Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
When, again, we look at the constitutions of governments which have
become settled, we find no great security for the orthodoxy of rulers.
One magistrate holds power because his name was drawn out of a purse;
another, because his father held it before him. There are representative
systems of all sorts, large constituent bodies, small constituent
bodies, universal suffrage, high pecuniary qualifications. We see that,
for the temporal ends of government, some of these constitutions
are very skilfully constructed, and that the very worst of them is
preferable to anarchy. We see some sort of connection between the very
worst of them and the temporal well-being of society. But it passes our
understanding to comprehend what connection any one of them has with
theological truth.
And how stands the fact? Have not almost all the governments in the
world always been in the wrong on religious subjects? Mr. Gladstone, we
imagine, would say that, except in the time of Constantine, of Jovian,
and of a very few of their successors, and occasionally in England since
the Reformation, no government has ever been sincerely friendly to the
pure and apostolical Church of Christ. If, therefore, it be true that
every ruler is bound in conscience to use his power for the propagation
of his own religion, it will follow that, for one ruler who has been
bound in conscience to use his power for the propagation of truth,
a thousand have been bound in conscience to use their power for the
propagation of falsehood. Surely this is a conclusion from which common
sense recoils. Surely, if experience shows that a certain machine, when
used to produce a certain effect, does not produce that effect once in
a thousand times, but produces, in the vast majority of cases, an effect
directly contrary, we cannot be wrong in saying that it is not a machine
of which the principal end is to be so used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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