Theological Essays and Other Papers v1

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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY

AUTHOR OF

'CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,' ETC. ETC.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT

PROTESTANTISM

ON THE SUPPOSED SCRIPTURAL EXPRESSION FOR ETERNITY

JUDAS ISCARIOT

ON HUME'S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES

CASUISTRY

GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS

ON CHRISTIANITY, AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT.

[1846.]

FORCES, which are illimitable in their compass of effect, are often,
for the same reason, obscure and untraceable in the steps of their
movement. Growth, for instance, animal or vegetable, what eye can
arrest its eternal increments? The hour-hand of a watch, who can
detect the separate fluxions of its advance? Judging by the past,
and the change which is registered between that and the present, we
know that it must be awake; judging by the immediate appearances,
we should say that it was always asleep. Gravitation, again, that
works without holiday for ever, and searches every corner of the
universe, what intellect can follow it to its fountains? And yet,
shyer than gravitation, less to be counted than the fluxions of
sun-dials, stealthier than the growth of a forest, are the footsteps
of Christianity amongst the political workings of man. Nothing,
that the heart of man values, is so secret; nothing is so potent.

It is _because_ Christianity works so secretly, that it works
so potently; it is _because_ Christianity burrows and hides
itself, that it towers above the clouds; and hence partly it is
that its working comes to be misapprehended, or even lost out of
sight. It is dark to eyes touched with the films of human frailty:
but it is 'dark with excessive bright.'[Footnote: 'Dark with
excessive bright.' _Paradise Lost_. Book III.] Hence it has
happened sometimes that minds of the highest order have entered
into enmity with the Christian faith, have arraigned it as a curse
to man, and have fought against it even upon Christian impulses,
(impulses of benignity that could not have had a birth except in
Christianity.) All comes from the labyrinthine intricacy in which
the _social_ action of Christianity involves itself to the
eye of a contemporary. Simplicity the most absolute is reconcilable
with intricacy the most elaborate. The weather--how simple would
appear the laws of its oscillations, if we stood at their centre!
and yet, because we do _not_, to this hour the weather is a
mystery. Human health--how transparent is its economy under ordinary
circumstances! abstinence and cleanliness, labor and rest, these
simple laws, observed in just proportions, laws that may be engrossed
upon a finger nail, are sufficient, on the whole, to maintain the
equilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once that equilibrium
is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough to rectify
the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of planetary
motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be convinced
that the distortion is in the eye which beholds, not in the object
beheld. Let a planet be wheeling with heavenly science, upon arches
of divine geometry: suddenly, to us, it shall appear unaccountably
retrograde; flying when none pursues; and unweaving its own work.
Let this planet in its utmost elongations travel out of sight, and
for _us_ its course will become incoherent: because _our_
sight is feeble, the beautiful curve of the planet shall be dislocated
into segments, by a parenthesis of darkness; because our earth is
in no true centre, the disorder of parallax shall trouble the laws
of light; and, because we ourselves are wandering, the heavens
shall seem fickle.

Exactly in the predicament of such a planet is Christianity: its
motions are intermingled with other motions; crossed and thwarted,
eclipsed and disguised, by counter-motions in man himself, and by
disturbances that man cannot overrule. Upon lines that are direct,
upon curves that are circuitous, Christianity is advancing for ever;
but from our imperfect vision, or from our imperfect opportunities
for applying even such a vision, we cannot trace it continuously. We
lose it, we regain it; we see it doubtfully, we see it interruptedly;
we see it in collision, we see it in combination; in collision
with darkness that confounds, in combination with cross lights
that perplex. And this in part is irremediable; so that no finite
intellect will ever retrace the total curve upon which Christianity
has moved, any more than eyes that are incarnate will ever see God.

But part of this difficulty in unweaving the maze, has its source
in a misconception of the original machinery by which Christianity
moved, and of the initial principle which constituted its differential
power. In books, at least, I have observed one capital blunder
upon the relations which Christianity bears to Paganism: and out
of that one mistake, grows a liability to others, upon the possible
relations of Christianity to the total drama of this world. I will
endeavor to explain my views. And the reader, who takes any interest
in the subject, will not need to fear that the explanation should
prove tedious; for the mere want of space, will put me under a
coercion to move rapidly over the ground; I cannot be diffuse; and,
as regards quality, he will find in this paper little of what is
scattered over the surface of books.

I begin with this question:--What do people mean in a Christian
land by the word _'religion?'_ My purpose is not to propound
any metaphysical problem; I wish only, in the plainest possible
sense, to ask, and to have an answer, upon this one point--how
much is understood by that obscure term,* _'religion,'_ when
used by a Christian? Only I am punctilious upon one demand, viz.,
that the answer shall be comprehensive. We are apt in such cases
to answer elliptically, omitting, because silently presuming as
understood between us, whatever _seems_ obvious. To prevent
_that_, we will suppose the question to be proposed by an
emissary from some remote planet,--who, knowing as yet absolutely
nothing of us and our intellectual differences, must insist (as
_I_ insist) upon absolute precision, so that nothing essential
shall be wanting, and nothing shall be redundant.

*[Footnote: '_That obscure term;_'--i. e. not obscure as
regards the use of the term, or its present value, but as regards
its original _genesis_, or what in civil law is called the
_deductio_. Under what angle, under what aspect, or relation,
to the field which it concerns did the term _religion_ originally
come forward? The general field, overlooked by religion, is the
ground which lies between the spirit of man and the supernatural
world. At present, under the humblest conception of religion, the
human spirit is supposed to be interested in such a field by the
conscience and the nobler affections, But I suspect that originally
these great faculties were absolutely excluded from the point of
view. Probably the relation between spiritual _terrors_ and
man's power of propitiation, was the problem to which the word
_religion_ formed the answer. Religion meant apparently, in
the infancies of the various idolatries, that _latreia_, or
service of sycophantic fear, by which, as the most approved method
of approach, man was able to conciliate the favor, or to buy off
the malice of supernatural powers. In all Pagan nations, it is
probable that religion would, an the whole, be a degrading influence;
although I see, even for such nations, two cases, at the least,
where the uses of a religion would be indispensable; viz. for the
sanction of _oaths_, and as a channel for gratitude not pointing
to a human object. If so, the answer is easy: religion _was_
degrading: but heavier degradations would have arisen from irreligion.
The noblest of all idolatrous peoples, viz. the Romans, have left
deeply scored in their very use of their word _religlo_, their
testimony to the degradation wrought by any religion that Paganism
could yield. Rarely indeed is this word employed, by a Latin author,
in speaking of an individual, without more or less of sneer. Reading
that word, in a Latin book, we all try it and ring it, as a petty
shopkeeper rings a half-crown, before we venture to receive it as
offered in good faith and loyalty. Even the Greeks are nearly in
the same άπορια, when they wish to speak of religiosity in
a spirit of serious praise. Some circuitous form, commending the
correctness of a man, περι τα θεια, _in respect of
divine things_, becomes requisite; for all the direct terms,
expressing the religious temper, are preoccupied by a taint of
scorn. The word όσιος, means _pious_,--not as regards
the gods, but as regards the dead; and even είσεβης, though
not used sneeringly, is a world short of our word 'religious.' This
condition of language we need not wonder at: the language of life
must naturally receive, as in a mirror, the realities of life.
Difficult it is to maintain a just equipoise in any moral habits,
but in none so much as in habits of religious demeanor under a Pagan
[that is, a degrading] religion. To be a coward, is base: to be a
sycophant, is base: but to be a sycophant in the service of cowardice,
is the perfection of baseness: and yet this was the brief analysis
of a devotee amongst the ancient Romans. Now, considering that
the word _religion_ is originally Roman, [probably from the
Etruscan,] it seems probable that it presented the idea of religion
under some one of its bad aspects. Coleridge must quite have forgotten
this Paganism of the word, when he suggested as a plausible idea,
that originally it had presented religion under the aspect of
a coercion or restraint. Morality having been viewed as the prime
restraint or obligation resting upon man, then Coleridge thought that
religion might have been viewed as a _religatio_, a reiterated
restraint, or secondary obligation. This is ingenious, but it
will not do. It is cracked in the ring. Perhaps as many as three
objections might be mustered to such a derivation: but the last of
the three is conclusive. The ancients never _did_ view morality
as a mode of obligation: I affirm this peremptorily; and with the
more emphasis, because there are great consequences suspended upon
that question.]

What, then, is religion? Decomposed into its elements, as they are
found in Christianity, how many _powers_ for acting on the
heart of man, does, by possibility, this great agency include?
According to my own view, four.[Footnote: there are _six_,
in one sense, of religion: viz. 5_thly_, corresponding moral
affections; 6_thly_, a suitable life. But this applies to
religion as _subjectively possessed_ by a man, not to religion
as _objectively contemplated_. ] I will state them, and number
them.

1st. A form of worship, a _cultus_.

2dly. An idea of God; and (pointing the analysis to Christianity
in particular) an idea not purified merely from ancient pollutions,
but recast and absolutely born again.

3dly. An idea of the relation which man occupies to God: and of
this idea also, when Christianity is the religion concerned, it
must be said, that it is so entirely remodelled, as in no respect
to resemble any element in any other religion. Thus far we are
reminded of the poet's expression, 'Pure religion _breathing_
household laws;' that is, not _teaching_ such laws, not formally
_prescribing_ a new economy of life, so much as _inspiring_
it indirectly through a new atmosphere surrounding all objects with
new attributes. But there is also in Christianity,

4thly. A _doctrinal_ part, a part directly and explicitly occupied
with _teaching_; and this divides into two great sections, α,
A system of ethics so absolutely new as to be untranslatable[Footnote:
This is not generally perceived. On the contrary, people are ready
to say, 'Why, so far from it, the very earliest language in which
the Gospels appeared, excepting only St. Matthew's, was the Greek.'
Yes, reader; but _what_ Greek? Had not the Greeks been, for
a long time, colonizing Syria under princes of Grecian blood,--had
not the Greek language (as a _lingua Hellenistica_) become
steeped in Hebrew ideas,--no door of communication could have been
opened between the new world of Christian feeling, and the old
world so deaf to its music. Here, therefore, we may observe two
preparations made secretly by Providence for receiving Christianity
and clearing the road before it; first, the diffusion of the Greek
language through the whole civilized world (ή οίχονμεγη)
some time before Christ, by which means the Evangelists found
wings, as it were, for flying abroad through the kingdoms of the
earth; secondly, the Hebraizing of this language, by which means
the Evangelists found a new material made plastic and obedient to
these new ideas, which they had to build with, and which they had
to build upon.] into either of the classical languages; and, β, A
system of mysteries; as, for instance, the mystery of the Trinity,
of the Divine Incarnation, of the Atonement, of the Resurrection,
and others.

Here are great elements; and now let me ask, how many of these
are found in the Heathen religion of Greece and Rome? This is an
important question; it being my object to show that no religion
but the Christian, and precisely through some one or two of its
_differential_ elements, could have been an organ of political
movement.

Most divines who anywhere glance at this question, are here found
in, what seems to me, the deepest of errors. Great theologians are
they, and eminent philosophers, who have presumed that (as a matter
of course) all religions, however false, are introductory to some
scheme of morality, however imperfect. They grant you that the
morality is oftentimes unsound; but still, they think that some
morality there must have been, or else for what purpose was the
religion? This I pronounce error.

All the moral theories of antiquity were utterly disjoined from
religion. But this fallacy of a dogmatic or doctrinal part in Paganism
is born out of Anachronism. It is the anachronism of unconsciously
reflecting back upon the ancient religions of darkness, and as if
essential to _all_ religions, features that never were suspected
as possible, until they had been revealed in Christianity.[Footnote: Once
for all, to save the trouble of continual repetitions, understand
Judaism to be commemorated jointly with Christianity; the dark root
together with the golden fruitage; whenever the nature of the case
does not presume a contradistinction of the one to the other.]
Religion, in the eye of a Pagan, had no more relation to morals,
than it had to ship-building or trigonometry. But, then, why was
religion honored amongst Pagans? How did it ever arise? What was
its object? Object! it _had_ no object; if by this you mean
ulterior object. Pagan religion arose in no motive, but in an
impulse. Pagan religion aimed at no distant prize ahead: it fled
from a danger immediately behind. The gods of the Pagans were wicked
natures; but they were natures to be feared, and to be propitiated;
for they were fierce, and they were moody, and (as regarded man
who had no wings) they were powerful. Once accredited as facts,
the Pagan gods could not be regarded as other than terrific facts;
and thus it was, that in terror, blind terror, as against power
in the hands of divine wickedness, arose the ancient religions of
Paganism. Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because
Olympus was cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were
the most lawless of Thugs, the human being became the most abject
of sycophants.

Had the religions of Paganism arisen teleologically; that is, with a
view to certain purposes, to certain final causes ahead; had they
grown out of _forward_-looking views, contemplating, for
instance, the furthering of civilization, or contemplating some
interests in a world beyond the present, there would probably have
arisen, concurrently, a section in all such religions, dedicated
to positive instruction. There would have been a _doctrinal_
part. There might have been interwoven with the ritual or worship,
a system of economics, or a code of civil prudence, or a code
of health, or a theory of morals, or even a secret revelation of
mysterious relations between man and the Deity: all which existed
in Judaism. But, as the case stood, this was impossible. The gods
were mere odious facts, like scorpions or rattlesnakes, having no
moral aspects whatever; public nuisances; and bearing no relation
to man but that of capricious tyrants. First arising upon a basis
of terror, these gods never subsequently enlarged that basis;
nor sought to enlarge it. All antiquity contains no hint of a
possibility that _love_ could arise, as by any ray mingling
with the sentiments in a human creature towards a Divine one; not
even sycophants ever pretended to _love_ the gods.

Under this original peculiarity of Paganism, there arose two
consequences, which I will mark by the Greek letters α and β.
The latter I will notice in its order, first calling the reader's
attention to the consequence marked α, which is this:--In the
full and profoundest sense of the word _believe_, the pagans
could not be said to believe in _any_ gods: but, in the
ordinary sense, they did, and do, and must believe, in _all_
gods. As this proposition will startle some readers, and is yet
closely involved in the main truth which I am now pressing, viz.
the meaning and effect of a simple _cultus_, as distinguished
from a high doctrinal religion, let us seek an illustration from
our Indian empire. The Christian missionaries from home, when first
opening their views to Hindoos, describe themselves as laboring
to prove that Christianity is a true religion, and as either
asserting, or leaving it to be inferred, that, on that assumption,
the Hindoo religion is a false one. But the poor Hindoo never
dreamed of doubting that the Christian was a true religion; nor
will he at all infer, from your religion being true, that his own
must be false. Both are true, he thinks: all religions are true;
all gods are true gods; and all are _equally_ true. Neither can
he understand what you mean by a false religion, or how a religion
_could_ be false; and he is perfectly right. Wherever religions
consist only of a worship, as the Hindoo religion does, there can
be no competition amongst them as to truth. _That_ would be
an absurdity, not less nor other than it would be for a Prussian
to denounce the Austrian emperor, or an Austrian to denounce the
Prussian king, as a false sovereign. False! _How_ false? In
what sense false? Surely not as non-existing. But at least, (the
reader will reply,) if the religions contradict each other, one
of them _must_ be false. Yes; but _that_ is impossible.
Two religions cannot contradict each other, where both contain only
a _cultus_: they could come into collision only by means of a
doctrinal, or directly affirmative part, like those of Christianity
and Mahometanism. But this part is what no idolatrous religion
ever had, or will have. The reader must not understand me to mean
that, merely as a compromise of courtesy, two professors of different
idolatries would agree to recognise each other. Not at all. The
truth of one does not imply the falsehood of the other. Both are
true as _facts:_ neither can be false, in any higher sense,
because neither makes any pretence to truth doctrinal.

This distinction between a religion having merely a worship, and a
religion having also a body of doctrinal truth, is familiar to the
Mahometans; and they convey the distinction by a very appropriate
expression. Those majestic religions, (as they esteem them,) which
rise above the mere pomps and tympanies of ceremonial worship, they
denominate '_religions of the book_.' There are, of such
religions, three, viz., Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism. The
first builds upon the Law and the Prophets; or, perhaps, sufficiently
upon the Pentateuch; the second upon the Gospel; the last upon the
Koran. No other religion can be said to rest upon a book; or to
need a book; or even to admit of a book. For we must not be duped
by the case where a lawgiver attempts to connect his own human
institutes with the venerable sanctions of a national religion, or
the case where a learned antiquary unfolds historically the record
of a vast mythology. Heaps of such cases, (both law and mythological
records,) survive in the Sanscrit, and in other pagan languages. But
these are books which build upon the religion, not books upon which
the religion is built. If a religion consists only of a ceremonial
worship, in that case there can be no opening for a book; because
the forms and details publish themselves daily, in the celebration
of the worship, and are traditionally preserved, from age to age,
without dependence on a book. But, if a religion has a doctrine,
this implies a revelation or message from Heaven, which cannot, in
any other way, secure the transmission of this message to future
generations, than by causing it to be registered in a book. A book,
therefore, will be convertible with a doctrinal religion:--no book,
no doctrine; and, again, no doctrine, no book.

Upon these principles, we may understand that second consequence
(marked β) which has perplexed many men, viz., why it is that the
Hindoos, in our own times; but, equally, why it is that the Greek
and Roman idolaters of antiquity, never proselytized; no, nor could
have viewed such an attempt as rational. Naturally, if a religion
is doctrinal, any truth which it possesses, as a secret deposit
consigned to its keeping by a revelation, must be equally valid
for one man as for another, without regard to race or nation. For
a _doctrinal_ religion, therefore, to proselytize, is no more
than a duty of consistent humanity. You, the professors of that
religion, possess the medicinal fountains. You will not diminish
your own share by imparting to others. What churlishness, if you
should grudge to others a health which does not interfere with
your own! Christians, therefore, Mahometans, and Jews originally,
in proportion as they were sincere and conscientious, have always
invited, or even forced, the unbelieving to their own faith: nothing
but accidents of situation, local or political, have disturbed'this
effort. But, on the other hand, for a mere '_cultus_' to
attempt conversions, is nonsense. An ancient Roman could have had
no motive for bringing you over to the worship of Jupiter Capitolinus;
nor you any motive for going. 'Surely, poor man,' he would have
said, 'you have, some god of your own, who will be quite as good
for _your_ countrymen as Jupiter for mine. But, if you have
_not_, really I am sorry for your case; and a very odd case it
is: but I don't see how it could be improved by talking nonsense.
You cannot beneficially, you cannot rationally, worship a tutelary
Roman deity, unless in the character of a Roman; and a Roman you may
become, legally and politically. Being such, you will participate
in all advantages, if any there _are_, or our national religion;
and, without needing a process of conversion, either in substance
or in form. _Ipso facto_, and without any separate choice of
your own, on becoming a Roman citizen, you become a party to the
Roman worship.' For an idolatrous religion to proselytize, would,
therefore, be not only useless but unintelligible.

Now, having explained _that_ point, which is a great step
towards the final object of my paper, viz., the investigation of
the reason why Christianity _is_, which no pagan religion ever
_has_ been, an organ of political movement, I will go on to
review rapidly those four constituents of a religion, as they are
realized in Christianity, for the purpose of contrasting them with
the false shadows, or even blank negations, of these constituents
in pagan idolatries.

First, then, as to the CULTUS, or form of the national worship:--In
our Christian ritual I recognise these separate acts; viz. A, an
act of Praise; B, an act of Thanksgiving; C, an act of Confession;
D, an act of Prayer. In A, we commemorate with adoration the
_general_ perfections of the Deity. There, all of us have an
equal interest. In B, we commemorate with thankfulness those special
qualities of the Deity, or those special manifestations of them,
by which we, the individual worshippers, have recently benefited.
In C, by upright confession, we deprecate. In D, we pray, or ask
for the things which we need. Now, in the _cultus_ of the
ancient pagans, B and C (the second act and the third) were wanting
altogether. No thanksgiving ever ascended, on his own account,
from the lips of an individual; and the state thanksgiving for a
triumph of the national armies, was but a mode of ostentatiously
publishing the news. As to C, it is scarcely necessary to say
that this was wanting, when I mention that penitential feelings
were unknown amongst the ancients, and had no name; for
_pœnitentia_[Footnote: In Greek, there is a word for
repentance, but not until it had been rebaptized into a Christian
use. _Metanoia_, however, is not that word: it is grossly
to defeat the profound meaning of the New Testament, if John the
Baptist is translated as though summoning the world to _repentance_;
it was not _that_ to which he summoned them.] means _regret_,
not _penitence_; and _me pœnitet hujus facti_, means, 'I
rue this act in its consequences,' not 'I repent of this act for
its moral nature.' A and D, the first act and the last, _appear_
to be present; but are so most imperfectly. When 'God is praised
aright,' praised by means of such deeds or such attributes as express
a divine nature, we recognise one great function of a national
worship,--not otherwise. This, however, we must overlook and pardon,
as being a fault essential to the religion: the poor creatures
did the best they could to praise their god, lying under the curse
of gods so thoroughly depraved. But in D, the case is different.
Strictly speaking, the ancients never prayed; and it may be doubted
whether D approaches so near to what _we_ mean by prayer,
as even by a mockery. You read of _preces_, of αραι, &c.
and you are desirous to believe that pagan supplications were not
_always_ corrupt. It is too shocking to suppose, in thinking
of nations idolatrous yet noble, that never _any_ pure act
of approach to the heavens took place on the part of man; that
_always_ the intercourse was corrupt; _always_ doubly corrupt;
that eternally the god was bought, and the votary was sold.
Oh, weariness of man's spirit before that unresting mercenariness
in high places, which neither, when his race clamored for justice,
nor when it languished for pity, would listen without hire! How
gladly would man turn away from his false rapacious divinities to
the godlike human heart, that so often would yield pardon _before_
it was asked, and for the thousandth time that would give without
a bribe! In strict propriety, as my reader knows, the classical
Latin word for a prayer is _votum_; it was a case of contract;
of mercantile contract; of that contract which the Roman law
expressed by the formula--_Do ut des_. Vainly you came before
the altars with empty hands. "But _my_ hands are pure." Pure,
indeed! would reply the scoffing god, let me see what they contain.
It was exactly what you daily read in morning papers, viz.:--that,
in order to appear effectually before that Olympus in London, which
rains rarities upon us poor abject creatures in the provinces,
you must enclose 'an order on the Post-Office or a reference.' It
is true that a man did not always register his _votum_, (the
particular offering which he vowed on the condition of receiving
what he asked,) at the moment of asking. Ajax, for instance, prays
for light in the 'Iliad,' and he does not then and there give either
an order or a reference. But you are much mistaken, if you fancy
that even light was to be had _gratis_. It would be 'carried
to account.' Ajax would be 'debited' with that 'advance.'

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