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THE
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
’
1 8 7 6.
'ice Sixpence.
��THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND CATECHISM.
ISE men, in modern times, are striving earnestly
and zealously to, as far as possible, free religion
from the cramping and deadening effect of creeds and
formularies, in order that it may be able to expand
with the expanding thought of the day. Creeds are
like iron moulds, into which thought is poured; they
may be suitable enough to the day in which they are
framed; they may be fit enough to enshrine the phase
of thought which designed them; but they are
fatally unsuitable and unfit for the days long after
wards, and for the thought of the centuries which
succeed.
“No man putteth new wine into old
bottles, else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and
the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred;
but new wine must be put into new bottles.” The
new wine of nineteenth century thought is being
poured into the old bottles of fourth century creeds
and sixteenth century formulas, and the strong new
wine bursts the bottles, while the weak new wine
that cannot burst them ferments into vinegar in them,
and often becomes harmful and poisonous. Let the
new wine be poured into new bottles; let the new
thought mould its own expression; and then the old
bottles will be preserved unbroken as curious speci
mens of antiquity, instead of being smashed to pieces
because they get in the way of the world. Nothing
is more to be deprecated in a new and living movement
W
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The Church of England Catechism.
than the formulating into creeds of the thoughts that
inspire it, and the imposition of those creeds on those
who join it. The very utmost that can be done to
give coherency to a large movement is to put forward
a declaration of a few cardinal doctrines that do not
interfere with full liberty of divergent thought. Thus,
Rationalists might take as the declaration of their
central thought, that “ reason is supreme,” but they
would be destroying the future of Rationalism if they
formulated into a creed any of the conclusions to
which their own reason has led them at the present
time, for by so doing they would be stereotyping
nineteenth century thought for the restraint of
twentieth century thought, which will be larger, fuller,
more instructed than their own. Free Thinkers
may declare as their symbol the Right to Think, and
the Right to express thought, but should never claim
the declaration by others of any special form of Free
Thought, before acknowledging them as Free Thinkers.
Bodies of men who join together in a society for a
definite purpose may fairly formulate a creed to be
assented to by those who join them, but they must
ever remember that such creed will lose its force in
the time to come, and that while it adds strength and
point to their movement now, it also limits its useful
duration, if it is to be maintained as unalterable, for
as circumstances change different needs will arise, and
a fresh expression of the means to meet those needs
will become necessary. A wise society, in forming a
creed, will leave in the hands of its members full
power to revise it, to amend it, to alter it, so that the
living thought within the society may ever have free
scope. A creed must be the expression of living thought,
and be moulded by it, and not the skeleton of dead
thought, moulding the intellect of its heirs. The
strength of a society lies in the diversity, and not in
the uniformity, of the thought of its members, for
progress can only be made through heretical thought,
�The Church of England Catechism.
5
i.e., thought that is at variance with prevailing thought.
All Truth is new at some time or other, and the
fullest encouragement should therefore be given to
free and fearless expression, since by such expression
only is the promulgation of new truths possible. An
age of advancement is always an age of heresy; for
advancement comes from questioning, and questioning
springs from doubt, and hence progress and heresy
walk ever hand-in-hand, while an age of faith is also
an age of stagnation.
Every argument that can be brought against a
stereotyped creed for adults, tells with tenfold force
against a stereotyped catechism for children. If it is
evil to try and mould the thought of those whose
maturity ought to be able to protect them against
pressure from without, it is certainly far more evil to
mould the thought of those whose still unset reason
is ductile in the trainer’s hand. A catechism is a sort
of strait-waistcoat put upon children, preventing all
liberty of action, and while the child’s brain ought to
be cultured and developed, it ought never to be
trained to run in one special groove of thought.
Education should teach children how to think, but
should never tell them what to think. It should
sharpen and polish the instruments of thought, but
should not fix them into a machine made to cut out
one special shape of thought. It should send the
young out into the world keen-judging, clear-eyed,
thoughtful, eager, inquiring, but should not send them
out with answers cut-and-dried to every question, with
opinions ready made for them, and dogmas nailed into
their brains. Most churches have provided catechism
sawdust for the nourishment of the lambs of their
flock; Roman Catholics, Church of Englanders, Pres
byterians, they have all their juvenile moulds. The
Church of England catechism is, perhaps, the least in
jurious of all, because the Church of England is the
result of a compromise, and has the most offensive
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The Church of England Catechism.
parts of its dogmas cut out of the public formularies.
It wears some slight apron of fig-leaves in deference to
the effect produced by the eating of the tree of know
ledge. But still, the Church of England catechism is
bad enough, training the child to believe the most
impossible things before he is old enough to test their
impossibility. To the age which believes in Jack-andthe-bean-stalk, and the adventures of Cinderella, all
things are possible; whether it be Jonah in the
whale’s belly, or Tom Thumb in the stomach of the
red cow, all is gladly swallowed with implicit faith:
the children grow out of Tom Thumb, in the course of
nature, but they are not allowed to grow out of
Jonah.
When the baby is brought to the font to make
divers promises, of the making of which he is pro
foundly unconscious—however noisily he may at times
convey his utter disgust at the whole proceeding—
the godfathers and godmothers are directed to see
that the child is “ brought to the bishop to be con
firmed by him, so soon as he can say the creed, the
Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the
vulgar tongue, and be further instructed in the
Church Catechism set forth for that purpose.” It is
scarcely necessary to say that these words—being in
the Prayer-Book—are not meant to be taken literally,
and that the bishop would be much astonished if all
the small children in the Sunday School who can
glibly repeat the required lesson, were to be brought
up to him for confirmation. As a matter of fact the
large majority of godfathers and godmothers do not
trouble themselves about seeing their godchildren
brought to confirmation at all, and the children are
sent up when they are about fifteen, at which period
most of them who are above the Sunday School going
grade, are rapidly “ crammed ” with the Catechism,
which they as rapidly forget when the day of confirma
tion is over.
�The Church of England Catechism.
The Christian name of the child, being given in
answer to the first. question of the Catechism, the
second enquiry proceeds : “ Who gave you this name?”
The child is taught to answer—“ My godfathers and
godmothers in my baptism; wherein I was made a
member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor
of the kingdom of heaven.” Thus, the first lesson
imprinted on the child’s memory is one of the most
objectionable of the dogmas of the Church, that of
baptismal regeneration. In baptism he is “made”
something; then he becomes something which he was
not before; according to the baptismal office, he is
given in baptism “that thing which by nature he
cannot have,” and being under the wrath of God, he is
delivered from that curse, and is received for God’s
“ own child by adoption ;” he is also “ incorporated”
into the “ holy Church,” and thus becomes “a member
of Christ,” being made a part of the body of which
Christ is the head; this being done, he is, of course,
an “ inheritor of the kingdom of heaven” through the
“ adoption.”
Thus the child is taught that, by nature, he is bad
and accursed by God; that so bad was he as an
infant, that his parents were obliged to wash away his
sins before God would love him. If he asks what
harm he had done that he should need cleansing, he
will be told that he inherits Adam’s sin ; if he asks
why he should be accursed for being born, and why,
born into God’s world at God’s will, he should not by
nature be God’s child, he will be told that God is
angry with the world, and that everyone has a bad
nature when they are born ; thus he learns his first
lesson of the unreality of religion; he is cursed for
Adam’s sin, which he had no share in, and forgiven
for his parent’s good deed, which he did not help in.
The whole thing is to him a play acted in his infancy
in which he was a puppet, in which God was angry
with him for what he had not done, and pleased with
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fhe Church of England Catechism.
him for what he did not say, and he consequently
feels that he has neither part nor lot in the whole
affair, and that the business is none of his; if he be
timid and superstitious, he will hand over his religion
to others, and trust to the priest to finish for him what
Adam and his parents began, shifting on to them all
a responsibility that he feels does not in reality belong
to him.
The unreality deepens in the next answer which is
put into his mouth— “ What did your godfathers and
godmothers then for you ? ” “ They did promise and
vow three things in my name : First, that I should
renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and
vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts
of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the
articles of the Christian Faith. And thirdly, that I
should keep God’s holy will and commandments, and
walk in the same all the days of my life.” Turning
to the Baptismal Service again, we find that the god
parents are asked, “ Dost thou, in the, name of this child,
renounce,” etc., and they answer severally, “I re
nounce them all,” “All this I steadfastly believe;”
and, asked if they will keep God’s holy will, they still
answer for the child, “ I will.” What binding force
can such promises as these have upon the conscience of
anyone when he grows up ? The promises were made
without his consent; why should he keep them 1 The
belief was vowed before he had examined it; why
should he profess it ? No promise made in another’s
name can be binding on him who has given no
authority for such use of his name, and the un
conscious baby, innocent of all knowledge of what is
being done, can never, in justice, be held liable for
breaking a contract in the making of which he had no
share. Bentham rightly and justly protests against
“ the implied—the necessarily implied—assumption,
that it is in the power of any person—not only with
the consent of the father or other guardian, but with-
�The Church of England Catechism.
9
out any such consent—to fasten upon a child at its
birth, and long before it is itself even capable of giv
ing consent to anything, with the concurrence of two
other persons, alike self-appointed, load it with a set
of obligations—obligations of a most terrific and
appalling character—obligations of the nature of oaths,
of which just so much and no more is rendered visible
as is sufficient to render them terrific—obligations to
which neither in quantity nor in quality are any
limits attempted to be or capable of being assigned.”
This obligation, laid upon the child in its uncon
sciousness, places it in a far worse position, should it
hereafter reject the Christian religion, than if such an
undertaking had not been entered into on its behalf.
It becomes an “ apostate,” and is considered to have
disgracefully broken its faith; it lies under legal dis
abilities which it would not otherwise incur, for heavy
statutes are levelled against those who, after having
“professed the Christian religion,” write or speak
against it. Thus in early infancy a chain is forged
round the child’s neck which fetters him throughout
life, and the unconsciousness of the baby is taken
advantage of to lay him under terrible penalties. In
English law a minor is protected because of his youth;
surely we need an ecclesiastical minority, before the
expiration of which no spiritual contracts entered
into should be enforceable. From the religious point
of view, apostacy is far more fatal than simple non
Christianity. Keble writes :
“ Vain thought, that shall not be at all !
Refuse me, or obey,
Our ears have heard the Almighty’s call,
We cannot be as they.”
Is it fair not to ask the child’s assent before making
his case worse than that of the heathen should he
hereafter reject the faith which his sponsors promise
he shall believe ?
B
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The Church of England Catechism.
Besides, how absurd is this promising for another ;
a child is taught not to break his baptismal vow, when
he has made no such vow at all ; how can the god
parents ensure that the child shall renounce the devil
and believe in Christianity, and obey God 1 It is
foolish enough to make a promise of that kind for
oneself, when’ changing circumstances may force us
into breaking it, but it is sheer madness to make such
a promise on behalf of somebody else. The promise
to “ believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith,”
cannot take effect until the judgment has grown ripe
enough to test, to accept, or to reject, and who then
can say for his brother, “ he shall believe.” Belief is
not a matter of will, it is a matter of evidence; if
evidence enough supports an assertion, we must
believe it, while if the evidence be insufficient we
must doubt it. Belief is neither a virtue nor a vice ;
it is simply the consequence of sufficient evidence.
Theological belief is demanded on insufficient evi
dence ; such belief is called, theologically, “ faith,”
but in ordinary matters it would be termed “ credu
lity.” First amongst the renouncings comes “the devil
and all his works.” Says Bentham:—“The Devil,
who or what is he, and how is it that he is renounced ?
The works of the Devil, what are they, and how is it
that they are renounced 1 Applied to the Devil, who
or whatever he is-—applied to the Devil’s works,
whatever they are—what sort of an operation is
renouncement or renunciation ?”
Pertinent questions, surely, and none of them answer
able. A Court of Law lately sat upon the Devil, and
could not find him ; how is the Christian to explain to
the child whom it is he has renounced in his infancy ?
“ And in the first place, the Devil himself—of whom so
decided and familiar a mention, as of one whom every
body knows, is -made.—Where lives he 1 Who is he ?
What is he ? The child itself, did it ever see him ? By
anyone, to whom for the purpose of the inquiry the child
�The Church of England Catechism.
11
has access, was he ever seen ? The child, has it ever
happened to it to have any dealings with him ? Is it
in any snch danger as that of having, at any time, to
his knowledge, any sort of dealings with him 1 If not,
then to what purpose is this renouncement ? and, once
more, what is it that is meant by it ? ”
But supposing there were a devil, and supposing he
had works, how could the child renounce him 1 The
devil is not in the child’s possession that he might
give him up as if he were an injurious toy. In days
gone by the phrase had a definite meaning; people
were supposed to be able to hold commerce with the
devil, to commune with familiar spirits, and summon
imps to do their bidding; to “ renounce the devil and
all his works ” was then a promise to have nothing to
do with witchcraft, sorcery, or magic; to regard the
devil as an enemy, and to take no advantage by his
help. All these beliefs have long since passed away
into “ The Old Curiosity Shop ” of Ecclesiastical Rub
bish, but children are still taught to repeat the old
phrases, to rattle the dry bones which life has left so
long. The “ pomps of this wicked world ” might be
renounced by Christians if they wanted to do so, but
they shew a strange obliviousness of their baptismal
vow. A reception at Court is as good an instance of
the renunciation of the vain pomp and glory of this
wicked world as we could wish to see, and when we
remember that the children who are taught the Cate
chism in their childhood are taught to aim at winning
these pomps in their youth and maturity, we learn to
appreciate the fact that spiritual things can only be
spiritually discerned. Would it not be well if the
Church would publish an “ Explanation of the
Catechism,” so that the children may know what they
have renounced ?
“Dost thou not think that thou art bound to
believe, and to do as they have promised for thee ? ”
“Yes, verily; and by God’s help so I will. And I
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heartily thank our heavenly Father, that he hath
called, me to this state of salvation, through Jesus
Christ our Saviour. And I pray unto God to give me
his grace, that I may continue in the same unto my
life’s end.” “ Bound to believe .... as they have
promised for thee ! ” In the name of common sense,
why ? What a marvellous claim for any set of people
to put forward, that they have the right to promise
what other people shall believe. And the child is
taught to answer to this preposterous question, “Yes,,
verily.” The Church does wisely in training children
to answer thus before they begin to think, as they
would certainly never admit so palpably unjust a claim
as that they were bound to believe or to do anything
simply because some other persons said that they
should. The hearty thanks due to God “ that he
hath called me to this state of salvation,” seem some
what premature, as well as unnecessary. God, having
made the child, is bound to put him in some “ state ”
where existence will not involve a curse to him; the
“ salvation ” is very doubtful, being dependent on a
variety of things in addition to baptism. Besides, it
is doubtful whether it is an advantage to be in a
“ state of salvation,” unless you get finally saved, some
Christian authors appearing to think that damnation
is the heavier if it is incurred after being put in the
state of salvation, so that, on the whole, it would pro
bably be less dangerous to be a heathen. The child
is then required to “rehearse the articles of his belief,”
and is taught to recite “the Apostles’ Creed,” i.e., a
creed with which the apostles had nothing in the
world to do. The act of belief ought surely to be an
intelligent one, and anyone who professes to believe
a thing ought to have .some idea of what the thing is.
What idea can a child have of conception by the Holy
Ghost and being born of the Virgin Mary, in both
which recondite mysteries he avows his belief ? Having
recited this, to him (as to everyone else), unintelligible
�The Church of England Catechism.
13
creed, he is asked, “ What dost thou chiefly learn in
these articles of thy belief! ” a most necessary ques
tion, since they can have conveyed no idea at all to
his little mind. He answers: “ First, I learn to
believe in God the Father, who hath made me and all
the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath
redeemed me and all mankind. Thirdly, in God the
Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the elect
people of God.” Curiously, the last two paragraphs
have no parallels in the creed itself; there is no word
there that the Son is God, nor that he redeemed the
child, nor that he redeemed all mankind; neither is
it said that the Holy Ghost is God, nor that he
sanctifies anyone at all. How is the child to believe
that God the Son redeemed all mankind, when he is
taught that only by baptism has he himself been
brought into “this state of salvation?” if all are re
deemed, why should he specially thank God that he
himself is called and saved ? if all are redeemed, what
is the meaning of the phrase that “ all the elect people
of God ” are sanctified by the Holy Ghost? Surely all
who are redeemed must also be sanctified, and should
not the two passages touch only the same people ?
Either the Holy Ghost should sanctify all mankind, or
Christ should redeem only the elect people of God.
A redeemed, but unsanctified, person would cause
confusion as to his proper place when he arrived in
the realms above ; St Peter would not know where to
send him to. Bentham caustically remarks : “ Here,
then, in this word, we have the name of a sort of
process, which the child is made to say is going on
within him; going on within him at all times—going
on within him at the very instant he is giving this
account of it. This process, then, what is it? Of
what feelings is it productive ? By what marks and
symptoms is he to know whether it really is or is not
going on within him, as he is forced to say it is?
How does he feel, now that the Holy Ghost is sancti-
�14
The Church of England Catechism.
fying him ? How is it that he would feel, if no such
operation were going on within him ? Too often does
it happen to him in some shape or other, to commit
sin; or something which he is told and required to
believe is sin: an event which cannot fail to be
frequently, not to say continually, taking place, if that
be true, which in the Liturgy we are all made so
decidedly to confess and assert,—viz., that we are all
—all of us without exception—so many ‘miserable
sinners.' In the schoolroom, doing what by this Cate
chism he is forced to do, saying what he is forced to
say, the child thus declares himself, notwithstanding,
a sanctified person. From thence going to church, he
confesses himself to be no better than ‘a miserable
sinner.' If he is not always this miserable sinner,
then why is he always forced to say he is 1 If he is
always this same miserable sinner, then this sanctifica
tion, be it what it may, which the Holy Ghost was at
the pains of bestowing upon him, what is he the
better for it
Besides, how can the child be taught
to believe in one God if he finds three different gods
all doing different things for him ? As clear a dis
tinction as possible is here made between the redeem
ing work of God the Son and the sanctifying work of
God the Holy Ghost, and if the child tries to realise
in any fashion that which he is taught to say he
believes, he must inevitably become a Tri-theist and
believe in the creator, the redeemer, the sanctifier, as
three different gods. The creed being settled, the
child is reminded: “You said that your godfathers
and godmothers did promise for you that you should
keep God’s commandments. Tell me how many there
be 1 Ans. Ten. Ques. Which be they 1 Ans. The
same which God spake in the twentieth chapter of
Exodus, saying, I am the Lord thy God, who
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods
but me.” But God has not brought the child, noi’
�The Church of England Catechism.
15
the child’s ancestors, out of the land of Egypt, nor
out of the house of bondage : therefore the first com
mandment, which is made dependent on such outbringing, is not spoken to the child. The argument
runs: “ Seeing that I have done so much for thee,
thou shalt have no other God instead of me.” The
second commandment is rejected by general consent,
and it is almost certain that the child will be taught
that God has commanded that no likeness of anything
shall be made in a room with pictures on the walls.
Christians conveniently gloss over the fact that this
commandment forbids all sculpture, all painting, all
moulding, all engraving; they plead that it only
means that nothing shall be made for purposes of
worship, although the distinct words are : “Thou shalt
not make any likeness of anything." In order to
thoroughly understand the state of the child’s mind
who has learned that “ I the Lord thy God am a
jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the
children,” when he comes to read other parts of the
Bible, it will be well to put side by side with this
declaration, Ezekiel xviii. 19, 20: “ Yet say ye,
why ? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the
father ? When the, son hath done that which is law
ful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath
done them, he shall surely live. The soul that
sinneth it shall die. The son shall not bear the
iniquity of the father.” The fourth commandment is
disregarded on all sides ; from the prince who has his
fish on the Sunday from the fishmonger down to the
costermonger who sells cockles in the street, all nominal
Christians forget and disobey this command; they keep
their servants at work, although they ought to “ do
no manner of work,” and drive in carriage, cab, and
omnibus as though God had not said that the cattle
also should be idle on the Sabbath day. Although
the New Testament is, on this point, in direct conflict
with the Old,—Paul commanding the Colossians not
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The Church of England Catechism.
to trouble themselves about Sabbaths, yet Christians
read and teach this commandment, while in their
lives they carry out the injunction of Paul. To com
plete the demoralising effect of this fourth command
ment on the child, he is taught that “ in six days the
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
in them is,” while, in his day-school, he is instructed
in exactly the opposite sense, and is told of the long
and countless ages of evolution through which the
world passed, and the marvellous creatures that
inhabited it before the coming of man. The fifth
commandment is also evil in its effect on the child’s
mind from that same fault of unreality which runs
throughout the teaching of the Established Church.
“ Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may
be long in the land.” He will know perfectly well that
good children die as well as bad, and that, therefore,
there is no truth in the promise he recites. The rest
of the commandments enjoin simple moral duties, and
would be useful if taught without the preceding ones;
as it is, the unreality of the first five injures the force
of the later ones, and the good and bad, being mixed
up together, are not likely to be carefully dis
tinguished, and thus they lose all compelling moral
power.
The commandments recited, the child is asked—
“What dost thou chiefly learn by these command
ments ? ” and he answers that—“ I learn two things :
my duty towards God, and my duty towards my
neighbour.” We would urge here that man’s duty
to man should be the point most pressed upon the
young. Supposing that any “ duty to God ” were
possible—a question outside the present subject—it
is clear that the duty to man is the nearest, the most
obvious, the easiest to understand, and therefore the
first to be inculcated. Surely, it is only by discharge
of the immediate and the plain duty that any dis
charge becomes possible of one less near and less
�The Church of England Catechism.
plain. Besides, the duty to God taught in the Cate
chism is of so wide and engrossing a nature that to
discharge it fully would take up the whole time and
thoughts. For in answer to the question, “What is
thy duty towards God?” the child says :—“My duty
towards God is to believe in him, to fear him, and to
love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with
all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship
him, to give him thanks, to put my whole trust in
him, to call upon him, to honour his holy name and
his word, and to serve him truly all the days of my
life.” First, “to believe in him;” but how can the
child believe in him until evidence be offered! of his
existence? But to examine such evidence is beyond
the still-weak intellectual powers of the child, and
therefore belief in God is beyond him, for belief based
on authority is utterly valueless. Besides, it can
never be a “duty” to believe; if the evidence of a
fact be convincing, belief in that fact naturally fol
lows, and non-belief would be very stupid ; but the
word “duty” is out of place in connection with
belief. “To fear him : ” that the child will naturally
do, after learning that God was angry with him for
being born, and that another God, Jesus Christ, was
obliged to die to save him from the angry God. “To
love him; ” not so easy, under the circumstances, nor
is love compatible with fear; “ perfect love casteth
out fear ... he that feareth is not made perfect
in love.” “ With all my heart, with all my mind,
with all my soul, and with all my strength.” Four
different things the child is to love God with : What
does each mean ? How is heart to be distinguished
from mind, soul, and strength ? In human love, love
of the heart might, perhaps, be distinguished from
love of the mind, if by love of the heart alone a
purely physical passion were intended; but this
cannot explain any sort of love to God, to whom such
love would be clearly impossible. Once more, we say
�18
The Church of England Catechism.
that the Church of England should publish an ex
planation of the Catechism, so that we may know
what we ought to do and believe for our soul’s health.
Bentham urges that to put the 11 whole trust ” in God
would prevent the child from putting “ any part of his
trust ” in second causes, and that disregard of these
would not be compatible with personal safety and
with the preservation of health and life; and that
further, as all these services are “unprofitable” to
God, they might “ with more profit be directed to the
service of those weak creatures, whose need of all the
service that can be rendered to them is at all times
so urgent and so abundant.” The duty to God being
thus acknowledged, there follows the duty to the
neighbour, for which there seems no room when the
love, trust, and service due to God have been fully
rendered “ Ques. What is thy duty toward thy
neighbour ? Ans. My duty towards my neighbour is
to love him as myself, and to do to all men as I would
they should do unto me. To love, honour, and suc
cour my father and mother. To honour and obey
the king, and all that are put in authority under him.
To submit myself to all my governors, teachers,
spiritual pastors and masters. To order myself lowly
and reverently to all my betters. To hurt nobody by
word or deed. To be true and just in all my dealings.
To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart. To keep
my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue
from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering. To keep
my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity. Not
to covet nor desire other men’s goods; but to learn
and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do
my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please
God to call me.” The first phase reproduces the
morality which is as old as successful social life.
“ What word will serve as a rule for the whole life ? ”
asked one of Confucius. “Is not reciprocity such a
word?” answered the sage. “What thou dost not
�The Church of England Catechism.
19
desire done to thyself, do not to others. When you
are labouring for others, let it be with the same zeal
as if for yourself.” The second phrase is true and
right; the next is often foolish and impossible. Who
could honour such a king as George IV. ? while to
“obey” James II. would have been the destruction of
England. Honour and obedience to constituted autho
rities is a duty only when those authorities discharge
the duties that they are placed in power to execute;
the moment they fail in doing this, to honour and to
obey them is to become partners in their treason to the
nation. The doctrine of divine right was believed in
when the Catechism was written, and then the voice
of the king was a divine voice, and to resist him was
to resist God. The two following phrases breathe the
same cringing spirit, as though the main duty towards
one’s neighbour were to submit to him. Reverence to
any one better than one’s-self is an instinct, but “ my
betters’’ is simply a cant expression for those higher
in the social scale, and those have no right to any
lowlier ordering than the simple respect and courtesy
that every man should show towards every other.
This kind of teaching saps a child’s mental strength
and self-respect, and is fatal to his manliness
of character if it makes any impression upon him.
The remainder of the answer is thoroughly good and
wholesome, save the last few words about “ that state
of life unto which it shall please God to call me.” A
child should be taught that his “ state of life” depends
upon his own exertions, and not upon any “ calling ”
of God, and that if the state be unsatisfactory, it is
his duty to set diligently to work to mend it; not to
be content with it when bad, not to throw on God the
responsibility of having placed him there, but so to
labour with all hearty diligence as to make it worthy
of himself, honourable, respectable, and comfortable.
At this point the child is informed :—“Thou art not
able to do these things of thyself, nor to walk in the
�20
The Church of England Catechism.
commandments of God, and to serve him, without his
special grace; which thou must learn at all times to
call for by diligent prayer.” But if the child cannot
do these things” without God’s “special grace," then
the responsibility of his not doing them must of neces
sity fall upon God; for the child cannot pray unless
God gives him grace; and without prayer he can’t get
special grace, and without special grace he can’t “ do
these things;” so that clearly the child is helpless
until God sends him his grace, and therefore the whole
responsibility lies upon God alone, and he can never
blame the child for not doing that which he himself
has prevented him from beginning. Diligent prayer
for special grace being thus wanted, the child is taught
to recite the Lord’s Prayer, in which grace is not
mentioned at all, and he is then asked—“ What desirest thou of God in this prayer?” “I desire my
Lord God, our Heavenly Father, who is the giver of
all goodness, to send his grace to me and to all people;
that we may worship him, serve him, and obey him,
as we ought to do.” We rub our eyes; not one word
of all this is discoverable in the Lord’s prayer! “Send
his grace to me and to all people ” ? not a syllable con
veying any such meaning: “ that we may worship him,
serve him, and obey him”? not the shadow of such a
request. Is it supposed to train a child in the habit
of truthfulness to make him recite as a religious lesson
what is utterly and thoroughly untrue ? “ And I pray
unto God that he will send us all things that be need
ful both for our souls and bodies, and that he will be
merciful unto us, and forgive us our sins.” “ All things
that be needful both for our souls and bodies ” is, we
presume, summed up in “ our daily bread.” Simple
people would scarcely imagine that “ daily bread ” was
all they wanted both for their souls and bodies; per
haps the souls want nothing, not being discoverable by
any real needs which they express. “ And that it will
please him to save and defend us in all dangers, ghostly
�‘The Church of England Catechism.
21
and bodily ; and that he will keep us from all sin and
wickedness, and from our ghostly enemy, and from
everlasting death.” Here, again, nothing in the prayer
can be translated into these phrases ; there is nothing
about saving and defending from all dangers, ghostly
and bodily, nor a syllable as to defence from our
ghostly enemy, by whom a child will probably under
stand a ghost in a white sheet, and will go to bed in
terror after saying the Catechism which thus recog
nises ghosts—nor from everlasting death. The prayer
is of the simplest, but the translation of it of the
hardest. “ And this I trust he will do of his mercy
and goodness, through our Lord Jesus Christ; And
therefore I say Amen, so be it.” Why should the
child trust God’s mercy and goodness to protect him?
There would be no dangers, ghostly and bodily, no
ghostly enemy, and no everlasting death, unless God
had invented them all, and the person who places us
in the midst of dangers is scarcely the one to whom
to turn for deliverance from them. Mercy and good
ness would not have surrounded us with such dangers;
mercy and goodness would not have encompassed us
with such foes; mercy and goodness would have
created beings whose glad lives would have been one
long hymn of praise to the creator, and would have
ever blessed him that he had called them into
existence.
The child is now to be led further into the Christian
mysteries, and is to be instructed in the doctrine of
the sacraments, curious double-natured things of
which we have to believe in what we don’t see, and
see that which we are not to believe in. “How many
sacraments hath Christ ordained in his Church ? ”
“ Two only, as generally necessary to salvation, that
is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.”
“ Generally necessary” ; the word “ generally” is ex
plained by commentators as “ universally,” so that
the phrase should run, “ universally necessary to sal-
�22
The Church of England Catechism.
vation.” The theory of the Church being that all
are by nature the children of wrath, and that “ none,
are regenerate/’ except they be born of water and of
the Holy Ghost, it follows that baptism is universally
necessary to salvation ; and since Jesus has said
‘/Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink
his blood, ye have no life in you” (John vi. 53), it
equally follows that the Lord’s Supper is universally
necessary to salvation. Seeing that the vast majority
of mankind are not baptized Christians at all, and
that of baptized Christians the majority never eat the
Lord’s Supper, the heirs of salvation will be ex
tremely limited in number, and will not be incon
veniently crowded in the many mansions above.
“ What meanest thou by this word sacrament ? I
mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ
himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and
as a pledge to assure us thereof.” If this be a true
definition of a sacrament, no such thing as a sacra
ment can fairly be said to be in existence. What is
the inward and spiritual grace given unto the baby
in baptism ? If it be given, it must be seen in its
effects, or else it is a gift of nothing at all. A baby
after baptism is exactly the same as it was before;
cries as much, kicks as much, fidgets as much; clearly
it has received no inward and spiritual sanctifying
grace; it behaves as well or as badly as any unbap
tized baby, and is neither worse nor better than its
contemporaries. Manifestly the inward grace is
wanting, and therefore no true sacrament is here, for
a sacrament must have the grace as well as the sign.
The same thing may be said of the Lord’s Supper;
people do not seem any the better for it after its re
ception ; a hungry man is satisfied after his supper,
and so shows that he has really received something,
but the spirit suffers as much from the hunger of
envy and the thirst of bad temper after the Lord’s
�The Church of England Catechism.
23
Supper as it did before. But why should the grace
be “inward,” and why is the soul thought of as
inside, the body, instead of all through and over it ?
There are few convenient hollows inside where it can
dwell, but people speak as though man were an
empty box, and the soul might live in it. The sacra
ment is “ a means whereby we receive the same, and
a pledge to assure us thereof.” God’s grace then can
be conveyed in the vehicles of water, bread, and wine;
it must surely, then, be something material, else how
can material things transmit it ? And God becomes
dependent on man to decide for him on whom the
grace shall be bestowed. Two infants are born into
the world; one of them is brought to church and is
baptized ; God may give that child his grace : the
other is left without baptism ; it is a child of wrath,
and God may not bless it. Thus is God governed by
the neglect of a poor, and very likely drunken, nurse,
and the recipients of his grace are chosen for him at
the caprice or carelessness of men. Strange, too, that
Christians who received God’s grace need “ a pledge to
assure ” them that they have really got it; how curi
ous that the recipient should not know that so preci
ous a gift has been bestowed upon him until he has
also been given a little bit of bread and a tiny sip of
wine. It is as though a queen’s messenger put into
one’s hand a hundred <£1000 notes, and then said
solemnly : “ Here is a farthing as a pledge to assure
you that you have really received the notes.” Would
not the notes themselves be the best assurance that
we had received them, and would not the grace of
God consciously possessed be its own best proof that
God had given it to us ? “ How many parts are
there in a sacrament ? Two ; the outward visible
sign, and the inward spiritual grace.” This is simply
a repetition of the previous question and answer, and
is entirely unnecessary.
“ What is the outward
visible sign, or form, in baptism ? Water; wherein
�24
The Church of England Catechism.
the person is baptized in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” This answer raises
the interesting question as to wrhether English Chris
tians—save the Baptists—are really baptized. They
are not baptized “ in,” but only “ with ” water.
The rubric directs that the minister “ shall dip it in
the water discreetly and warily,” and that only where
“ the child is weak it shall suffice to pour water upon
it.” It appears possible that the salvation of nearly
all the English people is in peril, since their baptism
is imperfect. The formula of baptism reminds us of
a curious difference in the baptism of the apostles from
the baptism in the triune name of God ; although
Jesus had, . according to Matthew, solemnly com
manded them to baptize with this formula, we find,
from the Acts, that they utterly disregarded his in
junction, and baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ,”
instead of in the name of “Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.” (See Acts ii. 38, viii. 16, x. 48, xix. 5, etc.)
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is, that
if the Acts be historical, Jesus never gave the com
mand put into his mouth in Matthew, but that it was
inserted later when such a formula became usual in
the Church. “ What is the inward and spiritual
grace ? A death unto sin, and a new birth unto
righteousness; for being by nature born in sin, and
the children of wrath, we are hereby made the chil
dren of grace.” What ? a baby die unto sin ? how
can it, when it is unconscious of sin, and therefore
cannot sin 1 “A new birth unto righteousness ? ” but
it is only just born, surely there can be no need that
it should be born over again so soon ? And if it be
true that this is the inward grace given, would it not
be well—as did many in the early Church—to put off
the ceremony of baptism until the last moment, so
that the dying man, being baptized, may die to all
the sins he has committed during life, and be born
again into spiritual babyhood, fit to go straight into
�The Church of England Catechism.
25
heaven ? It seems a needless cruelty to baptize
infants, and so deprive them of the chance of getting
rid of all their life sins in a lump later on. This is
not the only objection to baptism. Bentham power
fully urges what has often been pressed :—
“Note well the sort of story that is here told. The
Almighty God,—maker of all things, visible and 1 in
visible,’-—‘ of heaven and earth, and all that therein
is,’—makes, amongst other things, a child : and no
sooner has he made it, than he is ‘ wrath ’ with it for
being made. He determines accordingly to consign it
to a state of endless torture. Meantime comes some
body,—and pronouncing certain words, applies the
child to a quantity of water, or a quantity of water to
the child. Moved by these words, the all-wise Being
changes his design; and, though he is not so far
appeased as to give the child its pardon, vouchsafes
to it a chance,—no one can say what chance,—of
ultimate escape. And this is what the child gets by
being ‘ made ’—and we see in what way made—
‘ a child of grace.’ ”
“ What is required of persons to be baptised 1
Repentance, whereby they forsake sin; and Faith,
whereby they steadfastly believe the promises of God
made to them in that Sacrament. Why then are
infants baptised when by reason of their tender age
they cannot perform them ? [Why, indeed !] Be
cause they promise them both by their sureties, which
promise, when they come to age, themselves are bound
to perform.” Surely it would be better if these
things are “ required ” before baptism, to put off
baptism until repentance and faith become possible,
instead of going through it like a play, where people
act their parts and represent somebody else. For
suppose the child for whom repentance and faith are
promised does not, when he conies to full age, either
repent of his sins or believe God’s promises, what be
comes of the inward and spiritual grace ? It must
�26
The Church of England Catechism.
either have been given, or not have been given; if the
former, the unrepentant and unbelieving person has
got it on the faith of his sureties’ promises for him;
if the latter, God has not given the grace promised in
Holy Baptism, and his promises are therefore un
reliable in all cases.
“Why was the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
ordained 1 For the continual remembrance of the
sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits
which we receive thereby.” What very bad memories
Christians must have ! God has come down from
heaven on purpose to die for them, and they cannot
remember it without eating and drinking in memory
of it. The child is then taught that the outward part
in the Lord’s Supper is bread and wine, and that the
inward part is “ The Body and Blood of Christ,
which are verily and indeed taken and received by the
faithful in the Lord’s Supper,” the body and blood
nourishing the soul, as the bread and wine do the
body. If the body and blood convey as infinitesimal
an amount of nourishment to the soul as the small
portions of bread and wine do to the body, the soul
must suffer much from spiritual hunger. But how do
they nourish the soul ? The body and blood must be
somehow in the bread and wine, and how is it
managed that one part shall nourish the soul while
the rest goes to the body ? “verily and indeed taken
and received.” From the eager protestation one would
imagine that there must be some doubt about it, and
that there might be some question as to whether the
invisible and intangible thing were really and truly
taken. It needs but little insight to see how woefully
confusing it must be to an intelligent child to teach
him that bread and wine are only bread and wine one
minute and the next are Christ’s body and blood as
well, although none of his senses can distinguish the
smallest change in them. Such instruction will, if it
has any effect on his mind, incline him to take every
�The Church of England Catechism.
assertion on trust, without, and even contrary to,
reason and experiment; it lays the basis of all super
stition, by teaching belief in what is not susceptible
of proof.
“ What is required of them who come to the Lord’s
supper ? To examine themselves, whether they repent
them truly of their former sins, steadfastly purposing
to lead a new life; have a lively faith in God’s mercy
through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of his
death; and be in charity with all men.” It is the
custom in many churches now to have weekly, and in
some to have daily, communion; can the communi
cants who attend these steadfastly purpose to lead a
new life every time ? and how many “ former sins ”
are they as continually repenting of ? Here we find
the overstrained piety which throughout disfigures the
Prayer Book; people are moaning about their sins,
and crying over their falls, and resolving to mend
their ways, and vowing they will lead new lives, and
the next time one sees them they are once more pro
claiming themselves to be as miserable sinners as
ever. How weary the Holy Ghost must get of sancti
fying them.
Such is the Catechism that “ The curate of every
parish shall diligently upon Sundays and Holy Days,
after the second lesson at evening prayer, openly in
the Church ” teach to the children sent to him, and
which “ all fathers, mothers, masters, and dames shall
cause their children, servants, and apprentices (which
have not learned their Catechism) to come to the
Church at the time appointed,” in order to learn;
such is the nourishment provided by the Church for
her lambs; such is the teaching she offers to the
rising generation. Thus, before they are able to
think, she moulds the thinking-machine ; thus, before
they are able to judge, she biasses the judgment;
thus, from children puzzled and bewildered she hopes
to make men and women supple to her teaching, and
�28
The Church of England Catechism.
out of the Catechism she winds round the children’s
brains, she forges the chain of creeds which fetters the
intellect of the full-grown members of her com
munion.
TURNBULL & SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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The Church of England catechism
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Besant, Annie Wood
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 28 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Published anonymously. Author is Annie Besant. Attribution 'My Path to Atheism'. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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1876
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CT189
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The Church of England catechism), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Church of England
Catechisms
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Conway Tracts