The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

by Richard B. Westbrook

“He [the devil] was, according to Cyprian (De Unitate Ecd.), the author of all heresies and delusions: he held man by reason of his sin in rightful possession, and man could only be rescued from his power by the ransom of Christ's blood. This extraordinary idea of a payment or satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price of man's salvation is found both in Irenæus (Adv. Hcer., v. 1. 1.) and in Origen, and may be said to have held its sway in the Church for a thousand years. And yet Origen is credited with the opinion that, bad as the devil was, he was not altogether beyond hope of pardon."

It would be tedious to note the various views that have prevailed among theologians to the present day. Some hold that the offering was made to God to satisfy divine justice; others hold that it was a commercial transaction—so much blood for so many souls; and still others regard the whole as a governmental display to impress the world with a sense of the hatefulness of sin. Calvinists seem to think that the atonement was only made for the elect, but that the blood of Christ had sufficient merit to save the whole world. Roman Catholics hold that it is the literal, material blood of Christ that saves the sinner, and hence their extreme belief in the dogma of transubstantiation, the real body and blood of Jesus being offered in the sacrifice of the Mass, and taken by the penitent in the Holy Communion. Protestants generally hold to a sort of consubstantiation—a sort of real presence in the sacrament; while persons of intelligence profess to believe that this whole theory of blood-salvation is only to be accepted in a figurative sense. The fact is, that the whole scheme of vicarious atonement is an ancient superstition, though taught in the New Testament, and is absurd and unphilosophical, and false in principle and in practice, as we shall hereafter show.

We leave altogether out of view the logical conclusion that if the blood shed by Jesus was the blood of a man, it could have had no more efficacy than the blood of any other human being, and that if the blood shed was the blood of a God, the very mention of the thought is absurd and blasphemous in the extreme. It is nonsense to say that it was the union of the divine with the human nature that gave the blood of Christ its peculiar efficacy—that the altar sanctifies the gift for if the blood was changed by the man being united with the God, it was not human blood, but the blood of a divine man.

Now, there is no evidence that the blood of Jesus (supposing that he was crucified) differed in its essential qualities from other human blood. If analyzed by the chemist, it would have been found to contain only the constituent particles which belong to human blood. The white and red corpuscles and other chemical properties would have been found in it.

The dogma of blood-salvation as held by Romanists is cannibalism, pure and simple, and as held by Protestants it is sheer superstition, without one grain of reason to support it. It has no analogy in nature, nor in the philosophy of legal jurisprudence as held and practised by the most enlightened nations of the world.

It seems to us that the doctrine of vicarious atonement is not only immoral, but demoralizing. It represents God as punishing the innocent for the guilty to make it possible to forgive the guilty. This is inconsistent with the eternal principles of justice and rightfulness. It must have a demoralizing influence upon the mind and conscience of the sinner, to be told that his sins are already atoned for, and he only need to be cleansed by the blood of Christ; and this is to be obtained by simple faith and trust! Believe that Jesus shed his blood for you, and that he is waiting and anxious to apply it in washing away your guilt, and it is done! Then as often as you sin afterward you need only go through the same process to secure pardon! The easiness with which sins may be blotted out and washed away must have a demoralizing influence upon uneducated minds, though truly intelligent persons may not reason in this way. The low state of morals among those who really believe in this device for the forgiveness of sins may thus be accounted for. The numerous defalcations and downright thefts among the higher classes of Christians, and the petty lying and stealing among the great mass of Catholics and Protestants, are notorious, and can be traced, we think, to the easy methods of getting rid of the consequencees of wrong-doing. Our prison-statistics are truly suggestive, and should be carefully studied. Freethinkers are far in advance of Christians in the matter of practical morality. Many of those whom the courts exclude as witnesses, because they do not accept certain religious dogmas, are pre-eminently truthful, and would sooner die than tell a falsehood. They do not rely upon the blood of Jesus to wash away the vilest sins and make them white as snow.

Our statesmen are beginning to find out that our system of pardon is most pernicious. To relieve from the consequences of wrong-doing through a divine contrivance of the vicarious sufferings of an innocent person, and that human disobedience is made all right as to consequences by this obedience of a divine-human person, does not commend itself to the intelligence of this nineteenth century. The answer of theologians to this charge is familiar and specious enough, but it is not practically accepted by the common people. When a child enters the Sunday-school room, and his eyes rest upon the conspicuous placard, “Jesus Paid it All” the natural inference is there is nothing more to pay, nothing to do but to accept the free gift.

Thousands of ignorant persons, Catholics and Protestants, no doubt secretly accept and rely upon this easy device to cover up their numerous shortcomings and misdoings. This doctrine is a welcome one in the murderer’s cell and upon the platform of the gallows. In thousands of uncultivated minds the thought is no doubt deeply hidden that about the surest way to get to heaven is to commit a murder and have the “benefit of clergy,” and in due time to be “jerked to Jesus” (as described by a Western journal) by the hangman’s rope. Why should it not be so? The vicarious atonement has been made, and is being made in the Mass, and they have only to accept it. Two priests or ministers actually opposed the postponement of the execution of a certain murderer on the ground that he then believed in Jesus, but that if execution was postponed they did not know that he would continue to “believe,” and that his soul might thus be lost!

Suppose that our State authorities should proclaim in advance free pardon and a princely palace to all lawbreakers on the simple condition of trusting in the mediatorial interposition and substitution of another, already made and accepted; what would be the effect on public morals? The system of redemption and pardon set forth in the New Testament is infinitely more than this, and must be demoralizing. All public officers know the evil effects of the pardon system, and how even the faintest hope of pardon encourages crime, and how certainly a free pardon is almost sure to be followed by a life of increased criminality.

There should be no such thing as pardon in our State jurisprudence—no “board of pardons” and no “exercise of the executive clemency.” If a convict is believed to have been wrongly imprisoned, or by after-discovered evidence is found to be innocent, let no “pardon board” or “executive” interfere, but let the case go back to the court that convicted him or to one of like jurisdiction, and let the case be judicially reviewed in the light of evidence; and if the accused is found innocent, let him be honorably acquitted, or if guilty remanded to prison.