401 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CATECHISM EXAMINED. BY JEREMY BENTHAM, Esq., AUTHOR OF "Theory of Rewards and Punishments," "Constitutional Code," PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, Friends to the cause of "Free Inquiry and Free Expression" are earnestly 1868. Price One Shilling. PREFACE. J' EREMY BENTHAM, the friend of Brougham, Romilly, Peel, James Mill, and J. S. Mill, was one of the profoundest thinkers of his time. As a legislator and politician he exercised no small influence on his contemporaries. That he also directed his clear and logical mind to the exposition of the fallacies and superstitions of our religious system is evidenced in his works on those subjects, and especially in the one now presented to the reader. "The Church of England Catechism Examined" was first published about the year 1788; it was reprinted in 1824: it is now very scarce. Its reproduction, in a third and very large edition, has seemed to the present editor to be 307332 appropriate at a time when the means of giving a rational education to the children of the masses occupies the minds of our legislators-for the purpose of its wide circulation among such as are or will be engaged in the education of those who will be the men of the next generation. Mr Bentham's "Recapitulation," commencing at p. 76, will give the reader a summary of the searching dissection and merciless criticism to which the "formulary" called "The Church of England Catechism" has been subjected by him. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CATECHISM EXAMINED. Question 1. What is your name? Answer. My Godfathers and my Godmothers in my baptism (1); wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven (2). OBSERVATIONS. So (1). [Godfathers and Godmothers in my Baptism.]— Thus far the answer appears not to stand exposed to any considerable objection; it being supposed that to this examination no child is subjected on whom the ceremony called baptism has not been performed. far as this is true, the answer is nothing more than the statement of a matter of fact, of the existence of which, though, generally speaking, it is not possible the child should have any remembrance of it, it is but natural that he should feel himself assured by satis factory and unsuspected evidence. But this blamelessness-it will soon be seen whether it be of any long continuance. B |