Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.Ingersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I have not time to speak of the Baptists,--that Jeremy Taylor said were
as much to be rooted out as anything that is the greatest pest and
nuisance on the earth. Nor of the Quakers, the best of all, and abused
by all. I can not forget that George Fox, in the year of grace 1640,
was put in the pillory and whipped from town to town, scarred, put in a
dungeon, beaten, trampled upon, and what for? Simply because he
preached the doctrine: "Thou shalt not resist evil with evil. Thou
shalt love thy enemies." Think what the Church must have been that day
to scar the flesh of that loving man! Just think of it! I say I have
not time to speak of all these sects. And of the varieties of
Presbyterians and Campbellites. The people who think they must dive in
order to go up. There are hundreds and hundreds of these sects, all
founded upon this creed that I read, differing simply in degree. Ah
but they say to me: "You are fighting something that is dead. Nobody
believes this, now." The preachers do not believe what they preach in
the pulpit. The people in the pews do not believe what they hear
preached. And they say to me: "You are fighting something that is
dead. This is all a form, we do not believe a solitary creed in it.
We sign it and swear that we believe it, but we don't. And none of us
do. And all the ministers they say in private, admit that they do not
believe it, not quite." I don't know whether this is so or not. I take
it that they believe what they preach. I take it that when they meet
and solemnly agree to a creed, I take it they are honest and solemnly
believe in that creed.
The Evangelical Alliance, made up of all orthodox denominations of the
world, met only a few years ago, and here is their creed: They believe
in the divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of the Holy
Scriptures; the right and duty of private judgment in the
interpretation of Holy Scriptures, but if you interpret wrong you are
damned. They believe in the unity of the Godhead and the trinity of
the persons therein. They believe in the utter depravity of human
nature. There can be no more infamous doctrine than that. They look
upon a little child as a lump of depravity. I look upon it as a bud of
humanity, that will, under proper circumstances, blossom into rich and
glorious life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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