Anti-Christianity

“ This open confession of faith in Jesus Christ and the truths He has revealed, this fearless espousal of His cause, is demanded especially in our times. Modern society is to a great extent anti-Christian or inimical to Christ, pervaded by hatred to Christianity in general, and to the Catholic Church in particular. ”

“ The first step stone to modern christianity was laid on the smoking ruins of primitive christianity. The christian enemies to new revelations and miracles, actually waded through the blood of apostles and prophets, in order to establish the system of anti-revelation. And did their descendants and abettors realise the bloody and accursed origin of that system that wars against new regulations and prophets, and angels, many of them would shudder at their blind zeal and self-righteousness! ”

“ All the united efforts of the Church's enemies in the course of ages, all their errors, hatred and violence directed against her, the Spouse of Christ, are now concentrated in what is termed the Revolution—that is, anti-Christianity reduced to a system and propagated throughout the world, it is Satan usurping the place of Jesus Christ. ”

“ He is distinctly anti-Christian in his teaching; strongly prejudiced against anything that bears the Christian name: criticising the sayings and doings of our Lord in a fashion which indicates either the most astonishing misconception or the most melancholy perversion. But his sincerity and fervour on behalf of Theism are unmistakable. He describes it as Religion for all mankind, based on facts which are never in Dispute. ”

“ Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity. It prostrates every benevolent and just principle of action in the human heart. It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father. It is a practical denial of the extent and efficacy of the death of a common Savior. It is an usurpation of the prerogative of the great Sovereign of the universe, who has solemnly claimed an exclusive property in the souls of men. ”

“ In principle, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty;" in practice, is slavery the fruit of the Spirit? In principle, Christianity is the law of liberty; in practice, it is the law of slavery? Bring practice in these various respects into harmony with principle, and what becomes of slavery? And if, where the divine government is concerned, practice is the expression of principle, and principle the standard and interpreter of practice, such harmony cannot but be maintained and must be asserted. ”

“ Can we expect to see Christianity on higher vantage-ground than in this country she stands upon? In the midst of a republic based on the principle of the equality of mankind, where every Christian, as vitally connected with the state, freely wields the highest political rights and enjoys the richest political privileges; where the unanimous demand of one-half of the members of the churches would be promptly met in the abolition of slavery, what "ultimately" must Christianity here wait for before she crushes the chattel principle beneath her heel? ”

“ But how do the apologists and defenders of slavery proceed? Placing themselves amidst the arrangements and usages which grew out of the corruptions of Christianity, they make these the standard by which the gospel is to be explained and understood! Some Recorder or Justice, without the light of inquiry or the aid of a jury, consigns the negro whom the kidnapper has dragged into his presence to the horrors of slavery. As the poor wretch shrieks and faints, Humanity shudders and demands why such atrocities are endured? ”

“ Stuart assure himself that Christianity will destroy slavery? Are we, as American citizens, under the sceptre of a Nero? When, as integral parts of this republic--as living members of this community, did we forfeit the prerogatives of freemen? Have we not the right to speak and act as wielding the powers which the principle of self-government has put in our possession? And without asking leave of priest or statesman, of the North or the South, may we not make the most of the freedom which we enjoy under the guaranty of the ordinances of Heaven and the Constitution of our country? ”

“ The God of OUR salvation lives. "Good tidings of great joy shall be to ALL people." One shout shall swell from all the ransomed, "Thou hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood out of EVERY kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." To deny that the blessings of the jubilee extended to the servants from the Gentiles, makes Christianity Judaism. It not only eclipses the glory of the Gospel, but strikes out the sun. ”

“ Christianity itself was intolerant of all other religions. Was not Christianity the only true faith? How then could the Christians compromise with false faiths, or concede to them any truth, or any right to exist? ”

“ What confidence could be reposed in any instruction we might undertake to furnish? And is not this the way in which the advocates and apologists of slavery dispose of the bearing which primitive Christianity has upon it? They first ascribe, unwittingly, perhaps, to the primitive churches; the character, relations, and condition of American Christianity, and amidst the deep darkness and strange confusion thus produced, set about interpreting the language and explaining the usages of the New Testament! ”

“ The truth is, that what you call unbelief is only a higher and holier faith. Millions of men reject Christianity because of its cruelty. The Bible was never rejected by the cruel. It has been upheld by countless tyrants—by the dealers in human flesh—by the destroyers of nations—by the enemies of intelligence—by the stealers of babes and the whippers of women. ”

“ Her only weapons of offence and defence are truth and prayer. She returns good for evil, and blessing for cursing.
"If men, wearing the garb of the disciples of Jesus, instigated by pride, and the lust of dominion, and a desire to gratify the worst passions of the human heart, injure any of the human race under a pretence of zeal for religion, they act in direct opposition to the gospel, and you cannot condemn them with too much severity. But surely Christianity should not be condemned for what it forbids men to perpetrate under pain of the Divine displeasure. ”

“ I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. ”

“ What deserves the most rigorous condemnation, is the ambiguous and cowardly infirmity of purpose of a religion like Christianity,—or rather like the Church,—which, instead of recommending death and self-destruction, actually protects all the botched and bungled, and encourages them to propagate their kind. ”

“ And in our own day, when the spirit of evil more than ever seeks the destruction of the church, mimicking it as he does after his own fashion—to leave the power which societies are calculated to wield entirely to the enemies of Christianity, to those governed exclusively by the spirit of the world, would be to be more than blind. ”

“ It was the fate of Christianity that its faith had to become as sickly, as low and as vulgar as the needs were sickly, low and vulgar to which it had to administer. A sickly barbarism finally lifts itself to power as the church—the church, that incarnation of deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of soul, to all discipline of the spirit, to all spontaneous and kindly humanity.—Christian values—noble values: it is only we, we free spirits, who have re-established this greatest of all antitheses in values!... ”

“ When he has forced his subjects to belie their consciences, or to act against them, he has in effect driven them out of all religion, to bring them into his own; and when they thus see and feel the professed defender of religion overturning all its precepts, exhorting by bribes, rebuking by stripes, confiscations and dungeons, and making Christianity the instrument of fury, ambition, rapine, and tyranny; what can they think, but either that he is no Christian, or that Christianity is not true? If they come to suspect it of imposture, they grow infidels ”

“ How seldom do we find in the labored essays, the disjointed platitudes, the pretentious diatribes, the ornate editorials, or the epigrams which distinguish our prominent journals a sentiment or an argument based on sound views of morality and religion! With a constituency at least professedly Christian, they bandy with words and phrases, opinions and speculations, essentially anti-Christian. One sneers at the Catholic Church and everything we hold sacred; another patronizes us in a manner more insulting than complimentary ”

“ The attempt to create enthusiasm for God while banishing the Gospel of Christ meets with astonishingly small response. The 'Religion for all Mankind' makes but little progress, is, in spite of the labours of five-and-thirty years, confined, as we have seen, almost to a solitary moderately sized congregation. And whether or not the 'facts' on which the religion is based 'are never in dispute,' the religion itself is often-times disputed very keenly. Modern assaults upon religious faith are, as a rule, directed quite as much against Theism as {163} against Christianity. ”

“ On the contrary it should be observed that the church of anti-Christ is a gathering of the ungodly, and a community of the impenitent, who reject the aforementioned seed, Christ, and his word, and oppose his will, and for that reason are called the anti-Christian community or church, because they, through the spirit and artifices of anti-Christ, although in semblance of the word, and in the name of Christ, teach, believe, act, and establish a strange worship, contrary to the Spirit, word, example, and ordinance of Christ. ”

“ Men whose integrity and elevation of character are beyond suspicion, take their places among the rebels against the authority of Christ. They are fighting, they assert, not for the removal of a check to their vices, but for the introduction of a nobler ideal. In the demolition of Christianity, in the sweeping away of every vestige of religious belief, religious custom, religious hope, they imagine themselves to be conferring inestimable benefits upon mankind. Christianity, in their view, is the product of delusion and the buttress of all social ills. ”

“ We take the position that Christianity itself is essentially intolerant and persecuting in spirit; and, we take the New Testament itself to prove it. We take Christ's alleged words as reported there, and Paul's alleged words as reported there, and can thereby abundantly sustain our charge. "He that believeth not shall be damned." "A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition, reject." What is that but the quintessence of bigotry and intolerance? ”

“ The Christian father burns the heretic—he defends the soul.
If "orthodox Christianity" be true, an infidel has not the right to live. Every book in which the Bible is attacked should be burned with its author. Why hesitate to burn a man whose constitution is "warped, impaired and dislocated," for a few moments, when hundreds of others will be saved from eternal flames?
In Christianity you will find the cause of persecution. The idea that belief is essential to salvation—this ignorant and merciless dogma—accounts for the atrocities of the church. ”

“ Therefore, if neither offenders against the civil laws, state, and peace ought to be let alone; nor the spiritual estate, the church of Jesus Christ, ought to bear with them that are evil, Rev. ii. 2, I conclude that these are sinners of another nature—idolaters, false worshippers, anti-christians, who without discouragement to true Christians must be let alone, and permitted in the world to grow and fill up the measure of their sins, after the image of him that hath sown them, until the great harvest shall make the difference. ”

“ In all parts of the earth it opposes the Catholic Church, denounces her as anti-christian, bribes the world against her, obstructs her influence, apes her authority, and confuses her evidence. In all parts of the world it is the religion of gentlemen, [Pg 164] of scholars, of men of substance, and men of no personal faith at all. ”

“ They may be understood to mean that he who is not with Christ, by being united to his true flock, who does not belong to the one church which he has founded, is injuring the cause of Christ, is persecuting and hampering his church in its warfare against its enemies; or, in other words, that Protestants and heretics in general, zealous Christians though they may seem to be, are really hurting Christianity about as much as they help it, if not more. ”

“ Whether, therefore, the world outwardly professeth, or openly persecuteth christianity, it is still in the same state of contrariety to the true spirit and holiness of the gospel.
And indeed the world, by professing christianity, is so far from being a less dangerous enemy than it was before, that it has by its favour destroyed more christians, than ever it did by the most violent persecution. ”

“ Our interest lies entirely with modern days, with the struggle of the Church against the spirit of anti-Christ incarnate in all the movements of error from the sixteenth century until our own times. And thus, while we are seeking the causes of that anti-Christian spirit, we cannot help regarding with interest the influence exerted by the Protestant Reformation upon the intellectual and moral life of Europe. ”