Church Reform: The Only Means to That End, Stated in a Letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., First Lord of the TreasuryCarlile, Richard
Religion
Church Reform: The Only Means to That End, Stated in a Letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., First Lord of the Treasury
Carlile, Richard
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Church and state -- Church of England; Rationalism
It is not to be denied, that there are moral exhortations put forth in
every Church; the mystery would not pass on the people without them. But
it is a truth, that, in all of them, morals are treated as a secondary
consideration; and in some of the madder dissenting Churches, are
counted as of no weight in the question of religion. The truth, as it is
in Jesus, is, that morals are every thing as to practice, and knowledge
with succeeding reason, the principles of speculation, the WORD to be
sought, or the prize to be gained, the crown of glory, the spiritual
and immortal life, which is emphatically the language of Saint John's
Gospel; and this is the totality of the root and principle of the
Christian Religion, the promotion of which is the only proper business
of the ministration in the Church. No mystery: down with mystery. It
is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or
confessing to know, nothing. There is no Christ in the mystery. "How can
we reason, but from what we know?" The knowledge must be first. Nothing
precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. Nothing is required after;
but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. Unknown
worlds, unknown spirits, unknown matter, is nothing to us, until the
knowledge is obtained. Our knowledge is our all, in moral power, and we
can have nothing of a religious nature but our knowledge. Superstitious
fears, we know to be the property or sensation of ignorance and
misconception. We are morally responsible for nothing but an improper
use of our knowledge. It is wickedness to teach ignorance any other
doctrine.
My Christian proposition for the Reform of the Church harmonizes with
all science, and clashes with nothing but positive error and wicked
policy; and I venture to tell you, that you can find no other scheme to
produce the same effect, and to give satisfaction to the present and to
all future generations of men, to make the Church "meet the respect and
affections of the people."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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