CHAPTER
11
(The Bible
or the Church?, Chapter X, pp. 155-176)
181
SOME who thought, perhaps, when first opening these pages, that the title
was no more than “a quaint conceit,” will have come to see
what depth of meaning there is in it. Just as “the Jews' religion”
was a human system based upon a Divine revelation, so is it with the religion
of Christendom. But the Judaism of Messianic times was not an apostasy
in the sense in which that can be averred of the religion of Christendom.
For the Lord could sanction by His presence the services both of the temple
and the synagogue. The cult was right: it was the men who were
wrong. “God is Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship in
spirit.”[1] With unspiritual
men, therefore, even a religion which in itself was true became of
182
necessity false. “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink;
but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”[2]
And if this was true in regard to the cult in which ordinances and the
external element filled so large a place, how intensely true must it be
of Christianity.
[1]
John iv. 24. See p. 85,
ante.
[2]
Rom. xiv. 17.
Moses was the
Buddha of “the Jews' religion.” And in externals at least
there was no wilful departure from his teaching. Any blunders in this
respect were made honestly and through ignorance. Blunders there were,
as for example in the celebration of the Day of the Firstfruits. This
error, which has escaped the notice of theologians, destroyed the significance
of one of the great characteristic types of the law. The law enjoined
that “on the morrow after the Sabbath” of Passover week, the
first sheaf of the harvest should be cut and carried to the temple, to
be “waved before Jehovah.” The true “Day of the Firstfruits,”
therefore, always fell upon the “first day of the week.” But
in Ezra's revival, misreading the injunction, they took “the Sabbath”
to mean the festival day of the Passover. And thus
183
it came about that on that Sabbath day during which the Lord lay in the
grave, the Jews were celebrating a rite divinely ordained to typify His
resurrection from the dead.[3]
[3]
See Lev. xxiii. 10, 11, 15, 16; and Deut. xvi. 9. Also John xix. 31 (“that
Sabbath was an high day,” because it was “the day of the firstfruits”).
I have dealt more fully with this in The Coming Prince, Chapter
ix., and have there pointed out that the true “Day of Pentecost,”
as divinely ordered, was not the Sabbath upon which the Jews observed
it, but that “first day of the week” on which the Holy Spirit
was given. I Cor. xv. 20, 23 especially refers to the firstfruits as a
type of the resurrection. Just as God's accepting the first sheaf gathered
was a token and pledge of His acceptance of the whole harvest, so the
resurrection of Christ is a token and pledge of the resurrection of His
people. I have seen it stated that one of the points on which the Karaites
differed from the “orthodox” Jews was that they followed the
Scriptures in celebrating the Day of the Firstfruits, and therefore also
the Day of Pentecost, upon the first day of the week.
But while those
who made a Buddha of Moses sought to follow his teaching with the most
scrupulous care, the New Testament has received very different treatment
in the religion of Christendom. When the Lord and His disciples met to
eat the paschal supper, the rite was essentially the same as in the days
of Hezekiah or of Samuel. And if a heathen stranger could have passed
from that “upper room” to other kindred scenes in
184
Jerusalem, no difference in the ritual would have attracted his attention.
Here, was Israel's Messiah surrounded by His disciples; there, were apostate
Jews who on the morrow would clamour for Messiah's death. But disciples
and apostates alike were celebrating the same ordinance according to the
same ritual. The only difference between them was that while the disciples
were spiritually quickened and enlightened, the apostates were spiritually
in darkness and in death.
And if a Jew
of those days could now come back to life he could again take part in
the familiar rite in the home of any pious co-religionist. But imagine
one of the primitive disciples present in St. Peter’s at Rome to-day
during the celebration of a baptism or a mass! A devotee of the old Eleusinian
mysteries would find himself at home in the scene; but the disciple would
shrink away from it, as from a specially profane development of paganism.
Between the religion of Christendom and the revelation upon which it claims
to be founded there yawns a gulf which is impassable. To the apostasy
of Christendom Judaism affords no parallel. As already
185
noticed, Judaism appears to be an exception to the strange law of degeneration
which marks the religion of mankind. The Scriptures are still read in
the synagogues, and the paschal supper is still celebrated in simplicity.
And in the Scriptures and the paschal rite may yet be found the means
of their spiritual restoration. The altar is there and the wood for the
sacrifice: all that is lacking is the fire from heaven to kindle it—a
signal proof of the truth that “God has not cast away His people.”[4]
For though in this age of a silent Heaven, He does not declare Himself
as the God “that repayeth them that hate Him to their face,”
He is none the less “the faithful God which keepeth covenant...
to a thousand generations.”[5]
[4]
Rom. xi. 2.
[5]
Deut. vii. 9, 10.
Paganism is
not less evil or less hateful because it masquerades in a Christian dress,
and uses the language of Christianity. The guilt and infamy of Judas were
all the greater because he ranked as an apostle of the Lord. And if there
be indeed apostolic succession in the historic Church, we know to what
source to trace its origin! The Judaism which crucified the Lord was essentially
186
a true religion: it became a false religion only because the very truth
of God when administered by carnal men is changed into a lie. But the
religion of Christendom is essentially a false religion, and so lost to
shame, moreover, that it makes no effort even to cover itself with a Christian
terminology. About the priest and the altar the New Testament is silent,
save in that Epistle which was written expressly to teach that they belong
in type to Judaism and in antitype to Christ. And as for baptismal regeneration,
and the mass, with its vestments and “candles vainly lighted at
noonday”[6] —these
are the well-known stock-in-trade of a Pagan priesthood, and the New Testament
knows absolutely nothing of them.
[6]
Tertullian (“Apol.” xlvi.) used the words contemptuously of
the practice of the Pagans.
Judaism, I
repeat, affords no parallel to such an apostasy as this; but a counterpart
may be sought in Buddhism. Just as the principles and practices of Buddhism
are marked by the most flagrant opposition to the teaching of Gautama,
so also the religion of Christendom stands out in open contrast with the
teaching of Christ. I would not
187
be understood as bracketing Gautama with the Lord Jesus Christ. I deplore
such profanity.[7] But again I
appeal to the history of Buddhism as a striking instance of the working
of that same law of spiritual gravitation which has been so apparent and
so disastrous in the history of what—if
it be lawful to coin a much needed word—might
be described as Christianism. For while in the sphere of morals
and of mind man is master of himself, the ruin of his spiritual
nature is complete. Here he is so entirely the slave of perverted religious
instincts that, apart from Divine grace, his recovery is impossible.
[7]
I believe, moreover, that all that was best in the teaching of Gautama
was derived from the Hebrew prophets. See Daniel in the Critics' Den,
p. 49, note.
But even here
we must distinguish. Divine grace is needed for the apprehension of Divine
truth, but not for the detection of human error. No grace is needed to
save a man from card sharpers and “confidence trick” men;
and his native wit might equally avail to save him from the artifices
and errors of human religion.[8]
In the only address to a heathen audience recorded in
188
the New Testament, the Apostle appealed to reason and common sense to
teach his hearers that their cult was false.[9]
[8]
But while the victim of the criminal is eager to hide his shame, the dupe
of the priest seems always ready to glory in it. Not many years ago one
of our great city houses was defrauded of £20,000 in gold by a very
clever, but very transparent trick; but their chief anxiety was to avoid
the ridicule which publicity would have brought upon them.
[9]
Acts xvii. 22-29.
True it is
that in the most solemn prophecy ever uttered—for
the words fell from the lips of our Divine Lord—a
time is foretold when false prophets shall arise who “shall show
great signs and wonders, insomuch that if it were possible they shall
deceive the very elect.”[10]
But that time is yet to come. “Great signs and wonders!” The
only wonder is that any man can be deceived by such transparent frauds.
The victim of the “confidence trick” can plead that with his
eyes he saw the sheaf of counterfeit bank-notes, and he took them to be
genuine. But what excuse can the victim of these sham priests set up to
excuse his credulity? An honest-hearted schoolboy might well be ashamed
of being duped by them. They are proved to be
189
impostors by the after lives of the babies they pretend to regenerate.
The gaping yokels clustered round some travelling juggler on a village
green are not such pitiable creatures as the men and women who are deluded
by the hocus-pocus of the Mass. And as for priestly absolution,
if even-handed justice were meted out to all, the Vagrant Act would suffice
to deal with it. Ignorant women are sent to gaol for deceiving people
about their future in this world, but educated men are allowed to deceive
them with impunity about their future in the next.
[10]
Matt. xxiv. 24.
And yet human
religion has a terrible power behind it. Satan is not, as men suppose,
the instigator of their crimes. Religion is the special
sphere of his influence. What other meaning can be given to the awful
title, “the god of this world,” accorded him in Holy
Writ? Were it otherwise the religion of Christendom would never have survived
the sixteenth century. When that century opened, the infamous Alexander
VI. was on the papal throne. The letter of a devout Roman Catholic, recorded
in the diary of a high official in personal attendance on the Pope, describes
life in the
190
Vatican under the Borgias. Here are extracts from it:
“Everything
can be had for money. Crimes grosser than Scythian are committed without
disguise under the eyes of the Pope. There are rapes, murders, incests,
debaucheries, cruelties, exceeding those of the Neros and Caligulas.
Licentiousness past description is paraded in contempt of God and man.
Sons and daughters are polluted. Harlots and procuresses are gathered
together in the mansion of St. Peter. On All Saints' day fifty women
of the town were invited to dinner.”
At this point
the historian from whom the foregoing is quoted breaks off the narrative
by adding: “The details of what followed are totally unmentionable.”[11]
The letter goes on to speak of the universal sale of indulgences, to provide
a portion for the Pope's daughter, Lucretia, and also to mention his son
Cesar Borgia as being as great a monster as himself. And as for the Sacred
College, not a single voice is raised in warning or remonstrance.
[11]
Froude's “Council of Trent,” pp. 18, 19.
Was it any
wonder that when Charles V. ascended the Imperial throne the laity everywhere
191
were in revolt against the Church? But the Emperor was no friend of Luther,
no patron of the Protestants. The Edict of Worms, which devoted Luther
to the flames, gave proof of his zeal for the Church; and it was no fault
of his that that edict was frustrated. But the dream of his life was the
calling of a council which, by dealing with the flagrant immoralities
of the clergy, and allowing the voice of the laity a hearing, would prepare
the way for his putting down the Protestants by force. Pope succeeded
Pope, however, without his achieving his purpose. Neither Leo X. nor Clement
VII. had any wish to be “reformed;” and when, a quarter of
a century after Charles's accession, Paul III. found himself compelled
at last to yield, he took care that the council should neither parley
with the laity nor meddle with the vices of the clergy.
The secret
history of the Council of Trent has been laid bare by its “incomparable
historian,” as Gibbon calls him—Paolo
Sarpi of Venice, that amazing prodigy of genius and learning. The shameful
story is before the world.[12]
There was a
192
Lot even in Sodom, and doubtless there were not a few such at Trent—the
Spanish bishops were believed to be pure; but the Italian majority were
for the most part men of the same kidney as Pope Paul—that
“Vicar of Christ” who openly pensioned his [illegitimate]
children upon the State, and made cardinals of his schoolboy grandsons.[13]
And these men, unknown to fame as theologians, and bound by their ordination
oath to obey their master the Pope, settled the creed of Christendom,
not omitting to devote to eternal damnation all who refuse the blasphemous
lie that a thrice-holy God accredits licentious profligates as His ministers.
[12]
See Appendix III.
[13]
See p. 89 ante.
His friend and biographer, Cardinal Pallavicino, pleads that he was no
worse than his contemporaries! One might expect a “Vicar of Christ”
to be better; but this perhaps is proof of Protestant ignorance
and bigotry.
The Council
of Constance[14] had claimed jurisdiction
over the popes, and proceeded to try and depose the rival claimants to
the chair of St. Peter, including John XXIII., of whom Gibbon writes:
“The Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy,
and incest; the
193
most scandalous charges
were suppressed.”[15]
But the Council of Trent established the supreme authority of the Pope.
[14]
1414-1417. Here it was that John Huss, who attended under an Imperial
“safe conduct,” was seized and burnt at the stake.
[15]
“Decline and Fall,” chap. lxx.
Nine years
after it was finally dissolved, occurred the “Massacre of St. Bartholomew.”
The leading Protestants of France were invited to Paris by the French
king, Charles IX., to celebrate the marriage of his sister. They had been
granted solemn and oath-bound pledges of safety, but at midnight on the
festival of St. Bartholomew (21st Aug., 1572), the signal was given for
their butchery. Ten thousand Huguenots, men, women, and children, including
some five hundred persons of rank, were massacred. Their mangled bodies
were flung into the streets; the gutters were choked with their blood.
In other towns like butcheries were perpetrated. According to the estimate
of Sully, the defenceless victims numbered seventy thousand. But when
Charles, repenting too late of his hideous guilt, sought to palliate it
by inventing charges of political conspiracy against the Huguenots, the
“Vicar of Christ” rebuked his repentance by celebrating
194
a Te Deum and ordering public rejoicings in honour of the crime.
More than this, he sent Cardinal Orsino to convey his congratulations
to the king. At Lyons, on his way to Paris, the emissary sought out the
leader of the butchery, and gave him absolution and his blessing. And
on reaching the capital he urged Charles to claim openly the credit of
his acts, which future generations would attribute to zeal for the Catholic
religion, now purified from heresy by the Council of Trent and by the
extermination of the Protestant sect within his realm.
And this “Vicar
of Christ” was not a depraved sensualist like some of his predecessors,
but a theologian and a scholar.[16]
Gregory XIII. had much in common with his successors of our own times.
But on this very account his memory is branded with eternal infamy. If
his name is to be bracketed with that of any living potentate, let it
be, not with that of Leo XIII., but with that of “Abdul the damned,”
the guilty patron and apologist of the Armenian massacres.
[16]
He it was who introduced the Gregorian reform of the calendar.
And yet the
Council of Trent has settled it
195
that Leo XIII., notwithstanding his personal claims to veneration, has
no better title to the homage of Christendom than an obscene monster like
Alexander VI., or a monster as hateful, though of another kind, like Gregory
XIII. That he is the successor of the Apostle Peter is a mere theory;
that he is the successor of these men is a plain fact. Just as a family
or a nation can morally separate itself from its past, so can a Christian
Church; for it depends only on the living Christ in heaven, the Divine
Spirit present upon earth, and the inspired word of God. But the Church
of Christendom is united to its Buddha by a chain that reaches back through
all the centuries of our era, and if one link be broken the chain is destroyed.
And if, remembering
all this, we ask the way of life, we shall get answer, “Submission
to the Church.” And when we press the inquiry and ask, What is submission?
we shall be told, “Not the profession of Catholic doctrines, but
obedience to the voice of the Shepherd.” For “the sheep hear
the voice of their Shepherd and they follow Him. He chooses the pastures;
He leads His
196
sheep into them. The relations of sheep and Shepherd correspond to those
of disciple and Teacher. And hence it is clear that no one ought to be
received into the Catholic Church unless he comes into the fold through
the gate, of which Peter the Chief Shepherd is the Keeper.”
The words are
Cardinal Vaughan’s. Referring to the difficulties and prejudices
which have to be overcome, he proceeds: “Now, instead of entering
into a maze of objections, into a labyrinth of difficulties, a shorter
and more satisfactory course should be taken. Find the Divine Teacher,
find the Supreme Shepherd, find the Vicar of Christ. Concentrate all your
mental and moral faculties upon finding the Head of God's Church upon
earth. This is the key to the situation.”[17]
[17]
“The Primitive Church and the See of Peter.” Preface.
The daring
profanity of this is accentuated by the use of capital letters, which
lead the reader to suppose that the Divine titles so familiar to the student
of Scripture refer to his Divine Lord. But he is startled and shocked
to find that they are applied to an Italian priest, whose claim to them
is, as we have seen, no better than that
197
of the incarnate fiends of eternally infamous memory, who ruled the Church
of Rome in other days.
Nothing ever
penned by Edmund Burke has been more often challenged than the statement
in the most brilliant passage of the most brilliant of his treatises,
that “vice itself lost half its evil in losing all its grossness.”
By parity of reasoning it might perhaps be urged that the superstitions
of Christendom are less degrading than those of Pagan cults. But the true
contrast is between human superstitions on the one hand, and Christianity
on the other. And this explodes the fallacy of Macaulay's well-known problem
“Whether England owes more to the Roman Catholic religion or to
the Reformation.”[18] “For
political and intellectual freedom,” the historian goes on to say,
“and for all the blessings which political and intellectual freedom
brought in their train, she is chiefly indebted to the great rebellion
of the laity against the priesthood.” This is her debt to the Reformation.
To the Church of Rome she owes it that the dawning of that bright
198
day was delayed for centuries; that by her hideous cruelties, and the
debasing influence of her teaching, the chains were riveted which at last
made that “rebellion” a necessity.
[18]
“History of England,” chap. i.
It is commonly
assumed that religion, if earnest and sincere, must be pleasing to God
and a benefit to men. But Scripture and history combine to refute such
an error. The religious zeal of those who crucified the Lord was altogether
exemplary. Nor was religion with them what it has so often proved in the
history of Christendom—a
mere cloak for immorality. In the terrible denunciations of the Pharisees,
which fell from the lips of Christ Himself, the secret sinfulness of their
hearts was exposed, but there was not a word to justify the charge that
they were outwardly immoral. Nor was any such reproach ever cast upon
them by the great apostle who had been trained in their school, and whose
knowledge of their lives was intimate and full. “I bear them witness,”
he declared, “that they have a zeal for God.”[19]
And if such men were branded by the Lord Himself as a “generation
199
of vipers,” “children of hell,” and farther from the
kingdom than publicans and harlots, why should we doubt that there are
men among us to-day of scrupulous morality and intense religious zeal,
who, like them, are “children of hell,” and farther from the
kingdom than the openly dishonest and impure?
[19]
Rom. x. 2.
The religion
of Christendom has so lowered the standard of morals that morality has
come to mean no more than freedom from one special lust. But God makes
no such distinction between sins; and even men of the world have often
juster thoughts. It was not thus that John Stuart Mill used the word when
recording how his father taught him to regard religion as “the greatest
enemy of morality.”[20]
The indictment is a terrible one; but in the light of notorious facts,
who can resist the charge, inspired though it be by the bitterest prejudice?
[20]
“Autobiography,” p. 40.
From the murder
of Abel to the supreme tragedy of Calvary, and down through the ages to
these days of Armenian massacres and Mahdist horrors, religion has been
the fruitful
200
cause of more wickedness and hate and cruelty and bloodshed, than all
the common lusts and vices of humanity. These lusts and vices have degraded
men to the level of the brute, but religion has changed them into fiends.[21]
Hence it is that in every age religion has been the most implacable enemy
of God, the most relentless persecutor of His people.
[21]
The following is Hume's account of the massacre of the Protestants in
Ireland in 1641: “But death was the lightest punishment inflicted
by these rebels. All the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise, all
the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair,
could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelty derived
from no cause. To enter into particulars would shock the least delicate
humanity. Such enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear
almost incredible. Amidst all these enormities the sacred name of RELIGION
resounded on every side, not to stop the hands of these murderers, but
to enforce their blows, and to steel their hearts against every movement
of human or social sympathy.” This quotation is specially apt at
a time when certain politicians are seeking to hinder the nation from
giving too long deferred honour to the memory of the great man who, in
1649, meted out well-deserved punishment to the authors and abettors of
these crimes.
“It cannot
be,” the Lord exclaimed, “that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem!”
With common men the prophet's mantle would insure immunity from outrage.
Religion it was that
201
made it the outward badge and emblem of martyrdom. “Which of the
prophets did not your fathers persecute?” was the martyr Stephen's
scathing charge against the religious leaders of his people—”They
killed them which showed before of the coming of the Righteous One, of
whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers.” Religion it
was that crucified the Lord of Glory, and stoned His faithful servant.[22]
Religion inspired the persecutions even of Pagan Rome. For though in the
case of a monster like Nero it was no more than a cloak for his infamies,
in the case of emperors of a different type it was the genuine motive
of their cruelties.
[22]
It was the Lord’s misinterpreted words about the temple which most
excited the malignity of the religious Jews (Mark xiv. 58, xv. 29). Stephen
received a patient hearing until referring to Isaiah's words he declared
that God did not dwell “in temples made with hands” (Acts
vii. 48). This evidently provoked an outburst of opposition which led
to his breaking off his narrative, and launching the rebuke of verses
51-53. Just as in the case of Paul, the declaration that he had been charged
to preach to the Gentiles so exasperated his hearers that in a frenzy
of passion they exclaimed, “Away with such a fellow from the earth;
for it is not fit that he should live.” And but for the intervention
of the Roman power they would have murdered him then and there (Acts xxii.
21-24). Such is religion!
202
Nor will it avail to plead that theirs was a heathen cult. It is matter
of common knowledge, astounding though the fact may be, that the persecutions
of the Christian centuries, perpetrated in the name of the Christian
religion, equal in fiendish malignity and cruelty the atrocities of Pagan
Rome. As a matter of fact, in the case of such men as Trajan and Marcus
Aurelius, persecution was not the outcome of malignity at all. The State
required that every man should have a religion. But Christianity had not
yet degenerated into a religion, and so the Christians ranked as Atheists,
and they were punished accordingly.[23]
Christianity was aggressive. It proclaimed a revelation, and inculcated
a faith, that drew away men from all religions. It thus came to be regarded
as an enemy to religion; and rightly so. Religion therefore became the
enemy of Christianity. Such it has ever been. As Renan tersely puts it,
the temple has always been anti-Christian.
[23]
This accusation is mentioned by both Justin (“Apol.” i., 5,
16) and Tertullian (“Apol.” x.). And Eusebius records that
when the Roman pro-consul called upon Polycarp to renounce his fellowship
with Christians, he did so in the words, “Repent: say, 'Away with
the Atheists.'”
203
But here mark the contrast. In his famous letter to Pliny, Trajan enjoined
upon his proconsul not officiously to press inquiries concerning the Christians,
and on no account to receive charges made against them by informers. How
different this from the spirit and the methods of the persecutions inspired
by the so-called Christian Church in the name of Christ! In the passage
already quoted, Mill goes on to say that a hundred times he heard his
father declare that the Christian's God was “the most perfect conception
of wickedness which the human mind can devise.” And if the Christian's
God be the god of “the historic Church”—the
god of the religion of Christendom, is not this true?
If the judgment
which we mete out to men in other spheres is to be applied in this, and
guilt is to be measured by enlightenment and privileges neglected and
abused, the Church of Christendom stands out as the most hideous impersonation
of evil which the world has ever known. “No means came amiss to
it, sword or stake, torture chamber or assassin's dagger. The effects
of the Church's working were seen in ruined nations and smoking
204
cities, in human beings tearing one another to pieces, like raging maniacs,
and the honour of the Creator of the world befouled by the hideous crimes
committed in His name. All this is forgotten now,” the writer here
quoted sorrowfully adds—“forgotten,
or even audaciously denied.”[24]
[24]
Froude's “Council of Trent,” p. 301.
We judge of
a Pagan god by the acts of his worshippers, committed in his name and
in his honour. Let us be consistent and fair, and apply the same test
here; and instead of denouncing Mill as a coarse blasphemer, we shall
hang our heads as we deplore the ignorance which confounds the god of
Christendom with the Christian's God, and the Buddha of Christendom with
the Christ of the New Testament.
The god of
Christendom is a god who can own as his specially accredited agents and
ministers men whose lives were marked by immoralities and crimes so flagrant
and so shameful that the record of them here would render these pages
unfit for the eyes of the innocent and pure; a god who can sanction and
bless atrocities as hideous and hateful as any that we associate with
the names of Nero
205
and Diocletian; or, in these last days, with such names as Armenia, Benin,
the Soudan. With all the passion of which we are capable we protest against
the blasphemy of confounding this god with the God of the Bible: and if
the Christ of “the historic Church” is here described as “the
Buddha of Christendom,” the words are used with an unfeigned apology
to the disciples of Gautama.
*
* *
The
preceding chapter was taken from:
THE BUDDHA OF CHRISTENDOM (revised and republished in 1908 as The
Bible or the Church?)
by Sir Robert Anderson.
Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1899.
No copyright. Public domain.
The Buddha of Christendom, Chapter 12
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