XXIV.

FRUITS

OF CHRISTIANISM, AND

PAGANISM

AS COMPARED WITH THE INQUISITION - THE DARK AGES WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER BY CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS-PERSECUTION OF FREETHINKERS-A RECORD OF CRIME-ECCLESIASTICAL NOTIONS OF WOMAN.

WE have seen the origin and rise of Christianism; have considered the claims of its Messiah to Divine origin and mission; have seen the feeble character of his teaching; have seen the mythical character of his "miracles," the fraudulent character of the "prophecies" concerning events in his life, and the non-fulfilment of his own prediction that he would return during the lifetime of some of his hearers. We have also seen the distinctly human origin of the Bible, the squabblings of the various Christian sects, the Pagan origin of Christian symbols, festivals, and holidays, and the accident to which the success of Christianism in Europe may fairly be attributed. We will now devote this chapter to a study of the fruits of Christianism during the period in which she has held a position of supremacy in the countries of Europe. She shall be judged by her own law, and on her own principles, for the Matthew Gospel says (xii. 17): "Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit......Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

For some years old Paganism and new Christianism existed side by side in Alexandria. How did the latter show its superiority and establish its supremacy? By the much-preached-about virtues of love and charity? No; but by the carrying out of another Christian principle to be found in the same Gospel (x. 34), and again in Luke (xii. 51): "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace, but a sword. For I am

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come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother......and a man's foes shall be they of his own household." And: "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you nay, but rather division [strife]." Could any conception of man be more infamous in character, or wicked, than this piece of deliberate plotting on the part of an incarnate deity against man, said to be of his father's own creation? He is represented as deliberately telling us that his mission was to cause strife and murder! And his followers, very shortly after his disappearance, carried out faithfully and to the letter his principle as enunciated above by the brutal murder of Hypatia, the popular Pagan lecturer. And wherever Christianism has triumphed we find that bloodshed has prepared the way. Yet we are told in a contradictory manner that the Christian God "is not the author of confusion, but of peace" (1 Cor. xiv. 33), and that he is "very pitiful and of tender mercy (Jas. v. 11). Was ever such contradictory teaching found in any other religion of the world?

We now come to a later date-the "Dark Ages "—when the Christian Inquisition flourished, but a great deal of the details of which are little known, for so much secrecy was observed; but it may give some idea of the horrors of this institution if we state that, when the French took the city of Arragon, the Inquisition was broken into, and "no fewer than 400 prisoners were set at liberty, among whom were sixty young girls, who composed the Seraglio of the three principal Inquisitors."* I am quoting from a work in which is an account of a young girl, to whom one of the Inquisitors had taken a fancy, being taken from her home in the dead of night and handed over to the Inquisitor's officers by the terror-stricken father.

Till a comparatively recent date, Christianism taught from the "inspired word" the geocentric (Ptolemaic) theory of the universe-i.e., that the earth was the centre of a system of planets, and that the sun rose and set daily over it. By order of the Congregation of the Holy Office at Rome, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 for indulging in astronomical speculations, and for supporting the heliocentric (Copernican)

* Saladin, Woman.

T

theory, as being "contrary to the Bible," but now accepted by the Church as true (if it were contrary to the Bible then, it is now), and for suggesting that the Bible did not contain the whole of science. In 1616 Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition, and cowed by threats for teaching new theories of the heavens; and, again, at the age of seventy, for writing a book on the System of the World, in which he proved the truth of the Copernican theory. He was made to kneel, and swear, with his hands on the Gospels, that it was not true that the earth moved round the sun, and that he would never again spread the "damnable heresy." Here we have evidence of two mistakes on the part of the Christian Church: it condemned the thinkers, who maintained a theory of the universe now universally accepted; and it publicly declared its conviction that the Copernican theory was opposed to the science of the Bible.

The number of human beings burned alive under the rule of the forty-five Inquisitor-Generals is estimated at about 35,534; those burned in effigy, 18,637; and those condemned to other punishments, 293,533. The total, therefore, sacrificed to maintain the blessings of Christianism was 347,704. "In other words," says Middleton, "these worthy followers of the Lamb, the zealous imitators of him who 'came not to send peace but a sword,' to 'send fire on the earth,' and 'not peace, but rather division,' burned no less than 35,534 men and women......Rapidly the Christian priesthood converted the convents into brothels and, not content with debauching the 'brides of Christ,' they converted into harlots the wives of men; and, by means of the machinery of the confessional, they destroyed the chastity of the wives of the laity, and rendered all marriage simply polyandrous......The priests had harlots, concubines, and mistresses in every town; and the Church, recognizing these illicit connections, allowed the bishops to extract money from the priests in the shape of a tax on their concubines."* Even the mild Erasmus declared that the licentiousness of the "clergy has debauched and turned into poor profligates 100,000 women in England................. Yet who is he, though he be never so much aggrieved, who

* Letters from Rome.

dare lay to their charge, by any action at law, even the leading astray of a wife or a daughter?..............If he do, he is by-and-bye accused of heresy "-the next step being the dungeon and the torture.

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This period of history, when the Christian Church was enjoying its triumphant ascendancy, has been described as being one of the most terrible periods in human history ......and the soil of Europe was sodden with human gore, and that chiefly by the Western or Roman Catholic Church."

1,000,000 perished during the early Arian schism; 1,000,000 during the Carthaginian struggle; 7,000,000 during the Saracen slaughters. In Spain 5,000,000 perished during the eight Crusades; 2,000,000 of Saxons and Scandinavians lost their lives in opposing the introduction of the blessings of Christianity. 1,000,000 were destroyed in the Holy (?) Wars against the Netherlands and the Albigenses for heresy, the Waldenses for rejecting the Papal claims and denouncing the ignorance and corruption of the clergy, and the Huguenots, and the well-known massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, in which 30,000 were slaughtered—a Te Deum being afterwards sung at St. Peter's, Rome, and a year of jubilee proclaimed in honour of it. 30,000,000 Mexicans and Peruvians were slaughtered ere they could be convinced of the beauties (?) of the Christian creed. About 9,000,000 were burned for witchcraft. Total,

56,000,000.

To come to a later period. Under the Catholic Mary Tudor, 277 persons were burned as heretics, among whom were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eight lay gentlemen, eighty-four tradesmen, one hundred husbandmen, servants, and labourers, fifty-five women, and four children, besides many who were punished by imprisonment, fines, and confiscations. Under Protestant Elizabeth—the "bright and occidental star" of the translators of King James's Bible (see "Dedicatory Epistle" to A.V.)-more than 200 persons were destroyed either by burning, or hanging, or drawing (disembowelling) and quartering; in which last operation the culprit was cut down before death and his bowels drawn out before his eyes, his body being then divided into four quarters.

A great many, also, suffered from the penal laws against

Catholics in this and the following reigns. In 1553 the Protestant Reformers of Geneva were busy burning the physician Servetus for heretical writings, by order of the Protestant Calvin. In 1611 Legat and Wightman were publicly burned in England by (Protestant) Christian bishops. The horrors of the Star Chamber are too well known to need recapitulation. And not two centuries ago the Puritans of England-the same who so successfully deprived English people of their Sunday recreation—were busy hunting down, torturing, and burning innocent women for witchcraft. It is estimated that over 60,000 persons were imprisoned under the name of religion by Protestant Christians in the seventeenth century. We might well exclaim: "How these Christians love one another !"

In our own time advocates of a free press, such as Richard Carlile, for publishing Paine's Age of Reason; Hetherington, Watson, and Southwell; G. J. Holyoake, of the Reasoner; Charles Bradlaugh, of the National Reformer; G. W. Foote, of the Freethinker, and others, have been imprisoned for exercising the right of private judgment and daring to express their opinions.

What a record of crime for a Church to show which has had all the advantages of a supremacy of eighteen centuries! a Church, too, which, while having such a record, has the audacity to fritter away thousands of pounds every year in sending missionaries abroad to convert people whose morality and teaching are better and purer than her own; a Church whose teaching is absolutely immoral-which teaches at one moment love and mercy, and at another hatred, cruelty, and vindictiveness. Has it not taught that good is to be followed, not for love of our fellow-men, but with the hope of obtaining future rewards; that man's first duty is to offer adulation and flattery to an idol conjured up by human imagination as a personification of the powers of nature; the wickedness of earthly love, happiness, pleasure, ambition, industry, and wealth, holding them up as temptations of an equally imaginary bogey, devil, or personification of evil; that, to become a disciple of the idol the Church has set up, it is necessary to hate father and mother, brother and sister, husband and wife, and to concentrate all our love upon it -which teaching has done more than anything to turn the brains of weak-minded people, and to fill our lunatic asylums?