Prisoner for Blasphemy | Page 3

suggestion that could be
made. Several Unitarians were burnt in Elizabeth's reign, two were
burnt in the reign of James I., and one narrowly escaped hanging under
the Commonwealth. The whole body was excluded from the Toleration
Act of 1688, and included in the Blasphemy Act of William III. But
Unitarians have since yielded the place of danger to more advanced
bodies, and they may congratulate themselves on their safety; but to
make their own safety a reason for conniving at the persecution of
others is a depth of baseness which Dr. Blake Odgers has fathomed,
though happily without persuading the majority of his fellows to
descend to the same ignominy.
It will be observed that the Act specifies certain heterodox opinions as

blasphemous, and says nothing as to the language in which they may
be couched. Evidently the crime lay not in the manner, but in the
matter. The Common Law has always held the same view, and my
Indictment, like that of all my predecessors, charged me with bringing
the Holy Scriptures and the Christian religion "into disbelief and
contempt." With all respect to Lord Coleridge's authority, I cannot but
think that Sir James Stephen is right in maintaining that the crime of
blasphemy consists in the expression of certain opinions, and that it is
only an aggravation of the crime to express them in "offensive"
language.
Judge North, on my first trial, plainly told the jury that any denial of the
existence of Deity or of Providence was blasphemy; although on my
second trial, in order to procure a conviction, he narrowed his definition
to "any contumelious or profane scoffing at the Holy Scriptures or the
Christian religion." It is evident, therefore, what his lordship believes
the law to be. With a certain order of minds it is best to deal sharply;
their first statements are more likely to be true than their second. For
the rest, Judge North is unworthy of consideration. It is remarkable that,
although he charged the jury twice in my case, Sir James Stephen does
not regard his views as worth a mention.
Lord Coleridge says the law of blasphemy "is undoubtedly a
disagreeable law," and in my opinion he lets humanity get the better of
his legal judgment. He lays it down that "if the decencies of
controversy are observed, even the fundamentals of religion may be
attacked without a person being guilty of blasphemous libel."
Now such a decision can only be a stepping-stone to the abolition of
the law. Who can define "the decencies of controversy?" Everyone has
his own criterion in such matters, which is usually unconscious and
fluctuating. What shocks one man pleases another. Does not the
proverb say that one man's meat is another man's poison? Lord
Coleridge reduces Blasphemy to a matter of taste, and de gustibus non
est disputandum. According to this view, the prosecution has simply to
put any heretical work into the hands of a jury, and say, "Gentlemen, do
you like that? If you do, the prisoner is innocent; if you do not, you
must find him guilty." Such a law puts a rope round the neck of every
writer who soars above commonplace, or has any gift of wit or humor.
It hands over the discussion of all important topics to pedants and

blockheads, and bans the argumentum ad absurdum which has been
employed by all the great satirists from Aristophanes to Voltaire.
When Bishop South was reproached by an Episcopal brother for being
witty in the pulpit, he replied, "My dear brother in the Lord, do you
mean to say that if God had given you any wit you wouldn't have used
it?" Let Bishop South stand for the "blasphemer," and his dull brother
for the orthodox jury, and you have the moral at once.
"Such a law," says Sir James Stephen, "would never work." You cannot
really distinguish between substance and style; you must either forbid
or permit all attacks on Christianity. Great religious and political
changes are never made by calm and moderate language. Was any form
of Christianity ever substituted either for Paganism or any other form
of Christianity without heat, exaggeration, and fierce invective? Saint
Augustine ridiculed one of the Roman gods in grossly indecent
language. Men cannot discuss doctrines like eternal punishment as they
do questions in philology. And "to say that you may discuss the truth of
religion, but that you may not hold up its doctrines to contempt,
ridicule, or indignation, is either to take away with one hand what you
concede with the other, or to confine the discussion to a small and in
many ways uninfluential class of persons." Besides, Sir James Stephen
says,
"There is one reflection which seems to me to prove with conclusive
force that the law upon this