Ingersoll in Canada: A Reply to Wendling, Archbishop Lynch, Bystander; and OthersPringle, Allen
Religion
Ingersoll in Canada: A Reply to Wendling, Archbishop Lynch, Bystander; and Others
Pringle, Allen
Christianity -- Controversial literature; Ingersoll, Robert Green, 1833-1899
Let the Archbishop, and _Grip_, and every reader ponder these
brave words of so high an authority in defence of the reprobated
class-stigmatised as "infidels," to which they refer; and then, for
corroboration, compare the testimony given with the living facts around
them..
The Archbishop says, these "foolish men" (the Freethinkers) are
"striving to replunge the world into the depths of Barbarism and
Paganism," etc., etc. To those who know that the present attitude of
all the great scientists and eminent _savans_ towards the dogmas of the
Christian Church, is one of undoubted unbelief and hostility; and
who are conversant with the history of the Archbishop's own church in
particular, during the past fifteen centuries,--to them the Archbishop's
vituperation is as foolish as it is ridiculous. From the days of
Constantine to this year, 1880, the Church, of which this learned (?)
prelate is a representative, has strenuously opposed learning, and
retarded civilization; has tolerated no freedom of conscience or liberty
of thought, thus narrowing instead of extending the liberty enjoyed
in Pagan and Imperial Rome, over whose ruins she reared her tyrannical
head. Talk of "Paganism!" His Church needs, as Emerson puts it, "some
good Paganism." She left behind her the liberty even of Pagan Rome, her
maligned precursor. Renan tells us, "We may search in vain, the Roman
law before Constantine, for a single passage against freedom of thought,
and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a
prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine." And, Mosheim,
the ecclesiastical historian, tells us that the Romans exercised this
toleration in the amplest manner.
"The prosecutions of the Christians by the Pagans, it is now universally
conceded by Christian historians, have been greatly exaggerated;
Christians have killed, in one day, for their faith nearly half as many
heretics as all the Christians put to death by the Pagans during the
whole period of the Pagan Empire." (The Influence of Christianity on
Civilization, pp. 24-5, Underwood.)
The Archbishop's Church is, therefore, no improvement in respect of
liberty or toleration, on the Paganism he reviles.
What progress the world has made in liberty and civilization, has been
made, not with the assistance of the Christian Church, but in spite of
its determined opposition and deadly hostility. Dr. Draper, author of
the "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science," and other
works, tells us that:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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