Christian Opposition to Vaccination in History

See also:
Biblical critique of vaccination series
Moral objections to vaccination and inoculation in history

by Stephen Halbrook

A great scandal within the history of Christianity is the advocacy or indifference of many Christians to vaccination. This genocidal pagan practice has been with us for centuries — and we still have not cleaned up our act. Now are paying the price big time with mass murder via the COVID death shot.

Why the ongoing ignorance of the evils of vaccination? Or is it idolatry? We are long past due repenting.

Nevertheless, there has also been throughout vaccine history a number of Christians who have been salt and light on the matter of vaccination by opposing the practice itself, and/or opposing vaccine mandates. There are also those in history who may have not been true Christians, but have opposed vaccination on biblical grounds.  (This is because vaccination is unbiblical.)

Those who claim there is no historical opposition to vaccination in Christian history are ignorant at best, propagandists at worst.

Indeed, since the time of smallpox variolation (the forerunner to vaccination) and smallpox vaccination itself, we see an ongoing Christian opposition to vaccination in the early days of this wicked practice.

This post is a sampling of such Christian opposition. Topics include:

• The Inoculation Controversy of the 1700s
• Frank Scammony (1721)
• Reverend John Williams (1721)
• Reverend Edmund Massey (1722)
• Reverend Theodore Delafaye (1753)
• Reverend John Wesley (1766)
• Clericus (1857)
• Dr. E. Haughton (1871)
• Reverend William Hume-Rothery (1872)
• Henry Veysey (1877)
• W. Stoddart (1879)
• W.G. Ward (1880)
• Mary C. Hume Rothery (1881)
• Rev. George Wight (1884)
• Some other pastors around 1883-1885
• William Adair (1885)
• From Vaccination Tracts (1892)
• John Brown (1897)
• Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles (1902)
• John W. Hodge (1908)
• Opposition to Vaccination in Dutch Reformed Protestantism
• Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1832): Dutch Poet, Anti-vaccine Resistance Leader
• Dr. Abraham Capadose (1795-1874): a Model Vaccine Opponent in Christian History
• Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920): a Model Christian Statesman against Mandatory Vaccination
• L.W.C. Keuchenius (1822-1893): a Model Fire-breathing, Anti-vaccine Christian Statesman

Vaccine genocide begins — the introduction of smallpox variolation

The word inoculation is used to describe both vaccination (initially against smallpox) and its forerunner and analogous procedure, variolation. Both procedures claimed to protect one from naturally catching smallpox by infecting one with a certain amount of smallpox itself (in variolation), or cowpox (in vaccination).

And so, smallpox variolation, or inoculation, is vaccination in all but name. It is technically the forerunner to vaccination, but in essence it is the beginning of vaccination. And so we begin our discussion of Christian opposition to vaccination with this topic.

The Inoculation Controversy of the 1700s

Here we will see that, while some Christians were complicit in introducing the horrendous practice of inoculation, there were also those who condemned it from the outset.

In 1721, smallpox variolation would be introduced to England and America. In America, it was originally proposed by the Puritan Cotton Mather. A huge controversy erupted:

The chief proponents of inoculation, Cotton Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, were supported by a very small coterie of ministers and doctors. The opponents on medical grounds, led by Dr. William Douglass, the only trained medical doctor in town, included most of the other physicians, the town selectmen, and editor James Franklin of the New England Courant, a paper founded in the midst of the controversy to give opponents a forum.

Patricia Cline Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (New York, NY: Routledge, 1999), 96.

Battle lines were drawn within Puritan New England; the matter became a topic in sermons, and a

paper war ensued as each side published pamphlets and newspaper articles to argue its position and refute its opponents. At times the debate became personal and biting, each side accusing the other of bias and falsification.

National Humanities Center, The Paper War over Smallpox Vaccination in Boston, 1721, Selections., 1. Retrieved February 28, 2015 from http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text7/smallpoxvaccination.pdf.

Those on the opposing side recognized inoculation as a dangerous—and thereby morally unlawful—means to prevent smallpox. Some “argued that inoculation was a heathen remedy that should not be used by good Christians.” (Rebecca Jo Tannenbaum, Health and Wellness in Colonial America (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 95.)

It would seem that wherever smallpox variolation was introduced, there was a degree of Christian opposition. While Cotton Mather introduced the procedure in New England, the physician Charles Maitland did so in England. Here the practice met strong opposition from such pastors as Edmund Massey and Theodore Delafaye.

(One of the most famous Christian victims of smallpox variolation was the great preacher Jonathan Edwards. More about this, and the controversy in general, here.)

When Maitland took his murderous inoculation trade to Scotland, he was met with much resistance. Given the strong presence of Christianity in Scotland at the time, we can infer that many Scottish Christians opposed inoculation.

Maitland returned to Scotland, his native country, in 1726, and, going among his relations in Aberdeenshire, showed off his skill by inoculating six children. One of them, Adam, son of William Urquhart of Meldrum, aged 18 months, sickened on the seventh, and died on the eighth day. There was a great outcry, and Maitland tried to excuse himself by asserting that Adam was afflicted with hydrocephalus, which had been improperly concealed from him. Anyhow, the Aberdeenshire folk were satisfied with their experience, and recommended “Charlie Maitland to keep his new-fangled remedy for the English in future.” He was more fortunate in the west of Scotland, where he “inoculated four children of a noble family,” who escaped alive. The Scots, however, were deaf to his persuasions, and he made no headway among them. At a later date, 1733, inoculation began to be practised in and about Dumfries, and occasionally elsewhere.

William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 34.

Frank Scammony (1721)

During the inoculation controversy, in a letter to the New-England Courant in 1721, a one Frank Scammony raises the matter of moral responsibility for deaths resulting from smallpox variolation. He argues from Scripture against it:

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.

Reverend John Williams (1721)

Reverend John Williams (1664-1729) was a Puritan minister in New England. He was a leading voice in the colonies in opposing smallpox variolation following its introduction.

Williams called variolation

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 … [6]

[6] 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).

The reason was because variolation endangered the lives of its recipients; thus, Williams said it was 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 [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.

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), 3, 4. 

Williams also said the following in opposition to smallpox inoculation. While he doesn’t specifically reference the biblical text in opposition to doing evil that good may come (Romans 3:8), he nevertheless implicitly condemns this immoral philosophy that inoculation assumes:

Now we fear there are many in the Grave the More for it [smallpox inoculation]; 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.

Ibid., 10, 12.

For Williams, civil rulers should apply the Lex Talionis (the law of just punishment, “eye for eye,” “life for life”) 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.

More quotes from Rev. John Williams here. (Quotes are scattered, so find them via the keyword “Williams” using the “find” option.)

Reverend Edmund Massey (1722)

While Reverend John Williams was a leading voice against smallpox variolation in America, Reverend Edmund Massey was a leading voice against it in England. In 1722, Massey said the following about the practice:

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.)

The logical and ethical absurdity of inoculation (exposing one to an actual danger in order to avoid a possible danger)

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.

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.

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.

More quotes from Rev. Edmund Massey here. (Quotes are scattered, so find them via the keyword “Massey” using the “find” option.)

Reverend Theodore Delafaye (1753)

Theodore Delafaye of Canterbury, an Anglican clergyman, preached a sermon against inoculation on June 3, 1753. Here he considered inoculation as doing evil that good may come.

As William White writes, he preached

from the text, ‘Let us do evil that good may come’ (Rom. iii. 8), and published it under the title of Inoculation an Indefensible Practice.

William White, The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-fact Chapters (London: E.W. Allen, 1885), 42.

See Delafaye’s followup work, “A Vindication of a Sermon, entitled, Inoculation an Indefensible Practice,” here.

Reverend John Wesley (1766)

In 1766 Rev. John Wesley questioned the safety of inoculating children:

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.

Clericus (1857)

We don’t know who “Clericus” is. He submitted comments to The Homeopathic Record which were published in 1857. Perhaps, given his pseudonym, he was a clergyman.

In his comments, he condemns vaccination as doing evil that good may come, and comments on another statement in Romans 3:8, “whose damnation is just.”:

It has always been a matter of amazement to me that medical men of the old school do not soon perceive the mischief they are doing. I object to their mode of proceeding, (for one cannot call it a system,) on religious grounds also. For what is bleeding, blistering, purging, and setting up one disease to cure another, but “doing evil that good may come?” And does not the inspired apostle say of them whose actions are prompted by such a principle of expediency, their “damnation is just?” But I really do not see why the practice of vaccination should be exempt from this sweeping condemnation. Are we justified in disobeying a divine command from any motives of expediency? But in this as in every other instance of doing evil that good may come, if we are to believe the facts that Mr. Gibbs has brought forward, the good done is only apparent—sickness and mortality have by no means diminished thereby, only they have assumed other forms.

Clericus, “Correspondence: To the Editor of the Homeopathic Record,” in The Homeopathic Record (no. 10, vol. 2) (August 1, 1857), 202.

Dr. E. Haughton (1871)

Forced vaccination of children has no warrant from God

A doctor writing for a medical journal said:

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.

Reverend William Hume-Rothery (1872)

Reverend William Hume-Rothery was an Anglican minister in the Church of England and served as president of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League.

In 1872, he published the book Vaccination and the Vaccination Laws: a Physical Curse and a Class-tyranny. In this book, he considers vaccination as doing evil that good may come – a practice that is completely indefensible for Christians:

The theory of this so-called Vaccination is that we must do evil that good may come : create a disease to prevent a disease; a minor, which may be followed by life-long sufferings or a speedy and untimely death, to prevent a major, which might never occur, and could not possibly occur if the laws of health were faithfully obeyed. This theory would justify every description of wickedness within certain bounds. It, and the practice alluded to, which is based upon it, must, therefore, be indefensible on any Christian or rational ground whatever.

Reverend William Hume-Rothery, Vaccination and the Vaccination Laws: a Physical Curse and a Class-tyranny (Manchester: W. Tolley, 1872), 2.

In his book Rev. Hume-Rothery also says the following about vaccination opposing God’s established order of nature:

“The practice called Vaccination is in violent opposition, as any one may see, to the Divinely-established order of nature, the effect of which, in every living organism, is always to expel an invading evil, never to engraft one, to promote perfection. It must, therefore, be injurious to the nature which the All-good and All-wise Creator has given us. Surely no conscientious man, with his mind open to this fact, would be a party to the perpetration of this unnatural deed upon the tender body of a helpless babe.” (p. 1)

“The blood, which is the life of the flesh, is so jealously guarded from whatever might be injurious to health, that nothing from without immediately enters it. The skin, the lungs, and the digestive apparatus, which are the organs provided for conveying nourishment to the blood, are endowed with a discriminating and sifting power, so that they may exclude or reject, as is done in normal conditions, whatever might be detrimental to the system, and accept only what is necessary to repair and sustain it. Now, by lancing or tattooing the skin, and putting the product of a sore directly into the blood, the protection established by the All-wise Creator is infringed, and the bodily organism deprived of its right of selection of such substances as are needed for its well-being, whilst a poison, which has been expelled by Providence in nature is nevertheless forced into the blood of a healthy babe. A practice which begins by outraging some of the simplest laws of physiology, to say nothing of the insanity of its fighting against God, is self-condemned, and can be productive of nothing but mischief.” (p. 2

“By the right of the analogy as here presented, it may be seen how exceedingly dangerous is the practice of wounding the arm of a babe, and putting an animal poison, called vaccine, directly into its blood. With this truth upon his heart, no good man could consent to be a Vaccinator, or approve the venomous practice of Vaccination.” (p. 2)

Reverend William Hume-Rothery, Vaccination and the Vaccination Laws: a Physical Curse and a Class-tyranny (Manchester: W. Tolley, 1872), 1, 2.

Henry Veysey (1877)

In a letter to the editor of the Taunton Courier in 1877, Henry Veysey applies biblical arguments to oppose mandatory vaccination. While Scripture generally requires submission to the ruling authorities, in the case of a law that requires one to do evil — such as vaccination — one must obey God by disobeying that law:

[V]accination is unscriptural. We profess to be subject to God’s Word, and there we are told to “submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter ii., 13). If vaccination did all its supporters assert yet we read that the condemnation of such is just who say, “Let us do evil that good may come” (Romans iii., 8). I therefore dare not insert a filthy disease with fearful possible diseases (even to death in many cases) to escape small-pox, which may never come, and which, like scarlet fever, or measles, is an effort of nature to get rid the body of irritant matter. Sorry indeed shall I be to be obliged to appear to disregard the order of gentlemen whom privately I respect and loyally I would do my utmost to obey, but in this case I must “obey God rather than men.” Trusting that the law on this point may be soon altered, and that thus we shall be released from our present unpleasant position …

Henry Veysey, “Vaccination Prosecutions [To the Editor.],” The Taunton Courier, Wednesday, November 21, 1877. British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk); The British Library Board
Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

W. Stoddart (1879)

W. Stoddart, in an 1879 letter to the Stockton Herald, argues against submitting to a law to vaccinate his child. It is immoral to harm a child in order to avoid a potential harm; and if criminal law was consistent, killing a child with vaccination would be punished by the state:

I refuse to have my child vaccinated because vaccination, by which a disease called cow-pox is given to a child, is a direct violation of the laws of Nature. The human body is protected in various ways against the attack of disease, and to cut open the veins and inject the virus of a disease into the blood is clearly unnatural; moreover, there is a danger of other diseases being communicated along with the vaccine. Hundreds of cases could be adduced of children being murdered by law by vaccination. …

These murders are justified on the plea that vaccination is a preventive against small-pox, but can it be right to give a child one disease to guard against the possibility of catching another? ‘To do evil that good may come’ is acknowledged to be a vicious maxim, and can it be right to do a less evil to prevent the possibility of a greater evil happening? Even if vaccination were a sure preventive to small-pox, which it is not, it is unnatural and immoral to give a disease to a child. If I were to give any other disease to a child, and the child died, I should be charged with murder, and the law of the State cannot make that right which is wrong and immoral in itself.

W. Stoddart, Stockton Herald, September 27, 1879, quoted in The Daily Gazette, September 27, 1879, 4.
British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk); The British Library Board

W.G. Ward (1880)

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

A one W.G. Ward writes this in the Vaccination Inquirier:

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.

Mary C. Hume Rothery (1881)

Mary C. Hume Rothery was wife of the Reverend William Hume-Rothery (cited above) and editor of the National Anti-compulsory-vaccination Reporter.

In the vaccine narrative, goalposts are constantly changed to protect vaccines from being seen as failures. The game was always rigged.

And so in 1881, Mary C. Hume Rothery, editor of the National Anti-compulsory-vaccination Reporter, discusses the justification of such failures in terms of vaccine idolatry:

“They believe in a word — we doubt not many of them really do believe — in the fetish they have set up; though how a rational human being can arrive at such belief is a psychological problem not easy of solution, but yet one of very old standing ; for so the nations of old fashioned out of a tree the idols to which they then prayed, saying, “Deliver me, for thou art my god.”

“Modern scientists cultivate a peculiar sort of dirt—it melancholy to read of M. Pasteur, for instance, at Melun, spending valuable time in cultivating corruption (he calls it “pure lymph,” too, no doubt) of a more or less virulently poisonous character, corruption so foul that living parasites abound in it, and having cultivated, whether in calves or in sheep, or in hapless infants, this corruption, this dirt, to their liking, our sages insert it in their blood and say, “Deliver me from small-pox for thou art my god of health.”

“The parallel runs further yet; for just as we have all read of benighted worshippers when alarmed for or disappointed in results, beating, throwing away, or deserting the image previously worshipped, so do the votaries of vaccination when an epidemic, from which their fetish ought to have protected them, makes its appearance, and seizes some of them-as it always does-for its first victims, heap scorn and contumely on their once prized “successful vaccination.” It becomes “imperfect” or “ spurious” vaccination at once; and recourse must be had to a new protecting-fetish-“re-vaccination,” which, as the official German statistics now so overwhelmingly prove, protects just as little as its predecessor ; (less by any possibility it cannot).

“There is nothing more ludicrous, as we have often observed, than the blind terror with which small-pox inspires our best vaccinated populations,-such as that of London for instance. When no danger is at hand they point triumphantly to the cooked statistics and lying death-rate percentages with which the “divinity” of vaccination is hedged in by its priests and prophets ; but let there be a case of small-pox within half-a-mile, and immediately a re-vaccination scare arises.

“Previous vaccination is avowedly useless in presence of an epidemic. “You must re-vaccinate at once !” Then what in the name of all that is rational was the use of the previous vaccination, when there was, according to the orthodox theory, no small-pox to catch ? But, no sooner is the epidemic over and the danger as they suppose past, than back they go to their Vaccination-peans and their percentages again !-just as the savages pick up and reinstate their abused idols, when thanks to some other agency the danger has passed by.”

Marcy C. Hume-Rothery, “Modern Devil-Worship,” National Anti-compulsory-vaccination Reporter, Vol. V, No. 12, September 1, 1881, ed. Mrs. Hume-Rothery, in National Anti-compulsory-vaccination Reporter, Vol. V, October 1880 – September, 1881, ed. Mrs. Hume-Rothery, 202, 203.

Reverend George Wight (1884)

Reverend George Wight was a minister of the Church of Scotland. When there was a mandatory vaccination program in Dumphries, Scotland, he protected his child by refusing to have him vaccinated. He had given thought careful thought and study, and knew that the procedure was neither safe nor effective. This describes his situation:

At the Dumfries Sheriff Court on Jan. 30, the Rev. George Wight, Established Church, Whamphray, was charged with having refused to have his child vaccinated. Mr. Wight pleaded guilty, and urged that he had given the question of vaccination very anxious and careful study for many years, and to his mind the weight of testimony was overwhelming against it. He found that medical men of the highest position and repute in England, the Continent, and America pronounced it as their decided opinion, resulting from experience and observation, that not only was there no power in vaccination to protect from small-pox, but that it was the means of imparting dreadful and loathsome diseases, often consigning helpless infants to an early grave. He need not say that it was not with his consent that he was there that day ; it was simply be cause he could not help himself. There was a higher law than this law of man, and that law he felt bound in his conscience to obey.

“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), 246.

The following lauds Rev. Wight’s decision as obeying God’s law over man’s:

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.”

Ibid., 248.

Some other pastors around 1883-1885

As reported in The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review:

Rev. Stopford A. Brooke

The Rev. Stopford A. Brooke developed an argument of remarkable force against the practice of vaccination at the Bedford Debating Society on March 8. The occasion was a lecture by Dr. W. J. Collins on the unwisdom of enforced vaccination—one of those cogent and temperate addresses with which he apparently deprives his adversaries of the means of rational reply. Mr. Brooke, citing the observation of Sir James Paget, that vacination creates a permanent morbid condition of the blood, went on to show that it was in the nature of things impossible to create such a condition and have it limited to that condition ; that we could not attack the vital powers, and circumscribe the consequences of that attack; and that it was well known that shock to the system and disease predisposed the constitution to the entrance and establishment of other ailments. The position was fortified by several interesting illustrations from personal and general experience ; and the opponents of compulsory vaccination present felt that their case was presented with the fresh force of a vigorous and original mind.

The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. V, no. 49, April, 1883. In 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), 5.

Rev. James Rose

FROM REV. JAMES ROSE.
Sandhurst, Wokingham, June 20, 1883.
Bear Sir,—I have just read the discussion in the Commons on the Vaccination Laws, and I hope and pray that all the supporters of your
Society will redouble their efforts, and, where possible, their subscriptions, that the voice of reason, nature, and scandalised humanity may be more widely and loudly heard.

No person must be sent to Parliament who will not vote for the repeal—the unconditional repeal—of the Draconian law.

The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. V, no. 53, August, 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), 108.

Rev. J. Page Hopps

From the Rev. J. Page Hopps.
Lea Hurst, Stoneygate-road, Leicester,
November 11, 1883.
Dear Sir,—I am sorry I cannot attend your meeting. Without professing to be an expert on the subject of Vaccination, I am entirely in sympathy with those who say that if the Government has the right to enforce Vaccination, the area of ” reasonable excuse ” for non-compliance should be greatly widened, and should be made to include a parent’s intelligently expressed belief that grievous bodily harm may be done to his child. Fine and imprisonment, in face of such a belief, seem to me to be of the nature of persecution and cruelty.

The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. V, no. 58, January, 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), 199.

Rev. Andrew Noble Scott (Congregational)

The Rev. Andrew Noble Scott, Congregational Church, Cumnock, appeared at the Sheriff Court, Ayr, on March 13, and was fined 10s., with 30s. costs, for refusing to have his child vaccinated. Costs in Scotland are of extraordinary dimensions ; and it would be interesting to know how they are made up.

The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. VI, no. 61, April, 1884. The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: The Organ of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination: Volume the Sixth: April, 1884 to March, 1885 (London: 1885), 5.

Rev. T. Hancocks

The Rev. T. Hancocks, of Tonbridge, Kent, has been prosecuted, and ordered to have his children vaccinated, or in default pay a fine of 10s.—for each child 5s. Mr. Hancocks made a good defence in court, and a father who was present said he should follow his example. As Mr. Hancocks observes, “It is cheaper to be fined than to pay for vaccination—not to mention what else may be escaped.” We hope Mr. Hancocks may hold a public meeting in Tonbridge and explain his position fully to his neighbours. First example, then precept. How well they go together!

The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. VI, no. 62, May, 1884. The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: The Organ of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination: Volume the Sixth: April, 1884 to March, 1885 (London: 1885), 29.

Rev. William Cuff

From the Rev. William Cuff.
Shoreditch Tabernacle, Hackney-road,
May 2, 1884.
My dear Sir,—I am published all over Bury St. Edmunds and neighbourhood to be there on 13th inst., the day of your meeting. Of course I must go. I am sorry I cannot be with you. I would do or say anything in my power that was good and right to abolish the hateful vaccination laws. I hope you may have a good meeting.

The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol. VI, no. 63, June, 1884. The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review: The Organ of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination: Volume the Sixth: April, 1884 to March, 1885 (London: 1885), 52.

William Adair (1885)

On obeying God’s law despite compulsory vaccination

The following is from a letter submitted to “The British Friend” from a one William Adair:

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. 

From Vaccination Tracts (1892)

Vaccination as doing evil that good may come

Albert Carter, Surgeon Dentist, notes the ongoing oppression of humanity via the philosophy “Let us do evil that good may come” — with vaccination being one of the newer manifestations of this oppression:

“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.

Some more from Vaccination Tracts:

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 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.

Vaccination as 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.

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.

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.

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. 

“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), 48-50.

John Brown (1897)

John Brown, vestryman and Poor Law Guardian, resided in London. In the Wiltshire Times in 1897, he applies Scripture to the matter of fighting disease. There are biblical ways to combat disease, but this does not entail vaccination – evil that good may come; a mockery of God:

The word of God gives no countenance to the doing of evil that good may come. You can only sow disease and reap immunity from disease when you successfully mock God; there is absolutely no warrant for the use of disease in fighting disease; and the very thought of using disease as an ally, and making war upon health is utterly repugnant to Bible sanitation. Bible sanitation gives warrant for notification of diseases, for isolation and disinfection, but neither in Old or New Testament are we enjoined to send the physician to the healthy and only the healthy, as is done by vaccination.

Ella Stewart-Peters, From ‘Ignorant Mothers’ to ‘Conscientious Fathers’: Cornwall and the Vaccination Act, 1840-1907 (Thesis Submitted to Flinders University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, July 2018), 20. Quote from Wiltshire Times, 31 July 1897.

Reverend Isaac Lockhart Peebles (1902)

Isaac Lockhart Peebles was a Methodist Reverend who wrote a thorough critique of vaccination in the book Unanwerable Objections to Vaccination, published in 1902.

Vaccination as doing evil that good may come

In this book Peebles takes aim at the twisted, evil philosophy that justifies killing a few with vaccines in order to save many. Such a philosophy obviously justifies doing evil that good may come, which Peebles implicitly opposes in the following strong words:

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.

On unmerciful vaccinators

Peebles says this about the character of many 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.

Some more quotes from Peebles on vaccination:

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.

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.

On the insanity of vaccination

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 the need to criminalize 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.

On murderous, 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? Why 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.

John W. Hodge (1908)

John W. Hodge was a medical doctor and author of the book The Vaccination Superstition (1902). In 1908, he wrote a piece titled “Practice of Medicine: State-Inflicted Disease in our Public Schools.”

Regarding mandatory vaccination, he here connects doing evil that good may come with the evil philosophy “the end justifies the means.”

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.

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.

Opposition to Vaccination in Dutch Reformed Protestantism

The Dutch Reformed Church has historically provided significant opposition to vaccination – whether to the procedure itself, or mandatory vaccination laws. Thus, an article on Dutch opposition to vaccination reads,

“The orthodox Protestant opposition to vaccination dates back to the 19th century. Like in other countries, severe side effects of smallpox vaccination fueled protests against compulsory vaccination.”

Helma Ruijs, Acceptance of Vaccination among Orthodox Protestants in The Netherlands (W.L.M. Ruijs, 2012), 14. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/98582/98582.pdf?sequence=1

Another writer states,

The practice of refusing vaccinations has a long-standing history within the Netherlands. … Shortly after Jenner’s discovery, the Dutch government and many municipal authorities took steps to promote smallpox vaccinations. However, the smallpox vaccination was quite dangerous and, due to technical deficiencies and negligence of hygiene, did not offer total protection. In 1823 Edward Jenner died, and this led to a flood of commemorative texts which praised him as the very picture of the Enlightenment. This caused irritation on the part of the ‘Réveil’, a circle of people advocating a Christen revival and opposing the thinking of the Enlightenment, who combined orthodox Protestant faith with care for the poor and the elderly people.

Geurt Henk Spruyt, “Politicians and Epidemics in the Bible Belt,” Utrecht Law Review, Volume 12, Issue 2 (June) 2016 (accessible at https://www.utrechtlawreview.org/articles/abstract/10.18352/ulr.349/), 115.

The Dutch Reformed Church came about after the Reformation in the Netherlands. It has been an important influence on Christianity with its solid doctrinal formulations as expressed in the “Three Forms of Unity” – the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort. While those in the Dutch Reformed church have not been monolithic in their views on vaccination, nevertheless, according to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Dutch Reformed Congregations have

a tradition of declining immunizations. Some members decline vaccination on the basis that it interferes with divine providence.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Immunizations and Religion (August 27, 2013). Retrieved September 28, 2019, from https://www.vumc.org/health-wellness/news-resource-articles/immunizations-and-religion

While many Christians would disagree on how to ethically deal with health matters as it relates to divine providence, as we shall see, this was not the only reason the Dutch Reformed opposed vaccination. Indeed, just as it was in other nations, smallpox vaccination was recognized as dangerous and lethal. As such, vaccination would naturally be opposed as a violation of the 6th Commandment.

Some important figures in Dutch Reformed history opposing vaccination

The rest of the quotes in this piece are from those of the Dutch Reformed opposition to vaccination.

Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1832): Dutch Poet, Anti-vaccine Resistance Leader

(more on Bilderdijk here)

Whether or not Bilderdijk was an actual Christian, he was at least used by God as a voice to warn others against vaccination. For Bilderdijk,

Vaccinations were part of ‘perverted scientific practices’ and he regarded the smallpox vaccination as ‘animal poison’.[6]

Geurt Henk Spruyt, “Politicians and Epidemics in the Bible Belt,” Utrecht Law Review, Volume 12, Issue 2 (June) 2016 (accessible at https://www.utrechtlawreview.org/articles/abstract/10.18352/ulr.349/), 115.

In opposition to vaccines, Bilderdijk at one point noted the evil of using the pulpit as a means to promote vaccination:

God preserve us that we should recommend a vaccine and thereby misuse the Church’s pulpit and the position of a servant of God. Never the less anything is possible for Christians in these despicable times of restraint of conscience.

“CC Callenbach, a Reveille Preacher” (First published in the family-magazine “The Prophet of the Velue”, nr. 74, autumn 2006). Retrieved September 29, 2019, from http://www.callenbach-meerburg.nl/Website%20Callenbach%20Engels/Verhalen-Eng/cc_callenbach,%20a%20reveille%20Preacher.htm

In a poem in honor of fellow vaccine opponent Abraham Capadose, Bilderdijk thanks him for combating Molech worship. Here Bilderdijk appears to be referring to vaccination, which, being deadly, is a form of human sacrifice:

Thank you, my Friend, in the name of Religion and Conscience,
For the shield, taken up in the implacable battle,
To ward off the brute force that, forgetting God and obligation,
Throws innocent offspring in the infernal Moloch’s arms.

Kalmijn, Capadose, 151. Cited in Gerrit J. TenZythoff, Sources of Secession: The Netherlands Hervormde Kerk on the Eve of the Dutch Immigration to the Midwest (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), 169.

It seems likely that Bilderdijk influenced the Seceder clerics of his time to oppose vaccination:

[H]e and Capadose, a medical doctor, opposed the government-mandated smallpox vaccinations for school children. Virtually all the Seceder clerics later adopted this same anti-vaccination position, which caused their children to be barred from school.

Robert P. Swierenga, Elton J. Bruins, Family Quarrels in the Dutch Reformed Churches in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 15.

Dr. Abraham Capadose (1795-1874): a Model Vaccine Opponent in Christian History

(more on Capadose here)

Following his conversion to Christianity, Capadose would come to oppose vaccination. For him, the “Spirit of the Age” entailed a prideful trust in vaccination. (Gerrit J. TenZythoff, Sources of Secession: The Netherlands Hervormde Kerk on the Eve of the Dutch Immigration to the Midwest (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), 91.)

Capadose held that medical science

“has forgotten God and has adopted the principle that it should test all means … without first testing them against the principles of Religion.” Cited in Ibid.

And so, Capadose waged a campaign against smallpox vaccination (publishing objections in 1823) which would influence Holland’s Protestants. One argument was that vaccines were an attempt to thwart Divine Providence, as God grants both health and disease. However, he also argued that it was unlawful to give disease to one who is healthy, and pointed out the severe side-effects caused by smallpox vaccination.

On Capadose, Ruijs writes,

Capadose stressed that vaccination as a preventive measure is not allowed as it is not known to humans if God intends to send disease, that vaccine – moreover – may cause disease in healthy children and that the aims of lifelong protection and eradication of disease are signs of misplaced human pride.

Helma Ruijs, Acceptance of Vaccination among Orthodox Protestants in The Netherlands (W.L.M. Ruijs, 2012), 14. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/98582/98582.pdf?sequence=1

Referring to Luke 5:31, Capadose would write that “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Thus, making someone who is healthy ill by vaccination is unbiblical.
[Gerrit J. TenZythoff, Sources of Secession: The Netherlands Hervormde Kerk on the Eve of the Dutch Immigration to the Midwest (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), 91, 92.]

A Criminal Heathen Practice, Blasphemy, and Molech Worship

Capadose saw a link between vaccination and animal magnetism; moreover, he believed that to vaccinate a child is to engage in a heathen medical practice deserving of criminal punishment.
[Jaap Grave, Rick Honings, Bettina Noak, eds., Illness and Literature in the Low Countries: From the Middle Ages until the 21st Century (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 153.]

For Capadose, then, those who vaccinate their offspring “sacrificed their children to Molech.”
[Gewin, In den Reveilkring, 99-107; cf. Kluit, De Clercq-Capadose, 41-42. Cited in TenZythoff, Sources of Secession, 93.]

Capadose saw vaccination as a blasphemous attempt against God’s ways (TenZythoff, Sources of Secession, 92.).

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920): a Model Christian Statesman against Mandatory Vaccination

(More about Kuyper here)

Kuyper was a very important figure in Dutch history, and was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, a professor of theology, a member of the Dutch Parliament, and the prime minister of the Netherlands.

Kuyper very openly opposed mandatory vaccination. He noted that doctors can be wrong, and compulsion is not justifiable until one already manifests a disease – at which case it is too late for vaccination. Moreover, government does not have jurisdiction over one’s body, and conscientious objections must be respected. Finally, mandatory vaccination reduces to absurdity when requiring one to be vaccinated a second time. In Kuyper’s words,

For this reason alone, compulsory cowpox vaccination should be out of the question. Our physicians may be mistaken and government may never stamp a particular medical opinion as orthodox and therefore binding. Moreover, compulsion can never be justified until the illness manifests itself and may therefore never be prescribed as a preventative. A third reason is that government should keep its hands off our bodies. Fourthly, government must respect conscientious objections. In the fifth place, it is one or the other: either it does not itself believe in vaccination, or if it does, it will do redundant work by proceeding to protect once more those already safeguarded against an evil that will no longer have a hold on them anyway. Vaccination certificates will therefore have to go—and will be gone at least from our free schools. The form of tyranny hidden in these vaccination certificates is just as real a threat to the nation’s spiritual resources as a smallpox epidemic itself.

Abraham Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto (1880; Bellingham WA: Lexham Press. Kindle Edition, 2015), 16.2, § 204, Kindle Locations 4917-23.

Kuyper thus would be a very important force in protecting his people from vaccine tyranny. Kuyper headed the Antirevolutionary Party (ARP), which he was the chief architect of. Formed in 1879, a core part of its platform was opposition to mandatory vaccination. As Kuyper, speaking for the ARP, writes,

Thus we protested against the compulsory inoculation of our children.

Abraham Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, James D. Bratt, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 472.

Kuyper recognized that vaccination is deadly. As The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review reports, Kuyper states the following about a child slain by vaccination:

The Rev. Dr. A. Kuyper, Professor at the Free University, Amsterdam, writes, 3rd September, — “A child of Mr. J. Forster, Professor in Medicine at the Amsterdam Town-University, one year old, has been vaccinated by his colleague, Mr. H. Hertz, Professor of Medicine at the same institution. The lymph came down from the Munich-park. The child was poisoned by the vaccination and died twenty-four hours afterwards. All the newspapers have mentioned the fact, causing a great sensation.”

The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, vol.II, no. 19, October, 1880. In The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, Volume the Second, April 1880 to March 1881 (London: Edward W. Allen, 1881), 99.

In his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, Kuyper takes issue with the enforcement of vaccination on the “carelessly” drawn conclusion that the procedure is “harmless”:

But without knowing the genetic action of vaccine, the general conclusion was considered equally justifiable, that inoculation with this virus is a harmless preventive against smallpox, and, on the ground of this so-called scientifically discovered law vaccination has been enforced by public authority; while now, alas, in the end it appears how carelessly this conclusion was drawn. Hence extreme care is necessary, lest we proclaim as a general law what afterward appears to rest on defective observation.

Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles, trans. J. Hendrik de Vries (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 138.

L.W.C. Keuchenius (1822-1893): a Model Fire-breathing, Anti-vaccine Christian Statesman

(more on Keuchenius here)

Keuchenius was an outspoken opponent of vaccination and a leader of Abraham Kuyper‘s Antirevolutionary Party (ARP), which strongly opposed mandatory vaccination. Keuchenius also served in Holland’s Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League.

The New Amsterdam Gazette comments on Keuchenius’ passionate opposition to vaccination, which, like in our own day, was an idol in his time. Recognizing the religious devotion that some had for vaccination, Keuchenius sarcastically referred to the cow (the source of the smallpox vaccine’s coxpox) as the “immaculate cow”:

Moreover, he is a determined opponent of vaccination—still a “vexed question” in Holland, and once in a public meeting the late Minister said, that some people seemed to have but one clear and unmistakable belief—that was in the “immaculate cow.” For this expression the Roman Catholics hardly forgave him; they withheld their votes at the next election in the district for which he was sitting, namely Middelburg. But he was elected for another district, and after he became Minister the Catholic party uniformly sustained his measures.

S.R. Van Campen, “The Changes in the Dutch Cabinet,” New Amsterdam Gazette, Vol. VI, no. 8 (NY: May 21, 1890), 12.

[the use of the word “cow” has to do with the use of cowpox to vaccinate against smallpox.]

A piece in the New Rotterdam Courant took issue with Keuchenius’ fiery opposition to vaccination, including his condemnation of the famous vaccine pioneers Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur. The article calls Keuchenius

A person … who condemns vaccination with the most bitter satire, and who regards Jenner and Pasteur as the greatest enemies of the human race.

New Rotterdam Courant, cited in A. Fatherlander, “A Liberal’s Opinion of the Cabinet at the Hague,” New Amsterdam Gazette, Vol, V, no. 5 (NY: May 21-June 30, 1888), 3.

Whatever the motives of Jenner and Pasteur happened to be, Keuchenius rightfully recognized — and warned others about — vaccines as one of the greatest enemies of mankind. Due to its insidiousness, vaccination is one of the modern era’s greatest instruments of genocide.

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Tagged Christianity, History