It remains uncertain whence derives my contempt for religion. Of late its pinnacle is The Age of Reason, a theological work by Thomas Paine (published 1794–1807).
It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a deistic revival. British audiences, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. In The Age of Reason, he promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator god.
Most of Paine’s arguments had long been available to the educated elite but by presenting them in an engaging and irreverent style, he made deism appealing and accessible to the masses. Originally distributed as unbound pamphlets, the book was also cheap, putting it within the reach of a large number of buyers. Fearing the spread of what it viewed as potentially-revolutionary ideas, the British government prosecuted printers and booksellers who tried to publish and distribute it. Nevertheless, Paine’s work inspired and guided many free thinkers.
My scorn hasn’t always been so clinical. Nor have I by any measure been always profanus (the term profane originates from classical Latin profanus, literally “before (outside) the temple”, “pro” being outside and “fanum” being temple or sanctuary). Indeed in what no doubt appears to be at best a paradox (or at most a bigotry) I have long cooperated in the machinations of popular religion. In my defence however the schemes and stratagems were not without a degree of intentional witticism such as when I asked our new rector at St. Paul’s Anglican Church (of which I was then a Warden) what time his first show began on Sunday morning. Though my wit was not fully embraced it was nonetheless strengthened the following Sunday morning when I heard the minister from the pulpit curiously lapse into an altered rendition of the English language replete with metaphors and wishful assertions betraying a biblical composition of yore.
Recently I’ve been reading Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 5-volume tome about the history of England. Though Macaulay was careful to disguise his overt distrust of the church (he was after all intent upon creating an historical myth), it doesn’t require extraordinary perspicuity to decipher his meaning or allegiance. Besides his overriding conclusion is the supremacy of the monarchy and the Church of England as social institutions quite apart from any political, legal or religious toxicity.
While that demulcent innuendo is no longer entirely persuasive, I continue to subscribe to the magnificence of liturgical music including in particular that of Thomas Tallis, George Frideric Handel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, all of which I find succeeds as sufficiently or more so than ritual to accomplish the benefit of religion overall (and all without construction of a foundation).
It was known that he (King William) was so profane as to sneer at a practice which had been sanctioned by high ecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching for the scrofula.
Scrofula is a swelling of the lymph nodes in your neck caused by a bacterial infection. It can cause a large, matted mass on your neck from several lymph nodes fusing together. It’s usually painless or only slightly tender. It can be discolored, purplish or the same color as your skin.
This ceremony had come down almost unaltered from the darkest of the dark ages to the time of Newton and Locke. The Stuarts frequently dispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days on which this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish churches of the realm. When the appointed time came, several divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark was read. When the words, “They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover,” had been pronounced, there was a pause, and one of the sick was brought up to the King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the patient’s neck a white riband to which was fastened a gold coin.
The other sufferers were then led up in succession; and, as each was touched, the chaplain repeated the incantation, “they shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Then came the epistle, prayers, antiphonies and a benediction. The service may still be found in the prayer books of the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till some time after the accession of George the First that the University of Oxford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this mummery; and, what is stranger still, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, in the balsamic virtues of the royal hand.
We must suppose that every surgeon who attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill; and more than one of the surgeons who attended Charles the Second has left us a solemn profession of faith in the King’s miraculous power. One of them is not ashamed to tell us that the gift was communicated by the unction administered at the coronation; that the cures were so numerous and sometimes so rapid that they could not be attributed to any natural cause; that the failures were to be ascribed to want of faith on the part of the patients; that Charles once handled a scrofulous Quaker and made him a healthy man and a sound Churchman in a moment; that, if those who had been healed lost or sold the piece of gold which had been hung round their necks, the ulcers broke forth again, and could be removed only by a second touch and a second talisman.
We cannot wonder that, when men of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar should believe it. Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease over which natural remedies had no power should eagerly drink in tales of preternatural cures: for nothing is so credulous as misery.
The crowds which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense. Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons. The number seems to have increased or diminished as the king’s popularity rose or fell. During that Tory reaction which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, the press to get near him was terrific. In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred times. In 1684, the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, touched eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. The expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year, and would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royal surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to distinguish those who came for the cure from those who came for the gold.
William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture. “It is a silly superstition,” he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of the sick: “Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away.” On one single occasion he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient. “God give you better health,” he said, “and more sense.” The parents of scrofulous children cried out against his cruelty: bigots lifted up their hands and eyes in horror at his impiety: Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming to arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimate sovereigns; and even some Whigs thought that he acted unwisely in treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had a strong hold on the vulgar mind: but William was not to be moved, and was accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or a puritan.
Excerpt From
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 3
Thomas Babington Macaulay
King William and Queen Mary
