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 «!
 
 I
 
 THE ''"" ^^j 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED 
 
 JEREMY BENTHAM. 
 
 REPBINTED 
 
 WITH A BIOGB.APHICAL INTRODUCTION 
 By J. M. Wheelee. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY^ 
 
 28 Stonecutter. Street, E.G. 
 
 1890.
 
 I 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PrEINlKP AND I'UBI.ISHED BY G. W. FOOTE, 
 
 AT 28 STONECtTTTKB STREET, E.G.
 
 £135 
 B44-C 
 
 JEREMY BENTHAM. 
 
 Though known chiefly as a legal reformei* and advocate of 
 utility, the father of Utilitarianism and philosophical Radi- 
 calism was no less decidedly a Father of Freethought. Not 
 onlj'' did his philosophy disengage morals from theology, he 
 deliberately set himself to subvert the foundations of so-called 
 natural and revealed religion, and in his influence on his dis- 
 ciples may be said to have carried over the results of eighteenth 
 century thought and criticism into the present century. 
 
 Jeremy Bentham was born of a prosperous family in Red 
 Lion Street, Houndsditch, London, on February 15th, 1748. 
 His father and grandfather were both lawyers. One of his 
 ancestors was Thomas Bentham, Bishop of Lichfield and 
 Coventry (1513 — 1578), but Jeremy never traced beyond his 
 great grandfather, Avho was a pawnbroker. A grand uncle 
 named "Woodward was publisher of Tindal's Christianity as 
 Old as Creation. His family were Tory, and his education 
 conservative. Like J. S. Mill he was astonishingly precocious. 
 When three years old he read such works as Rapin's Ilistonj. 
 His earliest recollections were, as he expressed it, of being 
 " starved " for want of books. Fiction and poetry were pro- 
 hibited. He tells too how one of his tribulations was learning 
 Church collects — " they used to give me the colic ; but my 
 father insisted on my getting them by heart." At Westminster 
 he acquired a reputation for Greek and Latin verse. 
 
 Bentham matriculated at Oxford 26 June, 1760, becoming a 
 gowned collegian under the age of twelve and a half years. 
 On account of his age he was not at first required to take the 
 oath — a ceremonj'' for which, even then, he felt repugnance. 
 But he was called on to subscribe the Thirty Nine Articles, 
 and the necessity led to an examination, with the result that 
 they were found to be neither in accordance with reason nor 
 with scripture. One of the Fellows of the College to whom his 
 scruiDles were submitted, reproved his ])resumption in showing 
 his hesitation. He signed, but the impression made was painful 
 and lasting. He learnt little at Oxford, and gives his testimony : 
 
 807738
 
 iv. Preface. 
 
 ■*' Mendacity and insincerity — in these I found the effects, the 
 «ure and only sure effects, of an English university education." 
 In 1764 he proceeded B.A., and in 1766 took his master's 
 degree. 
 
 At the age of twenty he read Helvetius's Be VEsprit, and 
 ■was convinced that legislation was the most important pursuit. 
 He was intended for the bar, and entered at Lincoln's Inn 
 6th Nov., 1769. But the great law reformer was not cut out 
 for a practising barrister. In his very first case he recom- 
 mended the parties to agree and save their law costs, and the 
 discovery that clients were charged for three attendances when 
 ■only one was given, was a blow which toppled over his rever- 
 •ence for the law, and led to many of his attacks on its abuses. 
 As a student he listened to the lectures of the famous Sir 
 "William Blackstone, who did noc enhance his respect for legal 
 authorities. 
 
 The first work Bentham printed was a translation of Le 
 Taureau Blanc ("The Wliite Bull ") by Voltaire. To this he 
 supplied a long and very heretical Preface, showing that he 
 was already a disbeliever in revelation. The translation 
 was excellent, but he had not ihe courage to send a copy to the 
 great Freethinker. This was in 1774. In 1776 he issued, also 
 anonymously, an important Fragment on Government. This 
 work is funnily catalogued in Leslie Stephen's Dictionary of 
 National Biography as " A Fragment on Gout." This attack 
 on Blackstone's praises of the English Constitution made some 
 stir, and was variously attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord 
 Camden, and Mr. Dunning. It contained the germ of much 
 of his subsequent work. It set up the greatest happiness 
 jjrinciple as the test in ethics and legislation, showed the 
 hoUowness of the wisdom of our ancestors, and is a fitting 
 prelude to Paine's Rights of Man. From this time he was 
 engaged on his greatest work, which was not published until 
 1789, when it ajipeared as an Introduction to the Principles of 
 Morals and Legislation. 
 
 Bentham' works on legislation had the good fortune of being 
 edited and translated into French by M. Dumont, who made 
 them more popular on the Continent than in England. In 1792 
 Bentham — a stout Republican — was made a citizen of France 
 with Priestley and Paine. With true practical mind he criti- 
 cised their Declaration of the Rights of Man, and drew up for 
 the Assembly a scheme for the management of their debates. 
 
 Bentham largely concerned himself with the rational and 
 reformatory treatment of criminals, and proposed a Panopticon 
 or building in which this should especially be carried on. He 
 always held that it was the king alone who hindered the 
 acceptance of his proposals, and as late as 1831 he published a
 
 Preface. v. 
 
 History of the ^Var hetweeti Jercwi/ Bentham and Georcje III. 
 hi/ one of the Belligerents. 
 
 ' In 1814 Bentham removed to Ford Abbey, Devonshire, where 
 he was accomiianied by James Mill and his family. Here Mill 
 wrote his J/istori/ of British India, and here Bentham and he 
 devised several important anti-theological works. John Stuai't 
 Mill in his Autohiograph>i mentions this sojcnirn as an impor- 
 tant circumstance in his education. In the same year Bentham 
 advanced money to Robert Owen to enable him to carry 
 on his experiment at Now Lanark. Three years later appeared 
 a pamphlet Swear Not at All, in which he exposed the 
 immorality of oaths as used in the two Church of England 
 universities. This was one of his many decisive bloAvs at the 
 abuses of his day. In 1817 also appeared his Plan of Parlia- 
 mentary Reform, in which he advocated universal suffrage and 
 the ballot. 
 
 The work here reprinted formed part of his general design to 
 show the mischief of religion and its establishments. It was 
 written at Ford Abbey and was printed in 1817. It then 
 appeared as "by an Oxford Graduate," but with no publisher's 
 name. The work, it appears from a MS. note by Place, was 
 submitted to Sir Samuel Romilly, who gave his opinion that 
 Bentham would certainly be prosecuted and convicted for blas- 
 phemy and sedition.* Francis Place, however, gave his opinion 
 to the contrar}^ provided Jeremy Bentham's name, and the 
 price 20s. were printed on the title-page. James Mill, it appears, 
 agreed with Place. For a while the work was distributed 
 privately, but in 1818 Effingham Wilson's name appeared as 
 publisher and Bentham as author. Wilson was to require the 
 money to be paid first and then send the book in his own way 
 to the address of the purchaser. The result justified Place's 
 view. The edition was sold and no one was prosecuted. An 
 extract appeared in 1826 entitled "Mother Church Relieved 
 by Bleeding." A new edition was issued in 1824, and Tlie 
 Boole of Church Reform in 18.31 contained its essential parts. 
 The Catechism as here issued was reprinted by Thomas Scott 
 (of Ramsgate) in 1868. 
 
 In 1822 appeared a small but important volume entitled 
 Analysis of the influence of Natural Religion on the Temiioral 
 Happiness of Manlcind by Philip Beauchamp. This work had 
 been compiled by George Grote, afterwards the historian of 
 Greece, from MSS. of Jeremy Bentham's, which the venerable 
 sage desired his young disciple to put into readable form. Prof. 
 Alex. Bain, who first revealed the secret of authorship after 
 Grote's death says : " The MS. was handed to Mr. Place, who 
 
 * Bentham says " he agreed with it in every tittle."
 
 vi. Preface. 
 
 employed Richard Carlile to print the tract : the reason being 
 that Carlile was lying in Dorchester gaol, and thus safe from 
 farther prosecution. At that period the London booksellers 
 were afraid of having anything to do with writings wherein 
 religion was in question. The original papers in Bentham's 
 hand-writing became the property of Mrs. George Grote under 
 the author's will and are still extant, as well as the letter to G. 
 Grote which accompanied the packet." 
 
 Prof. Bain does not say, and perhaps does not know, that the 
 MSS. show that the design of Bentham was to attack Revealed 
 Religion no less than Natural Religion, and that what Grot© 
 did was only the easiest part of the task, which Bentham con- 
 sidered of the utmost importance. It is interesting to know 
 that Grote's Analysis was issued privately as late as 1866, 
 although kept on sale by Mr. Truelove, who afterwards re- 
 printed it with the commendation of Mill. It was translated into 
 French and published in 1875, with an excellent preface by the 
 translator, M. Emile Gazelles. Previously to the publication 
 of this work in 1822 Bentham had written to Carlile, sending 
 him a handsome donation " as a contribution toward your 
 support during persecution ; and as a testimony of my respect 
 for your persevering intrepidity and self-sacrifice, in the cause 
 of what, in your eyes is useful truth." 
 
 In 1823 appeared Not Paid hut Jesus by Gamaliel Smith, of 
 which A Summary View had been published in 1821. Dr. 
 Garnett's copy contains the following note by Francis Place : 
 " The matter of this book was put together by me at Mr. 
 Bentham's request in the months of August and September 1817, 
 during ray residence with him at Ford Abbey, Devonshire." 
 Probably what Place did was simply to prepare the manuscript 
 for the printer, the work being unmistakably the product of 
 Bentham's mind. It seeks to prove that Paul distorted the 
 primitive Christianity of Jesus, and tracks his career with the 
 relentless acumen of a cross-examining counsel. Another work 
 issued by the same publisher in the same year and entitled 
 Ihe New Irial of the Witnesses, or the Resurrection considered 
 . . . with an inquiry into the Origin of the Gospels and the 
 Authenticity of the Epistles of Paul, also bears traces of 
 coming, in part at least, from the same fertile brain. 
 
 The following year Bentham started The Westminster 
 Review, so long the organ of Philosophical Radicalism. In. 
 one of the first numbers the youthful John Stuart Mill had a 
 trenchant article on the Carlile prosecutions, in which we 
 can now see the proprietor of the Review was deeply interested. 
 
 Of Bentham's services to legal science we have said little. 
 Macaulay said " he found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it 
 a science." Sir James Mackintosh observed that Bentham has
 
 Preface. vii. 
 
 done more than any other writer to rouse the spirit of juridical 
 reformation. ITis Defence of Usury is recognised also as a 
 permanent contribution to the Principles of Political Economy. 
 Indeed as Prof. Holland well olisorves, " There are no limits 
 to the good results of his introduction of a true method of 
 reasoning into the moral and political science." 
 
 Bentham was no morose visionary. He regarded society 
 dining and visiting as a wastn of time, and looked on poetry as 
 " misrepresentation," but he delighted in music in which he 
 -was skilled, as in chess, the conversation of friends, and in 
 making others happy. When comparatively j'oung he met a 
 lady with whom he fell deeply in love, proposed and was 
 rejected. Sir John Bowring gives a letter which in his 80th 
 3'ear (over forty years afterwards) he wrote to the object of 
 his early attachment : "I am alive — more than two months 
 advanced in my eightieth year, more lively than when you 
 presented me in ceremony with the flowers in the green lane. 
 ♦Since that day not a single one has passed (not to speak of 
 nights) in which you have not engrossed more of my thoughts 
 than I could have wished . . . Every minute of my life has 
 been counted, and I am plagued with remorse at the minutes 
 which I have suffered j'ou to steal from me." 
 
 It appears that what was lost to the individual and family 
 was given to the race. The amelioration of life was his 
 dominant desire. Indefatigable in his labors and sparing of 
 his time, he accomplished much. Writing for six or eight 
 hours a day, he handed his voluminous manuscripts to his 
 disciples to be redacted or used as they thought fit. For sixty 
 years he labored without care of reward. When the Emperor 
 Alexander of Eussia sent him a packet containing a ring he 
 sent it back with the imperial seal unbroken. He said truly 
 of himself " in me, somehow or other, so it ha^^pens selfish- 
 ness has taken the shape of benevolence." 
 
 Sir John Bowring, who knew him well, says " The pre- 
 dominant characteristics of Bentham's mind were : — sincerity, 
 or love of truth ; benevolence, or an active desire to contribute 
 to the happiness of others; investigation, or a reckless craving 
 which could only be satisfied by thoroughly examining what- 
 ever attracted his attention in all its bearings." 
 
 The application of ideas to the production of happiness was 
 the predominant trait of Bentham's life. It was illustrated 
 by his dying words as recorded by Dr. T. Southwood Smith. 
 When he firmly believed he was near his last hour he said to one 
 of his disciples wlio was watching over him, "I now feel that 
 I am dying : our care must be to minimise the pain. Do not 
 let any of the servants come into my room, and keep away the 
 youth : it will be distressing to them and they can be of no
 
 viii. Preface, 
 
 service. Yet I must not be alone ; you will remain with me, 
 and you only ; and then we shall have reduced the pain to the 
 least possible amount." 
 
 Benthara died on June 6, 1832. One of his last works was 
 an anonymous treatise, afterwards printed for private circula- 
 tion entitled Auto-Icon ; or farther Uses of the Dead to the 
 Living. Its object was to show how, if embalmed, every man 
 might be his own statue and an object of enjoyment and 
 instruction to the living. In accordance with this view he left 
 his body to be dissected, and clothed in his usual attire his. 
 skeleton is kept in University College. 
 
 Bentham had a younger brother, who became Sir Samuel 
 Bentham, renowned for mechanical invention and naval admini- 
 stration. Jeremy Bentham brought the same talent to bear on 
 the art of life and the then little explored field of legisla- 
 tion. Whatever may be urged against his principle of "the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number" on the score of 
 ethics, there can be little dispute it forms the best practical test 
 of human laws. The phrase "utilitarianism" Bentham took 
 from an early work by Priestley, and no doubt the germs of 
 his philosophy can be found in Hume, Helvetius, Gassendi and 
 Epicurus. But it is his logical and analytical application of 
 his principles, his forensic astuteness in following up a clue 
 and his mechanical faculty foradaptation of means to end, which 
 gives him a separate place not only among the philosophers- 
 but among the benefactors of mankind. Upon his death 
 Albany Fonblanque wrote in the Examiner: "In him the 
 world has lost the great teacher and patriarch of his time ; 
 the man who, of all men who were living on the day of his 
 death, has exercised and is exercising over the fortunes of 
 mankind the widest and most durable influence." May not, 
 indeed, the great work of the nineteenth century, the task 
 of to-day, be summed up in the motto of Bentham, " Maximise- 
 morals, minimise religion " ? 
 
 J. M. Wheeleb^
 
 THE 
 
 CHUKCH OF ENGLAND CATECHISM 
 
 E X A MINED. 
 
 Question 1. What is j-our name ? 
 
 Answer. (Pronouncing the child's name.) 
 
 Question i2. Who gave j'ou that name ? 
 
 Answer. My Godfathers and my Godmothers in my baptism (1) 
 wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an 
 inheritor of the kingdom of heaven (2). 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 (1). \_Godfathers and Godmothers in my l)ai)tism.'] — 
 Thus far the answer appears not to stand exposed to 
 any considerable objection ; it being supposed that to 
 this examination no child is subjected on whom the 
 ceremony called baptism has not been performed. So 
 far as this is true, the answer is nothing more than 
 the statement of a matter of fact, of the existence of 
 which, though, generally speaking, it is not possible 
 the child should have any remembrance of it, it is 
 but natural that he should feel himself assured by 
 satisfactory and unsuspected evidence. But this blame- 
 lessness — it will soon be seen whether it be of any 
 long continuance. 
 
 (2). [Wherei7i I was W2a(/t^ etc.]— Already the con- 
 tempt of truth, pregnant with those incongruities of 
 which that corrupt affection is so naturally productive, 
 begins to manifest itself. In this formulary styled a 
 
 B
 
 2 THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Oatechism, will be found involved, though many of 
 them tacitly, in a manner and without any sufficient 
 warning, a system of assertions, prodigious in extent 
 and variety, contained in another formulary, being the 
 verbal part of a ceremony of prior date, called 
 hajMsm. Of this anterior ceremony, the examinee, a 
 child, commonly but just able to speak — a child, in 
 which the faculty of name has as yet scarcely begun 
 to develop itself — a child completely incompetent to 
 the forming of 2l\\j judgment, or so much as a concep- 
 tion, in relation to the matter contained in it, is made 
 to take upon himself to i^ronounce the effect. 
 
 Here, then, the first lesson which he is made to learn, 
 and that under the notion of forming his mind to the 
 sentiment of piety, is a lesson, which, if it amount to 
 anything and has any meaning, is a lesson of insin- 
 cerity : and which, as far as it forms him to anything, 
 forms him to insincerity. For hereby what is the 
 declaration which he is made to utter ? — a declaration, 
 asserting in the character of a true fact, the fact of his 
 entertaining a persuasion Avhich in truth he does not 
 ■entertain, and which that he should entertain, is, in the 
 nature of the case, not possible. When by Eousseau, 
 on the occasion of the stories commonly put into the 
 hands of children under the name of fables, the 
 practice of thus drawing from the fountain of false- 
 hood and misrepresentation the first aliment presented 
 to the human mind was held up to view, and the 
 absurdity and mischievous tendency of it displayed, 
 deep and extensive was the sensation produced by the 
 remark, not less so the conviction and recognition of 
 the justice of it. But if, in any such profane book of 
 instruction, the admission of falsehood be incongruous, 
 and the habit of regarding it not only with indifference 
 but with approbation pernicious, how much more so in 
 a book of religious instruction ? — in a book professing 
 to introduce men to the favor of the God of Truth ? 
 
 Yes, if by misrepresentation — yes, if by falsehood, 
 any real and 2^^^6ponderant good effect could be pro- 
 duced, such as could not be produced by any other 
 means. But by this or any other of the falsehoods so 
 plentifully strewed all over this Catechism, and which
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 3 
 
 will successively be held up to view, in what imagin- 
 able shape can any good be seen to flow ? 
 
 Question 3. What did your Godfathers and Godmothers then 
 for 3'on ? 
 
 Ansicer. They did promise and vow three things in my name 
 (1) : First, that I should renounce the Devil and all his works (2), 
 the pomps and vanity of this wicked world (3), and ail the sinful 
 lusts of the flesh (4) ; secondlj', that I should believe all the articles 
 of the Christian faith (5); and, thirdly, that I should keep God's 
 holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days 
 of my life (6). 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 (1). Things is the name given to the courses of con- 
 duct which are the subjects of the vow here spoken of. 
 But, before we enter upon the consideration of these 
 things, one thitig presents itself as calling for con- 
 sideration, — and that is the implied — the necessarily 
 implied — assumption, that it is in the power of any 
 person, — not only with the consent of the father or 
 other guardian, but without any such consent, — to 
 fasten upon a child at its birth, and long before it is 
 itself even capable of giving consent to anything, 
 with the concurrence of two other persons, alike self- 
 appointed, load it with a set of obligations — obliga- 
 tions of a most terrific and appalling character — 
 obligations of the nature of oaths, of which just so 
 much and no more is rendered visible as is sufficient 
 to render them terrific — obligations to which neither 
 in quantity nor in quality are any limits attempted to 
 be or capable of being assigned. 
 
 Every child, at its birth, is cast into bondage, under 
 the power of three persons, who, for any provision 
 that is made to the contrary, may have been self- 
 chosen, and in practice frequently are. Even though 
 these bonds were not more coercive than those of 
 temporal slavery — of slavery in the temporal sense — 
 this surely would be bad enough : — the notion of a 
 power derived from the Almighty to cast men into 
 such bondage, absurd and indefensible enough. But 
 such bondage, what is it in comparison of the bondage 
 actually supposed to be thus imposable and imposed ?
 
 4 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 It is as the space covered by human life to eternity : to 
 that eternity, over which the effects, here supposed to 
 be produced by this bondage, are here supposed to 
 extend. 
 
 Oh, hut, by our wisdom and our care (say the law- 
 givers by whom this formulary was devised and 
 imposed) — hy our wisdom and our care, against abuse 
 of this power, provision — effectual provision — has in 
 and by this very instrument been made. . . . 
 
 Answer. — Yes ; such provision as will be seen. But 
 in the meantime, and to authorise j^ou to make this 
 provision, what you have assumed — and what for that 
 purpose it was necessary for you to assume, — and that 
 in the character of an universal proposition, is — that, 
 by the Almighty, in consideration of that particular 
 portion of wisdom which to you in particular it has 
 happened to be blest with, such power not only i^ fit to 
 be given to rulers in general, but has actually been 
 given to them ; and this, be they who they may, to all 
 rulers : and sure enough, if, to the extent to which, to 
 the purpose of the argument, it is necessary it should 
 be assumed, this general proposition is granted, every 
 proposition necessary to the establishment of your own 
 aptitude in particular may be thrown into the bargain, 
 as not being worth disputing about. 
 
 But any such power — when and on what occasion 
 was it ever given ? where is any of the least evidence 
 of any such gift to be found ? 
 
 A job for the casuists : — Here is an engagement 
 taken — an engagement taken in the solemn and awful 
 form of a vow — a vow made by the sponsors — that the 
 child shall do so and so : a vow made by A, not that he 
 himself, but that B, shall do so and so. B, in process 
 of time, breaks the vow : for this transgression — for 
 this breach of a vovj — of a prromissory oath — for this 
 species of perjury, who is it that is to be punished ? 
 A or B ? or some one else, and who else ? If punished, 
 in what mode and to what amount punished ? by ever- 
 lasting flames in hell, or by any and what milder 
 punishment ? — Questions these, which, whenever this 
 formulary is considered as anything better than a 
 parcel of words without meaning, will surely, now
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 5 
 
 that, perhaps, for the first time the suggestion is made, 
 be regarded as having some claim to answers. The 
 persons thus dealing out eventual i)unishment at their 
 own pleasure— viz. tlie sponsors — are they the persons 
 by whom, in case of a breach of the vow, the punish- 
 ment is to be borne, — suppose the ordinary one of ever- 
 lasting burning in hell fire ? If so, quere, of the whole 
 number of persons who have been inveigled into the 
 taking upon themselves this office, what is the number 
 that will be saved ? — What is the number ? — Ansiver. 
 None. For, whether its being kept inviolate is not as 
 far from being possible as from being desirable, is what 
 any rational eye will presently be in a condition to 
 perceive. Upon the person whom, in a state of help- 
 less infancy, under the direction of the Church of 
 England hierarchy, they have thus fastened upon and 
 loaded with this burthen — is it upon this Jonas that 
 the lot of punishment will fall ? What a case is his ! 
 and, in its effect, what sort of a boon is this which is 
 thus magnified ! 
 
 II. — Thus much as to the general principle of the 
 alleged engagement — now as to the subject matter 
 of it. 
 
 Three, and but three, is the number here spoken of 
 as the number of the things vowed and promised. 
 But, of these thi^ee things, the first-mentioned is of 
 itself a TRIPLE one, speaking of three things, or sets 
 of things, as so many things which are to be renounced, 
 — as so many things for the renunciation of which by 
 the child (whatsoever be meant by renunciation) under- 
 takers, under the name of sponsors (or the child cannot 
 be a Christian), must be found that will pledge them- 
 selves. 
 
 Meantime, without stopping as yet to take any clear 
 view of the preceding things, no sooner is the last of 
 them brought to view, than a question very naturally 
 presents itself. Supposing this engagement fulfilled, 
 can anything else be wanting ? " God's holy will and 
 commandments " kept, can anything more be neces- 
 sary ? Is it in the nature of the case that even God 
 himself should will or desire anything more ? The
 
 b THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 terms of the phrase, it must be confessed, are general; 
 at the same time, for terms so comprehensive, few can 
 be clearer or more easily intelligible. — " A command- 
 ment" — what sort of a thing that is, is among those 
 things which, by daily and hourly reference, are made 
 known to everybody. Sure enough, if everything else 
 had been equally clear, no such commentary as the 
 present would ever have made its appearance. 
 
 Come we now to those other " things " by which this 
 last is so unnecessarily preceded. 
 
 In relation to these y?rs^7?2e^?i/onee^ things, numbered 
 first and second, the first observation that strikes the 
 eye is — that, presented as they are in this manner to 
 view, the child is bid to look upon them as so many 
 distinct things — upon each of them as something which 
 in its nature is distinct, and on this occasion specially 
 contradistinguished from the thing last-yywntioned, 
 viz., "the keeping God's holy will and commandments. '' 
 If all the days of his life so it is that a man has been 
 keeping this holy will and these holy commandments, 
 what he has thus been doing, is he to understand then 
 that it will be accepted as sufficient ? Not he, indeed : 
 — remain for him to do all these other things, whatso- 
 ever they may be. 
 
 These things, Avhatever they are, if so it be that it 
 is in 2^ui^suance as well as in consequence of the 
 engagement thus taken, that they are to be done by 
 him, then so it is that to his doing them one thing 
 more is necessary ; which is, that he understand what 
 they are : unfortunately, here, it will be seen, lies the 
 difficulty, — and that, to an ordinary understanding, not 
 to speak of extraordinary ones, it is much to be feared, 
 an insuperable one. 
 
 Among the three things, or sets of things, that are to 
 be renounced, first come " the Devil and all his worksy 
 — The Devil, who or what is he, and how is it that he 
 is renounced? — The luorks of the Devil, what are tliey, 
 and how is it that they are renounced ? — Applied to 
 the Devil, who or whatever he is, — applied to the Devil's 
 works, whatever they are, — what sort of an operation 
 is renouncement or renunciation ? 
 
 To all these several words, — to one of them in par-
 
 CATECriIS:M EXAMIXED. I 
 
 ticular, by which an idea no less terrific than obscnre 
 and indeterminate is wont to be excited, what tole- 
 rabh" distinct ideas can rationally be expected to be 
 attached in the mind of infant siraplicitj^ and igno- 
 rance ? When the holy person, whose name is next 
 under the Sovereign's, seated on the pinnacle of theo- 
 logical science, — when the Archbisliop of Canterbury 
 himself is able to tell ns who or what the Devil is, 
 what are his luorks, and by what operation they are 
 retiounced, — they being all the while things distinct, — 
 all of them, — as well from " the sinful lusts of the 
 flesh " as from " the pomps and vanity of this wicked 
 world," — then it is that it may be time enough to 
 expect any tolerably clear and practically useful idea 
 of all these mysteries to stand attached to these words 
 in the infant mind, for the nourishment of which this 
 composition, such as we see it, is the morsel first 
 administered. 
 
 " The Devil and all his ivories.''^ — And in the first 
 place, the Devil himself, — of whom so decided and 
 familiar a mention, as of one whom everybody knows, 
 is made. — Where lives he ? Who is he ? What is he ? 
 The child itself, did it ever see him ? By any one, to 
 Avhom for the purpose of the inquiry the child has 
 access, Avas he ever seen ? The child, has it ever hap- 
 pened to it to have any dealings with him ? Is it in 
 any such danger as that of having, at any time, to his 
 knowledge, any sort of dealings with him ? — If not, 
 then to what purpose is this renouncement? and, once 
 more, what is it that is meant by it ? Suppose him, 
 however, to have actually renounced this Devil — that 
 is, speaking of this Devil, to have said, I renonnce him 
 — in what condition is he other than that which he 
 would have been in had no such renouncement been 
 made ? — The engagement, whatever it be, if any, which 
 by this renunciation has been taken, by what act or 
 acts is it that it would be ■ violated ? — This is surely 
 among the things that would be worth knowing, were 
 it only that a man might have it in his power to avoid 
 the violating — the breaking — of this his engagement 
 without knowing and for want of knowing what 
 it is.
 
 S THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 " The Devil and all his ivorks!" — Exists there any- 
 where any real being to which this name is applicable ? 
 If yes, exists there any sufficient reason for supposing 
 that he ever made his appearance upon this earth? — 
 ever made his presence sensible to, exhibited his person 
 to the senses of, any human being that ever lived ? 
 
 Not by unbelievers only, but by many a pious 
 Christian, is the existence of such being not merely 
 doubted of, but, for such reasons as to them have been 
 satisfactory, utterly denied :— the sort of being men- 
 tioned under this name being, in their notion of the 
 matter, no other than an allegorical one ; the passages, 
 in which mention is made of him, so many purely 
 allegorical ov figurative expressions. 
 
 Figurative, and nothing more, was and is, according 
 to them, the existence of this personage : figurative, 
 and upon a line with that of Jupiter and Juno and ihe 
 other inhabitants of the classical heaven, subjects or 
 colleagues to those celestial potentates. 
 
 True, say certain fathers of the primitive Christian 
 Church. Yes ; most exactly indeed upon a par were 
 and are the Devils, great and small, with those Gods 
 and Goddesses, gvea,t and small — with those Dii majorum 
 gentium — with those Dii minorum gentium. Strange, 
 indeed, if they were not upon a par, when in truth 
 they were and are the very same. Who ? — yes, who 
 were Jupiter and Juno and the rest of them ? — Who, 
 but so many Devils, who, applying their influence to 
 the inhabitants of this earth, caused themselves to be 
 respectively worshipped under those classic names. 
 
 In these latter times, to men of the deepest learning 
 — though among them it probably would not be easy 
 to find many, if any, to join their suffrages on this 
 question with those of the above-mentioned fathers, — 
 everything relative to this personage, and in particular 
 his existence, is matter of doubt and difficulty, and as 
 between this and that one of them is matter of dispute. 
 At the same time, even among babes and sucklings, 
 there is not one who is not qualified to decide upon it, 
 and so well qualified as in this our Church to be forced 
 to decide upon it, and to decide upon it accordingly.
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. » 
 
 To any such tender mind how indeed should it be 
 matter of doubt or difficulty ! — when, besides being 
 assured of the existence of this personage by the 
 earliest of all lessons and highest of all authorities — 
 (for that of the Bible, — a book of which the sense is to 
 be taken upon the credit of this improved substitute, 
 is but derivative) — not only his nature but his very 
 form is brought to view and made known by those 
 portraitures, which are to be seen everywhere, and in 
 particular in so many copies of the Book of Common 
 Prayer, of which this Catechism forms a part. 
 
 To the learned, as well as to the gay, among persons 
 of riper years, such portraitures, with the infinite 
 variety of tales connected with them, are either sub- 
 jects of merriment or objects of indifference. But, to 
 the multitude of the young and uninformed, whose 
 learning begins and ends with this so highly magnified 
 summary, serious indeed is the idea attached to that 
 tremendous sound. How many, from whose minds 
 the horrific being, — of which, from the most unques- 
 tionable authority the existence is thus certified, — is 
 never absent ! How many, to whom this his ideal 
 presence is sufficient to render solitude, at least when 
 coupled with darkness, a situation of never-ceasing 
 torment ? 
 
 (3). [" The pomps and vanity of this wicked ivorld^'l 
 Pomps and vanity, two other sorts of things given here 
 as one thing, — and that one, as well as the things pre- 
 ceding and succeeding, a thing to be " renounced.'''' 
 Renounced ? By whom ? — By every member of the 
 Church of England without exception, and that with 
 almost his earliest articulate breath. 
 
 As to the vanity, with or without the subjoined 
 limitation, by which it is confined to " this wicked 
 ivorld" being in itself the vainest of all vain words — 
 so completely imi7i as to be void of all meaning — it 
 may, with that character attached to it, be dismissed. 
 
 But the word pomp — to this word is attached by 
 usage — unvaried usage — a meaning somewhat more 
 determinate and intelligible. Under the word pom'p 
 are comprised all those factitious appendages by which
 
 10 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 factitious dignity, — when combined with the visible 
 and tangible fruits and marks of opulence, — is, in the 
 hands of the ruling few, employed to distinguish them 
 from the suhject many. 
 
 The Monarch, in the first place, is it not by pomp 
 that he is intended and enabled to display and preserve 
 his dignity, and therewith and thereby to maintain his 
 power ? The robes — the sceptre — the crown — the train 
 of attendants, in so many forms and colors — armed and 
 unarmed — if these be not the elements of pomp, what 
 others are ? 
 
 Not to speak of Lords Temporal, with their titles, 
 their coronets, and their armorial ejisigns, behold the 
 Lords Spiritual, with the "fine linen" on their 
 shoulders, the '^ purple ^^ on their liveries, the purple 
 and the jnitre on their equipages. If not of these things, 
 of ivhat things is " pomp " made ? 
 
 Of all these holy personages — these sitting and walk- 
 ing pageants — what one has there ever been, by whom 
 all these things have not thus been solemnly renounced? 
 — all these things, to which, disguised under the name 
 of decency, they now cling with such fond and undis- 
 guised affection ; — these things, of which the very 
 essence of their order is, according to them, composed, 
 and hj the taking away of which the Church would, 
 according to them, be laid in ruins, and along with it 
 the State. 
 
 That this so much magnified instrument of theatrical 
 piety is neither more nor less than a farce, — that 
 nothing that is to be found in it need or ought to be 
 considered as possessing any binding force, — that it is 
 neither more nor less than so much sound Avithout 
 sense, — is not this the comment which, in that highest 
 of all high places, the text receives from practice r 
 
 Such, then, being the judgment passed on it by the 
 ' highest of all authorities, by what inferior authority — 
 by what private individual — should any different 
 judgment be passed upon it ? 
 
 And this is the " Instruction., which " (as it says itself 
 in and by its title) " is to he learned of every person 
 before he be brought to be confirmed by the Bishop : " 
 — By the Bishop ? and by what Bishop ? — by the self-
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 11 
 
 same Bishop, who by the " j^omps" whatever they are, 
 by which he is surrounded, manifests the contempt 
 with which, by himself, this same Instruction is 
 regarded : and who, at the very time when the youthful 
 votaries whom he beholds at his feet are passim^ exami- 
 nation under his eye, under his authority, in and by 
 the words thus forced into their moutlis, made to 
 declare the knowledge which they have of its contents 
 and the sentiments of veneration wilh which, by these 
 same contents, they have been impregnated, — is all the 
 while, in relation to these same contents, making 
 manifest, if not his deliberate contempt of them, at 
 least his ignorance or negligence. 
 
 (4). " Sinful lusts of the fleshy — In this may be seen 
 the third and last of the three " things,'''' or sets of 
 things, which with its scarce articulate accents the 
 child, so lately in its cradle, is made to declare itself to 
 have " renounced.'''' — Those " lusts," which he has so 
 decidedly "renounced" — those "■ sinfu,l lusts'' — what 
 are they ? — what, in his view of them, can they be ? — 
 Is it that the " lusts of the flesh " are cell of them 
 " sinful,'' and as such to be comprised in the renuncia- 
 tion ? or is it that, while there are some of them that 
 are sinful, and such are to be " renounced," others 
 there are that are not sinful, and accordingly are not 
 comprised in it ? — These are among the secrets, which 
 howsoever here mentioned, are not here made known. 
 But are they not ivorth knowing? — Are they not 
 necessm^y to be known ? — Are they not such as must 
 have been known, ere the " Instruction which is to he 
 learned of [meaning l)]i'\ every person," can to any one 
 person be of any sort of use ? 
 
 (5). " Secondly, that I should Relieve all the articles 
 of the Christian faith." 
 
 Behold here another subject for a promise — for a 
 promise in the shape of a solemn vow — in the shape 
 of that sacred sort of instrument, which is neither 
 more nor less than an oatJi, applied and adapted to this 
 particular purpose. A promise ? — to do what ? to 
 believe: — a promise to believe an innumerable host of 
 things, — and that without knowing what they are.
 
 12 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 For, be it observed, the thing to be believed is — not 
 simply the Articles, but all the Articles. Follows, 
 indeed, the Creed called the "■Apostles' Creed,'" the 
 repetition of which is performed in answer to the pre- 
 sently following command — " Rehearse the Articles of 
 thy Belief.^' — But in this Creed are they all contained ? 
 Not they indeed. For if they are, what is the Nicene 
 Creed, and what the Athanasian ? — both of them com- 
 prised in the Liturgy — that massy compound which 
 the child is condemed to gulp down after he has 
 swallowed this Catechism ; — each of them as much a 
 part of the Church of England Liturgy, and thereby 
 of what passes among Church of Englandists for the 
 repository of the Christian faith, as that called the 
 Apostles^ Creed is. 
 
 Question 4. Dost thou not think that thou art bound to believe 
 and to do as they have promised for thee ? 
 
 Answer. Yes, verily ; and, by God's help, so I will. And I 
 heartily thank our heavenly Father that he hath called me to 
 this state of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Savior. And I 
 pray unto God to give me his grace, that I may continue in the 
 same to my life's end. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Question. ''Dost thou not think,'' etc. — Answer. 
 " Yes, verily,'' etc. — Here then, not only do the authors 
 of this formulary themselves advance this absurdity, 
 but they compel the poor child, — as they have hitherto 
 compelled so many millions — compelled, during so 
 many successive generations, the far greater part of the 
 population of the whole kingdom, and done what 
 depended tipon them towards compelling all future 
 generations to the end of time, to pronounce his assent 
 to it and his approbation of it. 
 
 Now then, once more, if so it be that it is in the 
 power of any three persons, under the name of Spon- 
 sors, to take possession of a child — a new-born child 
 — and bind it, force it, to believe tJiis set of Articles — 
 how should it not be equally in their power to force 
 it to believe any other set of Articles ! — to believe, for 
 example, the direct reverse of these same Articles ? —
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 13 
 
 If it be in their power thus to force a child, — to force 
 as many children as they please, — to believe a set of 
 Articles which they call " the Christian faith" how 
 should it not be in their power to force it to believe a 
 set of Articles, for example, of the Mahometan faith ? 
 
 Here then is a notion, which strikes — (for does it 
 not strike ?) — at the root of all religion as well as all 
 morality : and, forasmuch as, in giving iitterance to 
 this mass of absurdity, the child is forced to say that 
 he believes it, — while, at his years, at any rate, to 
 believe it is not possible, — thus it is that the duty and 
 practice of lying forms part of every Church of England 
 child's first lesson. Forms part? — Yes, forms a part, 
 though but a part, of what he is taug/d, but forms 
 nearly the whole of what — let us hope at least — it is 
 possible to him to learn from it. 
 
 Command,, immediately follijwiiig upon the fourth question — 
 Rehearse the Articles of thy belief. 
 
 Answer. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
 heaven and earth ; and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who 
 was conceived by the Holy Ghost (1), born of the Virgin Mary (2), 
 suffered under Pontius Pilate (3), was crucified, dead, and buried 
 (4); he descended into hell (5); the third day he rose again frum 
 the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand 
 of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge 
 the quick and the dead. 1 believe in the Holy Ghost (6) ; the 
 Holy Catholic Church (7); the communion of saints (8); the for- 
 giveness of sins (9); the resurrection of the body, and the life 
 everlasting. Amen. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 The Ajjostles' Creed! This name, thus formally and 
 universally applied — applied to a formulary, which, of 
 those by whom iu that character it is forced into the 
 mouths of children, there is not one by whom anj- 
 such notion is entertained, as that any one of those 
 immediate disciples of Jesus had any the smallest 
 share in the formation of it ! 
 
 Applied ? — and by whom? — By the rulers of the 
 English Church — of the Church of England past and 
 present — by that Bench of Bishops, whose name stands
 
 14 THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 at the head of an association, instituted for a set of 
 purposes, of Avhich the first in the order of time as 
 well as importance is the causing the whole population 
 to receive the formulary in that character. 
 
 An association, of which one main object is, to give 
 currency to a forgery I to continue — and that for ever 
 — to palm upon the rising generation as genuine an 
 alreadj" exposed imposture. On the whole Bench sits 
 there so much as a single individual who will venture 
 to declare that he believes it not to have been a forgery ? 
 that he believes any of those to have had a hand in it 
 in whose name it is thus put upon the whole people ? 
 
 To all those who do not, with a critical eye pointed 
 to the questions of verity and authenticity, occupy 
 themselves in the searching of the Scriptures, the 
 immediate and sole looked-to evidence of that verity 
 and authenticity consists in the implied evidence 
 supposed to be bestowed upon it by those Right 
 Reverend and well-paid witnesses. But here are these 
 same witnesses, continually occupied in giving an 
 attestation of authenticity to a document, of the serious- 
 ness of which they cannot but be, every one of them, 
 fully conscious. If the religion of Jesus had no better 
 ground to stand upon than this modern evidence, 
 where would be the sort of regard due to it ? 
 
 To give proofs, or so much as references to proofs, of 
 its being a forgery — a generally exploded forgery — 
 would be a mere waste of labor. — Pearson — Bishop 
 Pearson — whose comment on it is regularly included 
 in the list of works studied by all candidates for 
 Church of England ministry, into whose heads any 
 such idea as that of rendering themselves, in an intel- 
 lectual point of view, in any degree fit for their office, 
 ever happens to find entrance, — Pearson, in styling it 
 the Creed, knew it too well to venture, either in his 
 title page or anywhere else, to style it the Apostles'' 
 Creed; or so much as, in the way of insinuation, to 
 give it to be understood that the Apostles had, any of 
 them, anything to do with it. " The Creed received in 
 all ages of the Church " (says he in his epistle dedi- 
 catory) : and thus far only did he venture to go beyond 
 the truth in speaking of it, except by this, viz., " it is
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 15 
 
 (says his Preface) " generally taken to comprehend all 
 things necessary to he believed :" — tlce Creed — as if he 
 had never heard of more Creeds than this one : as if 
 that Liturgy, of which it forms a part, did not, lest con- 
 fusion should not be thick enough, force into men's 
 mouths two other Creeds — the Niccnc and the Al/uma- 
 sicDi (yes, the Athanasian !) by the side of it. 
 
 For the first time — (pity the edition now on the 
 table, though the tentJi., does not enable any one to say 
 exactlj' what time was) — for the first time — observing 
 what sort of a thing this tissue of dark allusions, taken 
 in its own state, was, — he formed the generous resolu- 
 tion of rendering it intelligible : and in this endeavor, 
 no fewer than four hundred closely printed folio pages, 
 with more of microscopic notes than text, are employed : 
 ■" so that every one, when he pronounceth the Creed, 
 may know (says the good Bishop) what he ought to 
 intend and what he is understood to profess, when he 
 so pronounceth it :" so that now, to all those in whose 
 instance to the labor of studying this Exposition, and 
 the faculty of buying or borrowing it, has been added 
 the felicity of undei'standing it, the text, in so far as 
 the enterprise undertaken by the comment has been 
 successful, has been rendered intelligible. 
 
 Creed and exposition together, of those who but for 
 it would have been damned, how many will have been 
 saved by it ? Of those who, if they had had it, would 
 have been saved, how many will have been damned 
 for want of it? — those included who will not have 
 been rich enough either to buy or to borrow it. When 
 to each of these questions a satisfactory answer has 
 Ibeen provided, then it is that of its worth a correct 
 estimate as well as conception will have been formed. 
 
 This, together with both the other creeds, and 
 together with the spirit and so large a portion besides 
 •of the substance of her Liturgy, was by the Church of 
 England received from her Holy Mother : among 
 whose histories that of the pic-iiic formation of this 
 •Creed by its putative fathers the Apostles may be 
 found in their proper places. The equally established 
 Church of Scotland is wiser and honester than to teach 
 any of these Creeds.
 
 16 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Of the three declarations of persuasion, which, under 
 the name of Greeds, are all adopted into and make part 
 of the Church of England Liturgy, this, — which by- 
 universal confession falsely, yet not the less universally, 
 is called tJie Apostles' Creed, — is one. 
 
 In relation to this instrument, as here placed and 
 employed, two questions naturally present themselves — 
 
 I. The set of opinions here stated as deduced from 
 the text of holy writ, are they rightly deduced from 
 holy writ ? Do they in holy writ find a sufficient 
 warrant ? 
 
 If yes, is it right and useful to take the whole of 
 the instrument as it stands, — and thus, at the tenderest 
 age, force it into the mouths of children ? 
 
 Of these questions, the first does not in any peculiar 
 manner belong to this place : for the present, at least, 
 it may therefore be dismissed. 
 
 In relation to the other question, a few observations 
 may be not altogether without their use. 
 
 (1). \_Who tvas conceived, hy the Holy Ghost.'] — Not 
 to dispute the matter of fact — the child — is it in the 
 nature of the case that, of this conception, any concep- 
 tion at all should be entertained by the child by whom 
 the answer is lisped ? 
 
 (2). \Born of the Virgin Mary.'] — The like question 
 to this clause. — Born of a Virgin? — Yes : viz., of a 
 woman who was once a virgin : but if that be what is 
 here to be understood, so was every man that was ever 
 born. Born without prejudice to her virginity ? — she 
 remaining after the birth as entirely a virgin as she 
 was before ? Is this a matter, the conception of which 
 is, to a pupil, at such an age, in the number of things 
 possible ? — at such an age— not to speak of any less 
 early age. Admitting the possibility, the attempt to 
 convey an idea such as this, can it in any way be 
 of use? 
 
 (3). \_Suffered under Pontius Pilate.] — To a child at 
 such an age the name of the Roman governor under
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 17 
 
 ^vhose government the suffering took place — the 
 remembrance of it, is it of any particular use? 
 
 (4). [TFrt6- crucified, dead (Did Imricd.'] — Crucifixion 
 — burial — in neither of these two facts is there any- 
 thing but what, at a very early age, a child may be 
 capable of comprehending without much dilHculty. — 
 But death? the death of whom ? — the death of a God ? 
 — What ! a God ? a God of our own die ? — Much about 
 this time, perhaps a little earlier, perhaps a little later, 
 it maj' have happened to the child to hear of the Gods 
 of the Iwatliens — Gods in multitudes — not one of them 
 subject to death. In such a case, how inferior will this 
 comparatively new God be apt to appear to him, in 
 comparison of the least of these ancient ones! But if 
 God the Sun was thus mortal, what should preserve his 
 Father from being mortal too ? If it was the Son's 
 turn to die at that time, may it not one of these days 
 be the Father's turn ? and then what is to become of 
 the world and all that live in it ? 
 
 For the removal of this difficult j', what answer is 
 left, but the doctrine of the two natures? Jesus (the 
 child must be told) had two natures — the human and 
 the divine ; he was a man and a God ; that is tJic God 
 — for there is but one God — at the same time. It was 
 the man only that was crucified, and, dying under the 
 operation, was then buried. The God did not die : in 
 the case of God, no such thing as death took place : it 
 is not in the nature of God, that is to say, of the one 
 God, to die. "Well, then, while one of these persons, 
 viz., the man, was dying, the other of them, the God, 
 the one God, whereabouts was he ? — Have a care, child, 
 what you say. Two persons ? no such thing. Man 
 one, God one : these one and one, which you in your 
 ignorance take for two, are not two persons : they are 
 but one. — How but one person ? One man, is not that 
 one person ? And one God, is not that another person ? 
 One and one, do they not make two? — In answer to 
 any such questions, nothing remains but to chide the 
 poor child for its ignorance— to insist upon its under- 
 standing in this case the difference between a nature 
 and a person, and thereupon to plague him till he 
 
 C
 
 18 THE CHUHCII OF ENGLAND 
 
 declares himself satisfied that, though Jesus had two 
 natures, he had but one person, and that, in that 
 instance, at least, so far as ^er.so^ia?/^// was concerned, 
 a God — no, not a God, but God — yes, God, and man 
 together, were one and the same. 
 
 Now, to any practical purpose, whether this or any 
 part of it be true or no, is not, to child or man, worth 
 inquiry. How should it be ? For to human conduct, 
 take it in any of these ways, what difference does it 
 make ? But, in regard to all this, or any part of this, 
 to force a child to declare — to declare most solemnl y 
 and seriously, that he believes it, — believes it just as 
 he believes in the existence of the person by whose 
 words and gestures the words are forced into his 
 mouth, and this in a case in which any such belief is 
 as plainly impossible! — in this lies the mischief: — 
 and, so long as in a habit of falsehood and insincerity, 
 and that a universal one, there is anything mischievous, 
 this mischief will be as real as the pretended belief is 
 false. 
 
 (5). [^He descended into liell.'] — Of the matter of fact 
 here asserted, the truth being admitted — (though for 
 the admitting it no warrant was ever so much as 
 attempted to be found in any part of Scripture that 
 bears any relation to Jesus, and though as well might 
 it have been asserted that, while a visit was then paid 
 to hell by Jesus, a visit was at the same time paid to 
 heaven by the Devil) — still, on this as on so many pre- 
 ceding and succeeding occasions, comes the question — 
 supposing the fact ever so well established, to what 
 possible good use force a child, as soon as it can speak, 
 to say that it believes this, or so much as use any 
 endeavors to cause it actually to believe any such 
 thing ? 
 
 "When, against this proposition, the monstrous 
 absurdity of it, coupled with its utter destituteness of 
 all warrant from Scripture, is brought to view, the 
 observation made by way of answer — and that probably 
 enough a true one, is — that in this particular the trans- 
 lation is incorrect ; for that in the original Greek the 
 word rendered in English by hell, did not on this
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 19 
 
 occasion mean that which on every other occasion it is 
 commonly understood to mean — viz., the abode and 
 place of torment of the damned. 
 
 But, besides that of this observation a necessary 
 effect is to give birth to another question — viz., if not 
 hell, what other place then is on this occasion to be 
 understood ?— (a question, to which an answer would 
 not, it is supposed, be very easy to be found)— another 
 observation is, that in the case of at least nine hundred 
 and ninety-nine out of a thousand of those whose 
 salvation is understood to be in so material a degree 
 dependent — dependent, in some way or other — upon 
 this Catechism, no such mistranslation is known or so 
 much as suspected. In the conception of this vast 
 majority, the place of torment appointed for the Devil 
 and his angels, — tliis is the place to which the visit of 
 this Son of God — himself God — was, in his own divine 
 person, paid. 
 
 Of this perplexity, added to so many other per- 
 plexities, what is the result ? That, in the minds of 
 a very large proportion of the whole number, — a very 
 large proportion, if not the whole, of this discourse, 
 called a Creed, and the Creed, produces the same effect 
 as. and no more than, so much inarticulate sound. Not 
 but that if, in the instance of the whole number, such 
 were the case wuth the ivhole of this same creed, it 
 would be all the better ; always excepted the mischief 
 of the lie which the child is taught and compelled to 
 utter, in thus seriously and solemnly declaring that he 
 believes it. 
 
 (6). [/ helieve in the Holy Ghost.'] — Mere sounds 
 without sense : mere words without meaning : not 
 only void of all meaning, which to any such youvuf 
 person can be of any use — not only void of all meaning 
 which to any person can be of any use, — but without 
 anything attached to them that can be called mean- 
 ing. 
 
 What is the Holy Ghost? — Ansiver. The same as 
 the Holy S'pirit. 
 
 What then is the Holy Spirit? — Answer. The 
 Spirit of God.
 
 20 THE CHUUCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 What then is this Spirit of God, that, when you 
 believe this God, this should not be enough, but that 
 you must believe in this Spirit of God besides ? 
 Believing- in a man, what more do you do by believing 
 in his Spirit likewise ? 
 
 " TJie Lord be with you^'' says the minister to the 
 congregation in one part of our Liturgy. Not to be 
 behind hand with him either in piety or politeness, 
 nor yet to give him back his compliment without 
 variation, as if for want of words, " And with thy 
 Spirit," returns the Ghorns, under the command of the 
 clerk. In any such variation of the phrase, has imagi- 
 nation in its extravagance ever soared to such a height 
 as to fancy itself to be possessing and em[)loying a re- 
 agent, having the effect of decomposing a human 
 person, in such sort as to convert him, polypus like, 
 into two persons, of which himself is one and his spirit 
 the other ? 
 
 If believing in God be not enough, without believing 
 in the Spirit of God besides, how came this to be 
 enough? To believe in the Spirit of God in aildition 
 to God himself, how can this be sufficient when, besides 
 the Spirit of God, according to the flowery texture of 
 the same language and the same Scriptures, there are 
 so many other things belonging to God, viz , the hand 
 of God, the arm of God, the finger of God, the word of 
 God, the power of God, the glory of God, and so forth : 
 each of them not less susceptible, than the Spirit of 
 God, of a Separate existence. — Oh, silly men — yes, if 
 sincere, "more silly far than any sheep, which on the 
 flowery plains shepherd did ever keep," — ye string 
 words upon words, — and then, for every word believe, 
 or pretend to believe, that a correspondent really 
 existing object is brought into existence. 
 
 The Holy Ghost being, at the end of the account, 
 something which is the same as God and at the same 
 time distinct from God, — and being something in 
 which, day by day, the child is obliged to say that he 
 believes, — by the sense of this obligation, should it 
 happen to him to be induced to put himself upon the 
 look-out for something determinate to believe in, —
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 21 
 
 of such his inquiry, what, if anything, will be the 
 result? 
 
 In the same instructive prints which present to his 
 view the Devil in the character of a black man, with 
 horns on his liead and a tail to his rump, he will behold 
 a pigeon, hovering in a spot of light. This pigeon, 
 which, however, he will be taught to call not by this 
 name, but by its other and more poetical name, a dove 
 — this /;/y/6'on it is, that if anything will be the object 
 of his belief. 
 
 Onr God, whose picture here and noiv must not be 
 drawn, but which when here it was drawn, was — and 
 there where it is drawn, is — the picture of an old man ; 
 — another God, whose picture may be drawn, and 
 is continually drawn, and when drawn is seen to be 
 the picture of a goung man — which God is likewise 
 not only a God but also a man ; — a third God, whose 
 picture may be drawn, and being drawn, is seen to be 
 the picture of the sort of pigeon called a dove, — these 
 three Gods, who, man ?md pigeon included, make, after 
 all, but one and the same object of belief, and that 
 object a God, — these, when this system of instruction 
 has been read, marked, learnt, and inwardly digested, 
 comprise and constitute the suhjcct of all this science — 
 the object of the young child's belief — of that belief, 
 of which he is forced to say that he entertains it. — 
 That he entertains it ? — why ? — Even because, in an 
 unthinking and half-hearing moment, three persons, 
 under the rod of the law, — to save him from the end- 
 less and inscrutable mass of temporal inconvenience 
 attached to the non-performance of the ceremony, — 
 undertook, by that which would be not only a rash, 
 but a. flagitious, were it anything but a setiseless vow, 
 that, after having begun to entertain this belief, before 
 he knew or cared what it was that he was thus 
 entertaining, he would to the end of his life continue 
 to entertain it. 
 
 (7). IThe Holy Catholic Church.']— The Holy Catholic 
 Church. — " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.^^ — 
 Not to speak of former times, what is it that at present 
 a child can understand himself to have spoken of him-
 
 22 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 self as doing, when he has declared that he believes in 
 the Holy Catholic Church ? — I believe in God? — Yes, 
 this is what he maij conceive himself to understand. — 
 I believe in God ; i.e., I believe in the existence of a 
 God — and so in regard to Jesvs Christ and the Holy 
 Ghost. But / believe in the existence of a Holy 
 Catholic Church ? — For this same Church, of which, 
 under the name of the Holy Catholic Church — one 
 Holy Catholic Church, and no more than one — he is 
 thus forced to speak, where is it that he is to look ? 
 If, by any such name as the Catholic Church, there 
 be anything that on any other occasion he has 
 ever heard spoken of as being in existence, it 
 will have been the Roman Catholic Church — a Church 
 composed of Roinan Catholics, who are the same 
 men that are sometimes called Papists, and who, 
 when they were in power, burnt as many of the 
 good people called Protestants, of whom he himself is 
 one, as for that purpose thej' could lay hold of. Now, 
 as to the Holy Ghost, in whom the child has just been 
 declaring himself to believe, — whatsoever is or is not 
 meant by Jioliness, — that Ghost, Avithout any difficulty, 
 is holy. But this Church, composed as it is of the 
 barbarous men called Pajnsts, is this too. Holy ? — holy, 
 even as the Holy Ghost is Holy? — On the part of the 
 poor child, suppose any particle of thought to be 
 bestowed upon the subject, how distressing must be the 
 perplexity into which he here finds himself plunged ? 
 — But no : — before it has arrived thus far, the plain 
 truth of the case is — that, whether in the breast of a 
 child or in the breast of an adult, the faculty of 
 thought, having found itself baffled and wearied out, 
 has, in despair, withdrawn itself from the whole 
 subject, leaving in the grasp of the- conception and the 
 memory nothing but a string of sounds and characters, 
 void of all sense. 
 
 (8 ) \_The Communion of Saints.'] — The Communion 
 #/ Saints ? One more puzzle ; a riddle which un- 
 happily is not explicable, but which happily is not 
 worth being explained. 
 
 The Communion of Saints — What is a Communion f
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 23 
 
 What are Saints? Saints, the poor chihl will soon 
 have heard of. There is St. Peter ; there are the rest 
 of the twelve Apostles, (Traitor Judas being excepted) : 
 there are Jesus's four Biographers, decorated with the 
 title of Evangelists ; all or most of them more or less 
 known to him by their portraits ; all of them striking 
 likenesses ; and, though last not least, there is St. Paul, 
 ■whose beginning had borne but too near a resemblance 
 to the latter end of Judas. In the Cummunion, — or, at 
 any rate, in a communion, — the child may likewise ere 
 long behold a thing which he has heard of, and more- 
 over heard — a part of the Church service, called some- 
 times for shortness the Conununion simply, at other 
 times without abbreviation the Conimiinion Service. — 
 Comm nn ion — Sain ts — belief — pu tting together the 
 ideas brought to view by these three words, — what in 
 relation to this matter will be the little creature's 
 belief ? — something, perhaps, to this effect : viz., that, 
 among the Apostles and whatever other holy men 
 used to be called Saitits, it was a custom to join 
 together in the performance of the Communion service ; 
 of the Communion service, — worded, as he has seen it, 
 or is about to see it worded, viz., in the Church of 
 England Liturgy . 
 
 If this be an error, well would it be for the suc- 
 cessive generations by which the compound here 
 analyzed is destined to be swallowed, — not to speak of 
 those by whom it has iee;i swallowed, — if, of all errors 
 contained in it, this were the most pernicious one. 
 
 Saints, whose portraits he has there been used to 
 see — that, like good Saints as they were, they used, all 
 of them, to join in the performance of the Communion 
 service — this may do for a time. But to believe in the 
 Communion of Saints, is to believe in the Saints them- 
 selves : and who are these Saints ? Any such question, 
 should it ever happen to him. to put to himself, what 
 answer will he have to give — Where shall he find it ? — 
 Where shall he look for it ? Sooner or later it may 
 happen to him to look into the Calendar that stands at 
 the commencement of his Common Prayer Book, more 
 especially as it is there that he will have to look for 
 Holidays. Looking into this treasury of consecrated
 
 24 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 idleness, he will find, that, to the original stock of 
 Saints, he will have to add a list of modern ones : not 
 to speak of Martyrs and Confessors, with whom, this 
 Catechism has happily abstained from burthening his 
 memory and his conscience. Neither in this however 
 will there be anj^ great difficulty : and now, to his 
 belief in the Devil will be added his belief in Saint 
 Dunstan, whose Church is established still in Fleet 
 Street, and whose Saintship consisted in pulling the 
 Tinclean spirit by the nose. Here at any rate may be 
 Saints enough to satisfy his believing appetite, so long 
 as his studies are confined to the Common Prayer Book, 
 of which this Catechism makes a part, and the Calendar 
 by which it is commenced or preceded. But by the 
 Holy Scriptures — should they ever carry him so far 
 — how will those ideas, which by the Common Prayer 
 Book he had been led to form of Saints, be enlarged, 
 and at the same time confused and troubled ? On this 
 head, are the Holy Scriptures — is the New Testament — 
 are the Acts of the Apostles, to be believed ? H so, 
 then is every one a Saint by whom the religion of 
 Jesus is, or ever has been, or shall ever have been, 
 professed. Read to this purpose the Acts of the 
 Apostles ; or, what is shorter, tura to any Concordance. 
 If this be so, then in the number of these holy sub- 
 jects or objects of his belief, he may have to place not 
 only St. Peter and St. Paul with their contemporaries, 
 as above, with such of their successors as St. Sutton, 
 and St. Vernon, and St. Howell, and St. Burgess, and 
 St. Eldon, and St. Sidmouth, and St. Harrowhy, and 
 St. Bailey, and St. Stevens, and St. Parke, and St. 
 Wilherfoy^ce, and St. Bernard, and St. W. Milner the 
 Protestant, and St. Milner the Catholic, and St. 
 Hannah and St. Joamia, — but St. Napoleon, moreover, 
 and St. George, and St. Ellenhorough, and St, Yarmouth 
 the Orangeman, and St. Head.fort,di\\& ^t. Dudley Bate, 
 and St. Southey and St. Anti-Jacobin, and St. Eclectic, 
 and St. Quarterly Revieiv. 
 
 (9). [^The forgiveness of sins ; the resurrection of the 
 Ijody ; and the life everlasting.] On these several 
 points, to the present purpose it seems scarely necessary
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 25 
 
 to bestow any very particular observations. Thus 
 briefly and elliptically conceived, containing nothinjs^ 
 but a mere indication of certain topics, as if touched 
 upon in some other work, the phrases amount of them- 
 selves to nothing. The demand they present for 
 explanation is obvious and undeniable : and in the 
 whole body of that formulary, by not so much as a 
 syllable in the way of explanation are they accom- 
 panied. Nothing of that sort is there in the Creed 
 itself ; as little in this CatecJiism, into which, for the 
 instruction of young children, it is engrafted. 
 
 As such they add to the number of propositions or 
 subject-matters, in relation to which, while it is 
 impossible the child should entertain any belief con- 
 cerning them, he is thus forced to stand up with all 
 solemnity, and say, " / do helievey 
 
 As to these three last-mentioned subjects, — what in 
 each instance you have, and all that you have, is com- 
 posed of so many allusions — mere allusions. In the 
 mind of him, whoever he was, hy whom this formulary 
 was penned, they had doubtless, every one of them, a 
 suhject-matter or ohjcct, more or less determinate — every 
 one of them accordinglj- a meaning. But in the mind 
 of the so newly-born child, — in that mind, in which it 
 is, generally speaking, impossible that the indeterminate 
 portion of matter thus alluded to should have any 
 place, what meaning can they, any of them, have ? 
 At bottom, what then is it that he is thus forced to 
 declare ? What but this, viz., that he believes in what- 
 ever is thus forced into his mouth, without knowing 
 so much as who it is that put it where it is, much less 
 ivhat it is ? 
 
 Question 5. What dost tliou chiefly learn in these articles of thy 
 belief ? 
 
 Answer. First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath 
 made me and all the world (1). 
 
 Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all man- 
 kind (2). 
 
 Thirdly, in the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the elect 
 people of God (3).
 
 26 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 OBSERVATIONS, 
 
 To these three things may be added three others 
 which, with a degree of correctness proportioned to 
 the degree of the impregnation he has received from 
 them, a child may make sure of learning ; — and these 
 are, — the art of gratuitous assertion — the art of speaking 
 and writing without thinking — and the art of making 
 groundless inferences. 
 
 (1). {_Beliefin God the Father.'] — Yes : this is among 
 the things which, supposing them noticed, are not 
 incapable of being learnt from it. 
 
 (2). [Belief in God the Son?}— Yes, and this like-' 
 wise. — But belief in God the Son, ivho redeemed me and 
 all the world. — As to the fact of the redemption, had it 
 been taken for the subject of an independent article of 
 belief, no objection would would, here at least, have 
 been made to it. Bat the Creed called the Ajjostles' 
 Creed? — this just repeated Creed .^ — from this dis- 
 course is the belief of any such thing as redemption to 
 be learnt ? Look at it, reader, once more : examine 
 it from top to bottom. Of no such thing — any the 
 slightest intimation will you find in it. 
 
 But manMnd, all of whom the child is thus made 
 to say he believes to have been redeemed — redeemed, 
 along with himself, by Jesus — they, on considering the 
 condition in which they will be seen to be placed, 
 present some claim to notice. 
 
 Of this redemption, the universality any more than 
 the/«c^ is not here meant to be disputed. But, who- 
 soever has been made to declare himself to be a 
 believer in it, it might not have been amiss, it should 
 seem, had some little provision been made for pre- 
 serving him from any such obligation as that of 
 declaring, on an eventually subsequent occasion, a 
 directly opposite belief : viz., that of declaring, in 
 solemn form, his belief of and in the entire contents 
 of that other formulary called the Thirty -nine Articles, 
 — Of that test and treasury of Church of England 
 orthodoxy, in one article, viz., the 18th, intituled, " Of
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 27 
 
 obtaining eternal salvation only by the name of Christ,^* 
 " Those (it is said) are to be held accursed, that presume 
 to say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect 
 which he professeth, so that he be dili.G^entto frame his 
 life according to that Law and the Light of Nature. 
 For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us (concludes the 
 article) only the name of Jesus whereby men must be 
 saved." 
 
 Not to speak of any former portion of time, — of the 
 whole number of human beings existing at this time 
 upon this our earth, by far the greater number, it is 
 manifest, can never have heard of any such person or 
 name as Jesus. This great majority — are they capable 
 of being saved, each of them " diligently framing his 
 life," in the terms of the article, " according to the Law 
 of Nature " (i.e., it must be presumed, leading a 
 virtuous life), or are they not ? 
 
 Being, along with the rest of mankind, redeemed by 
 Jesus, is a man capable of being " saved," otherwise 
 than " by the name of Jesus ?" — then is the article 
 false. — Is he incapable ? — then where is the use of such 
 redemption, and what is a man the better for it ? 
 
 Every man who takes what are called Holy Orders — 
 every man, whose name is entered in the books of 
 either University — declares in writing his belief in all 
 these Articles. But, as hath been seen, no sooner does 
 he thus declare, than, by such his declaration, he con- 
 tradicts the belief thus expressed in and by this his 
 Catechism. 
 
 By parental authority — by the compulsion insepa- 
 rable from the exercise, however directed, of that 
 authority, — in a word, by fo7xe — by anything but 
 argument or reason applied to the understanding, — 
 during a long and uninterrupted course of years, he 
 is made continually to declare this to be his belief : 
 thereupon, when the time for the purchase of a ticket 
 in the Ecclesiastical Lottery, and with it the time for 
 Subscription comes, — all on a sudden he turns short 
 round, casts from him this his belief, and embraces the 
 reverse of it. 
 
 All this with the most perfect and the most exem- 
 plary regularity : and thus it is that order, good oidcr.
 
 28 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 regularity, decency — sounds so sweet to the ears of 
 OrtJiodoxy, Despotism, and their ever ready handmaid, 
 Mendaciiy — are preserved . 
 
 (3). [Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, ivho sanctifieth 
 me and all the elect imoyle of God.^ — In explanation of 
 the function called sanctification, thus allotted to God 
 the Holy Ghost, what, in this instrument, is there to be 
 found ? — Just as much as in the explanation of the 
 function of redemption, just allotted, as above, to God 
 the Son. 
 
 Whence, then, all this elaborate distinction of func- 
 tions ? all the work thus given to the carving knife ? 
 The Godhead being, as everybody is supposed to know, 
 or at least made to say, composed of three persons, — 
 and, on the occasion in question, the plan being to give 
 something to do for each, — thereupon, the less plainly 
 incomprehensible functions of creation and redemption 
 being already disposed of, — divided, as hath been seen, 
 between the two other persons of this undivided 
 Trinity, comes the question — what can we find for the 
 Holy Ghost to do ? — Answer. Sanctification. — Here, 
 then, whatsoever be the meaning of it, here was a 
 sort of employment found for him, every other being 
 engaged. 
 
 Here, then, in this word, we have the name of a 
 sort of process, which the child is made to say is going 
 on within him ; going on within him at all times — 
 going on within him at the very instant he is giving 
 this account of it. This process, then, what is it? Of 
 what feelings is it productive ? By what marks and 
 symptoms is he to know whether it really is or is not 
 going on within him, as he is forced to say it is ? How 
 does he feel, now that the Holy Ghost is sanctifying 
 him? How is it that he would feel, if no such opera- 
 lion were going on within him ? 
 
 Too often does it happen to him, in some shape or 
 other, to commit sin ; or something which he is told 
 and required to believe is sin : an event which cannot 
 fail to be frequently, not to say continually, taking 
 place, if that be true, which in the Liturgy we are all 
 made so decidedly to confess and assert, — viz., that we
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 29 
 
 are all — all of us without exception — so many " miser- 
 able sinners^ In the School-room, doing what by this 
 Catechism he is forced to do, saying what he is forced 
 to say, the child thus declares himself, notwithstanding, 
 a sancti/ied person. From thence going to church, he 
 confesses himself to be no better than "a miHcrable 
 sinner.''^ If he is not always this miserable sinner, 
 then why is he always forced to say he is ? If he is 
 always this same miserable sinner, tlien this sanctifica- 
 tion, be it what it may, which the Holy Ghost was at 
 the pains of bestowing upon him, what is he the better 
 for it ? 
 
 The child, into whose mouth these words are forced, 
 does he not so much as suppose himself to feel going 
 on within him any process, to which the word sancti- 
 fication can be applied ? If not, then what is it that 
 this same sanctificatUm means ? and why is it that he 
 is made to speak of the Holy Ghost, as performing or 
 having performed it upon him, when he feels not any 
 such thing, nor knows anything about the matter? 
 
 Does he then feel or suppose any such particular 
 operation going on within him ? If so, then must 
 this sanctification be the receiving of that inward 
 light, which certain of the people called Methodists 
 take upon them to speak of themselves as feeling 
 within themselves. By the rulers of the Church and 
 their adherents, these Methodists are spoken of as 
 schismatics, and a species of heretics. Quere, such 
 reprobation, how is it consistent with the declaration 
 thus expressed and included in this Catechism ? 
 
 To be sancti/ied is to be made holi/. By the child, 
 be he who he may, sooner or later, this point of infor- 
 mation will have been received, if it has not been 
 already. While giving this answer, does the child then 
 feel itself holt/? — If not, chen why is it to be forced to 
 say it does ? If yes, then is it already a Metliodist 
 child : an arrant Methodist. 
 
 Question 6. You said that yiur Godfathers and Godmothers 
 did promise for you that you should keep God's commandments. 
 Tell me how many there be. 
 
 Answer. Ten.
 
 30 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Question 7. Which be they ? 
 
 Answer. The same which God spake in the twentieth chapter 
 of Exodus, saying, I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee 
 out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 
 
 1. Thou shalt have none other Gods but me. 
 
 *^* Tliereupon follow the other nine of these commandments. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Upon the face of this introduction, an appearance 
 rather unfortunate presents itself. The child in ques- 
 tion is not a Jew : neither he nor any of his forefathers 
 were ever, in the manner thus alluded to, " brought 
 out of the land of Egypt.'' But it is to the Jews, and 
 to that race alone, — to those, and the progeny of those, 
 who were thus brought out of the land of Egj-pt — that 
 these Commandments are any where in the Bible re- 
 presented as having been delivered. 
 
 How far, by a person professing the religion of 
 Jesus, they ought to be considered as binding upon 
 him, is a subject of controversy, upon which it is not 
 proposed to enter in this place. 
 
 One observation however there is, which, even in 
 this place, claims admission,— and that by a title which 
 it seems not easy to dispute. This is — that, in a dis- 
 cnurse, which it is intended for the instruction of 
 CJiristian children, and which has for one of its objects 
 the causing these Commandments to be regarded as 
 binding upon Christians, it seems not altogether con- 
 gruous to that design to employ a form of words, upon 
 the face of which it appears that no person, not being 
 of Jewish lineage, and at the same time of the Jewish 
 persuasion in matters of religion, and therefore no 
 child for whose use this formulary was intended, is of 
 the number of the persons to whom these Command- 
 ments were addressed. 
 
 In relation to this incongruity, what was the expec- 
 tation, and consequent instruction, of the penners and 
 establishers of this formulary ? — that it would and 
 should, or that it would not and should not, attract, in 
 general, the notice, and engage the attention, of those 
 who were destined to be impregnated with it ? — im- 
 pregnated with the tnatter, or at any rate, with the
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 31 
 
 words of it ? If yes, then the expectation and inten- 
 tion was, — that, by those, by whom the words of this 
 formulary were got hj heart, no reliance should be 
 placed in the ivords of which it was composed ; but 
 that for the sense of it, they were to refer themselves 
 to whatever construction the person, to whose guidance 
 it was meant they should stand subjected, might at any 
 time be pleased to put upon it : — if no, then the expec- 
 tation and intention was, — that in this part at least — 
 (and if in this part, how should it be otherwise in any 
 other?) the place it occupied in men's minds would and 
 should be that of an insignificant assemblage of 
 words : — of mere words, not accompanied by corres- 
 pondent ideas, and therefore not capable of exercising 
 any influence on human practice ; — on the conduct of 
 those upon whose memories it was to be impressed. 
 
 But, in relation to this matter, let the expectation 
 and intention have been what they may, what is likely 
 to be the effect? The incongruity, ivill it be perceived? 
 then in so far will the unfitness of this formulary for 
 its purpose be perceived. The incongruity, will it not 
 be perceived ? it will then be, because, — in this par- 
 ticular part, as in the whole together, — it is not of a 
 nature to take on the understanding any efficient hold, 
 nor therefore to produce on life and conduct any 
 beneficial effect. 
 
 Tliou slialt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the 
 likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth 
 beneath, or in tlie waters under the earth. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Upon the face of this commandment, two branches 
 of art and science stand condemned and prohibited ; 
 viz., the grcqihic art in all its various modifications ; 
 the graphic art, and thereby, in great measure, the 
 science of natural history , two branches of art and 
 science ; and thereby, among men, those by whom 
 those branches of art and science are resijectively 
 practised and cultivated : on the one hand, 2)ainters 
 and other such artists — on the other hand, natural 
 philosophers.
 
 32 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 True it is that, immediately after the above, these 
 are the words that follow : — " iltoii shcdt not how doivn 
 to them nor icorship iJiem.'''' Well then (it has been 
 said) by this it appears, that in so far as concerns 
 manual operation in any shape, in addition to the act 
 of hawing down to and worshipping them^ all that was 
 meant to be included in the prohibition was, not 
 simply the act of nuiMng the sort of things in question, 
 but the act of making them for the jjurpose in ques- 
 tion : viz., that of their being howed down to and 
 worshipped. 
 
 Yes, verily ; in this may be seen a signification, 
 which must perforce be put upon these words, in so far 
 as a resolution has been previously taken, that whatso- 
 ever were the real meaning of the prohibitory clause, 
 the act of making, as applied to the class of articles in 
 question, shall not be considered as included in it. 
 
 But, upon the face of the words, as they here stand, 
 is this the true, the natural, the proper sense of them ? 
 If so, then are the words designative of the sort of act 
 first mentioned, viz., the act of making — then are the 
 words — '-^ Thou shalt not make to thyself" — to be con- 
 sidered as words void of meaning : then is the whole 
 passage to be understood, as it would be if no such 
 words were there. 
 
 But, for the taking of any such liberty with this 
 passage, where is the sufficient warrant ? If with tliis 
 passage, that sort of liberty may be taken, — taken at 
 pleasure, by any man who finds a convenience in so 
 doing, — why not with any other, and every other ? — 
 This is the way that, now-a-days, so many religions 
 are made. By omission, by insertion, by substitution 
 — b}^ amendment in every shape — a man makes a Bible 
 of his own ; and thereupon, with intimations given of 
 divine vengeance in case of refractoriness, he calls 
 upon mankind to bow down and worship it. 
 
 The writer, inspired or not inspired, by whom this 
 passage was originally penned, was he so much less 
 skilled in the import and management of his own 
 language, as not to be able to give expression to a 
 prohibition, which he did intend should take effect, — 
 not to be able to give expression to this prohibition,
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 33 
 
 without adding to it another and still more extensive 
 and that a useless and pernicious one — which he did 
 not intend should take effect ? Inspired or uninspired, 
 had he not foresight enough to foresee (and surely no 
 such gift as that of supernatural prophecy was neces- 
 sary to enable a man to foresee) that such as is here 
 contended for would be the signification put upon these 
 words, — and in consequence to do what was so per- 
 fectly easy to do, for preventing any such sense from 
 being put upon them, viz., to forbear inserting the 
 words by which this supposed real intention was so 
 plainly counteracted, and which could not be either 
 necessary or conducive to any other purpose than that 
 of counteracting it. 
 
 In truth, according to the plain and only natural 
 import of the words, here are two sorts of acts, 
 perfectly distinct from and unconnected with each 
 other, that are successively taken for the objects of so 
 man 5" successive prohibitory clauses. One is — the act 
 of worshipping the natural objects therein described, 
 the other is — the act of making visible representations 
 of these same objects. 
 
 True it is, that it is not in this order that the two 
 prohibitions follow one another: it is in the reverse 
 order : the prohibition of making any likenesses of the 
 objects in question — this is the prohibition that happens 
 here to have been first. And in this collocation it is — • 
 in the relative position thus given to these two pro- 
 hibitive clauses, Avhich in this their situation are, how- 
 ever, upon the face of them, no less completely 
 independent of one another, than in the opposite situa- 
 tion they would have been — in this circumstance, 
 insignificant as it. is, may be seen the only shadow of 
 pretence that could be found for a change so violent — ■ 
 for a, misrepresentation so manifest. 
 
 All this while, as everybody knows in this country, 
 in which the religion of Jesus is not only professed, 
 but established, and even forced upon men by law, — ■ 
 under the same law the making of graven images is 
 not only practised and allowed, but hy public authority 
 encouraged ; as well as in all other imaginable ways, 
 " the likenesses " of all sorts of things that are " in 
 
 D
 
 34 THE CIIUIICH OF ENGLAND 
 
 heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water 
 (whatsoever there is of it that is) under the earth." 
 In this state of law and universal practice, while such 
 as above is manifestly the import of this command- 
 ment, — a commandment, exhibited not only in the 
 character of a divine one, but of a divine one, binding 
 not only upon the Jews, to whom it was delivered, but 
 upon Christians, to whom it was not delivered, — is it 
 not deplorable, that, in this country in particular, every 
 Christian belonging to the established religion, should 
 thus be forced to declare his resolution to keep this 
 commandment along with the rest ; — this command- 
 ment, which no such Christian ever does keep, or 
 entertain so much as a thought of keeping ? or, except 
 in and by this formulary, addressed to young children 
 only, is ever called upon to keep ? 
 
 To engage in any such task as that of writing a com- 
 mentary on this Jewish code, forms not any part of the 
 design of the present tract. That part of this Catechism, 
 which is composed of the remaining eight of these 
 commandments, has therefore been omitted. 
 
 Question S. What dost thou chiefly learn by these command- 
 ments ? 
 
 Ansiver. I learn two things : my duty toAvards God, and my 
 duty towards my neighbor. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Of a commentary, be the subject what it may, a 
 proper (and, it should seem, where as here censure is 
 out of the question, the only proper) use is, in so far 
 as the text is, either Avith reference to all persons in 
 general, or with reference to a particular description of 
 persons, for whose use the commentary is intended, 
 less perspicuous than might have been wished, — to 
 clear away the ambiguity or obscurity ; to wit, by 
 bringing to view what, upon the consideration of the 
 whole, presents itself as the true meaning — the 
 meaning intended by the person of whose discourse 
 the text is composed. 
 
 On a' subject such as the present, if, — besides ex- 
 hibiting the meaning which it was in the mind and
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 35 
 
 intention of the author of the original work to convey, 
 — the author of the accessory work in question takes 
 upon himself to draw inferences of his own, in so far 
 it is rather a sermon than a commentary. Be that as 
 it may, in this case what he ought to do is — carefully 
 to avoid confounding with the consecrated ground- 
 work his own unconsecrated inference ; and, in par- 
 ticular, in giving expression to his own inference, he 
 ought to employ for that purpose other words of his 
 own, chosen by himself for that same purpose ; and 
 not any such words of the original texts, as will have 
 the effect of causing this inference of his to be regarded 
 not as his inference, but as so much matter already and 
 actually included in the text ; i.e., as constituting a 
 part of that meaning, which by means of that text, it 
 had been the intention of the author to convej' to his 
 expected readers. 
 
 Taken on the footing of an independent proposition, 
 that in the main, at this time of day, it would be for 
 the benefit of a professor of the religion of Jesus, to 
 regard the above described duties as so many duties 
 incumbent on himself, is not here less meant to be 
 represented as a matter open to dispute. But that in 
 the character of an inference — an inference drawn 
 from the tenor of the code here in question, any such 
 proposition is correct, cannot be admitted. The Jews 
 — they and they alone — were the people to whom this 
 code was addressed. In addressing himself, whether 
 to his hearers or his readers, those, and those alone, 
 were the people, which, on this occasion, could have 
 been present to the mind of Moses, in such sort as to 
 considered as the people, with reference to whom the 
 word neighbor was to be understood. But in those 
 days, and on that occasion, who was the neighbor of a 
 Jew ? In general, every other Jew : but most assuredly 
 no person other than a Jew. On that occasion, had the 
 benefit of these commandments been meant to be 
 extended to men in general, the word correspondent 
 to the word man, and not the word correspondent to 
 the word neighbor, would have been the word 
 employed. If by Muses, of all men, men m general — 
 all men without distinction — had been meant, what
 
 36 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 should have been Jiis inducement to discard this most 
 obvious of all words, and substitute to it a different 
 word, the effect of which, in so far as any effect is 
 given to it, is — to designate, to the exclusion of the 
 whole remainder of the species, a comparatively 
 minute portion of it ? 
 
 Neighbor being a relative term — a word of reference 
 — no sooner is the object of reference changed, than, in 
 this new case, it comes to be designative of a set of 
 persons altogether different from those which in the 
 first instance it was employed to designate. The sort 
 of person, who, during the penning of the text, was 
 in contemplation under the word neighbor, could be 
 no other than a Jeiv. But, at this time of day, in so 
 far as the word neighbor is used in its only proper 
 sense, no Jew is the neighbor, much less the only 
 sort of neighbor, of any child in whose mouth this 
 formulary is forced. True it is that, when Jesus 
 comes, he is represented as making an amendment to 
 this code : declaring, on that occasion, that, by every 
 one of his followers, not Jews alone, but every other 
 man without exception, should, to the purpose of 
 receiving the benefits proffered by him, be considered 
 in the character of a neighbor. With this explana- 
 tion, true it is that, to the particular purpose in ques- 
 tion, in the vocabulary of a follower of Jesus, the word 
 neighbor becomes synonymous to the word man: — ■ 
 understand with this explanation, given as it was by 
 Jesus. But, to the explanation and extension, thus, at 
 so vast a distance of time, after the issuing of this 
 code, given to it by Jesus, no reference is, in this 
 formulary, to be found. In it the neighbor of the 
 Christia7i is represented as being at all times the same 
 sort of person as was the neighbor of the Jew in Moses' 
 time ; and the one as well as the other, as being the 
 same sort of person as is designated by the word man 
 at all times. Accordingly, presently after, viz., in the 
 answer to the next question but one, the expression 
 all meri is slipt in, — and, without notice, is employed 
 in the place of neighbor : as if the two words h ad all 
 along the same meaning: and thus, instead of the 
 clear light in which the whole matter might so e asily
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 37 
 
 have been placed, it is wrapt up in confusion and 
 darkness. 
 
 Question 9. ^V hat is thy duty towards God ? 
 
 Answer. My duty towards God is to believe in hiin, to fear him, 
 and to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my 
 soul, and with all my strength; to worship him, to give him 
 thanks, to put my whole trust in him, to call uptm him, to honor 
 his holy name and. his word, and to serve him truly all the days 
 of m}^ life. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 On the subject of this answer, not a few are the 
 questions that present themselves : — the questions, 
 pregnant all of them, with doubts, if not with objec- 
 tions, — some of them chargeable, as it should seem, 
 with impertinence. But as the suggestions conveyed 
 by them have not for their result any imputation on 
 the morality of the discourse ; — as, supposing tliem 
 well grounded, nothing beyond its character for wisdom 
 is affected by them, — to frame the answers is a task 
 that will be left altogether to the reader : nor, upon 
 any of the subjects thus touched upon, will any more 
 words be employed than what have been found abso- 
 lutely necessary for giving expression to the questions 
 themselves. 
 
 1. Belief in God ? what is it that is here meant by 
 it ? belief that God exists, or any thing, and what else ? 
 
 2. Belief — an act of the understanding — ought it to 
 be or can it be made subject to the determination of 
 the will ? 
 
 3. If, in the mind in question, the existence of God 
 is already the subject matter of belief, what need can 
 there be to take it for a subject of obligation — to rank 
 it among duties ? 
 
 4. If it be not, where can be the effective ground — 
 the cause of fulfilment — in the case of the obligation 
 thus supposed ? Of what sort of matter can any such 
 ground be composed ? 
 
 5. In regard to love, on the supposition that, to the 
 person in question, the object in question is not only 
 an object of fear, but of a fear which is altogether
 
 38 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 boundless, in this case, of any such affection as is 
 expressed by the word love, is the real existence or 
 anything but the name and profession, compatible with 
 such fear ? 
 
 6. In particular, any such sentiment or affection as 
 love, is it, in such a place as the human breast, pro- 
 ducible by, or so much as compatible with, all this 
 training ? 
 
 7. Wherein, except in words, consists on this occa- 
 sion the difference between heart and mind, and aoul 
 and strength ? 
 
 8. By this accumulation of words, thus heaped one 
 upon another, is any other idea conveyed than that of 
 the extreme difficulty of the task thus endeavored to 
 be imposed, viz., the task of loving ? 
 
 9. Any such affection as that called love, where it 
 really has place, does it ever happen to it to have for its 
 accompaniment any such idea as that of difficulty ? 
 
 10. Be the object what it may, he to whom the idea 
 of loving it presents any such idea as that of difficulty, 
 can he with truth be said to love it ? 
 
 11. In the case of a j^oung child — not to speak of 
 maturer age — does it seem likely that, by all these 
 words, any such straining should frequently be pro- 
 duced ? 
 
 12. Supposing it produced, does it seem likely that 
 any real good effects, with relation either to his own 
 happiness, or to the happiness of those whose lot may 
 have placed them within the field of his influence, will 
 result from it ? 
 
 13. Be the person who he may, a determination on 
 his part to put his whole trust in God, is it, if carried 
 into effect, compatible with the practice of putting any 
 part of his trust in the known and perpetually experi- 
 enced and unquestionable operation and efficiency of 
 second causes ? 
 
 14. A total, or even considerable, though it were but 
 partial, disregard to the operation of such second 
 causes, would it be in any degree compatible with per- 
 sonal safety — with the preservation of health, of life, or 
 of anything that is worth preserving, whether to the 
 
 ndividual himself, or to any other person or persons
 
 CATECHISil EXAMINED. 39 
 
 whose lot it may be to stand in need of his assist- 
 ance ? 
 
 15. The exertions thus required, and perforce 
 undertaken to be employed, in the endeavor to serve 
 that Being, to whom all humaii service is " iinprojit- 
 able,'"* might they not with more profit be directed to 
 the service of those weak creatures, whose need, of all 
 the service that can be rendered to them, is at all times 
 so urgent and so abundant ? 
 
 Question 10. What is thy duty towards thy neighbor ? 
 
 Answer. My duty towards my neighbor, is to love him as my- 
 self, and to do to all men as I would they should do unto me. To 
 love, honor and succor my father and mother. To honor and 
 obey the king, and all that ai-e put in authority under him. To 
 submit mj'self to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and 
 masters. To order mj-self lowly and reverently' to all my betters. 
 To hurt nobody by word or deed. To be true and just in all my 
 dealings. To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart. To keep 
 my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil 
 speaking, lying, and slandering. To keep my body in temperance, 
 soberness, and chastity. Not to covet nor desire other men's 
 goods; but to learn and labor truly to get mine own living, and 
 to do ni}' duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God 
 to call me. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Of this long and wordy formulary, had the whole 
 contents been of a piece with the answer thus given 
 to this question, assuredly it would never have been 
 taken for the subject of a commentary, wearing any 
 such complexion as that of the present, or having any 
 such conclusions for its result and practical inference. 
 
 Throwing out the greater part, or the whole of the 
 rest, adding or not adding anything in the place of the 
 matter thus discarded, — were it proposed to retain the 
 substance of this answer, some such little changes 
 might perhaps be suggested, as need not despair of 
 being received in the character of amendments. But, 
 
 * Luke xvii., 10. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those 
 things which are commanded you, say, we are unprotitable servants ; we 
 have done that which was our duty to do.
 
 40 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 taken even as it stands, especially when consideration 
 is had of the age in which it was penned, and above 
 all, when comparison is made of it with the whole 
 remainder of that of which it forms a part, — so 
 beautiful does it appear, that the eye shrinks from any 
 such task, as that of travelling over it in search of 
 imperfections. 
 
 Question 10 (put immediately after the Lord's Prayer^. What 
 desirest thou of God in this pi-ayer ? 
 
 Answer. I desire my Lord God our heaveiily Father, who is the 
 giver of ail goodness, to send his grace (1) unto me, and to all 
 people. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 (1). [Grace.] — Here is the Prayer ; and in the whole 
 tenor of it, from beginning to end, about any such 
 thing or word as grace, not so much as a single syllable. 
 
 The misrepresentation thus made, is it an innocent 
 one ? On the mind of every man by whom this 
 formulary is regarded as unexceptionable, the effect 
 ofE it — is it not— in conjunction with so many other 
 causes which the same formulary sets to work, — to 
 contribute towards the reconciling him to that con- 
 venient laxity of interpretation, which among religion- 
 ists is so unhappily frequent and, with relation to all 
 worldly interests, so convenient ? 
 
 A subject-matter, of which everybody sees that no 
 mention is made in this Prayer — this subject-matter, a 
 child, who sees that it is not there, is made to declare 
 in the face of a clergyman, or other person, under 
 whom he is passing this examination, — and who, as 
 well as he, sees that it is 7iot there, — to declare, and to 
 declare most solemnly, that it is there. 
 
 The lesson thus forced into every Church of England 
 mouth, suppose it to be productive of any fruits what- 
 soever, — is it possible, that, under such instruction, a 
 rooted and habitual depravation of the mental faculties, 
 intellectual and moral, should not be of the number of 
 those fruits ? To repeat as if it were true that which 
 with his own eyes he sees to be untrue, this is what 
 from infancy a child is compelled to practise — this is
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 41 
 
 -what he is made to reckon among the number of his 
 duties. 
 
 In addition to grace, another of the things which, 
 they not being in this Prayer, the pupil is thus forced 
 to declare himself to have found in it, is death — ever- 
 lasting death. — Of everlasting death, what mention is 
 there in this Prayer of Jesus ? — Not any : nor yet so 
 much as of what is commonly meant by death. Of 
 evil, yes ; and death (it may be said) everlasting death 
 — is not this an evil ? — Doubtless : at least if b}^ death 
 be meant — not the absence of all sufferance, but suffer- 
 ance itself. But if this were a sufficient warrant for 
 making the child say that Jesus spoke of death, when 
 no such word as death is to be found in what he said, 
 so would it be for speaking of all other things, one 
 after another, to which, with any i^ropriety, the word 
 evil could be applied, and thereupon saying of each, 
 that Jesus had spoken of it. 
 
 As to grace on this occasion, as on so many others — 
 not to say all others — it is a mere exiiletive ; adding 
 nothing to the sense. Yet upon the ground of this 
 expletive, systems have been built, controversies 
 raised, swords drawn, and blood made to flow in 
 torrents. 
 
 But of this disastrous expletive, more will be seen 
 presently ; viz., when the modern inventions, called 
 Sacraments, come to be laid upon the table. 
 
 Question 11. How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained in 
 his Churcli ? 
 
 Ansiver. Two only (1), as generally necessary to salvation ; that 
 is to say Baptism (2), and the Sujypcr of the Lord (3). 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 (I). [I'lvo only.'] — Of the word only, the use — so all 
 commentators are agreed — was to put an exclusion 
 upon a parcel of other ceremonies to which this revolted 
 Church, the Church of England, had found the name 
 of sacrament attached by the original Church from 
 which she broke loose. 
 
 But as to Christ, the question being how many 
 sacraments hath Christ ordained, the true answer
 
 42 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 would have been — none. For on what occasion, in the 
 only language in which he spoke, is he represented as 
 having employed any word to which the word sacra- 
 ment, taken from the Latin sacramentum, corresponds 
 in this our language ? 
 
 Sacrament ? what is it but a word of modern inven- 
 tion — a sort of metaphysical term, having certainly for 
 its effect, probably for its object, the causing to be 
 regarded as mysterious, two operations, in neither of 
 which there was any mystery, — to be regarded as 
 having a connection with each other — and that con- 
 nection fraught with mystery — two objects, between 
 which no such connection, nor any connection at all^ 
 had been established by Jesus ? 
 
 (2). [1. Bajitism.^ — This operation ^'as a. ceremont/ : 
 a ceremony, having for its object the serving to 
 establish, and upon occasion bring to mind, the fact 
 of a man's having been aggregated into the society 
 formed by Jesus : the religious society, of which — 
 God or man, or both in one, — he was the teacher and 
 the head. 
 
 In an unlettered community it was a sort of sub- 
 stitute for an entry in a register or memorandum book. 
 By a too natural misconception, the mere sign or 
 evidence of this aggregation was taken for the efficient 
 cause of the benefits produced by it. Thereupon came 
 questions, out of number, about the circumstances by 
 which it should be accompanied : — I. whether the 
 application of the water should be total ov partial? — 
 
 2. if partial, what fingers should be employed in it? — 
 
 3. and what the form should be that should be given 
 to the wet mark made by it ? etc., etc.,* the principle 
 of nullity — that inexhaustible source of uncertainty 
 in all its excruciating shapes — that prime instrument 
 
 * In the Russian Empire, by differences on this ground, persecutions 
 and disastrous civil wars have been kindled. By the sect, which, in the 
 sixteenth century, under the name of Anabaptists, to the determination of 
 performing the humectation in the total way, as it was performed by 
 Jesus, added other particulars, some of which were not only absurd but 
 deplorably mischievous, peculiarities not regarding ceremony but morals, 
 prodigious were the miseries inflicted and suffered.
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 4^ 
 
 of fraud and rapine — being borrowed from technical 
 jurisprudence, and in the character of a necessary con- 
 sequence, attached to every deviation from the arbi- 
 trarily imagined and endlessly diversified standard of 
 rectitude. In the same spirit, had the literary, and 
 more durable expedient of a Register-hook been 
 employed, questions might have been started — whether, 
 for the validity of the appointment, the quill should 
 be a goose-qxx\\\ or a cr«9i/;-quill ; the paper, demy or 
 foolscap ; the binding, calf or sheep. 
 
 Christ ordain Baptism under the name and cha- 
 racter of a Sacrament? If by ordain is meant the 
 same as by insiiiute — the same as the having been the 
 first to practise or cause to be practised, — he did not so 
 much as ordain it in the character of a ceremony. 
 Practise it indeed he did, and afterwards cause it to be 
 practised. But, before he practised it, or caused it to 
 be practised by or upon any one else, he submitted to 
 have it practised upon himself, after it had been 
 practised already upon multitudes. By John it had 
 already been practised upon multitudes, before it was 
 practised by him upon Jesus. — Those who are forced 
 to say this Catechism, why are they so much as suflEered 
 to read the New Testament ? Can they read it without 
 seeing this ? 
 
 By whomsoever first invented and put in practice, — 
 in its character of a succedaneum to an entry in a 
 Register -book, it was an operation in every respect 
 well-imagined. In the country in which it was thus 
 practised, heat was plenty, water scarce, writing and 
 reading still scarcer, money not ovei- plenty. Baptism, 
 — whether by dipping, by sprinkling, or by both, — 'Was 
 then and there a pleasant operation. Wherever either 
 a river ran, or a lake stood, it cost nothing. John took 
 no surplice fees. Jesus took no surplice fees. When- 
 ever the existence of the Devil is fully proved, it will 
 be proved that by that Ghost it was that these priests' 
 fees were instituted, exactly at the same time with 
 Judges' fees. Surplice fees are unknown in Scotland. 
 By the Church of England only, not by the Church of 
 Scotland, do the poor behold the gates of heaven shut 
 against them.
 
 44 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Question 12. What meanest thou by the word sacrament ? 
 
 Answer. I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and 
 spiritual grace, given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a 
 means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us 
 thereof. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Here, as already observed — here may be seen another 
 example, — showing how a semblance of something 
 may be manufactured out of nothing. Two trans- 
 actions — the performance of the ceremony of Ba2Jtism, 
 and the utterance of a few words, stated as having been 
 uttered by Jesus on the occasion of a supper at which 
 he was present — two transactions — which, unless it be 
 the identity of the person who bore the principal part 
 in both, had nothing at all in common — forced into 
 conjunction ; and a generic appellation — the sacrament 
 — made to serve, as it were, for a box, for enclosing 
 them, and keeping them together. — Sacrainent ? by 
 whom was this word invented and made ? By Jesus ? 
 — no more than it was by Satan. When thus made, 
 what is the meaning given to this Rome-sprung 
 vocable ? In the English, and other dialects of the 
 Teutonic, it is rendered by holfj : it is the holy thing. 
 And a holy thing, whsit is it? — Holiness? the word 
 holiness, what is meant by it ? As a property belonging 
 to the thing itself, be the thing what it may, just 
 nothing. By a thing — by anything whatsoever, of 
 which, by the principle of association, the idea has 
 happened to become connected with the idea of the 
 Almighty Creator, — a connection of which any one 
 created thing is, and ever has been, just as capable as 
 any other, by any thing — by everything to which any 
 such accident has happened, is this mysterious property 
 thus acquired. 
 
 Thus then — such has been the course taken by the 
 manufacturing process — by the invention of this so 
 much worse than useless generic term, a branch of 
 false science — a portion of wayward school logic — has 
 been manufactured. Being made to pass examination 
 in this science, the unfledged parrot takes in the words 
 that are forced into its mouth, and declares itself
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 45 
 
 to understand, where there is nothing to be under- 
 stood. 
 
 Under the name of " a gi^ace" a something — and 
 that something "good" — given unto us — given to 
 everybody — given alike to every man, whatsoever be 
 his conduct — given as a thing of course, — by the more 
 ceremony : a pretended something, which, when 
 examined by an unsophisticated eye, turns out to be in 
 itself exactly nothing, — and even by the name thus 
 given to it, is but a sign, — yet by the description at 
 this same time given of it, it is an efficient cause! 
 
 The Almighty laid hold of, and made to enter into 
 a contract (under what penalty is not mentioned), 
 pledging himself, binding himself, to give to this pre- 
 tended e^«c?en^ cawse a ])retendedly real effect! Thus 
 it is that the sham science grows : thus it is that the 
 wilderness is foi-med, in which the wits of those who 
 are destined to travel in it are destined to be lost. 
 
 Question 13. How many parts are thei"e in a sacrament ? 
 Answer. Two: the outward visible sign, and the inward 
 spiritual grace. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 A compound made out of a reaZ and visible ceremony ^ 
 to which, by the force of imagination, is attached an 
 invisible and uyiintelligible effect — ^such is the whole : 
 and now comes the unfledged parrot, and with his 
 tongue is required to split it into two parts. 
 
 Question I4. What is the outward visible sign, or form in 
 Baptism ? 
 
 Answer. Water (1) ; wherein the person is baptised (2) in the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (3). 
 
 OBSERVATIONS, 
 
 (1). — Water the sign ? No : — of itself water is not 
 the sign of the thing in question — i.e., the transaction 
 here in question — or of anything else. Of the trans- 
 action in question, viz., aggregation to the society in 
 question, the sign was a physical operation: not water 
 itself, but the application of that liquid to the body of
 
 46 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAJ^D 
 
 the person aggregated. For preserving the memory of 
 the transaction in question, — instead of a transient 
 operation, such as was the application of water to the 
 body in question, suppose the object employed to have 
 been an entry in a BajMsm-book ; — of the transaction in 
 question what would have been the sign ? — not the leaf 
 of the book in its hlank state, but the mark made — the 
 words ivritten — on that leaf. 
 
 In itself nothing can be more trifling than such an 
 inaccuracy : the real matter of regret is — that in this 
 body of pretended instruction, composed by a man 
 who understood not what he wrote, a child should be 
 forced to declare himself to understand, that which, 
 neither to himself nor anyone else, is anything better 
 than unintelligible. 
 
 (2). " Wherem the person is baptised " — not where- 
 
 with^ but where^■7^. Alas ! alas ! what a scene of 
 
 horror presents itself to view ! the baptism then must 
 be by immersion — by a thorough dipping — or it is no 
 baptism. The whole ceremony — all 7iull and void! 
 Of the myriads in a year, who under the Church of 
 England discipline, are said to be baptised, how many 
 are the really baptised ? — Not one ! 
 
 All, all of us heathens ! all a prey to Satan ! — all 
 children of wrath ! (so we shall see the next answer 
 saying) — all " alive to sin !" — all " dead to righteous- 
 ness !" — the best works we ever do, or can do, no 
 better than so many sins ! ! ! 
 
 (3). [/n the name of the Father, avid of the Son, and 
 of the Holy Ghost.'] — Here we have a short string of 
 sounds — sounds that are in use to perform the office of 
 names — and, by the texture thus given to a mouthful 
 of air, note well the effects produced ! a human being 
 rescued or not rescued from a state of endless torment ! 
 And, to such an operation in the character of a cause, 
 — by whom — by what — have such effects been attached? 
 — By the deluded or deluding imaginations of a set of 
 presumptuous and domineering men. — Under the 
 name of magic, or some such name, state the same 
 conceit as issuing from a heathen brain, — execration or
 
 CATECHISM EXAJVIINED. 47 
 
 derision, instead of awe and veneration, are the senti- 
 ments it calls forth. 
 
 Question 15. What is the inward and spiritual grace ? 
 
 Answer. A death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness; 
 for being by nature born in sin, and the children of wrath, we are 
 hereb}' made the children of grace. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Note well the sort of story that is here told. — The 
 Almighty God, — maker of all things visible and 
 *' invisible " — " of heaven and earth, and all that 
 therein is " — makes, amongst other things, a child : 
 and no sooner has he made it, than he is " wrath " 
 with it for being made. He determines accordingly to 
 consign it to a state of endless torture. Meantime 
 comes somebody, — and pronouncing certain words, 
 applies the child to a quantity of water, or a quantity 
 of water to the child. Moved by these words, the all- 
 wise Being changes his design ; and, though he is not 
 so far appeased as to give the child its pardon, vouch- 
 safes to it a chance — no one can say what chance — of 
 ultimate escape. — And this is what the child gets by 
 being " made " — and we see in Avhat way made — " a 
 child of grace." 
 
 Thereupon comes the sort of ivit, ghostly and ghastly, 
 which, on such occasions, has been so plentifully 
 played off : there we have death, and here we have new 
 hirth : death unto sin, new birth unto righteousness. 
 And in this wit we have a subject — not merely for 
 admiration, but moreover iov belief : — for belief, of the 
 withholding of which, as if it were in the power of 
 every man to believe or not believe what he pleased, 
 the consequence is — what at every turn, and upon 
 every occasion, stares us in the face — a state of endless 
 torture. 
 
 Question 16. What is required of persons to be baptised ? 
 
 Answer. Repentance, whereby they forsake sin; and faith, 
 whereby they steadfastly believe the pi'omises of God made to 
 them in that sacrament.
 
 48 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Obvious indeed are the observations suggested by 
 this answer. But forasmuch as by the next question 
 these observations are themselves undertaken to be 
 obviated, let this next question, with the answers 
 which it is employed to call forth, be first heard. 
 
 Question 17- Why then are infants baptised, when, by reason 
 of their tender age, they cannot perform them ? 
 
 Answer. Because they promise them both by their sureties: 
 whicli promise, when they come to age, themselves are bound to 
 perform. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 [Perform ihem ?] — Perform ivhat ? — -Here may be 
 seen a cloud of obscurity and ambiguity, derived from 
 a sort of source — a purely grammatical one — such as in 
 a composition so highly elaborated, and so abundantly 
 examined, would not naturally have been looked for. 
 Of such things as are in their nature capable of being 
 '^performed " the last thing mentioned — not to say the 
 only thing — is what is brought to view by the word 
 promises. Yet, on a little reflection, these things, viz., 
 promises (it will be seen) cannot be among the things 
 here in view. — Why ? — Answer — Because Ood is the 
 person hy whom these promises were stated as being 
 made. But, not even in such a composition as this, 
 can it have been supposed or pretended, that when God 
 is the person by whom a promise is made, the person 
 by whom that promise is to be performed is an infant. 
 — An infant? Yea, a just-horn infant: — the time 
 allowed for performance being no longer than the 
 interval between its birth and the age at which 
 baptism is commonly administered : an interval com- 
 monly of between a week and a fortnight. 
 
 Look a little forwards however, and then a little 
 backwards, and it will be sufficiently clear that, though 
 the things to be performed are indeed j^^omises, yet 
 the person, hy ivhom they are to be performed, is — not 
 the last antecedent, viz., God, but the infant: the 
 infant who is considered as the subject of the operation
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 4^ 
 
 in question, viz., baptism. Why not God but the 
 infant ? — Ansuyr, for this plain reason : — because the 
 acts which are held up to view in the character of 
 subjects oi 2)romisr are ^^ Faith And Repentance ;^^ to 
 •wit, the Faith and Repentance above spoken of. 
 
 It is not, however, without some violence to gram- 
 mar — some violation of the rides of grammar — that 
 the language is here reconcileable to the rules of com- 
 mon sense. The ?i?^mi<?r employed in the IGth question 
 is the singular number. — "What is required :" the 
 number employed in the 17th question, by which, with 
 its answer, the answer to that lOtli question is under- 
 taken to be explained, is ilie plural nw.xnhev ; " Perjorm 
 them,'' says the 17th question : promise them, says the 
 answer to it. And this promise tlirtn, of what is it the 
 representative ? Why — as turns out immediately 
 after — of two things. Here then, between question 
 the 16th {i.e., the question, to which, it being, and with 
 so much reason, considered, that explanation is wanting, 
 explanation, such as we see, is accordingly given) — 
 between this IGth question and question 17th {i.e., the 
 question employed to explain it) a contradiction 
 exhibits itself. Believe the explained question, there 
 is but 07ie thing reqiTired, believe the exjdaining ques- 
 tion, there are two things — two very different things, 
 both, required : viz., the faith and the repentance. 
 These are the them which, viz., by their sureties, the 
 children /j^'om/s^rL- these are the them which, viz., by 
 themselves, they are to perform. For so it is, that 
 according to this law and this divinity, they themselves, 
 are thus to be sureties for their own sureties. 
 
 From the grammatical, return we now to the religious 
 ground : and thereon to what remains of the task 
 which the poor child has to go through with. 
 
 Two things, as above, he is required to do : and that 
 because once upon a time, without knowing anything 
 about the matter, he promised to do them : he promised, 
 that is, other people did, which comes to the same thing. 
 These things are — to repent of sin, whether he has 
 committed any or no : and to believe, — and that 
 " steadfastly," wdiatever he may think of it, — what, for 
 that purpose, is thereupon put into his hands. That is 
 
 E
 
 50 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 — that when, a few days after his birth, the clergyman 
 threw a little water on his face, — saying over him at 
 the same time a few words without a meaning, — God 
 was all the while making him ^jromises, which promises 
 might however as well have not been made, since 
 nobody has so much as pretended to know what they 
 were. 
 
 Another task, which his believing faculty is, at the 
 same time, put to — though without any express men- 
 tion of it — consists in the believing bad ^jrma^Z^^.s' to 
 be good 2J'}^inciples, and bad reasons good reasons. 
 
 Example of hdid j^rinciples : — that it is in the power 
 of any three persons, two of them being of the one sex 
 and one of the other, by making, in the name of a 
 new-born infant, a parcel of 2ii'omises, to saddle it with 
 a load of ohligatlons : amongst others, that of believing 
 — how incredible soever, when the time comes, they 
 may appear to him — things upon things, which, had he 
 not been thus saddled, he could not have believed. 
 
 Example of bad reasons: — that a man's having 
 taken upon him to promise, that a child shall believe 
 so and so, affords any reason for the child's believing 
 as much, or so much as trying to believe it. 
 
 The point of time, at which these two exploits are 
 to be performed — in this may be seen a point, in rela- 
 tion to which, if the babes and sucklings should, any 
 of them, succeed in forming to themselves anything 
 like a clear conception, they will have done more than 
 seems to have been done by the sages, by whom this 
 task has been thus put into their hands. 
 
 " What is required of persons after they have been 
 hajdisedf Had the question stood thus, the meaning 
 would have been clear enough. Thus, however, it 
 unfortunately does not stand : instead of so doing, it 
 stands thus: — " What is required of pe?^sons to be 
 baptised f^ In this way of putting it, the child's 
 having done these things, that are thus " required " of 
 him, is what, in the language of lawyers, is called a 
 condition p)recedent to his being baptised. These things, 
 then, which he is to do before he is baptised — that is, 
 before he is -a, fortnight, or perhaps before he is a iveeh 
 old — what are ihey ? — The question has been already
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 51 
 
 answered. He is to repent — to repent of the sins 
 which, in nobody can say what numbers, in his way 
 from the breast to the cradle and back again, he has 
 ah*eady committed : and he is to believe — to believe 
 with all his might all the fine things which for that 
 purpose have been provided. All this while, if so it 
 be, that a child, almost as soon as born, may promise 
 by proxy, why not repent and believe by proxy ? The 
 sponsors, when they have jrromised for him, why not 
 as well perform for him ? Having undertaken for the 
 2)erforma)ices, as they are all along called, — viz., a 
 quantity of repentance, and moreover, a quantity of 
 faith,— who so proper as they to execute these several 
 performances ? 
 
 To a child of a week or a fortnight old, the finding 
 sins of its own to repent of, may not be altogether so 
 easy a task as on this occasion seems to have been 
 supposed : — To the good men and woman, or the good 
 man and women, by whom all these promises are made 
 for it, the matter may, every now and then at least, be 
 a matter of much less difficulty. 
 
 The order in which these same two performances 
 are required and expected to succeed one another — 
 in this may be seen another exemplification of the 
 muddiness of the fountain from which all this in- 
 struction flowed. In the natural course of things, the 
 motive comes before the act. If the course here pre- 
 scribed wei-e to be pursued, the act would take the 
 lead : and then, with a manifestation of humility, of 
 which any example would not easily be found else- 
 where, up comes in the train of it the generating and 
 directing motive. According to the scheme of Jesus, 
 faith was of course everywhere the seed, repentance 
 one of the fruits of it : it was because a man believed 
 — expected to experience the eventual fulfilment of 
 the threats and promises held out to him — it was 
 because a man believed that he was to repent, — not 
 because he repented, that he was to believe. 
 
 Into the conception of any man besides this Cate- 
 chism-maker, did any such idea ever enter, as that of 
 addressing threats and promises to a man, to no other 
 purpose than that of making him do what he had done
 
 52 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 already? But, if the mind, in which both these fruits' 
 were to be produced by the genial virtue of this cere- 
 mony, was a new-born infant's, either of them would 
 be as ready to come forth as the other : and thus the 
 Catechism-maker is justified. 
 
 Question 18. Why was the sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
 ordained ? 
 
 Answer. For the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of tlie 
 death of Christ, and of the benefits Avhicli we receive thereby. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Of this answer, — keeping in that part for which a 
 warrant is to be found in the text of the Gospel 
 History, and leaving out of it that part which, no such 
 warrant being to be found for it, has been the work of 
 imagination, — inserting at the same time such words 
 of limitation as may be necessary to confine the pro- 
 position within the limits designated by the sacred 
 text, — of this answer the purport might (it should 
 seem) have stood thus expressed : — •' For the continual 
 remembrance ... of the death of Christ,'* to be pre- 
 served in the minds of such of his disciples as, — 
 having been admitted by him into a state of peculiar 
 intimacy, and, from time to time, sent out by him, 
 from place to place, to preach his doctrine, — became 
 distinguished by the appellation of his " Apostles " ; — 
 Apostles, in the Greek (the only language in which the 
 Gospel History, or any part of it, has been handed 
 down to us), meaning neither more nor less than an 
 Emissary or Messenger. 
 
 As to " the henefits which we receive thereby ^ — what, 
 in this Catechism, they are said to be — what the child 
 is forced to say he believes them to be — will be seen 
 presently. 
 
 Moreover, in the act of receiving, as brought to view 
 by the word " received^'' is implied the act of deliver- 
 ing : as also, that he, by whom the act of delivering 
 is to be performed, is a different person from him by 
 •whom the act of receiving is to be performed. A 
 foundation beingthus laid — and that foundation having, 
 in the words of the sacred history, a sufficient support,
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 53 
 
 — and that not exposed to dispute, — now coraes the 
 superstructure, which is the seat of the deception, and 
 which has no such support. This is — that to the act of 
 delivering one sort of person, and one alone, is com- 
 petent ; viz., a Priest: a person on whom a corporeal 
 ceremony has been performed : a ceremony from which 
 a multitude of spiritual, supernatural, and mystical 
 consequences are deduced : — the act of receiinng —t\i2it 
 alone is the act, whereunto, under the system, of which 
 this Catechism makes a part, persons other than priests 
 are competent : nor even to this are the profane multi- 
 tude competent, but ^xxblQctio exceptions, drawn out of 
 an inexhaustible mine of exceptions, which has been 
 opened for that purpose : — a mine capable, in its origin, 
 at least, of being dug into to any depth, which the 
 interest of those who opened it could require. 
 
 And thus it is that, upon the ground of this supper, 
 which, as the whole history declares, was neither more 
 nor less than a mere social and fai-ewell repast, taken 
 with the utmost privacy ; — a repast of which none 
 were partakers but the most confidential friends and 
 disciples of the Master ; — a repast taken on the occa- 
 sion of his foreseen and approaching fall ; — upon this 
 ground, and with so slender a stock of the most 
 ordinary materials, has been erected a manufactory of 
 grace : — of grace, — a commodity which, being alike 
 suited to everybody's use, was to be sold to all who 
 should be disposed to purchase it : a manufactory, 
 carried on in different forms, under an imaginary per- 
 petual patent, always for the benefit of i\ie patentees . 
 
 Instead of domination for the purpose of degradation, 
 had useful instruction and the melioration of moral 
 disposition and conduct been the object, and thereupon 
 had some physical operation, performed by Jesus him- 
 self, and actually directed to that object, been looked 
 out for, to be taken for a subject of imitation, and, for 
 the above good purposes, converted into a ceremony,^ 
 in any such ca^e, in the incident of i\ie feet- washing, 
 as related by Saint John, the founders of the Romish, 
 and therein of the English Church, might have found 
 what they wanted. 
 
 A little before the supper in question there was
 
 54 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 another ; if indeed it was another, and not the same. 
 Be this as it may, at the supper spoken of by John (by 
 whom not the least intimation is given of the hread- 
 hreaking), the same select disciples being present, 
 Jesus sees reason to give them a lesson of humility. 
 He therefore in his own person and deportment sets 
 them an example of that virtue. He insists on washing 
 their feet. Put to shame by a manifestation so striking 
 of a disposition with which their own formed so dis- 
 advantageous a contrast, Peter resists : vain, however, 
 is all resistance, and upon the feet of all the twelve 
 the operation is performed. 
 
 To give to this ceremony a real importance — a 
 practical object, no arbitrary inferences — no additions 
 — would have been necessary : never was design more 
 plainly, more impressively expressed.* 
 
 * St. John, Csap. xiii. 
 
 1. Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour 
 was come that he should depart ou.t of this world unto the father, having 
 loved his own which were in the world, he loved them i;nto the end. 
 
 2. And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of 
 Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him ; 
 
 H. Jesus knowing that the father had given all things into his hands, 
 and that he was come from God and went to God ; 
 
 4. He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments ; and took a 
 towel, and girded himfelf. 
 
 5. After that he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the 
 disciples' feet, and to wipe them -with the towel wherewith he was girded. 
 
 6. Then cometh he to Simon Peter : and Peter said unto him, Lord, 
 dost thou wash my feet ? 
 
 7. Jesus answered and said unto him, what I do thou knowest not now ; 
 but thou shalt know hereafter. 
 
 8. Peter saith unto him. Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus 
 answered him, if I wash thee not thou hast no part with me. 
 
 9. Simon Peter saith unto him. Lord, not my feet only, but also my 
 hands, and my head. 
 
 10. Jesus saith unto him, he that is washed, needeth not, save to wash 
 his feet, but is clean every whit ; and ye are clean, but not all. 
 
 11. For he knew who should betray him ; therefore, said he, ye are not 
 all clean. 
 
 12. So after he had washed thfiir feet, and had taken his garments, and 
 was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? 
 ■ 13. Ye call me master and Lord ; and ye say well, for so I am. 
 
 14. n I, then, your Lord and master, have washed your feet ; ye also 
 ought to wash one another's feet. 
 
 15. For I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done 
 to you. 
 
 16. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his 
 Lord ; neither he that is sent, gi'eater than he that sent him. 
 
 17. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 55 
 
 While this comparatively insiq'nificant one was 
 sublimated into a inysteri/, — that really instructive 
 ceremony, how comes it to have been passed over in 
 such profound neglect? — How? — why for three per- 
 fectly intelligible reasons : 
 
 1. Because it gave, to the self-created order of official 
 persons, no privilege, no peculiar advantage. 
 
 2. Because the lesson which it so plainly gives, is 
 to them a lesson of condemnation. 
 
 3. Because, to the inventors of the drinking ceremony ^ 
 drinking wine while others looked on, was an operation 
 more pleasant than would have been the washing the 
 feet of those same spectators. 
 
 Here then are two contiguous suppers — two farewell 
 suppers — or two incidents, related as having had place 
 at the same supper. By the one, a lesson is given — • 
 a lesson pregnant with instruction as plain as it is 
 salutarj', — and one, the applicability of which, and 
 with it the utility, will endure as long as man endures. 
 In the other, what is visible to every eye is — an 
 incident naturally interesting indeed in no mean 
 degree to the individuals then present, but having 
 neither interest nor meaning, as applied to any other 
 individual ; nor of itself calculated or designed to 
 convey instruction in any shape whatsoever. The 
 universally important transaction is passed over in 
 universal silence and neglect ; the other is converted 
 into a mystery, with damnation — universal damnation, 
 or thereabouts — at the bottom of it! 
 
 Question 19. What is the outward part oi* sign of the Lord's 
 Sujjper ? 
 
 Ansiver. Bread and Wine, which the Lord hath commanded 
 to be received. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 \_Hath commanded to he received ?'\ — Mark well the 
 misrepresentation of which this phrase is the chief 
 instrument : seldom has a plan of misrepresentation 
 been more subtilely contrived. 
 
 Had the passage stood in these words. Which the 
 Lord. . . . commanded to he received, stood in these
 
 56 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 words, without the word liath, — the answer would, as 
 far as it went, have been unobjectionable : as far as 
 it went, it would have been conformable to the sacred 
 text. Mark well — without the word hatli : for in 
 this short word lurks the poison — the seed of the 
 deceit. 
 
 It is by this word hath that the transaction is repre- 
 ■sented as meant to be applied to the indefinite present : 
 i.e., to every point of time, at which it shall have 
 happened to this account of it to find a reader, and to 
 every individual ^:>t'rso/i, by whom, he being a believer 
 in the religion of Jesus, it shall have happened to be 
 heard or read. 
 
 Such is the conception, which, by the authors of this 
 Catechism, composed in the sixteenth century after the 
 birth of Jesus, is endeavored to be impressed : viz., 
 that to the effect just described, a command delivered 
 by Jesus, in the intention of its being considered as 
 obligatory, — obligatory with a force equal at least to 
 that of any of his moral precepts, — was addressed to 
 all persons, by whom the religion taught by him 
 should come to be professed : — to all of them, without 
 distinction, to the end of time. 
 
 Such is the conception which, by these men of 
 yesterday, this part of the history of Jesus is represented 
 as intended to convey. In the historij itself, how is 
 this same matter represented ? 
 
 According to the history, who are the persons pre- 
 sent ? — a numerous assembly, as at the delivery of the 
 sermon on the Mount ? No : but a chosen few, sitting 
 with him in a private chamber ; the twelve disciples, 
 whose condition had been distinguished from that of 
 the general body of his followers by marks of peculiar 
 confidence, and whose life had been interwoven with 
 his own by habits of peculiar intimacy. 
 
 " Ever and anon, when I am no longer with you, and 
 when after my departure it happens to you, to the 
 chosen among my disciples, to meet together on a 
 convivial occasion as at present, — when the materials 
 of the repast are before you, think of your departed 
 master, think of this your last meeting (for such it will 
 be) in my presence. Think of his now approaching
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 57 
 
 death : think of the cause and fruit of it. When, for 
 the purpose of the social repast, bread, such as that 
 which I have thus broken, comes also to be broken, 
 think of this body, which, for the part acted by me 
 for your instruction, will, ere long, be broken and 
 destroyed " 
 
 " When the wine, whatever it be that stands before 
 you, comes to be poured out, let it call to your remem- 
 brance his blood which will have been shed in that 
 same cause." . . . 
 
 With this evident sense before them, will nothing 
 satisfj^ men but the grossest nonsense ? Of the mul- 
 titude of figurative expressions, to which scanty and 
 unfoi-med languages in general — to which the Jewish 
 language in particular, with its dialects — were neces- 
 sitated, or at least were continually wont to have 
 recourse, — is this alone, in spite of the plainest common 
 sense, to be understood in the literal sense ? That, in 
 his own hand Jesus held his own body, but in the first 
 instance without the blood belonging to it ; and having, 
 by breaking it into eleven or twelve pieces, converted 
 each of those parts into the ivliole, gave those his 
 eleven or twelve bodies, one to each guest — he himself, 
 with or without his body, looking on all the while to 
 see them eat it, — and thereupon, immediately after 
 gave to each of them the whole of his blood, viz., the 
 wine which had just been poured out, and by him 
 converted into blood, — the bodies, into which the 
 bread had been converted, not having any blood in 
 them, — that of all these self-contradictory extravagances 
 the existence should be more probable than that, on an 
 impassioned occasion, Jesus should have made use of 
 a figurative expression — and that too in a language 
 which scarce offered any other ? In a barbarous age, 
 and thence, under the influence of blind caprice, even 
 in a more improved age, — under the Roman Catholic 
 edition of the religion of Jesus. . . . Yes : under such 
 a system, in the admission given to any such style of 
 interpretation, how little soever there may be of 
 abstract reason, there is but too much of consistency. 
 
 But, under a government calling itself Protestant, 
 and oppressing Catholics, because they are Catholics,
 
 58 THE CHURCPI OF ENGLAND 
 
 and, for these very extravagances, branding them with 
 the name Idolaters ! . . . 
 
 Believe that Jesus, having held his own body in his 
 own hand, gave to each of twelve men, the whole of 
 that same body, and then saw them eat it, etc., etc. — 
 Believe this, because Jesus is related to have said so ? 
 — Well then — (not to speak of a ivay*) believe that 
 Jesus was a door — a door always open for as many 
 men as pleased to " go in and out " through it\ for 
 this too is among the things, which, in the same sacred 
 books, it is related of him that he said. In the mouth 
 of a Protestant, among Protestants, this argument, 
 when addressed by them to Catholics, is relied on as 
 conclusive. Conclusive? and against what? why, 
 against this very cannibal story, of the truth of which 
 every Church of England child is thus forced to declare 
 itselif persuaded. 
 
 Compared with this, the supposition about the door 
 would be rational and probable. Consider Bright and 
 Lambert: the least of these great men had quantity of 
 matter enough in his body to admit of an aperture, 
 through which, as through a door, a man of ordinary 
 size might have passed without much difficulty. 
 Believing and teaching the mystery of Gannihalism, 
 will a man refuse to believe and teach this other 
 mystery of the door? If so, what will his faith avail 
 him ? — When bread and wine, and body and blood, 
 and everything else is swallowed, still, unless he will 
 swallow the door likewise, — still, if he is consistent, he 
 is an unbeliever ; he is still an infidel, and all that he 
 has swallowed has been swallowed in waste. 
 
 Question 20. What is the inward part, or thin^ signified ? 
 
 Answer. The body and blood of Christ, which are verily and 
 indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper ? 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Body and Blood, ivithout the Bread and Wine, the 
 Bread and Wine being metamorphosed into Body and 
 
 * John xiv., C. Jesus saith unto him, I am the loay, the truth, and the- 
 life : no man cometh unto the father but through me. 
 
 f John X., 9. I am the dour; by me, if any man enter in, he shall be 
 saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 59 
 
 Blood, — in the pure f»rimgribber of modern technical 
 theology — in the theology of the Roman school — this 
 is transuhstantiati.on. Body and Blood, ivith the 
 Bread and Wine — in the adulterated grimgribber — the 
 produce of Luther a unmatured attempts to throw off 
 the load of pernicious rubbish heaped up by the Eomish 
 school — this is cnnsuhstanttatiun. In respect of 
 absurdity, self-contradiction, and groundless inference, 
 — between the tt^ans and the st(,h, is there so much as a 
 shade of difference worth thinking of ? On the con 
 plan the mess has more matter in it than in the trans : 
 and the more the worse. 
 
 " Verily and indeed T — Danger is here foreseen, — 
 and, it being foreseen, provision is thus made against 
 it : — the danger, lest, here or there, the stomach of this 
 or that intractable and refractory ciiild, should, in the 
 midst of all this instruction, be tempted to listen, in 
 preference to the testimonj" of his own senses : lest, 
 accordingly, not finding in his palate the taste and 
 consistence of fiesli, any more than, under his eyes, the 
 color of blood, he should thereupon, notwithstanding 
 all assurances, and the threatenings that may be seen 
 glittering in the background, be perverse enough to 
 harbor doubts of his own Gannihalistn. Of the 
 reiterated intensity of these asseverations, ih.Q dh^QCi is 
 — to keep out, if possible, all such doubts. 
 
 Question 21. What are the benefits whereof we are partakers 
 thereby ? 
 
 Answer. The strengtliening and refreshing of our souls by tlie 
 body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by tlie bread and wine. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 In itself, a puzzling one indeed is the question here. 
 But— answers siach as these — let these be received as 
 answers, no question can be a puzzling one. — Souls 
 refreshed by a body and a quantity of blood ? — Oh 
 yes : if the body were but a metaphorical bodj', the 
 blood but metaphorical blood, and the refreshment 
 but metajjhorical refreshment, in that case there would 
 be no difficulty. By that which is metaphorical, ani/- 
 thing may be done : Yes, anything ; for that which is
 
 60 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 metaphorical is — anything. But the body — is it then 
 a metaphorical body '} — Not it indeed. It is the real 
 body : the blood is the raal blood ; — or how could 
 they be " verily and indeed taken ? " the refresh- 
 ment, which a true Church of England bouI takes by 
 the eating of this body, and the drinking of this blood, 
 is either no refreshment at all, or it is the same refresh- 
 ment that the soul of a New Zealander takes when he 
 has been fortunate in battle : when, as a clergyman of 
 the New Zealand religion, whatever it be, would 
 phrase it, — " the Lord has delivered the enemy into 
 his hand." 
 
 Nay, hut it is otily by that ])art of the meal ivhich is 
 composed of the bread and the wine, that our bodies (says 
 somebody), are here said to be " refreshed^ — True : but 
 the body and the blood are not the less said to be taken, 
 i.e., taken, if into anything, into our bodies : " verily " 
 (lest anything like doubt on the subject should be 
 suffered to remain) — " verily and indeed taken.'' When 
 thus taken, true indeed it is, that it is to the refreshing 
 of our souls, that that part of the chyle, which is ex- 
 tracted /ro/« it, is applied. But, as to the verity, with 
 which it must have been taken, the particular applica- 
 tion thus made of it, makes not any difference: 
 whatever part of man's person it goes to the refresh- 
 ment of, — to produce this refreshment, whatever it is, 
 taken it must be : — taken ? yes, and digested likewise : 
 or how can anything like refreshment be afforded 
 by it? 
 
 To make all points not only plain and clear, but 
 moreover smooth and easy, — on this, as on so many 
 other occasions, the word sjdritual is at hand. In a 
 carnal, temporal sense, not exactly true, conceditur : 
 but besides the carnal, temporal sense, for this, as for 
 all other words for which it is wanted, there is a 
 spiritual sense : and, if in this spiritual sense the 
 thing be, as it is, true, — then, in this same spiritual 
 sense, it is not only as ivell as if it were true in the 
 carnal sense, but much better : better, viz., bj- the 
 amount of the saperiority — the undeniable superiority 
 — of things sjjiritual over things temporal: — not to 
 speak of 7yer6o>is.
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 61 
 
 So convenient is the use — so admirable the virtue — 
 of the word sjnritual. By it whatsoever things are 
 false niaj' at pleasure be made true: false in a carnal 
 — false in a temporal sense — yes, so let them be : — 
 still, in a sjnritual sense, they are not the less capable 
 of being true : whereupon, in that purer and superior 
 sense, if there be any convenience in their being true, 
 true they are. 
 
 To perform this metamorphosis, you couple the 
 word spiritual, as above, with the word sense. This 
 done, take any proposition that you please, the more 
 absurd the better : — a still more absurd one, than the 
 above cannibal proposition, if — which it will hardly 
 be found to do — the nature of things affords any- 
 where a more absurd one. — Proposed by itself, and 
 without that support, which the adjunct in question 
 has in store for every absurdity, the falsity of it is, in 
 the mind of any man in his senses, too glaring to admit 
 of its finding so much as a momentary acceptance. 
 Thus it is with it in its natural sense. To the word 
 sense, add the word spiritual, and now, instead of 
 being absurd Si.nd false — false to a degree of palpable 
 absurdity — it requires nothing but a simple assertion 
 to render it true. Have you any such thing in hand 
 as a rnind, to subdue, — to soften, — to weaken? — a 
 mind, which you want to convert into a species of wax, 
 ready to be moulded at any time to your purpose, 
 whatsoever that purpose be ?— here then is your way 
 to go to work upon it. Take in hand one of these 
 absurd propositions — the more palpably absurd the 
 better — try it upon the man in the first place, without 
 subterfuge : try it upon him in its natural sense. If 
 in that sense you find him swallowing it, so much the 
 better : — but, if you find him giving it back to you 
 itnmfediately, unable or refusing to swallow it, — you 
 then give it to him a second time, wrapped u]) in the 
 words spiritual sense — a spiritual sense (tell him) and 
 no other, is the sense in which he is to understand it. 
 
 Alas ! — the quantity of the good things of this 
 wicked world, which, by men calling themselves 
 spiritual, are every day being consumed — would they 
 but content themselves with the consuming of these
 
 62 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 same good things, in a spiritual sense, — leaving to the 
 growers, and makers, and buyers, the consuming of 
 them in a carnal sense, — how much less would there 
 be to be seen of that paujjerism, which under the 
 covering of prosperity, that glitters at and about the 
 head, is, in the lieart of the population, so plainly seen, 
 as well as so severely felt ! 
 
 Generally speaking, this spiritual sense — alias non- 
 sensical sense — seems to be the opposite or negative of 
 the carnal sense. Thus, for example, in this ca?inibal 
 case ; — viz , eating the body and blood of a man, or of 
 
 a God, or of both together. Carnal sense, eating it: 
 
 spiritual sense, not eating it. 
 
 To this interpretation of the word spiritual, as 
 applied to sense, give constancy and consistenci/, then, 
 in so far as it is understood in this sense, there may 
 be not much harm in it. — For, in that case, forasmuch 
 as there is such a thing as eating the sort of food in 
 question in a spiritual sense, so there will also be such 
 a thing as believing in that same sense : and as in a 
 spiritual sense, eating is not eating, — so, in a spiritual 
 sense, believing will be not believing. 
 
 On this plan, unspeakable will be the benefit both to 
 Faith and to Charity : to Faith, because, on this plan, 
 there is nothing whatsoever but may be believed — 
 believed by all men and withovit difficulty : — to 
 Cliarlty, because, on this plan, throughout the whole 
 field of divinity, the whole mass of any two men's 
 opinions,— in a word, of all men's opinions, — may, on 
 every imaginable point, be as opposite as possible, and 
 brotherly love not in any the smallest degree lessened 
 by it : — take any proposition whatsoever, A believes it 
 in a carnal or temporal sense, B, and everybody else 
 that differs from A, believes it in a spiritual sense. 
 Here then, if, by and with this mode of unity. Faith 
 is satisfied, so still more easily and heartily is Charity : 
 Hope need never quit them, and thus everything is as 
 it should be. 
 
 Question S2. What is required of them who come to the Lord's 
 Supper ? 
 
 Answer, To examine themselves, whether (1) they repent them
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 63 
 
 truh' of their former sins (2), steadfastly purposino; to lead a new- 
 life (3), have a lively faith in G^d's mercy through Christ (4), 
 •with a thankful remembrance of his death (5), and be in charity 
 with all men. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Five distinguishable alleged duties, forming so many 
 subjects of examination, ai-e here observable : five 
 duties or uhligations, concerning which every child is 
 forced to affirm and declare, that he is persuaded of 
 their having been imposed by the Almighty — imposed 
 upon the child himself, together with all his fellow- 
 Christians. 
 
 Concerning all these supposed duties, the first ques- 
 tion that presents itself as proper to be made, is — in 
 any one of the histories we have of Jesus, what ground 
 is there for any such supposition, as that, in the 
 character of duties to be performed on the occasion 
 of any such ceremony, as that which, having been 
 instituted by the Church of Rome, and retained by 
 the Church of England, is here spoken of, — duties, to 
 this effect, or to any other were by Jesus meant to be 
 imposed upon any person whatsoever ; and in par- 
 ticular upon any person, into whose mouth the decla- 
 ration, to the effect that has just been seen, has ever 
 been, or is ever destined to be forced ? — Answer. — 
 Not anj'. The ceremony itself, a mere modern inven- 
 tion ; — the duties, thus attached to it, a mere fiction ; — 
 a fiction, put forth in the teeth of those undisputed 
 and undisputable texts of Scripture, in which nothing 
 that bears the smallest resemblance to it is to be found. 
 In these texts, the persons addressed, no other than the 
 twelve chosen disciples, distinguished by the name of 
 Apostles ; — no other disciples, or followers, being pre- 
 sent, — or, so much as in the way of any the slightest 
 and most general allusion, spoken of : even to these 
 chosen few the act recommended, of such a nature, — a 
 mere token and pledge of remembrance, — a social act 
 of a purely convivial nature, — as scarcely to be capable 
 of being taken for the subject of a duty. They all eat, 
 they all drank : — thus say two of those three of his 
 four biographers, by whom what passed at that supper
 
 64 THE CHUIICH OF ENGLAND 
 
 is reported. At that same time, he (Jesus himself) eat 
 with them, if L\(.ke is to be believed : consequently, 
 according to the orthodox interpretation, eat and drank 
 along with them his thirteenth part of his own body 
 and his own blood : which doing, he said to them, on 
 that same occasion, according to that same Luke, " This 
 do in remcmhrance of mey* A duty, if a duty it can 
 be called, plainly and expressly confined to twelve 
 persons, then living and then present : and, in their 
 instance, no such accessory duties as are here set up — ■ 
 no, nor any other accessory duties — added to it ; — such 
 being the exact state of the case, — with the acknow- 
 ledged standard of belief and practice before their 
 eyes, up start a set of men, sixteen centuries after, — 
 and, without deigning to assert, do more than assert — 
 for they pretend to take for granted, — that, upon all 
 that ever professed, or ever shall profess, the religion 
 of Jesus, a whole swarm of duties, viz., the swarm thus 
 confidently delivered, were, on that same occasion, 
 imposed by him. 
 
 If, without support from any history, true or false, — 
 and, on the contrary, in the teeth of so many histories, 
 which now are, and then were in everybody's hands — 
 all of them recognised, as constituting, in I'elation to 
 this very subject, the sole standard of belief and 
 practice, — if, under such disadvantages, such palpable 
 misrepresentation has been made — such gross imposi- 
 tions, not only attempted, but, by the arm of coercive 
 power carried into effect with success, — what limits 
 can there be to the impostures which, with the same 
 support, may with like success have been attempted, 
 on subjects, on which the power of imposture has 
 found no such obstacle to check it ? — Tradition — • 
 Roman Catholic Tradition — in this word — not to look 
 any further — an indication is given of the sort of 
 matter, in which an answer to this question may be 
 found. 
 
 * Luke xxii. 15 : " And he said unto them, With desire / have desired to 
 eat this passover with you before I suifer : (10) For I say unto you, I will 
 not anymore eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of Grod." Such 
 being his declared desire, and the means being at hand, and no obstacle 
 at hand, of course that desire was fulfilled."
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 65 
 
 Under all these five heads of examination, and in 
 particular under the first, — suppose however the 
 answer were in the aflBrmative : on this supposition, 
 various are the observations, which the answer would 
 be apt to suggest, if considered in its several particular 
 parts. 
 
 1. This supernatural recipe, with what degree of 
 frequency is it expected to be repeated ? 2. Suppose 
 it were once a week — suppose it but once a month — 
 suppose even the number of doses taken in a year still 
 smaller — Each time, — let the times follow one another 
 ever so quickly, — here is " a new life^'' undertaken to 
 be led : — such at least is to be, on each occasion, the 
 " steadfast purpose." But, of any such new life — 
 (whatsoever may be meant by a new life) — what on 
 any occasion, according to the string of intimations 
 thus given, will be the fruit or use ? — Each time 
 there is to be " repentance " — each time the repent- 
 ance is to be " true " — yet true as it is, each and 
 every time it is to be of no effect : the penitent being, 
 all along, in the same sad case, as if no repentance had 
 taken place. Each time the purpose, how " steadfast " 
 soever it be, is to be broken through, and the condition 
 which the penitent is thereupon to be in, is to be 
 exactly the same as if no such ^"^ purpose " had been 
 resolved upon. For, if that purpose be to lead a life 
 without sin, then, suppose the purpose adhered to, of 
 what use would be the new life ? — The new life — no : 
 — the old life is on that supposition the only good one : 
 a new life ? — whatsoever of novelty his life had in it, 
 he would, on this supposition, be but so much the 
 worse for it. 
 
 Mark well, that all the time this perpetual alterna- 
 tive of sinniug and repentance is going on, " lively " 
 is to be the man's ^^ faith in Gods mercy :" lively, in 
 other words, his assurance — that upon repentance, 
 forgiveness will each and every time follow. Full of 
 comfort, no doubt, for the time, will this assurance be. 
 For time present, yes : — But on the future, on each 
 such occasion, what, if any, will be at all times, its 
 tendency and but too probably its effect ? What but 
 
 F
 
 66 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 to give encouragement — and by encouragement birth 
 — to sin ? 
 
 In a word — to use a familiar, but not the less apposite, 
 expression — at the end of each such supper, a new 
 score, it appears, is to be considered as commenced ; 
 and, at the conclusion of each immediately succeeding 
 one, such new score will, if the view thus given of the 
 effect be a correct one, be considered as rubbed ojf. In 
 an account of sins, any more than in an account of 
 money, can there be any stronger, or indeed other 
 encouragement to the running up of a fresh score, than 
 the assurance of having it rubbed off at pleasure : 
 rubbed off at any time, and at no other expense than 
 that of a few words of course ? 
 
 As to contrition, grief, sorrow, /penitence, repentattce, 
 ■ — whatever be the ivords emploj^ed, — for any such 
 affection, what room does the nature of the case leave 
 in the breast of a man, whose persuasion is — that he is 
 dealing upon such terms ? Siti, he may thus at all 
 times have his belly full of : only one thing he must 
 not forget, which is — that in some manner or other, 
 between the time of his committing each such sin, 
 and the time of the next supper of this sort that he 
 partakes of, he must "truly repent," i.e., be sincerely 
 sorry for it. — Take a mouthful of bread and a mouthful 
 of wine — taking care that before they are swallowed, 
 whatsoever sins it has happened to you to commit, 
 since the last preceding mouthful of each was 
 swallowed, are truly repented of, — vanished are all 
 these sins : all these sinful acts are caused not to have 
 happened, and everything is as it should be. Such is 
 the virtue of this bread, and of this wine : — if not 
 this, then what else is it ? 
 
 Under or over the Gliurch of Rome, certain Popes 
 used for some time to be selling this sort of licence 
 {indulgence was in the language of technical theology 
 its appropriate name) : and, in that Church, to a 
 Chu7xh-of- England eye, it was of course everything 
 that was mischievous and abominable. By these Popes 
 it was granted indeed, but in retail only, at so much 
 per sin, and at high prices ; and the higher the prices, 
 the smaller the number of those, in whose instance it
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 6T 
 
 could be obtained, and thereby become productive of 
 its mischievous effects. But, if even under the Church 
 of Eome this licensing system was a mischievous one, 
 under the Church of England, how much greater must 
 not be the mischievousness of it ? Under the Church 
 of England, at so small a price as that of the Table 
 offering, if any such there be, it is put into every hand 
 that can afford to pay that small price : and the whole 
 mass of sins, which, between supper and supper, a man 
 can see his convenience in committing — the whole 
 mass, be they in spirit and number what they may, 
 are thus included in one and the same indulgence. 
 
 Has it not this effect ? — Well then, if it has not, no 
 effect has it whatever : — and such, from beginning to 
 end, is the perpetual alternative. Justification, — 
 shadow of Justification, the case affords not any : 
 ajwlogy, palliation^ this is all that can be made or done 
 for it. That, when all is said and done, things may, 
 by a dispensation of God's providence, produced by an 
 act of God's mercy, turn out to be in that same state, 
 in which they would have been, had nothing of this 
 sort been either said or done, — such is the most favor- 
 able result, of which, under the guidance of the most 
 prejudiced judgment, the most sanguine imagination 
 can entertain a hope. 
 
 And, in that most favorable case, can it reallj' be 
 said to be thus destitute of effect ? — Yes : but in no 
 other sense than that, in which, after having, for a 
 length of time, been employed, dose after dose, without 
 success, in the hope of curing some disease, opium, 
 may be said to have been destitute of effect. The non- 
 existence of particular effect — viz., of the particular 
 good effect hoped for — is but too true. But, of a 
 general effect — and that a most disastrous one — the 
 existence is at the same time but too true — a prostration 
 of strength — an universal debility — " that prostration 
 of the understanding and will," by which the consti- 
 tution is destroyed.* 
 
 * And the production of which is among the declared objects of the 
 National Institution, according to the form given to it by the Bench 
 OF Bishops ; and in particular of the Bishop of London's labors la 
 support of it.
 
 68 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 REG A PITULA TION. 
 
 On recurring to the Observations contained in the 
 preceding pages, the following are the vices which 
 will, it is believed, be found to have been proved upon 
 this formulary, the peccant matter of which is, with a 
 diligence unhappily so successful, injected, by the 
 Tiand of power, into the breasts of the great majority 
 of the population, at the very first dawn of the reason- 
 ing faculty — 
 
 I. Bad Grammar. For a passage teaching bad gram- 
 
 mar by example, see p. 49. 
 
 II. Bad Logic ; viz. 
 
 1. By inculcation of matter plainly useless. See 
 
 p. 19 to 25. 
 
 2. By inculcation of manifest surplusage. See p. 6, 
 
 7,8. 
 
 3. By inculcation of matter plainly unintelligible. 
 
 See p. 6 to 12, 18 to 28, 30, 32. 
 
 4. By inculcation of propositions inconsistent with 
 
 one another. See p. 11, 12, 13, 14. 
 
 5. By inculcation of instruction which is either 
 
 erroneous, or at best useless. See p. 39, 40, 41. 
 
 6. By exemplification and consequent inculcation of 
 
 the art and habit of gratuitous or unfounded 
 assertion, and groundless inference. See p. 27, 
 28, 37, 38, 39, 40. 
 
 7. By inculcation of matter, repugnant to those 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles, to which the whole body 
 of the Clergy — Bishops and Archbishops in- 
 cluded — together with all other ruling and other- 
 wise influential persons, — who become partakers 
 of that course of education which is in highest 
 repute, will, upon entrance into that course, 
 after being thus impregnated with the repugnant
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 69 
 
 matter of this formulary, be forced to declare 
 their assent and approbation on record. See 
 p. 28, 29, 30. 
 8. By inculcation of matter savoring of Popery. 
 See p. 63, 64 
 
 III. Matter, the tendency of which is — to operate in 
 
 various other ways, to the depravation of the 
 INTELLECTUAL part of man's frame, viz. 
 
 1. Matter, by which the principle of vicarious 
 
 ohligatio7i is inculcated : i.e., by which children 
 are commanded to believe, that it is in the power 
 of two or three self-appointed persons, by agree- 
 ing together, to oblige a young child, in con- 
 science, to pursue to the end of his life, any 
 course of conduct, which, at that time, it may 
 please them to prescribe. See p. 3, 4, 5. 
 
 2. Matter, by which the young child is himself 
 
 forced to utter a rash promise, binding him, 
 during life, to pursue the course of conduct 
 therein and thereby prescribed. See p. 12. 
 
 3. Matter, by which the child is initiated in the art 
 
 and habit of lax interpretation ; i.e., of declaring, 
 in relation to the discourse in question, whatever 
 it may be, his persuasion, that such or such was 
 the meaning intended by the author to be con- 
 veyed by it : viz., whatever meaning it may at 
 any time happen to suit the personal purpose of 
 the interpreter so to convey, how wide soever 
 of the import really so intended to be conveyed. 
 See p. 42 to 46. 
 
 4. Matter, by which the intellectual part of the 
 
 child's frame is destined to be dehilitated and 
 depraved by groundless and useless terrors. 
 , See p. 8, 9, 10, 47. 
 
 IV. Matter, the tendency of which is to operate, in 
 
 various other ways, to the DErRAVATlON of the 
 MOEAL part of man's frame : viz. 
 
 1. Matter, in the texture of which Hypocrisy is 
 
 plainly discernible. See p. 10, 11. 
 
 2. Matter, by which lying is inculcated as a duty : — 
 
 a duty, which the child is forced to declare
 
 70 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 himself bound to persevere in the performance 
 of. See p. 2, 3, 12, 13, 17, 18, 27, 30, 41, 42, 48. 
 
 3. Matter, by which Imposture may be seen to be 
 
 promoted. See p. 42 to 69. 
 
 4. Matter, by which Forgery may be seen to be 
 
 knowingly uttered. See p. 14, 15. 
 
 5. Matter, hj which encouragement is given to sin 
 
 and wickedness in every shape. See p. ^^ to 69. 
 
 V. Matter, the tendency of which is to operate, in an 
 immediate way, to the injury of the sensitive 
 part of a man's frame. 
 Matter, by which groundless and useless terrors are 
 infused, as above. 
 
 Such, — on the grounds all along referred to, and 
 plainly brought to view, — are the character and ten- 
 dency herein imputed to this Church of England 
 formulary, with the matter of which every English 
 breast is, by the government at large, under the 
 guidance of the ruling part of the Clergy, designed and 
 endeavored to be impregnated : imputed, and with 
 what justice, let any person in whose eyes either the 
 morals or the understanding of the whole people of 
 England are objects worthy of regard, and who at the 
 same time has courage to look in the face truth, how- 
 ever unwelcome, and opposed by prejudices ever so 
 inveterate, lay his hand upon his heart and pronounce 
 
 III will towards 7ne7i, — towards all men, in whatso- 
 ever rank in life situated, with reference to him in 
 whose breast the corrupt affection is evident — equal, 
 superior, or inferior, — this, taking the whole together, 
 may now be added to the list of those fruits, the seeds 
 of which are so thickly sown by this machine. Ill 
 will and, from ill will, oppression and persecution : — 
 oppression th.Q chronical disease, persecution, the acute: 
 oppression, universal, habitual, and sluggish ; persecu- 
 tion particular and casual ; according as opportunity 
 happens to be favorable. 
 
 The genealogy is in this wise : From imaginary 
 grace, imaginary mystery, imaginary sacrament, come 
 imaginary blasphemy, imaginary sin ; from imaginary 
 sin comes real antipathy ; and from men, in ruling
 
 CATECHISM EXAMINED. 71 
 
 and otherwise influential situations, real oppression 
 and real persecution, on that one part ; real suffering 
 on the other : — for, by the imaginary sin, is produced, 
 in the ruling breast, along with the antipathy, a pre- 
 tence for gratifying it. 
 
 Good Men, Good Subjects, and Good Chris- 
 tians — such, and in these very words, are the goods, 
 which, — in giving the explanation of his truly 
 admirable, and beyond doubt ultimately and highly 
 useful, system of intellectual machinery, — over and 
 over again, — and always, by means of a set of instru- 
 ments of which this formulary is the earliest and 
 beyond comparison the most extensively employed 
 article, — over and over again : — and, as here, in placard 
 letters — Dr. Bell undertakes for the manufacturing. 
 
 Good men and Good Christians ! and by means of a 
 thorough impregnation with the matter of this formu- 
 lary ! Yes : if, of Good men and Good Christians, the 
 characteristic qualities are hypocrisy , lying, imposture, 
 forgery, sin and vice in every other shape. 
 
 Good subjects ? Yes : if the goodness of the subjection 
 be in proportion to the ahjectness of it : for, of abject- 
 ness in the subjection of the subject many to the 
 dominion of the ruling few, can any more conclusive 
 exemplifications be exhibited, than that which is 
 afforded, by the practice thus persevered in, of the 
 swallowing of matter, thus poisonous to the whole 
 moral texture of man's frame? — Good Subjects ? — Yes : 
 if the Good Subject be a character purposely selected to 
 form a contrast with that of the Good Citizen : a 
 description, by which — though now so studiously 
 marked out for infamy as descriptive of an enlisted 
 partisan of anarchy — no Frenchman, in the most 
 despotic aera of the monarchy, ever scrupled to 
 designate himself. 
 
 Good Men, Good Subjects, and Good Chris- 
 tians ! — Yes : let us not only wish, but hope, and even 
 believe — that in and from the mind-turning mill, 
 invented and worked by Dr. Bell, all these good articles 
 will in conclusion be manufactured and issued out for 
 use. Manufactured ? — but by what instrument ? — By 
 this formulary ? — No : — but, if at all, in spite of it.
 
 72 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 The greater the efficiency of this admirable instru- 
 ment — the more capable in its own nature of being, 
 in all its efficiency, applied to the best uses — the greater 
 in the breast of a true lover of mankind will be the 
 regret at seeing it, in the very first application made of 
 it, employed in thus thickly sowing in the mind, at 
 the earliest dawn of reason, the seeds of depravity in 
 every shape. 
 
 For consolation one hope remains : — and this is — 
 that, after having, with whatsoever success, been thus 
 employed in the introduction of the disease, it may, 
 in a maturer state of the faculties — such is the nature 
 of the instrument — be, still more effectually as well as 
 more worthily, rendered conducive to the extirpation 
 of it.
 
 AA 000 979 239 
 
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