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
to prove that a new and corrected Hebrew text was necessary, the Hebrew
itself being corrupt; or by the Rev. Dr. Irons, who teaches that not
only are the Gospel writers unknown, but that the very language in which
Jesus taught is yet to be discovered, who declares that prior to the
Esraic period the literal history of the Old Testament is lost, who
does not find the Trinity taught in Scripture, and who declares that
the Gospel dees not teach the doctrine of the Atonement; or by the
late Archbishop Whately, to whom is attributed a Latin pamphlet raising
strong objections against the truth of the alleged confusion of tongues
at Babel.
We may fairly allege, that amongst thinking clergymen of the Church of
England, heresy is the rule and not the exception. So soon as a
minister begins to preach sermons which he does not buy ready
lithographed--sermons which are the work of his brain--so soon heresy
more or less buds out, now in the rejection of some church doctrine or
article of minor importance, now in some bold declaration at variance
with major and more essential tenets. Even Bishop Watson's so famous for
his Bible Apology, declared that the church articles and creeds were
not binding on any man. "They may be true, they may be false," he wrote.
Today scores of Church of England clergymen openly protest against,
or groan in silence under the enforced subscription of Thirty-nine
unbelievable Articles. Sir William Hamilton declares that the heads of
Colleges at Oxford well knew that the man preparing for the Church "will
subscribe Thirty-nine Articles which he cannot believe, who swears to
do and to have done a hundred articles which he cannot or does not
perform."
In scientific circles the heresy of the most efficient members is
startlingly apparent. Against members of the Anthropological Society
charges of Atheism are freely levelled, and although such a charge does
not seem to be justified by any reports of their meetings, or by their
printed publications, it is clear that not only out of doors, but even
amongst their own circle it is felt that their researches conflict
seriously with the Hebrew writ. The Society has been preached against
and prayed against, and yet it is simply a society for discovering
everything possible about man, prehistoric as well as modern. It has,
however, an unpardonable vice in the eyes of the orthodox--it encourages
the utterance of facts without regard to their effect on faiths.
The Ethnological Society is kindred to the last named in many of its
objects, and hence some of its most active members have been direct
assailants of the Hebrew Chronology, which, limits man's existence
to the short space of 6,000 years; they have been deniers(sp.) of the
origin of the human race from one pair, of the confusion of tongues
at Babel, and of the reduction of the human race to one family by the
Noachian deluge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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