The ultimate claim of the
Church rests on the hypothesis of an intuitive faculty in man. Disprove
the existence of this faculty, and reason must remain the supreme test
of truth. Against reason the fabric of theological doctrine cannot long
hold out, and the Church's doctrinal authority once shaken, men will no
longer fear to test by ordinary rules the practical results of her
teaching. We have not joined the great army of truth to waste our time
in vain disputations over metaphysical subtleties. Our aim is, by
freeing the mind of man from superstition to relieve him from the
practical abuses it entails. As it is impossible to examine any fiscal
or industrial problem without discovering that the chief obstacle to
improvement lies in the Church's countless privileges and exemptions, so
in every department of human activity we find some inveterate wrong
taking shelter under the claim of a divinely-revealed authority. This
claim demolished, the stagnant current of human progress will soon burst
its barriers and set with a mighty rush toward the wide ocean of truth
and freedom..."
That general belief in the perfectibility of man which cheered the
eighteenth-century thinkers in their struggle for intellectual liberty
coloured with a delightful brightness this vision of a renewed humanity.
It threw its beams on every branch of research, and shone like an
aureole round those who laid down fortune and advancement to purchase
the new redemption of mankind.
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