Church Reform / The Only Means to That End, Stated in a Letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., First Lord of the Treasury

by Richard Carlile

I challenge the proof of any one apparent historical fact, in either Old or New Testament. I challenge the production of the existing mention of any one of the supposed facts about the personal or material Jesus Christ, within one hundred years of the time at which it is said to have happened, putting the disputed passages of Josephus and Tacitus out of the question.

I challenge the proof of the existence of the Jews, in any country, as a distinct nation, before the time of Alexander the Great.

No other contemporaneous history recognizes such an assumed history as that which I challenge.

And farther, I am prepared to prove that Christianity existed among Romans, Greeks, Persians, Hindoos, and Celtic Druids, or the northern nations, before the Christian era.

The present ministration of the Church entirely depends on the necessity of a clear historical proof of the literal contents of the Old and New Testaments.

But a spiritual reading of that volume solves every difficulty, and teaches us how to extract the truth, the system of religion that is a necessary and sure salvation for the human race, when reduced to practice, and to see it as a part of the wisdom of all ancient men of all times and countries.

It is ten years and upwards since I sent a petition to you, Sir, to be laid before the King, asking for a commission to examine my oppugnancy to the religion and administration of the existing Church. Will you now grant that commission? If you will not, you, while you remain in power, will blunder on in and through growing troubles and difficulties, until you, or some other person, be compelled to come to my school for information. It may be a galling pain, a conscience-smitten task to you to do so; but you have no alternative with honesty and wisdom. It is not a little of this cry for Church Reform, that has sprung out of my labours and sufferings. And here am I, though still in prison through that Church's iniquity, in the proud and triumphant position, clearly seeing that you can reform nothing in the Church that will satisfy the people without coming to my ground.

Your pledge is so to reform the Church as to make it meet the respect and affection of the people. I rejoiced when I read that sentiment; for I saw and felt, that I alone had proposed a reform equal to that end; and mine, as well as others, by the glorious power of the printing press, must come into consideration. I assure you that the correspondence with the Bishop of London, which I shall append to this letter, has been sold to the extent of many thousands, and is in great demand. This is but an enlargement of my second letter to the Bishop. So that my lamp has been constantly trimmed for your advent as a Reformer of the Church. It is not what you and others call "the rabble," "the destructives," "the mob," that I seek. I seek you and the Bishops, all the learned men in the country, as in application of mind to mind, learning to learning, and wisdom to wisdom.

I will now proceed to explain the distinction between the mystery and the revelation of Christ, between the letter and the spirit of the books of the Old and New Testament, between false and true religion, between superstition and idolatry on one side, and reason with growing knowledge in the Church on the other. I begin with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

The Church of the dark ages has taught the doctrine professedly founded upon the letter of the Sacred Scriptures: of God, as consisting of three persons in one person, coexistent, co-equal, and co-eternal, which, in expression, has been abridged, under the name of Trinity, and described as the Holy Trinity; and, in definition or distinction, as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This doctrine has always been dissented from while dissent has been tolerated. It is no more a physical absurdity than the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, or the changing of water to wine, or the feeding of five thousand with five small loaves and two fishes, or any other narrated miracle: still it has been dissented from, and when dissented from, no defence could be made of it. In every other case of dissent, the Church could make no defence and no other apology than ancientness of the doctrine in the Church. Truly this has been a verification of the blind leading the blind, until both fell into the ditch together.