Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers

CHARLES BLOUNT

Look with me through the dark vista of 150 years of clouded history. Throw your mind across the bridge of time, for we are about to visit a tragic scene – a scene which might be depicted by a poet – so much of beauty, of truth, and of goodness, all blasted by the perjuries of the priest. Yonder, in the dim library of an ancestral mansion, embowered amid the woods of the south, close by the gurgling waters which beat an echo to the stormy breezes – those breezes which will never more fan his cheek – that water where he has often bathed his limbs will be his rippling monument. The shady moonlight of an August evening is gilding the rich pastures of Hertfordshire; the gorse bushes have not yet lost their beauty, the pheasants are playing in the woods – woods that so lately resounded with laughter – laughter ringing like a bell – the music of a merry heart. Withdraw those curtains which hide the heart-struck and the dead. Above you is the exquisite picture of Eleanora, gazing into the very bed at that form which lay shrouded in nothingness. You see the broad manly brow – even now the brown hair rises in graceful curls over that damp forehead. The lips are locked in an eternal smile, as if to mock the closed eyes and the recumbent form. Is it true that pictures of those we love are endowed with a clairvoyant power of gazing at those who have caressed them in life? If it is, then on that August night the wife of Charles Blount was watching over his bier.

But who is that pale form, with dishevelled hair and weeping eyes, with an alabaster skin stained with the blue spots of grief? The rapid upheaving swells of that fair bosom tell of affection withered, not by remorse, but by superstition? See her how she nervously grasps that dead man's hand, how she imprints kisses on his lips! Her hair, which yesterday was glossy as the raven's, is now as bleached as the driven snow; to-day she utters her plaintive cries, to-morrow she hastens to join her lover in the tomb. This is a sad history. It should be written with the juice of hemlock, as a warning to Genius of impatient love.

While the fair girl watches by the couch of the suicide, while from the painted canvass Eleanora gleams on the living and the dead, while the clouds of night gather silently over that ancestral hall, around the drooping corn on the bold sloping park, and the clear blue river – all so quiet and gentle – let us gather up the events of the past, and learn the cause of a death so tragic, a grief so piercing.

In the year 1672, at the age of nineteen years, a young man (the son of a baronet) led to the altar the lovely daughter of Sir Timothy Tyrrel. Flowers strewed the path of the wedded pair, and for years their life was one scene of bliss. At last, struck down by disease, Charles Blount stood by the side of his dying wife – in his arms his Eleanora yielded her last sigh. He buried her by the willow-tree in the old churchyard. The lily blended with the white rose, and the myrtle overshadowed the grave. It was here where the widower rested in the evening – here where he taught his children the virtues of their dead mother. Sometimes he gazed at the azure skies, and strange fancies beguiled the mind of the mourner. When he saw the sun sink to the west, gilding the world with its glorious rays, he mused on the creeds of many lands. He fancied he saw a heaven and a God, and traced in the lines of light the patriarchal worshippers of the world. He looked at the sun and its worshippers – those who sought the origin of purity by worshipping that which is the origin of all good. He looked at the fables of Greece, and found delight in the thought of Sappho uttering her diapason of joy in lyrics which told of love and beauty; at Egypt, where the priests, in their esoteric cunning, searched in vain for that which gives life, and motion, and joy; and then he glanced at the Christian heaven, but here all was dark – dark as the Plutonian caverns of Homer's hell. He wished to meet his Eleanora – not in Pagan dreams – not in Christian parables – but in the world of realities. He looked with eager eyes upon the world around him, in society, at Court, and, in the homes of his country. But wherever he went, there was but one thought – one feeling. He wished a mother for his children – a mother like the sainted dead. There was but one who answered the ideal – like in features, in passion, and in beauty – to the lost Eleanora. Born of the same parents, loved by the same brother, educated by the same teachers, imbued with the same thoughts, she was the model of her dead sister; with a sisterly love for her brother, she was already both mother and aunt to her sister's children.

With deliberate thoughts, with convulsive passion, the love of Charles Blount passed the bounds of that of a brother; longing to make her his wife, he adored her with the passion he had lavished on the dead. It seemed as if the shade of Eleanora was perpetually prompting him to bestow all his affection on the young and beautiful Eliza. She caressed his children with the pride of an aunt, she traced the image of her sister in the laughing eyes of the merry babes – still she was not happy. How could she be happy? She loved him as a man – as a brother. She was a Christian – he an Infidel. She was bound by creeds – he by conduct. She was doing the duty she owed to the dead. He sought to do it by uniting himself to the living. Eliza was anxious to marry, but there existed something which, to her mind, was greater than human duties, and it often outraged them. God and the Church demanded her first attention, and then her lover and his children. The Church, in cruel mockery of human rights, stepped between her judgment and her affections. It denied the power of a woman to occupy the married home of her deceased sister. She was willing to pledge her love to Charles Blount at the altar, but the priest mocked her prayers and denounced her affections. The occasion was too good to be lost. Episcopalism sought revenge on its opponent, and it triumphed. Eliza felt the force of Blount's arguments. She wandered with him through the green fields, but her sorrow was too great to pluck the wild roses. The luscious fruits of summer were passed untasted. A heart sick and in trouble, a mind wandering from her sister's grave to her children, and then at the anathema of the Church, made her a widowed maid. To overcome her scruples, her lover wrote a book (inviting the clergy to refute it,) defending the marriage with a deceased wife's sister. But ever as he spoke there was a film before her eyes. There was a gaunt priest, with canonical robes, stood before the gates of heaven. Before him and through him was the way to an eternal happiness, below him was a fiery hell; and he shouted with hoarse voice, Incest, incest, incest!– And ever as he shouted, he pointed with his finger of scorn at this Christian hell, and she conjured up in her mind the old stories of this priest, until she saw the livid flames rising up higher till they encircled her form, and then the priest screamed with fury, Anathema maranatha, incest, incest! And in terror she stood, with the big drops of sweat dripping from her brow, with her heart beating, with her mind distracted, but her affections unclouded.

This priest was the Church of England, and those fancies were driven into her imagination by her creed, her litanies, and her sermons. Eliza Tyrrel was miserable; she was placed between her love, her duty, and her religion. If she had been a woman of a strong mind, she would have torn her creed into shreds, she would have dared the anathema of the priest – the ostracism of its dupes – and would have clung to the man she loved so truly, in defiance of that which was, at the best, but a faint possibility.

The arguments in that pamphlet of Blount's were conclusive, but she distrusted reason. The plainest dictates of common logic were referred to the promptings of the Devil. How could it be otherwise? Can the teachings of a lifetime be overthrown by the courtship of a few months? Eliza Tyrrel, true to Blount, loved him; true to her religion, she durst not marry him without the sanction of the Church. So Blount, as a last resolve, laid the matter before the Lord's Vicegerent at Canterbury, and many of the most learned divines of England; and from those ecclesiastical leeches there was a Shylock cry of incest, incest, incest! And those terrible words came greeting the ears of Charles Blount, making his home like a charnel-house, and they nearly sent his beautiful Eliza to a maniac's grave. Still she lingered on. Denied the power of a wife, she would not relinquish her duties as a mother to her sister's babes. There was a calm heroism here which few can imitate. The passions of Blount could not brook further insults. The last kick of bigotry against the broken-hearted Freethinker was given. He could no longer rise with the lark, and roam over the hills of his ancestral home. To him the birds, as they warbled, spoke of joys never to return. The broad river told him of the days when the little skiff floated on its waters with Eleanora; and even his friends only too bitterly reminded him of the tournaments of wit where Hobbes, Brown, and Gildon, jousted each other in the presence of his wife. His life was one scene of misery. He saw no chance of amendment. In a fit of despair, he loaded his pistol with due deliberation, placed it to his head, and shot himself. He lingered for sometime, and then died on the breast of Eliza.

This was a strange suicide. Blount's memory bears its weight of obloquy. It is hard to draw the line when and where a man has a right to take away his life. Common sense tells us that so long as our families are dependent upon us, we have no right to end our lives; and if we have no dependents, no friends, then our country has a claim upon us. But, at the same time, the one sole end of existence is to be happy. If a man cannot find happiness in life, if there is a great coalition against him, he is justified in taking up arms against them; but, at the same time, it proves a greater amount of courage "to bear up against the ills of life" than to madly leave it, and thus weaken the force of those who wish to stem its injustice.

Charles Blount died, and with him expired much of the chivalry of Freethought. His friend, Charles Gil-don, writing of him to a lady, says, "You know Astrea (Eliza,) and have an exact friendship with her. You can attest her beauty, wit, honor, virtue, good humor, and discretion. You have been acquainted with the charms of her conversation and conduct, and condemn her, only adhering to a national custom to the loss of so generous a friend, and so faithful a lover. But custom and obedience meeting the more easily, betrayed her virtue into a crime. I know my friend loved her to his last breath; and I know, therefore, that all who love his memory must, for her sake, love and value her, as being a lady of that merit, that engaged the reason of Philander (C. Blount) to so violent a passion for her."

The same writer says, "His father was Sir Henry Blount, the Socrates of the age, for his aversions to the reigning sophisms and hypocrisies, eminent in all capacities: the best husband, father, and master, extremely agreeably in conversation, and just in all his dealings. From such a father our hero derived him self; to such a master owed his generous education, unmixed with the nauseous methods and profane opinions of the schools. Nature gave him parts capable of the noblest sciences, and his industrious studies bore a proportion to his capacities. He was a generous and constant friend, an indulgent parent, and a kind master. His temper was open and free; his conversation pleasant; his reflections just and modest; his repartees close – not scurrilous; he had a great deal of wit, and no malice. His mind was large and noble – above the little designs of most men; an enemy to dissimulation, and never feared to own his thoughts. He was a true Englishman, and lover of the liberties of his country, and declared it in the worst of times. He was an enemy to nothing but error, and none were his enemies that knew him, but those who sacrificed more to mammon than reason."

This was the man who died, because a dominant priesthood insisted on a dogma which interfered with a purely Secular rite, which blasted two hearts in a vain attempt to perpetuate a system, which dashes its rude fingers, and tears out the heart of human felicity to sprinkle the altar of superstition with the gore of offended innocence. Charles Blount was a Deist; as such, he believed in a God; which he described in his account of a Deist's religion. Let us examine his thoughts, and see if they bear the interpretation which Christianity has always placed upon them. Blount gives the Deist's opinion of God. He says, "Whatever is adorable, amiable, and imitable by mankind, is in one Supreme, perfect Being." An Atheist cannot object to this. He speaks in the manner in which God is to be worshipped. He says, not by sacrifice, or by a Mediator, but by a steady adherence to all that is great and good and imitable in nature. This is the brief religious creed of Charles Blount. He never seeks to find out fabled attributes of Deity. He knows what is of value to mankind, and sedulously practices whatever is beneficial to society.

In his "Anima Mundi, or, History of the Opinions of the Heathens on the Immortality of the Soul," (p. 97,) Blount says: —

"The heathen philosophers were much divided concerning the soul's future state; some held it mortal, others immortal. Of those who held the mortality of the soul, the Epicureans were the chief sect, who, notwithstanding their doctrines, led virtuous lives." Cardan had so great a value for their moral actions, that he appeared in justification of them. It appears (says he) "by the writings of Cicero, Diogenes, and Laertius, that the Epicureans did more religiously observe laws, piety, and fidelity among men than either the Stoics or the Platonists; and I suppose the cause thereof was, that a man is either good or evil by custom, but none confideth in those that do not possess sanctity of life. Wherefore they were compelled to use greater fidelity, thereby the better to justify their profession, from which reason it likewise proceeds, that at this day few do equal the fidelity of usurers, notwithstanding they are most base in the rest of their life. Also among the Jews, whilst the Pharisees, that confessed the resurrection and the immortality of the soul, frequently persecuted Christ, the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, angels, and spirits, meddled not with him above once or twice, and that very gently. Thus, if you compare the lives of Pliny and Seneca (not their writings,) you shall find Pliny, with his mortality of the soul, did as far exceed Seneca in honesty of manners, as Seneca excels him in religious discourse. The Epicureans observed honesty above others, and in their conversation were usually found inoffensive and virtuous, and for that reason were often employed by the Romans when they could persuade them to accept of great employs, for their fault was not any want of ability or honesty, but their general desire of leading a private life of ease, and free from trouble, although inglorious. For when immortality is not owned, there can be no ambition of posthumous glory.

"The Epicureans, instead of those bloody scenes of gallantry (which tyrants applaud,) undertook to manage carefully the inheritance of orphans; bringing up, at their own charge, the children of their deceased friends, and were counted good men, unless it were in front of religious worship; for they constantly affirmed that there were no Gods, or, at least, such as concerned themselves with human affairs, according to the poets. Neither doth the hope of immortality conduce to fortitude, as some vainly suggest, for Brutus was not more valiant than Cassius; and if we will confess the truth, the deeds of Brutus were more cruel than those of Cassius; for he used the Rhodians, who were his enemies, far more kindly than Brutus did those amicable cities which he governed. In a word, though they both, had a hand in Cæsar's murder, yet Brutus was the only parricide. So that the Stoics, which believed a Providence, lived as if there were none; whereas the Epicureans, who denied it, lived as if there were… The next sect to the Epicureans, in point of incredulity, concerning the soul, I conceive to be the Sceptics, who were by some esteemed, not only the modestest, but the most perspicuous of all sects. They neither affirmed nor denied anything, but doubted of all things. They thought all our knowledge seemed rather like truth, than to be really true, and that for such like reasons as these: —

"1. They denied any knowledge of the Divine Nature, because, they say, to know adequately is to comprehend, and to comprehend is to contain, and the thing contained must be less than that which contains it; to know inadequately is not to know.

"2. From the uncertainty of our senses, as, for instance, our eyes represent things at a distance to be less than they really are. A straight stick in the water appears crooked; the moon to be no bigger than a cheese; the sun greater at rising and setting than at noon. The shore seems to move, and the ship to stand still; square things to be round at a distance; an erect pillar to be less at the top. Neither (say they) do we know whether objects are really as our eyes represent them to us, for the same thing which seems white to us seems yellow to a jaundiced man, and red to a creature afflicted with red eyes; also, if a man rubs his eyes, the figure which he beholds seems long or narrow, and therefore it is not improbable that goats, cats, and other creatures, which have long pupils of the eye, may think those things long which we call round, for as glasses represent the object variously, according to their shape, so it may be with our eyes. And so the sense of hearing deceives. Thus, the echo of a trumpet, sounded in a valley, makes the sound seem before us, when it is behind us. Besides, how can we think that an ear, which has a narrow passage, can receive the same sound with that which has a wide one? Or the ear, whose inside is full of hair, to hear the same with a smooth ear? Experience tells us that if we stop, or half stop, our ears, the sound cometh different as when the ears are open. Nor is the smelling, taste, or touch less subject to mistake; for the same scents please some, and displease others, and so in our tastes. To a rough and dry tongue that very thing seems bitter (as in an ague,) which to the most moist tongue seems otherwise, and so is it in other creatures. The like is true of the touch, for it were absurd to think that those creatures which are covered with shells, scales, or hairs, should have the same sense in touching with those that are smooth. Thus one and the same object is diversely judged of, according to the various qualities of the instruments of sense, which convinceth to the imagination; from all which the Sceptic concluded, that what these things are in their own nature, whether red, white, bitter, or sweet, he cannot tell; for, says he, why should I prefer my own conceit in affirming the nature of things to be thus, or thus, because it seemeth so to me – when other living creatures, perhaps, think it is otherwise? But the greatest fallacy is in the operation of our inward senses; for the fancy is sometimes persuaded that it hears and sees what it does not, and our reasoning is so weak, that in many disciplines scarce one demonstration is found, though this alone produces science. Wherefore it was Democritus's opinion that truth is hid in a well, that she may not be found by men. Now, although this doctrine be very inconsistent with Christianity, yet I could wish Adam had been of this persuasion, for then he would not have mortgaged his posterity for the purchase of a twilight knowledge. Now, from these sinister observations it was that they esteemed all our sciences to be but conjectures, and our knowledge but opinion. Whereupon, doubting the sufficiency of human reason, they would not venture to affirm or deny anything of the soul's future state; but civilly and quietly gave way to the doctrines and ordinances under which they lived, without raising or espousing any new opinions." Speaking of the "origin of the world," Gildon gives the following as a translation from Ocellus Lucanas: – "Again (says he,) as the frame of the world has been always, so it is necessary that its parts should likewise always have existed; by parts, I mean the heaven, earth, and that which lieth betwixt – viz., the sky; for not without these, but with these, and of these, the world consists. Also, if the parts exist, it is necessary that the things which are within them should also coexist; as with the heavens, the sun, moon, fixed stars, and planets; with the earth, animals, plants, minerals, gold, and silver; with the air, exhalations, winds, and alterations of weather, sometimes heat and sometimes cold, for with the world all those things do, and ever have existed, as parts thereof. Nor hath man had any original production from the earth, or elsewhere, as some believe, but have always been, as now he is, coexistent with the world, whereof he is a part. Now, corruptions and violent alterations are made according to the parts of the earth, by winds and waters imprisoned in the bowels thereof; but a universal, corruption of the earth never hath been, nor ever shall be. Yet these alterations have given occasion for the invention of many lies and fables. And thus are we to understand them that derive the original of the Greek history from Inachus, the Argive; not that he really was the original, as some make him, but because a most memorable alteration did then happen, and some were so unskilful as to attribute it to Inachus… But for the universe, and all the parts whereof it subsists, as it is at present, so it ever was, and ever shall be; one nature perpetually moving, and another perpetually suffering, one always governing, and the other always being governed. The course which nature takes in governing the world, is by one contrary prevailing over another, as thus: – The moisture in the air prevaileth over the dryness of the fire; and the coldness of the wafer over the heat of the air, and the dryness of the earth over the moisture of the water; and so the moisture of the water over the dryness of the earth; and the heat in the air over the coldness of the water; and the dryness in the fire over the moisture of the air. And thus the alterations are made and produced, out of one another… As nature cannot create by making something out of nothing, so neither can it annihilate, by turning something into nothing; whence it consequently follows, as there is no access, so there is no diminution in the universe, no more than in the alphabet, by the infinite combination and transposition of letters, or in the wax by the alteration of the seal stamped upon it. Now, as for the forms of natural bodies, no sooner doth any one abandon the matter he occupied, but another instantly steps into the place thereof; no sooner hath one acted his part and is retired, but another comes presently forth upon the stage, though it may be in a different shape, and so act a different part; so that no portion of the matter is, or at any time can be, altogether void and empty, but like Proteus, it burns itself into a thousand shapes, and is always supplied with one form or another, there being in nature nothing but circulation."