Elijah Benamozegh

“ What better omens could be desired of the advent of a pure and high morality? And yet, what a harrowing picture does the religion of a free enquiry present! .Far from reproaching Protestantism, we say that it has completely fulfilled its mission, that it has unhesitatingly and courageously laid bare the defects in Christian ethics and the evil it may produce when the sacredotal eye no longer keeps watch over the threatening hydra. But, however, our assertions are only better proved, and the history of Protestant doctrine is our strongest support.
Facts speak for themselves. ”

“ It is not as yet a heresy that has a name, a standard, a history, though it is truly the germ of a heresy. The first historical one that truly bears this name, the oldest example of human reason left to itself in the heart-centre of Christianity, is a grand outburst against morality. ”

“ A spectacle not a little instructive is that of the Nicolaites, who, at the cradle almost of Christianity, made every sort of licentiousness and immorality their rule of life ,' who, the better to escape the slavery of the senses, and not waste the freedom of the soul in constant tiresome struggles, desired to exhaust the flesh by complying with all its desires. ”

“ As to those done without the grace of Jesus, they are but mortal sins."
Years glide away, and we pass to another form of Protestantism, to another country: and the ethics? Moral works, says the Calvinistic synod of 1618, do not count for our justification. We are almost on the threshold of modern times, and the Christian ethics, with free speech, free teaching, has not budged a step.
Let us, however, imitate the sick man who shifts his position to ease his pain: let us pass to another church, let us ask from another period information about the Catholic morality. ”

“ Protestantism passes from hand to hand, changes its schools, its masters, its country, its church—its morality is always the same. The Anglicans, who are the most moderate, announce in 1562: That good works, the products of faith even, cannot expiate our sins and satisfy the strict justice of God. ”

“ By its fictions about death and resurrection, forced suppositions for a reality negatived by fact, it sanctioned the huge humbug of giving to the living the liberty of the dead, to existing humanity the laws that shall rule it when it leaves the tomb. ”

“ In the fourth century came the Messalians, who gave the faithful a dispensation from every virtue, provided they prayed incessantly, and who, having become as they thought incapable of sin, abandoned themselves without scruple to all kinds of licentiousness. Prior to these, in the second century, were the Adamites, who pretended that they had been restored by Jesus to the original innocence of Adam, and who consequently went naked, rejected marriage, and deemed the community of women a privilege of this return middle ages was a swarm of monstrous sects. ”

“ We cannot leave the middle ages without making two remarks which the intelligent reader will appreciate. One has particular reference to the Gnostics. We see in their systemized depravity, a confirmation, from point to point, of our assertion—that this sort of error and licentiousness originates in the contempt of the body preached by Christianity. ”

“ And the very language of the sects themselves will show unequivocally the logical connection of effect with cause, which we have assigned. No more precipitate blossoming can be imagined. As early as the Apostolic times even, the seeds sown in Christian soil puts forth its foul, dark-hued buds. ”

“ Reason, the heart, good morals, oppose this doctrine through Melancthon. Vain resistance! In 1567 the Diet of Worms condemns him and approves of Luther's ethics. Can we expect anything better of Calvin? He has, nevertheless, no connexion with any one, neither with Luther, nor the church. What will he teach regarding Christian ethics? "We believe," say the Calvinists in chorus, "that by faith alone we share the righteousness of Jesus Christ; God has no regard for good works." ”

“ We have also said that this fiction, the dream of the new-birth era, of a perfection unexampled in this life, was calculated to craze people on the subject of morals, and to authorize acts, criminal, doubtless, under existing physical and moral conditions, but not so under the imaginary ones of that unreal kingdom to which they believed themselves admitted. ”

“ In confining ourselves to the region of abstractions, perhaps we may have appeared desirous of avoiding realities that could falsify our conclusions, and of giving ourselves free rein in endless reasoning, without ever appealing to the test of experience. ”

“ What constitutes their importance and what unfortunately makes us right on all points is, that those vices did not hide themselves, were not ashamed, that they boldly established themselves in the Church, that they shamelessly displayed their deformity in open day, and that they deemed themselves justified by Christian dogma and ethics. ”

“ By the very act of redemption it detached man from the work of salvation, by throwing upon the God-Messiah all the weight of expiation, and transferring the sphere of his regeneration from within to without. ”

“ The principles already mentioned, the defects already discovered, the germs of weakness, degeneracy and corruption, we are about to see in the external world, exerting their influence, developing their inherent baneful powers, and spreading their deadly branches and leaves over a section of mankind. ”