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2006,10,10

ST.Paul,a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the doctrine and filling up the Greeks and Romans;and his advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of accommodation to that ;even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery.

What is called Christian ,but should rather be termed theological, morality, was not the work of Christ or the Apostles, but is of much later origin, having been gradually built up by the Catholic church of the first five centuries, and though not them than might have been expected.

For the most part, indeed, they have contented themselves with cutting off the additions which had been made to it in middle ages, each sect supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted to its own character and tendencies.

多くの部分において、実際、彼らは中世においてキリスト教道徳になされた付け加えられた部分を削除する事で満足してきた。それぞれの宗派が新たな付け足しをその部分にする事でそれぞれの性格や傾向に適合させ満足してきた。

That mankind owe a great debt to this morality, and to its early teachers, I should be the last person to deny; but I do not scruple to say of it, that it is , in many important points, incomplete and one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it,had contributed to the formation of European life and character, human affairs would would have been in a worse condtion than they now are.

Christiaｎ　morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is ,in greeat part, a protest against Paganism.

Its ideal is negative rather than positive ; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou　shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt."

その理想は積極的というよりは消極的です。行動的というより受身的です。高貴というより無知です。エネルギッシュに善を追求すると言うより悪を自制することです。その教えの中には（よく言われているように）"汝すべからず”が”汝すべし。”を過度に上回っている。

In its　horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality.

It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients,and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow -creatures,except so far as a self -interested inducement is offered tohim for consulting them.