Blasphemy

Blasphemy, according to Blackstone's Commentaries, an offence against God and religion, consisting in the denying the being or providence of God, or in contumelious reproaches of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and profane scoffing at Holy Scripture, or exposing it to contempt and ridicule. These offences are punishable at common law by fine and imprisonment, or other infamous corporal punishment. The Blasphemy Act, passed in 1698, enacts "that if any person educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion should by writing, preaching, teaching, or advised speaking deny any one of the persons of the Holy Trinity to be God, or should assert or maintain that there are more Gods than one, or should deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scripture to be of divine authority, he should upon the first offence be rendered incapable of holding any office or place of trust; and for the second, incapable of bringing any action, of being guardian or executor or of taking a legacy or deed of gift, and should suffer three years' imprisonment without bail," but the prosecution must be commenced within four days of the blasphemy spoken, and is to be desisted from and all the penalties to be removed upon the defendant's renunciation of his heretical opinions. An act passed in 1813 excepts from these enactments persons denying as therein mentioned the Holy Trinity. In an important case occurring in the year 1867 the court reaffirmed a previous declaration of Chief Justice Hale, viz.: - That Christianity was part of the Law of England (to be found in Blackstone's Commentaries).

The commissioners on criminal laws (6th report) remark, that "although the law forbids all denial of the being and providence of God or the Christian religion, it is only when irreligion assumes the form of an insult to God and man that the interference of the criminal law has taken place." In Scotland the punishment for blasphemy was formerly death. By an Act of Charles II., any person who, "not being distracted in his wits, should curse God or any person of the Blessed Trinity," was punishable with death; and by a statute passed in 1695 in King William's reign, any reasoner against the being of God or any person of the Trinity or the authority of the Holy Scriptures or the providence of God in the government of the world, was to be imprisoned for the first offence until he should give satisfaction in sackcloth to the congregation; to be punished more severely for the second offence, and for the third to be doomed to death; but by an Act passed in 1826, amended in 1837, blasphemy was made punishable by fine or imprisonment or both.

In the United States punishment is attached not only to this offence as above indicated, but to any language calculated to sap the foundations of society.