False religion

“ Religion is and has ever been a chief chapter of human life. False religions are the only ones known to two thirds of the human race, even now, after nineteen centuries of Christianity; and false religions are perhaps the most monstrous, complicated and thorough-going specimens of humbug that can be found. And even within the pale of Christianity, how unbroken has been the succession of impostors, hypocrites and pre [12] tenders, male and female, of every possible variety of age, sex, doctrine and discipline! ”

“ Then is Christianity false; the world believes what is false; has been converted, regenerated, civilized, by what is false; there is falsehood in the faith, in the love, and in all the other inspirations of the Christian religion; falsehood in all the blessings which have been conferred upon humanity in the name of God the Redeemer; falsehood in the heroism of innumerable martyrs; falsehood in all the master-minds who have adorned Christianity; falsehood in the whole chain of science, zeal, devotion, and superhuman virtues ”

“ The life and way of some engaged in a false religion may be so blameless and, according to the dictates of their deluded conscience, so strict, as that it may be a copy unto those who profess the true religion and a reproof for their palpable negligence. ”

“ A false religion out of the church will not hurt the church, no more than weeds in the wilderness hurt the enclosed garden, or poison hurt the body when it is not touched or taken, yea, and antidotes are received against it.
Secondly. A false religion and worship will not hurt the civil state, in case the worshippers break no civil law: and the answerer elsewhere acknowledgeth, that the civil laws not being broken, civil peace is not broken: and this only is the point in question. ”

“ When viewed in this light, we shall readily perceive the connection between this and the next verse, which contrasts the value of true, with the [pg 086] worthlessness and deceitfulness of false religion.
For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; and told false dreams; they comfort in vain.
That is, the heathen priests and oracles promise blessings which they have no power to bestow, but delude their votaries with false hopes, leading them astray, and leaving them to wander as a flock without a shepherd. ”

“ That if this person, the more effectually to conceal his religion, not only neglects its duties, but even joins in acts of the false religion of those with whom he dwells by being present at their prayers, or going to their churches, his sin is still more grievous, because he positively professes a false religion, denies the true religion of Jesus Christ before men, and therefore must expect to be denied by Him at the great day. ”

“ We may lay it down as a general principle that the greater the apparent resemblance which a false religion, utterly and fundamentally different in its spiritual character, and moral tendency, externally bears to the [121] true, the more reprehensible will it be in itself, and the greater its hostility to the truth. ”

“ Now, though many of those who are brought up in a false religion may live good lives as to moral honesty in the eyes of the world, yet they may be very blamable in the sight of God, and, their secret passions and attachments to the things of this life, may put an effectual obstacle to His merciful design of bringing them to the knowledge of His truth. ”

“ On the other hand, if the effect of error be not exceedingly pernicious, why should we be so frequently, and solemnly warned against false teachers—false doctrines—false Christs—against making shipwreck of faith and a good Conscience—and against the danger of all delusion? Some affect to believe in the harmlessness of error; and that all opinions and speculations in religion are of little or no consequence. ”

“ It is the natural process of all false and corrupt religions, on the contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ's Church, and to lead away our thoughts from our brethren in matters of religion, and to fix them merely upon God as known to us through a priest. ”

“ To believe that such a character was the product of a false religion, or that he was given over to believe a lie, savors too much of that worst agnosticism which would in effect deny the universality of God's love and would limit His care to some favored locality or age or race. ”

“ The barrenness that afflicts all countries which are the seat of a false religion is a public testimony of the Divine indignation against idolatry. For the sin of man the earth was originally cursed: and wherever wicked systems exist, there a [Pg 360] manifest curse rests upon the earth. ”

“ After this illustration, having in several sections exhibited an account of his own faith, and in some established it, he made in other sections a digression upon the creed of others, and the digressive sections are frequent; the proofs and disquisitions by controversy with regard to false religions, and the disquisitions by concordance with regard to the rightfulness of his own religion, are distinct from the totality of those arguments, which are between truth and falsehood, and the contrast between truth and falsehood, and that between small and great is made evident. ”

“ The idea, that God made a true religion only for a few learned men, and gave them a commission to make false religions for the vulgar, from time to time, supposes that the deity was unable to legislate for the great mass of his creatures. By reserving truth for the learned, and cheating the ignorant into virtue, religion is considered as necessary for the first class, and superstition as sufficient for the second, without any divine authority for the discrimination. ”

“ Let the books of false religion be opened; it will be found that their moral system is, in all its good features, the same. The impostors who composed them were compelled to pay this homage to the uniform moral sentiments of the world. ”

“ Let a person go into a congregation of Methodists and try to prove that Jesus was an impostor, that every system of religion is false, and that the Bible is a matter of speculation got up by selfish divines expressly for their own benefit; and who in that congregation would deem it worth while to oppose views so erroneous to the minds of those who have heard from Sabbath to Sabbath, the doctrines of the Gospel preached, so far as they understand them? No one, because to them the speaker's views would be so obviously false.
No man can disprove a truth. ”

“ Can any thing like this be380 said, or even suspected, of the Christian faith?
I know, that fraud and falsehood, by being mixed with a great deal of acknowledged evident truth, may obtain respect even with some acute and inquisitive men; as, without doubt, has been the case of Popery, since the Reformation: I know, too, that a false religion, unsupported by any truth, may even keep its ground in a learned age, when restraint or other causes have prevented a free inquiry into that religion ”

“ Even the Divine Founder of our Faith and Religion was stigmatized as the broacher of false opinions, and one who misled the people, by his ignorant and malicious accusers, whose frauds and delusions it was the object of his mission to confound and overthrow, as well as to free mankind from the bondage of their errors. ”

“ Though this may not be positive proof of the truth of any religion, for it is well known that fanatics will suffer horrible torture for a false and foolish religion, more than is required of the Lord for true Christians to suffer for their religion, except in cases when his providences may require for certain wise purposes. Votaries of false systems of religion will at times court persecution, with a view to establish their religion and give it notoriety. ”

“ Why not select the Devil at once, if beings the most cruel and blood-thirsty were best calculated for "carrying out his divine ends of mercy to the race"? Here is more proof of the evil effects of preaching, or adhering to, a religion which is so full of errors, absurdities, and immoral elements, that it blinds the moral vision, and weakens the reasoning faculties to give it a place in the mind, and leads to a system of false reasoning, and often corrupts the natural judgment. We have more orthodox testimony to show the defective morals of the Lord's chosen people. ”

“ False ideas and false principles are as tenaciously adhered to by those who inbibe [imbibe] them in their faith as is the truth by those who love it. I presume that the worshippers of idols in China, Japan, Hindostan, &c., were we to enter their congregations and tell them that our religion differs from theirs, would be as astonished as we are that they see and understand things as they do. ”

“ The main obstacle is that precisely because that the perversions of the false Christian teaching are too obvious, more and more gross superstition is lately spreading, many times more harmful than all ancient superstitions, the superstition that religion in general is something unnecessary, outdated, and that mankind can live a reasonable life without a religion. ”

“ And so, not only has the argument been weakened and obscured which might be founded on the rectitude of the line drawn of old between what ought and what ought not to be the subject of revelation, but even a positive argument has been furnished to the infidel,—ever ready to identify the glosses of the theologian with the enunciations of revelation itself,—similar to that which the Christian missionary directs against the false religions of India. ”

“ But craft and deceit in sacred things breed a vicious habit of defending by false reasoning what an uncorrupted conscience would reject; and the holy name of religion, instead of being a sacrament of good, becomes a sacrament of evil, which is used to cover and consecrate loathsome immoralities. ”

“ The Prophets, he thinks, might have simply annihilated all false religions by explaining how they originated in natural and cosmical appearances. Why then give an apparent reality to the heathen gods by railing against them as if they were real? The true God would surely have found it as easy to convince idolaters as to punish them. ”

“ At this purely subjective rating, therefore, Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. It would seem that she cannot be a mere anachronism and survival, but must exert a permanent function, whether she be with or without intellectual content, and whether, if she have any, it be true or false.
We must next pass beyond the point of view of merely subjective utility, and make inquiry into the intellectual content itself.
First, is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds, a common nucleus to which they bear their testimony unanimously?
And second, ought we to consider the testimony true? ”

“ 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? ”

“ Give it scope and it would sweep away every means in our power to distinguish truth from falshood,—blot out all the lights of science, reason and revelation. In its dark embrace the condition of its deluded votaries would resemble that of a mariner in mid-ocean, without compass or quadrant,—surrounded on all sides by dense fog, without a single star for his guide. To acknowledge the pretentions of Spiritualism would be, to surrender society with all its cherished institutions into the hands of false prophets. ”

“ Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretences to both. ”

“ On religion in particular the time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known; ”

“ Now, self and Boole—though I admit I have not asked my partner—are of opinion that a diabolical church with false doctrine does harm when the people are faithful, and can do good only when the people are unfaithful. ”

“ Nay, their not having such a doubt when they have just and solid grounds for doubting, rather renders them the more guilty, because it shows greater corruption of the heart, greater depravity of disposition. A person brought, up in a false faith which the Scripture calls sects of perdition, doctrines of devils, perverse things, lies, and hypocrisy-----and who has heard of the True Church of Christ, which condemns all these sects, and sees their divisions and dissensions has always before his eyes the strongest reason to doubt the safety of his own state. ”

“ Helpful action, observe! for there is just one law, which, obeyed, keeps all religions pure—forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to [Pg 144] dwell upon the points in which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil’s power. ”

“ Every doctrine, every explanation of the Scriptures, then, which leads us to rely upon our own works, and produces false Christians and self-righteous individuals, in the name of faith, is emphatically condemned. ”

“ At first I was astonished that such an obvious absurdity—such an evident contradiction—did not destroy religion itself. How can religious people remain so deluded? And really, viewed from the general, external point of view it is incomprehensible, and proves irrefragably that every religion is a fraud, and that the whole thing is superstition, as the dominant philosophy of today declares. And looking at things from this general point of view, I inevitably came to acknowledge that all religion is a human fraud. ”