BLASPHEMY

(From the Greek word, βλασφημέω , quasi βλάπτω τὴν φήμην .) An injury to the reputation of any, but now used almost exclusively to designate that which derogates from the honour of God , whether by detracting from his person or attributes, or by attributing to the creature what is due to God alone. Blasphemy is a crime both in the civil and canon law, and is punishable both by the statute and common law of England. The sin of blasphemy incurred the public censure of the primitive Christian Church. They distinguished blasphemy into three sorts. 1. The blasphemy of apostates, whom the heathen persecutors obliged, not only to deny, but to curse Christ . 2. The blasphemy of heretics, and other profane Christians. 3. The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost . The first sort we find mentioned in Pliny, who, giving Trajan an account of some Christians, whom the persecutions of his times had made to apostatize, tells him, they all worshipped his images, and the images of the gods, and cursed Jesus Christ . And that this was the common way of renouncing their religion, appears from the demand of the proconsul to Polycarp, and Polycarp’s answer. He bid him revile Christ : to which Polycarp replied; “These eighty-six years I have served him, and he never did me any harm; how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour ?”—These blasphemers, as having added blasphemy to apostasy, were reckoned among the apostates, and punished as such, to the highest degree of ecclesiastical censure.— Bingham, Origin. Eccles. b. xvi. ch. 7, § 1. Plin. Ep. 97, lib. x. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. cap. 15. The second sort of blasphemers were such as made profe ion of the Christian religion, but yet, either by impious doctrines or profane discourses, derogated from the majesty and honour of God and his holy religion. This sense of blasphemy included every kind of heresy; whence the same punishment the Church had appointed for heretics, was the lot of this kind of blasphemers. And that in this notion of blasphemy they included all impious and profane language, appears from Synesius’s treatment of Andronicus, governor of Ptolemais. He was contented to admonish him for his other crimes; but, when he added blasphemy to them, saying, no one should escape his hands, though he laid hold of the very foot of Christ , Synesius thought it high time to proceed to anathemas and excommunication.— Bingham , ibid. § 2. The third sort of blasphemy was that against the Holy Ghost : concerning which the opinions of the ancients varied. Some applied it to the sin of lapsing into idolatry and apostasy, and denying Christ in time of persecution. Others made it to consist in denying Christ to be God ; in which sense Hilary charges the Arians with sinning against the Holy Ghost . Origen thought that whoever, after having received the gifts of the Holy Ghos t by baptism, afterwards ran into sin, was guilty of the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost . A than as i us refutes this notion, and delivers his own opinion in the following manner. “The Pharisees, in our Saviour’s time, and the Arians, in our own, running into the same madne , denied the real Word to be incarnate, and ascribed the works of the Godhead to the devil and his angels.—They put the devil in the place of God —which was the same thing as if they had said, that the world was made by Beelzebub, that the sun rose at his command, and the stars moved by his direction.—For this reason Christ declared their sin unpardonable, and their punishment inevitable and eternal.” St. Ambrose likewise defines this sin to be a denying the Divinity of Christ . There are others, who make it to consist in denying the Divinity of the Holy Ghost . Epiphanius calls these blasphemers πνευματόμαχοι , “fighters against the Holy Ghost .” Others, again, place this sin in a perverse and malicious ascribing the operations of the Holy Spirit to the power of the devil; and that against expre knowledge and conviction of conscience. That the ancients did not look upon the sin against the Holy Ghost , in the several kinds of it here mentioned, as absolutely irremi ible, or incapable of pardon, appears from hence, that they did not shut the door of repentance against such offenders, but invited them to repent, and prayed for their conversion, and restored them to communion, upon their confe ion, and evidences of a true repentance. Wherever they speak of it as unpardonable both in this world and the next, they always suppose the sinner to die in obduracy, and in resistance to all the gracious motions and operations of the Holy Spirit . Whence it must be concluded, that they did not think the sin against the Holy Ghost , whatever it was, in its own nature unpardonable, but only that it becomes so through final impenitence. Thus the author of the book, “Of True and False Repentance,” under the name of St. Austin, says, they only sin against the Holy Ghost , who continue impenitent to their death. And Bacchiarius, an African writer about the time of St. Austin, says this sin consists in such a despair of God’s mercy, as makes men give over all hopes of recovering that state, from which they are fallen.— Synes. Ep. 58. Bingham , ibid. § 3. Cypr. Ep. 10. Hilar. in Mat. Can. 12, p. 164. Athan. in illud, Quicunque dixerit verbum, . , p. 975. Ambros. Comment. in Luc. lib. vii. c. 12. Epiphan. Hæres. lxxiv. Aug. Quæst. in Vet. et Nov. Test. 102. Bingham , ibid. Aug. de vera et falsa Pœnit. cap. iv. Bacchiar. Epist. de recipiend. laps is. St. Austin speaks often of this crime, and places it in a continued resistance of the motions and graces of the Holy Spirit, and persisting in impenitency to our death. “Impenitency is the blasphemy, which has neither remi ion in this world, nor in the world to come; but of this no one can judge so long as a man continues in this life. A man is a Pagan to-day; but how knowest thou but he may become a Christian to-morrow? To-day he is an unbelieving Jew; to-morrow he may believe in Christ. To-day he is an heretic; to-morrow he may embrace the Catholic truth.” Out of this notion of St. Austin, the schoolmen, according to their usual chymistry, have extracted five several species of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost ; viz. despair, presumption, final impenitency, obstinacy in sin, and opposition to the known truth. If we consider the Scripture account of this sin, nothing can be plainer than that it is to be understood of the Pharisees imputing the miracles, wrought by the power of the Holy Ghost , to the power of the devil. Our Lord had just healed one po e ed of a devil, upon which the Pharisees gave this malicious turn to the miracle; “This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.” (Matt. xii. 24.) This led our Saviour to discourse of the sin of blasphemy, and to tell his disciples; “Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men,” (Ver. 31.) The Pharisees therefore were the persons charged with this sin, and the sin itself consisted in ascribing what was done by the finger of God to the agency of the devil. And the reason why our Lord pronounced it unpardonable is plain, because the Jews, by withstanding the evidence of miracles, resisted the strongest means of their conviction. From all which it will follow, that no person now can be guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost , in the sense in which our Saviour originally intended it; though there may be sins which bear a very near resemblance to it.— August., Serm. xi. de Verbis Domini. Brouqhton.