Vaccine Pandemic: Part 7: Moral Objections to Vaccination and Inoculation in History

Rally of the Anti-Vaccination League of Canada, Old City Hall, November 13, 1919
(City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 43)

by Steve C. Halbrook

posts in this series:
part 1: The Inoculation Controversy of the 1700s
part 2: Opposition to Vaccines by Doctors and Others in History
part 3: The Inquisition Against Opponents of Bad Medical Practices
part 4: The Medical Profession’s Legacy of Tyranny, Torture, and Murder
part 5: God’s Sovereign Control Over Diseases
part 6: Unsafe & Deceptive — the Polio Vaccine Scam
part 7: Moral Objections to Vaccination and Inoculation in History
part 8: Death Certificates and Hiding the Vaccine Holocaust
part 9: in progress

“[S]eek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” (Isaiah 1:17b)

“Our crusade against vaccination is a struggle of health against disease, of virtue against error, of truth against falsity, of life against death.” — Alexander Wilder, MD, 1882

Series Intro
Vaccines have become one of the most polarizing issues of the day. There is an aggressive push by lawmakers to force everyone to become vaccinated, as well as intense hostility by many vaccine supporters towards those who question the efficacy and safety of vaccines.
Where’s all the opposition to vaccines coming from? Are opponents of them crazed fanatics, looking for a conspiracy, or are their concerns legitimate? Having given this topic much reflection and research, we are of the view that they indeed have a case against vaccines, and that vaccines—far from being safe and effective—are a dangerous plague and one of the greatest deceptions in our day.

This series is a case against vaccines from both an historical and biblical perspective. Our hope is that it will equip Christians to better understand how dangerous vaccines really are, and to approach the situation from a biblical worldview.

Foundational to vaccination is violations of God’s law, such as deceptive science, statistical manipulation, murder (justified “for the greater good”), the spreading of disease, and idolatrous, unquestioning trust. As such, there has been many moral objections to vaccination throughout history. Here we include a snapshot of such objections. We also include objections to smallpox inoculation, the forerunner to vaccination, which is based on the same unethical philosophy; thus the objections we include to inoculation here would just as much apply to vaccination. In fact, some of the best moral objections to vaccination come from opponents of inoculation.

The objections included below are by those from various occupations, including doctors and pastors. Probably all statements are set in the historical context of America and England, and were made between the 1700s and around the early 1900s.

(Smallpox inoculation took place in the 1700s, and would be replaced by smallpox vaccination, which popularized in the 1800s. In the late 1800s onwards, other vaccines would be introduced.)

All of this shows that opposition to vaccination on moral grounds is nothing new. There have always been those willing to remind us that doing evil via vaccination is never justified; and thus to bear witness to the law of God.

Note: as in just about any view, opposition to vaccination and inoculation includes those of a wide range of religious views; some may affirm true, biblical Christianity, while others may be heretics claiming to be Christian, or those not claiming to be Christian at all. Thus any given quote below is not necessarily by someone who we would consider affirms biblical Christianity; nor we would say the same about the orthodoxy of the publication it is included in. Readers are urged not to weigh the statements by those giving them, but by their biblical and factual substance.

“The plea of the advocates of these [vaccination] abominations when cornered is, it is right to kill a few in order to save many. What a plea! Kill a few to save many! In reality it is killing many to save none. The commandment of the God of the
universe is ignored, whose commandment is,
‘Thou shalt not kill.'” — Reverend Isaac L. Peebles

The evil of justifying killing a few with vaccination to save many

The plea of the advocates of these [vaccination] abominations when cornered is, it is right to kill a few in order to save many. What a plea! Kill a few to save many! In reality it is killing many to save none. The commandment of the God of the universe is ignored, whose commandment is: “Thou shalt not kill.” (Ex. xx. 13; Rom. xiii. 9.) O killers of the people, an awful day awaits you! And may you realize this awful truth before it is forever too late! ]ust simply open your eyes and behold your diseasing, tormenting, unmerciful, and deadly work, and repent most sincerely of it, and cease it at once and forever before our God shall call you before him to account for it!

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 50.

Vaccination as blasphemy

The vaccination theory implies, and vaccinators and pro-vaccinators openly assert, that a healthy unvaccinated child is a nuisance, as dangerous as a mad dog, a rabid horse, etc. Such wild talk is blasphemy against the Creator, who doeth all things well. Such a theory per se condemns any practice founded upon it.

Vaccination Tracts,”Vaccination Evil in its Principles, False in its Reasons, and Deadly in its Results” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 4.

Vaccination as a persecuting evil that good may come

“Let us do evil that good may come” is a falsehood as old as the human race. In one age it shows itself in one enormity ; in another period of history, the sacerdotalists through several centuries murder, torture, rob, lie, or cheat, the better to enable them to teach other people not to murder, torture, rob, lie, or cheat. And just when the last cries of their victims are dying away, the medical world busy themselves in diseasing every child born, with the pious intention of making the population healthy. And this idea having once taken possession of their mind, they are becoming daily more anxious to spread and develop it.

“Our Fathers’ Teeth were Sound: Why do our Children’s Teeth Decay?,” in Vaccination Tracts,”Vaccination Subverts Dentition, and is a Cause of the Prevalent Deformity and Decay of the Teeth” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 14.

The logical and ethical absurdity of inoculation

I cannot apprehend how it conduces to the Preservation of Mankind; to force a dangerous Distemper upon them, which possibly may never happen unto them, and if it should, may probably be attended with very little, if any Inconvenience ; and as before has been hinted, is no Security against future Contagion. This is unequally to stake a Substance against a Shadow, to make Men run into a real Danger, lest they should happen to fall into an accidental One, and contributes no more to the Preservation of Mankind, than it would redound to the Honour of a well provided City, to invite the Enemy and surrender now, for fear left sometime hence, they should possibly be surprised and taken.

Reverend Edmund Massey in Mr. Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain for the Month of August, 1722. (London: T. WARNE), 118.

More on the logical and ethical absurdity of inoculation

Inoculation … is an Engraftment of a corrupted body into a sound one: An Attempt to give a Man a Disease, who is in perfect Health, which Disease may prove mortal.

This, I said, was Tempting Providence; not unlike the Case of our Saviour, when he was tempted to cast himself down from the Pinacle of the Temple: To which You reply, (Page 46.) Put the Case as disadvantageously as possible, it more resembles that of a Person who leaps out of a Window for Fear of Fire; and surely, that can never be reckoned a Mistrust of Providence.

No certainly, Sir, if his House be really on Fire, and the Stairs burnt, ’tis the only ordinary probable Way of Safety left; and if the Leap should kill him, the Action could neither be call’d sinful or imprudent: But what should we say to a Man who jump’d out of the Window when his House was not on Fire, only to try what he might perhaps be forced to do hereafter? This mad Action exactly hits the Case between us. For if my House be not on Fire, that is, if I am in no apparent Danger, what need I jump out at the Window? What Occasion is there to inoculate me? And if it be, that is, if I am sick already, then I am not capable of taking so Extaordinary a Leap; that is, I am not a proper Subject for your Practice at all.

To carry on your own Allegory, I would ask You, Sir, what Human or Divine Authority You have to set a Man’s House on Fire, i.e. put a Man who is in perfect Health, in Danger of his Life by a Fit of Illness? His own Consent is not sufficient, because he has no more lawful Power over his own Life or Health than You have, to put either of them unnecessarily in Hazard.

Reverend Edmund Massey, A Letter to Mr. Maitland in Vindication of the Sermon Against Inoculation. (Norwich: S. Mascott), 14-16.

Civil rulers should apply the Lex Talionis to those who harm others via inoculation

A Case may be so circumstanced, that may make it immoral. I shall demonstrate it to you thus: A Man in the Country, living far from Neighbours, may have a great Stump of a Tree in his Land, which he may desire to have out of the Way, and he may put Fire unto it, and burn it down, and do no Body any harm; And I see no reason the Authority has to call him to an Account for it; but should he for the same Reason do the same thing for kind in Boston and not only endanger his Neighbours Houses but eventually consume them, Will not this be looked upon Immoral, and ought not the Authority to call him to an Account for it? And what saith the Law of God? Exod.21. Life for Life, and Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth, and Burning for Burning; Wound for Wound, Stripe for Stripe. And seeing this Way of Inoculation cannot be carried on without hazarding the Life and Health of People, how does it become our noble Towns-Men to take Care in this Matter, if there was no other reason to be given.

Reverend John Williams, Several arguments proving, that inoculating the small pox is not contained in the law of physick, either natural or divine, and therefore unlawful: together with a reply to two short pieces, one by the Rev. Dr. Increase Mather, and another by an anonymous author, entitled, Sentiments on the small pox inoculated ; and also, a short answer to a late letter in the New England Courant. (Boston, MA: J. Franklin, 1721), 4.

Inoculation does not attempt to preserve life in a lawful way

I shall first tell you, that the Word Allowable is ambiguous, and shall distinguish and enquire what you mean by it : If you mean humane Authority, I shall take no Notice of it. To the law and to the Testimony, and if they speak not according unto that, it is because there is no Light in them. … Your Proposition is, That it is a more successful and allowable Method of preventing Death. Now we fear there are many in the Grave the More for it; therefore we cannot believe that it is a successful Way of preventing Death. …

From the Means and End of effecting the Action, It is well or ill disposed. Tis a Duty to go to hear God’s Word preached, but ’tis unlawful to steal a Horse to ride to hear it. ‘Tis lawful to preserve Life, but it must be in a lawful way. All Circumstances must concur to make the Action good: The failing but in one Circumstance doth make the Action evil. See Hag. 2: 11, 12, 13, 14.

Reverend John Williams, Several arguments proving, that inoculating the small pox is not contained in the law of physick, either natural or divine, and therefore unlawful: together with a reply to two short pieces, one by the Rev. Dr. Increase Mather, and another by an anonymous author, entitled, Sentiments on the small pox inoculated ; and also, a short answer to a late letter in the New England Courant. (Boston, MA: J. Franklin, 1721), 10, 12.

Inoculation is doing evil that good may come

A Natural or Physical Power does not always infer a Moral one : That is to say, a Man cannot lawfully do every Thing that is in his Power to do. Thus we abstain from acts of Injustice and Oppression, although they may be gainful to our selves, out of regard to Morals, notwithstanding they lie within the Compass of our Abilities. Thus the Apostle adviseth us, Not to let our Good be evil spoken of ; that is, not to do any unwarrantable Action, for the Sake of any subsequent Benefit : Because the End, however good intentionally, can never justify in Law, nor sanctify in Religion, the use of Means that are bad, to come at it : But on the contrary, the use of bad Means designedly, corrupts the Morality of the intended Good : For to make an Action good, ’tis necessary that all its Parts, be lawful, innocent and good also ; whereas the Depravity of any One, is sufficient to denominate that whole Action, Evil : Now the Apostle forbids us to do Evil, tho’ Good should come of it, upon Pain of Damnation, which absolutely prohibits all unjustifiable Arts and Practices, be the Event never so beneficial and desirable ; so that although we have a Power to give a Man a Disease, that is, tho’ we know the Way how it may be done ; since a bare Power or Knowledge, does not infer the Morality of so doing ; till that is ascertained, we ought to forbear all Experiments of that sort. For even Uncertainty and doubting in moral or religious Cases, lays a positive, or at least a prudent Restraint upon Practice, because, as the Apostle says, Whatsoever is not of Faith, is Sin.

Reverend Edmund Massey in Mr. Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain for the Month of August, 1722. (London: T. WARNE), 116, 117.

Inoculation and provoking God’s wrath

Whether the Smallpox be not a Punishment from a righteous God, upon a People for their Sins? And hath it not a crying voice to them, saying, Cease to do evil and learn to do good? And whether the laboring to avert the Stroke in the way of Inoculation, doth answer this crying Voice; or whether it be not to provoke him more and more? …

God is a Jealous God; Deut. 32:21 They have provoked me to Anger with their Vanities, and I wilt move them to Jealousy […] That is, as we walk contrary to God, so God walks contrary to us.

Spreading mortal disease via inoculation and the death penalty

To spread abroad a mortal contagion, what is it but to cast abroad arrows and death? If a man should willfully throw a bomb into a town, burn a house, or kill a man, ought he not to die?

Dr. William Douglass in James Thacher, American Medical Biography (1828). Cited in “Zabdiel Boylston,” Celebrate Boston (2016). Retrieved October 19, 2017, from http://www.celebrateboston.com/biography/zabdiel-boylston.htm.

Smallpox inoculation is self-defeating

I do not see how we can be excused from great impiety herein, when ministers and people, with loud and strong cries, made supplications to Almighty God to avert the judgment of the smallpox, and at the same time some have been carrying about instruments of inoculation, and bottles of the poisonous humor, to infect all who were willing to submit to it, whereby we might as naturally expect the infection to spread, as a man to break his bones by casting himself headlong from the highest pinnacle. Can any man infect a family in town in the morning, and pray to God in the evening that the distemper may not spread?

I have some scruples as to inoculating Children, unless the Physician promise me, The Child shall not die of it.

“John Wesley’s Letter to Mr. George Merryweather, Yarm 1766,” in Wesley Historical Society, 88. Retrieved September 29, 2017, from https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/whs/13-4.pdf.

Vaccination and hanging a millstone around one’s neck

To give up our little children to blood-pollution for any offered good is against even the grossest conception of the genius of the Christian religion. It is unguided and unprincipled heathenism. … “Suffer little children to come unto Me,” says the Lord but the pollution of the frames and faculties of little children robs them of a sound mind in a sound body, and grievously stands in their way in coming to Him ; it also renders parents and guardians responsible to God because they have not suffered the little ones to come unto Him. “Whoso offendeth one of these little ones which believe in Me,” saith the Lord, “it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Whoso makes an orphan of a new-born child by violently putting aside the parental affection that would shield him from harm, the affection that is the cradle of the cradle, the arm and breast of the mother, and the virtue of the father,—whoso comes forcibly with vice of poison unto the child, does in the greatest degree offend against the little ones.

“The Union of Christendom Against the Evils of Christendom.,” in Vaccination Tracts,”Historical and Critical Summary in Three Parts: Part III. Pro Aris et Focis. The Religious Nature and Political Necessity of the Vaccination War.” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 47, 48.

Pastor Henning Jacobson’s opposition to vaccination in the U.S. Supreme Court Case Jacobson vs. Massachusetts over compulsory vaccination

The defendant offered to prove that vaccination ‘quite often’ caused serious and permanent injury to the health of the person vaccinated; that the operation ‘occasionally’ resulted in death; that it was ‘impossible’ to tell ‘in any particular case’ what the results of vaccination would be, or whether it would injure the health or result in death; that ‘quite often’ one’s blood is in a certain condition of impurity when it is not prudent or safe to vaccinate him; that there is no practical test by which to determine ‘with any degree of certainty’ whether one’s blood is in such condition of impurity as to render vaccination necessarily unsafe or dangerous; that vaccine matter is ‘quite often’ impure and dangerous to be used, but whether impure or not cannot be ascertained by any known practical test; that the defendant refused to submit to vaccination for the reason that he had, ‘when a child,’ been caused great and extreme suffering for a long period by a disease produced by vaccination; and that he had witnessed a similar result of vaccination, not only in the case of his son, but in the cases of others.

Justice Harlan in HENNING JACOBSON, , v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.,” Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School). Retrieved October 25, 2017 at https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/197/11.

On rejecting an honest discussion of vaccines

Why object to pouring on the light? Our Lord said: “Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (john iii. I9.) If vaccination were all right, how ready and free and fair its advocates would be in discussing it!

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 14.

Inoculation, as poisoning, is a criminal act

Poisoning and spreading infection, are by the penal Laws of England Felony. Inoculation falls in with the first without any Contradiction; and if a Person of so weak a Constitution, that any the least Illness may prove fatal to him, should be inoculated, and suffer but the tenth Part of what several of the Inoculated have done, he must unavoidably perish, and his Inoculator deemed guilty of willful Poisoning.

Dr. William Douglass, Inoculation of the Small Pox as Practised in Boston, Consider’d in a Letter to A-S– M.D. & F.R.S. in London (Boston, MA: J. Franklin, 1722), 13, 14.

Better to trust in God’s providence than to undergo the dangerous process of inoculation

And now upon the Whole, what is all this Discourse, but a Persuasive to depend upon the good Pleasure of an all wise God, rather than throw our selves into the presumptuous Hands of foolish and unskilful Men; and with David to say, Let us now fall into the Hand of the Lord, for his Mercies are great, and let us not fall into the Hand of Man, &c.

Reverend Edmund Massey in Mr. Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain for the Month of August, 1722. (London: T. WARNE), 122.

On unmerciful vaccinators

VACCINATORS are not charged unjustly when it is said that many of them are discourteous, rough, and cruel. Any butchery practice like vaccination, the serum inoculation, etc., will lessen, if not wholly destroy, a tender fellow-feeling. The sympathetic nature is blunted, hardened, and deadened. This is quite evident when we remember that one can poison the blood of sweet little children and infants by putting that rotten, filthy matter from the sore of a cow into their tender arms. Women are discourteously addressed, roughly treated, and tormented. Some vaccinators when invested with power seem to care little if at all for mercy, never seemingly impressed in the least that Jesus says: “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matt. v. 7.)

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 47.

Inoculation as a delusion of the Devil

[Inoculation is] a Delusion of the Devil; and that there was never the like Delusion in New-England, since the Time of the Witchcraft at Salem, when so many innocent Persons lost their Lives …

Reverend John Williams, An answer to a late pamphlet, intitled, A letter to a friend in the country, attempting a solution of the scruples and objections of a consciencious or religious nature, commonly made against the new way of receiving the small pox (Boston, MA: J. Franklin, 1722).

Inoculation violates the Sixth Commandment, even when well intentioned

If we now Thirdly, will weigh this Matter in a religious Ballance, it will certainly be found wanting, and deceitful upon the Weights. I look upon this Matter to be forbidden by the Sixth Commandment, as lascivious Thoughts are by the Seventh. For it is always to be supposed; that a Law which forbids a great Evil, forbids also every Thing that has a Tendency thereto. For which Reason, the very next Chapter forbids all voluntary and causeless Wounding, Mutilation, &c. [Exodus 21] Because these Things go often farther than they are designed, even to the taking away of Life : When this happens, they are to be considered, as no other than a Breach of the Commandment : And it is but reasonable to imagine, that when God forbad to take away Life, He forbad also the Commission of any Violence, whereby Loss of Life might probably ensue. Tho’ the Homicide be casual, yet if the Cause of it be criminal, surely it will be no Excuse for it is observed, That although the Effect which follows (if mortal) is beside the Intention, yet the Cause of it being not so, is sufficient to make a Man guilty before God : Men being justly chargeable with those Effects, which are the natural Results of those inordinate Actions, from whence they proceed.

Reverend Edmund Massey in Mr. Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain for the Month of August, 1722. (London: T. WARNE), 118.

Inoculation as a violation of God’s law

They are guilty of the Breach of the Moral and the Evangelical Law of God; for they have not done by their Neighbour as they would that their Neighbour should do to them, and that in a Case of great Moment; not only to the hazard of Life, but the Loss of many a Life; how many God knows. Math. 7.12. Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that Men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.

If we are commanded to love our Neighbour as our selves, then they that voluntarily bring in the Small Pox into their House, and not only endanger their Neighbours Health and Life, but eventually take both away, do transgress the Law and the Prophets, Matt, 22[:] 35, 36, 27 [should be 37], 38, 39, 40. And, Oh! What a Fountain of Blood are the Promoters guilty of! God grant them repentance unto life. May it not be said of you, You lay aside the Commandments [of] God, and ye have learned the Traditions of Men. Mark. 7. 9. And he said unto them, Fulwell ye reject the Commandment of God, that ye may keep your own Tradition.

Their Daring Practice on Women with Child who miscarry’d while under Inoculation, they do not mention, as if procuring Abortion were a very innocent Practice, I forbear the Names of some who are instances of this Wickedness.

Dr. William Douglass, Inoculation of the Small Pox as Practised in Boston, Consider’d in a Letter to A-S– M.D. & F.R.S. in London (Boston, MA: J. Franklin, 1722), 12.

The unlawfulness of inoculating someone with a disease

If Infection is communicated to another by means of Self-Infection, and this Contagion spreads itself among others, and any of these thus infected perish, at whose hands shall their Blood be required? Since it was probable they might have escaped the Natural Pock when they fell by means of the Inoculated Pock, and thereby come to an untimely End. . .

In short, I affirm it unlawful for a Person in Health upon any Account [for any reason] to receive a less Infection to avoid a greater, because Our blessed Saviour, the Great, the Skillful Physician says, He that is whole needs not a Physician, but he that is Sick. He allows of Application to Physicians in Cases of Illness, but Health has no need of Recourse to them.

Frank Scammony, The New-England Courant, August 21-28, 1721. Cited in National Humanities Center, The Paper War over Smallpox Vaccination in Boston, 1721, 4.

On harming oneself via vaccination

Every one who allows himself to be vaccinated becomes a party to all the mischief it may do him, and even a party to his own death if it should kill him.

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 57.

On the evils of legalizing vaccines

Lawmakers, will you not be touched by these sad pictures of poverty, sorrow, and death? Laws are made to keep people from wrecking and killing themselves with morphine, etc., but why—O, why—legalize the diseasing, crippling, and killing of people with the poison from cow sores? They do not want to be, and why force them to be? People are put in asylums and confined to keep them from killing themselves, but—O but !—in the cause of that foul butchery—vaccination —their constitutional rights for which their fathers fought, are ignored and trampled under foot, and they and their loved ones are forced to submit their bodies to a poison which diseases, sometimes permanently, and it frequently kills.

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 67.

Vaccination as a cause of disease

Epidemics of smallpox frequently begin with the vaccinated, and do them a greater evil than it does those unvaccinated. But to be just as fair as it is possible to be, suppose it were true that vaccination does prevent or lighten smallpox, even then would it be right to legalize and compel it to be done? It would not for the reason that it diseases and kills people, and therefore it would be legalizing disease and death. Another reason why it should not be legalized is that the virus that is used is unknown, and besides, it will mix with the virus of cancer, leprosy, syphilis, and it is not known how many others, and give the vaccinated these diseases. And let it be remembered that the virus of these diseases will mix with that of vaccination in such a condition that their presence cannot be detected by any test whatever, not even by that of the government itself, and therefore we and our children are liable to be diseased by these tormenting, loathsome, and destructive diseases, and therefore the only possible way to be sure not to be thus diseased is not to be vaccinated at all.

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 68.

Calling evil good and good evil

To enact a medical creed; to make health a crime ; to punish parents as criminals, because they will not allow their children to be diseased ; to establish and endow the degraded office of the spy ; to authorize guardians of the poor to interfere with the domestic life of independent citizens ; to filch from the poor-rates for the prosecution of respectable ratepayers ; to convert courts of law into courts of injustice ; to profane the very name of law by using it to trample upon parental rights, —all of which is done under the Vaccination Acts,—is flagrant usurpation by Parliament of a power which no earthly government can claim, the power, namely, to interpose between man’s conscience and his God, and to set aside God’s law in favour of man’s inventions.

Vaccination Tracts,”Vaccination Evil in its Principles, False in its Reasons, and Deadly in its Results” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 4.

Compulsory vaccination as sin and persecution

Is compulsory vaccination in accordance with the laws of God ? If it is, it is every man’s duty to obey this statute of men, not because it is the law, but because it is right. If it is not, it is every man’s duty to resist it, not because it is the law, but because it is wrong. And if it is wrong (though the law), it is tyranny and persecution to enforce it. …

Every father who resists this bad law is simply performing his duty before God and man, and every creature who tries to enforce it—be he relieving officer, guardian, or magistrate—sins against God’s laws and outrages the liberty of man. All such creatures had they lived 300 years ago would have been among those who burnt and beheaded others for not being of the same religion as them, for this persecution is born of the same spirit. But we will show them that God’s law is higher than their law—we will hearken unto God rather than unto them.

Vaccination Tracts,”The Vaccination Laws: A Scandal to Public Honesty and Religion” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 14, 15.

“A considerable number of good people are just now suffering fines and imprisonments because they will not suffer their children to be vaccinated. Their very excellencies as parents cause them to be dealt with as malefactors. … A law which thus favors parental indifference, and discourages careful thought and conscientious devotion to the child’s welfare, reverses the spirit of just law.”
— Moncure D. Conway on mandatory vaccination

Forced vaccination and obeying God rather than man

The point I want you to see is that as God’s laws are altogether right and must always be obeyed, when the statutes of men clash with the laws of God, the statutes of men must be resisted. I had far better break the law of man than the law of God, for while I may break the law of man often without either sin or punishment, I can never break the law of God without both. Only so far as the statutes of men are in accord with the laws of God are they binding on human beings. If a thing is not right to begin with, making it into a law will not make it right. If it is the law of Pharaoh that I shall drown every male child born unto me, I will break the law of Pharaoh even though I have to put my little Moses in an ark of bulrushes. If it is the law of Nebuchadnezzar that I shall bow down to his golden image, I will ‘ Dare to be a Daniel,’ I will ‘ dare to do what’s right.’ If it be the law of Herod that my young child’s life shall be taken, I will evade the law of Herod even by a flight into Egypt. And if it be the law of England and the Walsall Guardians that I shall give up my healthy child (committed to my arms by God) to have it diseased and corrupted, I will resist both even though they steal my goods or rob me of my personal liberty. I should do this not because / wish to oppose the laws of men, but because I must obey the laws of God. If Government commands me to do right I must do it, not because commanded, but because it is right ; if they command me to do wrong I must refuse, not because commanded, but because it is wrong. Whatever else I am loyal to, I must be loyal to my own soul—to God speaking to me through my own soul. As Lord Brougham said of the Slave Laws :— ‘ There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same throughout the world, the same in all time—it is the law written by the finger of God upon the heart of man.’ Pertinent, too, are the remarks of Bishop Hare—’No authority of man can alter the nature of things, or justify a cruel and unjust sentence in the sight of God. If to punish men for their opinions be not very right, there is no medium ; it must be very wrong. It is public robbery or outrage to deprive a man of his goods or his liberty for his conscientious convictions, if it be not just in itself to do so as well as legal.’ And if this be so—is it not time we had done with the cant and immorality, that seeing a wrong thing is the law of our country it ought to be obeyed. I say, those are the best friends of their country—those are the best citizens—who resist bad laws : who like Peter and John in our text prefer to hearken unto God—to be true to their conscience—rather than to bad human laws. If the people of Walsall are going to practically submit to the doctrine that it is as binding on them to give up their children to be diseased as it is to feed them, because both alike are the law, they are not worthy of liberty; they deserve nothing but law, oppressive law, tyrannical law, and will soon get what they deserve. If we have this notion, that we are morally bound to obey any statute legally made, though it conflict with public morals, with private conscience, and with the law of God, then there is no hope for us, and the sooner a tyrant whips us into our shameful grave the better for the world. And to us tyrants will soon come.

Vaccination Tracts,”The Vaccination Laws: A Scandal to Public Honesty and Religion” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 12-14.

On the “cure” being worse than the disease

Diseasing them to keep them from being diseased; making them sick to keep them from becoming sick; killing them to keep them from being killed! What philosophy! Giving them a disease more to be dreaded than the one it is supposed to prevent; giving a disease about which they know nothing, to prevent another about which they know nothing! What science! Giving them a disease which is a generator of diseases and an excellent vehicle for many others; giving them a disease that is likely to be permanent if it does not kill, to prevent one that runs its short course and it is done; giving them a disease that frequently produces the very one which it is given to prevent, and that, too, in its most violent forms; giving them a disease that not only produces the one which it is given to prevent, but makes those who have been diseased by it more susceptible to the other!

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 68.

On criminalizing vaccination

It would be more laudable by far to enact laws making the practice of vaccination a crime than to make its practice lawful, and therefore we hope that all laws that advocate and enforce vaccination will be repealed as soon as possible. It is right to do so, and therefore we most earnestly appeal to our lawmakers to see that it is done as soon as possible. Read this whole book if you have not done so, and then see whether or not you can afford not to repeal all laws in favor of vaccination, if you do not enact a law making its practice a crime.

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 69.

Inoculation as presumption before God

It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God: This was our Saviour’s Answer to the Devil, when he would have persuaded him to the Commission of a presumptuous Action. There are Angels, says the Tempter, to take Care of you, so that you cannot possibly come to any Harm, then make the Experiment, and cast thy self down. Now there is no great Difference between this of the Devil, and the Temptation which lies before us ; both intimate the Safety of the Practice, and both pretend the Blessing of God : Our Lord’s Reproof then will serve them both : No, says he, we must not preſume upon God’s Protection, to expose our selves to any unnecessary Danger or Difficulty. If Trials overtake us, he to whom we pray not to lead us into Temptation, will make a Way for us, that we may be able to bear them : But if we overtake them, if we seek for a Disease, and so lead our selves into Temptation, we can have no rational Dependance upon God’s Blessing: It is with Difficulty we can sanctify our Afflictions in the Course of Providence, in the Way of our Duty, and ’tis odds but we miscarry under them, when we bring them upon our selves: If God’s Blessing be withdrawn, it must unavoidably be so ; and such Circumstances wherein we have no Reason to expect his Blessing, are, I think, by no means to be run into.

Reverend Edmund Massey in Mr. Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain for the Month of August, 1722. (London: T. WARNE), 119.

Vaccination makes parents accomplices to evil

Compulsory vaccination stamps out parental feelings and consciences, and Christian faith and courage, and makes weak parents accomplices in its own wickedness, rotting the social state in its very heart.

“The Foundations and Effects of the Compulsory Vaccination Law,” in Vaccination Tracts,”Compulsory Vaccination a Desecration of Law, a Breaker of Homes and Persecutor of the Poor” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 4.

Compulsory vaccination as murderous tyranny

Compulsory vaccination is not law, excepting in the sense in which murderous tyranny is law. It is not medicine, save in so far as consummate blood-poisoning is medicine.

Resistance to it is a law of nature in unperverted men and women, and a dictate of the Law of Christ. Brethren, resist even to martyrdom, and He, the Lord, will defend the right.

C. T. Pearce, M.D., M.R.C.S., in his Essay on Vaccination (1868), and in his voluminous evidence before the Vaccination Committee of the House of Commons (1871), has demonstrated that vaccination is a violation of God’s law, and a contaminator of the body.That the increased death-rate of children is coeval with the extension of vaccination. That so far from the practice being protective against small-pox, the liability to small-pox in adult life is greater in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated. That chest diseases, especially phthisis and bronchitis, have enormously increased since vaccination was adopted. That half of our young women between the ages twenty and twenty-five who die are consumptives. That the mortality of children afflicted with measles, scarlatina, and other diseases, is far gréater in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated.

“Value of Re-vaccination According to Medical Testimony,” in Vaccination Tracts,”Letters and Opinions of Medical Men” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 15.

On tyrannical Boards of Health

Our Boards of Health, instead of being what the name really means, are a synonym for fright, disease, death, and tyranny. Why are they not as zealous about seeing that our towns and cities are kept clean as they are about using diseasing and deadly agencies on the people? VVhy are they seeking power, and, in proportion as they have the power, boss and drive the people? The day is not far distant, We hope, when this world will be ruled and governed by intelligence and love instead of brute force. May our God and the people hasten that day!

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles,Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination (Nashville, TN: South Bigham & Smith, 1902), 71.

Sowing, reaping, and vaccination

It is an indefeasible law of nature, that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” From vaccination, therefore, which sows disease and corruption in the blood, the only harvest possible is a harvest of corruption and disease, too often culminating in death. Accordingly, we find, proportionately to the increase of vaccination, an enormous increase in mortality from small-pox itself, and of infantile mortality from those constitutional diseases—syphilis, consumption, scrofula, cancer, etc.—which are especially liable to be transmitted by vaccination. Nor is it possible to estimate what proportion of all kinds and forms of disease whatever is the direct product of this insane practice.

Vaccination Tracts,”Vaccination Evil in its Principles, False in its Reasons, and Deadly in its Results” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 4.

Compulsory vaccination as blasphemous and superstitious — and a tyrannical, sinful, and murderous inquisition

[W]hat now is the Compulsory Vaccination Law? It is a law for compelling parents to violate their conscience by consenting to the performance of an operation on their children, which they regard as unnatural, dangerous, and therefore sinful. It is a law which makes it criminal for an Englishman to keep his children in health. It is a law which invests a medical trades’ union with a monopoly of the right of creating disease in every healthy born infant. It is a law which—passed by a professedly Christian legislature, in a professedly Christian country —postulates the blasphemy that the Creator is unable to send His creatures into the world except as a ‘dangerous nuisance ;‘ and postulates the infallibility of a certain radical sect, who propound an unclean superstition as the sole means for counteracting the mischievous effects of His handiwork. Such a law as this cuts at the root not merely of every sentiment of reverence for the God our country professes to worship, but at the root of every principle of civil and religious liberty, and of common sense itself. It invades the home—once an Englishman’s castle—and sets spies upon the very cradle. It makes health a crime and preaches disease as a blessing. It legalizes murder by slow torture; and sows loathsome disease broadcast among those who survive to transmit it to future generations. It stamps freeborn Englishmen as the slaves of medical disease-mongers. It transforms guardians of the poor and justices of the peace into persecutors of their neighbours, abject tools of a medico-materialistic inquisition, which cares nothing for demoralising and degrading parents so long as it can force them to work its wicked will upon their helpless infants.

“The Liberal Party and Vaccination: Re Professor Fawcett,” in Vaccination Tracts,”Historical and Critical Summary in Three Parts: Part III. Pro Aris et Focis. The Religious Nature and Political Necessity of the Vaccination War.” (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 35, 36.

Inoculation is done not to treat a disease already received, but to communicate a disease

Now Inoculating the Small Pox is not a Sympathy with, nor Antipathy unto a Wound or Disease already received, but a making a Wound, in order to communicate a Disease, which is an Abuse unto that Text, Math. 9.12. They that are whole need not a Physician, but they that are sick, and a horrid Violation of the Intent that our Lord said it for.

The need for churches to speak to all of life, including the evils of vaccination

Accordingly we turn with hope and with remonstrance to the religious bodies of Great Britain, and summon them one and all to a religious war against vaccination. They are the final refuges against natural panic, which is the ground on which vaccination lives. … They are the centres of rebuke to evil and of encouragement to good. Their light and life should inspire all the elections that men have to make in the outer and political spheres. And one church or chapel … resolute in God’s name against vaccination would be a new centre in the country : it would be such a true centre as none but a religious organization can supply. The dragon of blood-pollution would turn pale before it. It would be compact and unwasted, replenished from within against persecution. It would burn and chine with the work of its mission, infecting other bodies with its liberty, and encouraging them with its intelligence. It would teach the State that there is subordination in professions ; and that the supreme region of religious principle is above the body and the world, and will tolerate no insurrection from their hopes and fears. It would make religion into the guardian of the most precious liberties, and place them beyond the reach of wicked men. Shall not one such church, chapel, or meeting-house be found, where the Bible is the most practical of books, and guards the homes of the rich and poor alike? Shall not one such Sunday and weekday school be found to teach parliaments and judges and magistrates the A B C of common innocence and righteousness? Shall not one such light arise to break open the darkness of the press, to rebuke the vanity of literature, and to tell truths where they are unwelcome and wanted. At least our task is done for the present in crying aloud to all religious bodies, and in warning them that a great victim, a sorrowing childhood bound to the rock of materialism, pleads for rescue here.

Our suggestion is that religious bodies shall have special services for the instruction of the congregation in the urgent duties of the day, with prayers, hymns, and discourses suitable. That they shall begin to fight from the truths of the Word, a few of which are here cited, against private and public evils, and thus become militant in Bible power ; and find in public and private regeneration the witness of Scripture and the evidence of Christianity. In this way upon many subjects—such as vivisection, vaccination, the scientific and artistic abuse of women by the fingering slaves of Governments, medical domination over religion, and judicial and parliamentary denunciation of conscience as phantasy … —godly instruction will be diffused, and religious resistance prepared and organized. And when any beam of evil life is taken from the eye of the country, the mote of non-perception of outward truth may be clearly seen and easily removed ; and thus the religious bodies, as a part of their office, will become fontal schools of righteous science, and the Divine truth, cleansing and merciful, will flow into and fertilize natural truths. All depends upon practical good from the Word of God being the centre of worship, of thought, and of action. A complete counterpoise to the atheist schools will thus be brought into play; a true balance, and more than a balance, of power against scientific despotism. There is not a church or chapel in the wide world in which such service cannot be rendered, unless, indeed, there be any church empty enough of God to hold that religion has no real relation to life. … The truth for life and practice is, “Cease to do evil; learn to do well.” These things in their own power the Church universal alone can receive and communicate ; and this it can do only and surely by practical determinations against evil carrying out doctrinal teachings of good.

Civil punishment the only legs by which the failed vaccination system stands/vaccination and hardness of heart

Considering the circumstances brought before the reader in these pages—the condemnation of the whole present system of vaccination by eminent medical men, the recommendation of Sir Thomas Watson that parents should submit to prison rather than run the risk of submitting their children to vaccination, the willingness of nearly the whole profession to abandon the process as unreliable, and to resort to something else not sanctioned by law to escape the evils of the present system—it is wonderful that persecution in favour of the condemned system still goes on with magisterial power. Fine and imprisonment are the iron legs on which vaccination stalks, for it has no other leg to stand on. This fine and imprisonment are in themselves chaotic ; for the fines vary from sixpence in one court to twenty shillings in another ; and the imprisonment varies from simple confinement to cropped hair and hard labour. It is surprising. For it is a mark of the hardness of heart and dulness of mind of the scientific nineteenth century ; the epoch of legalized vivisectors, legalized vaccinators, and legalized purveyors of clean prostitutes for the vaccinated services which defend the United Kingdom from domestic disorder and foreign foes. These things are the ministries of health which Parliament and Government provide for us ; and the dissenters from these things are persecuted to ruin by magistrates clerical and lay—especially clerical—though the light of knowledge in favour of such dissenters is now accessible to the whole people.

Vaccination Tracts: Preface and Supplement(Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 28, 29.

The need for Reformation of medicine regarding vaccination

To the martyrs themselves we can only say, Be of good cheer, and endure to the end. The brand that afflicts you “is lighting a candle in England,” as a fellow-martyr said to Brother Latimer at the stake, and “that candle, by God’s grace, will not be put out ; ” but its light will shine down into the darkest and cruellest places of medical despotism, until people are their own masters for their bodies and their children, just as the other greater candle under God’s Providence showed them “the Way and the Truth” for the emancipation of their souls and minds.

It only remains to be said as a general deduction and lesson from the foregoing facts, that in the rectitude of the public information about vaccination and its laws, and in the fallibility and unsteadiness of the medical profession, all and sundry persons can find an assured reason to judge the case for themselves without paying heed to the vaccinating doctors. The matter of first certainty is, that the moral sense of mankind is from the beginning outraged by the poisoning of blood to ensure health. … The second certainty is that outward facts confirm this central position, and carry the war against vaccination into all the pretences and subterfuges of medical men. But the moral sense comes first, and gives every man a right, as a good subject and citizen, to refuse to obey legislation which is a crime against God and man.

Abide above all in this moral sense, which is the organ of conscience and the defence of religion under every difficulty. It will produce a Reformation in Medicine, even as the conscience with God speaking in it, and God’s Word instructing it, has already produced that Reformation to which we owe all we enjoy of civil and religious liberty. That civil and religious liberty requires continual completion and realization, as new ages make claim upon it, and new dangers from the powers of darkness assail it. For our homes and our children, for our parental love, liberty is an empty phrase, a skin with no safe heart inside it, so long as any profession under licence of Parliament can violate the feelings and consciences of parents and the bodies of children, and be upheld by force in the violation. It is 350 years since our English New Testament, our soul’s health, and men and women who held by it, were burnt by English Bishops and Archbishops as a noisome pestilence infecting the human mind. At this day our national bodily health, the very testament of our bodies, the clean tablet of successive childhoods, is branded by a vaccinating Parliament as a nuisance and also as a pest. The time has come for the people to stop this burning also, for they alone can do it, and it is their burning sin while it endures.

Vaccination Tracts: Preface and Supplement(Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892), 29-31.

On obeying God’s law despite compulsory vaccination

Parents are undoubtedly the proper judges in matters of this kind. Medical opinion and medical practice are constantly changing, and Parliament ought never to have passed a law based upon so sandy a foundation. Friends, above all others, should encourage fathers to be loyal to their consciences, and to refuse to do what they feel to be wrong, even if commanded to do so by Government—for God’s law is above man’s. All admit that disease is opposed to health. Now if the law said plainly, “You shall disease your healthy child,” people would at once see how monstrous such a law was. And such is the law in question. …

This law forbids perfect health—a proceeding which nothing can justify. Good men and worthy citizens are placed side by side with drunken reprobates, simply because they refuse to have their healthy children diseased. “They that are whole have no need of a physician.” If we sow corruption we ought not to expect to reap health.

William Adair, Keswick, 1st Mo. 1885, in The British Friend (Glasgow, 2nd Month 2nd, 1885), 37.

Vaccination transmits a large number of diseases under the pretense of preventing one disease

Experience has amply proven that vaccination has not infrequently transmitted to the healthy body maladies far more loathsome and fatal than the disease it was presumed to prevent. Under the silly pretense that it is a preventive of one acute disease it has transmitted a large number of chronic diseases.

J. W. Hodge, M.D., Niagra Falls, N. Y., “Practice of Medicine.: State-Inflicted Disease in our Public Schools,” in Medical Century, vol. XVI, no. 10 (October 1, 1908), in Willis A. Dewey, M.D., and J. Richey Horner, M.D., eds., Medical Century: An International Journal of Homoeopathic Medicine and Surgery, vol. XVI, January to December, 1908. (New York and Chicago, 1908), 310.

Compulsory vaccination violates the natural rights of parents to protect their children

These laws violate the natural rights of parents to protect the health of their children, and penalize them for conscientiously refusing to do that which they believe to be morallv wrong.

It is contended … by those who favor compulsion that this is a matter in which “the end justifies the means.” The answer is that no possible end can justify a means which makes the possession of a sound and healthful body a misdemeanor, and violates the conscience of law-abiding citizens. To do evil that supposed good may come is wholly indefensible in both law and morals. I am aware that the doctrine that “the end justifies the means” has been frequently used in the past for the defense and justification of all sorts of cruelties and crimes, and it will probably be so employed in the future. Since, in the very nature of things, it can never be right to do evil that possible good may come, the end does not justify the means in this case.

To intentionally and forcibly implant into the tissues of the healthy human body the elements of disease is a gross transgression of moral as well as of physiological law. It is tampering with the integrity of nature by entering into a compromise with disease. It is doing positive injury that hypothetical good may result. When we consider that obligatory vaccination in our public schools is directed against the well and healthy, not against the sickly and diseased, not against those who are in need of the services of a doctor, the utter absurdity and injustice of this unsanitary practice become glaringly apparent. Both the theory and the practice of vaccination are utterly opposed to the plain teachings of hygiene and sanitary science. The vaccine theory is the most untenable dogma in the whole category of delusive medical doctrines. The preposterous theory that a sound and healthful child can be benefitted or the public health promoted by having the mixed contagia of the undefined disease of men and beasts infused into his pure blood is so utterly antagonistic to the basic principles of hygiene and so revolting to every natural instinct of the human mind, that one is amazed to find presumably sane people willing to subject themselves and their children to this barbarous and disastrous practice.

Forced vaccination of children has no biblical warrant

God has given to every parent authority to decide upon the medical treatment of his offspring; and when Parliament vainly endeavours to override the ordinance of God, we may well ask—By what authority doest thou these things? and—Who gave thee that authority?”

Dr. E. Haughton, Journal of Cutaneous Medicine, in Notabilia.: “Vaccination and Sanitation,” The Monthly Homoeopathic Review, April 1, 1871. In The Monthly Homoeopathic Review, eds. J. Ryan, M.D., & A.C. Pope, Esq., vol. XV, (London: Henry Turner & Co., 1871), 246.

On vaccine refusal and obeying God and not man

The fact of a Minister of the Church of Scotland standing out against the law of compulsory vaccination is a significant event. A man in Mr. Wight’s position is not likely to be actuated by a whim. When the Sheriff charged him with crotchetiness, he clearly exceeded his judicial function; for it was wholly outside his duty to enter into and discuss Mr. Wight’s motives. If Mr. Wight was convinced that vaccination would endanger the health, and possibly the life, of his child, he was thoroughly justified in refusing to obey the law; for there is a higher law which decrees “Thou shalt not kill.” On that law Mr. Wight may set his feet as on a rock, and say with the Apostle, “We ought to obey God rather than man.”

“Rev. George Wight and Sheriff Hope” in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. V, no. 60, March, 1884. The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: The Organ of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination: Volume the Fifth: April, 1883 to March, 1884 (Westminster: 1884), 248.

Inoculation oppresses the stranger, fatherless and widow

Now we read in Deut. 27.19. Cursed is he that perverteth the Judgment (or Right) of the Stranger, Fatherless and Widow. …

If Inoculation has a natural Tendency to the perverting the Right of the Stranger, Fatherless and Widow, then it is an unrighteous Action. But, Inoculation has a natural Tendency to the perverting the Right of the Fatherless and Widow. Therefore, It is an unrighteous Action.

Bad laws, such as mandatory vaccination, undermine good laws

To a great extent the law is not obeyed. It is disregarded, as every law is disregarded which does not agree with men’s consciences. It is a most mischievous thing that there should be a law in existence which good people are tempted to disobey. It is a bad example to set, and it tends to bring laws into contempt which are of real importance.

Lord Bramwell, addressing the House of Lords in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. V, no. 52, July 1883. The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: The Organ of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination: Volume the Fifth: April, 1883 to March, 1884 (Westminster: 1884), 82.

Vaccination is an unnatural process, poisoning the blood

We unite in the assertion that vaccination is unnatural, and when we are asked, Why? we answer, Because it is an operation which violates the order maintained in the formation of the blood. If we follow food into the stomach and attend to the processes of digestion, rejection, and assimilation–the infinite care, in short, with which blood is made, we shall start back with dislike, and even horror, from a practice which sets at naught all this care; which attacks the blood directly, and attacks it to poison it. Hence it is that vaccination is stigmatised as unnatural, being a process which not only reverses the course of Nature in blood-making, but doubly unnatural, as violating that course and poisoning its product.

William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 594.

Unnatural, immoral vaccination inevitably has negative consequences

[V]accination is an attempt to swindle Nature. The vaccinator says, “Come, my little dear, come and let me give you a disease wherewith I shall so hoax Nature that henceforth you may live in what stench you please, and smallpox shall not catch you.” But can Nature be swindled ? can Nature be hoaxed? Mr. Lowell, in praising the genius of Cervantes, says, “There is a moral in Don Quixote, and a very profound one it is–that whoever quarrels with Nature, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is certain to get the worst of it.” There is sometimes an apparent triumph over Nature. We do wrong, and fancy we may evade the penalty by some cunning contrivance, but ere long we perceive with dismay that the consequences were only concealed or staved off, and that we have to answer to the uttermost farthing. Vaccination is a dodge kindred with incantations and similar performances whereby it is hoped to circumvent the order of the Highest, and compel his favour apart from obedience to his will. By artifice it is attempted to obviate a consequence of ill-living, whilst persisting in ill-living; but if it were possible to escape smallpox by such means, we should have equal punishment in some other mode. No: smallpox with its alternatives and equivalents can only be avoided through compliance with the old-fashioned prescription, “Wash you, make you clean; cease to do evil, learn to do well.” The lesson is hard to learn, and harder to practise ; but there is no evading it if we would be healthy and happy. Wherefore all tricks like vaccination are bound to nullity and disaster.

William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 595, 596.

Medical tyranny is not justified “for the greater good”

I now at once saw that compulsory vaccination was an infamy, since Parliament could not secure any one from Ira Connell’s fate : and I was indignant on learning that doctors pooh-poohed such miseries, as endured ‘for the general good’ a theory which justifies any amount of tyranny under the influence of superstition; and I presently remembered that in Roman pestilences sacrifices were believed efficacious, and the arguments of the priests and senators were quite as good as those of our physicians. Professor F. W. Newman in William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 545, 546.

On inoculation used on those who have no need of a physician

Your Practice [of inoculation] is upon those who in our Saviour’s Sense, Have no Need of a Physician; Matt. ix. 12. You indeed say they have; but whether your Testimony ought to prevail against such a Testimony, let any Body but the Inoculators themselves be Judges.

Reverend Edmund Massey, A Letter to Mr. Maitland in Vindication of the Sermon Against Inoculation. (Norwich: S. Mascott), 18, 19.

Inoculation calls evil good, and good evil

Till you shew me how these Contradictions can be reconciled, and a necessary Practice be drawn into Precedent to warrant an Unnecessary One, you must excuse me that I take you to be of the Number of those who call Evil Good, and Good Evil; who put Darkness for Light, and Light for Darkness; who put Bitterness for Sweet, and Sweet for Bitter; Isa. v. 20. against whom the Prophet has denounced a Wo!

Reverend Edmund Massey, A Letter to Mr. Maitland in Vindication of the Sermon Against Inoculation. (Norwich: S. Mascott), 22. (Not mentioned in this version itself, but it was printed in 1722.)

Mandatory vaccination oppresses the poor parent

Such persistent prosecution often becomes a public scandal. To a parent with adequate means, the fines and costs are trivial, and are amply repaid by the satisfaction of setting guardians and justices at defiance, and publishing far and wide his contempt for the vaccine superstition. On the other hand, a parent in humble circumstances is often put to cruel straits between his love and duty to his child and the comfort of conformity.

Professor F. W. Newman in William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 576.

On martyrs suffering under mandatory vaccination

The contest, be it repeated, is with the poor. “There is no getting over the fact,” says Dr. John Scott of Manchester, “that vaccination is hated among the working class, in Lancashire, at least.” Vaccination is hated, and rightly hated, and the law is set to overcome that hatred. Multitudes submit because they either know not how, or dread to do otherwise; but an honourable and increasing number prefer the better part–holding by what they recognise for right, resolved to obey God rather than man. It has been said, “The days of martyrdom, like those of miracles, have ceased “; but have they? The record of humble English folk, who, during the past thirty years, have withstood the infamous Vaccination Acts, bears witness to the contrary. Martyrdom and heroism are rarely recognised by those who occasion or dislike their manifestation: it is sympathy that opens the eyes to their appearance. Unknown or despised, these medical nonconformists have stood true to their faith in the order of nature against doctor-craft, and have counted nothing dear to them if so be they could preserve their children and conscience from outrage. They have been prosecuted with all the malice and pertinacity of petty authority–of Justice Shallow and Bumble; have been insulted from the judgment seat; have been fined to the uttermost farthing and loaded with uttermost costs, and this repeatedly; have had their goods and furniture distrained, and their homes broken up; have been sent to jail with hard labour, and subjected to every indignity and cruelty of the prison-house; have been hunted from parish to parish, and in despair driven to exile. And these have been Englishmen, the law English, and the time our own! The Master of the Rolls recently observed, “What is contrary to the feelings of every honest man cannot be the law of England–or, if it be, the sooner it ceases to be law the better.” It would be unfair to charge the injustice of the Vaccination Acts to the English people. To most of them their character and operation are unknown. The chief sufferers are hidden under the hatches of poverty, and are unable to make the land resound with their wrongs. Those, too, who essay to speak for them are confronted with that obdurate dullness with which the early Free-Traders had to contend when restriction was thought to be as good for commerce as cowpox is thought to be good for health in stopping smallpox.

Professor F. W. Newman in William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 591, 592.

On mandatory vaccination laws punishing parents who take responsibility for their children’s welfare

A considerable number of good people are just now suffering fines and imprisonments because they will not suffer their children to be vaccinated. Their very excellencies as parents cause them to be dealt with as malefactors. Here, say, are two men: one gives uninquiring assent to what other thoughtless people assent to; he doesn’t care much what happens to his child, delegates to usage the duty of thinking for it … The other man gives no uninquiring assent; he studies carefully that his family may be nourished with truth and maintained by such laws of health as he can discover. Now, of these two the careless parent is favoured by the vaccination law, while the thoughtful, anxious, and devoted parent is punished unless he adopt a prescribed opinion. A law which thus favours parental indifference, and discourages careful thought and conscientious devotion to the child’s welfare, reverses the spirit of all just law. Of course it is equally probable that the thinking parent may be able to agree with the majority; but he may not, and in this case he suffers for his inquiry, while the other escapes,—no man being so safe from the results of thought, erroneous or right, as he who never thinks at all.

Moncure D. Conway, “Compulsory Vaccination,” The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, no. 1 (April 1879). In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: Volume the First: April 1879 to March 1880 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1880), 6.

Inoculation destroys health and shortens lives

Inoculation as an art of giving the smallpox to persons in health, who might otherwise have lived many years, and perhaps to a very old age without it, whereby some unhappily come to an untimely death.

Reverend Edmund Massey, A Short and Plain Account of Inoculation, 1. Cited in William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 23.

Vaccination as the greatest physiological heresy of the day

The Rev. C. H. Collyns, Rector of Wirksworth, in seconding a resolution, said he looked on Vaccination as the greatest physiological heresy of the day. The vaccinators said every child was a centre of infection until they had poisoned its blood—until, that is to say, they had corrected the work of God Almighty. Vaccinators, on the pretext of preventing small-pox, not only did not prevent, but increased it, and multiplied other diseases by their filthy practices. It was for us to preach the truth about Vaccination, earnestly, firmly, and constantly. One of the greatest curses of this country was the vested interests which grew around abuses. A vested interest had been created by Vaccination, and there was now a whole army of officials and practitioners ready to defend the law, and to maintain its expediency at any cost. Whatever bishops, judges, and magistrates might say, he denied that he was bound to obey unjust law. On the contrary, he maintained he was bound as a Christian to disobey unjust law. Many an unjust enactment would never have been abolished had it not been for the brave resistance of men like those they welcomed from Northampton jail to-night.

Charles Gillett, T.J. Norton, and Solomon Shrimpton, “Banbury Anti-Vaccinators” (Banbury, May 8, 1879), The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, no. 3 (June 1879). In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: Volume the First: April 1879 to March 1880 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1880), 36.

The vaccination superstition trying God’s patience and oppressive to one’s neighbor

English men and English women when they fully comprehend the foulness of vaccination and the untrustworthiness of medical men will certainly put down the murderous and costly superstition with a heavy hand. Our medical vaccinators, in slaying thousands of infants every year, and polluting temporarily and for life many thousands more, are trying the patience of God, and exasperating fathers and mothers … The crime of compulsory vaccination is so infamous that even the obtuse consciences of miscalled Liberals must soon be aroused to take quick action to compensate for their long indifference to the oppression of their neighbours, and the unjust waste of public money.

W.G. Ward in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, no. 18, vol. II (September 1880). In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: Volume the Second: April 1880 to March 1881 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1881), 92.

On the priests of vaccination superstition

THE GREATEST TRIUMPH OF SCIENCE.
That is one of the phrases used by its high priests in praise of vaccination. Yet the vehicle by which this “triumph of science” is to be perpetuated, is as little understood now as ever by its devout and believing operators. … the failures as regards the supposed protection from small-pox are too frequent to be overlooked by the most bigoted partisan, and cause the greatest concern.

It is true the priests of this superstition still swear by the same name, and perform the same rite as of yore; that in proportion as the rite fails they are mad with rage, as Baal’s prophets were, with those who mock their zeal and their performances; but the “failures multiply” now, as Dr. Baron records them to have done in 1804-6.

[T]here is no more common-sense in their doings than there was in the exercises of the prophets of Baael, or in a Zulu medicine man’s performances.

Alexander Wheeler, “THE GREATEST TRIUMPH OF SCIENCE.,” in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, no. 17, vol. II (August 1880). In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: Volume the Second: April 1880 to March 1881 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1881), 70.

“The faith in vaccination is a superstition founded on ignorant theories of a profession which has vested interest in the rite. … Whenever they suffered some national disaster, the [ancient] Romans, thinking it must be caused by the unchasity of a vestal
virgin, burned one alive to amend matters. … In these days when smallpox breaks out in London … we kill a few little children by inoculating them with a disease from
some four-footed beast.” — H.S. Constable

Vaccination a superstition that demands child sacrifice

The faith in vaccination is a superstition founded on ignorant theories of a profession which has vested interest in the rite. It is like some of the religious superstitions of priesthoods in dark ages. I suppose there must be a certain quantity of superstition in the world, and it takes one form in one age, another in another. In the middle ages we were priest ridden, and when the priests tumbled off, the doctors and pseudo-scientists jumped up into the empty saddles and have stuck on manfully ever since. Doctorcraft, like priestcraft, has hitherto been a strange mixture of self-interest and honest enough self-delusion, combined with corresponding delusion in the general public. Going farther back still than the priestcraft of the middle ages, we come to the old Romans. There we find ignorance, superstition, and folly, though, of course, in different forms. Whenever they suffered some national disaster, the Romans, thinking it must be caused by the unchastity of a vestal virgin, burned one alive to amend matters. Whenever an epidemic occured, their way of stopping it was to execute some public functionaries of the locality, alleging that they could not have offered up due sacrifices to Esculapius, or the pestilence never would come. In these days when smallpox breaks out in London, instead of executing the Lord Mayor, we kill a few little children by inoculating them with a disease from some four-footed beast.

H.S. Constable, Fashions of the Day, in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, no. 16, vol. II (July 1880). In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: Volume the Second: April 1880 to March 1881 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1881), 60.

Forgers of lies who confidently assert that inoculation makes one forever free from future danger and infection

The confessed Miscarriages in this new Method, are more than have happened in the ordinary Way: And if this be our Case now, how much worse must it needs prove, if God for our Presumption, and contemptuous Distrust of his good Providence, should suffer this Delusion to gain Ground, and these Physicians of no Value, these Forgers of Lies (as Job expresses it) to obtain and grow into Credit among us : Such I fear they may be accounted, who so confidently tell us what is impossible for them to know ; namely, that they who undergo their Experiment are for ever thereby secured from any future Danger and Infection:This is a bold Assertion indeed, and if such Experiment were lawful and consistent with the Rules of Christian Practice, I could wish to God it were true also : But if neither of these be the Case, if the two Requisites, Prevention, and Lawfulness be wanting ; I believe I may venture to affirm, that the most learned and judicious among the Professors of Physick, will never give into so destructive a Scheme.

Reverend Edmund Massey in Mr. Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain for the Month of August, 1722. (London: T. WARNE), 117.

The need for doctors to avoid being corrupted by inoculators

I hope the Time is coming, that these Venefici, these Spreaders of Infection, will be distinguished from those of the Faculty, who deserve Honour, and not permitted to mingle with them, as the Devil among the Sons of God, lest like the Disease giving Practitioner, the Harlot whom Solomon describes, they entice us, till a Dart strike through our Lives, and we haste to their Snare, not knowing that it is for our Life.

Reverend Edmund Massey in Mr. Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain for the Month of August, 1722. (London: T. WARNE), 117, 118.

A persecuted father’s plea to refuse vaccination, a killer of children

TRUTH WITH VIGOUR. The Rev. W. Stoddart, B.A., Stockton-on-Tees, had an order made upon him, on 25th September, to have his child vaccinated within fourteen days, and at the same time was sentenced to pay 8s. 6d. costs. The case excited public attention, and Mr. Stoddart replied as follows to a letter in the Daily Gazette—

“I have just noticed a mean and dastardly attack on me in the Gazette of 30th September. The writer, Mr. J. Metcalfe Garry, confesses that ‘cases do occur where children and even adults have had by this means their existence blighted,’ and yet, because I will not expose my child to the risk of having its existence blighted, this gentleman classes me with returned convicts and cut-throats ‘as being one of those very dangerous class of law-breakers who ought to be placed under supervision of the police.’ … [I]s it because I consider it my duty to preserve my child from having a disease put into its blood? I have been summoned before the magistrates and compelled to pay costs because I will not risk the life and happiness of my child by allowing the virus of cow-pox to be injected into its blood. If my child’s happiness was blasted, who would be responsible? If my child were murdered by law, could the law clear my conscience of the crime of murder? Should I not be responsible before God for the murder of my child, and doubly guilty because I knew it was morally wrong to risk a child’s life or happiness by putting a disease into its blood? I could not plead ignorance of my duty. I consider human life too precious and too sacred a thing to be wantonly risked. It is unnatural and immoral to give a disease to a child, and when the laws of God are better known and taught, it will be considered a monstrous crime to poison the blood of a child. The natural way to prevent disease is to keep the body healthy by obedience to the laws of health. Cleanliness, temperance, fresh air, pure water, wholesome food, these are the natural preventives of disease. … Vaccination is radically wrong. Why should we not give our children a mild form of fever to prevent them from taking the typhoid or scarlet fever? Hundreds of children have had their existence blasted by this vile law. Hundreds of helpless infants have been massacred by this immoral law, and it is the duty of every parent to protect his offspring against cow-pox and the horrible diseases which are sometimes communicated by vaccination. I shall do my duty in spite of fine, imprisonment, and public insult; I shall obey the dictates of my conscience; I shall obey the law of God rather than that of ignorant men; I shall protest against this law as unnatural and immoral; and I shall teach men to disobey this State law, because it is a direct violation of the laws of God, a disgrace to the education of the age, and a scandal to public honesty and religion.”

“TRUTH WITH VIGOUR.” in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, no. 8 (November 1879). In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: Volume the First: April 1879 to March 1880 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1880), 116.

Inoculation, even when seems to work, can infect one’s neighbors with disease

[A]ltho’ we see sundry Persons have the Small Pox favourably that are inoculated and so escape, yet we see (and these Gentlemen own it themselves) that they are capable of infecting their Neighbours to as great a Degree as those that are smitten the Common Way [exposure to a person ill with smallpox]. And, if so, I am sure it was far from being a laudable Practice in this Town (or in any other Town) in the Condition it was in Ten Months ago, for this Reason, because they could not have inoculated Twenty Persons in the Heart of the Town, as Mr. B——n did, but that they must infect many of their Neighbours: how many, God knows.

“Absinthium,” The New-England Courant, December 11-18, 1721, excerpt. Cited in National Humanities Center, The Paper War over Smallpox Vaccination in Boston, 1721, Selections., 9. Retrieved November 2, 2017 from http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text5/smallpoxvaccination.pdf.

Inoculation with good intentions is not a moral excuse when it harms someone

Since you thus act out of your Way, and without Authority, what Amends can you, (willingly) make to the Friends of the Deceased, in Case of a Miscarriage? Or what Answer can you give the Prince, if he should inquire of the Loss of his Subject? The Plea of no Malice prepense, might, ’tis true, acquit you of wilful Murder; but still you nave robbed a Man of Health and Life without Authority: And great Consolation, no doubt, it must afford to his surviving Relations and Dependants …

Reverend Edmund Massey, A Letter to Mr. Maitland in Vindication of the Sermon Against Inoculation. (Norwich: S. Mascott), 17.

Smallpox vaccination and spreading disease

Small-pox has become more and more prevalent in England, more and more fatal, since vaccination has been made compulsory. It cannot be different in America.

Alexander Wilder, MD., “A View of Vaccination.” in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, no. 38, Vol. IV (May 1882). In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: Volume the Third: April 1881 to March 1882 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1882), 22.

Why crusade against vaccination?