Part 14 (1/2)
It is not necessary for me here to relate the well known particulars of that controversy, the desolating wars and scenes of blood to which it gave rise: how Luther posted on the door of the cathedral of Wittemberg ninety-five theses, and was summoned to Rome to answer for his offense; how he appealed from the pope, ill-informed at the time, to the pope when he should have been better instructed; how he was condemned as a heretic, and thereupon appealed to a general council; how, through the disputes about purgatory, transubstantiation, auricular confession, absolution, the fundamental idea which lay at the bottom of the whole movement came into relief, the right of individual judgment; how Luther was now excommunicated, A.D. 1520, and in defiance burnt the bull of excommunication and the volumes of the canon law, which he denounced as aiming at the subversion of all civil government, and the exaltation of the papacy; how by this skillful manoeuvre he brought over many of the German princes to his views; how, summoned before the Imperial Diet at Worms, he refused to retract, and, while he was bidden in the castle of Wartburg, his doctrines were spreading, and a reformation under Zwingli broke out in Switzerland; how the principle of sectarian decomposition embedded in the movement gave rise to rivalries and dissensions between the Germans and the Swiss, and even divided the latter among themselves under the leaders.h.i.+p of Zwingli and of Calvin; how the Conference of Marburg, the Diet of Spires, and that at Augsburg, failed to compose the troubles, and eventually the German Reformation a.s.sumed a political organization at Smalcalde. The quarrels between the Lutherans and the Calvinists gave hopes to Rome that she might recover her losses.
Leo was not slow to discern that the Lutheran Reformation was something more serious than a squabble among some monks about the profits of indulgence-sales, and the papacy set itself seriously at work to overcome the revolters. It instigated the frightful wars that for so many years desolated Europe, and left animosities which neither the Treaty of Westphalia, nor the Council of Trent after eighteen years of debate, could compose. No one can read without a shudder the attempts that were made to extend the Inquisition in foreign countries. All Europe, Catholic and Protestant, was horror-stricken at the Huguenot ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve (A.D. 1572). For perfidy and atrocity it has no equal in the annals of the world.
The desperate attempt in which the papacy had been engaged to put down its opponents by instigating civil wars, ma.s.sacres, and a.s.sa.s.sinations, proved to be altogether abortive. Nor had the Council of Trent any better result. Ostensibly summoned to correct, ill.u.s.trate, and fix with perspicacity the doctrine of the Church, to restore the vigor of its discipline, and to reform the lives of its ministers, it was so manipulated that a large majority of its members were Italians, and under the influence of the pope. Hence the Protestants could not possibly accept its decisions.
The issue of the Reformation was the acceptance by all the Protestant Churches of the dogma that the Bible is a sufficient guide for every Christian man. Tradition was rejected, and the right of private interpretation a.s.sured. It was thought that the criterion of truth had at length been obtained.
The authority thus imputed to the Scriptures was not restricted to matters of a purely religious or moral kind; it extended over philosophical facts and to the interpretation of Nature. Many went as far as in the old times Epiphanius had done: he believed that the Bible contained a complete system of mineralogy! The Reformers would tolerate no science that was not in accordance with Genesis. Among them there were many who maintained that religion and piety could never flourish unless separated from learning and science. The fatal maxim that the Bible contained the sum and substance of all knowledge, useful or possible to man--a maxim employed with such pernicious effect of old by Tertullian and by St. Augustine, and which had so often been enforced by papal authority--was still strictly insisted upon. The leaders of the Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon, were determined to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilification of that Greek philosopher knew no bounds. He is, says Luther, ”truly a devil, a horrid calumniator, a wicked sycophant, a prince of darkness, a real Apollyon, a beast, a most horrid impostor on mankind, one in whom there is scarcely any philosophy, a public and professed liar, a goat, a complete epicure, this twice execrable Aristotle.” The schoolmen were, so Luther said, ”locusts, caterpillars, frogs, lice.” He entertained an abhorrence for them. These opinions, though not so emphatically expressed, were entertained by Calvin. So far as science is concerned, nothing is owed to the Reformation. The Procrustean bed of the Pentateuch was still before her.
In the annals of Christianity the most ill-omened day is that in which she separated herself from science. She compelled Origen, at that time (A.D. 231) its chief representative and supporter in the Church, to abandon his charge in Alexandria, and retire to Caesarea. In vain through many subsequent centuries did her leading men spend themselves in--as the phrase then went--”drawing forth the internal juice and marrow of the Scriptures for the explaining of things.” Universal history from the third to the sixteenth century shows with what result.
The dark ages owe their darkness to this fatal policy. Here and there, it is true, there were great men, such as Frederick II. and Alphonso X., who, standing at a very elevated and general point of view, had detected the value of learning to civilization, and, in the midst of the dreary prospect that ecclesiasticism had created around them, had recognized that science alone can improve the social condition of man.
The infliction of the death-punishment for difference of opinion was still resorted to. When Calvin caused Servetus to be burnt at Geneva, it was obvious to every one that the spirit of persecution was unimpaired.
The offense of that philosopher lay in his belief. This was, that the genuine doctrines of Christianity had been lost even before the time of the Council of Nicea; that the Holy Ghost animates the whole system of Nature, like a soul of the world, and that, with the Christ, it will be absorbed, at the end of all things, into the substance of the Deity, from which they had emanated. For this he was roasted to death over a slow fire. Was there any distinction between this Protestant auto-da-fe and the Catholic one of Vanini, who was burnt at Toulouse, by the Inquisition, in 1629, for his ”Dialogues concerning Nature?”
The invention of printing, the dissemination of books, had introduced a cla.s.s of dangers which the persecution of the Inquisition could not reach. In 1559, Pope Paul IV. inst.i.tuted the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius. ”Its duty is to examine books and ma.n.u.scripts intended for publication, and to decide whether the people may be permitted to read them; to correct those books of which the errors are not numerous, and which contain certain useful and salutary truths, so as to bring them into harmony with the doctrines of the Church; to condemn those of which the principles are heretical and pernicious; and to grant the peculiar privilege of perusing heretical books to certain persons.
This congregation, which is sometimes held in presence of the pope, but generally in the palace of the Cardinal-president, has a more extensive jurisdiction than that of the Inquisition, as it not only takes cognizance of those books that contain doctrines contrary to the Roman Catholic faith, but of those that concern the duties of morality, the discipline of the Church, the interests of society. Its name is derived from the alphabetical tables or indexes of heretical books and authors composed by its appointment.”
The Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books at first indicated those works which it was unlawful to read; but, on this being found insufficient, whatever was not permitted was prohibited--an audacious attempt to prevent all knowledge, except such as suited the purposes of the Church, from reaching the people.
The two rival divisions of the Christian Church--Protestant and Catholic--were thus in accord on one point: to tolerate no science except such as they considered to be agreeable to the Scriptures. The Catholic, being in possession of centralized power, could make its decisions respected wherever its sway was acknowledged, and enforce the monitions of the Index Expurgatorius; the Protestant, whose influence was diffused among many foci in different nations, could not act in such a direct and resolute manner. Its mode of procedure was, by raising a theological odium against an offender, to put him under a social ban--a course perhaps not less effectual than the other.
As we have seen in former chapters, an antagonism between religion and science had existed from the earliest days of Christianity. On every occasion permitting its display it may be detected through successive centuries. We witness it in the downfall of the Alexandrian Museum, in the cases of Erigena and Wiclif, in the contemptuous rejection by the heretics of the thirteenth century of the Scriptural account of the Creation; but it was not until the epoch of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, that the efforts of Science to burst from the thraldom in which she was fettered became uncontrollable. In all countries the political power of the Church had greatly declined; her leading men perceived that the cloudy foundation on which she had stood was dissolving away.
Repressive measures against her antagonists, in old times resorted to with effect, could be no longer advantageously employed. To her interests the burning of a philosopher here and there did more harm than good. In her great conflict with astronomy, a conflict in which Galileo stands as the central figure, she received an utter overthrow; and, as we have seen, when the immortal work of Newton was printed, she could offer no resistance, though Leibnitz affirmed, in the face of Europe, that ”Newton had robbed the Deity of some of his most excellent attributes, and had sapped the foundation of natural religion.”
From the time of Newton to our own time, the divergence of science from the dogmas of the Church has continually increased. The Church declared that the earth is the central and most important body in the universe; that the sun and moon and stars are tributary to it. On these points she was worsted by astronomy. She affirmed that a universal deluge had covered the earth; that the only surviving animals were such as had been saved in an ark. In this her error was established by geology. She taught that there was a first man, who, some six or eight thousand years ago, was suddenly created or called into existence in a condition of physical and moral perfection, and from that condition he fell. But anthropology has shown that human beings existed far back in geological time, and in a savage state but little better than that of the brute.
Many good and well-meaning men have attempted to reconcile the statements of Genesis with the discoveries of science, but it is in vain. The divergence has increased so much, that it has become an absolute opposition. One of the antagonists must give way.
May we not, then, be permitted to examine the authenticity of this book, which, since the second century, has been put forth as the criterion of scientific truth? To maintain itself in a position so exalted, it must challenge human criticism.
In the early Christian ages, many of the most eminent Fathers of the Church had serious doubts respecting the authors.h.i.+p of the entire Pentateuch. I have not s.p.a.ce, in the limited compa.s.s of these pages, to present in detail the facts and arguments that were then and have since been adduced. The literature of the subject is now very extensive. I may, however, refer the reader to the work of the pious and learned Dean Prideaux, on ”The Old and New Testament connected,” a work which is one of the literary ornaments of the last century. He will also find the subject more recently and exhaustively discussed by Bishop Colenso. The following paragraphs will convey a sufficiently distinct impression of the present state of the controversy:
The Pentateuch is affirmed to have been written by Moses, under the influence of divine inspiration. Considered thus, as a record vouchsafed and dictated by the Almighty, it commands not only scientific but universal consent.
But here, in the first place, it may be demanded, Who or what is it that has put forth this great claim in its behalf?
Not the work itself. It nowhere claims the authors.h.i.+p of one man, or makes the impious declaration that it is the writing of Almighty G.o.d.
Not until after the second century was there any such extravagant demand on human credulity. It originated, not among the higher ranks of Christian philosophers, but among the more fervid Fathers of the Church, whose own writings prove them to have been unlearned and uncritical persons.
Every age, from the second century to our times, has offered men of great ability, both Christian and Jewish, who have altogether repudiated these claims. Their decision has been founded upon the intrinsic evidence of the books themselves. These furnish plain indications of at least two distinct authors, who have been respectively termed Elohistic and Jehovistic. Hupfeld maintains that the Jehovistic narrative bears marks of having been a second original record, wholly independent of the Elohistic. The two sources from which the narratives have been derived are, in many respects, contradictory of each other. Moreover, it is a.s.serted that the books of the Pentateuch are never ascribed to Moses in the inscriptions of Hebrew ma.n.u.scripts, or in printed copies of the Hebrew Bible, nor are they styled ”Books of Moses” in the Septuagint or Vulgate, but only in modern translations.
It is clear that they cannot be imputed to the sole authors.h.i.+p of Moses, since they record his death. It is clear that they were not written until many hundred years after that event, since they contain references to facts which did not occur until after the establishment of the government of kings among the Jews.
No man may dare to impute them to the inspiration of Almighty G.o.d--their inconsistencies, incongruities, contradictions, and impossibilities, as exposed by many learned and pious moderns, both German and English, are so great. It is the decision of these critics that Genesis is a narrative based upon legends; that Exodus is not historically true; that the whole Pentateuch is unhistoric and non-Mosaic; it contains the most extraordinary contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to involve the credibility of the whole--imperfections so many and so conspicuous that they would destroy the authenticity of any modern historical work.
Hengstenberg, in his ”Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch,” says: ”It is the unavoidable fate of a spurious historical work of any length to be involved in contradictions. This must be the case to a very great extent with the Pentateuch, if it be not genuine.
If the Pentateuch is spurious, its histories and laws have been fabricated in successive portions, and were committed to writing in the course of many centuries by different individuals. From such a mode of origination, a ma.s.s of contradictions is inseparable, and the improving hand of a later editor could never be capable of entirely obliterating them.”