Let us suppose you about to attempt a reconciliation with the present Dissenters, as to the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church. To please the advocates of adult baptism, you must exchange the infant for adult baptism, and then you will displease those who are not pleased with adult baptism. To please the Unitarians, you must give up the doctrine of the Trinity; and then you will displease all the Trinitarians. What is to be done to satisfy the Wesleyans or Methodists? They will have irregular prayers and preachings, which are contrary to the discipline of the Church. What is to be done with the Swedenborgians, the Muggletonians, and Southcotians? How can you furnish spirit and noise enough for the Unknown Tongues of the Irvingites? And what but the spirit of silence will conciliate the Quakers? All of them will require the abolition of your bishopricks and other offices, while none of them will object, and all will claim if a chance offer, to divide the Church Property among them. The spirit of dissent, in matters of religion, prevailing in this country, is nothing more than an infectious mental disease: with it, there is no reason mixed. The moment it becomes a profit to lead such a congregation, men of comparative talent as to capability will take it up and lead; and thus the thing has gone on to confusion and mental distraction, because the Church was not in a condition to defend itself and set a better example. You cannot please one sect of the Dissenters, without increasing the displeasure of the other: and thus your task is hopeless, on any other ground than that which I propose, to beat them in the superior communication of knowledge.
On the other hand, let us suppose the Church of England to begin to reveal the mystery of Jesus Christ, which I define, and maintain, to consist of a cultivation of the human mind, with all possible knowledge and reason; all other Churches must instantly bow to its superiority. The effect among men throughout the earth would be wonderful and intellectually electric. It is the only system that can be imagined to be a Catholic Christianity, and the very thing that is meant by the word Catholic, something alike suited to the welfare of every man, and which presents the principle of a moral equality, which is the only foundation for true liberty, and the only guarantee for an improvement of public morals; one that would make the Church an attraction to the wisest as well as to the most ignorant of men; those as teachers, these as learners.
We may carry the idea farther; and as in the present state of mind, millions in Europe and America are attached to an idea of the superiority of the Church authorities at Rome, through ignorance and custom I grant, but not less attached,—I would, to humour that conceit and turn it to good, consent to make the Pope of Rome the centre of communication from all parts of the earth for discovered knowledge, as it would be desirable to have such a central recipient and fountain to give it forth again in the best possible manner. This would accelerate the reconciliation of the dissenting race, without an idea of dishonourable submission on the part of an individual. Indeed, the perfection of my proposition is, that no man can feel injury or degradation in the change. It is an overthrow of nothing, but simply the development and better understanding of the mystery that has existed since the world of human intellect began: the revelation of that mystery; and, consequently, the completion or carrying out of the true Christian scheme.
It is not to be expected, that, in a pamphlet letter, I can do more than briefly notice a few leading points of this important subject; but I am quite prepared to extend it through volumes, and shall go on so to do. I am quite prepared to meet or be one of any commission on the subject. I would willingly put my life upon the hazard of verifying my present views of original Christianity. It would have been done in former ages, had the printing press existed. Its doing now is consequent on the gradual power of criticism which the Press has brought with it into existence. It is the truth, and must prevail. It is the God in man. It is the Church of Christ, against which the gates of Hell shall not prevail. They have certainly prevailed against every other existing Church, and the whole of the past is a wreck.
When speaking of the original Christian Religion, or of the revelation of the mystery, I wish to be understood, as not meaning that the revelation was ever before preached or openly taught to the human race on any part of the earth. We have no evidence of it beyond the reasoning and moral precepts of the philosophical world, which were not put forth as a scheme or system of religion. But when it is confessedly the fact, that something called a Christian scheme has been talked about for eighteen hundred years; and when we can trace the fac simile of that something, even in its whole nomenclature, principle and practice, through Greeks and Romans, Persians and Hindoos, up to the Celtic Druids and earliest known universal worship of Budha, the first personation of Jesus Christ now on record;—I mean, that the mystery has been the only general public part of it, and that the knowledge of the revelation was confined to the learned class and ancient mysteries of all countries, was the esoteric doctrine of the initiated into those mysteries; and the breaking up of those mysteries, from the time of Alexander to the Augustan era, was the cause of the first publication in writing of the books or traditions handed down through the agency of those secret and sacred Associations, bearing the mystery only on its surface and by the letter; and that after the mystery was so published, the very ministers of it lost the revelation, which is what the Freemasons profess to be in search of, the lost word, the word that I have found and now declare, that the salvation by Jesus Christ is only to be found in the increasing cultivation of the human mind with all attainable knowledge; that the true worship of God has no other meaning, the root of the word worship being to cultivate, and the field to be cultivated the human mind; that repentance is reflection for improvement; the second birth is the birth of mind, as distinguished from physical birth or birth of body, the one describing the man Adam, the other the God Christ; and that the kingdom of Heaven is to be established upon a general knowledge and practice of this revelation, is to be upon this earth, in successive generations of the human race, and not reasonably to be sought under any other speculation, calculation or hope. These are not only possibilities but probabilities, and immediate practicabilities, if the existing Devil will be pleased to retire: if not, we must resist him, and, as we are promised, on that condition, he will flee.
Such is the foundation of a Catholic Church, from which there can be no dissent; for what is understood cannot be dissented from: the existing dissent is ignorance dissenting from ignorance. In the common use of the word, I am not a Dissenter; but a trier, prover, teacher, revealer of that which is the true meaning of the mystery that has been through ignorance the cause of the dissent. The personation of Deity in the written mystery has been nothing more than a drama prepared for stage effect, which, to the initiated only, would be matter of instruction or refreshment of memory. The ancient mystery meant a play, a drama, in our modern sense; but was first called a mystery, then a morality; was first private, and afterwards made common to the public, and is now for the first time revealed to the general understanding, through the instrumentality of the printing press.
In my lecturings and discussions, both in town and country, I find this revelation has a great charm among all classes who have good temper and good manners to hear patiently. It is pure reason, pure knowledge, pure translation of language; it clashes with no other man's knowledge, and I have not found the man who can raise an argument against it. Of its final and complete success in regenerating the world, I have not a doubt; it is only a question of time. It is now a question, if you and the Parliament will look at it. I know you well enough to know, that you will not like its propounder; but who else has been ripe and bold enough to do it? Who else deserves the honour of being its propounder; but I, its honest martyr and zealous student, through a ten years' imprisonment? I call you to witness my fidelity in this matter. I was your prisoner through four years; you sanctioned the two years I had suffered before you came to the Home Department: you sanctioned my imprisonment by Lord Melbourne, through thirty-two months: and, by virtue of your office, you are sanctioning my present imprisonment. I do not say this in anger. I am retaliating upon you, as I would have you retaliate upon the Dissenters, by superior knowledge. If you do not now or early take me by the hand, I shall drive you out of the field of politics, and all who may succeed of your disposition.
It is not to be denied, that there are moral exhortations put forth in every Church; the mystery would not pass on the people without them. But it is a truth, that, in all of them, morals are treated as a secondary consideration; and in some of the madder dissenting Churches, are counted as of no weight in the question of religion. The truth, as it is in Jesus, is, that morals are every thing as to practice, and knowledge with succeeding reason, the principles of speculation, the WORD to be sought, or the prize to be gained, the crown of glory, the spiritual and immortal life, which is emphatically the language of Saint John's Gospel; and this is the totality of the root and principle of the Christian Religion, the promotion of which is the only proper business of the ministration in the Church. No mystery: down with mystery. It is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or confessing to know, nothing. There is no Christ in the mystery. "How can we reason, but from what we know?" The knowledge must be first. Nothing precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. Nothing is required after; but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. Unknown worlds, unknown spirits, unknown matter, is nothing to us, until the knowledge is obtained. Our knowledge is our all, in moral power, and we can have nothing of a religious nature but our knowledge. Superstitious fears, we know to be the property or sensation of ignorance and misconception. We are morally responsible for nothing but an improper use of our knowledge. It is wickedness to teach ignorance any other doctrine.
My Christian proposition for the Reform of the Church harmonizes with all science, and clashes with nothing but positive error and wicked policy; and I venture to tell you, that you can find no other scheme to produce the same effect, and to give satisfaction to the present and to all future generations of men, to make the Church "meet the respect and affections of the people."
Each paltry sect now considers its tenets as a Catholic Faith; but the truth is, as Dr. Oeddes well observed, "that what is Christian is Catholic, and what is Catholic must be Christian;" but then, this follows, that neither Christianity nor Catholicity will bear a union with the word dissent, unless the dissenter be an intelligent corrector at the same time: they are adverse to every admissible idea of undiscussed dissent. All standing dissent is of the devil; while Christianity and Catholicity are of God and Heaven. The multiplication table, the elements of Euclid, the doctrines of the Trinity and Transubstantiation, the proved analysis and composition of all known substances, are Catholic doctrines, from which nothing but ignorance can dissent. The whole of the present Church Ritual is a mass of words that conceal a truth; but that truth is not known in the Church, cannot therefore be used or worshipped, and the words can only be deemed the lumber of the memory: treating man as man treats a parrot, teaching him constantly to exclaim "pretty Poll," without giving him understanding whom or what "Poll" personates.