The Roman Catholic authorities of Vienne, discovering after a while the connivance of Calvin, in putting the execution of his enemy on them, contrived, it is said, to make his escape easy. They had no mind to have this work thrust upon them. They probably felt that the reformers should take care of their own heretics. Servetus, after his escape, wandered about from place to place, all the time his life in imminent danger, and finally brought up in Geneva, the home of Calvin, disguising himself, and hiding in the outskirts. What induced him to take such desperate chances is not positively known. His intention is supposed to have been to go to Naples, and to be gone from Geneva on the first favorable opportunity. Weary of confinement, and always piously inclined, he ventured imprudently to show himself, at the evening service of a neighboring church, and being there recognized, intimation of his presence was conveyed to Calvin, who, without loss of a moment, demanded his immediate arrest, making his arraignment himself, and industriously working until the end, as chief prosecutor and witness. The barbaric cruelty during imprisonment to this famous man, in an eminently Christian community, and by a Christian leader is shown by the following letter from his prison cell. “Most noble Lords, it is now three weeks since I petitioned for an audience, and I have to inform you that nothing has been done, and I am in a more filthy plight than ever. In addition, I suffer terribly from the cold, and from colic and my rupture, which causes me miseries. It is very cruel that I am neither allowed to speak, nor not have my most pressing wants supplied; for the love of God sirs, in pity give orders in my behalf.” And here is another one: “My most honored Lords, I humbly entreat of you to put an end to these great delays, or to exonerate me of the criminal charge. You must see that Calvin is at his wits ends, and knows not what more to say, but for his pleasure, would have me rot here in prison. The lice eat me up alive, my breeches are in rags, and I have no change, no doublet, and but a single shirt in tatters.” Thirty-eight articles of impeachment were drawn up by Calvin, and after a protracted trial, wherein he acted as chief interrogator, this unhappy victim was sentenced to be burnt at the stake. Servetus, during his whole examination, showed himself to be a brave, conscientious, religious man. His answers to each one of the articles was able, consistent, and would have been considered in this day unanswerable, and what is more his views have since been adopted by the most advanced of the Christian sects. The following is a description of his execution recorded at that time.
“When he came in sight of the fatal pile, the wretched Servetus prostrated himself on the ground and for a while was absorbed in prayer. Rising and advancing a few steps he found himself in the hands of the executioner, by whom he was made to sit on a block, his feet just reaching the ground. His body was then bound to the stake behind him by several turns of an iron chain, whilst his neck was secured in like manner by the coil of a hempen rope. His two books—the one in manuscript sent to Calvin in confidence six or eight years before for his stricture, and a copy of the one lately printed at Vienne—were fastened to his waist, and his head was encircled in mockery with a chaplet of straw and green twigs bestrewed with brimstone. The deadly torch was then applied to the fagots and flashed in his face; and the brimstone catching, and the flames rising, wrung from the victim such a cry of anguish as struck terror into the surrounding crowd. After this he was bravely silent; but the wood being purposely green, although the people aided the executioner in heaping the fagots upon him, a long half hour elapsed before he ceased to show signs of life and suffering. Immediately before giving up the ghost, with a last expiring effort he cried aloud, ‘Jesus, thou Son of the eternal God, have compassion upon me!’ All was then hushed, save hissing and crackling of the green wood, and by and by there remained no more of what had been Michael Servetus, but a charred and blackened trunk, and a handful of ashes.” So died in advance of his age, this victim of religious fanaticism and personal hate, a fitting triumph of the theological over the scientific methods of thought, the result among many thousands like it of the adoption of the Jewish legends by Christianity, and in this case, brought about by a Christian leader, the founder of a creed, in which to this day, enough of his spirit remains to make it the greatest enemy of free thought and liberal opinion, among all the creeds of Protestantism. Of this disgraceful tragedy was it the spirit of the Master which led the inhuman crowd to vie with each other in piling on the fagots, or was it the malign influence of a vindictive and cruel Hebrew God?
Every conflict between science and theology since the days of Copernicus has resulted in an unequivocal victory for the former. Both churches resisted the truth of the rotundity and movement of the earth as though their existence depended upon it. They fought each question as it arose in the same spirit. The Mosaic account of the creation, the age of the world, the deluge, the length of man’s sojourn upon the earth, are questions as effectively settled adversely to the “truths of scripture” as the one for which Galileo suffered. And yet Christianity lives, and will continue to live and flourish, solely on account of the inherent and increasing affinity of the human heart as civilization advances for the precepts and example of its founder. If Christianity were destined to fall by the undermining of its legends it would fall now with the recent destruction of one upon which its existence appeared to depend, which has, more than any other, shaped its course and laid the foundation of its rituals. The doctrine of evolution now established as a truth is the most serious and apparently destructive one that theology ever met. The fact that man has ARISEN from a condition of brutality, instead of FALLEN from a state of perfection is, to ecclesiasticism, a raking blow from stem to stern, compared with all previous battles with science as the shot of a modern thirty-two pounder with old fashioned ordinance. The legend of the fall of man, compared with all others, is the vilest. It was brought from Assyria, by the Hebrews, who obtained it during their captivity, from a barbarous people, among whom it was current for ages, and was thus inserted in our Sacred Book, proofs of which have recently been found in deciphering the Ninevite records. A suspicion is not entirely without warrant that it may have been adopted with a purpose of creating miseries and sorrows in the multitude for the profitable occupation of a divinely authorized few in the business of consoling them, and right well has it fulfilled its mission. It has changed the facial expression of Christendom. It has deepened the furrows of sorrow upon old age, and fixed lines of care upon the features of youth. It has brought the undeserved dejection of criminality, and the downcast of shame, where of right belongs the reflection of hopefulness and the light of expectancy. It has incalculably multiplied the sorrows of life, and created for each death a nightmare of imaginary horrors. This legend is the foundation and inspiration of most of the evil and cruelty that Christianity has inflicted on human kind. Fabulous itself, it has been the parent of unrealities, witchcraft and magic for instance, from which millions of innocent victims have been sacrificed to torture and death. It has transformed reasonable enjoyments of life into crimes by the invention of a word, which with the latitude given its definition, has kept in trembling uncertainty the innocent and harmless. To the parent it has bestowed the agony of dread for the fate of departed offspring, guileless infants, as well as the matured. This legend of the fall of man has established in the paths of life its drag net Sin, a word of such unlimited theological definition, that any one of average rectitude, by some trifling inadvertance of thought or action, is likely to bring upon himself the condemnation of a frowning God; so that, the worthy as well as the unworthy, may not escape the services of theological assistance and intercession. But for the doubt that exists, and has probably always existed, except among the ignorant and sluggish minded, of the truth of this puerile invention, it would have reduced humanity long ago to a state of universal hopelessness and despair.
The theologians have but little left now but the miracles to defend, and although it must be conceded by them that the miracle of Joshua has fallen, others whose fallacy cannot be so well demonstrated by science, are held to with the tenacity of desperation, and in utter disregard of reason and common sense. Fortunately, in the interest of truth, we are given an opportunity to study the evolution of miracles, in a case so modern that every statement in proof of their fallacy can be substantiated by the current literature of the time. Saint Francis Xavier was an earnest, sincere and truthful Jesuit, whose religious services were performed in the middle of the sixteenth century. He gave up a promising career as professor in a Paris academy, and in his enthusiasm and devotion to Christianity, went as missionary to the Far East. Among the various tribes of lower India, and afterward in Japan he wrought untiringly, toiling through village after village collecting the natives by means of a hand bell. After twelve years of such efforts seeking new converts for religion, he sacrificed his life on the desert island of San Chan. During his career as missionary he wrote great numbers of letters, which were preserved, and have since been published, and these, with the letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly all the features of his life. No account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own letters or any contemporary document. More than that, his brother missionaries, who were in constant and loyal fellowship with him, make no illusions to them in their communications with each other, or with their brethren in Europe. This silence regarding his miracles was clearly not due to any unbelief in them, because these good missionary fathers were free to record the slightest occurrence which they thought evidence of Divine favor. One of them sends a report that an illuminated cross had been recently seen in the heavens; another that devils had been cast out of the natives by the use of holy water; others send reports that lepers had been healed by baptism, and that the blind and dumb had been restored by the rites of the church; but to Xavier no miracles are imputed by his associates during his life, or during several years after his death. On the contrary we find his own statements as to his personal limitations and the difficulties arising from them fully confirmed by his brother workers. It is interesting for example, in view of the claim afterwards made, that the Saint was divinely endowed for his mission with the “gift of tongues” to note in these letters confirmation of Xavier’s own statement utterly disproving the existence of any such Divine gift, and detailing the difficulties which he encountered from his want of knowing various languages, and the hard labor he underwent in learning the elements of the Japanese tongue. With all this evidence, and much more available if necessary, to prove that Xavier never performed a miracle the church began building them up for him, unmindful of the fact that he lived in an age of literature, books and printed correspondence, and not in those remote times when it held supreme control of all learning and communication by letters; accordingly, the first of the Xavier miracles began to appear about ten years after his death. They multiplied from time to time beginning, it is reasonable to suppose, about the gossiping hearth and eagerly confirmed by the cloister, until they began to be mentioned in church literature. The first of which, a letter twenty years after his death by a Jesuit father entitled “On religious affairs in the Indies” says nothing of Xavier’s miracles. The next, a publication called “History of India” thirty-six years after his death by another Jesuit father dwells lightly on the alleged miracles. The next, sixty years later, a “Life of Xavier” shows an increase of his miracles, and representing him as casting out devils, curing the sick, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, and performing miracles of all sorts. Since Xavier was made a Saint many other lives of him appeared, one of them one hundred and sixty years after his death, the best so far written and now esteemed a classic, in which the old miracles were enormously multiplied. According to his first biographer he saves one person from drowning by a miracle, in this one he saves, during his life time, three. In the first he raises three persons from the dead, in this one fourteen. In the first there is one miraculous supply of water, in this one three, and so on, until this date when the Xavier miracles are counted by hundreds. This case of the evolution of miracles is largely copied from a recent publication of President White of Cornell University. It is not only highly instructive as indicating the process by which these deceptions are evolved, but also tends to the pleasant and welcome conviction that many of the earnest and self-sacrificing workers in the field of Christianity, to whom miracles are imputed were guiltless of them. But more than all it shows the way to a reasoning mind by which, through the present and coming rationalism, a pure and worshipful personality shall retain his hold upon the affections of men.
Those men of science and independent thought who went over to the Reformation, expecting encouragement and protection under it, were doomed to be disappointed. It was not a movement caused by the pressure of enlightenment. At that period, both Germany and England were far below Italy in their conditions of knowledge and learning. It was a rebellion caused by the oppression of evils, and a desire for change in the management of church matters only. Every one of the superstitions of the old church were transferred to the new one. The same, in fact a stricter literal adherence to the words of scripture in managing the affairs of life, and in deciding questions of science, were maintained, the same incessant watchfulness toward those men of learning who were threatening the “truths of scripture” in their scientific labors, and the same cruelties invoked for their suppression, and the extinction of heresy. No more intellectual freedom was permitted, except upon minor doctrinal points of beliefs, and upon these there began those controversies which soon broke up the movement into factions or creeds. The intention of the new church was to do away with those rituals and ceremonies, which had been adopted from paganism as a compromise in the second and third centuries, and to bring their church back as far as possible, to that simplicity which characterized the first teachings of Christianity. But the leaders of the Reformation never attempted nor had they any desire to bring back that entire freedom of thought and expression which existed in the early days. No one with immunity would be allowed to deny the doctrine of the Holy Trinity or the truth of Immaculate Conception, as the old Greek philosophers were wont to do. Such vital questions it was torture and death to adversely consider, Servetus being an early victim to such temerity. There were questions enough however within the limits of safe discussion, to set agoing those unending controversies which distinguished Protestantism to this day. The newly acquired privilege of discussing sacred affairs among laymen as well as others, were indulged in to such an extent that debate between the sects, in defense of their several interpretations of scriptural texts, monopolized in society its hours of intercourse and conversation. When their leaders were indulging in such discussion as the dialogue between Eve and the Serpent; whether the Serpent stood erect on his tail, or in its natural coil when it was addressing Eve; fixing the hour of this remarkable event; accounting for the manner in which Noah fed the animals in the ark; how fishes appeared before Adam to be named by him, and such troublesome problems, laymen were mostly engaged in the examination of those doctrinal points which were dividing the movement into sects. Questions that had been settled centuries before by authority in the old church were dragged forth to renewed discussion. Luther was describing his frequent interviews with the devil in his bed room. Demons and witches were poisoning the air, and bringing calamity and misfortune, against which there was but one safeguard and remedy, reading texts of scripture and prayer. But however the sects might differ in their understanding of the sacred language, upon a number of things they were all agreed; every text of scripture was to be taken literally; heresy could not be too severely punished; a curtailment of the pleasures of life increased the chances of heaven; the world was a “sink of iniquity” destined for early destruction, and presided over by a God who never smiles, and troubled by a devil who never sleeps, the latter with millions of offspring, man pursuing demons, inflicting insanity, sickness and many other of the misfortunes of life.
In these beliefs the two churches were in entire accord and must equally answer for the miseries and cruelties they have inflicted upon humanity in enforcing them. Theories and doctrines so persistently advanced and upheld by both churches, and which have proved so disastrous to humanity do not properly belong, and should have no place in Christianity. They are not only without the authority of the Master, but are mostly in opposition to his teaching and example. The most harmful of them owe their origin to the fables and myths introduced into the sacred book second-hand from Egyptian and Oriental sources, centuries before the Christian era, and it is not surprising that legends due to the faculty of romance in the minds of some barbarous Assyrians or Pharos, far back in the cradles of humanity, when introduced as foundations for rules of life, and as explanations of the mysterious processes of nature along the whole line of human advancement should have been constantly rejected and denied by the reasoning portion of mankind, and it is scarcely conceivable that now, within a few months of the twentieth century, they should be upheld by both churches as inspirations of the Deity. Not so surprising either when we consider that for seventeen centuries, the undeveloped minds of youth in all Christendom, have been moulded into the acceptance of beliefs, which, had they been presented without that gradual absorption in which reason takes no part would have been long ago rejected on account of their improbability. In no place is this better understood than among the churches, and as a consequence, they have been in perpetual contention with each other for the early education of youth.
The most inspiring and hopeful spectacle in all humanity is an assemblage, wrapt in the devotional exercises of Christianity, listening attentively to the eloquent ministrations of an earnest leader, who pleads the cause of virtue and charity as it is exhibited in the written life and character of the Model Man. The great central story never wearies in interest, and never grows old; a willing sacrifice and suffering for the benefit of mankind. Such never failing kindness, such lessons of brotherhood, such love for men, such tenderness for children, such consideration beyond his time for women, and with such a pathetic and suffering end as to capture their emotional natures for all time. And above all bringing the tidings of a hope, that comes to men, as a boat of rescue comes to a storm-tossed ship slowly sinking into the depths; so cherished in Christian households as to become a worshiped member of them, to be defended as one of them, upheld if need be by force of arms and sacrifice of life. And the lesson of it all, and the hopefulness and inspiration of it all is, that wherever mankind dwells, be it in castles or cottages, amid the crowds of cities, or among quiet country fields, there are laurels everywhere among them all for him who will sacrifice himself that others may gain; esteem and veneration among them all for him, whose life is pure, and whose ways are ways of kindness and charity. Vice can never reign supreme but for a time amid such inherent affinity for goodness implanted in every human heart, and as the days of general consent and unobstructed knowledge enlighten and control the affairs of men, more and more certain, as time rolls on, will come protests and rebellions against the temporary triumph of evil.
Of that entrancing story which has captured civilization, and has come to be a part of it, what is there in the Master that deserves such barbaric surroundings; such inconsequential details of obscure and barbarous lives; such vindictive retaliations and brutal conflicts, sacrilegiously involving the Deity as a promoter of them; wild fictions of early ages, inventions of the infancy of man, conflicting accounts of historical events, fragmentary parts by different persons at different periods; explanations in many branches of science, now known to be mistaken and absurd, and containing texts, that either openly sanction or have been twisted into service of the most stupendous outrages that humanity has suffered.
“Considering the asserted origin of these records—indirectly from God himself—we might justly expect that they would bear to be tried by any standard that man can apply, and vindicate their truth and excellence in the ordeal of human criticism. We ought therefore to look for universality, completeness, perfection. We might expect that they would present us with just views of the nature and position of this world in which we live, and that, whether dealing with the spiritual or material, they would put to shame the most celebrated productions of human genius, as the magnificent mechanism of the heavens, and the beautiful forms of the earth are superior to the vain contrivances of man. We might expect that they would propound with authority, and definitely settle those all important problems, which have exercised the mental powers of the ablest men of Asia and Europe for so many centuries, and which are at the foundation of all faith and all philosophy; that they should distinctly tell us, in unmistakable language, what is God, what is the world, what is the soul, and whether man has any criterion of truth; that they should explain to us how evil can exist in a world, the Maker of which is omnipotent, and altogether good; that they should reveal to us in what the affairs of men are fixed by destiny, in what by free will; that they should teach us whence we came, what is the object of our continuing here, what is to become of us hereafter. And since a written word claiming a divine origin must necessarily accredit itself, even to those most reluctant to receive it, its internal evidences becoming stronger and not weaker, with the strictness of the examination to which they are submitted, it ought to deal with those things that may be demonstrated by the increasing knowledge and genius of many anticipating therein his conclusions. Such a work noble as may be its origin, must not refuse, but court the test of natural philosophy, regarding it not as an antagonist but as its best support. As years pass on and human science becomes more exact and more comprehensive, its conclusions must be found in unison therewith. When occasion arises they should furnish us at least the foreshadowings of the great truths discovered by astronomy and geology, not offering for them the wild fictions of earlier ages. They should tell us how suns and worlds are distributed in infinite space, and how, in their succession they come forth in limitless time. They should say how far the dominion of God is carried out by law, and what is the point at which it is his pleasure to resort to his own arbitrary will. How grand would have been the description of the magnificent universe written by the omnipotent hand! Of man they should set forth his relations to other living beings, his place among them, his privileges and responsibilities. They should not leave him to grope his way through the vestiges of Greek philosophy, and to miss the truth at last, but they should teach him wherein true knowledge consists, anticipating the physical science, physical power, and physical well being of our own times, nay, even unfolding for our benefit things that we are still ignorant of. The discussion of subjects, so many and so high, is not outside the scope of a work of such pretensions. Its manner of dealing with them is the only criterion it can offer of its authority to succeeding times.”[A]
How unlike this is our asserted Sacred Book, with its fables, its myths and legends, its deadly texts that have scourged mankind. By its pretension of divine authority, carrying forward into our civilization superstitions, that otherwise would have melted away under the light of knowledge; putting a limit to learning, obstructing it, and denouncing it, in many of its branches; paralyzing thought, and substituting in its stead a blind faith, instituted and cultivated by ecclesiasticism, to bring men under its control; holding up as an example of divine favor, the low moral standard of barbaric times; recounting murders, incests, adulteries and obscenities, that would have banished the book long since from the regions of refinement and civilization, but for its assumed origin, and which serve, by their easy and undenied access to young minds, as a stimulation to destructive pruriency; sanctioning human slavery, and encouraging bloodshed by battle; setting an example of extortionate tithes for the support of ecclesiasticism; uttering the most heart-rending curses, as coming directly from the Almighty, for failure to comply with his assumed commands, and which have been made the example, authorizing the horrible cruelties inflicted upon mankind by the churches, literary models as they are of those anathemas, interdicts, and excommunications, by which the older church terrorized humanity for fifteen hundred years. “I will also do this unto you, I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart, and ye shall sow your seed in vain; for your enemies shall eat it.” “I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, and your highways shall be desolate.” “For they went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book.” “Do not I hate them O Lord that hate thee, yea I hate them with a perfect hate.” “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” “A man, also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death.” “And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.” Solely on the authority of such deadly texts as these, and the book is full of them, the world has been overspread in blood. It was these that gave Spain a pretended sanction of the Lord to exterminate fifteen millions of people in Mexico and Peru, with a better and higher civilization than itself, and to rob them of their wealth and possessions. It was these, and such as these, that authorized and instigated the Inquisition, which from 1481 to 1808, put to torture and horrible death by burning, 340,000 human beings. It was these that induced the massacre of St. Bartholomew with its 30,000 victims of fire and sword; the English persecutions under Bloody Mary, in which three hundred fellow-creatures perished; the almost total annihilation of the Albigenesis in the south of France. This war was carried on with more ferocious cruelty than any ever recorded in history; the fanatical fury of the soldiers was stimulated by the exhortations of the clergy. At the storming of Baziers, when it was proposed to spare the Catholics, a monk exclaimed, “Kill all, God will recognize his own,” and the atrocious precept was but too well observed. The war terminated by the complete devastation of the country, and the almost complete extermination of its inhabitants. Following along in the bloody path of these barbaric scriptural commands, we have to record the witch burnings of Europe and America, during the term of Christian supremacy, calculated in the hundreds of thousands; the Crusades, and purely religious wars since the time of Constantine, whose victims are beyond computation; and all this to no other purpose or end, but that the world should be forced into the belief of, what is known to be, the theological system of a low social development; this the terrible cost to humanity, for the adoption and systematic retention by the churches, of the ancient Jewish beliefs and modes of thought; this the infliction, that ecclesiasticism might prevail, using the sermon on the mount to capture the consciences of men, and scourging them with the mandates, curses and punishments of a Hebrew divinity, to bring them into line for its purposes. In taking these Jewish annals to its heart, making them a part of itself, as objects of example and worship, has not Christianity retarded the advance of mankind? Has it not, by them, obstructed knowledge, prevented a greater expansion of human sympathy, and prolonged the betterment of social conditions?