objection to the Christian system that it is a system formed for human beings. Of the puzzles of the Academy there is not one which does not apply as strongly to Deism as to Christianity, and to Atheism as to Deism. There are difficulties in everything. Yet we are sure that something must be true. LORD MACAULAY: Sadler's Refutation Refuted, Jan. 1831. Sir, in supporting the motion of my honourable friend, I am, I firmly believe, supporting the honour and the interests of the Christian religion. I should think that I insulted that religion if I said that it cannot stand unaided by intolerant laws. Without such laws it was established, and without such laws it may be maintained. It triumphed over the superstitions of the most refined and of the most savage nations, over the graceful mythology of Greece and the bloody idolatry of the Northern forests. It prevailed over the power and policy of the Roman empire. It tamed the barbarians by whom that empire was overthrown. But all these victories were gained not by the help of intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of intolerance. The whole history of Christianity proves that she has indeed little to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally. May she long continue to bless our country with her benignant influence, strong in her sublime philosophy, strong in her spotless morality, strong in those internal and external evidences to which the most powerful and comprehensive of human intellects have yielded assent, the last solace of those who have outlived every earthly hope, the last restraint of those who are raised above every earthly fear! But let us not, mistaking her character and her interests, fight the battle of truth with the weapons of error, and endeavour to support by oppression that religion which first taught the human race the great lesson of universal charity. LORD MACAULAY: Speech in House of Commons, April 17, 1833, On Jewish Disabilities. We led them [the people of India] to believe that we attached no importance to the difference between Christianity and heathenism. Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether abstain from alluding to topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician anxious for the morality and the temporal well-being of society. And, so speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to discountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice, and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and domestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave, which has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from servants and playthings into companions and friends, is to commit high treason against humanity and civil ization. LORD MACAULAY: Speech in House of Commons, March 9, 1843, On the Gates of Somnauth. Rome must be imagined in the vastness and uniformity of its social condition, the mingling and confusion of races, languages, conditions, in order to conceive the slow, imperceptible, yet continuous progress of Christianity. Amid the affairs of the universal empire, the perpetual revolutions which were constantly calling up new dynasties, or new masters over the world, the pomp and state of the imperial palace, the commerce, the business flowing in from all parts of the world, the bustle of the Basilicas or courts of law, the ordinary religious ceremonies, or the more splendid rites on signal occasions, which still went on, if with diminishing concourse of worshippers, with their old sumptuousness, magnificence, and frequency, the public games, the theatres, the gladiatorial shows, the Lucullan or Apician banquets, Christianity was gradually withdrawing from the heterogeneous mass some of all orders, even slaves, out of the vices, the ignorance, the misery, of that corrupted social system. It was instilling humanity, yet unknown, or coldly commended by an impotent philosophy, among men and women whose infant ears had been habituated to the shrieks of dying gladiators; it was giving dignity to minds prostrated by years, almost centuries, of degrading despotism; it was nurturing purity and modesty of manners in an unspeakable state of deprivation; it was enshrining the marriage-bed in a sanctity long almost entirely lost, and rekindling to a steady warmth the domestic affections; it was substituting a simple, calm, and rational faith and worship for the worn-out superstitions of heathenism; gently establishing in the soul of man the sense of immortality till it became a natural and inextinguishable part of his moral being. MILMAN: Latin Christianity, i. 26. He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised, and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. MILTON. Christianity bears all the marks of a divine original: it came down from heaven, and its gracious purpose is to carry us up thither. Its author is God; it was foretold by the beginning from prophecies, which grew clearer and brighter as they approached the period of their accomplishment. It was confirmed by miracles, which continued till the religion they illustrated was established. It was ratified by the blood of its author; its doctrines are pure, sublime, consistent; its precepts just and holy; its worship is spiritual; its service reasonable, and rendered practicable by the offers of divine aid to human weakness. It is sanctioned by the promise of eternal happiness to the faithful, and the threat of everlasting misery to the disobedient. It had no collusion with power, for power sought to crush it; it could not be in any league with the world, for it set out by declaring itself the enemy of the world; it reprobated its maxims, it showed the vanity of its glories, the danger of its riches, the emptiness of its pleasures. This religion does not consist in external conformity to practices which, though right in themselves, may be adopted from human motives, and to answer secular purposes; it is not a religion of forms, and modes, and decencies; it is being transformed into the image of God; it is being likeminded with Christ; it is considering Him as our sanctification, as well as our redemption; it is endeavouring to live to Him here, that we may live with Him hereafter. HANNAH MORE. The propagation of Christianity, in the manner and under the circumstances in which it was propagated, is an unique in the history of the species. PALEY. Lactantius also argues in defence of the religion from the consistency, simplicity, disinterestedness and sufferings of the Christian historians. PALEY. We live in the midst of blessings till we are utterly insensible of their greatness, and of the source from whence they flow. We speak of our civilization, our arts, our freedom, our laws, and forget entirely how large a share is due to Christianity. Blot Christianity out of the pages of man's history, and what would his laws have been?-what his civilization? Christianity is mixed up with our very being and our daily life: there is not a familiar object around us which does not wear a different aspect because the light of Christian love is on it; not a law which does not owe its truth and gentleness to Christianity; not a custom which cannot be traced in all its holy, healthful parts to the Gospel. JUDGE SIR J. A. PARK. Christianity forbids no necessary occupations, no reasonable indulgences, no innocent relaxations. It allows us to use the world, provided we do not abuse it. It does not spread before us a delicious banquet, and then come with a "touch not, taste not, handle not." All it requires is, that our liberty degenerate not into licentiousness, our amusements into dissipation, our industry into incessant toil, our carefulness into extreme anxiety and endless solicitude. So far from forbidding us to engage in business, it expressly commands us not to be slothful in it, and to labour with our hands for the things that be needful; it enjoins every one to abide in the calling wherein he was called, and perform all the duties of it. It even stigmatizes those that provide not for their own, with telling them that they are worse than infidels. When it requires us to "be temperate in all things," it plainly tells us that we may use all things temperately; when it directs us to "make our moderation known unto all men," this evidently implies that, within the bounds of moderation, we may enjoy all the reasonable conveniences and comforts of the present life. BISHOP PORteus. Our religion is a religion that dares to be understood; that offers itself to the search of the inquisitive, to the inspection of the severest and the most awakened reason; for, being secure of her substantial truth and purity, she knows that for her to be seen and looked into is to be embraced and admired; as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light than to see it. SOUTH. The Christian religion is the only means that God has sanctified to set fallen man upon his legs again, to clarify his reason, and to rectify his will. SOUTH. It is owing to the forbidding and unlovely constraint with which men of low conceptions act when they think they conform themselves to religion, as well as to the more odious conduct of hypocrites, that the word Christian does not carry with it at first view all that is great, worthy, friendly, generous, and heroic. The man who suspends his hopes of the reward of worthy actions till after death, who can bestow unseen, who can overlook hatred, do good to his slanderer, who can never be angry at his friend, never revengeful to his enemy, is certainly formed for the benefit of society. Yet these are so far from heroic virtues, that they are but the ordinary duties of a Christian. SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 356. If Christianity were once abolished, how could the free thinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject so calculated, in all points, whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject! We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left. . . . For had an hun dred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion. SWIFT: Argument against Abolishing Christianity. He is a good man who grieves rather for him that injures him than for his own suffering; who prays for him who wrongs him, forgiving all his faults; who sooner shows mercy than anger; who offers violence to his appetite in all things; endeavouring to subdue the flesh to the spirit. This is an excellent abbreviature of the whole duty of a Christian. JEREMY TAYLOR: Guide to Devotion. Christianity came into the world with the greatest simplicity of thought and language, as well as life and manners, holding forth nothing but piety, charity, and humility, with the belief of the Messiah and of his kingdom. The pure and benign light of revelation has had a meliorating influence on mankind. WASHINGTON. It is the peculiar nature of the inestimable treasure of Christian truth and religious knowledge, that the more it is withheld from people, the less they wish for it; and the more is bestowed upon them, the more they hunger and thirst after it. If people are kept upon a short allowance of food, they are eager to obtain it; if you keep a man thirsty, he will become the more and more thirsty; if he is poor, he is exceedingly anxious to become rich; but if he is and still more his children, cease to feel it, and left in a state of spiritual destitution, he will, cease to care about it. It is the last want men can be trusted (in the first instance) to supply for themselves. WHATELY: Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Plantations. Christianity cannot be improved, but men's views and estimates and comprehension of Christianity may be indefinitely improved. WHATELY. To believe in Christianity, without knowing why we believe it, is not Christian faith, but blind credulity. WHATELY. The main distinction between real Christianity and the system of the bulk of nominal Christians chiefly consists in the different place which is assigned in the two schemes to the peculiar doc. trines of the Gospel. These, in the scheme of nominal Christians, if admitted at all, appear but like the stars of the firmament to the ordinary eye. Those splendid luminaries draw forth, perhaps, occasionally a transient expression of admiration when we behold their beauty, or hear of their distances, magnitudes, or properties; now and then, too, we are led, perhaps, to muse upon their possible uses; but, however curious as subjects of speculation, it must, after all, be confessed they twinkle to the common observer with a vain and idle lustre; and except in the dreams of the astrologer have no influence on human happiness, or any concern with the course and order of the world. But to the real Christian, on the contrary, these peculiar doctrines constitute the centre to which he gravitates! the very sun of his system! the origin of all that is excellent and lovely! the source of light, and life, and motion, and genial warmth, and plastic energy! Dim is the light of reason, and cold and comfortless our state while left to her unassisted guidance. Even the Old Testament itbut with feeble and scanty rays. But the blessed self, though a revelation from Heaven, shines truths of the Gospel are now unveiled to our eyes, and we are called upon to behold and to enjoy "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ," in the full radiance of its meridian splendour. The words of inspiration best express our highly-favoured state: " We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." WILBERFORCE. Since the revelation of Christianity all moral thought has been sanctified by religion. Religion has given to it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity which even amongst the noblest of the heathen we shall look for in vain. The knowledge that shone by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates and Plato," that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over many lands into the "huts where poor men lie;" and thoughts are familiar there, beneath the low and smoking roofs, higher far than ever flowed from Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his pillared temples. PROFESSOR JOHN WILSON: Recreations of Christopher North. There are two considerations upon which my faith in Christ is built as upon a rock: the fall of man, the redemption of man, and the resurrection of man, the three cardinal doctrines of our religion, are such as human ingenuity could never have invented; therefore they must be divine. The other argument is this: If the prophecies have been fulfilled (of which there is abundant demonstration), the Scripture must be the Word of God; and if the Scripture is the Word of God, Christianity must be true. DR. EDWARD YOUNG, THE POET: Cowper to Lady Hesketh, July 12, 1765. The service of God in the solemn assembly of the saints is a work, though easy, yet withal very weighty, and of great respect. HOOKER. Then are the public duties of religion best ordered when the militant church doth resemble by sensible means that hidden dignity and glory wherewith the church triumphant in heaven is beautified. HOOKER. Churches have names; some as memorials of peace, some of wisdom, some in memory of the Trinity itself, some of Christ under sundry titles; of the blessed Virgin not a few; many of one apostle, saint, or martyr; many of all. HOOKER. Christ could not suffer that the temple should serve for a place of mart, nor the apostle of Christ that the church should be made an inn. HOOKER. Manifest it is, that the very majesty and holiness of the place where God is worshipped hath, in regard to us, great virtue, force, and efficacy; for that it serveth as a sensible help to stir up devotion. HOOKER. When neither the evidence of any law divine, nor the strength of any invincible argument otherwise found out by the law of reason, nor any notable public inconvenience, doth make against that which our own laws ecclesiastical have instituted for the ordering of these affairs, the very authority of the church itself sufficeth. HOOKER. It is no more disgrace to Scripture to have left things free to be ordered by the church, than for Nature to have left it to the wit of man to devise his own attire. HOOKER. Everywhere throughout all generations and ages of the Christian world no church ever perceived the Word of God to be against it. HOOKER. The church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of which we read in the book of Genesis; but never was the resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she rode alone, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bear ing within her that feeble germ from which a second and more glorious civilization was to spring. LORD MACAULAY: History of England. We do not see that while we still affect, by all means, a rigid external formality, we may as soon fall again into a gross conforming stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of "wood, hay, and stubble," forced and frozen together; which is more to the sudden degenerating of a church than many subdichotomies of petty schisms. MILTON. What means the service of the church so imperfectly and by halves read over? What makes them mince and mangle that in their practice which they could swallow whole in their subscriptions? SOUTH. After this time came on the midnight of the church, wherein the very names of the councils were forgotten, and men did only dream of what was past. STILLINGFLEet. even CHURCH AND STATE. The consecration of the state by a state religious establishment is necessary also to operate with a wholesome awe upon free citizens; because, in order to secure their freedom, they must enjoy some determinate portion of power. To them, therefore, a religion connected with the state, and with their duty towards it, becomes more necessary than in such societies where the people, by the terms of their subjection, are confined to private sentiments, and the management of their own family concerns. All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society. BURKE: Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790. Turn a Christian society into an established church, and it is no longer a voluntary assembly for the worship of God; it is a powerful corporation, full of such sentiments and passions as usually distinguish those bodies: a dread of innovation, an attachment to abuses, a propensity to tyranny and oppression. ROBERT HALL: Apology for the Freedom of the Press, Sect. V. If Mr. Gladstone has made out, as he conceives, an imperative necessity for a State Religion, much more has he made it out to be imperatively necessary that every army should, in its collective capacity, profess a religion. Is he prepared to adopt this consequence? On the morning of the 13th of August, in the year 1704, two great captains, equal in authority, united by close private and public ties, but of different creeds, prepared for a battle, on the event of which were staked the liberties of Europe. Marlborough had passed a part of the night in prayer, and before daybreak received the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. He then hastened to join | Eugene, who had probably just confessed himself to a Popish priest. The generals consulted together, formed their plan in concert, and repaired each to his own post. Marlborough gave orders for public prayers. The English chaplains read the service at the head of the English regiments. The Calvinistic chaplains of the Dutch army, with heads on which hand of Bishop had never been laid, poured forth their supplications in front of their countrymen. In the mean time the Danes might listen to their Lutheran ministers; and Capuchins might encourage the Austrian squadrons, and pray to the Virgin for a blessing on the arms of the Holy Roman Empire. The battle commences, and these men of various religions all act like members of one body. The Catholic and the Protestant general exert themselves to assist and to surpass each other. Before sunset the Empire is saved. France has lost in a day the fruits of eighty years of intrigue and of victory. And the allies, after conquering together, return | thanks to God separately, each after his own form of worship. Now, is this practical atheism? Would any man in his senses say, that, because the allied army had unity of action and a common interest, and because a heavy responsibility lay on its chief, it was therefore imperatively necessary that the army should, as an army, have one established religion, that Eugene should be deprived of his command for being a Catholic, that all the Dutch and Austrian colonels should be broken for not subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles? Certainly not. The most ignorant grenadier on the field of battle would have seen the absurdity of such a proposition. "I know," he would have said, "that the Prince of Savoy goes to mass, and that our Corporal John cannot abide it; but what has the mass to do with the taking of the village of Blenheim ? The prince wants to beat the French, and so does Corporal John. If we stand by each other we shall most likely beat them. If we send all the Papists and Dutch away, Tallard will have imagine, would admit that our honest grenadier every man of us." Mr. Gladstone himself, we would have the best of the argument; and if so, what follows? Even this: that all Mr. Glad stone's general principles about power, and responsibility, and personality, and conjoint action, must be given up; and that, if his theory is to stand at all, must stand on some other foundation. LORD MACAULAY: Gladstone on Church and State, April, 1839. When Mr. Gladstone wishes to prove that the government ought to establish and endow a religion, and to fence it with a Test Act, government is rò iv in the moral world. Those who would confine it to secular ends take a low view of its nature. A religion must be attached to its agency; and this religion must be that of the conscience of the governor, or none. It is for the governor to decide between Papists and Protestants, Jansenists and Molinists, Arminians and Calvinists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Sabellians and Tritheists, Homoousians and Homoiousians, Nestorians and Eutychians, Monothelites and Monophysites, Pædobaptists and Anabaptists. It is for him to rejudge the acts of Nice and Rimini, of Ephesus and Chalcedon, of Constantinople and St. John Lateran, of Trent and Dort. It is for him to arbitrate between the Greek and the Latin procession, and to determine whether that mysterious filioque shall or shall not have a place in the national creed. When he has made up his mind, he is to tax the whole community in order to pay people to teach his opinion, whatever it may be. He is to rely on his own judgment, though it may be opposed to that of nine-tenths of the society. He is to act on his own judgment, at the risk of exciting the most formidable discontents. He is to inflict perhaps on a great majority of the population, what, whether Mr. Gladstone may choose to call it persecution or not, will always be felt as persecution by those who suffer it. He is, on account of differences often too slight for vulgar comprehension, to deprive the |