Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A Justification — John Shaqi
Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A JustificationBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A Justification
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought; Heresy
Heretics are usually called "infidels," but no word could be more
unfairly applied, if by it is meant anything more than that the heretic
does not conform to the State Faith. If it meant those who do not
profess the faith, then there would be no objection, but it is more
often used of those who are unfaithful, and then it is generally
a libel. Mahomedans and Christians both call Jews infidels, and
Mahomedans and Christians call each other infidels. Each religionist
is thus an infidel to all sects but his own; there is but one degree
of heresy between him and the heretic who rejects all churches. Each
ordinary orthodox man is a heretic to every religion in the world except
one, but he is heretic from the accident of birth without the virtue of
true heresy.
In our own country heresy is not confined to the extreme platform
adopted as a standing point by such a man as myself. It is rife even
in the state-sustained Church of England, and to show this one does
not need to be content with such illustrations as are afforded by
the Essayists and Reviewers, who discover the sources of the world's
education rather in Greece and Italy than in Judea, who reject the
alleged prophecies as evidence of the Messianic character of Jesus;
who admit that in nature and from nature, by science and by reason,
we neither have, nor can possibly have any evidence of a deity working
miracles; but declare that for that we must go out of nature and beyond
science, and in effect avow that Gospel miracles are always _objects_,
not _evidences_, of faith; who deny the necessity of faith in Jesus as
saviour to peoples Who could never have such faith; and who reject
the notion that all mankind are individually involved in the curse
and perdition of Adam's sin; or even by the Rev. Charles Voysey, who
declines to preach "the God of the Bible," and who will not teach that
every word of the Old and New Testament is the word of God; or by the
Rev. Dunbar Heath, who in defiance of the Bible doctrine, that man has
only existed on the earth about 6,000 years, teaches that unnumbered
chiliads have passed away since the human family commenced to play at
nations on our earth; or by Bishop Colenso, who in his impeachment of
the Pentateuch, his denial of the literal truth of the narratives of
the creation, fall, and deluge, actually impugns the whole scheme of
Christianity (if the foundation be false, the superstructure cannot be
true); or by the Rev. Baden Powell, who declared "that the whole tenor
of geology is in entire contradiction to the cosmogony delivered from
Mount Sinai," and who denied a "local heaven above and a local hell
beneath the earth;" or by the Rev. Dr. Giles, who, not content with
preceding Dr. Colenso in his assaults on the text of the Pentateuch,
also wrote as vigorously against the text of the New Testament; or
by the Rev. Dr. Wall, who, unsatisfied with arguments against the
admittedly incorrect authorised translation of the Bible, actually wrote
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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