PART III.

New York:
PETER ECKLER, PUBLISHER,
35 Fulton Street.
PREFACE.
TO THE MINISTERS AND PREACHERS OF ALL DENOM- INATIONS OF RELIGION.
IT is the duty of every man, as far as his ability ex- tends, to detect and expose dehision and error. But nature has not given to every one a talent for that purpose ; and among those to whom such a talent is given, there is often a want of disposition or of courage to do it.
The w^orld, or more properly speaking, that small part of it called Christendom, or the Christian world, has been amused for more than a thousand years with accounts of prophecies in the Old Testament, about the coming of the person called Jesus Christ, and thousands of sermons have been preached, and volumes written to make man believe it.
In the following treatise I have examined all the passages in the New Testament quoted from the Old, and called prophecies concerning Jesus Christ, and I find no such a thing as a prophecy of any such person, and I deny there are any. The passages all relate to circum- stances the Jewish nation was in at the time they were written or spoken, and not to any thing that was or was not to happen in the world several hundred years after- wards ; and I have shown what the circumstances were, to which the passages apply or refer. I have given chapter and verse for every thing I have said, and have not gone out of the books of the Old and New Testa- ment for evidence, that the passages are not prophecies of the person called Jesus Christ.
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prefacp:.
The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes, at last, rank hypocrisy. When men, from custom or fashion, or any wordly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer honest to their own minds they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others. It is from the in- fluence of this vice, hypocrisy, that we see so many church and meeting-going professors and pretenders to religion, so full of trick and deceit in their dealings, and so loose in the performance of their engagements, that they are not to be trusted further than the laws of the country will bind them. Morality has no hold on their minds, no restraint on their actions.
One set of preachers make salvation to consist in believing. They tell their congregations, that if they believe in Christ, their sins shall be forgiven. This, in the first place, is an encouragement to sin, in a similar manner as when a prodigal young fellow is told his father will pay all his debts, he runs into debt the faster, and becomes the more extravagant. Daddy, says he, pays all, and on he goes. Just so in the other case, Christ pays all, and on goes the sinner.
In the next place, the doctrine these men preach is not true. The New Testament rests itself for credibility and testimony on what are called prophecies in the Old Testa- ment of the person called Jesus Christ ; and if there are no such things as prophecies of any such person in the Old Testament, the New Testament is a forgery of the councils of Nice and Laodicea, and the faith founded thereon, delusion and falsehood. *
*The councils of Nice and Laodicea were held about 350 years after the time Christ IS said to have lived ; and the books that now compose the New Testament, were then voted for by yeas and nays, as we now vote a law. A great many that were offered had a majority of nays, and were rejected. This is the way the New Testament came into being. t
t The rejected gospels are now known as The Apocryphal New Testament. — Pub.
PREFACE. 191
Another set of preachers tell their congregations that God predestinated and selected from all eternity, a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be damned eternally. If this were true, the day of judgment is past: their preaching is in vain, and they had better work at some useful calling for their livelihood.
This doctrine also, like the former, hath a direct tend- ency to demoralize mankind. Can a bad man be reform- ed by telling him, that if he is one of those who was decreed to be damned before he was born, his reformation will do him no good ; and if he was decreed to be saved he will be saved, whether he believes it or not ? for this is the result of the doctrine. Such preaching and such preachers do injury to the moral world. They had better be at the plough.
As in my political works my motive and object have been to give man an elevated sense of his own character, and to free him from the slavish and superstitious absurdi- ty of monarchy, and hereditary government, so in my publications on religious subjects, my endeavors have been directed to bring man to a right use of the reason that God has given him ; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, mercy, and a be- nevolent disposition to all men, and to all creatures, and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence, and con- solation, in his Creator, unshackled by the fables of books pretending to be the word of God,
THOMAS PAINE.
INTRODUCTION.
AS a great deal is said in the New Testament ^ about dreams, it is first necessary to explain the nature of a dream, and to show by what operation of the mind a dream is produced during sleep. When this is understood we shall be better enabled to judge whether any reliance can be placed upon them : and consequently, whether the several matters in the New Testament related of dreams deserve the credit which the writers of that book and priests and commentators ascribe to them.
AN EXAMINATION
OF THE
PASSAGES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
QUOTED FROM THE OI.D, AND CAI.I.ED PROPHECIES OF THE COMING OF JESUS CHRIST.
THE passages called prophecies of or concerning Jesus Christ in the Old Testament^ may be classed under the two following heads : —
First, Those referred to in the four books of the New Testament called the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Secondly, Those which translators and commentators have, of their own imagination, erected into prophecies, and dubbed with that title at the head of the several chapters of the Old Testament. Of these it is scarcely worth while to waste time, ink, and paper upon ; I shall therefore confine myself chiefly to those referred to in the aforesaid four books of the New Testament. If I show that these are not prophecies of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have reference to any such person, it will be perfectly needless to combat those which translators or the Church have invented, and for which they had no other authority than their own imagination.
I begin with the book called the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
In the first chapter, ver. i8, it is said, ^^ Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise : When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they cafne together
196 AGE OF REASON.
SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD BY THE
This is goinc^ a little too fast ; because to make this verse agree with the next, it should have said no more than that she was found with child ; for the next verse says, " Then Joseph her husband^ bemg a just 7ftan^ and riot willing to make her a public example^ was minded to put her away privily y Consequently Joseph had found out no more than that she was with child, and he knew it was not by himself.