Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/276

Rh him what the Pope is to the Catholic. Some Protestant sects reject the Apocrypha as no part of the miraculous communication; some individual Protestants reject certain doubtful books of the Old Testament or the New; but all the little Protestant sects, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Nullitarian, and the three great Christian sects, the Greek, the Roman, and the Teutonic churches, agree in the assumption and in the deduction. By the same method the Roman gets his infallible Pope, and the Teuton his infallible Bible, the Trinitarian his trinity, the Unitarian his unity, the Damnationalist his eternal torment, and the Salvationist the redemption of all men. Now the Christian sects do not prove that the words they take as ultimate authority in matters of religion, are a divine, miraculous, and infallible communication from God; they do not prove this from facts of observation in the world without, or facts of consciousness within. That fact is assumed. In the' whole compass of theological literature there is no proof of the fact; there is no evidence which would lead an impartial jury to think for a moment that there was the shadow of a proof. There is no direct evidence adequate to prove it : there is no personal evidence—the testimony of known men, carefully collected together and tested; and there is no circumstantial evidence—the testimony of known things. It is assumption, and no more. It is thought wicked to doubt what none has ever proved, and what never can be proved.

From this assumption the theologians deduce certain doctrines, and read them as mysteries, revelations, commandments, resting on God, things which must not be questioned. If you reject them you are to be damned for ever.

Look at some of the most remarkable of these ecclesiastical doctrines thus deduced. I shall not take great religious or theological truths, such as the existence of God, the immorality of man, his dependence on God and accountability to Him; for these are facts of consciousness which are common to all forms of religion, in the enlightened, the civilized, the half-civilized, the barbarous, and even the savage state, and all of these have been demonstrated, it seems to me, till the argument for each can be analyzed into propositions, each of which is self-evident,