Ecce Homo [I]112

—This is the title of a book, lately published in London, purporting to be a true history of Jesus Christ and of the Christian Religion.—In another part of this Number, the reader will find a letter upon the subject of this book; and, though I do not agree with the writer in all his opinions, I must confess, that I could wish to see the book receive an answer. It is a work possessing great literary merit. It deals more in matters of history than in matters of speculation; and exhibits to the view of a reader a great mass of information.—I am very sorry that it has not been attacked by the arm of reason instead of the arm of the law. On whose mind can such a work produce an evil impression? Certainly on the mind of no one incapable of reading and of understanding what he reads. This being taken for granted, the ready way of combatting the errors of the work is, to show / those errors to be errors, which could be no difficult matter, because the same person who read the book, would naturally read its refutation.—Whereas to suppress the work by force may lead some persons to suspect, that it is not in the power of any one to answer it. The world will naturally reason thus upon the subject: “either the work is bottomed on truth, or it is not: if the latter, it is easy to show the falsehood of it: if the former, it is hard that the author or publisher should be punished.”—For my part, I think, that a Censorship of the Press would, especially in religious matters, be preferable to what is called its freedom. If the Bishops, or any body else, had the authority to prevent certain books from being published, nobody would be exposed to suffer for publishing. Men differ very widely upon religious subjects; and, if some are to be punished for promulgating their opinions, while others are not, who knows when he is safe?—There is an Artillery Officer (I forget his name) who has lately very gallantly volunteered in defence of Christianity, in a couple of volumes, the matter of which is very weighty indeed, who says, that it was “highly necessary, that the meaning of the Scriptures should be difficult to be understood.” Admitting this fact, does it not follow, that for men to entertain different notions about it is a benefit?—But, what I think most worthy of public attention is this: that the Unitarians, or, indeed, any body else, may now by law, do as much against Christianity as the author of Ecce Homo has done, provided they do it in a certain way.—Any man may now openly deny the fact, that Christ was the Son of God.—He may openly deny, that Christ was begotten by God on the body of a Virgin, through the instrumentality of the Holy Ghost. And, what can any man do more towards the demolishing of the Christian System? The author of Ecce Homo does not deny, that there was such a person as Jesus Christ about 1800 years ago; but he denies, that he had any thing of the nature of God in him any more than the rest of us, and he makes use of reasoning and facts to induce his readers to be of this opinion.—So that, it appears to me, that the Unitarians are precisely upon the same footing with this writer; and, if men are, by law, authorized to deny the divinity of Christ, what more can the law authorize them to do; or, rather, how is it possible for them to offend against the law in writing against the Christian System? / —I said from the beginning, that Mr. Smith’s Bill was a blow at the very basis of Christianity; for, what is the basis of it? In few words, the Christian System is this:—That the Maker of all things, having, many thousands of years back, created a Man and a Woman, and placed them in a very delightful garden, told them, that they might eat of all the fruits thereof except of the fruit of one particular tree; that the Woman was tempted by the Devil to taste that forbidden fruit; that she tempted her husband to do the same; that God thereupon drove them out of the garden; that they and all their posterity did, by that act, justly incur the penalty of being burnt in fire to all eternity; that God, in his infinite mercy, found out a way of satisfying his justice without enforcing this tremendous penalty; that he found one, who offered up his life as an atonement; that this was his own Son, who alone could be a sufficient sacrifice; that, in order to effectuate this purpose, a Virgin, viz. the blessed Mary, was chosen as the means of bringing the Son of God into the world; that the Holy Ghost was employed in the work of impregnation; that Mary, who was still a Virgin, was with child, in consequence of this divine intercourse; that Joseph, who was now become the husband of Mary, and who, for some cause not stated, had had no consummation with her, perceiving her with child, was minded to put her away; that the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and assured him, that his wife was still worthy of his love and esteem, for that her pregnancy arose not from any connexion with man, but from the cause, stated above; that, in due time, Mary was delivered; that Jesus Christ was the issue; that he, the Son of God, was put to death by the Jews at Jerusalem; that his life was accepted by his Father, as an atonement for the sins of the world in which he had been murdered.—This is the Christian system; and this the Unitarians deny. They deny openly, that Christ was anything more than a mere man. The author of Ecce Homo is profane enough to say, that he was the son of some soldier, and is pleased to be jocular upon the manner in which Joseph was satisfied of his wife’s innocence.¹¹³ I greatly blame this levity of expression; and, as a churchman, hold the opinion in abhorrence; but, in real substance, what difference is there between this writer and the Unitarian Preachers? If Christ was not the Son of God, what is it to us whose son / he was? If he was a mere man, he might as well be the son of a soldier as of anybody else.—The Jews, who have the traditionary impudence to say that our blessed Saviour was an artful impostor do not go an inch beyond the Unitarians. The latter say, indeed, that he was a very good man; but, they deny all about his origin; they make him the son of a Carpenter, and, if that had been the fact, as it was not, he would have been an impostor and his Apostles, who wrote the Gospels, most impudent liars.—The author of Ecce Homo has, at any rate, the merit of being consistent. He denies miracles, resurrection and all: whereas the Unitarians, joining the utmost degree of absurdity with the utmost degree of profanity, deny all that St. Matthew says, all that he so explicitly records, about the impregnation of Mary, while they choose to believe, and to send others to the devil for not believing, that thousands were fed upon a little fish or two and three or four barley loaves, and that the crumbs filled several baskets. They will not believe in the mystery of the Holy incarnation; and yet they will believe in this miracle of the loaves and fishes.—They tell you with as much positiveness as the author of Ecce Homo, that it is inconceivable, that God should have recourse to such means; that the maker of the world should, through any instrumentality, have intercourse with a woman; that, even supposing this to have been the case, it is inconceivable how the Son could be God himself: and that, if he was God himself, it is inconceivable how the world should have existed while God was dead upon the cross, and they pretend to be horrified at the idea of the creatures’ killing the creator; their whipping him, mocking him, and hanging him up betwixt a couple of thieves.—Oh, the modest gentlemen! It is inconceivable is it, and is it any more inconceivable than the miracles and the resurrection Yet, in these they profess to believe!—Why, these are all mysteries. As mysteries they are given to us by our Church; and as mysteries we must receive them. We cannot conceive how they could be; but, as the Major of Artillery very shrewdly observes, that is an argument in support of their divine origin rather than otherwise, because it shews that they are above our mundane comprehension.— They ask us Trinitarians, why God should have died; why he could not have saved men from everlasting flames without first letting men / add the murder of himself to all the rest of their sins; why did he not come at once and assume the form of man without the tedious process of incarnation, pregnancy, delivery, and growing up to manhood? In answer, we might ask them, why a chicken came out of an egg instead of being born as puppies are; why trees do not have their fruit at once and ripe too, without going through the process of budding and blooming; why they themselves, the Unitarians and Mr. Ecce Homo, were not made without the aid of mothers; and, indeed, why they were made at all; it being to most people, I believe, quite inconceivable what use they can be of in this world.—When Mr. Ecce Homo (who has some talent) has answered to these whys, I shall think it worth while to attend further to his.—Yet, I will say of him, that he is consistent. He disbelieves all the whole of the Book: Old Testament as well as New. That is to say, he treats the whole as fable, or the work of imposture. This, though I must consider it as profane, is fair; because he exposes himself boldly to all the numerous proofs that we are able to bring forth against him. But, the Unitarians, who are the same with the Socinians, whom Dryden compared to the Fox, slyly pretend to believe in part.¹¹⁴ They have not the hardihood to deny the whole; they dare not deny that Jonah lay days and nights in a whale’s belly, that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for her impertinent curiosity, or that Balaam’s ass spoke; nay, they do not venture to deny, that the Devil took Christ up to the pinnacle of the Temple; these things they do not dare to deny; and yet they must cavil and carp at the divine impregnation of the blessed Virgin Mary, though, if the context be regarded as truth, and the divine impregnation as falsehood, it is manifest that that Holy personage must have been what I will not name, but what the reader will at once perceive.—It really fills one with horror barely to think of the conclusions, to which the opinions, now openly promulgated by Mr. Belsham and his heretical sect, inevitably lead; and, though I am, I trust, behind no man, in respectful submission to the laws of my country, I must repeat an expression of my regret, that an act of parliament should have been passed, which seems to invite men openly to proclaim, that the fundamental doctrine of our religion is false.—It has hitherto been regarded as horrid blasphemy to say, that Mary was not a Virgin when she bore Christ. But / the fact is now openly asserted by this sect of wonderful impudence. Why, if she was not a Virgin, what was she? for we know from St. Matthew that she was married and that she had not consummated with her husband.—Talk of libels, indeed? If this be not a libel, it is hard to say what is.—Mr. Belsham and his sect do not, indeed, in express terms, call the Virgin Mary names; but, they state as facts what inevitably leads to the libellous conclusion. We know; every reader knows, that she had not known her husband, and that she was with child; and then these sectarians come and tell us, that her child was not the Son of God; that she became pregnant by no supernatural means. The conclusion is manifest. And yet Mr. Smith tells us, that he, in getting his bill passed, met with no obstruction from the Bishops! I am in hopes, and, indeed, I must believe, that their Lordships did not perceive the end, to which such a measure must finally lead. Why need any one wonder now at the appearance of Ecce Homo? Mr. Belsham asserts in the things, which he ludicrously calls sermons, as much as is asserted by the author of Ecce Homo; for it is impossible for any one to assert more than Mr. Belsham, of whose “sermons” I shall take more particular notice another time.