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AFFIRMATION
BILL
. REASONS WHY IT CANNOT BE
PERMITTED TO BECOME THE LAW OF THE LAND
CONSIDERED AND STATED.
IN A PUBLIC LETTER ADDRESSED
TO THE
Right
The Speaker of the House of Commons
Snti to all
T U L L I A N.
Justutn et tenacem propositi virum
Non civium ardor prava j ubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni,
Mente quatit solida ;
Hor. hi. Odes iii. I.
LONDON:
DAVID BOGUE, 3, ST. MARTINS PLACE,
TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
��NATIONAL secular society
THE
AFFIRMATION
BILL.
REASON’S WHY IT CANNOT BE
PERMITTED TO BECOME THE LAW OF THE LAND
CONSIDERED AND STATED.
IN A PUBLIC LETTER ADDRESSED
TO THE
Right Hon. The Speaker of the House of Commons,
Slntr in all its fKemtiers.
BY
TERTULLIAN.
Justum et tenacem propositi virum
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni,
Mente quatit solids ;
Hoe. iii. Odes iii. I.
LONDON:
DAVID BOGUE, 3, ST. MARTIN’S PLACE,
TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
�4
SECTION
EAGE
whose one sole chief end of his being would seem to be to make
himself as widely known as possible as the man who denies the
existence of GOD, and the consequent possibility of any religion.
34
IX. A second brief word touching the horns of a comical dilemma of which
the supporters of Mr. Bradlaugh will be compelled to make the
best that they can................................................................................. 35
X. The near view of the precipice.. ................................................................ 35
A Word in Conclusion.
If every Member of the House of Commons has bound himself to the
duty of defending the Throne by his having sworn his Oath of
Allegiance, how will such Member be able to vote for the removal
of one of the principal safeguards and defences of the Throne in
any other way than by the perjury of his Oath ?
... 39
�THE AFFIRMATION BILL:
REASONS WHY IT CANNOT BE SUFFERED TO
BECOME THE LA W OF THE LAND.
Eight Honourable Sir,
There cannot be a better proof of the honour and
dignity which the Empire of Great Britain confers upon
those who inherit by birth and social standing the privilege
of being its citizens, than the liberty of speech which is their
birthright, and of which it must be their constant solicitude to
prove themselves worthy, by the care they are seen to take
not to overstep in their use of it, the limits of justice and
becoming respect for all its constituted authorities. It is,
then, this privilege of freedom of speech which is the
English citizen's highest honour, so long as he studies not
to abuse it to unworthy ends, that enables one who other
wise would be but a humble and retiring member of the
commonwealth, known only as a person engaged in the
usual pacific employment of his everyday life, to take up
his pen to address the Speaker of the most eminent and
powerful legislative assembly, which is known to the civi
lized nations of the world. How great this assembly is over
which you, sir, so worthily preside in the name of the
Majesty which sits on the time-honoured Throne of Eng
land, the laws emanating from it, whose jurisdiction com
prises a far wider expanse of the territory of the earth than
that which two thousand years ago was subject to the rule
�6
of the far-famed. Senate of Rome, bear their ample and
world-wide testimony.
When St. Paul had the privilege granted to him, by
way of a special favour, that he might have a public hearing
for his cause before the King Agrippa who happened at
that moment to be a distinguished visitor of the Roman
procurator Festus, whose prisoner Paul was, this was to
him a source of the most real rejoicing. Now he knew
that he should be at least able to plead his cause and give
an account of himself in the presence of one whose ears
would be open to listen to him as an obligation of public
justice. But he had even a still stronger reason for re
joicing than this. He knew that he was to plead before
one, who, by reason of his Jewish education and his know
ledge of, and respect for, the Sacred Scriptures, was both
able and willing to give, that which must ever be the
highest good to the public speaker, after that of having
a just and religious cause—the most appreciable boon of a
right-minded and intelligent hearing.
It is in a like
manner a source, to the present writer, of a similar unfeigned
satisfaction to know, that his Englishman’s birthright, his
freedom of speech and his right to raise his voice, in season
and out of season, in defence of the cause of God and of his
country—-procures for him the honour of pleading his cause
in the hearing of one, to whom, as Speaker of the House of
Commons, the true and lasting welfare his country will ever
be the supreme rule and guide of his judgment.
He may not, indeed, hope that it should be given to
him to emulate the eloquence of the Apostle, but he may
hope to be found not to fall too far below the inspired
model that is before him in point of courage and fidelity
to his cause. From the Apostle he may learn that it can be
the duty of a Christian to resist any adversary, even one,
the excess of whose confidence in his own powers stands.
�7
forward in a singularly marked contrast with the infamy
and abjection of the designs which he is pursuing.
The Tertullian whom he ventures to take as the especial
model and pattern of his undertaking, has put before man
kind the example,—that with a view the better to secure a
calm and dispassionate hearing for the many remonstrances
which belong to his cause and its pleading, there may be
circumstances when it will be the wisest course to trust
entirely to the efficacy of what he calls the “ occulta via
tacitarum literarum,” the retiring method of silently advo
cating his cause in writing. This is, then, his choice. His
cause is too grave and sacred for the counter recourse to
a rival antagonist, noisy clamour of street gatherings, and
to further poisoned vehemence of the partizan oratory
specially designed and prepared for them.
Elijah on the Mountain Horeb was witness to the strong
wind that passed over the mountain and its effect, but
“ the Lord was not in the wind’-’—then followed the earth
quake, but “ the Lord was not in the earthquake/-’—then
after the earthquake there came a fire, but “ the Lord was
not in the fire.” After all these had passed, there then came
the “still small voice,” and this was the voice of the Lord
(1 Kings xix. 12).
In the phenomena which have already manifested them
selves in Mr. Bradlaugh’s short career, a very little gift
of discernment is all that is needed to perceive, at least the
first beginnings of the same calamities about to be visited
upon the kingdom and people of England which are wellknown to have desolated the neighbouring land of Erance
for the whole of the present century. In the wind is
figured the storm of atheistic impure and revolutionary
doctrines, which have been desseminated with an evil energy
on purpose to carry away the masses of the population
from all the ancient hereditary landmarks and strongholds
�8
of the Christian religion, as well as to make war on the
boasted belief of the English people in the inspiration of the
Bible as the Word of God.
These atheistic impure and revolutionary doctrines are
planned to prepare the way for the “ earthquake/'’ which
will first manifest itself in the overthrow of the right of all
private property, the fruit of legitimate industry and labour,
and in the sinking of all in one level of indiscriminating
communism. To this will be added the abolition of the
sanctity of family life, and the establishment in its stead
of the brute beast state of promiscuous concubinage, falsely
honoured with the inviting but appallingly deceptive name
of socialism.
But as nothing can subsist any length of time that
presumes to place itself in an attitude of defiance to the
Law and the Will of the Divine Creator and Sovereign
Lord of His Creation, the state of things which will follow
the contemplated earthquake of communism and socialism
is aptly figured by the pregnant term “ fire.’"’ “ Eire^ is a
word that expresses far more if left to stand by itself than
would be gained by attempting a commentary. Nor will
it serve the cause of the profane and impious mockers of
sacred truth to say, that the day for believing in the Bible is
past; mankind has been held long enough in bondage to
its pious and totally vain terrors. Let these impious
scoffers account for the phenomenon of one of the most
distinguished poets of the present or indeed of any century,'
giving the form of his imperishable verse to his perfectly
similar provision of the kind of future which is in store for
the nations where the storm of revolutionary doctrines is
allowed to have its free course to work out their destructive
issues. I may now be allowed in the present state of our
knowledge of German to cite the lines in the original, to
which no translation can render adequate justice :
�9
Da werden Weiber zu Hyiinen
Und treiben mit Entsetzen Scherz;
Noch zuckend, mit des Panther’s Zahnen
Zerreisen sie des Feindes Herz.
Nichts heiliges ist mehr, es losen
Sich alle Bande frommer Scheu,
Der Gute raumt den Platz dem Bdsen
Und alle Laster walten frei.
Schiller’s Lay of the Bell.
Such is the future prospect for human society under the
ascendency of the career, the beginnings of which Mr.
Bradlaughhas,by the sheer strength of the rage which displays
so much power of moving forward to its evil ends, for the
reason which the Scripture gives, because it knows “ that its
time is short.”
The former, Tertullian, it may be easily perceived, had a
very different task before him from that which lies before
the writer who succeeds to his name. The Christian cause
then was comparatively weak in numbers, but it was strong in
mind, and was, in the main, lion-hearted in the presence of
its rival and persecutor—the great Imperial power of Rome.
This power is known to have elected to throw all the weight
of its administrative action to the propping up the falling
cause of the idolatrous popular religion. The present
moment, it must be confessed, appears to have witnessed a
strange phenomenon of a totally contrary kind—a temporary
paralysis of all the ancient Christian statesman-like courage
and discernment of the nation. We wonder what has become
of all the vigorous independent power of thought and
judgment which has, in all great emergencies, been known
as the chief honourable mark and sign of the true English
man. Numbers, whose ruling characteristics are to be
sought for in their feebleness, cowardice, and helplessness,
it must be borne in mind, cannot possibly be the strength
of any cause however good in itself. On the contrary, they
a 3
�IO
are the incurable weakness of their cause, whatever it may
be. Nothing can possibly lead cowards to victory.
We must be extremely careful, however, how we risk a fall
into a most serious error. We must not mistake for cow
ardice what it is incomparably more reasonable to suppose
can be in reality nothing more serious than a momentary
and passing fit of stupor. Such a stupor it is quite easy
to conceive might be for a time occasioned by the unex
pected and unparalleled effrontery of one single man,
destitute of any single qualification other than that of his
present unexampled boldness in daring to offer himself as
the leader of a public cause. It is too terrible a thought to
have to contemplate even the possibility of a cowardice which
renders a whole multitude, comprising the entire wealth,
property, and education of the nation, incapable of stirring
a hand or foot in the defence of all that they are bound to
hold to be dearer to them, even than life.
The moment for waking up must come ! The Roman
poet, indeed, has given utterance to a very undoubted
truth—
Qui sibi fidit,
Dux regit examen.
But Heaven save our country from the depth of its
fall over the precipice which is being prepared for it. It
must be absolutely impossible for it to be true that the
educated classes of Great Britain can have come into the
condition of consenting to be the mindless swarm, helplessly
led in obedience to his will, by the atheist, Bradlaugh.
The task, then, for the Tertullian of the present time is
the quiet, unpresuming labour of a patient remonstrance,
addressed to the higher intelligence of the nation, which
may be most truly said to find its honourable represen
tative in yourself, as the Vicegerent of the Throne, and the
Speaker or President of the chief really great Legislative
�11
assembly of the world at the present time. His work has to
offer itself as the “small still voice” of Divine truth, opposing
itself to the noisy clamour of the streets, and calling all who
love their country and who, as legislators, are responsible to
God and the throne, to seek its true prosperity in the only paths
in which it is to be found, the fear and honour of God. He has
the honourable task of asking them to weigh well and consider
the exceeding great issues about to be placed before them.
It is then with this weighty task resting upon him that the
Tertullian of the present hour ventures to crave your
attention for the truths which he now proceeds to submit
to consideration, in the order in which they are laid out to
view in the Table of Contents.
I. The inevitable degradation, in the eyes of the whole world, which
an Imperial Legislature must submit to incur, if it should be
seen to have legislation forced upon it by a mere mob outcry
confined to a simple handful of its own towns.
The Legislature of Great Britain, as it is almost out of
place in an ordinary citizen of the land to venture to sub
mit to those who are its legislators, is a “ city set on a hill
which cannot be hid.” 'Whatever its legislative acts are—
wise, just, and statesmanlike as every true citizen of the
empire will always desire that they may be ; or extorted
from its unworthy fears, by a noisy and godless clamour
outside—nothing can be more certain, than that such as
the acts of the Legislature of Great Britain may be, they are
passed under the destiny of being carried by the newspaper
press to the knowledge and judgment of all the civilized
nations of the world.
It has again often been said that the Imperial power
of Great Britain stands upright in the world not so
much by the force of its armaments, which are less
than those of other nations, as by the known solid
a 4
�12
character, both of its legislature and of its executive
government.
The virtues of truth, firmness, and justice
are honourably recognized in the world at large as placing
British power above the reach of being swayed by the voice
of faction, or of being misled by mean and unworthy
motives. In this respect the history of the present times
only repeats the lesson of former periods. In the ancient
military Rome, the empire of the city over the nations is
seen in her history to have been firm and stable so long as
the Senate of Rome was able to impress upon the nations
the universal sense of fear, and respect for the justice, capacity,
and inviolable fidelity of its senators. And in proportion
as the respect of the nations for the Senate of Rome, which
appears almost always to have been willingly given, was
rendered no longer possible in consequence of the too
manifestly feeble and unmanly character of the Senate itself
and its public action, the power of Rome over the nations
then began to dwindle away, until it at length died out.
What can be a more fatal sign of the danger of an irrup
tion of a similar spirit of disastrous degeneracy into the
Imperial Senate of the British Empire, than that it should
be universally seen to be willing to suffer itself, even for a
moment, to submit to the disgrace of allowing a mere mob
leader outside itself, to dictate to it what its legislation is to
be or what it is not to be ? How is this manifest proof of
-degeneracy to be possibly concealed from the rest of the
-world ? Will not the other nations at once take up their
parable against Great Britain, and say to her, “ Art thou
-also become weak as we ? Art thou become like to us ?
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave; the worm is
spread under thee; the worms cover thee.’7
Yet it is the boast of Great Britain, that as the Assyrians
■were the Romans of the early civilization of the world, so
’Great Britain is the Rome of the living world. And this
�13
resemblance of the English character to that of the ancient
Romans, the conquerors, legislators, and peacemakers of the
world, has been very remarkably recognized by an extremely
distinguished French writer, the Compte de Champagny.
In the first volume of his history of the Empire of Rome,
he says that John Bull has always appeared to him to
be the younger brother of Romulus. Accepting, then, a
testimony which is as honourable to the giver as it must be
gratifying to the receiver, allow me to pass from my first
point, by citing an example of the manner in which the spirit
of ancient Rome could reject with the sternest indignation
the very thought of accepting the least legislation in obedience
to an external dictation. The passage of history occurs
in the eighth book of Livy, § v. and runs as follows :—
“ A certain Annius, a native of the municipality of Setia
(now Sezza), on the confines of the Pontine marshes, came
to Rome in the year of the city 415, as the legate of the
Latin Confederacy, to demand that one of the consuls of
Rome should be chosen from Latium.” The Senate paid
the Latin envoy the mark of deference to hold a special
assembly for the purpose of hearing and considering his
demand, which it would appear that Annius made in an
extremely confident and peremptory manner. This attempt
to dictate to Rome what its legislation ought to be, so
stirred the Roman spirit of Titus Manlius, the consul, as
to cause him to rise up from his seat there and then, and
to exclaim aloud, “ that if any such madness could come
upon the conscript fathers that they could be ready to take
their laws from a man of Setia, he would come himself
into the Senate house, sword in hand, and with his own
arm slay any man of Latium whom he found in it?"’
The senators of your honourable assembly, Mr. Speaker,
will hardly fail here to perceive that the Lucius Annius
above mentioned as the representative of the entire Latin
�14
Confederacy^ contrasts more than favourably with the man
who has outraged the Christian religion of the entire
nation by his impious denial of the very existence of God.
And yet the Rome which at that time repelled Lucius Annius
was only a city in the Latin Confederacy; without the least
prestige of any sort or kind to maintain in the sight of the
wide world. Notwithstanding this; Rome; the simple isolated
city; standing by herself; is seen to have made it a point of
honour to herself to repudiate so much as the thought of
submitting to the least approach of dictation from without.
II. A great and fundamental change of the law is proposed to be
introduced, subversive of the entire religious constitution of
the empire. Is there one solitary spokesman representing the
property and education of the empire, who is known to have
directly called for this change ?
When Esther; the Persian Queen; fell down before
Ahasuerus; to intercede for the life of her people; the
King in amazement asked her, “ Who is the man, and what
is his power; that he durst presume in his heart to do this
thing
The whole of the education and property of the
entire empire asks itself the question in a perfectly similar
amazement; Who is the man, and what is the secret of
his power; who has been able to prevail so far; as to cause
a formal proposal to be entertained by your Honourable
Assembly; to take the initiative step to bring about this con
templated subversive change in the time honoured constitution
of the kingdom ?
Great legislative assemblies; it is undoubtedly true;
have been known to have been led into their legislative
acts by the voice of one man.
The life of the late
Mr. Wilberforce affords a remarkable example of this kind.
The counsels of the nation unquestionably suffered them
selves in the end to be moulded in conformity with the
�policy of which for some time he stood alone by himself as
the advocate. But between the case of Mr. Wilberforce and
that of Mr. Bradlaugh, where does the shadow of a parallel exist
that can be perceived ? In the one instance we have the man
of piety and religion, pleading the cause of the natural right
of an oppressed race to their liberty, and step by step, through
his assiduity, his patient eloquence and powers of persuasion,
winning over the thoughtful religious men of the nation to
befriend his cause, which indeed was that of suffering and
downtrodden humanity. In the other, we see the man of
impiety and irreligion, by his own avowal the profane dis
believer in God and the despiser of His laws, the advocate
of no known cause, except that of his own wild will to
break through the barrier which the existing immemoria
constitution of the kingdom places in the way of his
ambition. Is this the man to mould the counsels of an
empire ?
Bor the sake of this man, however, it is now proposed that
a sacred, ancient, and immemorial religious landmark of the
Christian religion is to be removed. Can it be shown that
this man has won over so much as a solitary representative of
the independent property and education of the country to
desire the proposed change for its own sake ? The extreme
suddenness, added to the intrinsic impiety and irreligion of
the proposed change, may doubtless have produced a momen
tary sense of stupor and paralysis, and for a time have kept
back the expression of the deep-seated horror that is enter
tained against it. But in the nature of things, the stupor
and paralysis will pass away, while the horror and the
detestation will remain.
�i6
III. The Prime Minister is seen to be reduced to the humiliating
position of the humble slave of Mr. Bradlaugh’s dictation. The
question to come before the Legislature will be, will it elect to
become a participator in the Prime Minister’s humiliation ?
No doubt that it would be perfectly possible fortlie Prime
Minister, if he were honestly to elect to come before the
empire of whose destinies he has been raised to be the chief
arbiter, as a convert of conviction to the denial of God—to
which alone his new protege owes the degree of unhappy
notoriety which he has gained—to make good by such an
avowal his claim to be Mr. Bradlaugh's free, noble, and
most enlightened patron. In this case, nothing could be
more unjust and unfounded than to attempt to breathe a
word about the Prime Minister being the slave of Mr.
Bradlaugh's dictation. He might then say to Mr. Bradlaugh,
Welcome brother in unbelief and in the contempt of God
and his law. Too late in life have I learned the folly and
emptiness of my former belief in the inspiration of the books
of the Bible. What might I not have spared myself if I
could have come earlier to share in your illumination. But
henceforth, at least, I shall be able to walk arm in arm with
you in the light of day, emancipated from all the vain
superstitions and empty dreams of my previous life.” If
Mr. Gladstone would only come before his country with a
full and open avowal of the errors and deceptions of his past
life as a religious man, and profess himself to have become
henceforward a free and enlightened follower of the
“ Fruits of Philosophy” of his new political associate, we
could then perfectly understand his position.
But nothing of this kind is suffered to appear. Mr.
Gladstone is known through the pages of the Graphic as
one who thinks himself honoured by being permitted to
wear a surplice, and to deliver before a lectern in his parish
church the lessons from the books of the Sacred Scripture,
�the reading of which in- the presence of the people is an
appointed part of the public offices of prayer in all the
national sanctuaries. It is, of course, simply intolerable to
associate the name of Mr. Gladstone in such acts as those
described, with the thought of any possible histrionic ritual
exhibition of himself, or any hypocritical performance gone
through for the purpose of acquiring a reputation for
religion. No ; the Prime Minister, like all the still sound
part of his countrymen, is a believer, ex animo, in the books
of the Sacred Scripture, as containing the Word of God
spoken to man for his guidance and direction, and for his
instruction as well in the lessons of wisdom that are good
for the present life, as in the wisdom which teaches and
smoothes the way to the promised heaven of the life that
is future.
But the merest tyro in the knowledge of the truth that
is contained in the books of the Bible knows as well as
possible that nothing in the world can be further removed
than Bible truth from observing the least thought of
neutrality towards the class of men of whom it is Mr.
Bradlaugh-’s boast, not merely that he is an advanced
specimen of their genus, but that he is a distinguished
and foremost champion of their speedy exaltation to political
power and pre-eminence. Mr. Bradlaugh may be a short
lived hero in the eyes of the mob-following which he has
gathered about himself, but before the judgment of the
Sacred Scripture, he is nothing more than “ the fool that
“ saith in his heart there is no God” (Ps. xiv. 1). He
belongs to the class of those of whom God says, “ I will
“ beat them as small as the dust before the wind ; I will cast
“them out as the clay of the streets” (Ps. xviii. 42). He is
but one of the men of whom the inspired word says, “ He
“ loved not blessing, therefore it shall be far from him; he
“ clothed himself with cursing as with a raiment, and it shall
A 3
�18
“ come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones”
(Ps. cix. 16). Of such men as he is, the word of God
in the Bible exclaims, (< O my soul, come not thou into
“ their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou
‘‘united” (Gen. xlix. 6).
With such sentiments as the above, which meet our eye
in almost every page of the inspired volume, and with a
Prime Minister who professes in public his belief in the Bible
as the Word of God, what bond of real friendship and mutual
confidence can, by any possibility, unite him and his Govern
ment to the cause of Mr. Bradlaugh ?
Plainly none! If the religious Prime Minister of Great
Britain has consented to espouse the cause of Mr. Bradlaugh,
there can be but one explanation : Mr. Bradlaugh has become
the master by the sheer force of his boldness and firm
tenacity of purpose; and the Prime Minister, fearing for
the security of his own hold of power, has consented to
become the servant. Mr. Bradlaugh holds the instruments of
torture, and says—
If ihou ncglcctest or dost unwillingly
What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps, &c.
And the Prime Minister of the greatest of existing empires
replies—
No pray thee,
I must obey; his art is of such power.
Tempest, Act i. sc. 2.
IIow far more noble would have been the Prime Ministeps
position—what an infinitely more lasting title to the grati
tude of his country he would have earned—had he taken the
following all but inspired lines of the Roman poet for his
rule of policy :—
Ac veluti magno in populo qtium ssepc cooi'ta cst
Seditio, sajvitque anirnis ignobile vulgus,
Jamquo faces et saxa volant, furor arma ministrat.
Turn pictatc gravem et meritis si forte virum quern
�19
Congpexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant.
Iste regit animos dictis et pectora mulcet.1
BEneid i. 148.
Alas, then, we have but to say, alas for the fall of a great
man—Would that charity could throw a veil over his fall !
But his fall is the danger of the constitution of the kingdom.
To minor political adversaries who may be disposed to mock
at his fall, it might justly be said, “ Howl, fir tree, for it
is the cedar that is fallen.”
But still, if the cedar is
fallen, it is a matter of the highest import that the tree
should lie where it has fallen, and that it should not be
allowed to draw others after it to be the partakers of its
fall.
IV. An atheist faction conspiring to undermine the ancient religious
constitution of the kingdom could not hope to succeed in open
warfare. To gain their ends, therefore, its leaders have been
compelled to take recourse to a juggle and fraud of words.
The atheist faction having to their great joy, in all
probability not a little mingled with surprise, gained over
an adherent in the Prime Minister, practically fallen from
his religious belief, has still to encounter an obstacle of no
ordinary magnitude, which by some means or other has to
be overcome before any benefit can possibly be derived from
their unlooked for conquest in the surrender of the Prime
Minister.
To awaken the dormant religious energies of the nation
3 “ As oft when micl’st the multitude has ris’n
Sedition, rage in heart the ignoble crowd ;
And now stones, torches fly—what fury finds—
If chance some venerated sage they view,
In sober sanctity severe, at once
Mute, motionless, they stand around,
He rules with salutary words their minds,
And mollifies their breasts.”
Beresford’s Version.
�20
and to call these into life by the faction letting their
scheme come to be discovered before its time, would be
totally to shipwreck their design.
There is even yet an
energy of religion in the land and a vigour of action sur
viving among the people who still retain their old traditional
veneration for the sacred volume, that it would be perilous
in the extreme for the faction to do anything whatever
calculated even to awaken suspicion, much less to rouse these
up into wakefulness and action.
For this end the leaders of the faction in question propose
to have recourse to a manifestly unscrupulous, if not, after
all, so very crafty a fraud and juggle of words. The fraud
is really not so surpassingly profound but that it may be
quite readily seen through and detected, even by any
ordinarily attentive observer. Nevertheless, its devisers
evidently rely upon its being accepted by what they
appear confidently to expect will be, the imperturbably
guileless and unsuspecting simplicity of the great multi
tude of the good and peace-loving people whom it is
their intention to deceive by it. That the Prime Minister
himself should be held to be a bona fide participator in this
guileless unsuspecting simplicity of the multitude, on which
the faction place so much reliance, this not even his most
deeply fascinated admirers, will find it a very easy task to
persuade themselves. But let this pass, and let us have
the intended juggle and the fraud of words, on which all
their hopes are to be embarked, placed before us in the light
of day.
This, then, consists in their purpose of attempting to
palm off the ordinary common affirmation of daily life (the
only affirmation which an atheist can possibly have the
power of making) for the “ solemn” affirmation which is in
its very nature an act of religion, and therefore not capable
of being performed by any man who does not profess his
�2I
belief in God; as St. Paul says, as “ existing and as being
the rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. xi. 6).
Their trick, then, is to dress up their jackdaw atheist
affirmation in the feathers of the jay, and to try to pacify
the religious people, always well disposed to ease and quiet,
by saving to them, What would you have more, you good
religious people ? Have we not given you, for your com
fort, a SOLEMN affirmation ?
Loes any one, however, in his senses, suppose for a single
moment that the Prime Minister is deceived by this jack
daw atheist affirmation ? Singular, it certainly is, that the
atheist faction should have ever proposed to dress up their
jackdaw in the feathers of the jay to try even to make
it pass off with the simple people ; just as if after being thus
dressed up, it could possibly in the nation of things be the
real solemn affirmation which is the exclusive act of the man
of religion ! Have they, then, really thought all the world
to be nothing but absolute simpletons ?
Or have they,
perchance, been so lifted up with the conceit of the towering
height of their own intelligence, that it has never occurred
to them that compliance with their fraud could be by
any possibility refused.
V. A reason briefly stated, why it can never be anything else than a
conscious act of the most deliberate, barefaced fraud to attempt
to palm off the affirmation of an atheist as even capable of hav
ing any thing in common with the SOLEMN affirmation of the
man of religion.
A gulph or chasm, it is nevertheless true, and this of an
impassable width, separates the affirmation of the atheist
(which nothing that he has at his command can by any pos
sibility cause to become solemn) from the affirmation of the
man of religion, which is made solemn by the fact of its
being an act of his religion.
�22
A very few words will suffice to make it clear in what
this impassable gulph consists. Let us take for our test
case the oath of allegiance. This is what is known in law
as the “ juramentum promissorium.” It is a sworn promise
of true allegiance to the person and prerogatives of the
monarch, confirmed by the formula, “So help ms God,”—
Or, as the same would be expressed more fully—So help me
God as I truly keep my promise, and so avenge Thyself
against me, God, as I may forswear my promise.
Between this oath and the true “ solemn affirmation”
there is virtually no difference whatever. The religious
man affirming solemnly has the form of words which he
scruples on grounds of religion to utter remitted; but the
understanding is nevertheless clear on both sides—viz., on
the side of the proponent of the affirmation and on that of
the person who makes it—that the person affirming appeals
to God to reward or to punish him according as he promises
or affirms truly or falsely. The “ solemn affirmation” is thus
perceived to be lifted up above the ordinary affirmation by
the appeal made in it to God, which differs only in the par
ticular form of words used from the similar appeal made to
God in the ordinary oath.
Now everyone must see there is nothing of this nature to
be found in the atheist’s affirmation to lift it up above the
level of the affirmation of ordinary life.
The atheist can
know of nothing in the whole of creation higher than him
self. The God of Heaven and the Creator of the Earth can
indeed swear by Himself, because He alone can know nothing
higher than Himself by which He can swear, as St. Paul
tells us (Heb. vi. 13). But if the forlorn and abject atheist,
in the judicial blindness of his pride, were to claim the
right to say, “ I also am able to make a solemn affirmation,”
all that he could possibly hope to gain thereby would be to
exhibit himself to the derision of every man of understanding.
�23
No man of sense could see in liim anything but a contemptible
caricature., trying as a perishable worm of the earth to put
himself on a level with the Eternal Sovereign of the Universe;
while hoping to be able to make himself the passing wonder
of the moment, for the few fools who for the time being
might be deceived into a little shortlived marvel at his daring.
But this is somewhat to anticipate.
A brief survey of
the practice of swearing the oath of religion in the past
history of mankind must now engage our best attention. It
is indispensable to the completeness of our subject, and not
impossibly it may bring to light some few details of antiquity
not commonly known, and not without their own claim to
prove of interest to their readers.
VI. A brief survey of the reasons which render the swearing of an
oath of religion indispensable to the well-being of all civilized
society, with a rapid glance at the history of its immemorial
practice at every known period of the world.
The reason why the practice of swearing the oath of reli
gion is indispensable to the well-being of civilized society,
as well in public or political as in private life, is very easily
given. It is seen at once to come under the rule of St.
Vincent of Lerins, “ Quod ubique/’“ quod semper/-’ “ quod
ab omnibus?'’ That which exists everywhere, which has
always been, and is received and accepted by all, is placed
thereby beyond the reach of controversy or doubt. The
oath of religion is no invention of yesterday, but is as
old as the civilization itself, which, from our earliest records,
is known as simply unable to exist in a condition of well
being without it.
The reason of this inability to dispense with the oath of
religion, which is understood and known all over the
world, is found in the necessity for truth as the basis of all
the human society which aspires to lift itself up to any
�^4
degree of civilization. The Word of God says : “ Who shall
dwell upon Thy holy hill?—even he that speaketh the truth
from his heart (Ps. xv. 2); and, as regards public life, the
same Word says, “ Open ye the gates that the righteous
nation that keepeth the truth may come in” (Isaiah xxvi. 2).
Precisely the same sound is that which is echoed back from
all the great voices of the Gentile world. Pythagoras being
asked, “ In what men in their actions can become like to the
gods,” answered “ If they speak the truth” (Stob. Fiori, xi.
25). Pindar says—
AX«0«a Svyarijp Awe.—(01. xi. 4.)
Truth the daughter of God.
Cicero says that the foundation of justice is good faith—•
that is, the firmness and truth of all that is said, and of every
thing that is matter of compact (Off. i. 7). Csecilius, the
jurisconsult, in his dispute on the subject of the laws of
the Twelve Tables with Favonius the philosopher, says:
“ The Roman people, by the sedulous practice of every kind of
virtue, rose from a very small beginning to their marvellous
extent of power; but above all their virtues they ever
studied, in the first place, to cultivate good faith, and
always held good faith to be most sacred and holy in both
public and private life” (A. Gell. xx. i. 39.) Quintilian
says : “ Fides supremum rerum humanarum vinculum est
good faith is the supreme bond of human business.
But this truth and good faith, thus pronounced to be so
supremely needed, exists now no longer by nature in
human society, since the footing which the devil, the father
of lies, has been permitted to gain for himself in our world.
David says: “ I said in my ecstasy, all men are liars”
(Ps. cxvi. 12), which St. Paul confirms in the words : “ Let
God be true, but every man a liar.” It is under this
supreme need of truth, beset as it is by the ever present
peril of falsehood, that the entire human family, from the
�25
earliest existing record up to the actually present hour, in
every known civilized nation under the sun, has discovered
no other recourse than the invocation of the Supreme God
of heaven—not, however, excluding the lesser celestial
powers—to which invocation we now give the name of an
OATH, known to the Greeks as op/coc, and to the Komans
as “ juramentum, or jusjurandum?'’1
The oath, then, consists in the solemn formal invocation of
God as witness of the truth and good faith of all that
is spoken, and as the avenger of any falsehood or breach of
faith that may subsequently be committed. The oath,
consequently, is at one and the same time both a prayer for a
blessing and the imprecation of a curse; it is a declaration of
the love of truth and of the hatred of a lie. It is a calling upon
God, who is believed to be present, to the effect that He
should deign to prosper the speaker in so far as he speaks the
truth, and to punish him in the same degree as he may speak
falsely. An oath, says Cicero, is “a religious affirmation
of which God is the witness” (Off iii., 19); a little
after adding, Nullum vinculum ad adstringendam fidem,
jurejurando majores arctius esse voluerunt; id indicant leges
in duodecim tabulis, indicant sacratse,” &c. (Off iii., 31).
Our ancesters have provided by law no power more binding to
secure good faith than an oath. This is shown in the laws of
the Twelve Tables, and in those known as sacratae, (i.e., to
the non-observance of which a ban was attached).1
To create the binding force, then, of the oath, it becomes easy
to perceive in what way two distinct motives have to concur.
1 The following are Greek testimonies to the necessity for the Oath as the
binding power of political society:—
To avvsxov -n}v Sr)p.oK.paTiav opKOQ sari. “That which holds the State
together is the oath?’ “ Lycurgus adv. Leocratem,” p. 79. povov in op leaped a
ffyvXaK-njpiov rov opicov Kai tt]v e7riKX7]ffiv riSv deZv.—We have provided for our
only protection the oath and the invocation of the Gods.—(Themistius Orat.
XXI.)
�26
And these, indeed, equally concur in the case of every human
virtue. There must be as the foundation—faith in the ex
istence of God and of His presence and power—to which
succeed, in due order (1) the wish to please Him and to
earn His promised reward by acting with loyal truthfulness;
and (2-) the desire to escape the penalty to be incurred from
His anger against deception and false swearing.
Without
these two grounds there can be no oath.1
If an objector should here attempt to argue that the
great facility, added to the incessant actual occurrence of
the perjuries which have been known in all ages, abun
dantly proves the futility of trusting to the protection of
any oath, nothing could be more absurd. Fidelity to the
obligation of an oath is the virtue to which perjury is
attached as its correlative vice.
But then, in the
same way, drunkenness and incontinency are the vices
attached to the virtues of sobriety and continence. Yet to
what man in his senses could it ever occur that the
practice of sobriety and continency were to be abandoned as
superfluous because of the existence of the vices opposed to
them.
The perfect love and fear of God would doubtless
suppress all perjury, and give increased value to the binding
power of an oath for the great improvement of human
life. But then it would do exactly the same for the
suppression of all the other vices, and give a wonderful
1 The accustomed form of the conclusion of the oath among the Greeks as
numerous inscriptions which have been found upon various public monuments,
was the following:
“ evopicovvTi p'tv pot ev eh], ttycopKouvri Se e£<i>Xeia Kai aiirip Kai ytvei
Tip
spoil.”
(May it be well with me if I am true to my oath, but if I forswear myself, may
utter ruin come upon me and all my race).
This is the formula of the oatn which Demosthenes swears in his Oration de
Corona.
�27
impulse to the contrary virtues. Only our world is without
the perfect love and fear of God, and yet we do not there
fore abandon all thought of the practise of virtue as an
impossible chimera.
The ordinary economy of the government of God in
dealing with both the virtues and the forfeits of those who
swear His oaths, may be easily seen to be conspicuous in
an eminent degree for its efficacy and considerate wisdom.
His rewards for the faithful observance of the obligations
contracted are neither so openly manifest as to assume the
character of a bargain, nor are the punishments for falsehood
so certain as to provoke impious and daring contumacy and
resistance. There is sufficient concealment of both the one
and the other to leave men on the one hand in full possession
of their liberty, and on the other to try and prove their
fidelity and attachment. It is clearly his perceiving the
above truth that has caused Solomon to say: “ Because
sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them
to do evil; nevertheless, though a sinner do evil a hundred
times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it
shall be well with them that fear God, and which fear before
Him : but it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall
he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he
feareth not before God^ (Eccles, viii. 11).
With the above judgment of Solomon the voice of man
kind in general has never been otherwise than in the most
complete accord. It has ever borne witness that a marked
prosperity has, on the whole, been well-known to attach to
the faithful observance of an oath, while a contrary marked
career of mishap and misfortune has always, on the whole,
followed in the wake of false swearing and perjury. Pindar
says ;—
IloXXai 5’ oSol
Suv S'eotf evirpaliiag.
�28
The favour of the gods is the way to every sort of good
fortune; and in the extravagant caricature which Aristo
phanes appears to have been prompted to make of Socrates,
Strepsiades, in questioning him upon the subject of the
nature of thunder, expresses the universal sense of the
Athenian world that the perjured man was the certain object
of the anger of the gods :—
tovtov
yup Sr) <j>avep&£ 6 Zei>£ iija’ erri tovq STriopicovQ ("Nub.” 397.)
At least it is clear that Jupiter hurls this (thunder)
against those who forswear their oaths.1
Cicero again admits that the Greeks were possessed of ex
cellent doctrines as regards the obligation of an oath, but they
had to come to the Romans for examples of their doctrines
being carried out into practice
De Oratore,’-’ iii. 34), and
Quintilian says the same: “ Quantum Grseci praeceptis valent
tantum Romani, quod est magis, exemplis” (xii. 2, 30). And
the corresponding result is patent on the face of history. The
Greek cities soon lost their autonomy and independence,
while the Roman power, founded on its love for truth, came
to be so firm and stable that it advanced in the world at
large, without any effort at seeking this, to acquire from all
the nations the attribute and character of eternity.1
2
Herodotus, in his history, happens to relate an anecdote
of a certain Glaucus, which sums up in so singularly de
scriptive a manner the vivid sense that has pervaded the
whole human race, that perjury cannot possibly go un
punished, that I must ask leave to relate it in the words of
Herodotus’ own narrative. “ One Glaucus, a citizen of
1 Compare “Iliad IV.” 166 and “JEneid XII.” 894.
2 Cicero has the following testimony concerning the faithlessness of the Greeks
to their oaths :—Hoc dico de toto genere Graecorum; tribuo illis litteras, do
multarum artium disciplinam, non adimo sermonis leporem; ingeniorum acumen,
dicendi copiam, denique si qua sibi alia sumant non repugno ; testimoniorum
religionem et fidem nunquam ista natio coluit, totiusque hujusce rei quae sit vis
quae auctoritas, quodpondus, ignorat.—(Orat. pro. Flacco, iv. 9.)
�29
Sparta, had a great reputation for justice, which induced a
citizen of Miletus to deposit a large sum of money in his
care, to be given to whoever later on should present the
tokens agreed upon • Glaucus received the money on these
conditions. After a long time had elapsed the sons of the
man who had deposited the money came to Sparta, and
having addressed themselves to Glaucus, and having shown
the tokens, demanded back the money. Glaucus repulsed
them, answering as follows : I neither remember the cir
cumstance, nor does it occur to me that I know anything
of the matter you mention, but if I can recall it to my
mind I am willing to do everything that is just; and if,
indeed, I have received it, I wish to restore it correctly ;
but if I have not received it at all I shall have recourse to
the laws of the Greeks against you. I therefore defer
settling this matter with you for four months from this
present time. The Milesians, therefore, considering it a
great calamity, departed as being deprived of their money.
But Glaucus went to Delphi to consult the oracle; and
when he asked the oracle whether he should make a
booty of the money by an oath, the Pythian assailed
him with the following words : “ Glaucus, son of Epicydes,
thus to prevail by an oath and to make a booty of the
money will be a present gain; swear, then, for death awaits
even the man .who keeps his oath. But there is a name
less son of perjury, who has neither hands nor feet, but he
pursues swiftly, until, having seized, he destroys the whole
race, and all the house. But the race of a man who keeps
his oath is afterwards more blessed., The Pythian also said,
that to tempt God and to commit the crime was the same
thing.
“ Glaucus, therefore, having sent for the Milesian strangers,
returned them the money. With what design, O Athenians,
this story has been told you shall now be mentioned. There
�/
30
is at present not a single descendant of Glaucus, nor any
house which is supposed to have belonged to Glaucus, but
he is utterly extirpated from Sparta. Thus it is right
to have no other thought respecting a deposit than to
restore it when it is demanded (“ Erato” 86, Cary’s transla
tion).
The visitor to the quiet little market town of Devizes, in
Wiltshire, who takes his stroll into the market place, may
there have his attention drawn to a remarkable record engraved
on a metal plate stating the year and the day of the occur
rence. It relates the judgment of sudden death inflicted by
the hand of God, on a market woman, who falsely took God
to witness, something in the manner that Glaucus had only
turned over in his mind, that she had duly paid her share
of a joint purchase, when the money was found fraudulently
concealed in her hand.1
1 The subjoined extract gives the full details of this striking instance of the
divine punishment of a perjury :—
“ The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the stability of
this building (the market cross) to transmit to future times the record of an
awful event which occurred in the market place in the year 1753, hoping that
such a record may serve as a salutary warning against the danger of impiously
invoking Divine vengeance, or of calling on the holy name of God to conceal
the devices of falsehood and fraud.
“ On Thursday, the 25th of January, 1753, Ruth Pierce, of Potterne, in this
county, agreed with three other women to buy a sack of wheat in the market,
each paying her due proportion towards the same. One of these women, in
collecting the several quotas of money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded of
Ruth Pierce the sum which was wanting to make good the amount. Ruth
Pierce protested that she had paid her share, and said, she wished she might
drop down dead if she had not. She rashly repeated the awful wish, when, to
the consternation and terror of the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell
down and expired, having the money concealed in her hand.
“ The narrative of this solemn event was, by order of the authorities, recorded
on a tablet and hung up in the market house (a row of sheds near the cross).
When the building was taken down, Mr. Halcombe, who kept the Bear Inn, in
order that the remembrance might not be lost, caused it to be inscribed on the
pediment of a couple of pillars which stood opposite liis inn, supporting the sign
of the Bear.
“ The sign was removed in 1801, and a few years after, Lord Sidmouth, having
presented to the town the new cross, which forms the central ornament of the
�31
Between the date of the judgment which brought total
extirpation upon Glaucus and his family and that which
brought the visitation of sudden death on the market woman
of Devizes, who shall say how many and how signal have
been the similar acts of the judgment of God falling on the
heads of the perjurers of their oaths ? Who, then, will very
easily dare to maintain that an oath which calls upon the
God of Heaven to be the witness to the truth with which
it is spoken is a thing devoid of sanction, notwithstanding
that the general rule of the Divine Government is well
known to be-one of long proved patience and forbearance,
under which the perjurer is permitted often for years, and
sometimes for the whole of the present life, to be seen to go
unpunished.
It is beyond doubt, then, that the interests of the truth
which human society needs as the basis of its well-being,
and for the securing of which the recourse to an oath has
remained the uninterrupted practice of nearly four thousand
years standing in every civilized nation of the earth, may,
as constant experience shows, be defeated and undone in
the particular case, by the sin and crime of perjury. Who
does not know this perfectly well ? Nevertheless, remove
the extremely real sanction and protection of truth, which
the most just fear of visitation from the anger of God and
of infamy in the sight of man necessarily strikes into the
soul of the intending perjurer, and you will have inflicted
a most deadly wound upon the welfare and happiness of
human life. Does not an apostle say to us, “ Men swear
by the greater, and in every dispute of theirs, the oath is
marketplace, the Mayor and Corporation ‘availed themselves,’ to use their own
language, ‘ of the stability of the new structure to transmit to future time a
record of the awful death of Ruth Pierce, in hope that it might serve as a
salutary warning against the practice of invoking the sacred name to conceal
the devices of falsehood and fraud.’ ”—“The Other World; or, Glimpses of the
Supernatural. By F. G. Lee. Pp. 289, 290. London. 1875.
�32
final for confirmation.” (Heb. vi. 16.) 'Wherever we turn,
to the pages of inspiration or to the histories of Gentile and
Christian writers, to the books of j urists and the homilies of
the Divine, we always hear one and the same concordant
testimony, bearing its witness to the indispensable need of
the maintenance of the oath of religion, in the full measure
of the religious honour and solemnity which is due to it.1
What, then, must be the inevitable conclusion from this
brief and rapid survey of the reasons of this immemorial
recourse to the oath of religion ? The first conclusion will
be that Mr. Bradlaugb/s impious denial of the existence of
God necessarily takes away the possibility of this indispen
sable recourse to the oath of religion “in radice/'’ in its
very root. Where no God is held to exist, what can be
more idle and absurd than to say that there can be any
appeal for the guarantee of truth to that which, according
to Mr. Bradlaugh s doctrine, is pure and simple vacuum,
mere negation of being, absolute nothing ?2
And, again, further, in the same degree in which the
preceding survey, brief and imperfect as it has been, has
succeeded in bringing to light the truth that the oath
of religion is an indispensable condition of the well-being of
civil society, and this equally in its public as in its private
life, the conclusion must be just as inevitable—that Mr.
Brad laugh, by his open denial of the existence of God, is to
be held by all reasonable men, to be not only a very bad enemv
1 The Roman Jurisconsults re-echo St.Paul’s testimony:—Maximum remedium
expediendar um litium .in usum venit juris jurandi religio, qua, vel ex pactione
ipsorum litigatorum, vel ex auctoritate judicis deciduntur controversial—Gaius,
fragm. (xii. 2).
a The following are the testimonies of Juvenal to the little credit to be
attached to the oath of an atheist, and still less to his affirmation:—
Sunt qui nullo credunt mundum rectore moveri
Atque ideo intrepide queecunque altaria tangunt.—Sat. XIII. 89.
Falsus erit testis vendens perjuria summit
Exigua, Cereris tangens aramque pedemque.—Sat. XIII. 218.
�of God; but likewise also in the same degree,, an equally bad
enemy of the social well-being of his fellow-men.
Are the above-mentioned truths, then, it is to be asked,
things that are wholly unknown to the Prime Minister?
Ask, rather, are they things that can by any possibility be
unknown to whoever possesses even the ordinary education
which is the necessary preparation to entering into any ODe
of the learned professions ? Certainly not! To what honest
ordinary man, indeed, can they be unknown, seeing that
they are the elementary traditions of the original primitive
revelation [made to man in the beginning of the world?
The Gospel has but gathered them together from the wreck
of the Old World, and rehabilitated them with new and still
stronger sanctions for the light and guidance of the Chris
tian people.
How is it, then, it is to be asked, that the Prime Minister
and his Government are found openly espousing the cause
of a man, whom on this showing it would be an insult to
their understanding, to suppose that they do not recognize
in him equally the enemy of God and the enemy of his
fellow-man ?
Singular fascination of the hope of being able to gain
a little political support which appears to have the power to
blind their eyes to the reality of what they are doing.
Experience, nevertheless, has shown that precarious political
support may at times be bought too dear even for the transi
tory ends for which the price for it has to be paid.
When the great Divine truths on which human society is
known to have been built from the beginning of the world
are to be made the price of a few paltry votes, the outcome
of the bargain may disappoint the calculation on which
it was made. The hoped-for gain may find itself simply
struck down to the ground with a sudden terror at the
very magnitude of the forfeit about to be consummated.
�34
VII. The designs of the atheist faction may, in the meanwhile, be
most effectually resisted, by the unsparing exposure of their
fraud, in attempting to palm off the common affirmation of the
atheist, for the solemn affirmation of the man of religion.
The legislator here who is determined to discharge the
duty of his conscience to God, and not to suffer himself to
be hoodwinked by mere words, may be asked to say to himself, Before I will vote I will insist upon an explicit formal
definition being embodied in the bill, “ sine dolo malo,” de
claring in express words, what it is to be—that is, to make
the affirmation of a man declaring himself to be an atheist
become a solemn affirmation. I will not be consciously a
party to any fraud or deceit on this point. I will resist to
the last and protest against any ambiguity or obscurity
on this head. Ambiguity or obscurity in this matter carries
with it—the guilt and shame of conscious fraud upon the
religious conscience of the nation. It also involves open
derision of the Majesty of God by the Legislature appearing
to be willing to try to palm off an affirmation in the face of
day as solemn, in which there cannot possibly be any act of
religion. The fraud is recommended under the false guise
of the equivocal use of the Name of “ solemn/"’ It
will be in effect the saying to God, we are going to deceive
you with the use of a name, that cannot have any meaning
whatsoever, which will be to your honour.
VIII. A brief word on the comic absurdity of the pretence which,
proposes to give the name of an act of religion to the act of a
man, whose one sole chief end of his being would seem to be to
make himself as widely known as possible as the man who
denies the existence of GOD, and the consequent possibility of
any religion.
The best generally received definition of the word “ reli
gion” derives it from the word religare, to reunite or to bind
together, and therein points to the rehabilitation of the
�35
union, of friendship between God and man, which it is the
mission of religion to restore. If so extremely serious a
subject could be allowed to have its comic side, this would
be certainly found in the singularly burlesque spectacle
which Mr. Gladstone and his Government now propose to
introduce on to the arena of public life, and to exhibit to
the astonished eyes of all the nations and people of the
world.
This new and unexpected spectacle, then, is Mr. Bradlaugh,
the Atheist, the profane scorner of God and the denier of
the mere possibility of such a thing as any religion, intro
duced into the British Parliament, as quite capable in the
judgment of Mr. Gladstone and his Ministry, making of the
solemn affirmation of the man of religion ! The nineteenth
century is certainly fruitful in wonders !
IX. A second brief word touching the horns of a comical dilemma of
which the supporters of Mr. Bradlaugh will be compelled to
make the best that they can.
The absolutely open and avowed atheist platform is not yet
a possible thing in Great Britain and the United Kingdom.
Mr. Bradlaugh, consequently, atheist as he avows him
self to be, and as he seeks to be universally known, cannot,
nevertheless, for the present hope to be able to enter the British
Parliament in any other way than as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Atheist, as he persists in calling himself, he has no chance
whatever of being admitted, except under the disguise of a
man of religion. He must be held to be capable of perform
ing the act of religion, known as a “ solemn affirmation.”
His supporters, in consequence, find themselves in the
following dilemma :—
This solemn affirmation, which Mr. Bradlaugh hopes by
their aid to be allowed to make, and so to enter to take his
seat, is compelled to be one or other of two things—
�36
(I.) Either it is the fraud already exposed, invented and
designed by malice prepense, to deceive religious people,
and to throw dust in their eyes; or
(II.) It is in itself a real, true, and genuine solemn
affirmation, “ sine ullo dolo malo,” without a shadow of
deception.
In the first case, the British Legislature will expose
itself to the whole world, as has been pointed out, as
lending itself to a proceeding of simple fraud. In the
second case, if the affirmation is to be maintained to be
“ solemn,” then there must needs be something special
which can be the root and cause of this solemnity. This
something will of necessity have to be sought for in the
person of Mr. Bradlaugh himself for the obvious reason that
it is not to be found anywhere else. On his own reiterated
averments he knows of nothing in creation greater than
himself. So that in order to make good the claim that his
affirmation is to be held to be solemn, the British Legisla
ture will have to exhibit him to the wide world as a little
pseudo divinity of their own making, as in short a very
small comic caricature of the God of Heaven, who swears
by Himself because He knows of nothing greater than
Himself by whom he could swear.
X. The near view of the precipice.
It is, of course, possible for a man to be found walking
close upon the very edge of a precipice, without his, for
the moment, adverting to the fact that the precipice is
there, and that to take only a single step more in the
direction of the precipice will be to fall over it and to be
afterwards taken up dead.
Let none of the members of your honourable House,
together with yourself, shut their eyes to the real facts of
�37
the case that will shortly come before them. Your Legis
lative Assembly is now actually brought to the edge of such
a precipice., the fall over which involves the being after
wards taken up dead. Of course dead,, in the sense of
having the seeds of future death deeply planted in its con
stitution. The Legislative Assemblies of great Imperial
Powers require a considerable time before they can actually
die, but unhappily for them they can plant the seeds of
future death in themselves in a very short time.
It is proposed, then, by the Affirmation Bill, to remove
the oath of religion, promising true allegiance to the throne
under the sanction of an appeal to God, from its being the
necessary legal condition of a legislator taking his seat and
exercising his functions as a maker of the laws and as
guardian of the public purse of the Empire. Henceforward
the law is to stand that it is to be a simple matter of per
sonal option, to swear this oath or not to swear it, the law
providing an open alternative in the form of a nominally
“ solemn affirmation/’
What this “ solemn affirmation” is to be and what is to
be the power generative of its solemnity, if any,—nothing
as yet appears to be known.
The solemnity of it, however, is, as has been said, hope
lessly discredited by the fact that, whereas the Oath of
Religion for which it is to be substituted is so solemn a
thing that Mr. Bradlaugh the atheist cannot by any possi
bility be permitted to profane it, the solemn affirmation will
be so unsolemn a thing that there will be no objection at
all, of any sort or kind whatsoever, to Mr. Bradlaugh the
atheist being permitted to profane it. Let this proposed
substitution of a nominal fictitious solemn thing, which any
atheist may profane at his own perfectly free will and
pleasure, without rendering himself liable to any sort of
penalty or ill consequence whatsoever, either from God or
�man, for the immemorial Oath of Religion be effected, and
then see what must inevitably follow.
It must inevitably follow, that if the Oath of allegiance
to the Throne is not necessary, and may be replaced at the
mere will or fancy of each individual by a purely nominal
and fictitious substitute as the sole guarantee to be demanded
from a legislator of the Empire, neither in this case, as has
been already said publicly, will the oath remain necessary,
but may be replaced by the same purely nominal and
fictitious substitute
for the monarch on the throne,
for the judges who administer the laws of the land,
for the witnesses who give testimony in courts of law,
for the soldiers serving in the army and their officers,
for the sailors serving in the navy and their officers.
The entire body politic of the empire will thus find itself
on the high road to be constituted in a condition of open
and avowed denial of God, and the contempt of His sove
reignty of the world of which He is the Creator.1
' The true safety of the Christian religion is not to he sought in proofs of the
existence of legal enactments in its favour, but in the solid and fervent attach
ment of the people to its altars and its doctrines. Nevertheless, in an appeal to
the legislature of the United Kingdom it will not be wholly out of place to lay
before them legal testimonies to the truth that Christianity is even yet the law
of the land.
“ A sound, solid, contention might be had that any enactment of Parliament,
in which Christianity were renounced and repudiated, was ipso facto null and
void”—p. 37. Life of the worthy and illustrious Thomas Holt, Knight,
Recorder of the borough of Abingdon, and one of the King’s Serjeants, &c.
Oxford: L. Litchfield. 1706.
“ No administration of the oath............ taken by common jurymen, or by
any other, either as witness or testifying, could be too reverent or too solemn ;
for such are bound to tell the whole truth who so call the Almighty God notably
to witness that it be the truth.”—“ State Trials,” in Seven Parts. Vol. III.
p. 140. London: G. Strahan. 1720.
“In Cowan v. Milbourne (L. R. Q. Ex. 230), Kelly, L.C.B., said that
Christianity was part of the law of the land. This case, tried in 1867, contains
the latest judicial utterance on the matter. In R. v. Williams (1797), a cele
brated case, where the man was tried for publishing Paine’s “Age of Reason,”
�39
Such is the precipice!
Let every member of your
assembly look at it, and study it well. Now, what can be
the claim of this single man, Bradlaugh the atheist, the
daring and profane denier of the existence of God, to push
the chief legislative assembly of the world over such a
precipice as this must be seen to be ?
A Word in Conclusion.
If every Member of the House of Commons has bonndhim
self to the duty of defending the Throne by his having
sworn his Oath of Allegiance, how will such Member be
able to vote for the removal of one of the principal safe
guards and defences of the Throne in any other way than
by the perjury of his Oath ?
No statesman or legislator of the kingdom will very easilv
dare to say that the Throne of the United Kingdom with
the person of the Monarch has not its just rights under the
constitution of the Empire, which as true statesmen they
are bound to maintain and defend. Again, no statesman
or legislator of the Empire will very easily dare to deny
that the oath of true allegiance to the throne, which every
one has sworn under the formula SO HELP ME GOD,
does not bind the legislator who has sworn it positively to
maintain and to uphold,—and that it does not likewise strictly
prohibit him from any act whatever calculated even to weaken,
let alone remove,—that which is acknowledged and confessed
to be the mainstay of the rights of the throne and the pre
rogatives of the person of the Monarch.
On this point there cannot be a doubt raised.
On the question that the oath of allegiance is and always
has been held to be the mainstay and bulwark of the rights
and to be found 26 St. Tr. 653, Lord Kenyon told the jury that “the Christian
religion is part of the law of the land.” Kelly’s exact words in Cowan v. Mil
bourne were “ There is abundant authority for saying that Christianity is part
and parcel of the law of the land.”
�of the throne, only open and avowed atheists can take the
side of negation. Every one who believes in the Person of
a Divine Creator and Sovereign Ruler of the world, and
who, sine dolo malo and bond fide has sworn his oath
promising true allegiance to the throne, by the very fact of
such belief stands on the side of the affirmative.
How, then, will those members of your honourable assem
bly, who confess this oath of allegiance to be under God the
mainstay of the rights of the throne, and who at the same
time confess that their oath of allegiance binds them to the
firm upholding of this same acknowleged indispensable main
stay be able to give their vote for its removal ? How can
they do this without directly forswearing the terms of the
oath by which they have bound themselves, and without
subjecting themselves to all the penalties attached to such
an act of perjury.
Public perjury under the laws of the twelve tables was
dealt with thus. “ Perjurii, poena divina exitium, humana
dedecus“The punishment with which God visits perjury
is destruction, man inflicts infamy/'’ Time and the belief
of the Christian world has added to, and has not taken any
thing away, from the force of the ancient Roman law.
I remain,
Right honourable Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
TERTULLIAN.
PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS, CHANDOS STREET, W.C,
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Affirmation Bill : reasons why it cannot be permitted to become the law of the land considered and stated, in a public letter addressed to the Right Hon. the Speaker of the House of Commons and to all its members by Tertullian
Creator
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Tertullian
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 40 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Date of publication from British Library record. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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D. Bogue
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[1883]
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N636
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Parliament
Secularism
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Text
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English
Charles Bradlaugh
Freedom of Speech-History
NSS
Oaths and Affirmations
William Ewert Gladstone