The paradox of zeal: When absolute religious certainty becomes tyranny

“ You might as well say that all that have red hair shall be damned. It has filled the heart with arrogance, cruelty, and murder. It has caused the religious wars; bound hundreds of thousands to the stake; founded inquisitions; filled dungeons; invented instruments of torture; taught the mother to hate her child; imprisoned the mind; filled the world with ignorance; persecuted the lovers of wisdom; built the monasteries and convents; made happiness a crime, investigation a sin, and self-reliance a blasphemy. It has poisoned the springs of learning ”

“ These notions, absurd as they are, have been sufficient in every age to produce in the world a multitude of crimes, extravagances, and follies, the legitimate offspring of a religious zeal. Infatuated fanatics, exasperated by priests against each other, have been driven into mutual hatred, persecution, and destruction; they have thought themselves called upon to avenge the Almighty; they have carried their insane delusions so far as to persuade themselves that the God of clemency and goodness could look on with pleasure while they murdered their brethren ”

“ Their passions are not repressed, but on the contrary are often thus rendered more fierce and more calculated to disturb society. Masked under the veil of religion, they generally produce more terrible effects. It is then that ambition, vengeance, cruelty, anger, calumny, envy, and persecution, covered by the deceptive name of zeal, cause the greatest ravages, range without bounds, and even delude those who [Pg 224] are transported by these dangerous passions. Religion does not annihilate these violent agitations of the mind in the hearts of its devotees, but often excites and justifies them ”

“ It is sad to observe what odious actions are committed in all ages of the world, by the instigation of misguided zeal! And what a shame an imprudent zealot is to his profession! while making himself ridiculous in the eyes of the adversaries, he brings his profession itself into contempt, and maketh the ungodly think that the religious are but a company of transported brain-sick zealots; and thus they are hardened to their perdition. ”

“ It is this zeal that causes members of the same state, and the same family, to detest and torment each other for opinions, and puerile ceremonies, which they are led to esteem as of the last importance. It is this zeal that has a thousand times, kindled those religious wars so remarkable for their atrocity. Finally, it is this zeal for religion which justifies calumny, treason, carnage, and, in short, the disorders most fatal to society. ”

“ It is always difficult, and often impossible, for the zealot to conceive that his own religious system and his own zeal on its behalf may have but a relative truth and a relative value; or to conceive that there may be relative truths and relative values in alien beliefs and the fanaticisms which maintain them. ”

“ Do the Chinese ever argue among themselves on points of belief?
Ans. Never. When Chinese, who are strangers [Pg 235] to each other, meet, a polite formula is to ask “To what sublime religion do you belong?” Then one will call himself a Buddhist, another a follower of Confucius, etc., upon which politeness requires that each one should speak slightingly of his own religion, and praise the sect to which he does not belong. These compliments end by all repeating in chorus a proverbial phrase to the effect that all men are brothers, and religions are of no consequence. ”

“ Let religion be seized on by individuals or sects, as their special province; let them clothe themselves with God's prerogative [Pg 3522] of judgment; let them succeed in enforcing their creed by penalties of law, or penalties of opinion; let them succeed in fixing a brand on virtuous men whose only crime is free investigation—and religion becomes the most blighting tyranny which can establish itself over the mind. You have all heard of the outward evils which religion, when thus turned into tyranny, has inflicted ”

“ Thus our priests are cruel and revengeful from pure zeal; they would ardently wish to forgive their own enemies, but how could they justify themselves to the God of Mercies if they extended the least indulgence to his enemies?
A true Christian loves the Creator above all things, and consequently he must love him in preference to the creature. We feel a lively interest in every thing that concerns the object of our love ”

“ Had the disputing part of the world been as careful to avoid sin and destruction as they have been busy in searching after the cause of them, and forward directly to impute them to God, they might have exercised their wits more profitably, and have less wronged God, and sped better themselves. When so ugly a monster as sin is within us, and so heavy a thing as punishment is on us, and so dreadful a thing as hell is before us, one would think it would be an easy question, who is in the fault, whether God or man be the principal or culpable cause? ”

“ In the books of Moses God defines himself, I am that I am; yet does this inspired writer detail the history of this God as a tyrant who tempts men, and who punishes them for being tempted; who exterminated all the human kind by a deluge, except a few of one family, because one man had fallen; in a word, who, in all his conduct, behaves as a despot, whose power dispenses with all the rules of justice, reason, and goodness. ”

“ We see these pernicious characteristics of the Divinity penetrating the entire economy of the Christian religion; we find them in the books which are pretended to be inspired, and we discover them in the dogmas of predestination and grace. In a word, every thing in religion announces a despotic God, whom his disciples vainly attempt to represent to us as just, while all that they declare of him only proves his injustice, his tyrannical caprices, his extravagances, so frequently cruel, and his partiality, so pernicious to the greater portion of the human race. ”

“ It is upon this frightful model that theologians have formed that God whom they, notwithstanding, assert to be a just being, while, if the conduct they attribute to him was true, we should be constrained to regard him as the most unjust of tyrants, as the most partial of fathers, as the most fantastic of princes, and, in a word, as a being the most to be feared and the least worthy of love that the imagination could devise. ”

“ You know that the God who appears to have taken pleasure in rendering himself unintelligible, that the God who is partial and changeable, that the God whose precepts are at variance one with another, can never serve as the base on which to rear a morality that shall become practicable among the inhabitants of the earth. In short, how can we fonnd justice and goodness on attributes that are unjust and evil; yet attributes of a Being who tempts man, whom he created, for the purpose of punishing him when tempted? ”

“ It is impossible to follow the precepts of a rational morality, under the empire of a religion, which makes a merit of the most destructive zeal, enthusiasm, and fanaticism. A religion, which commands us to imitate the conduct of a despot who delights to ensnare his creatures, who is implacable in his vengeance, and devotes to flaming destruction all who have the misfortune to displease him, is incompatible with all morality. ”

“ The so-called perfections which Christianity proposes place man in a perpetual war with himself, and must render him miserable. The true Christian is an enemy both of himself and the human race, and for his own consistency should live secluded in darkness, like an owl. His religion renders him essentially unsocial, and as useless to himself as he is disagreeable to others. What advantage can society receive from a man who trembles without cessation, who is in a state of superstitious penance, who prays, and who indulges in solitude? ”

“ To produce the little zeal for heaven which Christians have, it is requisite to torment them, and thus lead them to the practice of those marvellous virtues in which they imagine is placed all their safety. A strange religion, which, practised in all its rigor, would drag society to ruin! The sincere devotee proposes impossible attainments, of which human nature is not capable ”

“ These gloomy notions have banished men to the desert They have fanatically renounced society and the pleasures of life, to be buried alive, believing they would merit heaven if they afflicted themselves with stripes and passed their existence in mummical ceremonies, as injurious to their health as useless to then-country. And these are the false ideas by which the Divinity is transformed into a tyrant as barbarous as insensible, who, agreeably to priestcraft, has prescribed how both men and women might live in ennui, penitence, sorrow, and tears ”

“ Can you wonder that we are proud to know that we have always been disciples of Reason, and soldiers of Freedom; that we have denounced tyranny and superstition, and have kept our hands unstained with human blood?
We deny that religion is the end or object of this life. When it is so considered it becomes destructive of happiness—the real end of life. It becomes a hydra-headed monster, reaching in terrible coils from the heavens, and thrusting its thousand fangs into the bleeding, quivering hearts of men. ”

“ And, indeed, seeing that it is the truth of God which reaches far beyond this world, and upward above the heavens, it is not likely that she should straiten herself according to the fancy or by the tyranny of men. Consequently, the more the devil contrives to torture us by distress, let us strive the more to enlarge our hearts by faith, so as to meet all assaults. Our Saviour, moreover, has formerly afforded you examples of the kind, and gives us all the like daily in divers places ”

“ It is extremely destructive to the moral happiness of mankind to teach them the want of powers, or the inadequacy of those they possess; because the fact is otherwise, because it is a solemn truth that the powers of man are competent to provide for his happiness; they are equal to the exigencies of his existence. It is superstition that has made him a fool, it is religious tyranny that has enslaved his mind, perverted his faculties, and tarnished the glory of his intellectual energies. ”

“ Even the Christian religion can do but little or no good in lands of tyranny, since miracles have ceased; but is made to do infinite harm, by being corrupted and perverted into a deadly engine in the hands of a tyrant and his impostors, to rivet his subjects' chains, and to confirm them thorough wretches, slaves, and ignorants. I cannot indeed say, that they have the Christian religion at all amongst them, but only use its amiable name to countenance abominable falsehoods, nonsense, and heavy oppression ”

“ They who despise the false and deceitful motives by which, to the present time, it has been vainly attempted through the other world to make men virtuous, equitable, and beneficent, are denounced as having no real motives to practise the virtues necessary for their well-being here. In fine, the priests scandalize those who wish to destroy sacerdotal tyranny, and impostures dangerous alike to nations and people, as enemies of the state so dangerous that the laws ought to punish them. ”

“ He must have a band of standing cut-throats to murder all men who would sacrilegiously defend their own. And both his cut-throats and his deceivers must go shares with him in his tyranny.
Men will naturally see their interests, feel their condition; will quickly find that the sword, the rack, and the sponge, are not government, but the height of cruelty and robbery; and will never submit to them, but by the united powers of violence and delusion: Their bodies must be chained, their minds enchanted and deceived ”

“ And it is observable, that where toleration or toleration principles prevail, real religion never prospers much; and besides all it is of woful consequence, for as in natural bodies antipathies of qualities cause destruction, so in bodies politic different religions, or ways of worship in religion, cause many divisions and distractions, whereby the seamless coat of Christ is like to be torn in pieces, and this oftentimes terminates in the ruin of the whole. For a kingdom, city or house divided against itself (saith Christ) cannot stand. ”

“ In the variety and contradiction of opinions in religion, wherein the princes of the world are as much divided as in their secular interests, the narrow way would be much straitened; one country alone would be in the right, and all the rest of the world put under an obligation of following their princes in the ways that lead to destruction; and that which heightens the absurdity, and very ill suits the notion of a Deity, men would owe their eternal happiness or misery to the places of their nativity. ”

“ I discovered that the devotees of these various religions do nothing else but hate and anathematize each other, that all these religions have become the instruments of tyranny and oppression in the hands of rulers and governors, and that they are the causes of the destruction of the world of humanity.
'Considering these evil results, every person is forced by necessity to enlist himself on the side of Your Excellency and accept with joy the prospect of a fundamental basis for a universal religion of God being laid through your efforts. ”

“ A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. ”

“ It seemed to him the imaginings of a zealot's weakening brain. This war which he foretold was to Michael an impossible thing amongst civilized nations, but he listened patiently to all that he had to say. Blood which was to pour like a river over the Western world, was to be spilt for the cause of Truth; it was to be the punishment and final agony of the unbelievers; war was to spread over the world like a deadly plague. God in His wisdom had willed it, for it was to be a proof that the infidels, who had flourished like the green bay-tree, were at last to suffer the vengeance of God. ”

“ Perhaps a limited income at home, and a desire to make a suitable provision for your family, have prompted you to emigrate; but what will it profit you, or your children, if you could gain all the wealth of a colony, or of the world, and lose your own souls? Better live in poverty, and die, as did Lazarus, at the rich man's gate, with the comfort of gospel ordinances, than to live and die in their neglect, with all the advantages that earth and time could afford! ”

“ Wherever you pitch your tent, there erect an altar to the honour and worship of the one living and true Jehovah. It is a mournful fact, that many persons who, in Great Britain, made a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ have, after their emigration, gradually relapsed into a state of indifference and irreligion, and have sunk into a condition of guilt and immorality which it is fearful to consider. This has been in part attributable to the circumstance, that they have settled in a remote part of the colony, where Christian friends or Christian instruction could seldom be met with. ”