Richard Carlile

“ The riddle is of larger comprehension than the mere relations of God to man. It is an astronomical almanack, a written and dramatized picture of the celestial globe; and is, in truth, a most perfect allegory of all known nature, both in physics and morals, in matter and spirit. There are no such men in the Church now as the writers of the Sacred Scriptures; none even with sufficient knowledge to understand them. We have fallen; yes, we have fallen into the dark ages; and the revelation, when known, is to be the millennium. We have fallen by that Scarlet Whore, the Babylon of Mystery ”

“ Is not, rather, the present ministry of the Church more afraid of knowledge than of the people's ignorant dissent; more of "Carlile and his crew," than of all the dissenters; more of free discussion, than of any kind of superstition? The dissent of knowledge and the dissent of ignorance, though disunited, are becoming too powerful for your knowledgeless Church; and you, at last, have consented to speak of its necessary reform! To which will you yield, or whom will you join? Those who dissent by knowledge, or those by ignorance? ”

“ Instead of making the Bishops overseers and the Clergy generally actors of a drama, I purpose to put the whole structure of the human mind under their superintendance and guidance: not to be dealt with as now, but really to be educated in all attainable knowledge. My purpose is as practicable as that any other person can teach any kind of knowledge. Give the human being a better occupation of time, let the human mind expand where it may, and you guarantee perpetual peace and improvement, with dignity to every class of men, with injury to none. ”

“ If the first cannot be done, the clumsy mystery falls to the ground, as the Dagon of the day, before historical criticism: and if the first be done, and the second cannot bear the light of scientific and philosophical criticism, the mystery is still but a mummery, which belief can no longer prop, nor physical power farther propagate; it is thrown into the crucible of moral criticism, and men will not longer consent to believe that the same causes will demonstrate differing effects, nor that varying causes may be made to demonstrate the same effect. ”

“ In thus stating my subject, I am not insensible to the state of mind and conflicting interests with which you have to deal: but you are in a dilemma, from which nothing but wisdom and honesty can relieve you; every false or inefficient step will weaken you; any attempt to patch the holes made by Time in the mystery of the Church, will be like the tinker's work of mending one and making two: it is rusty and rotten, and must be knocked to pieces and burnt up, to produce the brilliant revelation from its ashes! There can be no mixture of the mystery with the revelation. ”

“ It is simply to begin to teach the people something useful in the Church, to give them useful knowledge, as easy in practicability as it is for a ripe scholar to become a schoolmaster to uninstructed youth. We have teachers all prepared for the purpose in the Clergy themselves. You have now to deal with a suspected and not a respected clergy. Though the great mass of the people do not understand where the fault theologically lies, yet they have instinctive discernment enough to see, that the relation of their condition to that of the Clergy is not founded in honesty and social utility. ”

“ No mystery: down with mystery. It is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or confessing to know, nothing. There is no Christ in the mystery. "How can we reason, but from what we know?" The knowledge must be first. Nothing precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. Nothing is required after; but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. ”

“ Is not the idea horrible, and of the worst description, that a Church and King, or Church and State, should exist and hold together on no better tenure than a military power; than that of an army constantly under arms to keep the people from carrying their complaints to an extent disagreeable or alarming to the men in office? Yet such is all that you can boast of in the present state of the Institutions of the country. ”

“ The physical, its forms and compositions excepted, is eternal and immutable—the moral is evanescent, mortal, and mutable in its personal existence, but immutable and immortal as to principle. The root of God, therefore, as of man, is in physical power, which is correctly described as almighty, immutable and omnipresent: it is only omniscient, as being the fountain of knowledge—the all that can be known. Science is art; therefore, there can be no science in an infinite or eternal sense, as we can speak of the physical power of Deity ”

“ Banish the superstition of the Church, plant the tree of knowledge there, and you will quickly overthrow the morally pestilent Dissenters. I mean, of course, by moral means, by the exhibition of more knowledge and wisdom and utility than they. This would be salvation and reform to every good institution in the country; for when knowledge becomes the nation's religion and moral pole-star, everything good is safe, everything evil will vanish before a discussion of its merits. ”

“ Ceremonial sobriety would be but the mockery of a good principle. I care not how much repenting and proving we have, how much trial, let us but have free, full, and fair enquiry and discussion, in Parliament and out of Parliament. Giving a man knowledge cannot be a disqualification for true religion. Feeding him with science can have no tendency to injure his morals. Occupying his time well can be no source of bad habits. Spurring him on to a moral emulation in the acquisition of equal or more knowledge than his neighbour, will not create ill will toward that neighbour. ”

“ Material and spiritual existence are the only two positive existences of which man can speak or write, to which no inspiration can add; for inspiration is only knowledge; and the recognition of material and spiritual existence is the limitation of knowledge. The details of knowledge can be nothing more than definitions and descriptions of existing things,—the plantings of art upon nature.
All knowledge is matter of art. Nature is the thing known—art the knowledge of the thing. ”

“ The unrevealed mystery of religion has been the curse and moral devil of the human race. A statesman cannot be wise and honest without setting his face against it, and seeking to rid of it the minds of his countrymen. ”

“ Man is not known to be the creature, but the creator of art; not the creature, but the creator of spirit, soul, mind, reason, knowledge, or whatever other term relates to the mental phenomena.
I maintain, because it is a truth of the deepest importance to the human race, and without the knowledge of which nothing can work well in human society, that man is the creator of all spiritual existence; and in the sense in which God is a spirit, man is the creator of that God, and has been the creator of every description of existence that has been made of such a God. ”

“ I pass by the Pagan mythology, which, in its understood personifications and allegories, is as beautiful a picture of physical and moral nature, as the Christian Religion itself; and I rest on the Christian, as, when understood, the only religion for human improvement that has been presented to the notice of the human race. ”

“ Now, nothing of the properties of existing things is taught in the Church; but through the medium of the mystery remaining unrevealed, unexplained, or untranslated in our language, every thing is falsified to man's credulous view and consideration, by the ministers of the Church; nature appears to him distorted, and he lives without certainty, and dies deceived as to the future. Knowledge is as infinite as existing things, and man's power of acquisition illimitable. ”

“ Now the secret in the mind is, where understood, and where not understood there is no Sacrament, that, like the Trinity, all the appearances of God are in the principle of transubstantiation or change from one to another thing. All is motion.—Nature knows no rest. All is change, all is transubstantiation. It is like the Trinity,—one of the attributes of Deity, one not to be doubted,—because everywhere visible. The present Church of England calls it a damnable doctrine; but it is so called through ignorance. Like that of the Trinity, it is a doctrine much older than the Christian era ”

“ The best occupation of time is a question at the very root of individual happiness and national prosperity: I find it everywhere sadly neglected; here in prison, out in church, at the theatre, in public and private business, in families, in pursuit of pleasure, in the army—everywhere. ”

“ But a personification after deifications of the mental phenomena, is a sounding, preaching, writing, carving or painting God, as the perfection of knowledge; Christ, as the perfection of reason; and the Holy Spirit of communication, as the perfection of all attainable moral power by the human race: making those perfections to be things sought, the things worshipped, the best religion, as it undoubtedly is, for the whole human race. It was the best plan of scholastic improvement, when acted upon, that human wisdom could have devised, and to this I would have you bring our Church. ”

“ The deepest investigators of the Hebrew Bible of this day maintain that it should be algebraically understood as a book of astronomical science—as a record of time by astronomical motion, which, physically speaking, can alone be the WORD OF THE WORKS OF GOD.
The only true religion must be founded in man's reasonable comprehension; all other pretences to it are presumptions and nonsense to be condemned. We may as properly speak of religious horses and cows, as of men who are ignorant of the subject, substance and meaning, of what is religion. ”

“ You may delay for a while; but you cannot otherwise reform. You, by delay, will merely bid the people wait until they are strong enough to combat your authority. Delay will be a challenge to them of physical combat.
What can confer more dignity on the "Dignitaries of the Church" than for the Legislature to say to them:—"Feed the people with knowledge and no longer fill them with superstition?" If I understand human nature rightly, it has more pleasure in honesty than in dishonesty. ”

“ Not annihilated by slaughter or physical force; but by superior knowledge, and consequent superior teaching, by openness, by honesty, by throwing off the mask of hypocrisy, and leaving the Church of Christ to be no longer a theatre of dramatic ceremony in mystery, with parts and actors as ignorant as automata of their subject, and who not knowing, can value it not, beyond the salaries they receive for its performance in unrevealed mystery. ”