Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe With His Vision of the Angelick World

SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

present business is not to write a history, or engage in a dispute, but to relate a passage.

They carried in procession all their criminals to the great church, where eight of them appeared first, dressed up in gowns and caps of canvas, upon which were painted all that man could devise of hell’s torments, devils broiling and roasting human bodies, and a thousand such frightful things, with flames and devils besides in every part of the dress.

Those I found were eight poor creatures condemned to be burnt, and for they scarce knew what, but for crimes against the Catholic faith, and against the blessed Virgin, and they were burnt. One of them, it was said, rejoiced that he was to be burnt, and being asked why, answered that he had much rather die than be carried back to the prison of the Inquisition, where their cruelties were worse than death. Of those eight, as I was told, some were Jews, whose greatest crime, as many there did not scruple to say, was that they were very rich; and some Christians were in the number at the same time, whose greatest misery was that they were very poor.

It was a sight that almost gave me a shock in my notion of Christianity itself, till I began to recollect that it might be possible that Inquisitors were scarce Christians, and that I knew many Catholic countries do not suffer this abominable judicature to be erected among them.

I have seen much, and read more, of the unhappy conduct, in matters of religion, among the other nations of the world

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professing the Christian religion; and upon my word I find some practices infinitely scandalous, some which are the common received customs of Christians,

which would be the abhorrence of heathens; and it requires a strong attachment to the foundation, which is indeed the principal part in religion, to guard our minds against being offended even at the Christian religion itself, but I got over that part afterward.

Let it not offend the ears of any true lover of the Christian religion that I observe some of the follies of the professors of the Christian religion, assuring you ‘tis far from being my design to bring the least scandal upon the profession itself.

And here, therefore, let me give the words of a judicious person who travelled from Turkey through Italy. His words are these:—

“When I was in Italy I ranged over great part of the patrimony of St. Peter, where one would think, indeed, the face of religion would be plainest to be seen, and without any disguise; but, in short, I found there the face of religion, and no more.

“At Rome there was all the pomp and glory of religious habits: the Pope and the cardinals walked with a religious gravity, but lived in a religious luxury, kept up the pomp of religion and the dignity of religious titles; but, like our Lord’s

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observation on the Pharisees, I found within they were all ravening wolves.

“The religious justice they do there is particularly remarkable, and very much recommends them. The Church protects murderers and assassins, and then delivers the civil magistrates over to Satan for doing justice. They interdict whole kingdoms, and shut up the churches for want of paying a few ecclesiastic dues, and so put a stop to religion for want of their money. I found the courtesans were the most constant creatures at the church, and the most certain place for an assignation with another man’s wife was at prayers.

“The Court of Inquisition burnt two men for speaking dishonourably of the blessed Virgin, and the missionaries in China tolerated the worshipping the devil by their new convert. A Jew was likewise burnt for denying Christ, while the Jesuits joined the paganism of the heathen with the high mass, and sung anthems to the immortal idols of Tonquin.

“When I saw this I resolved to inquire no more after religion in Italy, till by accident meeting with a quietist, he gave me to understand that all religion was internal, that the duties of Christianity were summed up in reflection and ejaculation. He inveighed bitterly against the game of religion which he said was playing over the world by the clergy; and said Italy was a theatre, where religion was the grand opera, and the Popish clergy were the stage players. I liked him in many of his notions about other people’s religion; but when I came to

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talk with him a little closely about his own, it was so wrapped up in his internals, concealed in the cavities and dark parts of the soul, viz., meditation without worship, doctrine without practice, reflection without reformation, and zeal without knowledge, that I could come to no certainty with him but in this, that religion in Italy was really invisible.”

This was very agreeable to my notions of Italian religion, and to what I had met with from other people that had travelled the country, but one observation of blindness and superstition I must give within my own knowledge, and nearer home. When passing through Flanders I found the people in a certain city there in a very great commotion. The case was this. A certain scelerate (so they call an abandoned wretch given up to all wickedness) had broken into a chapel in the city, and had stolen the pix or casket wherein the sacred host was deposited; which host, after rightly consecrated, they believe to be the real body of our blessed Saviour, being transubstantiated, as they call it, from the substance of bread.

The fact being discovered, the city, as I said above, was all up in a tumult; the gates were shut up, nobody suffered to go out, every house was searched, and the utmost diligence used; and at length, as it was next to impossibility he should escape, he was discovered.

His execution was not long deferred. But first he was examined, and I think by torture, what he had done with the sacred thing which was in the pix, which he had stolen? And

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at length he confessed that he had thrown it into a house of office, and was carried with a guard to show them the place.

As it was impossible to find a little piece of a wafer in such a place, though no pains were spared in a most filthy manner to search for it; but, as I say, it could not be found; immediately the place was judged consecrated ipso facto, turned into an oratory, and the devout people flocked to it to expiate, by their prayers, the dishonour done to the Lord God by throwing His precious body into so vile a place. It was determined by the wiser part that the body would not fall down into the place, but be snatched up by its inherent power, or by the holy angels, and not be suffered to touch the excrements in that place. However, the people continued their devotions for some time just in the place where it was, and afterwards a large chapel was built upon it, where the same prayers are continued, as I suppose, to this day.

I had a particular occasion to come at a very accurate account of Poland by a Polish gentleman, in whose company I travelled, and from whom I learned all that was worth inquiring of about religious affairs in Prussia on one side and Muscovy on the other.

As for Poland, he told me they were all confusion both in Church and in State; that notwithstanding their wars they were persecutors of the worst kind, that they let the Jews live among them undisturbed to such a degree, that in the country about Lemburg and Kiow there were reckoned above 30,000

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Jews; that these had not toleration only but many privileges granted them, though they denied Christ to be the Messiah, or that the Messiah was come in the flesh, and blasphemed His name upon frequent occasions; and at the same time they persecuted the Protestants, and destroyed their churches, wherever they had power to do it.

On the other hand, when I came to inquire of those Protestants, and what kind of people they were who suffered so severely for their religion, I found they were generally a sort of Protestants called Socinians, and that Lelius Socinus had spread his errors so universally over this country that our Lord Jesus Christ was reduced here to little more than a good man sent from heaven to instruct the world, and far from capable of effecting by the influence of His Spirit and grace the glorious work of redeeming the world. As for the divinity of the Holy Ghost, they have no trouble about it.

Having given this account of knowledge and piety in the countries inhabited by Christians of the Roman Church, it seems natural to say something of the Greek Church.

There are in the Czar of Muscovy’s dominions abundance of wooden churches, and had not the country been as full of wooden priests something might have been said for the religion of the Muscovites, for the people are wonderfully devout there; which would have been very well, if it had not been attended with the profoundest ignorance that was ever heard of

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in any country where the name of Christian was so much as talked of.

But when I came to inquire about their worship, I found our Lord Jesus Christ made so much a meaner figure among them than St. Nicholas that I concluded religion was swallowed up of superstition, and so indeed I found it was upon all occasions: as to the conduct of the people in religious matters, their ignorance is so established upon obstinacy, which is the Muscovite’s national sin, that it would be really to no purpose to look any longer for a reformation among them.

In short, no man will, I believe, say of me that I do the Muscovites any wrong when I say they are the most ignorant and most obstinate people in the Christian world, when I tell the following story of them.

It was after the battle at Narva, where the late King of Sweden, Charles XII., defeated their great army, and after the victory extended his troops pretty far into their country, and perhaps plundered them a little as he advanced; when the Muscovites, we may be sure, being in the utmost distress and confusion, fell to their prayers. We read of nothing they had to say to God Almighty in that case; but to their patron saint they addressed this extraordinary prayer:

“O thou, our perpetual comforter in all our adversities! thou infinitely powerful St. Nicholas, by what sin, and how have we highly offended thee in our sacrifices, genuflections, reverences, and actions of thanksgiving, that thou hast thus

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forsaken us? We had therefore sought to appease thee entirely, and we had implored thy presence and thy succour against the terrible, insolent, dreadful, enraged, and undaunted enemies and destroyers; when, like lions, bears, and other savage beasts that have lost their young ones, they attacked us after an insolent and terrible manner; and terrified and wounded, took and killed us by thousands, us who are thy people. Now, as it is impossible that this should happen without witchcraft and enchantment, seeing the great care that we had taken to fortify ourselves, after an impregnable manner, for the defence and security of thy name, we beseech thee, O St. Nicholas, to be our champion, and the bearer of our standard, to be with us both in peace and in war, and in our necessities, and at the time of our death, to protect us against this horrible and tyrannical crew of sorcerers, and to drive them far enough off from our frontiers, with the recompense which they may deserve.”

It may be hoped I may give a better account of religion among the Protestants than I have among the Roman and Grecian Churches; and I will, if in justice it is possible.

The next to the nations I have been mentioning, I mean in geographical order, are those reformed Christians called Lutherans; to say no worse of them, the face of religion indeed is altered much between these and the latter. But I scarce know what name to give it, at least as far as I have inquired into it, or what it is like.

It was Popery and no Popery; there was the consub, but not the transub. The service differed indeed from the mass, but the

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deficiency seemed to be made up very much with the trumpets, kettle-drums, fiddles, hautboys, &c., and all the merry part of the Popish devotion; upon which it occurred to me presently, that if there was no danger of Popery among the Lutherans, there was danger of superstition; and as for the pious part, I saw very little of it in either of them.

By religion, therefore, the reader is desired to understand here not the principles upon which the several nations denominate themselves, so much as the manner in which they discover themselves to be sincere in the profession which they make. I had no inclination here to enter into the inquiry after the creeds which every nation professed to believe, but the manner in which they practised that religion which they really professed; for what is religion to me without practice? And although it may be true that there can be no true religion where it is not professed upon right principles; yet, that which I observe here, and which to me is the greatest grievance among Christians, is the want of a religious practice even where there are right principles at bottom, and where there is a profession of the orthodox faith.

In brief, I am not hunting after the profession of religion, but the practice. The first I find almost in every nation — nulla gens tam barbara; but the last I am like to travel through the histories of all Christendom with my search, and perhaps may hardly be able, when I have done, to tell you where it is.

All the satire of this inquiry will look this way; for where God has not given a people the blessing of a true knowledge

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of Himself, it would call for our pity, not reproach. It would be a very dull satire indeed that a man should be witty upon the negroes in Africa for not knowing Christ, and not understanding the doctrine of a Saviour; but if turning to our modern Christians of Barbadoes and Jamaica for not teaching them, not instructing them, and for refusing to baptize them, there the satire would be pointed and seasonable, as we shall hear farther by-and-by.

But to return to the Lutherans, for there I am supposed to be at this time, I mean, among the courts and cities of Brandenburg, Saxony, &c., — I had opportunity here to view a court affecting gallantry, magnificence, and gay things, to such a height, and with such a passion, to exceed the whole world in that empty part of human felicity called show, that I thought it was impossible to pursue it with such an impetuous torrent of the affections without sacrificing all things to it which wise men esteem more valuable.

Nor was my notion wrong; for the first thing I found sacrificed, as I say, to this voluptuous humour was the liberties of the people, who being by constitution or custom rather under absolute government, and at the arbitrary will of the prince, are sure to pay, not all they can spare, but even all they have, to gratify the unbounded appetite of a court given up to pleasure and exorbitance.

By all I have read of the manner of living there, both court and people, the latter are entirely given up to the former, not by necessity only, but by the consent of custom and the gen-

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