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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY

AUTHOR OF

'CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,' ETC. ETC.


IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.





CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.


ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT

PROTESTANTISM

ON THE SUPPOSED SCRIPTURAL EXPRESSION FOR ETERNITY

JUDAS ISCARIOT

ON HUME'S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES

CASUISTRY

GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS



ON CHRISTIANITY, AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT.

[1846.]

FORCES, which are illimitable in their compass of effect, are often,
for the same reason, obscure and untraceable in the steps of their
movement. Growth, for instance, animal or vegetable, what eye can
arrest its eternal increments? The hour-hand of a watch, who can
detect the separate fluxions of its advance? Judging by the past,
and the change which is registered between that and the present, we
know that it must be awake; judging by the immediate appearances,
we should say that it was always asleep. Gravitation, again, that
works without holiday for ever, and searches every corner of the
universe, what intellect can follow it to its fountains? And yet,
shyer than gravitation, less to be counted than the fluxions of
sun-dials, stealthier than the growth of a forest, are the footsteps
of Christianity amongst the political workings of man. Nothing,
that the heart of man values, is so secret; nothing is so potent.

It is _because_ Christianity works so secretly, that it works
so potently; it is _because_ Christianity burrows and hides
itself, that it towers above the clouds; and hence partly it is
that its working comes to be misapprehended, or even lost out of
sight. It is dark to eyes touched with the films of human frailty:
but it is 'dark with excessive bright.'[Footnote:  'Dark with
excessive bright.' _Paradise Lost_. Book III.] Hence it has
happened sometimes that minds of the highest order have entered
into enmity with the Christian faith, have arraigned it as a curse
to man, and have fought against it even upon Christian impulses,
(impulses of benignity that could not have had a birth except in
Christianity.) All comes from the labyrinthine intricacy in which
the _social_ action of Christianity involves itself to the
eye of a contemporary. Simplicity the most absolute is reconcilable
with intricacy the most elaborate. The weather--how simple would
appear the laws of its oscillations, if we stood at their centre!
and yet, because we do _not_, to this hour the weather is a
mystery.  Human health--how transparent is its economy under ordinary
circumstances! abstinence and cleanliness, labor and rest, these
simple laws, observed in just proportions, laws that may be engrossed
upon a finger nail, are sufficient, on the whole, to maintain the
equilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once that equilibrium
is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough to rectify
the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of planetary
motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be convinced
that the distortion is in the eye which beholds, not in the object
beheld. Let a planet be wheeling with heavenly science, upon arches
of divine geometry: suddenly, to us, it shall appear unaccountably
retrograde; flying when none pursues; and unweaving its own work.
Let this planet in its utmost elongations travel out of sight, and
for _us_ its course will become incoherent: because _our_
sight is feeble, the beautiful curve of the planet shall be dislocated
into segments, by a parenthesis of darkness; because our earth is
in no true centre, the disorder of parallax shall trouble the laws
of light; and, because we ourselves are wandering, the heavens
shall seem fickle.

Exactly in the predicament of such a planet is Christianity: its
motions are intermingled with other motions; crossed and thwarted,
eclipsed and disguised, by counter-motions in man himself, and by
disturbances that man cannot overrule. Upon lines that are direct,
upon curves that are circuitous, Christianity is advancing for ever;
but from our imperfect vision, or from our imperfect opportunities
for applying even such a vision, we cannot trace it continuously. We
lose it, we regain it; we see it doubtfully, we see it interruptedly;
we see it in collision, we see it in combination; in collision
with darkness that confounds, in combination with cross lights
that perplex. And this in part is irremediable; so that no finite
intellect will ever retrace the total curve upon which Christianity
has moved, any more than eyes that are incarnate will ever see God.

But part of this difficulty in unweaving the maze, has its source
in a misconception of the original machinery by which Christianity
moved, and of the initial principle which constituted its differential
power.  In books, at least, I have observed one capital blunder
upon the relations which Christianity bears to Paganism: and out
of that one mistake, grows a liability to others, upon the possible
relations of Christianity to the total drama of this world. I will
endeavor to explain my views. And the reader, who takes any interest
in the subject, will not need to fear that the explanation should
prove tedious; for the mere want of space, will put me under a
coercion to move rapidly over the ground; I cannot be diffuse; and,
as regards quality, he will find in this paper little of what is
scattered over the surface of books.

I begin with this question:--What do people mean in a Christian
land by the word _'religion?'_ My purpose is not to propound
any metaphysical problem; I wish only, in the plainest possible
sense, to ask, and to have an answer, upon this one point--how
much is understood by that obscure term,* _'religion,'_ when
used by a Christian? Only I am punctilious upon one demand, viz.,
that the answer shall be comprehensive. We are apt in such cases
to answer elliptically, omitting, because silently presuming as
understood between us, whatever _seems_ obvious. To prevent
_that_, we will suppose the question to be proposed by an
emissary from some remote planet,--who, knowing as yet absolutely
nothing of us and our intellectual differences, must insist (as
_I_ insist) upon absolute precision, so that nothing essential
shall be wanting, and nothing shall be redundant.

*[Footnote: '_That obscure term;_'--i. e. not obscure as
regards the use of the term, or its present value, but as