In the same way, we constantly hear of the evils of wealth, and of the sinfulness of loving money; although it is certain that, after the love of knowledge, there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind as the love of money. It is to the love of money that we owe all trade and commerce; in other words, the possession of every comfort and luxury which our own country is unable to supply. Trade and commerce have made us familiar with the productions of many lands, have awakened curiosity, have widened our ideas by bringing us in contact with nations of various manners, speech, and thought, have supplied an outlet for energies which would otherwise have been pent up and wasted, have accustomed men to habits of enterprise, forethought, and calculation, have, moreover, communicated to us many arts of great utility, and have put us in possession of some of the most valuable remedies with which we are acquainted, either to save life or to lessen pain. These things we owe to the love of money. If theologians could succeed in their desire to destroy that love, all these things would cease, and we should relapse into comparative barbarism. The love of money, like all our appetites, is liable to abuse; but to declaim against it as evil in itself, and, above all, to represent it as a feeling, the indulgence of which provokes the wrath of God, is to betray an ignorance, natural, perhaps, in former ages, but shameful in our time, particularly when it proceeds from men who give themselves out as public teachers, and profess that it is their mission to enlighten the world.
Injurious, however, as all this is to the best interests of society, it is nothing in comparison with the doctrines formerly advocated by the Scotch divines. What their ideas were, I have shown from their own sermons, the reading of which has been the most painful literary task I ever undertook, since, in addition to the narrowness and the dogmatism which even the best of such compositions contain, there is, in these productions, a hardness of heart, an austerity of temper, a want of sympathy with human happiness, and a hatred of human nature, such as have rarely been exhibited in any age, and, I rejoice to think, have never been exhibited in any other Protestant country. These things, I have resuscitated from the oblivion in which they had long been buried, partly because it was necessary to do so in order to understand the history of the Scotch mind, and partly because I desired to show what the tendency of theologians is, when that tendency is uncontrolled. Protestants, generally, are too apt to suppose that there is something in their creed which protects them against those hurtful extravagances which have been, and, to a certain extent, still are, practised in the Catholic Church. Never was a greater mistake. There is but one protection against the tyranny of any class; and that is, to give that class very little power. Whatever the pretensions of any body of men may be, however smooth their language, and however plausible their claims, they are sure to abuse power, if much of it is conferred on them. The entire history of the world affords no instance to the contrary. In Catholic countries, France alone excepted, the clergy have more authority than in Protestant countries. Therefore, in Catholic countries, they do more harm than in Protestant countries, and their peculiar views are developed with greater freedom. The difference depends, not on the nature of the creed, but on the power of the class. This is very apparent in Scotland, where the clergy, being supreme, did, Protestants though they were, imitate the ascetic, the unsocial, and the cruel doctrines, which, in the Catholic Church, gave rise to convents, fastings, scourgings, and all the other appliances of an uncouth and ungenial superstition.
Indeed, the Scotch divines, in some of their theories, went beyond any section of the Catholic Church, except the Spanish. They sought to destroy, not only human pleasures, but also human affections. They held that our affections are necessarily connected with our lusts, and that we must, therefore, wean ourselves from them as earthly vanities.[606] A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others; and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people, that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish.[607] They might go; none but their wives and children would suffer, and that was nothing in comparison with breaking the Sabbath. So, too, did the clergy teach, that on no occasion must food or shelter be given to a starving man, unless his opinions were orthodox.[608] What need for him to live? Indeed, they taught that it was a sin to tolerate his notions at all, and that the proper course was, to visit him with sharp and immediate punishment.[609] Going yet further, they broke the domestic ties, and set parents against their offspring. They taught the father to smite the unbelieving child, and to slay his own boy sooner than allow him to propagate error.[610] As if this were not enough, they tried to extirpate another affection, even more sacred and more devoted still. They laid their rude and merciless hands on the holiest passion of which our nature is capable, the love of a mother for her son. Into that sanctuary, they dared to intrude; into that, they thrust their gaunt and ungentle forms. If a mother held opinions of which they disapproved, they did not scruple to invade her household, take away her children, and forbid her to hold communication with them.[611] Or if, perchance, her son had incurred their displeasure, they were not satisfied with forcible separation, but they laboured to corrupt her heart, and harden it against her child, so that she might be privy to the act. In one of these cases, mentioned in the records of the church of Glasgow, the Kirk-Session of that town summoned before them a woman, merely because she had received into her house her own son, after the clergy had excommunicated him. So effectually did they work upon her mind, that they induced her to promise, not only that she would shut her door against her child, but that she would aid in bringing him to punishment. She had sinned in loving him; she had sinned, even, in giving him shelter; but, says the record, ‘she promised not to do it again, and to tell the magistrates when he comes next to her.’[612]
She promised not to do it again. She promised to forget him, whom she had born of her womb and suckled at her breast. She promised to forget her boy, who had ofttimes crept to her knees, who had slept in her bosom, and whose tender frame she had watched over and nursed. All the dearest associations of the past, all that the most exquisite form of human affection can give or receive, all that delights the memory, all that brightens the prospect of life, all vanished, all passed away from the mind of this poor woman, at the bidding of her spiritual masters. At one fell swoop, all were gone. So potent were the arts of these men, that they persuaded the mother to conspire against her son, that she might deliver him up to them. They defiled her nature, by purging it of its love. From that day her soul was polluted. She was lost to herself, as well as lost to her son. To hear of such things is enough to make one's blood surge again, and raise a tempest in our inmost nature. But to have seen them, to have lived in the midst of them, and yet not to have rebelled against them, is to us utterly inconceivable, and proves in how complete a thraldom the Scotch were held, and how thoroughly their minds, as well as their bodies, were enslaved.
What more need I say? What further evidence need I bring to elucidate the real character of one of the most detestable tyrannies ever seen on the earth? When the Scotch Kirk was at the height of its power, we may search history in vain for any institution which can compete with it, except the Spanish Inquisition. Between these two, there is a close and intimate analogy. Both were intolerant, both were cruel, both made war upon the finest parts of human nature, and both destroyed every vestige of religions freedom. One difference, however, there was, of vast importance. In political matters, the Church, which was servile in Spain, was rebellious in Scotland. Hence the Scotch always had one direction in which they could speak and act with unrestrained liberty. In politics, they found their vent. There, the mind was free. And this was their salvation. This saved them from the fate of Spain, by securing to them the exercise of those faculties which otherwise would have lain dormant, if, indeed, they had not been entirely destroyed by that long and enfeebling servitude in which their clergy retained them, and from which, but for this favourable circumstance, no escape would have been open.
Footnotes:
[410] In 1638, one of the most eminent of the Scotch clergy writes: ‘Our maine feare’ is ‘to have our religion lost, our throats cutted, our poore countrey made ane English province, to be disposed upon for ever hereafter at the will of a Bishope of Canterburie.’ Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. i. p. 66. Compare p. 450. ‘This kirk is a free and independant kirk, no less then the kingdom is a free and independant kingdom; and as our own Patriots can best judge what is for the good of the kingdom, so our own Pastors should be most able to judge what form of worship beseemeth our Reformation, and what serveth most for the good of the People.’ Two generations later, one of the most popular arguments against the Union was, that it might enable the English to force episcopacy upon Scotland. See De Foe's History of the Union between England and Scotland, pp. 222, 284, 359. ‘The danger of the Church of Scotland, from the suffrages of English bishops,’ &c.
[411] The hatred which the Scotch naturally felt against the English for having inflicted so much suffering upon them, was intense about the middle of the seventeenth century, notwithstanding the temporary union of the two nations against Charles. In 1652, ‘the criminal record is full of cases of murder of English soldiers. They were cut off by the people whenever a fitting opportunity occurred, and were as much detested in Scotland as the French soldiers were in Spain during the Peninsular war.’ The Spottiswoode Miscellany, vol. ii. p. 98, Edinburgh, 1845. See also p. 167: ‘a nationall quarrell, and not for the Stuarts.’
[412] Browne's History of the Highlands, vol. ii. pp. 75–77: ‘the English army was augmented to twenty thousand men, and citadels erected in several towns, and a long train of military stations drawn across the country to curb the inhabitants.’
[413] Clarendon, under the year 1655, says, ‘Though Scotland was vanquished, and subdued, to that degree, that there was no place nor person who made the least show of opposing Cromwell; who, by the administration of Monk, made the yoke very grievous to the whole nation; yet the preachers kept their pulpit license; and, more for the affront that was offered to presbytery, than the conscience of what was due to majesty, many of them presumed to pray for the king; and generally, though secretly, exasperated the minds of the people against the present government.’ Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, p. 803.