History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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efore-often and vainly has it been made sinc

firms that all philosophical and religious systems must be unreliable, because we have no criterion by which to test them. Democritus asserts that even things that are true cannot impart certainty to us; that the final result of human inquiry is the discovery that man is incapable of absolute knowledge; that, even if the truth be in his possession, he cannot be certain of it. Pyrrho bids us reflect on the necessity of suspending our judgment of things, since we have no criterion of truth; so deep a distrust did he impart to his followers, that they were in th

ming to be revealed by the omnipotent God, proves that neither of them is true. But let us remember that it is difficult for men to come to the same conclusion as regards even material and visible things, unless they stand at the same point of view. If discord and distrust were the

we make creeds arbitrarily and explain them as arbitrarily. Every year, nay, every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries; we repent of what we have done; we defend those who repent; we anat

osed all differences, and was, in fact, the Pope of Christendom. Mosheim, the historian, to whom I have more particularly referred above, speaking of these times, remarks that "there was nothing to exclude the ignorant from ecclesiastical preferment; the savage and illiterate party, who looked on all kinds of learning, particularly philosophy, as pernicious to piety, was increasing;" and, accordingly, "the disputes carried on in the Council of Nicea offered a remarkable example of the greatest ignorance and utter confusion of ideas, particularly in the language and explanations of those who approved of the decisions of that council." Vast as its influence has been, "the ancient critics are neither agreed concerning the time nor place in which it was assembled, the number of those who sat in it, nor the bishop who presided. No authentic acts of its famous sentence have been committed to writing, or, at least, none have been transmitted to our times." The Church had now become what, in the language of modern politicians, would be called "a confederated republic." The will of

h century: 1. That it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when, by that means, the interests of the Church might be promoted. 2. Tha

spirits: thus, St. Ambrose, in his disputes with the Arians, produced men possessed by devils, who, on the approach of the relics of certain martyrs, acknowledged, with loud cries, that the Nicean doctrine of the three persons of the Godhead was true. But the Arians charged him with subo

pes unharmed when he holds a piece of red-hot iron in his hand; a champion whom he has hired is vanquished or vanquishes in single fight; he can keep his arms o

h imposture miracles during those ages?-miracle

common people. Books, such as "The Everlasting Gospel," appear among the former; sects, such as the Catharists, Waldenses, Petrobrussians, arise among the latter. They agreed in this, "that the public and established religion was a motley system of errors and superstitions, and that the dominion which the pope had usurped over Christians was

two institutions: 1. The Inquisition; 2. Auricular confession-the lat

lds." With such savage alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of religion, that between 1481 and 1808 it had punished three hundred and forty thousand persons, and of these nearly thirty-two thousand had been burnt! In its earlier days, when public opinion could find no means of protesting against its atrocities, "it often put to death, without appeal, on the very day that they were accu

or did it confine itself to religious affairs; it engaged in the suppression of political discontent. Nicolas Eymeric, who was inquisitor-general of the kingdom

countries. The papal Inquisition continued the tyranny, and eventually superseded the old episcopal

gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread

protest against the sale of indulgences, which they said had nearly abolished prayer, fasting, alms; to affirm that it was utterly useless to pray for the souls of the dead, since they must already have gone either to heaven or hell. Though it was generally believed that philosophy or science was pernicious to the interests of Christianity or true piety, the Mohammedan literature then prevailing in Spain was making converts among all classes of society. We see very plainly its influence in many of the sects that then arose; thus, "the Brethren and Sisters of the Free. Spirit" held that "the universe came by emanation from God, and would final

he same relations to each other as the soul and the body; that there is but one individual intelligence; and that one soul performs all the spiritual and rational functions in all the human race. When, subsequently, toward the time of the Reformation, the Italian Averroists were required by the In

rmation, there lay concealed, in many parts of Europe, persons who entertained the most virulent enmity against Christianity. In this pernicious class

phical evidence. Hallam has cast some doubt on the well-known story of this discovery, but he admits that the celebrated copy in the Laurentian library, at Florence, is the only one containing the entire fifty books. Twenty years subsequently, the monk Gratian collected together the various papal edicts, the canons of councils, the declarations of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in a volume called "The Decretum," considered as the earliest authority in cano

he sturdy German monk revolted against such a monstrous assertion, nor would he have believed it though a thousand miracles had been worked in its support. This shameful practice of selling indulgences for the commission of sin originated among the bishops, who, when they had need of money for their private pleasures, obtained it in that way. Abbots and monks, to whom this gainful commerce was denied, raised funds by carrying about relics in solemn procession, and charging a fee for touching them. The popes, in their pecuniary straits, perceiving how lucrative the practice might become, deprived the bishops of the right of making such sales, and appropriated it to themselves, establishing agencies, chiefly among

the real principle that was animating the controversy. It lay in the question, Does the Bible owe its authe

tal idea which lay at the bottom of the whole movement came into relief, the right of individual judgment; how Luther was now excommunicated, A.D. 1520, and in defiance burnt the bull of excommunication and the volumes of the canon law, which he denounced as aiming at the subversion of all civil government, and the exaltation of the papacy; how by this skillful manoeuvre he brought over many of the German princes to his views; how, summoned before the Imperial Diet at Worms, he refused to retract, and, while he was bidden in the castle of Wartburg, his doctrines were spreading, and

e frightful wars that for so many years desolated Europe, and left animosities which neither the Treaty of Westphalia, nor the Council of Trent after eighteen years of debate, could compose. No one can read without a shudder the attempts that w

ncil of Trent any better result. Ostensibly summoned to correct, illustrate, and fix with perspicacity the doctrine of the Church, to restore the vigor of its discipline, and to reform the liv

e Bible is a sufficient guide for every Christian man. Tradition was rejected, and the right of pri

le contained the sum and substance of all knowledge, useful or possible to man-a maxim employed with such pernicious effect of old by Tertullian and by St. Augustine, and which had so often been enforced by papal authority-was still strictly insisted upon. The leaders of the Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon, were determined to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilification of that Greek philosopher knew no bounds. He is, says Luther, "truly a devil, a horrid calumniator, a wicke

ing men spend themselves in-as the phrase then went-"drawing forth the internal juice and marrow of the Scriptures for the explaining of things." Universal history from the third to the sixteenth century shows with what result. The dark ages owe their darkness to this fatal policy. Here and there, it is true, there were

t the genuine doctrines of Christianity had been lost even before the time of the Council of Nicea; that the Holy Ghost animates the whole system of Nature, like a soul of the world, and that, with the Christ, it will be absorbed, at the end of all things, into the substance of

re not numerous, and which contain certain useful and salutary truths, so as to bring them into harmony with the doctrines of the Church; to condemn those of which the principles are heretical and pernicious; and to grant the peculiar privilege of perusing heretical books to certain persons. This congregation, which is sometimes held in presence of the pope, but generally in the palace of the Cardinal-p

d; but, on this being found insufficient, whatever was not permitted was prohibited-an audacious attemp

ssion of centralized power, could make its decisions respected wherever its sway was acknowledged, and enforce the monitions of the Index Expurgatorius; the Protestant, whose influence was diffused among many foci in differ

Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, that the efforts of Science to burst from the thraldom in which she was fettered became uncontrollable. In all countries the political power of the Church had greatly declined; her leading men perceived that the cloudy foundation on which she had stood was dissolving away. Repressive measures against her antagonists, in old times resorted to with effect, could be no longer advantageously employed. To her interests the burnin

s she was worsted by astronomy. She affirmed that a universal deluge had covered the earth; that the only surviving animals were such as had been saved in an ark. In this her error was established by geology. She taught that there was a first man, who, some six or eight thousand ye

with the discoveries of science, but it is in vain. The divergence has increased so m

since the second century, has been put forth as the criterion of scientific trut

s that were then and have since been adduced. The literature of the subject is now very extensive. I may, however, refer the reader to the work of the pious and learned Dean Prideaux, on "The Old and New Testament connected," a work which is one o

ce of divine inspiration. Considered thus, as a record vouchsafed and dicta

demanded, Who or what is it that has p

horship of one man, or makes the impious decla

originated, not among the higher ranks of Christian philosophers, but among the more fervid Fa

t authors, who have been respectively termed Elohistic and Jehovistic. Hupfeld maintains that the Jehovistic narrative bears marks of having been a second original record, wholly independent of the Elohistic. The two sources from which the narratives have been derived are, in many respects, con

is clear that they were not written until many hundred years after that event, since they contain referen

are so great. It is the decision of these critics that Genesis is a narrative based upon legends; that Exodus is not historically true; that the whole Pentateuch is unhistoric and non-Mosaic; it contains the most

o a very great extent with the Pentateuch, if it be not genuine. If the Pentateuch is spurious, its histories and laws have been fabricated in successive portions, and were committed to writing in the course of

e in the world since the beginning. It may be said that the books of Esdras are apocryphal, but in return it may be demanded, Has that conclusion been reached on evidence that will withstand modern criticism? In the early ages of Christianity, when the story of the fall of man was not considered as essential to the Christian system, and the doctrine of the atonement had not attained that precision which Anselm eventually gave

rities which demonstrate that they were written on the banks of the Euphrates, and not in the Desert of Arabia. They contain many Chaldaisms. An Egyptian would not speak of the Mediterranean Sea as being west of him, an Assyrian would. Their scenery and machinery, if such expressions may with propriety be used, are altogether Assy

naming of animals, the cherubim and flaming sword, the Deluge and the ark, the drying up of the waters by the wind, the building of the Tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, were obtained by E

Duke of Argyll, in his book on "P

ough which we have glimpses of great movements which were going on, and had been long going on beyond. No shapes are distinctly seen. Even the direction of those movements can only be guessed. But voices are heard which are "as the voices of many waters." I agree in the opinion of Hupfeld, that "the discovery that the Pentateuch is put together out of various sources, or original documents, is beyond all doubt not only one of the most important and most pregnant with consequences for the interpretation of the historical books of the Old Testament, or rather for the whole of

e narrative of the fall in Eden is legendary carry with it the surrende

tics. It was not admitted by the Alexandrian theological school. It was never prominently advanced by the Fathers. It was not brought into its present commanding position until the time of Anselm Philo Judaeus speaks of the story of the fall as symbolical; Origen regarded it as an all

een resigned to the Jews, among whom they originated, and by whom they have been transmitted to us. Still more, it is to be deeply regretted that the Pentateuch, a production so imperfect as to be unable to stand the touch of modern critic

d the infallibility of the pope. It may be said that this infallibility applies only to moral or religious things; but where shall the line of separation be dr

phical nature of this conception; it is destroyed by an examination of the political history of the papacy, and the biography of the popes. The former exhibits all

h councils have not always agreed with each other. There are also many who remember that councils have deposed popes, and have passed judgment on their clamors and contentions. Not without reason do Protestants demand, What proof can be given that infallibility exists in the Church at all? what proof is there that the Church has ever been fairly or justly represented in any council?

ascertainment of truth with supreme indifference; if she leaves the claim of infallibility in any human being to be vindicated by the stern logic of coming events-the cold impassiveness which in these matters she maintains is what she displays toward her own doctrines. Without hesitation she would give up the theories of gravitation or undulations, if she found that they were irreconcilable with facts. For her the