Charles Southwell

“ 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 except to prove the absurdity of that exclusion. ”

“ 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 it reverence. Were your bosoms warmed by one spark of generous wisdom, silence on the question of religion would be broken, the multitude cease to believe, and imposters to triumph. ”

“ A want of forethought so remarkable and indolence so abominable, are results of superstitious education. Does any one suppose the religion of the Irish has little, if anything, to do with their political condition? Or can it be believed they will be fit for, much less achieve, political emancipation, while priests and priests alone, are their instructors? We may rely upon it that intellectual freedom is the natural and necessary precursor of political freedom. Education, said Lord Brougham, makes men easy to lead but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave. ”

“ There cannot be slavery where there is no tyranny, and to say, as Newton did, that we stand in the name 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 God is relative, and relate 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. ”

“ Under cover, then, of what reason can Christians escape the imputation of pretending to adore what they have no conception of? The very 'book of books,' to which they so boldly appeal, is conclusive against them. In its pages they stand convicted of idolatry. Without doubt a God is revealed by Revelation; but not their God, not a supernatural Being, infinite in power, in wisdom, and in goodness. The Bible Deity is superhuman in nothing; all that His adorers have ascribed to Him being mere amplification of human powers, human ideas, and human passions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Nature is all, and all is Nature, nothing but itself could ever have existed, and of course nothing but itself can be supposed ever to have been capable of causing. To cause is to act, and though body without notion is conceivable, action without body is not. Neither can two Infinites be supposed to tenant one Universe. Only 'most religious philosophers' can pretend to acknowledge the being of an infinite God co-existent with an infinite Universe. ”

“ Besides, how can we imagine a God, who is 'totally destitute of body and of corporeal figure,' to have any kind of substance? Earthly emperors we know to be substantial and common-place sort of beings enough, but is it not sheer abuse of reason to argue as though the character of God were at all analogous to theirs; or rather, is it not shocking abuse of our reasoning facilities to employ them at all about a Being whose existence, if we really have an existence, is perfectly enigmatical, and allowed to be so by those very men who pretend to explain its character and attributes? ”

“ History proves that the generality of men are the slaves of prejudice, the sport of custom, and foes most bigoted to such opinions concerning religion as have not been drawn in from their sucking-bottles, or 'hatched within the narrow fences of their own conceit.'
Every day experience demonstrates the fallibility of majorities. It palpably exhibits, too, the danger as well as folly of presuming the unpopularity of certain speculative opinions an evidence of their untruth. A public intellect, untainted by gross superstition, can nowhere be appealed to. ”

“ To me they are indicative of the startling truth, that neither eloquence nor learning, nor faith in God and his Scripture, nor all three combined, are incompatible with the cruelest spirit of persecution. The Treatise on Moderation will stand an everlasting memorial against its author, whose fine intellect, spoiled by superstitious education, urged him to approve a deed, the bare remembrance of which ought to excite in every breast, feelings of horror and indignation. That such a man should declare the aim of Universalists is 'to dethrone God and destroy man,' is not surprising. ”

“ Infallibility of Popes is the doctrine insisted upon by Count De Montalembert as essential—as doctrine the smallest deviation from which is damnable heresy. Believe and admit Antichrist is not Antichrist, but God's accredited viceregent upon earth, infinite is the mercy in store for you; but woe to those who either cannot or will not believe and admit anything of the kind. On them every sincere Roman Catholic is sure that God will empty the vials of his wrath.
Priests ascribe to Deity the low, grovelling, vindictive, feelings which agitate and disgrace themselves. ”

“ But the Universalist, 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 Universalist 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. ”

“ And, without doubt, it was hostility eminently calculated to exhaust their stock of patience, because eminently calculated to damage their superstition, 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 it be granted, for the mere purpose of explanation, that spirit is an entity, we can frame 'clear distinct ideas of'—a real though not material existence, surely no man will pretend to say an uncreated Spirit, is less inexplicable than uncreated Matter. All could not have been caused or created unless nothing can be a Cause, the very notion of which involves the grossest of absurdities. ”

“ And can any one fail to perceive that such a religion must needs be political? The cunning few, who esteem nothing apart from their own aggrandisement, are quite aware that the civil and criminal law of England is intimately associated with Christianity—they publicly proclaim their separation impossible, except at the cost of destruction to both. They are sagacious enough to perceive that a people totally untrammelled by the fears, the prejudices, and the wickedness of superstition would never consent to remain in bondage. ”

“ The same Hume who thus pleasantly rebuked 'most religious philosophers,' was himself a true Universalist. That he lacked faith in the supernatural must be apparent to every student of his writings, which abound with reflections far from flattering to the self-love of superstitionists, and little calculated to advance their cause. Hume astonished religious fanatics by declaring that while we argue from the course of nature and infer a particular intelligent cause, which first bestowed, and still preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle which is both uncertain and useless. ”

“ Supposing, however, that theologians were to succeed in establishing an analogy between 'the contrivances of human art and the various existences of the universe,' is it not evident that Spinoza's axiom—of things which having nothing in common one cannot be the cause of the others—is incompatible with belief in the Deity of our Thirty-Nine Articles, or, indeed, belief in any unnatural Designer or Causer of Material Nature. Only existence can have anything in common with existence. ”

“ 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's faith in the inconceivable is ever half so strong as his belief in the visible and tangible. ”

“ Whatever men could doubt or deny they have doubted or denied, but in no country of the world, in no age, has the dogma—there is something—been denied or even treated as doubtful. Here then Universalists, Theists, and Polytheists agree. They agree of necessity. There is no escape from the conclusion that something is, except we adopt the unintelligible dogma—there is nothing—which no human being can, as nothing amounts to nothing, and of what amounts to nothing no one can have an idea. ”

“ The universe is an uncaused existence, or it was caused by something before it. 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. ”

“ Animated by a vile spirit of accommodation, their whole sum of practical wisdom can be told in four words—BE SILENT AND SAFE. They are amazed at the 'folly' of these who make sacrifices at the shrine of sincerity; and while sagacious enough to perceive that superstition is a clumsy political contrivance, are not wanting in the prudence which dictates at least a seeming conformity to prevailing prejudices. ”

“ All would know that what theologians call sometimes spirit, sometimes soul, and sometimes mind, is an imaginary existence. All would know that the terms immaterial something do in very truth mean nothing. Count de Caylus died as became a man convinced that soul is not an entity, and that upon the dissolution of our 'earthly tabernacle', the particles composing it cease to perform vital functions, and return to the shoreless ocean of Eternal Being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Romanists will have nothing to do with reason whenever it appears at issue with their faith. All sects, as sects, play fast and loose with reason. Many members of all sects are forward enough to boast about being able to give a reason for the faith that is in them; but an overwhelming majority love to exalt faith above reason. Philosophy they call 'vain,' and some have been found so filled with contempt for it, as to openly maintain that what is theologically true, is philosophically false; or, in other terms, that the truths of religion and the truths of philosophy have nothing in common. ”

“ 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 dog-like to lick the hand that smites them. ”

“ But no one will contend for an infinite series of Makers; and if, continues the Atheist, what would, if viewed, be indications of design, are no proofs of a designer in the one case, they are not in the other; and as such indications are the only evidence we have of the existence of a Designer of the universe, we, as rational beings, contend there is no God. We do not suppose the existence of any being, of which there is no evidence, when such supposition, it admitted, so far from diminishing would only increase a difficulty, which, at best, is sufficiently great. ”

“ The dogma that something has existed from all eternity, as already shown, is perfectly intelligible, and may defy contradiction—but the real difficulty is to satisfactorily determine what that something is. Matter exists, and as no one can even imagine its non-existence or annihilation, the Materialist infers that must be the eternal something. Newton as well as Clark thought the everlasting Being destitute of body, and consequently without parts, figure, motion, divisibility, or any other such properties as we find in matter—ergo, they did not believe matter to be the eternal something ”

“ But we deny that magnetism is the magnet. These words magnetism and magnet do not, it is true, stand for two things, but one thing: that one and only thing called matter. The magnet is an existence, i.e., that which moves. Magnetism is not an existence, but phenomenon, or, if you please, phenomena. It is the effect of which magnetic body is the immediate and obvious cause. ”