferent majority. The system is unjust and undemocratic, is
immoral. In his Annual Message to Congress in 1875, President Grant
pointed out that the tax-free property of Churches was at the time
about one billion dollars; that "by 1900, without check, it is safe
to say this property will reach a sum exceeding three billions of
dollars"; and he added:
"So vast a sum, receiving all the protection and benefits
of Government without bearing its proportion of the burdens
and expenses of the same, will not be looked upon
acquiescently by those who have to pay the taxes. In a growing
country, where real estate enhances so rapidly with time, as
in the United States, there is scarcely a limit to the wealth
that may be acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise,
if allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The
contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded to,
without taxation, may lead to sequestration without
constitutional authority and through blood. I would suggest
the taxation of all property equally, whether church or
corporation." (Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol.
vii, p. 334-5.)
Sequestration and blood have been required to put a curb on
Church greed in many modern and "Christian" countries, even in
Italy, Spain and France, the "most favored nations" of Holy Church.
Russia and Mexico have followed suit; they had been ground into
desperation by the luxurious exactions of their respective
Churches, and the debased ignorance and poverty which were thus
imposed on their peoples. Every country of Europe, even the "Most
Christian," where the Society of Jesus has grasped wealth and
power, has been forced to expel the parasites; and to "padlock" the
vast establishments of religious orders. If one would take a census
of illiteracy and poverty, just in those countries where the Church
has had or yet has most power and wealth, the people are most
ignorant and impoverished. It may be a "coincidence," but it is a
very suspicious matter of fact. All these things are of the
"fruits," moral and educational, of Christianity.
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Until now the "damning things of the Church" arrayed in these
pages, have been known only as the result of laborious research by
a limited number: I broadcast them now so that they may be known to
all. Even the "Man of God" may plead ignorance heretofore of the
frauds of his Church and the falsity of his religion. Here it is
demonstrated to him. To beg money now on the plea that the giver
"lendeth to the Lord," that money paid for prayers for the dead
relieves the souls in Purgatory, -- both these coin-cajoling pleas
are now known to be false; obtaining money by these false
pretenses, now, is Larceny. This is timely and serious warning,
which it may be salutary to heed.
AN APPEAL TO REASON
"If any man is ignorant, let him be ignorant." Paul.
"Were we can understand, it is a moral crime to cherish the
un-understood." Shotwell.
These two quotations represent the difference between the
viewpoints of the cleric and the scholar. "A mere recital of facts
is of little avail unless certain fundamental principles be kept in
view," says our oft-quoted Defender of the Faith, -- a truth which
I would now drive home to the reader -- but in a very different
sense than is expressed in the clerical conclusion of the sentence,
-- "and unless the fact of Christian revelation be given its due
importance." The False Pretense of "Christian revelation" has been
exposed and exploded by the real revelations of falsity and fraud
in every pretended one of them, by this same Apologist for
Christian imposture. Contrasting the wondrous results of
"Christian" training -- such as we have seen exemplified -- with
those suffered by the poor Pagan without any revelation, the same
Apologist makes this deprecatory comment: "That he should learn to
think for himself was of course out of the question. With such a
training, the development of free personality was of course out of
the question." (CE. v, 296.) Such a disparaging verdict much rather
condemns the Christian system and its aims and results, which
obviously are, that its devotees, or victims should be "able to
believe automatically a number of things which -- [in reason] --
they know are not true," and which they must therefore accept "of
faith," subjecting their reason to the priest-instilled Faith. It
is to the awakening of Reason, in the light of the facts herein
presented, that I appeal against the preoccupations or prejudices
of Faith, -- those "superstitions drunk in with their mother's
milk," and never since questioned with open mind.
The ex-Pagan Fathers of Christianity now turned Defenders of
the new Faith, and propagandists of it among their fellow Pagans,
were very fervid and eloquent in their appeals to the reason of the
Pagans as against their mother-inherited superstitions. In his
First Apology to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, Father Justin Martyr
makes a fine appeal for the use of reason in defiance of tradition
and authority, -- a fine gesture to the Pagan, -- but a principle
seldom applied by a Christian in point of his own imposed creeds:
"Reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophical to
honor and love only what is true, declining to follow the opinions
of the ancients, if these be worthless." (Chap. ii, ANF. i, 63.) As
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the preceding review has shown the opinions of the ancient Fathers
to be worthless with respect to the "facts" of the Christian
religion, and that that religion is quite worthless either as
divine truth or effective police, it should therefore be discarded,
except for such good moral precepts as are to be found in it as in
all religions and all moral systems.
In those times the Christian Church was small and feeble, and
had not yet snatched the cynical power whereby, ever since, it
"requires the acceptance and practice not of the religion one may
choose, but of that which God prescribes ... to be the only true
one," as asserted by His Holiness Leo XIII, in the Encyclical
Immortale Dei, of November 1, 1885. (CE. xiv, 764.) Whereupon, the
"choosers" of their religion became "heretics," and were quite
"justly burned," as that same Pope admits. But before the
successors of Constantine gave the Church the sword and the stake
for persuasions unto faith, it was necessary that the Christian
Apologists should appeal to reason with the intelligent classes of
Pagans. Father Lactantius uses argument in his great Apology
addressed to Constantine and intended for the learned Pagans of the
imperial entourage, which I would earnestly address now to those
who yet hesitate in their inherited Christianity:
"It is therefore right, especially in a matter on which
the whole plan of life turns, that every one should place
confidence in himself, and use his own judgment and individual
capacity for the investigation and weighing of the truth,
rather than through confidence in others to be deceived by
their errors, as though he himself were without understanding.
God has given wisdom to all alike, that they might be able
both to investigate things which they have not heard, and to
weigh things which they have heard. Nor. because they (our
ancestors) preceded us in time, did they also outstrip us in
wisdom; for if this is given equally to all, we can not be
anticipated in it by those who precede us." (Lact., Divine
Institutes, II, viii; ANF. VII, 51.)
If no one, upon reason, or even by caprice, ever changed his
opinion, belief, status, we would all be savages still. In matter
of religion, the ancestors of every one of us were once Pagans, and
those who became Christians were dubbed "atheists" by those
remaining faithful to the old gods, -- until they too changed to
the new. Then these ex-Pagan ancestors of ours were Catholics, of
the "orthodox" or one of the ninety-odd "heretic" brands which
finally perished or conformed by Grace of God and the Orthodox
sword. Others many of our good Catholic ancestors just a few
hundred years ago became "heretics" of the Protestant brands, and
so continue or until lately continued, -- and then threw off the
old tradition of faith, and became Rationalists. Every gradation of
change was due to one pregnant cause: increasing intelligence of
the individual. Each advance sloughed off sundry inherited articles
of faith, which then became discarded superstitions. Dean Milman
spoke truly of the reason for the decadence of the Pagan religions;
his reasons apply as aptly to the Christian: "The progress of
knowledge was fatal to the religions of Greece and Rome. ... Poetry
had been religion; religion was becoming mere poetry." (Hist. of
Christianity, I, 33.)
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Father Lactantius has a Chapter entitled "Cicero and Other Men
of Learning Erred in not Turning Away the People from Error." It is
a moral crime, as Dr. Shotwell says, to cling to error when we can
come to understand it as error. Not only that, urges Lactantius, it
is wrong for those who know a vital truth to refrain from striving
to turn men away from harmful error. His argument was much
applauded by the Church, and is the argument of every missionary to
the "heathen" today. Lactantius thus justly chides:
"Cicero was well aware that the deities which men
worshipped were false. For when he had spoken many things
which tended to the overthrow of religious ceremonies, he said
nevertheless that these matters ought not; to be discussed by
the vulgar, lest such discussion should extinguish the system
of religion which was publicly received. ... Nay, rather, if
you have any virtue, Cicero, endeavor to make the people Wise:
that is a befitting subject, on which you may expend all the
powers of your eloquence ... in the dispersion of the errors
of mankind, and the recalling of the minds of men to a healthy
state." (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, II, iii; ANF. VII,
43.)
To this ideal of the use of Reason, which Lactantius and the
earlier Fathers of the weakling Church held before the intelligent
Pagans to incite them to discard the errors and superstitions of
Paganism, this book is devoted in the earnest hope and purpose to
evoke the use of Reason to the discard of the identical errors and
superstitions of "that newer Paganism later called Christianity,"
which yet persist among the priest-taught masses of Christendom.
That Christian Appeal to Reason was not with the intelligent
classes of Pagandom very effective; more persuasive methods must,
therefore, be divised to bring the Pagans to the Altar and Treasury
of the Lord. We have read the succession of laws of the now
"Christian Emperors," which at the behest of the Priests proscribed
Paganism upon pain of death and confiscation, made outlaws of all
who refused to take the name of Christian, or continued to offer
incense to the old gods, or became "heretics" to the official
Faith; all who were guilty of these "crimes -- let them be stricken
by the avenging sword." As the newer "barbarian"' nations came upon
the Christian scene, "the Catholic Faith was spread by the sword"
among and upon them, and all who hesitated or backslid were
murdered by Christian law and sword. Crass ignorance, credulity and
superstition were then imposed and enforced upon Christendom in
order to "preserve the purity of the faith" in the unthinking minds
of unknowing dupes of the Church and the Priests who waxed in
wealth and in dominion over witless Christendom. When after a
millennium during which men were too ignorant to be heretic, the
light of thought and reason began to dawn upon the horizon of the
Dark Ages of Faith, the Inquisition and the Index, the tortures of
the rack and the stake, were providentially provided for the
further preservation of Faith by augment of Ignorance and Terror.
In all these holy Ages of Faith, in this "civilization thoroughly
saturated with Christianity," the Siamese Twins of Creed and Crime,
Faith and Filth, popular Poverty and Ecclesiastical Opulence,
stalked hand in hand -- "the inseparable companions of Religion."
The Renaissance and the Reformation came to enfranchise men from
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Authority and blind Obedience, and the way was blazed for
Rationalism and the Age of Reason. The unquestionable record of all
this we have read in the amazing and unblushing confessions of Holy
Church itself.
At the time of the Reformation admitted conditions existed
which today are infinitely more active and more thoroughgoing: "The
Christian religious ideal -- [never a matter of practice] -- was to
a great extent lost sight of; higher intellectual culture,
previously confined in great measure to the clergy, but now common
among the laity, assumed a secular character. ... Only a faint
interest in the supernatural life survived." (CE. xii, 703.)
Education is now becoming universal; the hateful history of the
Church and of Religion is becoming general knowledge; the Church,
forced by ever-growing Secularism and Rationalism, has lost the
power of compulsion and all but that of persuasion to belief in its
forged and fatuous creeds, with all but the unthinking minority,
and is itself almost secularized, held together as a sort of social
center for the masses without other social contacts, and as matter
of "good form" for the pretentiously pious, were infantile hymns
are vocalized to an empty Heaven, and the unco gude chorus their
petitions to the inhering and unheeding Throne of Grace,
"beseeching the Lord upon the universal prayer-theme of 'Gimme!'"
Universally, too, as old John Duffy poetizes it, "The rich they
pray for pounds, and the poor they pray for pence."
The utter futility of prayer in objective sense for the
obtaining of the subject-matter of the supplication, even of the
"Give us this day our daily bread," -- which many do get and many
and more others miserably go without, is confessed by CE., which
frankly attributes all these things to the operation of the Law of
Chance: "The apparent success which so often attends superstition
can mostly be accounted for by natural causes, although [it piously
adds] it would be rash to deny all supernatural intervention (e.g.
in the phenomena of Spiritualism). When the object is to ascertain,
or to effect in a general way, one of two possible events, the law
of probabilities gives an equal chance to success and failure; and
success does more to support than failure would do to destroy
superstition, for, on its side, there are arrayed the religious
instinct, sympathy and apathy, confidence and distrust,
encouragement and discouragement, and, -- perhaps strongest of all
-- the healing power of nature." (CE. xiv, 341.) There, in a
nutshell, is the profound psychology of the priest-instilled
"religious instinct," and of the hit-or-miss "efficacy of prayer"
for the cajoling of "heavenly gifts" of earthly benefits and of the
eversion of the heaven-sent or devil-inflicted evils whereof
suffering humanity is the sport and prey, -- to the utter
indifference of their Celestial Pater!
The last sentence of the clerical admission above -- "the
healing power of nature," bears destructively upon one of the most
insistent of religious superstitions, the efficiency of prayers,
and saints, and relies, and shrines, and pious mummeries, to which
millions of the afflicted and deluded of God's children resort for
the relief of their torments and the cure of their diseases, --
which their loving Father God inflicts or prevents. From the
earliest times of priestcraft until this very year of grace, the
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priests and parsons and charlatans of every stripe preach and
encourage this ancient heathen superstition, -- and reap rich
rewards through the imposture. The perfectly natural cause and
explanation of numerous occasional instances of success at the
game, which incites to further superstition and greater abuses, is
curiously but truly confessed: "There are few religions in which
recourse is not had to supernatural aid for miraculous cures. The
testimony of reliable witnesses and the numerous ex-votos that have
come down to us from antiquity leave no doubt as to the reality of
these cures. It was natural that they should have been viewed as
miraculous in an age when the remarkable power of suggestion to
effect cures was not understood. Modern science recognizes that
strong mental impressions can powerfully influence the nervous
system and through it the bodily organs, leading in some instances
to sudden illness or death, in others to remarkable cures. Such is
the so-called mind cure or cure by suggestion. It explains
naturally many extraordinary cures recorded in the annals of many
religions. Still it has its recognized limits. It cannot restore of
a sudden a half-decayed organ, or heal instantly a gaping wound
caused by a cancer." (CE. xii, 743.)
This thus confesses the huge false pretense of "miracle of
God" in such cases of relief or cure of nervous or mental maladies
as are claimed for the impostures of Lourdes, St. Anne's, Maiden,
the Calvary Baptist Holy Rollers and all such shrines of religious
imposture and superstition. In antiquity, the fictitious Pagan gods
did not exist, -- the cures attributed to them and paid for to the
priests were entirely due to nature, and the claims of the priests
were frauds. The Christians now confess the "recognized limits" of
their God to do more than Nature did under the Pagan gods: the
pretense of "miracle," of "supernatural intervention" is seen to be
as fraudulent in modern times as it is admitted to have been in
ancient. The Pagans believed, and prayed, and paid the priests, and
some by auto-suggestion found relief or were cured, many others
believed, and prayed, and paid -- and their natural sufferings were
enhanced by their disappointment. But did they cease therefore to
believe and pray and pay? Probably then the pious apologetics of
defeatism were the same as now. If the thing prayed for cometh to
pass -- "the gods have -- God has -- answered our prayers; blessed
be their -- His -- holy name!" and the fortunate results are noised
abroad. If by equal chance the prayed-for benefit is unattained,
then "God knows better than we what is best for us," and the less
said about the failure the better for childlike Faith. When exposed
to danger or death we escape, it is "the wonderful Providence of
God," -- nothing being thought or said about those so curiously
designated "Acts of God" which permitted or inflicted the disaster;
whereas, if we die or continue in suffering, why, "God's ways are
not our ways"; "the ways of God are beyond our finite
understanding," et cetera of pious apologies for the silence and
failure of God to help his suffering and neglected children.
It would seem that every fossil of credulity embedded in the
ancient Rock of Faith has in the course of this review been picked
out and the Rock itself drilled through and through for the easy
task of final demolition. For nigh two thousand years it has cast
its baleful shadow upon civilization, stunting and dwarfing the
minds and faculties of men clouded by its worthless bulk. Though
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vastly undermined and hacked and tottering, the blighting effects
of Church and religious superstition are yet in many odious
respects persistent; humanity and civilization yet suffer under the
lingering disease of priest-imposed delusions and the hateful
miasma of religious intolerance in every land cursed yet by
priestcraft, parsonate, and the odium of theology.
"When the Devil was sick, the Devil a Saint would be!" The
Church is dying now; has been forced despite itself and its
enginery of torture and murder, to desist from the worst of its
deviltry, to appear a bit civilized; some of its partizans and
dupes think it "reformed," pure-minded and clean-handed. It is only
measurably so perforce, and reluctantly. Even today the Law of God,
conserved in the latest Edition of the holy Canon Law, commands
murder for unbelief; these infamous "principles are in their own
nature irreformable; ... owing to changed conditions [forced upon
it by secular civilization] are to all practical intents and
purposes obsolete ... The custom of burning heretics is really not
a question of justice, but a question of civilization"! (CE. xiv,
769.) Thus the Church confesses itself uncivilized; it retains and
insists upon the God-ordained justice of burning and murder; but is
forced by heretic civilization, acquired in bloody despite of the
Church, to conform to the decrees of Civilization. But as --
however -- Holy Church is impotent, dying, and will soon be dead --
then only De mortuis nil nisi bonum! -- Speed its hastening Death!
Founded in fraud by avarice and ambition, propagated by sword
and fire, perpetuated by ignorance and fear; by increase of
knowledge and free expression of thought rendered now all but
impotent except in will and malice, priestcraft yet grasps for
power and dominion over mind and spirit of men. In present default
of rack and stake, it struggles yet to impose itself through such
unholy means as it can still partially command, -- fines and
imprisonment under ridiculous medieval laws for the absurd priestly
"crimes" of blasphemy and sacrilege, "desecration of the Lord's
Day" by innocent diversions instead of attending dull preachings
and paying the priests by the gift upon the Altar or in the
contribution plate. Odious laws for the repression of human
liberty; for the outlawing of honest men who refuse the
superstitious forms of Religious Oath imposed in courts and legal
proceedings, of which several shocking instances have recently
occurred, depriving men of liberty and property, and potentially of
life through refusal of their testimony in court. Religious
Intolerance flames through the land, as notorious instances have
lately made evident. Good Christians yet cordially dislike and
distrust all others of differing brands of Faith, which sentiments
Christians and Jews religiously reciprocate in holy hatred and
intolerance of each other, while all unite in utter abhorrence and
damnation of the Liberal and the Unbeliever, condemned alike by
private Christian spite and public obloquy, of a vocal and
intolerant minority; by political disqualifications for public
office wherever this or that Sect is yet in a majority and can
enforce its intolerance by law. "A careful study of the history of
religious toleration," says the historian of Civilization, "will
prove, that in every Christian country where it has been adopted,
it has been forced upon the clergy by the authority of the secular
classes. At the present day it is still unknown to those nations
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among whom the ecclesiastical power is stronger than the temporal
power." In quite half the countries of Latin America and several of
Europe -- the most backward and poverty-stricken and priest-ridden
of them -- yet today public office and honors can be attained only
by the votaries of the Sect in power, and the free and public
practice of any other than the official cult is prohibited by law.
I have the codes of these "Christian" countries.
Even in our own "tolerant" country today, religious fanaticism
succeeds in its attacks, to impose by law the "sacred science of
Genesis" in the universities and schools to the outlawry of the
teachings of the truths of Nature. Preachers and teachers who dare
express honest opinions of liberalism or unbelief are by pious
religionists discharged and their families deprived of bread and
support. Religious Pharisees seek to seize the public schools to
disseminate their obsolete superstitions in the minds of youth --
the hope of the future, and the last chance of the Church.
Individual peace and friendliness, public peace and good
understanding are often jeopardized and destroyed by Religion.
Corrupt and insulting ecclesiastical government is rampant in many
of our large cities and in a number of entire States. In a word,
and despite all, the Twentieth Century is still under the hang-over
spell of medieval theology and an the holy spites and intolerance
of rancorous Religiosity.
The fatal work of Church and Priest through the Christian Era
-- as herein revealed, has wrought ignorance, superstition and
vice: it has been and remains a supreme failure. Faith is become
obsolete before Facts. Christianity is proved to be a fraudulent
Bankrupt; this is its final adjudication before the bar of
Civilization.
The Christian Religion -- shown to be a congeries of revamped
Pagan Superstitions and of Priestly Lies -- is not respectable for
belief: every honest and self-respecting mind must repudiate it in
disgust. We can all "Do good, for good is good to do"!
Faith -- fondly called "the most precious heritage of the
race," is not a thing whereof to be proud; it is not Intelligent or
of Reason. Not a flicker of intelligence is required to believe:
millions of the most illiterate and ignorant of earth's teeming
populations are the firmest in their "faith" in every form of
religious superstition known to the priests of the world, the most
devout believers of this or that imposture, -- "most assured of
what they are most ignorant" withal. Indeed, as aptly quoted:
"Unbelief is no crime that Ignorance was ever capable of being
guilty of." Buckle truly says, that to the secular and skeptical
spirit European civilization owes its origin: that "it is evident,
that until doubt began, progress was impossible" (Ch. vii, 242);
and CE. has confessed, as is also self-evident, -- "Toleration only
came in when Faith went out." What a boon then to humanity to
hasten and complete its going!
Disbelief, doubt, inquiry of truth, rejection of superstition,
is distinctly an act of Intelligence; it often requires heroic
virtue of bravery and independence of mind to disbelieve, to revolt
against and reject the creeds and credulities of the ignorant
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community, -- as evidenced by the whole holy bloody history of
religious rancor and intolerance which has so inadequately but
shockingly been reviewed. It is the bravest men and the finest
minds, with high courage to dare and defy Holy Church, whom that
unholy Hoodlum has murdered, but who have saved and recreated
Civilization, as even yet inadequately it has been achieved.
Think to what Civilization might have attained by this
Twentieth Century. For nigh two thousand years Christianity has
held sway and thrall over the most dominant part of the world and
portion of the human race. In each generation for most of the two
thousand years there have been hundreds of thousands of men and
women -- Priests, monks, nuns, and "religious" nondescripts,
devoted through life to the unrealities of "Other-worldliness" to
the utter neglect of the world in which they lived, resolved, all
too oft, "to make of earth a hell that they might merit heaven." In
the pursuit of such impracticalities. and to force all others to
believe, doubtless millions of books and sermons of sophistry have
been their output, not to mention ignorance, wars, famines, plagues
and bestialities innumerable that they have brought about to the
destruction of civilization. Thus, in aggregate, millions of human
beings -- many of them of very high mental capacity, have devoted
some millions of years of labor or of sloth to Theology and
Religion, -- lives, years and labor wasted! If these years and
labors had but been devoted to pure and applied Science, to the
discovery and conquest of the powers of Nature, to Knowledge of the
Worth While -- medicine, surgery anesthetics, antiseptics,
sanitation -- the catalogue is endless; to the outlawry of War and
the establishment of universal Peace; the abolition of Crime,
Poverty, and Disease -- in a word, to the Social Sciences and
Service, to Humanism and the Humanities, instead of to Theism and
Theology -- to what glorious heights would not Civilization and
Humanity have scaled!
The timorous Religionist -- affrighted at the threatened loss
of the "opiate" and "crutches" of Faith, often asks: "What
are you going to give us in its place?" A cure! -- so that you will
not need these artificial aids. When the surgeon excises a
dangerous tumor, or the physician heals a mental or physical
disease, -- he restores to health of body or mind, -- does not
inflict some other form of disease in place of the one cured. So
with the fictitious mental disorder of Religion, -- for that it is
a mental disorder of most malignant kind is proved by the
inveterate hates and crimes it has caused the sufferers from it to
be guilty of through all the Ages of Faith, as disclosed in this
review. The sufferer goes through life, actually -- or what is the
same thing, under the delusion of disability, -- hobbling on
crutches, or with frequent injections of "dope" to allay real or
imagined pain. Either by material means or by "mind cure" he is
healed of the real or imaginary ailment: he throws away his
crutches, discards his daily narcotic; health and strength come to
his members and his whole body; the faculties of the mind are freed
from the inhibitions of disease and disability. The sufferer goes
through life, actually -- or what is the same thing, under the
delusion of disability, -- hobbling on crutches, or with frequent
injections of "dope" to allay real or imagined pain. Either by
mental means or by "mind cure" he is healed of the real or
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imaginary ailment: he throws away his crutches, discords his daily
narcotic; health and strength come to his members and his whole
body; the faculties of the mind are freed from the inhibititions of
disease and disability. The grandest cure ever wrought in the man
and in humanity is free the mind from Superstition, to release all
the energies of mind and body for the glorious work for Mankind.
The noblest and most blest worker for Humanity is the Humanist.
Religious Toleration and freedom of thought and of beneficent
research, came in only as religious Faith went out; Civilization
began only as the Dark Ages of Faith came to an end. The Church has
had its long Night -- those Dark Ages of Faith. Therein it shed its
boasted refulgence of "sweetness and light" -- in the Dark. The
Church is very like the fire-fly -- the homely lightning Bug, -- it
needs darkness in which to shine. But the Day is come; the
supernatural Light of the Cross is faded and paled before the
luminous truths of Nature discovered now and exploited by free men
for the good of mankind.
It remains yet to complete the good work for civilization and
humanity by destroying the last lingering works and delusions of
decadent and decayed priestcraft; through the universal triumph of
Rationalism to fully and finally Ecraser l'Infame. Truly and
prophetically spoke Zola: "Civilization will not attain to its
perfection, until the last stone from the last church falls on the
last priest!"
A new and free Civilization rises from the ruins of the Ages
of Faith; with heart aglow and high purpose set on the attainment
of the ancient "Supreme Good," it hails the glorious possibilities
of the scientific Age of Reason, which will redeem humanity from
the blight of the centuries of Unreason. Men may now know and
freely and unafraid make known the truth: and the Truth shall make
mankind Free.
In the fine imagery of Dr. Trattner, his autobiographic God
looks into the now not so distant Future, and thus communes:
"Before Me is the Scroll of Destiny. See! Man has already scaled
the foot-hills. Not one man alone, or two, or three, but all the
nations. Everywhere men and women together are now leading their
children forward consecrated to the Ideal. ... I am satisfied. It
is the day -- the day of complete Emancipation!"
FINIS -- FIDEI
<div> <div>
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Bank of Wisdom
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3 page printout, 320 to 322 of 322
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
Table of Contents
for
SUB TITLES
FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
THE DISEASE AND THE CURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
FAITH IN A FATAL DECLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
THE INDICTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
OUTLINE OF CASE AND PROOFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
FORGERY DEFINED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
RELIGIOUS LAWS OF OUTLAWRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
CHAPTER I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
PAGAN FRAUDS -- CHRISTIAN PRECEDENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
THE DAWN-MAN AND THE SHAMAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
PAGANISM AT THE CROSS-ROADS WITH
CHRISTIANITY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
SIMON MAGUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
SUPERSTITIONS AND REVELATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
CHRISTIAN "REVELATION" DEFINED AND DISPROVED . . . . . . . . 35
MITHRAISM -- AND CHRISTIAN MYTH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
"MITHRAISM" -- PRE-CHRISTIAN CHRISTIANITY. . . . . . . . . . 37
BUDDHISM IN CHRISTIANITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
ALL DEVILISH IMITATIONS! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Abbreviations for most often used sources: . . . . . . . . . 55
CHAPTER II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
HEBREW HOLY FORGERIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
THE INSPIRED FABLE OF TOBIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
EZRA "RESTORES" THE LAW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
THE "FINDING OF THE LAW" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
THE "SEPTUAGINT" TRANSLATION INTO GREEK. . . . . . . . . . . 65
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE "VIRGIN-BIRTH" FRAUD. . . . . . . . . 68
OTHER HEBREW SACRED FORGERIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
THE "INSPIRED" HEBREW SCRIPTURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
FORGERY BY CONTRADICTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
OUR "PHONY" CHRISTIAN ERA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
FORGERY BY FALSE TRANSLATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
The "God" Forgery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
The "Adam" Forgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
The "Soul" Forgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
The "Mosaic Revelation" Forgery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
THE ANCIENT IDEA OF "HISTORY". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
CHRISTIAN "REVELATIONS" IN JEWISH FORGERIES. . . . . . . . . 84
CHAPTER III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
CHRISTIAN "SCRIPTITRE" FORGERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
"THE AGE OF APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
"THE IDEA OF INSPIRATION". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
"THE LYING PEN OF THE SCRIBES" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
"CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES" -- FORGED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
FORGED GOSPELS, ACTS, EPISTLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
THE FORGFD "APOSTLES' CREED" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
THE FORGED ATHANASIAN CREED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
JESUS CHRIST'S FORGED LETTERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
OTHER FORGERIES FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
JOSEPHUS FORGERY TESTIFIES OF JESUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
320
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
THE OWL-ANGEL FORGERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
CHAPTER IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
THE SAINTLY "FATHERS" OF THE FAITH . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
PATRISTIC "TRADITION". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
THE TWELVE "TRADITIONAL" APOSTLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
The Apostles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
APOSTOLIC GREED AND STRIFE.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
The Apostolic Fathers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
The Sub-Apostolic Fathers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
JESUS DIED OF OLD AGE! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
THE PAGAN "LOGOS" CHRISTIANIZED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
AUGUSTINE "PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY". . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
CHRISTIAN PAGANISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
CHAPTER V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
THE "GOSPEL" FORGERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
STILL TINKERING AT IT! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
SOME TESTS FOR FORGERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
THE GOSPEL TITLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
THE "CANONICITY" OF THE FOUR GOSPELS . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
THE "MARK" FABLE BELIES "CANONICITY" . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
THE GOSPELS "ACCORDING TO" GREEK PRIESTS . . . . . . . . . . 157
THE FOUR GOSPELS -- "CHOSEN" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
WHY FOUR GOSPELS?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
INSPIRATION AND PLAGIARISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
GOSPELS LATE FORGERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
"LURE" DISCREDITS APOSTOLICITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
FORGERIES IN THE FORGED GOSPELS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
CONTRADICTIONS AND TRUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
JESUS -- MAN OR GOD? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
"UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH". . . . . . . . . . . 174
THE "CHURCH" FOUNDED ON THE "ROCK" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
PETER-ROCK-CHURCH" DENIED AB SILIENCIO . . . . . . . . . . . 182
"GO, TEACH ALL NATIONS" FORGERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
ACTS BELIES THE "GO, TEACH ALL NATIONS"
ORGERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
THE FORGED GOSPEL ENDINGS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
THE BAPTISMAL FORGERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
A MEDLEY OF FORGERIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
THE "WOMAN IN ADULTERY" FORGERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
THE JOHN XXI FORGERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
THE "LORD'S PRAYER" FORGERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
THE "UNKNOWN GOD" FORGERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
THE FORGED EPISTLES, ETC.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
THE "EPISTLE OF PETER" FORGERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
THE "GOD MANIFEST" FORGERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
THE "THREE HEAVENLY WITNESSES" FORGERY . . . . . . . . . . . 193
CHAPTER VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
THE CHURCH FORGERY MILL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
THE FORGED APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
THE FORGED "APOSTOLIC CANONS". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
THE FORGED LIBER PONTIFICALIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
THE "CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE" FRAUD. . . . . . . . . . . . 199
CHRISTIAN FORGERIES FOR POWER AND PELF . . . . . . . . . . . 204
THE "CONSTANTINE" FORGERIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
FORGED DEEDS OF EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
THE FORGED LETTER OF ST. PETER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
A HOLY CONSPIRATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
THE POPE SYLVESTER FORGERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
321
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
THE FORGED "DONATION OF CONSTANTINE" . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
THE "SYMMACHIAN FORGERIES" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
THE "FALSE DECRETALS" FORGERIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
THE FORGED DECRETUM OF GRATIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
THE FULL FRUITION OF FORGERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
THE FRUSTRATED EMS REVOLT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
FORGED SAINTS, MARTYRS AND MIRACLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
"SPECULA STULTORUM". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
OLD PAGAN STUFF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
FORGED AND FAKED RELICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
THE "INVENTION OF THE CROSS," ET AL. . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
ANCIENT FAKES YET ACCREDITED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
HOLY OILS, WATERS, AND FETISHES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
THE AGNUS DEI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
THE TRAGEDY OF THE "MYSTICAL MARRIAGE" . . . . . . . . . . . 237
CHAPTER VII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
THE "TRIUMPH" OF CHRISTIANITY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
PRIESTLY TERRORISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
GOD-ORDAINED MURDER FOR UNBELIEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
THE GOSPEL OF FEAR AND TREMBLING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
UNBORN BABES TO BURN FOREVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
A CONTRAST IN TOLERANCE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
THE EDICT OF MILAN (313) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
CHRISTIAN INTOLERANCE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
FAITH ENFORCED BY LAWS OF MURDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
LAWS OF CONSTANTINE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
LAWS OF CONSTANTIUS AND CONSTANS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
LAWS OF GRATIAN AND THEODOSIUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
LAWS OF THEODOSIUS AND VALENTINIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
LAWS OF HONORIUS AND ARCADIUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
LATER LAWS AGAINST PAGANISM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
BLOODY RECORD BOASTED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
"THE SECULAR ARM". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
COMPULSORY AND WHOLESALE CONVERSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
CONVERSION SKIN DEEP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
THE "FRUITS" OF CHRISTIANITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
"THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
THE POWER THAT WAS ROME. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
PAGAN CULTURAL RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
THE CHRISTIAN AGE OF FAITH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
THE AIM OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
THE MORAL "FRUITS" OF CHRISTIANITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
THE CHRISTIAN "MORALITY LIE"). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
THE INTELLECTUAL "FRUITS" OF CHRISTIANITY. . . . . . . . . . 283
THE CHRISTIAN "EDUCATION LIE," . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
THE MONKS "PRESERVED THE CLASSICS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
CHRISTIAN "SCIENCE". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
THE REBIRTH OF CIVILIZATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Gulliver Awakes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
BENEFIT OF CLERGY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
THE CRIMINAL CRUSADES STARTED THE REVOLT . . . . . . . . . . 297
THE "INFIDEL" REDEEMS CHRISTENDOM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
THE "MIRACULOUS ATTESTATIONS" OF
CHRISTIANITY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
"THE MARKS OF THE BEAST" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
WHY -- AND WHAT PRICE -- RELIGION? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
"STOP! THIEF!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
AN APPEAL TO REASON. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
322
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