Charles Southwell

“ We can as easily understand that the universe ever did exist, as we now understand that it does exist—but we cannot conceive its absence for the millionth part of an instant—and really it puzzles one to conceive what those people can be dreaming about who talk as familiarly about the extinction of a universe as the chemist does of extinguishing the flame of his spirit-lamp. ”

“ Atheists say, Nature never had an Author—so do Pantheists of the 'Shepherd' school. Atheists say Nature is at once the womb and grave and cause and effect of all phenomena—so do they. Atheists say 'death is nothing, and nothing death;' all matter breathing the breath of life—so do they. Indeed, notwithstanding their talk about God and Devil, they think Nature both, which amounts to denying both. Can Atheists do more? or can Pantheists do so much without themselves being Atheists? ”

“ The fact of a creed being unpopular is no proof it is false. The argument from general consent is at best a suspicious one, for the truth of any opinion or the validity of any practice. History proves that the generality of men are the slaves of prejudice, the sport of custom, and foes most bigotted to such opinions concerning religion as have not been drawn in from the sucking-bottles, or 'hatched within the narrow fences of their own conceit.' No prudent searcher after truth will accept an opinion because it is the current one, but rather view it with distrust for that very reason. ”

“ It may without injustice be affirmed, that the sincerest and strongest believers in this mysterious Deity, are often tormented by doubts, and, if candid, must own they believe in the existence of many things with a feeling much closer allied to certainty than they do in the reality of their 'Great First Cause, least understood.' No man can be so fully and perfectly satisfied there is a God in heaven as the Author of this Apology cannot but be of his own existence on earth. No man's faith in the imaginary is ever half so strong as his belief in the visible and tangible. ”

“ And without doubt it was hostility eminently calculated to exhaust their stock of patience, because eminently calculated to damage their religion, which has nothing to fear from the assaults of ignorant and immoral opponents; but when assailed by men of unblemished reputation, who know well how to wield the weapons of wit, sarcasm, and solid argumentation, its priests are not without reason alarmed lest their house should be set out of order.
It would be difficult to name a philosopher at once so subtle, so profound, so bold, and so good as Hume. ”

“ If he do not impute to his God of mercy cruelty and injustice the most monstrous that can enter into human conception, all language is void of meaning, and men had far better cease 'civilising,' and betake themselves to woods and wilds and fastnesses, to enjoy the state of mere brutishness so infinitely preferable to that reasonable state in which they are shaken and maddened by terrible dreams of a vengeful cruel God. ”

“ In legislation, in law, in all the relations of life, we want honesty, not piety. There is plenty of piety, and to spare, but of honesty—sterling, bold, uncompromising honesty—even the best regulated societies can boast a very small stock. The men best qualified to raise the veil under which truth lies concealed from vulgar gaze, are precisely the men who fear to do it. Oh, shame upon ye self-styled philosophers, who in your closets laugh at 'our holy religion,' and in your churches do them reverence. ”

“ But nothing never can be a cause no more than it can be something or equal to two right angles. By the same intuition that we perceive nothing not to be equal to two right angles, or not to be something, we perceive that it can never be a cause and consequently must perceive that every object has a real cause, of its existence. When we exclude all causes we really do exclude them, and neither suppose nothing nor the object itself to be the causes of the existence, and consequently can draw no argument from the absurdity of these suppositions to prove the absurdity of that exclusion. ”

“ Smith is no Atheist; at least he makes no profession of Atheism. Au contraire, he makes fine sport with those who do. Himself a Pantheist of the all-God school, he took to calling Atheists 'ugly names,' as if quite innocent that no 'thinking mind' can fail to perceive the downright lunacy, or something worse, of supposing a pin to choose on the score of piety, between universal Deity and no Deity at all. The 'Shepherd' of a new philosophic flock should have known better than to attempt the reform of 'vulgar theology' by setting forth the mystical nonsense of 'vulgar' Pantheism. ”

“ There cannot be slavery where there is no tyranny, and to say as Newton did, that we stand in the same relation to a universal God, as a slave does to his earthly master, is practically to accuse such God, at reason's bar, of tyranny. If the word of God is relative, and relates itself with slaves, it incontestably follows that all human beings are slaves, and Deity is by such reasoners degraded into the character of universal slave-driver. ”

“ By universe we mean matter, the sum total of things, whence all proceeds, and whither all returns. No truth is more obviously true than the truth that matter, or something not matter, exists of itself, and consequently is not an effect, but an uncaused cause of all effects.
From such conviction, repugnant though it be to vulgar ideas, there is no rational way of escape; for however much we may desire, however much we may struggle to believe there was a time when there was nothing, we cannot so believe. Human nature is constituted intuitively or instinctively to feel the eternity of something. ”

“ No one at all acquainted with its cunningly contrived 'system' will hesitate to characterise it as 'wickedly political,' productive of nothing but mischief—a system through whose accursed instrumentality millions are cheated of their sanity as well as substance, and trained like the dog to lick the hand that smites them. So perfect is their degradation that literally they 'take no thought for to-morrow,' it being their practice to wait 'till starvation stares them in the face,' [2] and then make an effort against it. ”

“ Men who fancy themselves commissioned by Deity to interpret his 'mysteries,' or announce his 'will,' are apt to make blunders without being sensible of it, as did those worthy Jesuits who declared, in opposition to Bayle, that a society of Atheists was impossible, and at the same time assured the world that the government of China, by Voltaire and many others considered the most ancient on earth, was a society of Atheists. So difficult it is for men inflamed by religious prejudices, interests, and animosities to keep clear of sophisms, which can impose on none but themselves. ”

“ All are agreed as to the genuineness of current money. All are at 'daggers drawn' as to the genuineness of any one religion. That Christianity is true no Christian denies, but which is the true Christianity has not and we think cannot be determined.
The knot of old fashioned politicians who call themselves Young England, are enamoured of 'graceful superstition.' Alarmed at the march of reason, and admirers of 'blind faith in mystery,' they sigh for a renewal of those times when no one doubted the propriety of drowning witches, or being touched for the king's evil. ”

“ Indeed the dogma, if true, proves all religion false, for it strikes full at belief in a God, a belief which, it cannot be too often repeated, is to religion what blood is to the brain and oxygen to the blood.
Materialism is hated by priests, because no consistent Materialist can stop short of disbelief in God. He believes in Nature and Nature alone. By Nature he understands unity. ”

“ As if he felt the absurdity of pretending to love and honour an unknown 'Perhaps.' That he did himself what he ridiculed in them proves nothing but his own inconsistency. To the Author of this Apology it seems certain, a God whose being is not as our being, whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and whose ways are not as our ways, is neither more nor less than the merest figment of ill-regulated imagination. He is sure a Being, above nature, can only be conceived of by itself; it being obviously true that the natural cannot attain to the supernatural. ”

“ It weighs nothing, says the Atheist, in the eye of reason, to say the universe appears to man as though it were organised by an Almighty Designer; for the maker of a thing must be superior to the thing made; and if there be a maker of the universe there can be no doubt, but that if such maker were minutely examined by man, man would discover such indications of wisdom and design that it would be more difficult for him to admit that such maker was not caused or constructed by a pre-existing Designer, than to admit that the universe was not caused or constructed by a Designer. ”

“ The universe, quoth they, must have had a cause, and that cause must have been a First Cause, or cause number one, because nothing can exist of itself. Oh, most lame and impotent conclusion! How in consistency can they declare nothing can exist without a cause in the teeth of their oft repeated dogma that God is uncaused. If God never commenced to be He is an uncaused existence, that is to say, exists without a cause. The difference on this point between Theists and Atheists is very palpable. The former say, Spirit can exist without a cause; the latter say Matter can exist without a cause. ”

“ Were every Romanist in Ireland at once to turn 'good Protestant,' their political emancipation would be far off as ever. Protestantism everywhere, like Romanism everywhere, is 'a political system, and a wicked political system, for it regards only the exercise of power, and neglects utterly the duty of improvement.'
Religion is the curse of Ireland. To the rival churches of that country may be traced nearly all the oppressions suffered by its people, who never can be materially improved till purged of their faith in priests. ”

“ Beattie, another Christian doctor, towards the close of his celebrated Essay on the Immutability of Truth, denounces every sincere outspoken unbeliever as a 'murderer of human souls,' and it being obvious that the murderer of a single soul must to the 'enlightened' majority of our people appear an act infinitely more horrible than the butchery of many bodies, it really does at first view seem 'passing strange' that body murderers are almost invariably hanged, whilst they who murder 'souls,' if punished at all, usually escape with some harmless abuse and a year or two's imprisonment. ”

“ The piety of Newton we are not prepared to dispute. It is certain he manufactured for himself a God, inasmuch as to space he ascribed the honor of being His sensorium. It is equally clear that he believed Christianity a divine system, inasmuch as he wrote, and rushed into print with, a lot of exquisite nonsense about the exquisitely nonsensical Apocalypse. But we defy pietists to ferret out of his religious writings, any argument in defence of religion, not absolutely beneath contempt; the best of them are execrably bad—mere ravings of a disordered and o'erwrought intellect. ”

“ Our Anti-Romish priests would have us think the more and more we have of-faith, the more and more we have of happiness. Faith they exalt far, very far, above hope or even charity. 'Oh Lord, increase our faith,' is the text on which they love to enlarge. Faith is their panacea for all human ills: but their faith is worse than useless if it be not true faith. And how can we so test conflicting faiths as to distinguish the true from the false? Aye, there's the rub! Undoubtedly faith is to religion what the root is to the tree; and men in search of 'saving faith' are naturally anxious to find it. ”

“ It is true that Divines of our 'Reformed Protestant Church,' call everything but gentlemen those who lay claim to the equivocal privilege of feasting periodically upon the body and blood of Omnipotence. The pains taken by Protestants to show from Scripture, Reason and Nature, that Priests cannot change lumps of dough into the body, and bumpers of wine into the blood of their God, are well known and appreciated. But the Roman Catholics are neither to be argued nor laughed out of their 'awful doctrine' of the real presence, to which they cling with desperate earnestness. ”

“ Let the people of Ireland be properly employed, as a preliminary to being well educated, and speedily they may deserve to be singled out as 'the most moral people on the face of the earth.'
An educated nation will never tamely submit to be priest-ridden, and well do Ireland's enslavers know it. The most stupid of her priests, equally with the shrewdest of her 'patriots,' are quite alive to the expediency of teaching as facts, the fraudulent fables of the 'dark ages.' To keep the people ignorant, or what is worse, to teach them only what is false, is the great end of their training ”

“ But the Atheist, because he finds it impossible to explain the action of matter, because unable to state why it exhibits such vast and various energies as it is seen to exhibit, is none the less assured it naturally and therefore necessarily acts thus energetically. No Atheist pretends to understand how bread nourishes his frame, but of the fact that bread does nourish it he is well assured. He understands not how or why two beings should by conjunction give vitality to a third being more or less analogous to themselves, but the fact stares him in the face. ”

“ If Pantheists of this reverend gentleman's school are neither sophists nor simpletons, Materialism is neither true nor false. They do not plainly write down philosophy of so strangely negative a kind; that would be too ridiculous; but every reader of the 'Shepherd' knows that, in their way, they cleverly demonstrate all doctrine—their own of course excepted—true and false, which, no one need mount a pair of 'universal' spectacles to see, comes to neither true nor false. Spiritualism receives at their hands no better treatment than Materialism, nor Southcottianism than either. ”