Название: History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3
Автор: Henry Buckley
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44493
isbn:
I. The Roman emperors, as is well known, subjected the early Christians to persecutions, which, though they have been exaggerated, were frequent and very grievous. But what to some persons must appear extremely strange, is, that among the active authors of these cruelties, we find the names of the best men who ever sat on the throne; while the worst and most infamous princes were precisely those who spared the Christians, and took no heed of their increase. The two most thoroughly depraved of all the emperors were certainly Commodus and Elagabalus; neither of whom persecuted the new religion, or indeed adopted any measures against it. They were too reckless of the future, too selfish, too absorbed in their own infamous pleasures, to mind whether truth or error prevailed; and being thus indifferent to the welfare of their subjects, they cared nothing about the progress of a creed, which they, as Pagan emperors, were bound to regard as a fatal and impious delusion. They, therefore, allowed Christianity to run its course, unchecked by those penal laws which more honest, but more mistaken, rulers would assuredly have enacted.326 We find, accordingly, that the great enemy of Christianity was Marcus Aurelius: a man of kindly temper, and of fearless, unflinching honesty, but whose reign was characterized by a persecution from which he would have refrained had he been less in earnest about the religion of his fathers.327 And to complete the argument, it may be added, that the last and one of the most strenuous of the opponents of Christianity, who occupied the throne of the Cæsars, was Julian: a prince of eminent probity, whose opinions are often attacked, but against whose moral conduct even calumny itself has hardly breathed a suspicion.328
II. The second illustration is supplied by Spain; a country of which it must be confessed, that in no other have religious feelings exercised such sway over the affairs of men. No other European nation has produced so many ardent and disinterested missionaries, zealous self-denying martyrs, who have cheerfully sacrificed their lives in order to propagate truths which they thought necessary to be known. Nowhere else have the spiritual classes been so long in the ascendant; nowhere else are the people so devout, the churches so crowded, the clergy so numerous. But the sincerity and the honesty of purpose by which the Spanish people, taken as a whole, have always been marked, have not only been unable to prevent religious persecution, but have proved the means of encouraging it. If the nation had been more lukewarm, it would have been more tolerant. As it was, the preservation of the faith became the first consideration; and everything being sacrificed to this one object, it naturally happened that zeal begat cruelty, and the soil was prepared in which the Inquisition took root and flourished. The supporters of that barbarous institution were not hypocrites, but enthusiasts. Hypocrites are for the most part too supple to be cruel. For cruelty is a stern and unbending passion; while hypocrisy is a fawning and flexible art, which accommodates itself to human feelings, and flatters the weakness of men in order that it may gain its own ends. In Spain, the earnestness of the nation, being concentrated on a single topic, carried everything before it; and hatred of heresy becoming a habit, persecution of heresy was thought a duty. The conscientious energy with which that duty was fulfilled is seen in the history of the Spanish Church. Indeed, that the inquisitors were remarkable for an undeviating and incorruptible integrity, may be proved in a variety of ways, and from different and independent sources of evidence. This is a question to which I shall hereafter return; but there are two testimonies which I cannot omit, because, from the circumstances attending them, they are peculiarly unimpeachable. Llorente, the great historian of the Inquisition, and its bitter enemy, had access to its private papers; and yet, with the fullest means of information, he does not even insinuate a charge against the moral character of the inquisitors; but while execrating the cruelty of their conduct, he cannot deny the purity of their intentions.329 Thirty years earlier, Townsend, a clergyman of the Church of England, published his valuable work on Spain;330 and though, as a Protestant and an Englishman, he had every reason to be prejudiced against the infamous system which he describes, he also can bring no charge against those who upheld it; but having occasion to mention its establishment at Barcelona, one of its most important branches, he makes the remarkable admission, that all its members are men of worth, and that most of them are of distinguished humanity.331
These facts, startling as they are, form a very small part of that vast mass of evidence which history contains, and which decisively proves the utter inability of moral feelings to diminish religious persecution. The way in which the diminution has been really effected by the mere progress of intellectual acquirements, will be pointed out in another part of this volume; when we shall see that the great antagonist of intolerance is not humanity, but knowledge. It is to the diffusion of knowledge, and to that alone, that we owe the comparative cessation of what is unquestionably the greatest evil men have ever inflicted on their own species. For that religious persecution is a greater evil than any other, is apparent, not so much from the enormous and almost incredible number of its known victims,332 as from the fact СКАЧАТЬ
325
One part of the argument is well stated by Cuvier, who says, ‘Le bien que l'on fait aux hommes, quelque grand qu'il soit, est toujours passager; les vérités qu'on leur laisse sont éternelles.’
326
‘The first year of Commodus must be the epocha of the toleration. From all these authorities, it appears beyond exception, that Commodus put a stop to the persecution in the first year of his reign… Not one writer, either heathen or Christian, makes Commodus a persecutor.’
327
Dr. Milman (
328
Neander (
329
By which, indeed, he is sorely puzzled. ‘On reconnaîtra mon impartialité dans quelques circonstances où je fais remarquer chez les inquisiteurs des dispositions généreuses; ce qui me porte à croire que les atroces sentences rendues par le Saint-Office, sont plutôt une conséquence de ses lois organiques, qu'un effet du caractère particulier de ses membres.’
330
Highly spoken of by the late Blanco White, a most competent judge. See
331
‘It is, however, universally acknowledged, for the credit of the corps at Barcelona, that all its members are men of worth, and most of them distinguished for humanity.’
332
In 1546, the Venetian ambassador at the court of the Emperor Charles V. stated, in an official report to his own government on his return home, ‘that in Holland and in Friesland, more than 30,000 persons have suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors.’