We need not follow our lecturer into the details of the Arabic philosophy. When we are told that the Arabian philosophers “had rejected the theory of creation and adopted that of evolution,” and that they reached this conclusion “through their doctrine of emanation and absorption rather than from an investigation of visible nature,” we may well dismiss them without a hearing. Dr. Draper seems to be much pained at the thought that a religious revolt against philosophy succeeded in “exterminating” such progressive ideas so thoroughly that they “never again appeared in Islam.” But that which causes him still greater disgust is that “if the doctrine of the government of the world by law was thus held in detestation by Islam, it was still more bitterly refused by Christendom, in which the possibility of changing the divine purposes was carried to its extreme by the invocation of angels and saints, and great gains accrued to the church through its supposed influence in procuring these miraculous interventions.” These words, and others which we are about to quote, must have given great pleasure to the assembled Unitarian ministers; for we all know that to throw dirt at the church is a task singularly congenial to the natural bent of the sectarian mind. But, be this as it may, whoever knows that our lecturer is the author of the history of the conflict between religion and science, so truly described by the late Dr. Brownson as “a tissue of lies,” will agree that Dr. Draper’s denunciations deserve no answer. When a man undertakes to speak of that of which he is absolutely ignorant, the best course is to let him blunder till his credit is entirely gone. The reader need not be informed that Christendom never opposed the doctrine of “the government of the world by law,” and never imagined that there was a “possibility of changing the divine purposes” through the invocation of angels and saints; whilst, if “miraculous interventions” brought “great gains to the church,” the fact is very naturally explained by the principle that “piety is useful for all things,” and that God’s intervention cannot be barren of beneficial results. But Dr. Draper, who does not understand how God’s intervention is compatible with the universal reign of law, denies all miracles, and denounces the church as a school of deceit, superstition, and hypocrisy, his hatred of miracles being his only proof that all miracles are frauds. His assumption is that, because the natural order is ruled by law, therefore no supernatural order can be admitted; which, if true, would equally warrant the following: Because bodies gravitate towards the centre of the earth, therefore no solar attraction can be admitted.
The papal government, Dr. Draper assures us, could not tolerate “universal and irreversible law.” How did he ascertain this? Perhaps he thought that the papal government was embarrassed to reconcile irreversible law with miracles. But the popes never taught or believed that a miracle was a reversal of law; they only taught that the course of nature, without any law being reversed, was susceptible of alteration, and that this alteration, when proceeding from a power above nature, was miraculous. We fancy that even Dr. Draper must concede this, unless he prefers to say with the fool that “there is no God.”
“The Inquisition had been invented and set at work.” To do what? To overthrow the “universal and irreversible law”? Certainly not. What was it, then, called to do?
“It speedily put an end, not only in the south of France but all over Europe, to everything supposed to be not in harmony with the orthodox faith, by instituting a reign of terror.” It is scarcely necessary to remark that what the lecturer calls “a reign of terror” was nothing but self-defence against the murderous attacks of the Albigenses and other cut-throats of the same dye, who were themselves the terror of Christendom—a circumstance which Dr. Draper should not have ignored. But whilst the Inquisition caused some terror to the enemies of Christian society, it actually restored the reign of law and secured the benefits of religious peace to countries which, but for its remedial action, would have sunk again into a lawless barbarism. And if the Inquisition “put an end to everything contrary to the orthodox faith,” no thoughtful man will find fault with it. False doctrines are a greater curse than even armed rebellions. Dr. Draper will surely not complain that the United States “put an end” to the rebellion of the Southern Confederates, though they were gallant fellows and fought for what they believed to be their right. But, while he finds it natural that thousands of valuable lives should have been destroyed for the sake of the American Union, he pretends to be scandalized at the punishment which the Inquisition, after regular trial, inflicted on a few worthless and contumacious felons for the sake of religious and civil peace and the preservation of the great Catholic union. Such is the delicacy of his conscience! Then he continues:
“The Reign of Terror in revolutionary France lasted but a few months, the atrocities of the Commune at the close of the Franco-German war only a few days; but the reign of terror in Christendom has continued from the thirteenth century with declining energy to our times. Its object has been the forcible subjugation of thought.”
This is how Dr. Draper manipulates history. It would be superfluous to inform our readers that there has never been a reign of terror in Christendom, except when and where Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglican Puritans, or infidel revolutionists held the reins of power, and crowned their apostasy by tyrannical persecution, by plundering, and burning, and murdering, and demolishing, and prostituting whatever they could lay their hands on, with that diabolical fiendishness and cool brutality of which we had lately a new instance in the Paris Commune here mentioned by the lecturer. This very mention of the Commune, and of the reign of terror inaugurated by it, is a blunder on the part of Dr. Draper. The heroes of the Commune belong to his school; they are infidels; they are men whose thought has not been “subjugated” by the church; and to confess that their ephemeral triumph constituted a reign of terror amounts to a condemnation of unsubjugated thought and a vindication of the principle acted on by the church, that from unbridled thought nothing can be expected but discord, confusion, and violence. Yet Dr. Draper, who is a profound chemist, knows how to make poison out of innocent drugs; and whilst the church aimed only at preserving the loyalty of her children from the attacks of heresy and the snares of hypocrisy, the doctor depicts her as “subjugating” thought. This is just what might be expected. The snake draws poison from the same flowers from which the bee sucks honey:
Spesso del serpe in seno
Il fior si fa veleno;
Ma in sen dell’ ape il fiore
Dolce liquor si fa.