402. Thumbscrews or Toleration

Thumbscrews or Toleration

Luk_9:55 : ’93Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.’94

Christ said this to John and James, who were very mad, and wanted the Samaritans struck with lightning because they differed on some religious matters. John and James thought they were doing a good thing; but Christ turns their heart inside out, and says to them: ’93You think you are serving me by this intolerance against those Samaritans: you are mistaken. Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.’94

There have been blundering instruments of torture in all ages, but the thumbscrew is comparatively delicate, and belongs to the fine art of persecution. Lord Claverhouse’92s men called it ’93a nosegay.’94 You could carry it in the pocket, and all unobserved. This instrument of torture was put upon the thumb, and sometimes, not always, changed a man’92s opinion. The screw was turned once on the thumb, and the man would begin to think: ’93Well, after all, I may be wrong.’94 A second turn of the screw, and he thought: ’93Well, perhaps my antagonists may be right.’94 The third turn of the screw, and the man cried out: ’93Stop! stop! I think just as you do.’94 Then the thumbscrew was unloosened.

There are those who suppose that this instrument of torture belonged to the dark ages between Charlemagne and Hildebrand. No. It belongs to all ages, to all denominations’97Protestants and Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians. The instrument works as lively now as it ever did. In other words, in all ages there is abroad in the Church of God the spirit which seems to say: ’93Do as I do, think as I think, or you will have to suffer.’94 It cannot kill you. Oh no! the thumbscrew never killed anybody, but it will pinch you, and twist you until you are tempted to surrender.

The Methodist Church says: ’93Believe as I do on the subject of lay delegation.’94 A Methodist looks up and says: ’93I cannot quite adopt that theory.’94 On with the Methodist thumbscrew. The Episcopal Church says: ’93Believe as I do on the subject of baptismal regeneration.’94 An Episcopalian looks up and says: ’93I cannot quite adopt that theory.’94 On with the Episcopalian thumbscrew. The Baptist Church says: ’93Believe as I do on the subject of close communion.’94 A Baptist looks up and says: ’93I cannot quite adopt that theory.’94 On with the Baptist thumbscrew. The Presbyterian Church says: ’93Believe as I do against woman’92s preaching, and against all new styles of Christian work.’94 A Presbyterian looks up and says: ’93I do not see any particular harm in woman’92s preaching, and I think sometimes new modes of Christian work may be salutary.’94 On with the Presbyterian thumbscrew. In other words, in all councils, in all conferences, in all associations, in all presbyteries all the world over, there are men who, figuratively speaking, believe in the thumbscrew. You say: ’93I do not see it.’94 Ah! that is the beauty of the thumbscrew: you carry it all unobserved. I know men who would make splendid Herods, Ahabs, Neros and Robespierres. They have all the spirit of social, political and ecclesiastical tyranny, and are only waiting for some opportunity to display it. If they had the courage and the chance they would stir you up with pitchforks, and take you with red-hot tongs, and give you a course of Torquemada.

Now, mind you, I am not speaking of anybody, in any particular council, or association. Some people are all the time disposed to apply things to themselves. I make no such application. I am talking on general principles. There are in all denominations today, young ministers, and middle-aged ministers, and old ministers who are by ecclesiastical authority held in terrorem. That is Latin. We sometimes use in the pulpit Latin, to show how much we know. It gives one more authority. We seem to speak ex-cathedra. There is more Latin. But as I like my mother-tongue a little the better, I will say there are in all denominations Protestant inquisitors, who practically say: ’93Do as I do, say as I say; when I get up, you get up; when I sit down, you sit down; when I smile, you smile; when I frown, you frown; vote as I vote, or be decapitated.’94 And if a minister of any idiosyncrasy halts in his obedience, off goes his head ecclesiastically. If he be in the Methodist Church his antagonists will try to get the bishop to sit down on him, and freeze him out by appointing him to some insignificant station on a small salary. If he be in the Baptist Church his antagonists will try to have him expelled from the association, or will cough him down when he is reading his essay. If he be in the Congregationalist Church they will call a Council and will not invite him. If he be in the Presbyterian Church they will try to grind him up between the Book of Discipline and Westminster Assembly Catechism. Thumbscrews! Thumbscrews!

There are those who have supposed that the Catholic Church has a monopoly of persecution. It is a great mistake. Rev. Mr. Mather, a Protestant minister of Boston, advocated the burning of people who were suspected of bewitching others, or supposed to be witches. Who burned the Quakers? Protestants. Servetus wrote books offensive to Protestants and was burned to death, and ’93Appleton’92s Encyclopedia’94 says John Calvin sanctioned the awful tragedy. And in all ages of the Church, thumbscrew.

I have been waiting for some minister of an evangelical denomination to preach a sermon of emancipation. There are thousands of ministers in the different denominations in this country who are ready for a rallying word. They are so situated that if they move they are in danger of being squelched. To-day, in the name of God, I sound the knell of ecclesiastical tyranny, and bid all denominations who are attempting to be free, rejoice. Stay where you are in your denomination, and fight this battle of liberty. Do not cross over from the Methodist to the Baptist, or from Baptist to Episcopacy, or from Episcopacy to Presbyterianism; for in all denominations there are men who are antagonistic to religious freedom.

I stayed in the Presbyterian Church, among other good reasons, because I had received many letters from clergymen saying, ’93Stand firmly where you are. You represent those of us who are tired of painful espionage and ecclesiastical tyranny;’94 and I felt I was fighting not only my battle, but the battle of three-fourths of the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, who are tired of the tutelage, and the bombardment, and the unfair interpretation to which they have been subjected. What we want in all our denominations is the banding together of live men who are opposed to this ecclesiastical tyranny, which would repress all the juvenescence of the Church, and which looks askant at any mode different from their own. What we want is a Stonewall Jackson’92s raid, or a Sherman’92s march through the heart of Protestant popedom, to see how quickly it will break up and scatter. I am not so much opposed to one Pope, if he be a good man, as I am opposed to these hundreds of little popes all over Protestantism, two, or three, or four of them in every ecclesiastical court of every denomination in the United States’97Methodist popes, Baptist popes, Episcopalian popes, Lutheran popes, Congregational popes, Presbyterian popes; and I will say that, in this country, it takes the least timber to make a pope of any country in the world. Oh! let us have a grand and glorious equality of the clergy’97young ministers and old ministers, doctorated and untitled, pastors and evangelists, surpliced and plain-coated, no one lording it over God’92s heritage. Nearly all the ecclesiastical battles of this day are wars which ecclesiastical sticklers are making, to keep their own power. They have had it so long they cannot bear to give it up.

It is too late in the history of the world to turn the wheel of progress backward. The Declaration of American Independence, and the English Magna Charta, and Abraham Lincoln’92s proclamation, and Paul’92s epistle about the liberty of the sons of God, have had too wide a circulation for any such attempt to succeed. The State free, let the Church be free. The great cry, cisatlantic and transatlantic, is: ’93Down with tyrants, whether on throne or pulpit.’94 St. John counted twelve gates into heaven; but there are small-souled ecclesiastics who want us all to go in through one augerhole, and that of their own boring! Now, my friends, you can go in any of the twelve gates; I do not care which, if you only get in. There are ecclesiastics who would decide everything about the ministry’97the color of the cravat, the number of buttons on the front of the coat, and on what side a man shall part his hair. Now, my young minister, do as you please. Have your cravat white, black, striped, or brindled. Part your hair on the north side, or the south side, or at the equator. There ought to be enough room in all our denominations to let a man turn round and exercise his own individual taste, and if they be natural to him, indulge a few eccentricities.

Spring is coming, and the ecclesiastical courts of all denominations will gather for annual business. Let those men who have a large heart and high purpose go and take the positions of influence and power. Because you are young, that is nothing against you. You will get over that, if you live long enough! Old-time flails, old-time ploughs, old-time horse-rakes, have been superseded by the modern thresher and steam plough, and the old modes of work are to be superseded by something more alert, more spirited, and more progressive. The sermons, the prayers, the styles of Christian work appropriate a hundred years ago, are no more fit for this age than the canal-boat is fit to carry passengers to Boston or Buffalo. Give me the lightning express train, sixty miles an hour, stopping for nothing but coal and water.

There are ecclesiastics in this day who are trying to stop the age, saying, ’93It is going too fast;’94 and they throw a block in front of this wheel, and a block in front of that wheel, and try to pull the coachman off the driver’92s box. You cannot stop the age. The only way to do is to keep up with it, and get on the box beside the driver, and help him control the ten galloping coursers. In the harness of the Church at this day there is too much breeching strap and not enough traces, too much provision to hold back, not enough provision to pull ahead. More liberty in the Christian Church. The command which the general gave in the battle is appropriate now all over Christendom: ’93Forward, the whole line!’94

’93But,’94 says some one, ’93would you not curb fanaticism?’94 Why, my brother, fanaticism dies of itself, if it is mischievous, but the Church wants it if it is good. Almost every reform has been started by men whom the inert denounced as fanatics. Real fanaticism never lasts more than five or ten years. Robert Hall, in his ’93Essay on Toleration,’94 says most tersely, ’93Nothing that is violent lasts long,’94 and you and I know as well as Robert Hall that anything that is not wisely Christian has in it elements of destruction; but if a thing be of God, caricature it, denounce it, vote against it, legislate against it’97but you might as well try to abolish the eternities.

I declare now, and especially to young ministers, intolerance never put anything down; it puts it up. What has intolerance done in the Presbyterian Church? It took Albert Barnes from his pulpit in Philadelphia, and made him sit one year in silence in a pew in his own church hearing others preach, he not allowed to preach because one of his statements of doctrine differed a little from somebody else’92s statement. A few weeks ago I got hold of one of the volumes containing the speeches of his bitter antagonists, showing how that Albert Barnes was not fit for the Presbyterian ministry, or any other ministry, showing that the existence of everything good depended upon the disgrace and expulsion of Albert Barnes, showing that he was a perjurer, for he had broken the vows of the Church. So they said. Synod cast him out; but General Assembly took him back. Where are the men who put the thumbscrews on Albert Barnes? I can think of only the name of one, and not a word he ever wrote or said will be remembered; while Albert Barnes’92 commentaries are in the hands of Sunday-school teachers, and ministers of the Gospel, and private Christians wherever the English language is written or spoken; and so many souls blessed by his ministry had preceded him into glory, that I think the good old man must have had hard work to crowd into heaven because of the multitude that came out on the shining wharf to greet him. The thumbscrews on Albert Barnes did not destroy him.

The same intolerance was tried with Dr. Beaman, of Troy, his name a benediction. He sat down for day after day, and week after week, in Presbytery, a thumbscrew on that hand and a thumbscrew on the other hand. He had committed an awful crime. What was the crime? He had allowed Mr. Finney to preach for him. Where are those who put on the thumbscrews? I do not know where they are; but Dr. Beaman’92s name will be held in everlasting remembrance. Charles G. Finney, persecuted at Rochester, at Utica, at Buffalo, at Boston, at New York. A thumbscrew on each hand year after year. What had he done? He had done something awful. As near as I can understand, he had been the means of saving more souls than any man of his age. That was his crime. And I remember clear back into my boyhood hearing what a bad man Charles G. Finney was. Was he to be put down by intolerance? Ask the Oberlin University, now standing the monument of his holy industry. Ask the tens of thousands of souls on earth and in heaven saved by that man’92s glorious life and work, whether Charles G. Finney was to be destroyed by the thumbscrews. Intolerance never put anything down.

Did the thumbscrew destroy the Baptist Church? If laughing scorn, if tirade and denunciation, could have destroyed that Church, it would not have had a disciple today. Rev. Leonard Bernkop, a Baptist minister, burned at Salzburg because he was a Baptist, in his dying moment, saying, ’93I am roasted enough on that side; turn me over now; the fire don’92t hurt compared with the eternal glory.’94 Rev. Mr. James, a Baptist, because he was a Baptist, drawn on a hurdle from Newgate to Tyburn, his dead body lifted on the city gates, his head lifted on a pole, and set up in the front of the place where he used to preach. Rev. Obadiah Holmes, a Baptist minister, and because he was a Baptist publicly whipped, and two men coming up and shaking hands with him, they got whipped, and the surgeon who dressed his wounds pursued as a criminal. Four hundred Baptists put to death in Flanders and Holland because they were Baptists. Even Richard Baxter lost his balance on the subject, and he said that the Baptists were as bad as murderers because they put people under water and they caught their death of cold! He wrote these words: ’93The ordinary practice of baptizing overhead and in cold water, as necessary, is a plain breach of the sixth commandment. Therefore, it is not an ordinance of God, but a heinous sin; and as Mr. Craddock shows in his book of Gospel liberty, the magistrate ought to restrain it to save the lives of his subjects. In a word, it is good for nothing but to despatch men out of the world that are burdensome, and to ranken churchyards. I conclude, if murder be a sin, then dipping ordinarily overhead in England is a sin; and if those who make it men’92s religion to murder themselves and urge it upon their conscience as their duty, are not to be suffered in a commonwealth any more than highway murderers, then judge how these Anabaptists that teach the necessity of such dipping are to be suffered.’94 One would suppose that Baxter himself had felt the twist of the thumbscrew enough to make him a little tolerant of antagonists, or those who, not antagonists at all, only thought a little differently. In New England the Baptists were persecuted. They were driven out of Boston, and it is a matter of Church history, that after a man had been baptized by immersion, weeks having gone by, and his death occurring, the officiating clergyman was thrown into prison and indicted for murder. Thumbscrews! Thumbscrews!

England persecuted the Jews. England, by law, said no Jew should hold any official power in the realm. England thrust back the Jew, and thrust down the Jew. Who was one of the most popular Prime Ministers? Who rose to be next to Queen Victoria in power? Who became higher than the throne, became its adviser and counselor? Disraeli, the Jew. Intolerance never put down anything; it puts it up.

Not only has this spirit failed to do the work it proposed, but there are so many illustrations of the fact that the thumbscrew is to be found in Protestantism, as well as Catholicism, that I am impressed to know which of many authorities to present. John Milton wrote of his enemies as follows, praying for their destruction: ’93After a shameful end of this life, which God grant them, they shall be thrust down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where under the despiteful control, the trampled and spurned of all the other damned that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight forever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most under foot and downtrodden vassals of perdition.’94 Thumbscrews! One would have supposed that Milton had felt enough of the twist of that instrument of torture to have been very tolerant of those who differed from him.

Martin Luther, who suffered so much himself, wrote as follows: ’93What a pleasing sight it would be to see the Pope and the Cardinals hanging on one gallows in exact order, like the seals which dangle from the bulls of the Pope! The Papists are all asses, and always will remain asses. Put them in whatever sauce you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, skinned, beat, hashed, they are always the same asses.’94 Thumbscrews! Thumbscrews!

O my friends I from what I have been saying, you are persuaded that intolerance never puts anything down, but puts it up. If you find things in ecclesiastical matters that are wrong, argue against them, reason against them; but do not bring threat, or violence, or anything that can be mistaken for the thumbscrew. I am not afraid to trust the people. Put in their hand a free Bible. Give them a free pulpit, give them a free church, a free ballot, a free conscience, and a free heaven. Here we are in the evening of the nineteenth century, in a land where religious liberty is to correspond, or ought to correspond, with civil liberty. Between these two oceans in our day, or the day of our children, is to be demonstrated what a man may be if his religion is unmolested.

The cradle of the human race was the Tigro-Euphrates basin. The cradle of its regeneration will be this continent, I think. Why not Great Britain and Ireland? Their area is too small. Why not the continent of Europe? Too many nationalities to be unified. Why not Asia or Africa? Their climates are unpropitious. Here in America, I believe, the work is to begin. Plenty of room. Enough rigors in our climate to energize the people, and enough of the balsamic to make everything genial. No earthquakes worth speaking of. No famine. A race, a stalwart race, made out of all the other races.

There are many Christian people who think that Christ will come to the earth again and reign person-ally. I am not ready to reject or adopt that theory; but if Christ does come to our world again, I believe he will find a Mount Zion in this land, and will set up his throne between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, and will walk the streets of our American cities. Would that the heavens might open today and our glorious Lord descend to take possession of this continent! How we would rush out from our churches to greet him, and with clanging bells and thundering cannonade celebrate his arrival! In what millennial day there will be one denomination of Christians far ahead of all others if it have not swallowed them all up. Would you like to know what denomination it will be? I will tell you. It will be that denomition which has worked the hardest, trusted the fullest, loved the mightiest, and eclipsed all others in the spirit of Christian toleration. No thumbscrews in the millennium.

Sure as Thy truth shall last,

To Zion shall be given

The brightest glories earth can yield,

And brighter bliss of heaven.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage