The Author of this Apology was recently in Scotland, where a vast number of religious tracts were put into his hand, one of which contains the following among other striking paragraphs:—
'Man could, not create himself, and far less can he save himself. When God made him, he brought him out of nothing; when God. saves him, he brings him out of a state far lower and worse than nothing. If in the one case, then, everything depended, upon God's will and decree, much more in the other. There can be no injustice here. Had God pleased, He might have saved the whole world. But he did not; and thousands are now in hell, and shall be to all eternity.'
'Hell is peopled already with millions of immortal souls doomed to fiery wrath; while Heaven is filled with ransomed sinners as vile, yea perhaps viler than they.' [83:1]
If the writer of this horrid nonsense do not blaspheme, there surely can be no possibility of blaspheming. If he do not impute to his God of mercy cruelty and injustice the most monstrous that can enter into human conception, all language is void of meaning, and men had far better cease 'civilising,' and betake themselves to woods and wilds and fastnesses, to enjoy the state of mere brutishness so infinitely preferable to that reasonable state in which they are shaken and maddened by terrible dreams of a vengeful cruel God.
Better be with the dead
Than on the tortures of the mind to lie
In restless ecstacy.
Better, far better, roam the desert or the forest like any other brutes, than educate ourselves and others into the monstrous belief in a God who might have saved the world and would not; who predestinates to endless and unutterable agonies; who has with the one hand peopled Hell with millions of immortal creatures, while with the other has filled Heaven with millions of ransomed sinners, as vile, yea perhaps viler than they.
In justice however to the large class of Christians under the despotic and truly lamentable influence of this belief, the Author is bound to admit that they are far more consistent and logical in their notions of Deity than perhaps any other section of Theists, for it cannot properly be denied that the doctrine of an Omnipotent and Prescient God destroys all distinction of virtue and vice, justice and injustice, right and wrong, among men. Let the omnipotency and prescience of a First Cause be granted, the corollary of 'whatever is, is right,' is one of the most obvious that can flow from any proposition: the distance of any link in the eternal sequence cannot lessen the connection with a First Cause, admitting its Omnipotency and Prescience.
The author of these detestable paragraphs admits both. He is a rigid Predestinarian, which no one can be who doubts the all powerfulness or foreknowledge of that God whom Christians worship. Taking Scripture as his guide, the Predestinarian must needs believe some are foredoomed to Hell, and some to Hell, irrespective of all merit; it being manifestly absurd to suppose one man can deserve more or less than another, in a world, where all are compelled to believe, feel, and act, as they do believe, feel, and act. The disgrace attached to the memory of Judas, supposing him really to have betrayed his Divine Master, has no foundation in human justice, for 'surely as the Lord liveth,' he was foredoomed, and therefore compelled to betray him. Luther saw that truth, and had the good sense to avow it. No more rational or just are the denunciations of Judas than those so unsparingly heaped upon the Jews for crucifying the Redeemer of the world, when every body must, or at least, should know, that admitting the world's redemption depended upon the Crucifixion of Christ, if the Jews had not crucified him the world could not have been redeemed. So far then from blackguarding Judas and the Jews for doing, what in the Gospel they are represented to have done, we should consider them rather as martyrs in the cause of Divine Providence than as villains worthy only of abhorrence and execration. To the Author of this Apology it seems certain that if there is a God, such as the Christian delighteth to honour, nothing happens, nothing has happened, nothing can happen contrary to His will. And is it not absurd to say that what He pre-ordains mere mortals can hinder coming to pass? Even the Devil, believed in by Christians, is a creature—how then could he be anything else than the Creator thought fit to make him? Grant he is the Father of Lies, and then he will appear worthy of compassion, if you reflect that he was made so by the Father of Truth. In the Tract to which such special reference has been made, it is contended that Adam was made not because he chose to be made, but because God chose to make him, and surely the same may be contended on the part of Judas, the Jews, and last, though, assuredly, not least, the Devil himself. He who is without God cannot run into absurdities and blasphemies like these, whereas he who is with one cannot keep clear of them. If consistent he must clothe Him with Calvinistic attributes. To present Him stripped of foreknowledge, or omnipotency would outrage all just conception of that 'Immense Being' who brought his worshippers out of nothing. And yet if we allow him these attributes there is no help for us, headlong we go into the dark and fathomless doctrine of predestination, than which no religious doctrine is so consistent or so revolting. Receive it, and at once you find yourself bound heart and brain to belief in a supernatural MONSTER—'a vengeful, pitiless, and Almighty Fiend, whose mercies are a nickname for the rage of hungry tigers.'
The believers in this terrible offspring of heated imagination, naturally aim at imitating, and thus rendering themselves acceptable, to Him. Here is the source, whence for ages have flowed the bitter waters of religious intolerance. If Calvin had not worshipped a cruel God, he never could have hoped to please Him by the murder of Servetius. If Cranmer had wanted lively faith in a God who people's Hell 'with millions of immortal souls,' he never would have brought Joan Bocher to the stake. Full of that Christian zeal, so 'apt to tarn sour,' these men lived like the hermit Honorius, 'in hopes of gaining heaven by making earth a hell.'
The savage bigotry of an Elizabeth or a Mary, naturally resulted from the notion that monarchs unquestionably ruling by Divine right, were called upon by every earthly, as well as heavenly consideration, to prove their zeal in the cause of God, by destroying His adversaries. Heretics have been consigned to dungeon and to name, for His glory, and His satisfaction. All inquisitors from St. Dominic downward, have indignantly repelled the charge that they have punished heretics just to glut their own appetite for cruelty. Worshippers of a God who saith, 'vengeance is mine,' they have felt themselves mere instruments in His hands; of themselves, and for themselves, they did nothing; all was for God. To please Him, the Jew and the Heretic shrieked amid the flames. They are not ashamed, why should they? to perform His behests. When the late Duke of York was about to leave Lisbon, its Inquisitor-General waited upon him, with a humble request that he would delay his departure for a few days, in order to make one at an Auto da Fe, where it was kindly promised, some Jews should be burnt for his diversion: so cruel and so blind are the superstitious.