Whoever reads history with a view of tracing the progress of the human mind,—which, by the way, is the great object that renders history useful,—whoever reads history with that regard, must be astonished and shocked at the slow progress of philosophy, and the universal prevalence of credulity, superstition, and fanaticism. If antiquity would give a claim to reverence, this destructive band have a date prior to Christianity; their united power shed baneful influence on the earliest ages.
In the pagan temples there was a kind of incantation for conjuring down deities, to whom were assigned niches according to their different degrees of rank. The histories of Greece and Rome (for the sake of human nature, I wish that the parallel did not reach modern times) display an innumerable host of all ages, sexes, descriptions, and characters, enlisted under the banner of the priesthood, together with a select corps de reserve of augurs and soothsayers, who, by inspecting the entrails of beasts, foretold future events, and from the flight of birds the defeat of armies. Succeeding ages beheld their heathen temples solemnly consecrated; and being thus metamorphosed into Christian churches, the sculptures representing Jupiter, Minerva, Venus, and Diana, by virtue of a new baptism, became saints.[114]
Here also were a legion of arrogant priests, who insolently dictated the terms of salvation, fixed a standard for universal belief, and introduced their own inventions as divine precepts; who forced monarchs to pay tribute by ecclesiastical privilege, assumed the dominion of empires by divine right, and claimed three-fourths of the known world as heirs-at-law to St. Peter. To secure their acquisitions, they entrenched themselves behind ramparts raised on the credulity and folly of mankind. He who attempted to scale these hallowed mounds was deemed guilty of sacrilege; he who questioned the catholic infallibility was an atheist; and whosoever doubted the divine mission of a priest—an infidel.[115]
Finding the multitude were so well inclined to believe that whatever they could not comprehend was supernatural, they construed each phenomenon of nature into a portentous menace from Heaven. An eclipse became the omen of a revolution; an inundation the prognostic of a defeat; and an hurricane foretold the fall of every power that made any opposition to papal authority. By arts like these, the people were brought into a mental vassalage; and the powerful Baron having previously enslaved their persons, they readily gave the care of their souls to the confessor. To him they applied as the proper interpreter of every difficult case; and fraught with a full portion of credulity, each individual considered every cloud that passed over the sun, and every raven that expanded its ebon wing, as bearing some particular direction to himself. Hence arose the doctrine of demonology; and apparitions, witches, dreams, and divinations, formed a creed of superstition. On this was built that notable system, properly enough called "The Philosophy of the Distaff." This mythology of weak minds has been carried through every age and country by oral tradition and unfounded record.
Our earliest histories abound in augury and prediction; the most fabulous tales had credence, not only with the unlearned and ignorant, but with the educated and sagacious. The grave Duke de Sully seriously narrates those which had relation to Henry the Fourth.
It is recorded by Victorius Sirri, that Louis the Thirteenth was from his infancy surnamed Just,—"because he was born under the sign of the Balance!"
Even sorcery was made a leading branch of religion; and one of a priest's duties was to exorcise ghosts by talking Latin, which was considered as a never-failing antidote for a troublesome spirit, and invariably concluded by the ghost being laid in the Red Sea.
Some of these glaring errors have been obliterated, but absurdities of equal magnitude have supplied their place; and modern credulities are nearly as destructive to the interests of society as ancient superstitions.
Though this nation, as well as others, was at an early period enveloped by ignorance, superstition, and their consequent accompaniments, we had some right to expect the clouds would have been dispelled by the Reformation; but credulity kept its ground, and at a still later period—when we had a most learned and sedate monarch, and a most sententious and grave Parliament—an Act was passed for the punishment of witchcraft! By this sagacious union of royal and national wisdom, if a woman lived to a greater age than her neighbour, she was tried, proved guilty of commercing with a familiar in the shape of a tabby cat, and eased of all her sufferings by the ordeal of fire or water.