Being a plea for the inclusion within the Church of England of all Mahometans, Jews, Buddhists, Brahmins, Papists, and Atheists, submitted to the consideration of the British Public.
Editor’s note: Written in 1914 while Ronald Knox was still an Anglican, this essay is not an attack on true ecumenism but a satire on indifferentism. We perserve Msgr. Knox’s capitalization, punctuation, and spelling and add some bracketed explanations.
It is now generally conceded that those differences that were once held to divide the Christian sects from one another (as whether or no Confirmation were a necessary ordinance of the Church) can no longer be thought to place any obstacle against unity and charity between Christians rather, the more of ’em we find to exist, the more laudable a thing it is that Christian men should stomach, now and again, these uneasy scruples, and worship together for all the world as if they had never existed.
There is no progress in humanity, without the surmounting of obstacles; thus, we are all now agreed that Satan, far from meaning any harm to our race when he brought sin into the world, was most excellently disposed toward us, and desired nothing better than that we, having some good stout sins to overcome should attain an eventful and exciting sort of virtue, instead of languishing for ever in that state of respectable innocence, which is so little creditable to the angels, who alone practise it.
In like manner, all heresies and schisms are the very condition of Christian Unity, and were doubtless designed to supply a kind of zest to the tedious business of Church-going, on the same principle that the digestion of poultry is improved if they be allowed to have a little grit or gravel in their crops to assist them. So that there can be no more edifying spectacle, to the rightly-constituted mind, than that of two fellow-worshippers, one of whom is saying in his heart, Great is Diana of the Ephesians [Acts 19:28] and the other, O Baal, hear Us [1 Kgs. 18:26], both which inward intentions they express by a common formula, when they profess openly with their lips that Honesty is the best policy.
Further, it has come to be seen that Bishops and Archbishops are not, as was commonly supposed hitherto, the vehicles of any extraordinary grace, which they passed on one to another, like a contagion, by the laying on of hands, but only another of these obstacles, which make the race of life so agreeable a pursuit. They exist to supervise our doctrines, and find them unscriptural, to control our religious practices, and forbid their continuance, thus enabling us to snatch a fearful joy while we are about ’em, in short, to give the Christian profession that spice of martyrdom, which it has so sorely lacked since the abolition of the amphitheatre. However salutary this interference be, it is plain that it is of the nature of a luxury; and we shall, therefore, be content to forgo the enjoyment of it, if the Non-conformists should demand the sacrifice as a condition of reunion with themselves.
Adventists Accommodated
I conceive then, that within a few years from the present date, the division of Christians into sects for purposes of worship will have utterly disappeared, and we shall find one great United Protestant Church existing throughout the civilized world. I would not deny but there might be some few difficulties of adjustment attending the venture; as, that the Fifth Monarchy Men [a sect of millennarists during the time of Cromwell] might withhold their assent from the scheme, unless we would all make it a matter of doctrine that the last judgement is to be presently expected; which knowledge would cast an intolerable gloom over the most part of our pleasures, and create a lack of public confidence on the Exchange.
But I cannot doubt, upon a little cool reflection, we should rid ourselves of these fanciful megrims of sectarian particularity; and there is gain to be shown on the other side; for example, it may be anticipated the Seventh Day Adventists will demand the observance of Saturday as well as Sunday as a feast of the Church; and we shall thus have two days instead of one in every seven on which we can lie abed till noon, over-eat ourselves, go out driving in the country, and dine away from home under colour of sparing trouble to the domestics.
The Symphorodox Church
There is some doubt in this connection, whether or not the churches of Russia and Greece, arrogantly styled Orthodox, can have any part in the Church of the future. Their very title is, it must be confessed, most horrid and repellent to our ears; for how can a man proclaim his own tenets to be orthodox without thereby implying that other people’s opinions are less likely to be true than his own? We must have no more of this; I leave it to themselves to pitch upon a new designation, with the suggestion that they would do well to alter their present style to that of Symphorodox, which is to assert no more than that they find their own doctrines helpful.
As to our old quarrel about the clause Filioque, it will clearly have disappeared at the time of which we speak: for as Tradition avers that the Apostles when they first formed a Creed, did not all profess it together, but each supplied his contribution, Peter leading the way with I believe in God, so in this new Church nobody will be expected to recite the whole Creed, but only such clauses as he finds relish in; it being anticipated that, with good fortune, a large congregation will usually manage in this way to recite the whole Formula between them.
And indeed these oriental Christians already enjoy to the full, in Russia at any rate, one of the most blessed privileges of our own Church; which is, to have their religious affairs entirely controlled by the State; and this will prove undoubtedly a great bond of union, when the Greeks have been induced to assign the same position in the management of their religion to the Soldan of Turkey, as the Russians assign to the Czar.
But it is not to be supposed that such an arrangement can be entered into without some undertaking from the Eastern Churches to set their own house in order: to translate, for example, their Liturgy into the modern vernacular tongue; or at least to provide that it is, like our own, not more than three hundred years out of date; to dispense with all mumblings, bobbings, bowings, shutting and opening of doors, kissings, gesticulatings, etc.; to put all their ikons high up on the wall, so as to destroy all peril of worship; and, finally, if they cannot but let off fireworks on Easter Day (as their present beastly custom is), to make sure that they do it only for purposes of illumination.
Unitarians Isolated
Thus it may be hoped we shall complete the reunion of all Christians: the considerations so far brought forward are so obvious and plain to all men of sense, that I am well-nigh ashamed to have dwelt so long upon them; the question to be raised in the present treatise is rather, whether we do right to confine these beneficent operations to the Christian or Trinitarian sects only, or whether we cannot advantageously extend them to other religious systems that have, till now, from a lack of proper reflection, been held to be incompatible with Christianity.
And here I do not refer to the Unitarians; for it is to be feared that if these persons have gone out of their way to separate themselves from the other sects on the ground of doctrine so little taught in our Church, and so little believed in, as that of the Trinity, they must be a pettifogging, cantankerous set of fellows, that prize their own opinions too highly to become parties to our policy of reunion.
But where disagreement from ourselves about the nature of God arises, not from any wilful spirit of dissension, but from difference of early training or national tradition, nay, of climate, atmosphere, and geographical conditions; where there are people in the world, who have enjoyed so little the advantages of our modern enlightenment, as to be unaware that it is not religion or patriotism, but only the prospect of commercial advantage, that justifies a nation in going to war; there I would humbly venture to urge, there may still be hopes of a good understanding, when a few scruples have been removed, and a few doubts explained away.
Mahomet a Protestant
It was customary with our ancestors, to designate Mahomet by the title of The False Prophet. A more modern and more temperate judgement will not allow us to contend further than that he was unduly positive in his assertions.
And there is this to be said for him at least, that he was a good, sound Protestant; and that his quarrel with the debased Church of his time was mainly about its heathenish Mariolatry, and the unduly strict views it held about marriage; all which should make us conceive a sympathy and respect for him, as in some ways the forerunner of our own Reformation.
Further, it cannot be denied that the Mahometans admit the historical truth of many of those facts, upon which the Christian religion is, or was until the last half-century, supposed to be founded. True they have hitherto failed to invest the facts with the same theological colouring we are accustomed to put on them, and it must be confessed they show a certain reluctancy to avow the most elementary articles of our faith.
But is this difficulty final? Let five Christian and five Mahometan theologians be closeted together for a week to discuss these controverted doctrines, the Christians explaining to their less enlightened coassessors what sense such doctrines are really meant to convey; and I for one shall be vastly surprised if, at the end of the week, the Mahometans are not prepared to accept the Athanasian Creed in the same sense in which it is maintained by some of the most highly-placed ecclesiastics of our own country.
Universal Bigamy
It is, I apprehend, in matters of discipline rather than of doctrine we shall need a certain amount of give and take before our differences can be settled. Christian men are accustomed to be content with one wife, and even in America with one at a time; whereas in Turkey he would be thought a very chickenhearted husband who had not endowed four ladies simultaneously with his own surname.
This might seem to be an irreconcilable difference of principle; but fortunately, where numbers are concerned, mathematics provides us with a ready solution of the difficulty, by the method of averages.
Nor does it need the brain of a profound scholar to determine that in the Church of the future we shall all be conscientious bigamists; thereby avoiding at once the expense of a harem, and the monotony of our present European system. We shall also obviate at one blow the difficulty of finding wives in Baghdad, and the difficulty of finding husbands in Balham.
We shall, of course, adopt at the same time the Mahometan rule, by which a man may at any time turn his wife out of doors, upon finding her displeasing to himself, and take a new one, modifying it only so far as to extend the privilege equally to the wife, as to the husband: in this way we shall meet a long-felt demand on the part of the lower classes in our country, as well as recognising an existing practice in the case of their superiors in social rank. At the same time we shall abolish those accounts of divorce court proceedings in our newssheets, which are admitted by everyone to be injurious to public morals.
Reformed Hierarchy
The same principle will naturally rule our dispositions about the sacred hierarchy. Mahometans, as well as Christians, have their several grades of clergy, and it is to be supposed that we should avoid all invidiousness and suspicion of favouritism here, if we called the ministers of the new Church alternately, according to their rank, by Western and Eastern designations.
Thus, for example, we might call them (in descending order):
- Archbishops
- Pashas (corresponding to Bishops)
- Archdeacons
- Mullahs (corresponding to Rural Deans)
- Incumbents
- Hadjis (corresponding to unbeneficed clergy)
Two Hats
The services in our Churches (or Mosques) would be characterized by a spirit of accommodation. It would be plainly impossible to ask Christian men to remove their boots on entering the building, like the Moslems; but we could make a point of having a substantial mat at the door, so that they could at least wipe them; and it would be a pretty conceit to have the word Salve worked on the mat, in token of our readiness to welcome all, whatever their opinions, to public worship.
On the other hand, reciprocity demands that we should not put any yoke on the conscience of the oriental, by insisting on his taking off his turban: we should expect him instead to carry in his hand a second hat (preferably a silk one), so that when he reached his pew he might not be without something to pray into.
Which Readings to Read
Some dissensions might be expected to arise about the reading of the first lesson. It is an unfortunate mark of the barbarism which still triumphs in the East, that the Mahometans have a very considerable respect for their sacred book, the Koran; and treat it with a reverence, which our Western enlightenment has long outgrown.
Our plea is that since we have nowadays so little use for the Old Testament, readings from the Koran should be substituted for it in Divine Service. And if any man object that this might lead to a superstitious belief in the facts therein alleged, I would point out for his comfort that in a very short time that critical study will come to be expended on the latter book, which has hitherto investigated the former, with such happy results; and consequently within twenty years’ time we should be in no more danger of giving credit to the miracles of Mahomet, than we are in now, of stomaching the history of Joshua.
Facing the Magnetic Pole
It is a degraded practice of the Mahometans, at certain fixed hours of the day to bring out a little praying carpet, and kneel on it with the face turned eastward, to engage in prayer. It is manifest that any Christian man would sooner die than be seen at his devotions, unless it were at the time of public service. This custom, then, would of necessity be disallowed, especially as in great cities it would have the effect of continually obstructing the traffic.
But if any felt it difficult to break themselves of this untidy habit, I would not deal harshly with them; rather, they should be suffered to carry about a small joint-stool, and be allowed thus to meditate in any of the less thickly populated districts, under colour of admiring the scenery. But this is not all: for the Mahometans obstinately insist, when performing such devotions, on turning towards the East, that is, towards the sunrising; towards the beginnings or origins of things, in short, towards the dispiriting recollection of the past.
This (thank God) is not our way in Europe; if any of us should be so strangely affected, as to want to pray in one direction more than another, it would certainly be towards the West, the land of the sunset, the glorious prospect of the remote future, which is by all accounts, to be a time of great happiness, virtue, and prosperity. We should substitute for orientation, what we might call occidentation; and address ourselves, not towards Mecca, but towards Chicago.
The spirit of our religious compromise thus plainly demands, that every such devotee should carry a compass about with him; and when the time came for his superstitious observances, face as nearly as possible in the direction of the magnetic pole.
Muezzin’s New Call
There is another custom prevailing in Mahometan countries, of such doubtful advantage that we should not agree to conform to it without earnest consideration; I mean, the custom by which people are woken in the morning by a fellow bawling out from the top of a minaret, to the effect (unless my memory plays me false) that Allah is great. It will seem shocking to minds habituated to our Western standards of taste, that these muezzins, as they are called, should give a pronouncement so public to so controversial a statement. We could not allow it; for it would manifestly cause the most grievous distress of conscience to any atheist or agnostic who happened to be within earshot.
Yet is something to be said for the practice in general outline; who has not wished, as he turned over in bed at eight of the clock on a Sunday morning, that there were some less noisy means of awakening a few devout women, than making a great clanging of bells, as if the whole city were afire?
Would it not be well to introduce the muezzin into our church towers, and at the same time to see to it that his announcement was both less provocative and more appropriate; that he should either shout out; The early bird catches the worm, or, if he were musical, even intone to some simple Anglican chant the words: Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise?
Assassins Handled
There are besides one or two particular sects among the Mahometans, who might give us trouble; as the dancing dervishes, who insist upon making dancing into a sort of religious ceremony. We should have to show these very plainly, that the exercising of the soul is one thing, and the exercising of the legs another. It might even be well to forbid their executing any dance except the Russian ones; if they only practised these, it would speedily rid their dancing from any association of religion, or even of morality.
There are the Assassins, too, who hold it to be just and lawful to kill a man in virtue of a disagreement about religion, and did lately murder a man very horribly in the city of Paris. Yet these should be surely treated not as public enemies, but as erring brethren: that is, they should be admitted to full communion, but we should lose no opportunity of advising them of the disadvantages of their peculiar tenets, by means of preaching to them in sermons: reminding them, I mean, that the practise of murder frequently begets dangerous consequences for the perpetrator of it, by the establishing of blood-feuds; and (taking even a higher ground) that where the practise becomes common it creates a general uncertainty about the tenure of life, and renders the maintenance of public peace and order a far more difficult affair than it would otherwise be. Doubtless in a very short time they would have learned to take a more lenient view of doctrinal irregularities.
Beer and Bacon
There is one obstacle to reunion with the Mahometans still remaining, which I confess at first sight seems wholly insuperable; viz., that the Mahometans hold it sinful and unclean to eat the flesh of the pig, or to drink fermented liquors. And though our countrymen might be prevailed upon to abandon whatsoever else in the interests of peace, there are two privileges they will never relinquish except at the sword’s point, and namely, bacon and beer. Such practical considerations as these mean very much more, to a businesslike nation such as we are, than any abstract theory or any matter of ecclesiastical principle. Yet even here there is a via media to be thought upon, which I very earnestly recommend to the attention of all those who have the best interests of religion at heart.
Would it not be possible to add a rubric in the Book of Common Prayer, following immediately upon the rubric which directs abstinence on Fridays, and fasting during the forty days of Lent, to this effect: ‘And note, that in no circumstances whatever is it permissible on any day of the year to eat bacon, ham, pork, or sausages, or to drink any kind of fermented liquor; and if the curate find his people so doing, he shall present them to the Bishop as contumacious sinners and rotten members of the Church of Christ.’
This will surely be calculated to ease the consciences of our Eastern brethren, since it will show them clearly what the mind of our Church is upon this matter; whereas on the other hand, we shall have no scruple at all about the eating of the pig, but will continue to eat our pork chops on every day in the year, with the same assurance as we eat mutton on all Fridays: in short, no one will be at all affected in his manner of life, except a few scurvy High-churchmen, who impiously try to gain merit in the sight of heaven by observing these and other like ordinances imposed by the founders of our Church, instead of contenting themselves with a spiritual fast, which is far more acceptable to God, and far less prejudicial to the digestion.
Decalogue Demythed
This same prescription would, it is clear, vastly lessen our quarrel with another religious sect—I mean, the ancient people of the Jews. Although it is to be doubted, whether the stubborn prejudices of this nation would be wholly satisfied, even by so signal a mark of our determination to sacrifice everything in the cause of Unity.
Yet I would not despair, even here, of some better understanding. For myself, I cannot praise the suggestion of my friend Dr. Honeybotham, that we should endeavour to bring them to a more Christian mind, by explaining to them (what is now proved to the satisfaction of all our scholars) that the Law was not given to Moses by the dispensation of angels upon Sinai, but rather botched together by an ignorant fellow, who had nothing better to do, at the time of the Babylonish Captivity: that it is no business of ours, to conform ourselves to the fanciful scruples begot in the brain of such an one by an attack of the spleen. This whole proposal has an air of propagandism about it, which can commend it very little to the enlightenment of the present age, since it might be misconstrued into a declaration, that one man’s religious opinions are in some way better than another’s.
Repeal Jerusalem Decrees
It would be more congruous with the principles on which we have hitherto proceeded, if we would undertake to make further concessions on our part.
It is a commonplace of theologians in these days, that in all cases of schism and division among Christians either party is right in what it asserts, and wrong in what it denies. And it is plain that in the first great schism of the Christian Church, an account of which is set down in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the denials were all on Saint Paul’s part, and the affirmations on the part of his adversaries.
Nor am I afraid of any taint of unorthodoxy, when I humbly submit the propriety of rescinding the decrees of the first Council of Jerusalem, as we have to all intents already rescinded those of Chalcedon, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Nicea.
Eastern Doctrines
It may be thought by the careless observer, that we shall have even less difficulty in arranging our terms of peace and amity with the religions of the further East, as Buddhism, Brahmanism, and the like. For already in our own time we see many men and women of fashion showing a tenderness for the mystical doctrines of these sects, keeping Mahatmas instead of domestic chaplains, and cultivating the Inner Life so far as the pursuit does not interfere with pleasure, wealth, and the enjoyment of polite society.
Already we see Ganges flowing into the Medway, and it is the part of every philosophic mind to discern these signs of the times. For we are all accustomed to comfort ourselves with the reflection, Magna est Veritas, et praevalebit [Truth is great and shall prevail]; is it not then plain, that the prevalence of any idea is the measure of its truth? Thus it might well be thought that all this cult of oriental poetry, and conjuring, and fortune-telling which is now only practised by Mistress Chloe in her closet, must contain such a groundwork of truth as to be like to commend itself, in a few years, to Dryasdust in his study.
There are indeed, very comfortable doctrines to be found in these systems; as, That what a man is, is conditioned, for the most part, by what he was in a previous incarnation: this quits us of much moral responsibility; and there are not many men so sensitive, as to feel bound to defend the honour of a former self.
And again, that all existence tends ultimately to annihilation; which prospect is a deal more comforting to most of our university professors, merchant princes, and company promoters, than anything that was promised them by traditional Christianity.
On the Evil of Matter
But it is to be observed, that all these doctrines rest on a most disquieting major premise, very much adhered to in the East, viz., that all Matter is evil. Such a position will hardly commend itself to the thinkers of our time.
For, if matter be evil, how can it be that among an enlightened people like ourselves, as is very obviously the case, the exploits men can achieve with their fists, their feet, or their muscles are far more anxiously recorded and read of than any activity of their brains? That we undergo exercises every morning for the perfecting of our bodies, and never reflect, from one week’s end to another, upon the case of our souls? That we seek bodily health by every possible means, and plead it upon every possible occasion as an excuse for our derelictions? That our eating and drinking become every day the subject of more anxious cogitation? That the getting of riches is our passion from birth, our ruling principle in marriage, and our only hope for the respect of posterity, after our death?
All these considerations will prove to the satisfaction of any philosopher, that if Christians have given up every other Article of the Creed, we have still a lively hope in the Resurrection of the Body.
How then are we to come to any agreement with those, who openly profess that the body is something to be neglected and mortified, and that matter is an evil? I answer, that where there’s a will there’s a way; and that if we will only consent to admit, for the sake of charity, that all matter is evil, we can quite easily safeguard ourselves against any untoward consequences that might follow from the doctrine, by adding, that it is a necessary evil.
The horrors of war, poverty, and ill-paid labour; the delays and expense of the law; the party-system; the licentiousness of the press; the unequal distribution of stipends among the clergy—these and a hundred other such features of our policy we all confess, with one voice, to be evils; but we go on to add, that they are necessary evils, meaning thereby that the speaker (for one) has no intention of moving a finger to amend them. If this were clearly understood, I cannot see that we should be much the losers by the adoption of an Eastern way of thinking.
Benighted Enthusiasts
Yet God forbid that we should encourage in our own country any of those barbarous institutions, by which these benighted enthusiasts attempt to rid themselves of the body, and its very agreeable encumbrances; as, by the institution of monasteries, which have made the religion of the Buddhists almost as much suspect as the corrupt Church of the Middle Ages, and, in fact, little better than it; or by allowing crackbrained fellows called fakirs to sit by the roadside with no visible means of subsistence, begging their bread, scantily clothed and afflicting themselves with lying upon beds of spikes, as if they would rebuke the more commonsense manners of the passers-by.
We might indeed allow them to ask for money, if they would proffer laces and almanacks in return for it, and so conform to the regulations of the police; but spikebeds I would have altogether forbidden: and as for the monks, if they would not come out again into the world, I would shut them up for their lives in madhouses, to cure them of this arrogant craving for silence, confinement, and solitude.
Idolaters, Such as Papists
‘But,’ someone will urge, ‘if we hope to persuade those who at present disagree with us to forgo their superstitious practices for the sake of reunion with the Church of England, we are surely transgressing outside the range of practical politics into sanguine and visionary hopes, not likely to be realized.
‘If the Buddhists could be so far prevailed upon, is there not some prospect of reunion with the idolaters, fetish-worshippers, and believers in mumbojumbo; nay, even with the Papists themselves?’ and here, I conceive we have arrived at the very pith of our present contention.
We have much to look for from the gradual softening influence of time, from the progress of civilized ideas, and the wider diffusion of knowledge. And I (for one) am so persuaded of the mission of our Church to unite all the religions of the world under its own auspices, that I do not hesitate to assert what may seem at first sight a very distasteful possibility, namely, that at some time it will be our duty to consider on what terms we shall accept the submission even of the Church of Rome.
And I would beg of my readers, not to be unduly prejudiced beforehand; but to take a lenient view of the abominable history of that institution, and as far as possible to reconcile themselves to the prospect of a closer relation with those, who are at present tainted by the infection of its impious tenets.
Roman Extinction
I know we are commonly told, that this will never be achieved, by reason of the extreme obstinacy and perversity of this sect, which will never allow them to come to any conditions. But this obstinacy, I apprehend, is nothing else than the confidence of numbers: they are at present a pretty numerous body; and they will soon be brought to see reason when they find their own adherents becoming rarer every day.
That this will speedily happen, science itself gives us warrant to avow; for we know now that all survival in the world is a survival of the fittest, and that two instincts chiefly make an organism fit to survive, namely the will to live and the desire to propagate its kind.
The Church of Rome pays the highest veneration to martyrs, and to celibates or virgins, thereby attesting its contempt for these two great instincts, which alone enable a race to persist; it might, therefore, be allowed to become extinct by the force of its own ignorant delusions; but I hold it a more charitable thing to arrest this decline, when it has once fairly set it, and invite the survivors, many of them good enough fellows at heart, into the all-embracing unity of our national establishment.
Too Many Irish
True, hitherto these symptoms of decline have been slow to manifest themselves, and it is even alleged that popery is on the increase in certain parts of the world, notably in our own island, in America, in Australia, in France, and in Holland.
But it is not to be supposed, that any such observed augmentation of numbers is due to conversions; on the contrary, it has been repeatedly proved, that nobody is ever converted to the Roman Catholic religion; in England, America, and Australia the whole cause of increase is the immigration of Irishmen, and it cannot be doubted but that a few more statistics would show to everybody’s satisfaction, that Irishmen are emigrating in very great quantities both to France and to Holland.
The melancholy facts bear testimony both to the prolific character of a race, which can thus stock five countries with Papists from year to year; and also to its singular obstinacy and bigotry, in that it carries its religion about with it, like a part of its luggage, and must needs attempt to transplant it into an alien soil, where it was never meant to flourish.
Such opinionated arrogance must be firmly dealt with; and I would therefore suggest, in the interests of the reunion of religions, that upon his conquest of Ireland our great commander Sir E— C— [Edward Carson] should put all Papist children to the sword, and we should make it a criminal offence for the future, that any Papist should be allowed to marry, or have issue: the offence itself to be punished with death, and the resulting issue to be exposed on some hillside, lest it should grow up infected with the gross superstition of its parents.
Submission of the Pope
The Hibernian hydra thus amputated, the remaining Papists of the world, seeing their numbers daily dwindle and decrease, would speedily come crying to us for admission: and it is here that I would appeal to my countrymen not to use any undue harshness in receiving their allegiance.
I would not, I mean, altogether treat their orders as null and void, but only degrade their clergy by a single step in the hierarchy; their bishops to count as priests, their priests as deacons, their deacons as lay-readers. Nor would I extract from these, by way of a declaration of loyalty to our Church, anything more than an affirmation of general dissent from the doctrine contained in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.
The Pope himself I would allow to take rank as a retired missionary bishop, thus leaving him the insignia without any sphere in which to exercise, or income with which to abuse it. The cardinals I would disperse among the common-rooms of Oxford and Cambridge, where they could exercise to the full their talent for intrigue without having any serious effect, for good or ill, upon the destinies of the nation. In discipline, doctrine, and devotion, we should of course compel our newly returned prodigal brethren to conform entirely to the Book of Common Prayer, and, for fear of any recrudescence of superstitious orthodoxy among us as the result of their inclusion, take an oath of them that they unfeignedly disbelieved all the scriptures of the Old and New Testament.
I cannot apprehend any grave consequences following from such a course of enlightened charity upon our part; and if any should still have scruples about the wisdom of it, I would mention that the sum of money we should add to our revenues as well by the increased sale of bibles, prayer-books, and hymn-books, as by the proceeds of the dismantling of cathedrals, churches and monasteries, would amply suffice to form a fund for a public training of athletes.
Atheists Reconciled
The differences at present existing between the various persons who believe in a God being thus happily ended, we should be the more free, finally, to consider the problem of reunion with the atheists. And here it is to be noticed, that whereas the sectaries of one religion differ from those of another over a whole multitude of points, as niceties of ritual, quibbles of doctrine, forms and postures in the recitation of prayer, etc.; in the case of the atheists we have only one single quarrel to patch up, namely as to whether any God exists, or not.
If we could but ease their consciences on this matter, it is clear they would have no difficulty in accepting our forms and fashions of worship, having no inherited prejudice in favour of any other. There would be no straining at gnats, if they could but be brought to swallow the camel. I submit it, therefore, with all deference to our theologians, whether they could not find it possible to allow, that as God is immanent and yet transcendent, so we cannot see the whole truth, but only an.aspect of the truth, until we have reconciled ourselves to the last final antinomy, that God is both existent and non-existent?
We, who are conscious of the Supreme Being as existent, and those others who are conscious of Him as non-existent, are each of us looking at only one half of the truth, one side, as it were, of the shield; and we can surely hope that when we have studied each other’s points of view, and come to understand them a little better, by common discussion and common worship, we shall all of us recognize the Divine Governor of the Universe as One who exists, yet does not exist, causes sin, yet hates it, hates it, yet does not punish it and promises us in heaven a happiness, which we shall not have any consciousness to enjoy.
A New Vincentian Motto
It would be superfluous to add, what great advantages will be derived from the absence of any religious dissension whatever in the world; as, that there will be no division within families, no tests in the appointment of ministers, and no religious matter to offend the eye in our daily newsheets.
I commend these considerations very earnestly to the attention of the public, calling upon them in the name of Humanity and Progress to see that this scheme is carried out, whether or no any of the various sectaries concerned like the proposals made; and not to allow the fact that they do not happen to have any religion or any morality of their own make them in any way backward to arrange the moral and religious affairs of other people. Thank God, in these days of enlightenment and establishment, everyone has a right to his own opinions, and chiefly to the opinion, that nobody else has a right to theirs.
It shall go hard, but within a century at most we shall make the Church of England true to her Catholic vocation, which is, plainly, to include within her borders every possible shade of belief, Quod unquam, quod usquam, quod ab ullis [at any time, anywhere, by anyone].