This priest was the Church of England, and those fancies were driven into her imagination by her creed, her litanies, and her sermons. Eliza Tyrrel was miserable; she was placed between her love, her duty, and her religion. If she had been a woman of a strong mind, she would have torn her creed into shreds, she would have dared the anathema of the priest—the ostracism of its dupes—and would have clung to the man she loved so truly, in defiance of that which was, at the best, but a faint possibility.
The arguments in that pamphlet of Blount's were conclusive, but she distrusted reason. The plainest dictates of common logic were referred to the promptings of the Devil. How could it be otherwise? Can the teachings of a lifetime be overthrown by the courtship of a few months? Eliza Tyrrel, true to Blount, loved him; true to her religion, she durst not marry him without the sanction of the Church. So Blount, as a last resolve, laid the matter before the Lord's Vicegerent at Canterbury, and many of the most learned divines of England; and from those ecclesiastical leeches there was a Shylock cry of incest, incest, incest! And those terrible words came greeting the ears of Charles Blount, making his home like a charnel-house, and they nearly sent his beautiful Eliza to a maniac's grave. Still she lingered on. Denied the power of a wife, she would not relinquish her duties as a mother to her sister's babes. There was a calm heroism here which few can imitate. The passions of Blount could not brook further insults. The last kick of bigotry against the broken-hearted Freethinker was given. He could no longer rise with the lark, and roam over the hills of his ancestral home. To him the birds, as they warbled, spoke of joys never to return. The broad river told him of the days when the little skiff floated on its waters with Eleanora; and even his friends only too bitterly reminded him of the tournaments of wit where Hobbes, Brown, and Gildon, jousted each other in the presence of his wife. His life was one scene of misery. He saw no chance of amendment. In a fit of despair, he loaded his pistol with due deliberation, placed it to his head, and shot himself. He lingered for sometime, and then died on the breast of Eliza.
This was a strange suicide. Blount's memory bears its weight of obloquy. It is hard to draw the line when and where a man has a right to take away his life. Common sense tells us that so long as our families are dependent upon us, we have no right to end our lives; and if we have no dependents, no friends, then our country has a claim upon us. But, at the same time, the one sole end of existence is to be happy. If a man cannot find happiness in life, if there is a great coalition against him, he is justified in taking up arms against them; but, at the same time, it proves a greater amount of courage "to bear up against the ills of life" than to madly leave it, and thus weaken the force of those who wish to stem its injustice.
Charles Blount died, and with him expired much of the chivalry of Freethought. His friend, Charles Gil-don, writing of him to a lady, says, "You know Astrea (Eliza,) and have an exact friendship with her. You can attest her beauty, wit, honor, virtue, good humor, and discretion. You have been acquainted with the charms of her conversation and conduct, and condemn her, only adhering to a national custom to the loss of so generous a friend, and so faithful a lover. But custom and obedience meeting the more easily, betrayed her virtue into a crime. I know my friend loved her to his last breath; and I know, therefore, that all who love his memory must, for her sake, love and value her, as being a lady of that merit, that engaged the reason of Philander (C. Blount) to so violent a passion for her."
The same writer says, "His father was Sir Henry Blount, the Socrates of the age, for his aversions to the reigning sophisms and hypocrisies, eminent in all capacities: the best husband, father, and master, extremely agreeably in conversation, and just in all his dealings. From such a father our hero derived him self; to such a master owed his generous education, unmixed with the nauseous methods and profane opinions of the schools. Nature gave him parts capable of the noblest sciences, and his industrious studies bore a proportion to his capacities. He was a generous and constant friend, an indulgent parent, and a kind master. His temper was open and free; his conversation pleasant; his reflections just and modest; his repartees close—not scurrilous; he had a great deal of wit, and no malice. His mind was large and noble—above the little designs of most men; an enemy to dissimulation, and never feared to own his thoughts. He was a true Englishman, and lover of the liberties of his country, and declared it in the worst of times. He was an enemy to nothing but error, and none were his enemies that knew him, but those who sacrificed more to mammon than reason."
This was the man who died, because a dominant priesthood insisted on a dogma which interfered with a purely Secular rite, which blasted two hearts in a vain attempt to perpetuate a system, which dashes its rude fingers, and tears out the heart of human felicity to sprinkle the altar of superstition with the gore of offended innocence. Charles Blount was a Deist; as such, he believed in a God; which he described in his account of a Deist's religion. Let us examine his thoughts, and see if they bear the interpretation which Christianity has always placed upon them. Blount gives the Deist's opinion of God. He says, "Whatever is adorable, amiable, and imitable by mankind, is in one Supreme, perfect Being." An Atheist cannot object to this. He speaks in the manner in which God is to be worshipped. He says, not by sacrifice, or by a Mediator, but by a steady adherence to all that is great and good and imitable in nature. This is the brief religious creed of Charles Blount. He never seeks to find out fabled attributes of Deity. He knows what is of value to mankind, and sedulously practices whatever is beneficial to society.
In his "Anima Mundi, or, History of the Opinions of the Heathens on the Immortality of the Soul," (p. 97,) Blount says:—
"The heathen philosophers were much divided concerning the soul's future state; some held it mortal, others immortal. Of those who held the mortality of the soul, the Epicureans were the chief sect, who, notwithstanding their doctrines, led virtuous lives." Cardan had so great a value for their moral actions, that he appeared in justification of them. It appears (says he) "by the writings of Cicero, Diogenes, and Laertius, that the Epicureans did more religiously observe laws, piety, and fidelity among men than either the Stoics or the Platonists; and I suppose the cause thereof was, that a man is either good or evil by custom, but none confideth in those that do not possess sanctity of life. Wherefore they were compelled to use greater fidelity, thereby the better to justify their profession, from which reason it likewise proceeds, that at this day few do equal the fidelity of usurers, notwithstanding they are most base in the rest of their life. Also among the Jews, whilst the Pharisees, that confessed the resurrection and the immortality of the soul, frequently persecuted Christ, the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, angels, and spirits, meddled not with him above once or twice, and that very gently. Thus, if you compare the lives of Pliny and Seneca (not their writings,) you shall find Pliny, with his mortality of the soul, did as far exceed Seneca in honesty of manners, as Seneca excels him in religious discourse. The Epicureans observed honesty above others, and in their conversation were usually found inoffensive and virtuous, and for that reason were often employed by the Romans when they could persuade them to accept of great employs, for their fault was not any want of ability or honesty, but their general desire of leading a private life of ease, and free from trouble, although inglorious. For when immortality is not owned, there can be no ambition of posthumous glory.
"The Epicureans, instead of those bloody scenes of gallantry (which tyrants applaud,) undertook to manage carefully the inheritance of orphans; bringing up, at their own charge, the children of their deceased friends, and were counted good men, unless it were in front of religious worship; for they constantly affirmed that there were no Gods, or, at least, such as concerned themselves with human affairs, according to the poets. Neither doth the hope of immortality conduce to fortitude, as some vainly suggest, for Brutus was not more valiant than Cassius; and if we will confess the truth, the deeds of Brutus were more cruel than those of Cassius; for he used the Rhodians, who were his enemies, far more kindly than Brutus did those amicable cities which he governed. In a word, though they both, had a hand in Cæsar's murder, yet Brutus was the only parricide. So that the Stoics, which believed a Providence, lived as if there were none; whereas the Epicureans, who denied it, lived as if there were.... The next sect to the Epicureans, in point of incredulity, concerning the soul, I conceive to be the Sceptics, who were by some esteemed, not only the modestest, but the most perspicuous of all sects. They neither affirmed nor denied anything, but doubted of all things. They thought all our knowledge seemed rather like truth, than to be really true, and that for such like reasons as these:—
"1. They denied any knowledge of the Divine Nature, because, they say, to know adequately is to comprehend, and to comprehend is to contain, and the thing contained must be less than that which contains it; to know inadequately is not to know.