I have grave doubts as to whether we possess Macaulay’s real opinions on religion.  His way of dealing with the subject is so like the hedging of an unbeliever that, without some good assurance to the contrary, I must include him also among the imitators of Aristotle’s “caution”.  Some future critic will devote himself, like Professor Mohl, to expounding his ambiguous utterances.

[EVIL OF DISFRANCHISING THE CLERGY.]

When Sir Charles Lyell brought out his “Antiquity of Man” he too was cautious.  Knowing the dangers of his footing, he abstained from giving an estimate of the extension of time required by his evidences of human remains.  Society in London, however, would not put up with that reticence, and he had to disclose at dinner parties what he had withheld from the public—­namely, that, in his opinion, the duration of man could not be less than fifty thousand years.

These few instances must suffice to represent a long history of compelled reticence on the part of the men best qualified to instruct mankind.  The question now is—­What has been gained by it?  What did the condemnation of Socrates do for the Athenian public?  What did the chief priest of Eleusis hope to attain by indicting Aristotle?  Unless we can show, as is no doubt attempted, that the set of opinions that happen to be consecrated at any one time, whether right or wrong, were essential to the existence of society,—­then the attempt to improve upon them was truly meritorious, instead of being censurable.  If the good of society as a whole is not plainly implicated, there remains only the interest of the place-holders under the existing system, as opposed to the interest of the mass of the people, who are, one and all, concerned in knowing the truth.

Again contracting the discussion to the narrow limits of the title of the essay, I must urge the special injury done to mankind by disfranchising the whole clerical class; that is to say, by depriving their authority of its proper weight in matters of faith.  It is an incontrovertible rule of evidence, that the authority of an interested party is devoid of worth.  Reasons are good in themselves, whoever utters them; but in trusting to authority, apart from reason, we need a disinterested authority.  This the clergy at present are not, except on the points left undecided by the articles.  If a man has five thousand a year, conditional on his holding certain views, his holding those views says nothing in their favour.  For a much less bribe, plenty of men can be ’got to maintain any opinions whatsoever.  When to this is added that, for certain other views, the holders are subjected to loss—­it may be to fine, imprisonment, or death,—­the value of men’s adhesion to the favoured creed, as mere authority, is simply nil.