The following relates to smallpox variolation, which is technically the forerunner to vaccination, but in essence it is the beginning of vaccination; vaccination in all but name (and both practices can be referred to as “inoculation”). Thus, the arguments here against variolation also apply to vaccination.
Joseph Greenhill (1704 – 1788) lived in England and was a Rector for the Church of England. He opposed the evils of smallpox variolation, or inoculation, and in 1756 published a sermon titled “Inoculation a presumptuous practice destructive to man”.
In this sermon, Greenhill calls inoculation “an evil, an impious, and a presumptuous practice” (p. 22) that is “unworthy of a Christian” ( p. 18).
Greenhill blames certain ministers for the popularizing of inoculation — even more so than physicians. This is very important, because ministers have a very significant moral influence on society. They can make the difference between life and death by vaccination — and whether vaccination has a stronghold over a people.
And so, Greenhill says:
Yet the advance, that inoculation made here, was but slow, under the aid lent thereto, by the advice of physicians, as there were plain marks of the daring impiety, that there was in such a practice, till it came recommended from another quarter; from some of those who profess themselves ministers of the Gospel … (p. 24)
[W]hich practice of inoculation hath now got such strength, that it needs many and the strongest antidotes against it; since, as it hath the above-mentioned circumstance attending it, that of being recommended by some of the clergy; for none can so effectually put darkness for light, and light for darkness, and bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter, as those Ministers, who have lost sight of the truth and simplicity of the Gospel. (pp. 28, 29)
More points from Rector Greenhill:
On the words of Christ versus inoculation:
[H]ow much more should these Words of our Lord, “they that be whole need not a Physician, but they that are sick” [Matthew 9:12b] have preserved all that profess themselves Christians, from ever running into a needless and presumptuous use of the physician, in contradiction to so plain and obvious a Truth, so clearly bounding the appointed use of the art and skill of the physician: yet so little regard hath been paid to these and other words of our Saviour’s … through that gross decay of Christianity that hath lately prevailed here, that a multitude have sinned by running into the practice of being inoculated … and this only, because fair shews, appearances and pretences, have been urged for this practice, so very inconsistent with the revealed will of God. (p. 2)
On the practice of inoculation being symptomatic of a corrupted people:
The practice of inoculation is, in all respects, respecting either children, or those grown up, bad and destructive to man; and, unless a people had been long corrupted in their ways, they could not have run into this practice, as they have lately done. (p. 9)
On the pretence of inoculation being safer than natural infection:
Inoculators make indeed a fine pretence of their way, pretending not only, that they do no harm to the constitution of the human body thereby; but that they give the small pox, by infusing the injection thereof immediately with the blood, in a far safer and better manner, than it is got by drawing it in with the breath, as they say it is got in the natural way. (p. 11)
Joseph Greenhill, A sermon. Inoculation a presumptuous practice destructive to man (London : S. Crowder & H. Woodgate, 1756).
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