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Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers

<h2> ROBERT TAYLOR. </h2> Many of the readers of this number will, from their own memories, be better able to do justice to him, whom Henry Hunt named "The Devil's Chaplain," than we shall in our limited space. Robert Taylor was born at Edmonton, in the county of Middlesex, on the 18th of August, 1784. His family was highly respectable, and his parents were in affluent circumstances; but, being a younger son in a family of eleven children, it was necessary that Robert Taylor should follow some profession. His father died when he was about seven years old, leaving him under the guardianship of a paternal uncle. When seventeen years of age, he was apprenticed to a surgeon, at Birmingham, and studied medicine afterwards under Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Clive, passing the College of Surgeons with considerable eclat. When about twenty-three, he became acquainted with the Rev. Thomas Cotterell, a clergyman of the Established Church, of high evangelical principles, who induced him to quit physic for metaphysics, and in 1809 Robert Taylor entered Saint John's College, Cambridge, and in 1813 took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was publicly complimented by the Master of the College as a singular honor to the University in his scholarship, and was ordained on the 14th of March, 1813, by the bishop of Chichester; from that time until 1818, Taylor officiated as curate at Midhurst. Here he became acquainted with a person named Ayling who held Deistical opinions, and who induced Taylor to read various Free-thinking works; this soon resulted in an avowal of Deism on the part of Taylor, who tendered his resignation to his Bishop. His friends and family were much alarmed, and much pressure was brought to bear upon him, and we regret to state that it had the effect of producing a temporary recantation. This, however, brought Taylor no relief; he found himself in distress, and shunned by his family. Through the kindness of an old friend, he obtained the curacy of Yardley, near Birmingham, but his previous apostacy having reached the ears of the Bishop, the necessary license was refused, and the rector received a peremptory notice to dismiss Taylor. This harsh treatment caused a reaction, and while the rector sought another curate, Taylor preached a series of sermons, by means of which he shook the faith of nearly the whole of his congregation. The following is an abstract of his last sermon at Yardley:— "The text was, 'For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.'—Matt, xii., 40. He began, 'Then this glorious miracle of the man having been swallowed alive by a fish, and remaining alive for seventy-two hours, undigested and unhurt, in the fish's bowels, and being vomited up unhurt and safe upon the dry land, was as true as the gospel; and consequently the gospel was as true, but not more true, than this sea-sick miracle. He inferred that no person could have a right to pretend to believe in the death and resurrection of Christ, who had the least doubt as to the reality of the deglutition and evomition of the prophet Jonah. As to the natural improbabilities and physical impossibilities of this very wonderful Bible miracle, these were nothing in the way of a true and lively faith. Where miracles of any sort were concerned, there could be no distinction into the greater and the less, since infinite power was as necessary to the reality of the least as to the greatest. We should never forget that it was the Lord who prepared the fish, and prepared him for the express purpose of swallowing the man, and probably gave him a little opening physic, to cleanse the apartment for the accommodation of its intended tenant; and had the purpose been, that the whole ship and all the crew should have been swallowed as well as he, there's no doubt that they could have been equally well accommodated. But as to what some wicked Infidels objected, about the swallow of the whale being too narrow to admit the passage of the man, it only required a little stretching, and even a herring or a sprat might have gulped him. He enlarged, most copiously, on the circumstance of the Lord speaking to the fish, in order to cause him to vomit; and insisted on the natural efficacy of the Lord, which was quite enough to make anybody sick. He pointed out the many interesting examples of faith and obedience which had been set by the scaly race, who were not only at all times easy to be caught in the gospel net, when thrown over them by the preaching of the word, but were always ready to surrender their existence to the Almighty, whenever he pleased to drop 'em a line. That as the first preachers of the gospel were fishermen, so the preachers of the gospel, to this day, might truly be said to be looking after the loaves and fishes, and they who, as the Scripture says, are 'wise to catch soles,' speak to them for no other purpose than that for which the Lord spake unto the whale—that is, to ascertain how much they can swallow. The moral of this pungent persiflage, aimed to admonish the proud and uncharitable believer, who expected his acceptance with the deity on the score of his credulity, that when his credulity was fairly put to trial, it might be found that he was in reality as far from believing what he did not take to be true as the most honest and avowed Infidel. 'Thou then who wouldst put a trick upon infinite wisdom, and preferest the imagined merit of a weak understanding to the real utility of an honest heart—thou who wouldst 'Compound for sins thou art inclined to, By damning those thou hast no mind to;' hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous self? Thou believest only that which seemeth to thee to be true; what does the Atheist less? And that which appeareth to be a lie thou rejectest; what does the Atheist more? Can we think that God has given us reason only to betray us, and made us so much superior to the brute creation, only to deal with us so much worse than they, to punish us for making the best use we could of the faculties he has given us, and to make the very excellence of our nature the cause of our damnation?'" This concluded his connection with the Church of England, and his brother having consented to make him an allowance of one pound per week if he would quit England, he retired to the Isle of Man. After nine weeks his brother ceased to remit; and to support himself, Taylor wrote for the two newspapers then published in the island, but his articles attracting attention, he was summoned before the Bishop, and compelled to quit the island under a threat of imprisonment. In deep distress, he went to Dublin, where he lectured on Deism until 1824, when he came to London, and founded the Christian Evidence Society. Many of the discourses delivered by him were printed in "The Lion." which was first published in 1828. In 1827 Mr. Taylor was tried at Guildhall for blasphemy, and was sentenced to imprisonment in Oakham gaol for one year. In Oakham he wrote "The Diegesis" and "Syntagma." After his release from prison in 1829, he, together with Richard Carlile, made a tour through England on an Infidel mission, commencing with a challenge to the Cambridge University. In 1830 and 1831 he delivered a series of discourses, which are printed together under the title of "The Devil's Pulpit." On the 4th July, 1831, he was again tried for blasphemy and sentenced to two years' imprisonment In 1833 he delivered a number of discourses, which were printed in the "Philalethean." He was the friend and companion of Richard Carlile for several years. It is difficult to quote from Robert Taylor's works, unless at the risk of doing him great injustice, and we must therefore refer our readers to the works we have named. The following is from "The Devil's Pulpit:"— "The gentlemen who distribute religious tracts, the general body of dissenting preachers, and almost all persons engaged in the trade of religion, imagine themselves to have a mighty advantage against Infidels, upon the strength of that last and reckless argument—that whether the Christian religion be true or false, there can be no harm in believing; and that belief is, at any rate, the safe side. Now, to say nothing of this old Popish argument, which a sensible man must see is the very essence of Popery, and would oblige us to believe all the absurdities and nonsense in the world: inasmuch as if there be no harm in believing, and there be some harm and danger in not believing, the more we believe the better: and all the argument necessary for any religion whatever would be, that it should frighten us out of our wits: the more terrible, the more true: and it would be our duty to become the converts of that religion whatever it might be, whose priests could swear the loudest, and damn and curse the fiercest. But I am here to grapple with this Popery in disguise, this wolfish argument in sheepish clothing, upon Scriptural ground, and on Scriptural ground only; taking the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, for this argument's sake, to be divine authority. The question proposed is, 'Whether is the believer or the unbeliever the more likely to be saved, taking the Scriptures to be of divine authority!' And I stand here, on this divine authority, to prove that the unbeliever is the more likely to be saved: that unbelief, and not belief, is the safe side, and that a man is more likely to be damned for believing the gospel, and because of his having believed it, than for rejecting and despising it, as I do.... But, if a patient hearing be more than good Christians be minded to give us, when thus advance to meet them on their own ground, their impatience and intolerance itself will supply the evidence and demonstration of the fact, that, after all, they dare not stand to the text of their own book, that it is not the Bible that they go by, nor God whom they regard: but that they want to be God-a'-mighties themselves, and would have us take their words for God's words; you must read it as they read it, and understand it as they understand it: you must 'skip, and go on,' just where a hard word comes in the way of the sense they choose to put upon it: you must believe what the book contains, what you see with your own eyes that it does not contain: you must shut your eyes, and not see what it does contain; or you'll be none the nearer the mark of their liking.... Taking the authority of Scripture, for this argument's sake, to be decisive, I address the believer who would give himself airs of superiority, would chuckle in an imaginary safety in believing, and presume to threaten the unbeliever as being in a worse case, or more dangerous plight, than he. 'Hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous self?' when on the showing of thine own book, the safety (if safety there be) is all on the unbelieving side? When for any one text that can be produced, seeming to hold out any advantage or safety in believing, we can produce two in which the better hope is held out to the unbeliever? For any one apparent exhortation to believe, we can produce two forbiddances to believe, and many threaten-ings of God's vengeance to, and for the crime and folly of, believing. To this proof I proceed, by showing you:—1st. What the denunciations of God's vengeance are: with no comment of mine, but in the words of the text itself. 2d. That these dreadful denunciations are threatened to believers: and that they are not threatened to unbelievers. And 3d. That all possible advantages and safety, which believing could confer on any man, are likely, and more likely to be conferred on the unbeliever than on the believer. That the danger of the believer is so extreme, that no greater danger can possibly be. 1st. What are the denunciations of God's vengeance! 'There are' (says the holy Revelation, xiv. 10,) 'who shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever: and they have no rest day or night.' There's 'glad tidings of great joy' for you! The Christian may get, over the terror of this denunciation by the selfish and ungenerous chuckle of his 'Ah! well, these were very wicked people, and must have deserved their doom; it need not alarm us: it doesn't apply to us.' But good-hearted men would rather say, 'It does apply. We cannot be indifferent to the misery of our fellow-creatures. The self-same Heaven that frowns on them, looks lowering upon us.' And who were they? and what was their offence? Was it Atheism! was it Deism' was it Infidelity? No! It was for church and chapel-going; it was for adoring, believing, and worshipping. They worshipped the beast: I know not what beast they worshipped; but I know that if you go into any of our churches and chapels at this day, you will find them worshipping the Lamb; and if worshipping a lamb be not most suspiciously like worshiping a beast, you may keep the color in your cheeks, while mine are blanched with fear. The unbeliever only can be absolutely safe from this danger. He only who has no religion at all, is sure not to be of the wrong religion. He who worships neither God nor Devil, is sure not to mistake one of those gentlemen for the other. But will it be pretended, that these are only metaphors of speech, that the thing said is not the thing that's meant? Why, then, they are very ugly metaphors. And what is saying that which you don't mean, and meaning the contrary to what you say, but lying? And what worse can become of the Infidel, who makes it the rule of his life 'to hear and speak the plain and simple truth,' than of the Christian, whose religion itself is a system of metaphors and allegories, of double meanings, of quirk and quiddities in dread defiance of the text that warns him, that 'All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone?' Rev. xxi. 8. "Is it a parable that a man may merely entertain his imagination withal, and think no more on't,—though not a word be hinted about a parabolical signification, and the text stands in the mouth of him who, we are told, was the truth itself? And he it is who brought life and immortality to light, that hath described in the 16th of Luke, such an immortality as that of one who was a sincere believer, a son of Abraham, who took the Bible for the rule of his life, and was anxious to promote the salvation of his brethren, yet found for himself no Saviour, no salvation; but, 'In Hell he lifted up his eyes being in torment: and saith Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.' But that request was refused. 'Then he said, I pray thee, therefore, Father, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house; for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' But that request was refused. There's 'glad tidings of great joy' for you! That the believer's danger of coming or going into that place of torment is so great, that greater cannot possibly be: and that his belief will stand him in no stead at all, but make his plight a thousand times worse than if he had not been a believer; and that unbelief is the safer side—Christ himself being judge—I quote no words but his to prove. Is the believer concerned to save his soul, then shall he most assuredly be damned for being so concerned: for Christ hath said, 'Whosoever will save his soul shall lose it.' Matthew xvi. 25. Is the believer a complete beggar? If he be not so, if he hath a rag that he doth call his own, he will be damned to all eternity. For Christ hath said, 'Whosoever he be of you who forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.' Luke xiv. 33. Is the believer a rich man? and dreams he of going to Heaven? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.' Matthew xix. 24. Is he a man at all, then he cannot be saved, for Christ hath said, 'Thou believest that there is one God;' saith St. James, 'Thou dost well, the Devils also believe and tremble.' 2 James xix. And so much good, and no more, than comes to damned spirits in the flames of Hell, is all the good that ever did and can come of believing. 'For though thou hadst all faith, so that thou couldst remove mountains,' saith St. Paul, 'It should profit thee nothing.' 1 Cor. xiii. 2. Well, then! let the good Christian try what saving his prayers will do for him: this is the good that they'!! do for him; and he hath Christ's own word to comfort him in't, 'He shall receive the greater damnation.' Luke xx. 47. Well, then, since believing will not save him, since faith will not save him, since prayer will not save him, but all so positively make things all the worse, and none the better, there's one other chance for him. Let him go and receive the Sacrament, the most comfortable Sacrament, you know, 'of the body and blood of Christ,' remembering, as all good communicants should, 'that he is not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs that fall from that table.' 'Truth, Lord! But the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master's table!' O what happy dogs! But let those dogs remember, that it is also truth, that 'He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.' 1 Cor. xvi. 29. O what precious eating and drinking! "'My God! and is thy table spread; And doth thy cup with love o'erflow? Thither be all the children led, And let them all thy sweetness know.' "That table is a snare, that cup is deadly poison that bread shall send thy soul to Hell. Well, then! try again, believer: perhaps you had better join the Missionary Society, and subscribe to send these glad tidings of these blessed privileges, and this jolly eating and drinking, to the Heathen. Why, then; you have Christ's own assurance, that when you shall have made one proselyte, you shall just have done him the kindness of making him twofold more the child of Hell than yourself. Mat. xxiii. 15. Is the believer liable to the ordinary gusts of passion, and in a passion shall he drop the hasty word, 'thou fool!' for that one word 'he shall be in danger of Hell fire.' Mat. v. 22. Nay, Sirs! this isn't the worst of the believer's danger. Would he but keep his legs and arms together, and spare his own eyes and limbs; he doth by that very mercy to himself damn his eyes and limbs—and hath Christ's assurance that it would have been profitable for him rather to have plucked out his eyes, and chopt off his limbs, and so to have wriggled and groped his way through the 'Straight gate and the narrow way that leadeth unto life,' than having two eyes and two arms, or two legs, to be cast into Hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their 'worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' Mark ix. 43. Well, then! will the believer say, what were all the miracles and prophecies of both the Old and the New Testament for those unquestionable miracles, and clearly-accomplished prophecies, if it were not that men should believe? Why, absolutely, they were the very arguments appointed by God himself to show us that men should not believe, but that damnation should be their punishment if they did believe. 'To the law and the testimony.'" Sirs! These are the very words:—'Of miracles, saith God's word, 'They are the spirits of devils, that work miracles.' Rev. xvi. 14. And it is the Devil who 'deceiveih them which dwell on the earth, by means of those miracles which he hath power to do.' Rev. xiii. 14. So much for miracles. Is it on the score of prophets and of prophecies, then, that you will take believing to be the safe side? Then 'thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, the prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means.' Jer. v. 31. 'The prophet is a fool: the spiritual man is mad.' Hosea i. 7. 'Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: hearken not unto the prophets.' Jer. xxiii. 15. 'O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes of the desert.' Ezekiel xiii. 4. 'They lie unto thee.' Jerem. xiv. 14. 'And they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.' Rev. xx. 10. 'And the punishment of the prophet shall be even as the punishment of him that seeketh unto him.' Ezekiel xiv. 10. Nay more, then, it is, when God hath determined to damn men, that he, in every instance, causeth them to become believers, and to have faith in divine Revelation, in order that they may be damned. Believers, and none but believers, becoming liable to damnation; believers and none but believers, being capable of committing that unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, which hath never forgiveness, neither in this world nor in that which is to come. 'Whereas all other kinds of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, and all sorts of blasphemy wherewith soever they shall blaspheme. But there is no forgiveness for believers.' Mark iii. 28. For it is written, 'For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned.' 2 Thessal. ii. 11. So when it was determined by God that the wicked Ahab should perish, the means to bring him to destruction, both of body and soul, was to make him become a believer. "I offer no comment of my own on words so sacred; but these are the words: 'Hear thou, therefore, the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, who shall persuade Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? and one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there stood forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said: I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also. Go forth and do so. Now, therefore, behold the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all thy prophets.' 1 kings xxii. 22. There were 400 of 'em; they were 'the goodly-fellowship of the prophets for you; all of them inspired by the spirit from on high, and all of them lying as fast as they could lie.' So much for getting on the safe side by believing. Had Ahab been an Infidel, he would have saved his soul alive. As it was, we may address him in the words of St. Paul to just such another fool, 'King Ahab, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest: but no better than I know, that for that very belief, fell slaughter on thy soul: and where thou soughtest to be saved by believing, it was by believing thou wert damned.' So when Elijah had succeeded in converting the 450 worshippers of Baal, who had been safe enough while they were Infidels, and they began crying, 'the Lord He is God, the Lord He is God:' the moment they got into the right faith, they found themselves in the wrong box; and the prophet, by the command of God, put a stop to their Lord-Godding, by cutting their throats for 'em, 'Elijah brought them down to the brook of Kishon, and slew them there.' 1 Kings xviii. 40. Oh! what a blessed thing, you see, to be converted to the true faith! Thus all the sins and crimes that have been committed in the world, and all God's judgments upon sin and sinners have been the consequence of religion, and faith, and believing. What was the first sin committed in the world? It was believing. Had our great mother Eve not been a believing credulous fool, she would not have been in the transgression. Who was the first reverend divine that began preaching about God and immortality? It was the Devil. What was the first lie that was ever told, the very damning and damnable lie? It was the lie told to make folks believe that they would not be dead when they were dead, that they should not surely die, but that they should be as gods, and live in a future state of existence. 'When God himself hath declared, that there is no future state of existence: that 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' Who is it, then, that prefers believing in the Devil rather than in God, but the believer?—And from whom is the hope of a future state derived, but from the father of lies—the Devil? But if in defiance of so positive a declaration of Almighty God, men will have it that there is a future state of existence after death, who are they who shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of Heaven, but unbelievers, let them come from the north, from the south, from the east, or from the west? And who are they that shall be cast out, but believers, 'the children of the kingdom?' As St. Peter very charitably calls them, 'cursed children.' 2 Peter ii. 14. That is, I suppose, children with beards, children that never grew to sense enough to put away childish things, but did in gawky manhood, like new-born babes, desire the pure milk and lollipop of the gospel. 'For of such is the kingdom of Heaven.' And who are they whom Christ will set upon his right hand, and to whom he will say, 'Come ye blessed of my father!' but unbelievers, who never troubled their minds about religion, and never darkened the doors of a gospel shop? But who are they to whom he will say, 'Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels,' but believers, every one of them believers, chapel-going folks, Christ's blood men, and incorrigible bigots, that had been bothering him all their days with their 'Lord! Lord!' to come off at last with no better reward of their faith than that he will protest unto them, I never knew ye. "One text there is, and only one, against ten thousand of a contrary significancy: which, being garbled and torn from its context, seems, for a moment, to give the advantage to the believer; the celebrated 19th chapter of Mark, v. 16:—'He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned.' But little will this serve the deceitful hope of the Christian, for it is immediately added. And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.' Can the Christian show these signs, or any of them? Will he dare to take-up a serpent, or drink prussic acid? If he hesitate, he is not a believer, and his profession of belief is a falsehood. Let belief confer what privilege it may, he hath no part nor lot in the matter; the threat which he denounces against Infidels hangs over himself, and he hath no sign of salvation to show. Believing the gospel, then, (or rather, I should say, professing to believe it, for I need not tell you that there's a great deal more professing to believe, than believing,) instead of making a man the more likely to be saved, doubles his danger of damnation, inasmuch as Christ hath said, that 'the last state of that man shall be worse than the first.' Luke xi. 26. And his holy apostle Peter addeth, 'It would have been better for them not to have known the way (2 Peter ii. 21) of righteousness.' The sin of believing makes all other sins that a man can commit so much the more heinous and offensive in the sight of God, inasmuch as they are sins against light and knowledge: and 'the servant who knew his Lord's will, and did it not, he shall be beaten with many stripes.' Luke xii. 47. While unbelief is not only innocent in itself, but so highly pleasing to Almighty God, that it is represented as the cause of his forgiveness of things which otherwise would not be forgiven. Thus St. Paul, who had been a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious, assures us that it was for this cause he obtained mercy, 'because he did it ignorantly in unbelief.' 1 Tim. i. 13. Had he been a believer, he would as surely have been damned as his name was Paul. And 'tis the gist of his whole argument, and the express words of the 11th of the Epistle to the Romans, that 'God included them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.' Unbelief being the essential qualification and recommendation to God's mercy: not without good reason was it that the pious father of the boy that had the devil in him, when he had need of Christ's mercy, and knew that unbelief would be the best title to it, cried out and said with tears, 'Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief!' Mark ix. 24. While the Apostles themselves, who were most immediately near and dear to Christ, no more believed the Gospel than I do; and for all they have said and preached about it, they never believed it themselves, as Christ told 'em that they hadn't so much faith as a grain of mustard seed. And the evangelist John bears them record, to their immortal honor; that 'though Christ had done so many miracles among them, yet believed they not.' John xii. 37. And the same divine authority assures us that 'neither did his brethren believe in him.' John vii. 5. Which then is 'the safe side.' Sirs, on the showing of the record itself? On the unbelieving side, the Infidel stands in the glorious company of the Apostles, in the immediate family of Christ, and hath no fear; while the believer doth as well and no better than the devils in hell, who believe and tremble." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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