Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/332

Rh called by a Christian name. That divine man, whose name is ploughed into the world, said, If a man smite the one cheek, turn the other; but if a man lifted his hand or his voice against the Church,—it blasted him with damnation and hell. Christ said his kingdom was not of this world; so said the Church at first, and Christians refused to war, to testify in the courts, to appear in the theatres, and foul their hands with the world's sin. But soon as there was an organized priesthood, to defend themselves from the tyranny of the State, to exercise authority over the souls of men, power on the earth became needed. One lie leads to many. What the Church first took in self-defence it afterwards clung to and increased, and was so taken up with its earthly kingdom, it quite forgot its patrimony in Heaven; so it played a double game, attempting to serve God, and keep on good terms with the Devil. But it was once said, “no man can serve two masters.” Unnatural, spiritual power could not be held without temporal authority to sustain it; so the Church took fleshly weapons for its carnal ends. Monks raised armies; Bishops led them; God was blasphemed by prayers to aid bloodshed. The Church sold her garment to buy a sword.

The Church was the exclusive vicar of God; she must have “the tonnage and poundage of all freespoken truth.” To accomplish this end and establish her dogmas, she slew men, beginning with Priscillian and “the six Gnostics,” in the fourth century, at Triers, and ending no one knows where, or when, or with whom. It had such zeal for the “unity of the faith,” that it put prophets in chains; asked the sons of God if they were “greater than Jacob.” It made Belief take the place of Life. It absolved men of their sins, past, present, and future. Emancipated the clergy from the secular law, thus giving them license to sin. It sold heaven to extortioners for a little gold, and built St Peter's with the spoil. It wrung ill-gotten gains out of tyrants on their death-bed; devoured the houses of widows and the weak; built its cathedrals out of the spoil