Theological Essays and Other Papers, vol 1

Theological Essays and Other
Papers, vol 1

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v1
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Title: Theological Essays and Other Papers v1
Author: Thomas de Quincey
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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS.
BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY
AUTHOR OF
'CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,' ETC. ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT
PROTESTANTISM
ON THE SUPPOSED SCRIPTURAL EXPRESSION FOR
ETERNITY
JUDAS ISCARIOT
ON HUME'S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES
CASUISTRY
GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS

ON CHRISTIANITY, AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL
MOVEMENT.
[1846.]
FORCES, which are illimitable in their compass of effect, are often, for
the same reason, obscure and untraceable in the steps of their
movement. Growth, for instance, animal or vegetable, what eye can

arrest its eternal increments? The hour-hand of a watch, who can detect
the separate fluxions of its advance? Judging by the past, and the
change which is registered between that and the present, we know that
it must be awake; judging by the immediate appearances, we should
say that it was always asleep. Gravitation, again, that works without
holiday for ever, and searches every corner of the universe, what
intellect can follow it to its fountains? And yet, shyer than gravitation,
less to be counted than the fluxions of sun-dials, stealthier than the
growth of a forest, are the footsteps of Christianity amongst the
political workings of man. Nothing, that the heart of man values, is so
secret; nothing is so potent.
It is because Christianity works so secretly, that it works so potently; it
is because Christianity burrows and hides itself, that it towers above the
clouds; and hence partly it is that its working comes to be
misapprehended, or even lost out of sight. It is dark to eyes touched
with the films of human frailty: but it is 'dark with excessive
bright.'[Footnote: 'Dark with excessive bright.' Paradise Lost. Book III.]
Hence it has happened sometimes that minds of the highest order have
entered into enmity with the Christian faith, have arraigned it as a curse
to man, and have fought against it even upon Christian impulses,
(impulses of benignity that could not have had a birth except in
Christianity.) All comes from the labyrinthine intricacy in which the
social action of Christianity involves itself to the eye of a contemporary.
Simplicity the most absolute is reconcilable with intricacy the most
elaborate. The weather--how simple would appear the laws of its
oscillations, if we stood at their centre! and yet, because we do not, to
this hour the weather is a mystery. Human health--how transparent is
its economy under ordinary circumstances! abstinence and cleanliness,
labor and rest, these simple laws, observed in just proportions, laws that
may be engrossed upon a finger nail, are sufficient, on the whole, to
maintain the equilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once that
equilibrium is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough
to rectify the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of
planetary motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be
convinced that the distortion is in the eye which beholds, not in the
object beheld. Let a planet be wheeling with heavenly science, upon
arches of divine geometry: suddenly, to us, it shall appear

unaccountably retrograde; flying when none pursues; and unweaving
its own work. Let this planet in its utmost elongations travel out of
sight, and for us its course will become incoherent: because our sight is
feeble, the beautiful curve of the planet shall be dislocated into
segments, by a parenthesis of darkness; because