Reverend Edmund Massey was a leading voice against smallpox variolation in England. Variolation is technically the forerunner to vaccination, but in essence it is the beginning of vaccination; vaccination in all but name. (Both variolation and vaccination can be referred to as “inoculation”.)
In 1722, Massey delivered A Sermon Against the Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation (read in its entirety here). The sermon can just as well apply to vaccination today.
The following is an excerpt from the sermon regarding the Scripture Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 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 thyself down. Now there is no great difference between this of the devil and the temptation which lies before us [smallpox inoculation]; 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 ourselves 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 to escape, that we may be able to bear them; but if we overtake them, if we seek for a disease, and so lead ourselves into temptation, we can have no rational dependence 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the way of our duty, and ’tis odds but we miscarry under them, when we bring them upon ourselves: if God’s blessing be withdrawn, it must unavoidably be so; and such circumstances wherein we have no reason to expect his blessing are, I think, by no means to be run into.
There is also a tempting of the Lord our God, when men rely too much upon themselves, and put their trust in one another, without calling upon God for his assistance, or praying to Him to guide and direct them: under these two temptations the practice I condemn is fairly to be ranked. In the former, we throw ourselves off the pinnacle ; in the latter, we lean upon a broken reed, which will go into our hand and pierce it: and it is but just in Almighty God, when we presume too far, to punish our rashness ; when we misplace our confidence, to visit us for our idolatry.
Edmund Massey, A Sermon Against the Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation. Preached at St. Andrew’s Holborn, on Sunday, July the 8th, 1722. (London: William Meadows, 1722), 21, 22.
Read the sermon in its entirety here
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