I challenge the Bishops and the whole priesthood, to produce me any knowledge that is intelligible to themselves or to any other person, as an interpretation of the narratives in the Old and New Testament, about Jehovah or Christ, other than that which I am now unfolding. Mine has a warrant in the spirit of the language of the books, in the roots of words, and in all the principles of things that relate to man's welfare; and more particularly in that to man most important of all, MORAL SCIENCE.
I am not insensible to the circumstance, that a man might have a knowledge of a thing, of a train of circumstances, of causes and effects, in his own mind, with a difficulty to find language in which to communicate it, that shall be equally and immediately clear to all other states of mind. A resemblance, nearness, or similarity of mind, almost an equality of knowledge, is requisite to a clear understanding. It is thus, that men, in different languages, understand each other, when other men, bystanders, do not understand them. And it so happens, in all first developments of science, the new discovery wants a new language in which to be presented to others, and it often happens, that first words made or chosen are not the best and clearest.
Know you not, Sir, that knowledge is power? You must have read that celebrated axiom of Bacon's; but have you considered it, have you reflected, have you repented and proved that axiom? I may add, by way of explanation, that knowledge is the only moral power. What seeks your Church to be? Or what should it seek to be, other than a moral power? On what rock, then, must the Church of Christ be built, so that the gates of hell, or of evil design, or of dissent, may not prevail against it? On what, but KNOWLEDGE? Is it now so built? Is not, rather, the present ministry of the Church more afraid of knowledge than of the people's ignorant dissent; more of "Carlile and his crew," than of all the dissenters; more of free discussion, than of any kind of superstition? The dissent of knowledge and the dissent of ignorance, though disunited, are becoming too powerful for your knowledgeless Church; and you, at last, have consented to speak of its necessary reform! To which will you yield, or whom will you join? Those who dissent by knowledge, or those by ignorance? If you take the former, your work will be perfected at once; if the latter, your work will never be done, and you will become weaker and weaker; for I know not one body of worshipping associated dissenters, whose ground of association and dissent is better than that of the Established Church. Find me the minister of one of them, who will stand up in discussion before a public audience with me, so as to have his language reported. I have not yet found him in England or Scotland. The pretences of the kind that have been made, have been so deficient in respectability of character and of good manners, that I do not think them worth a recognition.
I am not insensible to the circumstance, that you have a difficult task to perform, and I am not sure that you are equal to it: I hope you are; that is, I would have you so, or any other who may be the King's adviser, and the real head of the Church. Nothing is wanted for this reform but honesty and moral courage. Where the will and the power exist, the task is an easy one. I desire to save the Church and its property, and to annihilate the Dissenters. I would have the present dignities of the Church dignify themselves in a triumph over the Dissenters. A collusion with the Dissenters will be a hugging of pestilence and death to the bosom of the Church. There can be no co-existence: there was proof enough of that in the seventeenth century, and still in Scotland. A revolution in the affairs and manners of the Church must take place, even by your own confession, in language admitting of the inference; and I desire that good may be educed from that revolution. I would make the Church triumph in the correction of every mental error in the country, and noble would be that triumph!
You may ask, how is this to be done? I will tell you. Let the Church become the oracle of truth, the fountain of knowledge, the mistress and dispenser of all science. Let its ministers declare this great truth:—that, hitherto, the mystery of Christ has alone been taught in the Church, without the revelation of that mystery; that the Church has been the depository of that sacred mystery, until the fulness of time, in which it is promised, that all people shall be prepared to partake of the revelation; that the mystery has been kept up in outward form and without any spiritual grace; that the spiritual grace and all the pro-mises are to be fulfilled in the understanding of the revelation; that the spirit or revelation has been buried in a resting on the letter of the Sacred Scriptures; that Christ is only now risen or beginning to rise, after thousands of years, we may say three thousand years, rather than three days of crucifixion, death and burial. In me, he has risen indeed, as, in me, he has been last crucified; and I crave the pleasure of seeing his principles rise in the Church; for that craving is the nature of Christ. Let the Church declare that the time is now come to reveal the mystery of Christ. Exhibition has not been revelation.
What, then, is the revelation of the mystery of Christ?
It is, that Christ is God and not man, that it is God in man; that it is knowledge, reason, or all its essences in moral principle; and that it is not an idol to be worshipped as a statue, but a principle to be taught and inherited by the human race. The mystery sets forth Christ as a statue or image to be worshipped after the fashion of the Pagan world. The revelation teaches, that it is the principle of knowledge, to be gained by labour, by asking, seeking and knocking, or prayer; by repentance, that is, reflection; by enquiry, that is, proving all things, and holding fast that which is good; by mutual instruction, by free discussion, by whatever constitutes a school for useful knowledge, and that constitution is a Church of Christ: all the rest is mistake or imposture, whether it be established by law, or ignorantly dissented from; whether it have a King for its head, or be carried on in a garret or a cellar.
I must go to the root of my subject, and leave no excuse for evasion. The root of religion is the relation of God to man, and man to God.
What does man know of God?
Books can teach him nothing, unless those books be written pictures of existing things and things that have existed. Things that have existed have no source of trial or test, but in the similarity of things that do exist.