V. ly. By A. ly., they mean in the year of the Eodge, as

the Christians by A. D. mean in the year of our Lord. But A. Iv, like V. L., refers to the same chronological era, that is, to the supposed time of the creation. In the chapter on the origin of the Christian religion, 1 have shown that the cosmogony, that is, the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis opens, has been taken and mutilated from the Zend- Avista of Zoroaster, and is fixed as a preface to the Bible, after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon : and that the rabbins of the Jews do not hold their account in Genesis to be a fact, but mere allegory. The six thousand years in the Zend- Avista, is changed or interpolated into six days in the account of Genesis. The Masons appear to have chosen the same period, and, perhaps to avoid the suspicion and persecution of the church, have adopted the era of the world, as the era of Masonry. The V. L., of the French, and A. L. of the English Mason, answer to the A. M., Anno Mundi, or year of the world.
Though the Masons have taken many of their ceremo- nies and hieroglyphics from the ancient Egyptians, it is certain they have not taken their chronology from thence. If they had, the church would soon have sent them to the stake ; as the chronology of the Egyptians, like that of the Chinese, goes many thousand years beyond the Bible chronology.
The religion of the Druids, as before said, w^as the same as the religion of the ancient Egyptians. The priests of Egypt were the professors and teachers of science, and w^ere styled priests of Heliopolis ; that is, of the city of tJie sun. The Druids in Europe, who were the same order of men, have their name from the Teu- tonic or ancient German language, the Germans being anciently called Teutones. The word Druid signifies a
AGE OF REASON. 333
wise mail. In Persia they were called Magi, which signifies the same thing.
"Egypt," says Smith, " from whence we derive many of our mysteries, hath always borne a distinguished rank in history, and was once celebrated above all others for its antiquities, learning, opulence, and fertility. In their system, their principal hero-gods, Osiris and Isis, theo- logically represented the Supreme Being and universal nature ; and physically, the two great celestial luminaries, the sun and the moon, by whose influence all nature was actuated. The experienced brethren of the society (says Smith in a note to this passage) are well informed what afiinity these symbols bear to Masonry, and why they are used in all Masonic lodges."
In speaking of the apparel of the Masons in their lodges, part of which, as we see in their public proces- sions, is a white leather apron, he says, "The Druids were apparelled in white at the time of their sacrifices and solemn offices. The Egyptian priest of Osiris wore snow-white cotton. The Grecian and most other priests wore white garments. As Masons, we regard the princi- ples of those who were the first ivorshippers of the true God^ imitate their apparel, and assume the badge 01 innocence.
"The Egyptians." continues Smith, "in the earliest ages, constituted a great number of lodges, but, with assiduous care, kept their secrets of Masonry from all strangers. These secrets have been imperfectly handed down to us by tradition only, and ought to be kept un- discovered to the laborers, craftsmen, and apprentices, till, by good behavior and long study, they become better acquainted in geometry and the liberal arts, and thereby qualified for masters and wardens, which is seldom or ever the case with English Masons."
Under the head of Free-Masonry, written by the astronomer Lalande, in the French Encyclopedia, I
334 AGR OF REASON.
expected, from his great knowledge in astronomy, to have found much information on the origin of Masonry ; for what connection can there be between any institution and the sun and twelve signs of the zodiac, if there be not something in that institution, or in its origin, that has reference to astronomy? Every thing used as an hieroglyphic has reference to the subject and purpose for which it is used ; and we are not to suppose the Free- Masons, among whom are many very learned and scien- tific men, to be such idiots as to make use of astronomical signs without some astronomical purpose.
But I was much disappointed in my expectation from Lalande. In speaking of the origin of Masonry, he says, ^^L^ origine de la Macojtiere se perd^ comme tant d^ autres^ dans Pobsctcrite des temps ;^'' that is, the origin of Masonry, like many others, loses itself in the obscurity of time. When I came to this expression, I supposed Lalande a Mason, and on inquiry found he was. This passing over saved him from the embarrassment which Masons are under respecting the disclosure of their origin, and which they are sworn to conceal. * There is a society of Masons in Dublin who take the name of
• " It must not be expected," says Godfrey Higgiiis in the Anacalypsis, (vol i, page 8i6,) " that the grand secret, the knowledge of the highest and last secret of the initia- ted,—of the illuminati,— will be found clearly described in any work written by one of the initiated. If my reader be, as I hope he is, an honorable, upright and benevolent man, and wish to know the truth, by working himself up to the Royal Arch, he then will know it. More I add not here: the M«initiated have no business to know. To the initiated I need not tell it." On page 719 of the same work, this learned and astute author says that "Masons were the builders of Solomon's temple," that "they and their art came from India," and that "they were the ancestors of our Free-Masons," Speaking of the initiation of Moses by the Egyptian priests, Schiller says, "These ceremonies were connected with the mysterious images and hyeroglyphics. And the hidden truths so carefully concealed under them, and used at their rites, were all com- prised under the name, mysteries, such as had been used in the temples of Isis and Serapis, which were the models of the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace, and in more modern times gave rise to the order of Freemasonry." " I doubt not," continues Higgins, "that what Mr. Schiller says is true, with one exception : the mysteries were not the origin ot Masonry; they were Masonry itself ; for Masonry was a part of them, and every part, except that which my Masonic engagements prevent, I will explain."
On page 726 Mr. Higgins states that " The Masons were the first priests, or a branch from them, and as they were the persons employed to provide every thing required for honoring the Gods, the building of temples naturally fell into their hands, and thus priests and masons were identified. This was the first practical attempt at Masonry. Thus the Masons were an order of priests, that is, of initiated."— £" fe/
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Druids ; these Masons must be supposed to have a reason for taking that name.
I come now to speak of the cause of secrecy used by the Masons.
The natural source of secrecy is fear. When any new religion overruns a former religion, the professors of the new become the persecutors of the old. We see this in all the instances that history brings before us. When Hilkiah the priest and Shaphan the scribe, in the reign of king Josiah, found or pretended to find the law, called the law of Moses, a thousand years after the time of Moses, (and it does not appear from the 2nd book of Kings, chap, xxii., xxiii., that such law was ever practised or known before the time of Josiah,) he established that law as a national religion, and put all the priests of the sun to death. When the Christian religion overran the Jewish religion, the Jews were the continual subjects of persecution in all Christian countries. When the Pro- testant religion in England overran the Roman Catholic religion, it was made death for a Catholic priest to be found in England. As this has been the case in all the instances we have any knowledge of, we are obliged to admit it with respect to the case in question, and that when the Christian religion overran the religion of the Druids in Italy, ancient Gaul, Britain, and Ireland, the Druids became the subjects of persecution. This would naturally and necessarily oblige such of them as remained attached to their original religion to meet in secret and under the strongest injunctions of secrecy. Their safety depended upon it. A false brother might expose the lives of many of them to destruction : and from the remains of the religion of the Druids, thus preserved, arose the institution which, to avoid the name of Druid, took that of Mason, and practised, under this new name, the rights and ceremonies of Druids.
THOMAS PAINE.
EXTRACT FROM A REPLY TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.*
GENESIS.
THE bishop says, "the oldest book in the world is Genesis." This is mere assertion; he offers no proof of it, and I go to controvert it, and to show- that the book of Job, which is not a Hebrew book, but is a book of the Gentiles, translated into Hebrew, is much older than the book of Genesis.
The book of Genesis means the book of generations ; to which are prefixed two chapters, the first and second, which contain two different cosmogonies, that is, two different accounts of the creation of the world, written by different persons, as I have shown in the preceding part of this work.
The first cosmogony begins at the first verse of the first chapter, and ends at the end of the third verse of the second chapter ; for the adverbial conjunction thus^ with which the second chapter begins, shows those three verses to belong to the first chapter. The second cos- mogony begins at the fourth verse of the second chapter, and ends with that chapter.
In the first cosmogony the name of God is used with- out any epithet joined to it, and is repeated thirty-five times. In the second cosmogony it is always the I^ord
* This extract from Mr. Paine's reply to Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, was given by him, not long before his death, to Mrs. Palmer, widow of Elihu Palmer. He retained the work entire, and, therefore, must have transcribed this part, which was unusual for him to do. Mrs. Palmer presented it to the editor of the Theophilanthropist, pub- lished in New York, in which it appeared in 1810.
RICHARD WATSON, Bishop of Liandaff.
BISHOP WATSON.
RICHARD WATSON, D. D., Bishop of Landaff, in his Apology for Christianity, which was intended as a reply- to Gibbon's History of Christianity, makes use of the following temperate language at the commencement of that well-known work :
" It would give me much uneasiness to be reputed an enemy to free inquiry in religious matters, or as capable of being an- imated into any degree of personal malevolence, against those who differ from me in opinion. On the contrary, I look upon the right of private judgment, in every concern respecting God and ourselves, as superior to the control of human au- thority ; and have ever regarded free disquisition as the best means of illustrating the doctrine, and establishing the truth of Christianity. Let the followers of Mahomet, and the zealots of the Church of Rome, support their several religious sys- tems, by damping every effort of the human intellect to pry into the foundations of their faith ! but never can it become a Christian to be afraid of being asked 'a reason of the faith that is in him ;' nor a Protestant to be studious of enveloping his religion in mystery and ignorance ; nor the Church of Eng- land, to abandon that moderation by which she permits every individual, et sentire quae velit, et quae sentiat dicere."
In Watson' Apology for the Bible, ^ in answer to the second part of Paine' s Age of Reaso7i, the learned prelate uses, with a skill that rivals the best efforts of Hume or Biichner, the strongest arguments of atheism against Paine's sincere and earnest faith in the existence of a Deity. It is to be regretted that Paine's answer to this portion of the Bishop's argument has never been given to the world.
"What think you," says the bishop in his tenth letter to Paine, " of an uncaused Cause of every thing ? of a Being who has no relation to time, — not being older to-day than he was yesterday, not younger to-day than he will be to-morrow? who has no relation to space, — not being a part here and a part there, or a whole any where ? What think you of an om- niscient Being, who cannot know the future actions of a man? Or, if his omniscience enables him to know them, what think you of the contingency of human actions ? And if human ac- tions are not contingent, what think you of the morality of actions ? of the distinction between vice and virtue, crime and innocence, sin and dutv ? " etc , etc. — E.
* He always seemed to realize that both ChrisliaiiUy and the Bible needed an apology.
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God, which is repeated eleven times. These two differ- ent styles of expression show these two chapters to be the work of two different persons, and the contradictions they contain show they cannot be the work of one and the same person, as I have already shown.
The third chapter, in which the style of I^ord God, is continued in every instance, except in the supposed con- versation between the woman and the serpent (for in every place in that chapter where the writer speaks, it is always the Lord God), shows this chapter to belong to the second cosmogony.
This chapter gives an account of what is called the fall of man, which is no other than a fable borrowed from and constructed upon the religion of Zoroaster, or the Persians, of the annual progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac. It is the/all of the year, the approach and evil of winter, announced by the ascen- sion of the autumnal constellation of the serpent of the zodiac, and not the moral y^// of 7nan^ that is the key of the allegory, and of the fable in Genesis borrowed from it.
The fall of man in Genesis is said to have been pro- duced by eating a certain fruit, generally taken to be an apple. The fall of the year is the season for gathering and eating the new apples of that year. The allegory, therefore, holds with respect to the fruit, which it would not have done had it been an early summer fruit. It holds also with respect to place. The tree is said to have been placed in the midst of the garden. But whv in the midst of the garden more than in any other place? The solution of the allegory gives the answer to this question, which is, that the fall of the year, when apples and other autumnal fruits are ripe, and when days and nights are of equal length, is the mid-season between Slimmer and winter.
It holds also with respect to clothing, and the tempera-
338 AGE OF REASON.
ture of the air. It is said in Genesis, chap, iii., ver. 21, " Unto Adam and his wife did the Lord God make coats of skills^ and clothed them^ But why are coats of skins mentioned? This cannot be understood as referring to any thing of the nature of moral evil. The solution of the allegory gives again the answer to this question, which is, that the evil of winter^ which follows the fall of the year ^ fabulously called in Genesis the fall of man^ makes warm clothing necessary.
But of these things I shall speak fully when I come in another part to treat of the ancient religion of the Persians, and compare it with the modern religion of the New Testament. * At present, I shall confine myself to the comparative antiquity of the books of Genesis and Job, taking, at the same time, whatever I may find in my way with respect to the fabulousness of the book of Genesis ; for if what is called the fall of man in Genesis be fabulous or allegorical, that which is called the redemp- tion in the New Testament cannot be a fact. It is morally impossible, and impossible also in the nature of things, that moral good can i^A^^vci physical evil. I return to the bishop.
If Genesis be, as the bishop asserts, the oldest book in the world, and, consequently, the oldest and first written book of the Bible, and if the extraordinary things related in it, such as the creation of the world in six days, the tree of life, and of good and evil, the story of Eve and the talking serpent, the fall of man and his being turned out of paradise, were facts, or even believed by the Jews to be facts, they would be referred to as fundamental matters, and that very frequently, in the books of the Bible that were written by various authors afterwards ; whereas there is not a book, chapter, or verse of the Bible, from the time Moses is said to have written the book of Genesis, to the book of Malachi, the last book
* Not published.
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in the Bible, including a space of more than a thousand years, in which there is any mention made of these things or any of them, nor are they so much as alluded to. How will the bishop solve this difficulty, which stands as a circumstantial contradiction to his assertion?
There are but two ways of solving it.
First^ that the book of Genesis is not an ancient book ; that it has been written by some (now) unknown person, after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captiv- ity, about a thousand years after the time that Moses is said to have lived, and put as a preface or introduction to the other books, when they were formed into a canon in the time of the second temple, and, therefore, not having existed before that time, none of these things mentioned in it could be referred to in those books.
Secondly^ that admitting Genesis to have been written by Moses, the Jews did not believe the things stated in it to be true, and, therefore, as they could not refer to them as facts, they would not refer to them as fables. The first of these solutions goes against the antiquity of the book, and the second against its authenticity, and the bishop may take which he pleases.
But be the author of Genesis whoever he may, there is abundant evidence to show, as well from the early Christian writers, as from the Jews themselves, that the things stated in that book were not believed to be facts. Why they have been believed as facts since that time, when better and fuller knowledge existed on the case than is known now, can be accounted for only on the imposition of priestcraft.
Augustine, one of the early champions of the Christian church, acknowledges, in his City of God ^ that the adven- ture of Eve and the serpent, and the account of Paradise, were generally considered as fiction or allegory. He regards them as allegory himself, without attempting to give any explanation, but he supposes that a better
340 AGE OF REASON.
explanation might be found than those that had been offered.
Origen, another early champion of the church, says, "What man of good sense can ever persuade himself that there were a first, a second, and a third day, and that each of these days had a night, when there were yet neither sun, moon, nor stars? What man can be stupid enough to believe that God, acting the part of a gardener, had planted a garden in the east, that the tree of life was a real tree, and that its fruit had the virtue of making those who eat of it live for ever? "
Maimonides, one of the most learned and celebrated of the Jewish rabbins, who lived in the eleventh century (about seven or eight hundred years ago) and to whom the bishop refers in his answer to me, is very explicit, in his book entitled More Nebachim^ upon the non-reality of the things stated in the account of the Creation in the book of Genesis.
"We ought not" says he "to understand, nor take ac- cording to the letter, that which is written in the book of the Creation, nor to have the same ideas of it with common men ; otherwise, our ancient sages, would not have recommended, with so much care, to conceal the sense of it, and not to raise the allegorical veil which envelopes the truths it contains. The book of Genesis, taken according to the letter, gives the most absurd and the most extravagant ideas of the Divinity. Whoever shall find out the sense of it ought to restrain himself from divulging it. It is a maxim which all our sages repeat, and above all with respect to the work of six days. It may happen that some one, with the aid he may borrow from others, may hit upon the meaning of it. In that case, he ought to impose silence upon himself; or if he speak of it, he ought to speak obscurely, and in an enigmatical manner, as I do myself, leaving the rest to be found out by those who can understand."
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This is, certainly, a very extraordinary declaration of Maimonides, taking all the parts of it.
First^ he declares, that the account of the Creation in the book of Genesis is not a fact ; that to believe it to be a fact, gives the most absurd and the most extravagant ideas of the Divinity.
Secondly^ that it is an allegory.
Thirdly^ that the allegory has a concealed secret.
Foii7^thly^ that whoever can find the secret ought not to tell it.
It is this last part that is the most extraordinary. Why all this car.e of the Jewish rabbins, to prevent what they call the concealed meaning, or the secret, from being known, and, if known, to prevent any of their people from telling it? It certainly must be something which the Jewish nation are afraid or ashamed the world should know. It must be something personal to them as a people, and not a secret of a divine nature, which the more it is known, the more it increases the glory of the Creator, and the gratitude and happiness of man. It is not God's secret, but their own, they are keeping. I go to unveil the secret.
The case is, the Jews have stolen their cosmogony, that is, their account of the Creation, from the cosmogony of the Persians, contained in the books of Zoroaster, the Persian lawgiver, and brought it with them when they returned from captivity by the benevolence of Cyrus, king of Persia ; for it is evident, from the silence of all the books of the Bible upon the subject of the Creation, that the Jews had no cosmogony before that time. If they had a cosmogony from the time of Moses, some of their judges who governed during more than four hundred years, or of their kings, the Davids and Solomons of their day, who governed nearly five hundred years, or of their prophets and psalmists, who lived in the mean time, would have mentioned it. It would, either as fact
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or fable, have been the grandest of all subjects for a psalm. It would have suited to a tittle the ranting, poetical genius of Isaiah, or served as a cordial to the gloomy Jeremiah. But not one word, nor even a whisper, does any of the Bible authors give upon the subject.
To conceal the theft, the rabbins of the second temple have published Genesis as a book of Moses, and have enjoined secresy to all their people, who, by travelling or otherwise, might happen to discover from whence the cosmogony was borrowed, not to tell it. The evidence of circumstances is often unanswerable, and there is no other than this which I have given that goes to the whole of the case, and this does.
Diogenes Laertius, an ancient and respectable author, whom the bishop, in his answer to me, quotes on another occasion, has a passage that corresponds with the solution here given. In speaking of the religion of the Persians as promulgated by their priests or Magi, he says, the Jewish rabbins were the successors of their doctrine. — Having thus spoken on the plagiarism, and on the non- reality of the book of Genesis, I will give some additional evidence that Moses is not the author of that book.
Bben-Ezra, a celebrated Jewish author, who lived about seven hundred years ago, and whom the bishop allows to have been a man of great erudition, has made a great many observations, too numerous to be repeated here, to show that Moses was not, and could not be, the author of the book of Genesis, nor any of the five books that bear his name.
Spinosa, another learned Jew, who lived about a hundred and thirty years ago, recites, in his treatise on the ceremonies of the Jews, ancient and modern, the observations of Bben-Ezra to which he adds many others, to show that Moses is not the author of these books. He also says, and shows his reasons for saying it, that the Bible did not exist as a book, till the time of the
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Maccabees, which was more than a hundred years after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity.
In the second part of the Age of Reason^ I have, among other things, referred to nine verses in the 36th chapter of Genesis, beginning at the 31st verse. "And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Bdom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel, ' ' which it is impossible could have been written by Moses, or in the time of Moses, and could not have been written till after the Jew kings began to reign in Israel, which was not till several hundred years after the time of Moses.
The bishop allows this, and says, "I think you say true." But he then quibbles and says, "that a small addition to a book does not destroy either the genuineness or authenticity of the whole book." This is priestcraft. These verses do not stand in the book as an addition to it, but as making a part of the whole book, and which it is impossible that Moses could write. The bishop would reject the antiquity of any other book if it could be proved from the words of the book itself, that a part of it could not have been written till several hundred years after the reputed author of it was dead. He would call such a book a forgery. I am authorized, therefore, to call the book of Genesis a forgery.
Combining, then, all the foregoing circumstances together, respecting the antiquity and authenticity of the book of Genesis, a conclusion will naturally follow therefrom ; those circumstances are : —
First^ that certain parts of the book cannot possibly have been written by Moses, and that the other parts carry no evidence of having been written by him.
Secondly^ the universal silence of all the following books of the Bible, for about a thousand years, upon the extraordinary things spoken of in Genesis, such as the creation of the world in six days — the garden of Bden — •
344 AGE OF REASON.
the tree of knowledge — the tree of life — the story of Eve and the serpent — the fall of man and his being turned out of this fine garden, together with Noah's flood, and the tower of Babel.
Thirdly^ the silence of all the books of the Bible upon even the name of Moses, from the book of Joshua until the second book of Kings, which was not written till after the captivity, for it gives an account of the captivity, a period of about a thousand years. Strange that a man who is proclaimed as the historian of the Creation, the privy-councillor and confident of the Almighty — the legislator of the Jewish nation, and the founder of its religion ; strange, I say, that even the name of such a man should not find a place in their books for a thousand years, if they knew or believed any thing about him, or the books he is said to have written.
Fourthly^ the opinion of some of the most celebrated of the Jewish commentators, that Moses is not the author of the book of Genesis, founded on the reasons given for that opinion.
Fifthly^ the opinion of the early Christian writers, and of the great champion of Jewish literature, Maimonides, that the book of Genesis is not a book of facts.
Sixthly^ the silence imposed by all the Jewish rabbins, and by Maimonides himself, upon the Jewish nation, not to speak of any thing they may happen to know or dis- cover, respecting the cosmogony (or creation of the world) in the book of Genesis. From these circumstances the following conclusions offer :
Firsts that the book of Genesis is not a book of facts.
Secondly^ that as no mention is made throughout the Bible of any of the extraordinary things related in Genesis, that it has not been written till after the other books were wTitten, and put as a preface to the Bible. Every one knows that a preface to a book, though it stands first, is the last written.
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Thirdly^ that the silence imposed by all the Jewish rabbins and by Maimonides upon the Jewish nation, to keep silence upon every thing related in their cosmogony, evinces a secret they are not willing should be known. The secret therefore explains itself to be, that when the Jews were in captivity in Babylon and Persia, they became acquainted with the cosmogony of the Persians, as registered in the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the Persian lawgiver, which, after their return from captivity, they manufactured and modelled as their own, and anti-dated it by giving to it the name of Moses. The case admits of no other explanation. From all which it appears that the book of Genesis, instead of being the oldest book in the world^ as the bishop calls it, has been the last written book of the Bible, and that the cosmogony it contains has been manufactured.
ON THE NAMES IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
Every thing in Genesis serves as evidence or symptom that the book has been composed in some late period of the Jewish nation. Even the names mentioned in it serv^e to this purpose.
Nothing is more common or more natural, than to name the succeeding generations, after the names of those who had been celebrated in some former generation. This holds good with respect to all the people and all the histories we know of, and it does not hold good with the Bible. There must be some cause for this.
This book of Genesis tells us of a man whom it calls Adam, and of his sons Abel and Seth ; of Enoch, who lived 365 years (it is exactly the number of days in a year,) and that then God took him up. It has the appearance of being taken from some allegory of the Gentiles on the commencement and termination of the year, by the progress of the sun through the twelve signs
346 AGE OF REASON.
of the Zodiac, on which the allegorical religion of the Gentiles was founded.
It tells us of Methuselah, who lived 969 years, and of a long train of other names in the fifth chapter. It then passes on to a man whom it calls Noah, and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet ; then to Lot, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and his sons, with which the book of Genesis finishes.
All these, according to the account given in that book, were the most extraordinary and celebrated of men. They were, moreover, heads of families. Adam was the father of the world. Enoch, for his righteousness, was taken up to heaven. Methuselah lived to almost a thou- sand years. He was the son of Enoch, the man of 365, the number of days in the year. It has the appearance of being the continuation of an allegory on the 365 days of a year and its abundant productions. Noah was selected from all the world to be preserved when it was drowned, and became the second father of the world. Abraham was the father of the faithful multitude. Isaac and Jacob were the inheritors of his fame, and the last was the father of the twelve tribes.
Now, if these very wonderful men and their names, and the book that records them, had been known by the Jews before the Babylonian captivity, those names would have been as common among the Jews before that period as they have been since. We now hear of thousands of Abrahams, Isaacs, and Jacobs among the Jews, but there were none of that name before the Babylonian captivity. The Bible does not mention one, though from the time that Abraham is said to have lived to the time of the Babylonian captivity is about 1400 years.
How is it to be accounted for that there have been so many thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Jews of the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, since that period, and not one before? It can be accounted
AGE OF REASON. 347
for but one way, which is, that before the Babylonian captivity the Jews had no such book as Genesis, nor knew any thing of the names and persons it mentions, nor of the things it relates, and that the stories in it have been manufactured since that time. From the Arabic name Ibrahim (which is the manner the Turks write that name to this day) the Jews have, most probably, manufactured their Abraham.
I will advance my observations a point further, and speak of the names of Moses and Aaron^ mentioned for the first time in the book of Exodus. There are now, and have continued to be from the time of the Babylonian captivity, or soon after it, thousands of Jev/s of the names of Moses and Aaron^ and we read not of any of that name before that time. The Bible does not mention one. The direct inference from this is, that the Jews knew of no such book as Exodus before the Babylonian captivity. In fact, that it did not exist before that time, and that it is only since the book has been invented, that the names of Moses and Aaron have been common among the Jews.
It is applicable to the purpose to observe, that the picturesque work, called Mosaic-work^ spelled the same as you would say the Mosaic account of the Creation, is not derived from the word Moses^ but from Muses (the Muses\ because of the variegated and picturesque pave- ment in the temples dedicated to the Muses. This carries a strong implication that the name Moses is drawn from the same source, and that he is not a real but an allegorical person, as Maimonides describes what is called the Mosaic account of the Creation to be.
I will go a point still further. The Jews now know the book of Genesis, and the names of all the persons mentioned in the first ten chapters of that book, from Adam to Noah : yet we do not hear (I speak for myself) of any Jew of the present day, of the name of Adam, Abel,
348 AGE OF REASON.
Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shein, Ham, or Japhet, (names mentioned in the first ten chapters,) though these were, according to the account in that book, the most extraordinary of all the names that make up the catalogue of Jewish chronology.
The names the Jews now adopt are those that are mentioned in Genesis after the tenth chapter, as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, &c. How then does it happen, that they do not adopt the names found in the first ten chapters? Here is evidently : line of division drawm between the first ten chapters of Genesis, and the remaining chapters, with respect to the adoption of names. There must be some cause for this, and I go to offer a solution of the problem.
The reader will recollect the quotation I have already made from the Jewish rabbin Maimonides, wherein he says, "We ought not to understand nor to take according to the letter that which is written in the book of the Creation. It is a maxim "says he" which all our sages repeat, above all with respect to the work of six days. ' '
The qualifiying expression above all^ implies there are other parts of the book, though not so important, that ought not to be understood or taken according to the letter, and as the Jews do not adopt the names mentioned in the first ten chapters, it appears evident those chapters are included in the injunction not to take them in a literal sense, or according to the letter; from which it follows that the persons or characters mentioned in the first ten chapters, as Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Methuse- lah, and so on to Noah, are not real but fictitious or allegorical persons, and therefore the Jews do not adopt their names into their families. If they afiixed the same idea of reality to them as they do to those that follow after the tenth chapter, the names of Adam, Abel, Seth, &c., would be as common among the Jews of the present day as are those of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Aaron.
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In the superstition they have been in, scarcely a Jew family would have been without an Enochs as a presage of his going to heaven as ambassador for the whole family. Every mother who wished that the days of her son might be long in the land^ would call him Methuselah; and all the Jews that might have to traverse the ocean would be named Noah^ as a charm against shipwreck and drowning.
This is domestic evidence against the book of Genesis, which, joined to the several kinds of evidence before recited, show the book of Genesis not to be older than the Babylonian captivity, and to be fictitious. I proceed to fix the character and antiquity of the book of
JOB.
The book of Job has not the least appearance of being a book of the Jews, and though printed among the books of the Bible, does not belong to it. There is no reference in it to any Jewish law or ceremony. On the contrary, all the internal evidence it contains shows it to be a book of the Gentiles, either of Persia or Chaldea.
The name of Job does not appear to be a Jewish name. There is no Jew of that name in any of the books of the Bible, neither is there now, that I ever heard of. The country where Job is said or supposed to have lived, or rather where the scene of the drama is laid, is called Uz, and there was no place of that name ever belonging to the Jews. If Uz is the same as Ur, it was in Chaldea, the country of the Gentiles.
The Jews can give no account how they came by this book, nor who was the author, nor the time when it was written. Origen, in his work against Celsus (in the first ages of the Christian church), says that the book of Job is older than Moses. Eben-Ezra, the Jewish commentator, whom (as I have before said) the bishop allows to have
350 AGE OF REASON.
been a man of great erudition, and who certainly under- stood his own language, says, that the book of Job has been translated from another language into Hebrew. Spinosa, another Jewish commentator of great learning, confirms the opinion of Eben-Ezra, and says moreover, ''Je crois que Job etait Gentie;'''^ I believe that Job was a Gentile.
The bishop (in answer to me) says, "that the structure of the whole book of Job, in whatever light of history or drama it be considered, is founded on the belief that prevailed with the Persians and Chaldeans, and other Gentile nations, of a good and an evil spirit."
In speaking of the good and evil spirit of the Persians, the bishop writes them Arimanius and Oromasdes. I will not dispute about the orthography, because I know that translated names are differently spelled in different languages. But he has nevertheless made a capital error. He has put the Devil first ; for Arimanius, or, as it is more generally written, Ahriman^ is the evil spirit^ and Oromasdes, or Ormusd, the good spirit. He has made the same mistake, in the same paragraph, in speaking of the good and evil spirit of the ancient Egyptians, Osiris and Typho, he puts Typho before Osiris. The error is just the same as if the bishop, in writing about the Christian religion, or in preaching a sermon, were to say, the Devil and God. A priest ought to know his own trade better. We agree, however, about the structure of the book of Job, that it is Gentile. I have said in the second part of the Age of Reason, and given my reasons for it, that the drama of it is not Hebrew.
From the testimonies I have cited — that of Origen, who, about fourteen hundred years ago, said that the book of Job was more ancient than Moses ; that of Eben-
* Spinosa on the Ceretnonies of the yews, page 296, published in French at Attister- dam, 1678.
AGE OI^ REASON. 351
Ezra, who, in his commentary on Job, says, it has been translated from another language (and consequently from a Gentile language) into Hebrew ; that of Spinosa, who not only says the same thing, but that the author of it was a Gentile ; and that of the bishop, who says that the structure of the whole book is Gentile — it follows, then, in the first place, that the book of Job is not a book of the Jews originally.
Then in order to determine to what people or nation any book of religion belongs, we must compare it with the leading dogmas and precepts of that people or nation ; and therefore, upon the bishop's own construction, the book of Job belongs either to the ancient Persians, the Chaldeans, or the Egyptians ; because the structure of it is consistent with the dogma they held, that of a good and evil spirit, called in Job God and Sataii^ existing as distinct and separate beings, and it is not consistent with any dogma of the Jews.
The belief of a good and an evil spirit, existing as distinct and separate beings, is not a dogma to be found in any of the books of the Bible. It is not till we come to the New Testament that we hear of any such dogma. There the person called the son of God holds conversa- tion with Satan on a mountain, as familiarly as is represented in the drama of Job. Consequently the bishop cannot say, in this respect, that the New Testa- ment is founded upon the Old. According to the Old^ the God of the Jews was the God of every thing. All good and evil came from him. According to Exodus, it was God, and not the Devil, that hardened Pharaoh's heart. According to the book of Samuel it was an evil spirit from God that troubled Saul. And Ezekiel makes God to say, in speaking of the Jews, ' ' I gave them, statutes that were not good^ and judgments by which should not livey The Bible describes the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in such a contradictory manner, and under
352 AGE OF REASON.
sucli a two-fold character, there would be no knowing when he was in earnest, and when in irony ; when to believe, and when not. As to the precepts, principles, and maxims in the book of Job, they show that the people, abusively called the heathen in the books of the Jews, had the most sublime ideas of the Creator, and the most exalted devotional morality. It was the Jews who dishonored God : it was the Gentiles who glorified him. As to the fabulous personifications introduced by the Greek and Latin poets, it was a corruption of the ancient religion of the Gentiles, which consisted in the adoration of a first cause of the works of the creation, in which the sun was the great visible agent.
It appears to have been a religion of gratitude and adoration, and not of prayer and discontented solicitation. In Job we find adoration and submission, but not prayer. Even the ten commandments enjoin not prayer. Prayer has been added to devotion, by the church of Rome, as the instrument of fees and perquisites. All prayers by the priests of the Christian church, whether public or private, must be paid for. It may be right, individually, to pray for virtues, or mental instruction, but not for things. It is an attempt to dictate to the Almighty in the government of the world. But to return to the book of Job.
As the book of Job decides itself to be a book of the Gentiles, the next thing is to find out to what particular nation it belongs, and, lastly, what is its antiqiiity.
As a composition, it is sublime, beautiful, and scientific: full of sentiment, and abounding in grand metaphorical description. As a drama, it is regular. The dramatis personse, the persons performing the several parts, are regularly introduced, and speak without interruption or confusion. The scene, as I have before said, is laid in the country of the Gentiles, and the unities, though not
AGE OF REASON. 353
always necessary in a drama, are observed here as strictly as the subject would admit.
In the last act, where the Almighty is introduced as speaking from the whirlwind to decide the controversy between Job and his friends, it is an idea as grand as poetical imagination can conceive. What follows of Job's future prosperity does not belong to it as a drama. It is an epilogue of the writer, as the first verses of the first chapter, which gave an account of Job, his country and his riches, are the prologue.
The book carries the appearance of being the work of some of the Persian Magi, not only because the structure of it corresponds to the dogmas of the religion of those people, as founded by Zoroaster, but from the astronomi- cal references in it to the constellations of the Zodiac and other objects in the heavens, of which the sun, in their religion called Mithra, was the chief. Job, in de- scribing the power of God (Job, chap, ix, ver. 7, 8, 9,) says, ' ' Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up to the stars — which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea — which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south." All this astronomical allusion is consistent with the religion of the Persians.
Establishing then the book of Job as the work of some of the Persian or Eastern Magi, the case naturally follows, that when the Jews returned from captivity, by the permission of Cyrus, king of Persia, they brought this book with them, had it translated into Hebrew, and put into their scriptural canons, which were not formed till after their return. This will accoimt for the name of Job being mentioned in Ezekiel (Ezekiel, chap, xiv, ver. 14,) who was one of the captives, and also for its not being mentioned in any book said or supposed to have been written before the captivity.
Among the astronomical allusions in the book, there
354 AGE OF REASON.
is one which serves to fix its antiquity. It is that where God is made to say to Job, in the style of reprimand, ' ' Cajist thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades^ ' ' (chap, xxxviii, ver. 31.) As the explanation of this depends upon astronomical calculation, I will, for the sake of those who would not otherwise understand it, endeavor to explain it as clearly as the subject will admit.
The Pleiades are a cluster of pale, milyk stars, about the size of a man's hand, in the constellation Taurus, or, in English, the Bull. It is one of the constellations of the zodiac, of which there are twelve, answering to the twelve months of the year. The Pleiades are visible in the winter nights, but not in the summer nights, being then below the horizon.
The zodiac is an imaginary belt or circle in the heavens, eighteen degrees broad, in w^hich the sun apparently makes his annual course, and in which all the planets move. When the sun appears to our view to be between us and the group of stars forming such or such a constellation, he is said to be in that constellation. Consequently the constellations he appears to be in, in the summer, are directly opposite to those he appeared in, in tli^ winter, and the same with respect to spring and autumn.
The zodiac, besides being divided into twelve con- stellations, is also like every other circle, great or small, divided into 360 equal parts, called degrees ; consequently each constellation contains thirty degrees. The constella- tions of the zodiac are generally called signs, to distin- guish them from the constellations that are placed out of the zodiac, and this is the name I shall now use.
The precession of the equinoxes is the part most difficult to explain, and it is on this that the explanation chiefly depends. The equinoxes correspond to the two seasons of the year when the sun makes equal day and night.
The following disconnected part of the same work was first published in 1834,
AGE OF REASON. 355
SABBATH, OR SUNDAY.
The seventh day, or more properly speaking the period of seven days, was originally a numerical division of time and nothing more ; and had the bishop been acquainted with the history of astronomy, he would have known this. The annual revolution of the earth makes what we call a year.
The year is artificially divided into months, the months into weeks of seven days, the days into hours, &c. The period of seven days, like any other of the artificial divis- ions of the year, is only a fractional part therof, contrived for the convenience of countries.
It is ignorance, imposition, and priestcraft, that have called it otherwise. They might as well talk of the lyord's month, of the Lord's week, of the Lord's hour, as of the Lord's day. All time is his, and no part of it is more holy or more sacred than another. It is, however, necessary to the trade of a priest, that he should preach up a distinction of days.
Before the science of astronomy was studied and carried to the degree of eminence to which it was by the Egyptians and Chaldeans, the people of those times had no other helps, than what common observation of the very visible changes of the sun and moon afforded, to enable them to keep an account of the progress of time. As far as his- tory establishes the point, the Egyptians were the first people who divided the year into twelve months. Herodotus, who lived above two thousand two hundred years ago, and is the most ancient historian whose works have reached our time, says, they did this by the knowl- edge they had of the stars. As to the Jews, there is not one single improvement in any science or in any scien- tific art, that they ever produced. They were the most ignorant of all the illiterate world. If the word of the Lord had come to them, as they pretend, and as the
356 AGK OF REASON.
bishop professes to believe, and that they were to be the harbingers of it to the rest of the world ; the Lord wonld have taught them the use of letters, and the art of print- ing ; for without the means of communicating the word, it could not be communicated ; whereas letters were the invention of the Gentile world; and printing of the modern world. But to return to my subject :
Before the helps which the science of astronomy afforded, the people, as before said, had no other where- by to keep an account of the progress of time than what the common and very visible changes of the sun and moon afforded. They saw that a great number of days made a year, but the account of them was too tedious, and too difficult to be kept numerically, from one to three hundred and sixty-five ; neither did they know the true time of a solar year. It therefore became necessary, for the purpose of marking the progress of days, to put them into small parcels, such as are now called weeks ; and which consisted as they now do of seven days. By this means the memory was assisted as it is with us at this day ; for we do not say of any thing that is past, that it was fifty, sixty, or seventy days ago, but that it was vso many weeks, or, if longer time, so many months. It is impossible to keep an account of time without helps of this kind.
Julian Scaliger, the inventor of the Julian period of 7,980 years, produced by multiplying the cycle of the moon, the cycle of the sun, and the years of an indiction, 19, 28, 15, into each other ; says, that the custom of reckoning by periods of seven days was used by the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the people of India, the Arabs, and by all the nations of the east.
In addition to what Scaliger says, it is evident that in Britain, in Germany, and the north of Europe, they reckoned by periods of seven days, long before the book called the Bible was known in those parts ; and, con-
AGE OF REASON. . 357
sequently, that they did not take that mode of reckoning from any thing written in that book.
That they reckoned by periods of seven days is evident from their having seven names and no more for the several days ; and which have not the most distant rela- tion to any thing in the book of Genesis, or to that which is called the fourth commandment.
Those names are still retained in England, with no other alteration than what has been produced by mould- ing the Saxon and Danish languages into modern English.
1. Sun-day Sumia the sun, and dcsg^ day, Saxon. Sondag^ Danish. The day dedicated to the sun.
2. Monday, that is, moonday, from Mona^ the moon, Saxon. Maane^ Danish. Day dedicated to the moon.
3. Tuesday, that is Tiiis-cd' s-day. The day dedicated to the Idol Tuisco.
4. Wednes-day, that is Woden' s-day. The day ded- icated to IVoden^ the Mars of the Germans.
5. Thursday, that is, Thor' s-day dedicated to the Idol Thor.
6. Friday, that is Friga' s-day. The day dedicated to Friga^ the Venus of the Saxons.
Saturday from Scster (Saturn) an Idol of the Saxons ; one of the emblems representing time, which continually terminates and renews itself: The last day of the period of seven days.
When we see a certain mode of reckoning general among nations totally unconnected, differing from each other in religion and in government, and some of them un- known to each other, we may be certain that it arises from some natural and common cause, prevailing alike over all, and which strikes every one in the same manner. Thus all nations have reckoned arithmeti- cally by tens, because the people of all nations have ten fingers. If they had more or less than ten, the mode
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of arithmetical reckoning would have followed that number, for the fingers are a natural numeration table to all the world. I now come to show why the period of seven days is so generally adopted.
Though the sun is the great luminary of the world, and the animating cause of all the fruits of the earth, the moon by renewing herself more than twelve times oftener than the sun, which does it but once a year, served the rustic world as a natural almanac, as the fingers served it for a numeration table. All the world could see the moon, her changes, and her monthly revolutions ; and their mode of reckoning time, was accommodated as nearly as could possibly be done in round numbers, to agree with the changes of that planet, — their natural almanac.
The moon performs her natural revolution round the earth in twenty-nine days and a half. She goes from a new moon to a half moon, to a full moon, to a half moon gibbous or convex, and then to a new moon again. Each of these changes is performed in seven days and nine hours ; but seven days is the nearest division in round numbers that could be taken ; and this was sufficient to suggest the universal custom of reckoning by periods of seven days, since it is impossible to reckon time without vSome stated period.
How the odd hours could be disposed of without inter- fering with the regular periods of seven days, in case the ancients recommenced a new Septenary period with every new moon, required no more difficulty than it did to regulate the Egyptian Calendar afterwards of twelve months of thirty days each, or the odd hour in the Julian Calendar, or the odd days and hours in the French Calendar. In all cases it is done by the addition of com- plementary days ; and it can be done in no other way.
The bishop knows that as the Solar year does not end at the termination of what we call a day, but runs some hours
AGE OF REASON. 359
into the next day, as the quarters of the moon runs some hours beyond seven days ; that it is impossible to give the year any fixed number of days, that will not in course of years become wrong, and make a complementary time necessary to keep the nominal year parallel with the solar year. The same must have been the case with those who regulated time formerly by lunar revolutions. They would have to add three days to ever>' second moon, or in that proportion, in order to make the new moon and the new week commence together like the nominal year and the solar year.
Diodorus of Sicily, who, as before said, lived before Christ was born, in giving an account of times much anterior to his own, speaks of years of three months, of four months, and of six months. These could be of no other than years composed of lunar revolutions, and, therefore, to bring the several periods of seven days to agree with such years, there must have been complementary days.
The moon was the first almanac the world knew ; and the only one which the face of the heavens afforded to common spectators. Her changes and her revolutions have entered into all the Calendars that have been known in the known world.
The division of the year into twelve months, which, as before shown, was first done by the Egyptians, though arranged with astronomical knowledge, had reference to the twelve moons, or more properly speaking, to the twelve lunar revolutions that appear in the space of a solar year, as the period of seven days had reference to one revolution of the moon. The feasts of the Jews were, and those of the Christian church still are, regulated by the moon. The Jews observed the feasts of the new and full moon, and therefore the period of seven days was necessary to them.
All the feasts of the Christian church are regulated by the moon. That called Easter governs all the rest, and the moon governs Easter. It is always the first Sunday after
360 AGK OF REASON.
the first full moon that happens after the vernal Equinox, or 2ist of March.
In proportion as the science of astronomy was studied and improved by the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and the solar year regulated by astronomical observations, the custom of reckoning by lunar revolutions became of less use, and in time discontinued. But such is the harmony of all parts of the machinery of the universe, that a cal- culation made from the motion of one part will correspond with the motion of some other.
The period of seven days deduced from the revolution of the moon round the earth, corresponds nearer than any other period of days would do to the revolution of the earth round the sun. Fifty-two periods of seven days make 364, which is within one day and some odd hours of a solar year ; and there is no other periodical number that will do the same, till we come to the number thir- teen, which is too great for common use, and the numbers before seven are too small. The custom, therefore, of reckoning by periods of seven days, as best suited to the revolution of the moon, applied with equal convenience to the solar year, and became united with it. But the decimal division of time, as regulated by the French Calendar, is superior to every other method.
There is no part of the Bible that is supposed to have been written by persons who lived before thetimeof Josiah, (which was a thousand years after the time of Moses,) that mentions any thing about the sabbath as a day consecrated to that which is called the fourth commandment, or that the Jews kept any such day. Had any such day been kept, during the thousand years of which I am speaking, it cer- tainly would have been mentioned frequently ; and that it should never be mentioned, is strong presumptive and cir- cumstantial evidence that no such day was kept. But mention is often made of the feasts of the new moon, and of the full moon; for the Jews, as before shown, worshipped
AGE OF REASON. 361
the moon ; and the word sabbath was applied by the Jews to the feasts of that planet, and to those of their other deities. It is said in Hosea, chap. 2, verse 11, in speaking of the Jewish nation, "And I will cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new-moo7is^ and her sabbaths^ and all her solemn feasts. ' ' Nobody will be so foolish as to contend that the sabbaths here spoken of are Mosaic sabbaths. The construction of the verse implies they are lunar sabbaths, or sabbaths of the moon. It ought also to be observed that Hosea lived in the time of Ahaz and Hezekiah, about seventy years before the time of Josiah, when the law called the law of Moses is said to have been found ; and consequently, the sabbaths that Hosea speaks of are sabbaths of the Idolatry.
When those priestly reformers, (impostors I should call them,) Hilkiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah, began to produce books under the name of the books of Moses, they found the word sabbath in use : and as to the period of seven days, it is like numbering arithmetically by tens, from time immemorial. But having found them in use, they continued to make them serve to the support of their new imposition. They trumped up a story of the creation being made in six days, and of the Creator resting on the seventh, to suit with the lunar and chronological period of seven days ; and they manufactured a commandment to agree with both. Impostors always work in this manner. They put fables for originals, and causes for effects.
There is scarcely any part of science, or any thing in nature, which those impostors and blasphemers of science, called priests, as well Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or sought to pervert to the purpose of superstition and falsehood. Every thing wonderful in appearance, has been ascribed to angels, to devils, or to saints. Every thing ancient has some legendary tale annexed to it. The common operations of nature have not escaped their practice of corrupting every thing.
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FUTURE STATE.
The idea of a future state was a universal idea to all nations except the Jews. At the time and long before Jesus Christ and the men called his disciples were born, it had been sublimely treated of by Cicero in his book on old age, by Plato, Socrates, Xenophon, and other of the ancient theologists, whom the abusive Christian church calls heathen. Xenophon represents the elder Cyrus speaking after this manner :
' ' Think not, my dearest children, that when I depart from you, I shall be no more : but remember that my soul, even while I lived among you, was invisible to you ; yet by my actions you were sensible it existed in this body. Believe it therefore existing still, though it be still unseen. How quickly would the honors of illustrious men perish after death, if their souls performed nothing to preserve their fame ! For my own part, I could never think that the soul, while in a mortal body, lives, but when departed from it dies ; or that its consciousness is lost, when it is discharged out of an unconscious habitation. But when it is freed from all corporeal alliance, it is then that it truly exists.''
Since, then, the idea of a future existence was univer- sal, it may be asked, what new doctrine does the New Testamejit contain? I answer, that of corrupting the theory of the ancient theologists, by annexing to it the heavy and gloomy doctrine of the resurrection of the body.
As to the resurrection of the body, whether the same body or another, it is a miserable conceit, fit only to be preached to man as an animal. It is not worthy to be called doctrine. Such an idea never entered the brain of any visionary but those of the Christian church ; — yet it is in this that the novelty ofthe7V All the other matters serve but as props to this, and those props are most wretchedly put together.
AGE OF REASON. 363
MIRACLES.
The Christian church is full of miracles. In one of the churches of Brabant, they show a number of cannon balls, which, they say, the virgin Mary, in some former war, caught in her muslin apron as they came roaring out of the cannon's mouth, to prevent their hurting the saints of her favorite army. She does no such feats now-a-days. Perhaps the reason is, that the infidels have taken away her muslin apron. They show also, between Montmatre and the village of St. Dennis, several places where they say St. Dennis stopped with his head in his hands after it had been cut off at Montmatre. The Protestants will call those things lies ; and where is the proof that all the other things called miracles are not as great lies as those ?
[There appears to be an omission here in the copy.]
Christ, say those Cabalists, came in \\v^ fulness of time. And pray what is the fulness of time? The words admit of no idea. They are perfectly Cabalistical. Time is a word invented to describe to our conception a greater or less portion of eternity. It may be a minute, a portion of eternity measured by the vibration of a pendulum of a certain length ; — it may be a day, a year, a hundred, or a thousand years, or any other quantity. Those portions are only greater or less comparatively.
The word fulness applies not to any of them. The idea of fulness of time cannot be conceived. A woman with child and ready for delivery, as Mary was when Christ was born, may be said to have gone her full time ; but it is the woman that is full, not time.
It may also be said figuratively, in certain cases, that the times are full of events ; but time itself is incapable of being full of itself. Ye hypocrites ! learn to speak intelligible language.
It happened to be a time of peace when they say Christ was born; and what then? There had been many such
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intervals : and have been many such since. Time was no fuller in any of them than in the others. If he were, he would be fuller now than he ever was before. If he was full then, he must be bursting now. But peace or war have relation to circumstances, and not to time ; and those Cabalists would be at as much loss to make out any meaning to fulness of circumstances, as to fulness of time ; and if they could, it would be fatal ; for fulness of cir- cumstances would mean, when there are no more cir- cumstances to happen ; and fulness of time when there is no more time to follow.
Christ, therefore, like every other person, was neither in the fulness of one nor the other.
But though we cannot conceive the idea of fulness of time, because we cannot have conception of a time when there shall be no time ; nor of fulness of circumstances, because we cannot conceive a state of existence to be with- out circumstances ; we can often see, after a thing is past, if any circumstance, necessary to give the utmost activity and success to that thing, was wanting at the time that thing took place. If such a circumstance was wanting, we may be certain that the thing which took place, was not a thing of God's ordaining; whose work is always perfect, and his means perfect means. They tell us that Christ was the Son of God ; in that case, he would have known every thing ; and he came upon earth to make known the will of God to man throughout the wdiole earth. If this had been true, Christ would have known and would have been furnished with all the possible means of doing it ; and would have instructed mankind, or at least his apostles, in the use of such of the means as they could use themselves to facilitate the accomplishment of the mission ; consequently he would have instructed them in the art of printing, for the press is the tongue of the world ; and without which, his or their preaching was less than a whistle compared to thunder. Since, then,
AGE OF REASON. 365
he did not do this, he had not the means necessary to the mission ; and consequently had not the mission.
They tell us in the book of Acts, chap, ii, a very stupid story of the Apostles' having the gift of tongues ; and cloven tongues of fire descended and sat upon each of them. Perhaps it was this story of cloven tongues that gave rise to the notion of slitting jackdaws' tongues to make them talk. Be that however as it may, the gift of tongues, even if it were true, would be but of little use without the art of printing. I can sit in my chamber, as I do while writing this, and by the aid of printing, can send the thoughts I am writing through the greatest part of Europe, to the East Indies, and over all North America, in a few months. Jesus Christ and his apostles could not do this. They had not the means, and the want of means detects the pretended mission.
There are three modes of commfmication. Speaking, writing and printing. The first is exceedingly limited. A man's voice can be heard but a few yards of distance; and his person can be but in one place.
Writing is much more extensive ; but the thing written cannot be multiplied but at great expense, and the mul- tiplication will be slow and incorrect. Were there no other means of circulating w^hat priests call the word of God (the Old and New Testament) than by writing copies, those copies could not be purchased at less than forty pounds sterling each ; consequently but few people could purchase them, while the writers could scarcely obtain a livelihood by it. But the art of printing changes all the cases, and opens a scene as vast as the world. It gives to man a sort of divine attribute. It gives to him mental omnipresence. He can be every where, and at the same instant ; for wherever he is read he is mentally there.
The case applies not only against the pretended mission of Christ and his Apostles, but against every thing that priests call the word of God, and against all those who
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pretend to deliver it ; for had God ever delivered any verbal word, he would have taught the means of com- municating it. The one without the other is inconsist- ent with the wisdom we conceive of the Creator.
The third chapter of Genesis, verse 21, tells us that God made coats of skins and clothed Adam and Eve. It was infinitely more important that man should be taught the art of printing, than that Adam should be taught to make a pair of leather breeches, or his wife a petticoat.
There is another matter, equally striking and impor- tant, that connects itself with those observations against this pretended word of God — this manufactured book, called Revealed Religion.
We know that whatever is of God's doing is unalterable by man beyond the laws which the Creator has ordained. We cannot make a tree grow with the root in the air and the fruit in the ground ; we cannot make iron into gold nor gold into iron ; we cannot make rays of light shine forth rays of darkness, nor darkness shine forth light. If there were such a thing as a word of God, it would possess the same properties which all his other works do. It would resist destructive alteration. But we see that the book which they call the word of God has not this prop- erty. That book says. Genesis chap, i, verse 27, ^ So God created man in his own image;'''' but the printer can make it say, So man created God in his own image. The words are passive to every transposition of them, or can be annihilated and others put in their places. This is not the case with any thing that is of God's doing ; and therefore, this book, called the word of God, tried by the same universal rule which every other of God's works within our reach can be tried by, proves itself to be a forgery.
The bishop says, that ^^ miracles are proper proof of a divine mission.'''' Admitted. But we know that men, and especially priests, can tell lies and call them miracles.
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It is therefore necessary that the thing called a miracle be proved to be true, and also to be miraculous, before it can be admitted as proof of the thing called reve- lation.
The bishop must be a bad logician not to know that one doubtful thing cannot be admitted as proof that an- other doubtful thing is true. It would be like attempting to prove a liar not to be a liar by the evidence of another, who is as great a liar as himself.
Though Jesus Christ, by being ignorant of the art of printing, shows he had not the means necessary to a divine mission, and consequently had no such mission ; it does not follow that if he had known that art, the divinity of what they call his mission would be proved thereby, any more than it proved the divinity of the man who invented printing. Something therefore beyond printing, even if he had known it, was necessary as a miracle^ to have proved that what he delivered was the word of God ; and this was that the book in w^hich that w^ord should be con- tained, which is now called the OlddJVL^New Testame^tt^ should possess the miraculous property, distinct from all human books, of resisting alteration. This would be not only a miracle, but an ever existing and universal miracle ; whereas, those which they tell us of, even if they had been true, were momentary and local ; they would leave no trace behind, after the lapse of a few years, of having ever existed ; but this would prove, in all ages and in all .places, the book to be divine and not human, as effectu- ally, and as conveniently, as aquafortis proves gold to be gold by not being capable of acting upon it ; and de- tects all other metals and all counterfeit composition, by dissolving them. Since then the only miracle capable of every proof is wanting, and which every thing that is of a divine origin possesses, all the tales of miracles with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.
A LETTER,
-X
BEING AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND ON THE PUBLICATION OF THE AGE OF REASON.
Paris^ May 12^ 1797-
IN your letter of the 20th of March, you gave me several quotations from the Bible, which you call the word of God^ to show me that my opinions on religion are wrong, and I could give you as many, from the same book, to show that yours are not right ; consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it.
•But by what authority do you call the Bible the word of God? for this is the first point to be settled. It is not your calling it so that makes it so, any more than the Mahometans calling the Koran the word of God imk^s the Koran to be so. The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time that the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books, that now compose what is called the New Testament^ to be the word of God. This was done hy yeas and nays^ as we now vote a law. The Pharisees of the second Temple, after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose the Old Testament^ and this is all the authority there is, which to me is no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they were, and I think more so, because, as
AGE OF REASON. 369
they made a living by their religion, they had a self- interest in the vote they gave.
You may have an opinion that a man is inspired, but you cannot prove it, nor can you have any proof of it yourself, because you cannot see into his mind in order to know how he comes by his thoughts, and the same is the case with the word revelation. — There can be no evidence of such a thing, for you can no more prove revelation, than you can prove what another man dreams of, neither can he prove it himself
It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet ; do you believe that too? No. Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it ; and so because you do^ and because you don' t^ is all the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving, except you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor? For my own part, I believe that all are impostors who pretend to hold verbal communication with the Deity. It is the way by which the world has been imposed upon ; but if^ you think otherwise you have the same right to your opinion that I have to mine, and must answer for it in the same manner. But all this does not settle the point, whether the Bible be the word ofGod^ or not. It is, there- fore, necessary to go a step further. The case then is :
You form your opinion of God from the account given of him in the Bible ; and I form my opinion of the Bible from the wisdom and goodness of God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works of the Creation. The result in these two cases will be, that you, by taking the Bible for your standard, will have a bad opinion of God : and I, by taking God for my standard, shall have a bad opinion of the Bible.
The Bib^e represents God to be a changeable, passion-
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ate vindictive being ; making a world, and then drown- ing it, afterwards repenting of what he had done, and promising not to do so again. Setting one nation to cnt the throats of another, and stopping the course of the sun till the butchery should be done. But the works of God, in the Creation, preach to us another doctrine. In that vast volume we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable, passionate, vindictive God ; every thing we there behold impresses us with a contrary idea ; that of unchangeableness and of eternal order, harmony, and goodness. The sun and the seasons return at their appointed time, and every thing in the Creation pro- claims that God is unchangeable. Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor may make, and call the word of God ^ or the Creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? for the Bible says one thing, and the Creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the Creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder ; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. That blood-thirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (i Sam. chap. xv. ver. 3,) "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not^ but slay both man and wo77ian^ infant and sucklings ox and sheep^ camel and ass. ' '
That Samuel, or some other impostor, might say this, is what, at this distance of time, can neither be proved nor disproved, but, in my opinion, it is blasphemy to say, or to believe, that God said it. All our ideas of the justice and goodness of God revolt at the impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.
What makes this pretended order to destroy the
AGE OF REASON. 37 1
Amalekites appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites four hundred years before^ according to the account in Exodus, chap. 17, (but which has the appearance of fable from the magical account it gives of Moses holding up his hands,) had opposed the Israelites coming into their country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders of Mexico ; and this opposition by the Amalekites, at that tirne^ is given as a reason, that the men, women, infants and sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses, that were born four hundred years afterwards, should be put to death ; and to complete the horror, Samuel hewed Agag, the chief of the Amalekites, in pieces, as you would hew a stick of wood. I v/ill bestow a few observations on this case.
In the first place, nobody knows who the author, or writer, of the book of Samuel was, and, therefore, the fact itself has no other proof than anonymous or hearsay evidence, which is no evidence at all. In the second place, this anonymous book says, that this slaughter was done by the express command of God : but all our ideas of the justice and goodness of God give the lie to the book, and as I never will believe any book that ascribes cruelty and injustice to God, I, therefore, reject the Bible as unworthy of credit.
As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the word of God, and that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary ; but I know you can give me none, except that you were educated to believe the Bible^ and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that education makes all the differ- ence, and that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case. You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. — But leaving
372 AGE OF REASON.
the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprej- udiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament or from the New.
When you have examined the Bible with the attention that I have done, (for I do not think you know much about it,) and permit yourself to have just ideas of God, you will most probably believe as I do. But I wish you to know that this answer to your letter is not written for the purpose of changing your opinion. It is written to satisfy you, and some other friends whom I esteem, that my disbelief of the Bible is founded on a pure and reli- gious belief in God ; for, in my opinion, the Bible is a gross libel against the justice and goodness of God, in almost every part of it.
THOMAS PAINE.
SAMUEL ADAMS.
SAMUEL ADAMS.
SAMUEL ADAMS, says the Dictionary of Biography^ was " one of the most remarkable men connected with the American Revokition. He was born at Boston in 1772, educated at Harvard College, and received its honors in 1740. He was one of the first who organized measures of resistance to the mother country ; and for the prominent part which he took in these measures he was proscribed by the British government. During the Revolutionary war, he was one of the most active and influential asserters of American freedom and independence. He was a member of the legisla- ture of Massachusetts from 1766 to 1774, when he was sent to the first Congress of the old Confederation. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Indepeyidence of 1776, for the adoption of which he had always been one of the warmest ad- vocates. In 1 78 1 he retired from Congress, but only to receive from his native state additional proofs of her confidence in his talents and integrity. He had ah-eady been an active member of the convention that formed her constitution ; and after it went into effect, he was placed in the Senate of the state, and for several years presided over that body. In 1789 he was elected lieutenant governor, and held that office till 1794; upon the death of Hancock, he was chosen governor, and was annually re-elected till 1797, when he retired from public life. He died in 1803. "
The leading trait of Adams's character which endeared him to Thomas Paine, and made him worthy of that great patriot's friendship, was his absolute honesty and incorruptible integ- rity. The scheming politicians of the present day, who pose as statesmen, would, with Mr. Adams's opportunities, have acquired great wealth; but he freely gave his time, his services, his intellect — all to his country — and died, as he had lived, a poor and honest man.
Mr. Everett said in 1825, (as quoted in Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. iii, page 136,) that " Adams's family, at times, suffered almost for the comforts of life, when he might have sold his influence over the counsels of America for un- counted gold, — when he might have emptied the royal treasury if he would have betrayed his country." On the 334th page of the same volume, we are told that, according to " the inven- tory and appraisement " in the records of the Probate Court, Boston, Dec. 12, 1803. the total value of Mr. Adams's per- sonal estate was $665.70. — E.
LETTER TO SAMUEL ADAMS.
My dear and venerable friend :
I received with great pleasure your friendly and affec- tionate letter of Nov. 30th, and I thank you also for the frankness of it. Between men in pursuit of truth, and whose object is the happiness of man both here and hereafter, there ought to be no reserve. Even error has a claim to indulgence, if not to respect, when it is believed to be truth. I am obliged to you for your affec- tionate remembrance of what you style my services in awakening the public mind to a declaration of independ- ence, and supporting it after it was declared. I also, like you, have often looked back on those times, and have thought, that if independence had not been de- clared at the time it was, the public mind could not have been brought up to it afterwards. It will imme- diately occur to you, who were so intimately acquainted with the situation of things at that time, that I allude to the black times oi seve7tty-six ; for though I know, and you my friend also know, they were no other than the natural consequences of the military blunders of that campaign, the country might have viewed them as pro- ceeding from a natural inability to support its cause against the enemy, and have simk under the despond- ency of that misconceived idea. This was the impres- sion against which it was necessary the country should be strongly animated.
1 now come to the second part of your letter, on which
374 AGE OF REASON.
I shall be as frank with yon as you are with me. *' But (say you) when I heard you had turned your mind to a defence of infidelity^ I felt myself much astonished," &c. What, my good friend, do you call believing in God infidelity ? for that is the great point mentioned in the Age of Reason against all divided beliefs and alle- gorical divinities. The Bishop of Llandaff (Dr. Watson) not only acknowledges this, but pays me some compli- ments upon it, in his answer to the second part of that work. " There is (says he) a philosophical sublimity in some of your ideas, when speaking of the Creator of the Universe. ' '
What then, (my much esteemed friend, for I do not respect you the less because we differ, and that perhaps not much, in religious sentiments,) what, I ask, is the thing called infidelity ? If we go back to your ancestors and mine, three or four hundred years ago, for we must have fathers, and grandfathers or we should not have been here, we shall find them praying to saints and vir- gins, and believing in purgatory and transubstantiation ; and therefore, all of us are infidels according to our fore- father's belief. If we go back to times more ancient we shall again be infidels according to the belief of some other forefathers.
The case, my friend, is, that the world has been over- run with fable and creed of human invention, with sec- taries of whole nations against other nations, and sectaries of those sectaries in each of them against each other. Every sectary, except the Quakers, have been persecutors. Those who fled from persecution, perse- cuted in their turn, and it is this confusion of creeds that has filled the world with persecution, and deluged it with blood. Even the depredation on your commerce by the Barbary powers, sprang from the crusades of the church against those powers. It was a war of creed against creed, each boasting of God for its author, and
AGE OF REASON. 375
reviling each other with the name of infidel. If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and this is all that it proves.
There is, however, one point of union wherein all religions meet, and that is in the first article of every man's creed, and of every- nation's creed, that has any creed at all, I believe in God, Those who rest here, and there are millions who do, cannot be wrong as far as their creed goes. Those who chose to go further may be wrongs for it is impossible that all can be right, since there is so much contradiction among them. The first, therefore, are, in my opinion, on the safest side.
I presume you are so far acquainted with ecclesiastical history as to know, and the bishop who has answered me has been obliged to acknowledge the fact, that the Books that compose the New Testament, were voted by yeas and nays to be the Word of God, as you now vote a law, by the Popish Councils of Nice and Laodocia, about fourteen hundred and fifty years ago. With respect to the fact there is no dispute, neither do I mention it for the sake of controversy. This vote may appear author- ity enough to some, and not authority enough to others. It is proper, however, that every body should know the fact.
With respect to the Age of Reason^ which you so much condemn, and that, I believe, without having read it, for you say only that you heard of it, I will in- form you of a circumstance, because you cannot know it by other means.
I have said in the first page of the first part of that work, that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon religion, but that I had reserved it to a later time of life. I have now to inform you why I wrote it, and published it at the time I did.
In the first place, I saw my life in continual danger. My friends were falling as fast as the giiillotine could
376 AGE OF REASON.
cut their heads off, and as I expected every day the same fate, I resolved to begin my work. I appeared to myself to be on my death bed, for death was on every side of me, and I had no time to lose. This accounts for my writing at the time I did, and so nicely did the time and intention meet, that I had not finished the first part of the work more than six hours before I was arrested and taken to prison. Joel Barlow was with me, and knows the fact.
In the second place, the people of France were running headlong into atheism, and 1 had the work translated and published in their own language, to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first article (as I have before said) of every man's creed, who has any creed at all, / believe in God. I endangered my own life, in the first place, by opposing in the Convention the exe- cuting of the king, and laboring to show they were try- ing the monarch and not the man, and that the crimes imputed to him were the crimes of the monarchial system ; and endangered it a second time by opposing atheism, and yet someoi your priests, for I do not believe that all are perverse, cry out, in the war-whoop of mon- archial priest-craft, what an infidel ! what a wicked man is Thomas Paine ! They might as well add, for he be- lieves in God, and is against shedding blood.
But all this war-whoop of the pulpit has some con- cealed object. Religion is not the cause, but is the stalking horse. They put it forward to conceal them- selves behind it. It is not a secret that there has been a party composed of the leaders of the Federalists, for I do not include all Federalists with their leaders, who have been working by various means for several years past, to overturn the Federal Constitution established on the representative system, and place government in the new world on the corrupt s^^stem of the old. To accomplish this a large standing army was necessary, and as a pre-
AGE OF REASON.
tence for such an army, the danger of a foreign invasion must be bellowed forth, from the pulpit, from the press, and by their public orators.
I am not of a disposition inclined to suspicion. It is in its nature a mean and cowardly passion, and upon the whole, even admitting error into the case, it is better, I am sure it is more generous to be wrong on the side of confidence, than on the side of suspicion. But I know as a fact, that the English Government distributes an- nually fifteen hundred pounds sterling among the Pres- byterian ministers in England, and one hundred among those of Ireland ;* and when I hear of the strange dis- courses of some of your ministers and professors of col- leges I cannot, as the Quakers say, find freedom in my mind to acquit them. Their anti-revolutionary doctrines invite suspicion, even against one's will, and in spite of one's charity to believe well of them.
As you have given me one Scripture phrase, I will give you another for those ministers. It is said in Exodus, chapter xxiii, verse 28, " Thou shalt not revile the Gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people." But those ministers, such I mean as Dr. Emmons, curse ruler and people both, for the majority are, politically, the people, and it is those who have chosen the ruler whom they curse.
As to the first part of the verse that of not of reviling the Gods^ it makes no part of my Scripture : I have but one God.
Since I began this letter, for I write it by piecemeals as I have leisure, I have seen the four letters that passed between you and John Adams. In your first letter you say. "Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age^ by
* A mistake in regard to the amount said to have been expended has probably been made ; the sums intended to be expressed were probably fifteen hundred thousand, and one hundred thousand pounds. — Ed.
AGE OF REASON.
inculating in the minds of youth the j ear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy ^ Why, my dear friend, this is exactly my religion, and is the whole of it. That you may have an idea that the Age of Reason (for I believe you have not read it) inculcates this reverential fear and love of the Deity, I will give you a paragraph from it.
" Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we w^ant to con- template his wisdom ? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful."
As I am fully with you in your first part, that respect- ing the Deity, so am I in your second, that of universal philanthropy ; by which I do not mean merely the sen- timental benevolence of wishing well, but the practical benevolence of doing good. We cannot serve the Deity in the manner we serve those who cannot do without that service. He needs no service from us. We can add nothing to eternity. But it is in our power to render a service acceptable to him, and that is, not by praying, but by endeavoring to make his creatures happy. A man does not serve God when he prays, for it is himself he is trying to serve ; and as to hiring or paying men to pray, as if the Deity needed instruction, it is in my opinion an abomination. One good school-master is of more use and of more value than a load of such par- sons as Dr. Emmons, and some others.
You, my dear and much respected friend, are now far in the vale of years ; I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind : I take care of both, by nourishing the first with temperance, and the latter with abundance.
AGE OF REASON. 379
This I believe you will allow to be the true philosophy of life. You will see by my third letter to the citizens of the United States, that I have been exposed to, and preserved through many dangers ; but, instead of buffet- ing the Deity with prayers, as if I distrusted him, or must dictate to him, I reposed myself on his protection : and you, my friend, will find, even in your last moments, more consolation in the silence of resignation than in the murmuring wish of prayer.
In every thing which you say in your second letter to John Adams, respecting our rights as men and citizens in this world, I am perfectly with you. On other points we have to answer to our Creator and not to each other. The key of heaven is not in the keeping of any sect, nor ought the road to be obstructed by any. Our relation to each other in this world is, as men, and the man w^ho is a friend to man and to his rights, let his religious opin- ions be what they may, is a good citizen, to whom I can give, as I ought to do, and as every other ought, the right hand of fellowship, and to none with more hearty good will, my dear friend, than to you.
THOMAS PAINE. Federal City^ Jan. /, i8oj.
FROM A LETTER TO ANDREW A. DEAN.*
Respected friend :
I RECEIVED your friendly letter, for which I am obliged to you. It is three weeks ago to-day (Sunday, Aug. 15,) that I was struck with a fit of apoplexy, that deprived me of all sense and motion. I had neither pulse nor breathing, and the people about me supposed me dead. I had felt exceedingly well that day, and had just taken a slice of bread and butter, for supper, and was going to bed. The fit took me on the stairs, as sud- denly as if I had been shot through the head ; and I got so very much hurt by the fall, that I have not been able to get in and out of bed since that day, otherwise than being lifted out in a blanket, by two persons ; yet all this while my mental faculties have remained as perfect as I ever enjoyed them. I consider the scene I have passed through as an experiment on dying, and I find that death has no terrors for me. As to the people called Christians, they have no evidence that their religion is true.f There is no more proof that the Bible is the word of God, than that the Koran of Mahomet is the
• Mr. Dean rented Mr. Paine's farm at New Rochelle.
t Mr. Paine's entering upon the subject of religion on this occasion, it may be pre- sumed was occasioned by the following passage in Mr. Dean's letter to him, viz :
" I have read with good attention your manuscriv)t on dreams, and examination on the prophecies in the Bible. I am now searching the old prophecies, and comparing the same to those said to be quoted in the New Testament. I confess the comparison is a matter worthy of our serious attention ; I know not the result till I finish ; then, if you be living, I shall communicate the same to you ; I hope to be with you soon."
AGE OF REASON. 381
word of God. It is education makes all the difference. Man, before lie begins to think for himself, is as much the child of habit in Creeds as he is in ploughing and sowing. Yet creeds, like opinions, prove nothing.
Where is the evidence that the person called Jesus Christ is the begotten Son of God ? The case admits not of evidence either to our senses or our mental faculties : neither has God given to man any talent by which such a thing is comprehensible. It cannot therefore be an object for faith to act upon, for faith is nothing more than an assent the mind gives to something it sees cause to believe is fact. But priests, preachers, and fanatics, put imagination in the place of faith, and it is the nature of the imagination to believe without evidence.
If Joseph the carpenter dreamed, (as the book of Matthew, chap, ist, says he did,) that his betrothed wife, Mary, was with child, by the Holy Ghost, and that an angel told him so ; I am not obliged to put faith in his dream, nor do I put any, for I put no faith in my own dreams, and I should be weak and foolish indeed to put faith in the dreams of others.
The Christian religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its articles. It puts the Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the Christian Devil above him. It is he, according to the absurd story in Genesis, that out- wits the Creator in the garden of Eden, and steals from him his favorite creature, man, and at last obliges him to beget a son, and put that son to death, to get man back again, and this the priests of the Christian religion call redemption.
Christian authors exclaim against the practice of offer- ing up human sacrifices, which, they say, is done in some countries ; and those authors make those exclama- tions without ever reflecting that their own doctrine of salvation is founded on a human sacrifice. They arc saved, they say, by the blood of Christ. The Chris-
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tian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.
As I am now well enough to sit up some hours in the day, though not well enough to get up without help ; I employ myself as I have always done, in endeavoring to bring man to the right use of the reason that God has given him, and to direct his mind immediately to his Creator, and not to fanciful secondary beings called medi- ators, as if God was superannuated or ferocious.
As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the word of God. It is a book of lies and contra- dictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book. The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a parody on the sun and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of the Eastern world, is the least hurtful part. Every thing told of Christ has refer- ence to the sun. His reported resurrection is at sunrise, and that on the first day of the week ; that is, on the day anciently dedicated to the sun, and from thence called Sunday ; in latin Dies Solis^ the day of the sun ; as the next day, Monday, is Moon-day. But there is no room in a letter to explain these things.
While man keeps to the belief of one God, his reason unites with his creed. He is not shocked with contra- dictions and horrid stories. His Bible is the heavens and the earth. He beholds his Creator in all his works, and every thing he beholds inspires him with reverence and gratitude. From the goodness of God to all, he learns his duty to his fellow-man, and stands self- reproved when he transgresses it. Such a man is no persecutor.
But when he multiplies his creed with imaginary things, of which he can have neither evidence nor con- ception, such as the tale of the garden of Eden, the talking serpent, the fall of man, the dreams of Joseph
AGE OF REASON. 383
the carpenter, the pretended resurrection and ascension, of which there is even no historical relation, for no his- torian of those times mentions such a thing, he gets into the pathless region of confusion, and turns either frantic or hypocrite. He forces his mind, and pretends to be- lieve what he does not believe. This is in general the case with the Methodists. Their religion is all creed and no morals.
I have now my friend given you a fac simile of my mind on the subject of religion and creeds, and my wish is, that you make this letter as publicly known as you find opportunities of doing.
Yours, in friendship,
THOMAS PAINB. N. K, Aug,, 1806,
REMARKS ON ROBERT HALUS SERMONS.*
ROBERT HALL, a protestant minister in England, preached and published a sermon against what he calls ^^ Modern infidelity ^ A copy of it was sent to a gentleman in America, with a request for his opinion thereon. That gentleman sent it to a friend of his in New York, with the request written on the cover — and this last sent it to Thomas Paine, who wrote the following observations on the blank leaf at the end of the sermon :
The preacher of the foregoing sermon speaks a great deal about infidelity^ but does not define what he means by it. His harangue is a general exclamation. Every thing, I suppose, that is not in his creed is infidelity with him, and his creed is infidelity with me. Infidelity is believing falsely. If what christians believe is not true, it is the christians that are the infidels.
The point between deists and christians is not about doctrine, but about facts — for if the things believed by the christians to be facts, are not facts, the doctrine founded thereon falls of itself. There is such a book as the Bible, but is it a fact that the Bible is revealed reli- gion? The christians canot prove it is. They put tradition in place of evidence, and tradition is not proof.
* This, and the following pieces are from the Prospect, or View of the Moral World, a periodical work edited and published by Elihu Palmer, at New York, in 1804. The same signatures are given as were subscribed to the original communications.
AGK OI^ REASON. 385
If it were, the reality of witches could be proved by the same kind of evidence.
The Bible is a history of the times of which it speaks, and history is not revelation. The obscene and vulgar stories in the Bible are as repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a divine Being, as the horrid cruelties and murders it ascribes to him, are repugnant to our ideas of his justice. It is the reverence of the Deists for the attributes of the Deity, that causes them to reject the Bible.
Is the account which the christian church gives of the person called Jesus Christ, a fact or a fable? Is it a fact that he was begotten by the Holy Ghost? The christians cannot prove it, for the case does not admit of proof The things called miracles in the Bible, such, for instance, as raising the dead, admitted, iffriie^ of ocular demonstration, but the story of the conception of Jesus Christ in the womb is a case beyond miracle, for it did not admit of demonstration. Mary, the reputed mother of Jesus, who must be supposed to know best, never said so herself, and all the evidence of it is, that the book of Matthew says, that Joseph dreamed an angel told him so. Had an old maid of two or three hundred years of age, brought forth a child, it would have been much better presumptive evidence of a supernatural conception, than Matthew's story of Joseph's dream about his young wife.
Is it a fact that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, and how is it proved? If a God he could not die, and as a man he could not redeem, how then is this redemption proved to be a fact? It is said that Adam eat of the forbidden fruit, commonly called an apple, and thereby subjected himself and all his posterity for- ever to eternal damnation. This is worse than visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. But how was the death of Jesus Christ to affect or alter the case? — Did God thirst for
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blood? If SO, would it not have been better to have crucified Adam at once upon the forbidden tree, and made a new man? Would not this have been more creator- like than repairing the old one? Or, did God, when he made Adam, supposing the story to be true, exclude himself from the right of making another? or impose on himself the necessity of breeding from the old stock? Priests should first prove facts, and deduce doctrines from them afterwards. But, instead of this, they assume every thing and prove nothing. Authorities drawn from the Bible are no more than authorities drawn from other books, unless it can be proved that the Bible is revelation.
This story of the redemption will not stand examina- tion. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple, by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up. Deism is perfect purity compared with this. It is an established principle with the Quakers not to shed blood — suppose, then, all Jerusalem had been Quakers when Christ lived, there would have been nobody to crucify him, and in that case, if man is redeemed by his blood, which is the belief of the church, there could have been no redemp- tion— and the people of Jerusalem must all have been damned, because they were too good to commit murder. The christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense. Why is man afraid to think?
Why do not the christians, to be consistent, make saints of Judas and Pontius Pilate ? for they were the persons who accomplished the act of salvation. The merit of a sacrifice, if there can be any merit in it, was never in the thing sacrificed, but in the persons offering up the sacrifice — and, therefore, Judas and Pontius Pilate ought to stand first on the calendar of saints.
THOMAS PAINK.
OF THE WORD RELIGION,
AND OTHER WORDS OF UNCERTAIN SIGNIFICATION.
THE word religion is a word of forced application when used with respect to the worship of God. The root of the word is the latin verb ligo^ to tie or bind. From ligo^ comes religo^ to tie or bind over again, or make more fast — from religo^ comes the sub- stantive religo^ which, with the addition of 7i makes the English substantive religion. The French use the word properly — when a woman enters a convent she is called a noviciat^ that is, she is upon trial or probation. When she takes the oath, she is called a religieuse^ that is, sheistiedor bound by that oath to the performance of it. . We use the word in the same kind of sense when we say we will religiously perform the promise that we make. But the word, without referring to its etymology, has, in the manner it is used, no definitive meaning, because it does not designate what religion a man is of There is the religion of the Chinese, of the Tartars, of the Bramins, of the Persians, of the Jews, of the Turks, etc. The word Christianity is equally as vague as the word religion. No two sectaries can agree what it is. It is a lo here and lo tJiere. The two principal sectaries. Papists and Protestants, have often cut each other's throats about it: — The Papists call the Protestants heretics, and the Protestants call the Papists idolaters. The minor sectaries have shown the same spirit of rancor, but, as
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the civil law restrains them from blood, they content themselves with preaching damnation against each other.
The word protestant has a positive signification in the sense it is used. It means protesting against the authority of the Pope, and this is the only article in which the pro- testants agree. — In every other sense, with respect to religion, the word protestant is as vague as the word christian. When we say an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Quaker, we know what those persons are, and what tenets they hold — but when we say a christian, we know he is not a Jew nor a Mahometan, but we know not if he be a trinitarian or an anti-trinitarian, a believer in what is called the immaculate conception, or a dis- believei', a man of seven sacraments, or of two sacra- ments, or of none. The word christian describes what a man is not, but not what he is.
The word Theology^ from Theos^ the Greek word for God, and meaning the study and knowledge of God, is a word, that strictly speaking, belongs to Theists or Deists, and not to the christians. The head of the christian church is the person called Christ — but the head of the church of the Theists, or Deists, as they are more commonly called, from Deus^ the latin word for God, is God himself, and therefore the word Theology belongs to that church which has Theos, or God, for its head, and not to the christian church which has the person called Christ for its head. Their technical word is Christianity, and they cannot agree what Christianity is.
The words revealed religion, and natural religion, require also explanation. They are both invented terms, contrived by the church for the support of priestcraft. With respect to the first, there is no evidence of any such thing, except in the universal revelation that God has made of his power, his wisdom, his goodness in the struc- ture of the universe, and in all the works of creation. We have no cause or ground from any thing we behold
AGE OF REASON. 389
in those works, to suppose God would deal partially by mankind, and reveal knowledge to one nation and with- hold it from another, and then damn them for not know- ing it. The sun shines an equal quantity of light all over the world — and mankind in all ages and countries are endued with reason, and blessed with sight, to read the visible works of God in the creation, and so intelligent is this book that he that nuts may read. We admire the wisdom of the ancients, yet they had no bibles, nor books, called revelation. They cultivated the reason that God gave them, studied him in his works, and arose to eminence.
As to the Bible, whether true or fabulous, it is a history, and history is not revelation. If Solomon had seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, and if Samson slept in Delilah's lap, and she cut his hair off, the relation of those things is mere history, that needed no revelation from heaven to tell it ; neither does it need any revelation to tell us that Samson was a fool for his pains, and Solomon too.
As to the expressions so often used in the Bible, that the word of the Lord came to such an one, or such an one, it was the fashion of speaking in those times, like the expression used by a Quaker, that the spirit moveth him^ or that used by priests, that they have a call. We ought not to be deceived by phrases because they are ancient. But if we admit the supposition that God would condescend to reveal himself in words, we ought not to believe it would be in such idle and profligate stories as are in the Bible, and it is for this reason, among others which our reverence to God inspires, that the Deists deny that the book called the Bible is the word of God, or that it is revealed religion.
With respect to the term natural religion, it is, upon the face of it, the opposite of artificial religion, and it is impossible for any man to be certain that what is called
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revealed religion^ is not artificial. Man lias the power of making books, inventing stories of God, and calling them revelation, or the word of God. The Koran exists as an instance that this can be done, and we must be credulous indeed to suppose that this is the only instance, and Mahomet the only impostor. The Jews could match him, and the church of Rome could overmatch the Jews. The Mahometans believe the Koran, the Christians believe the Bible, and it is education makes all the difference.
Books, whether Bibles or Korans, carry no evidence of being the work of any other power than man. It is only that which man cannot do that carries the evidence of being the work of a superior power. Man could not invent and make a universe — he could not invent nature, for nature is of divine origin. It is the laws by which the universe is governed. When, therefore, we look through nature up to nature's God, we are in the right road of happiness, but when we trust to books as the word of God, and confide in them as revealed religion, we are afloat on the ocean of uncertainty, and shatter into contending factions. The term therefore, natural religion^ explains itself to be dhnne religion, and the term revealed religicm involves in it the suspicion of being artificial.
To show the necessity of understanding the meaning of words, I will mention an instance of a minister, I believe of the Episcopalian church of Newark, in New Jersey. He wrote and published a book, and entitled it. An Antidote to Deism. An antidote to Deism^ must be Atheism. It has no other antidote — for what can be an antidote to the belief of a God, but the disbelief of God. Under the tuition of such pastors, what but ignorance and false information can be expected ?
T. P.
OF CAIN AND ABEL.
THE story of Cain and Abel is told in the fourth chapter of Genesis ; Cain was the elder brother, and Abel the younger, and Cain killed Abel. The Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, and the Jewish story, in Genesis, of Cain and Abel, have the appearance of being the same story differently told, and tha^it came originally from Egypt.
In the Egyptian story, Typhon and Osiris are brothers ; Typhon is the elder, and Osiris the younger, and Typhon kills Osiris. The story is an allegory on darkness and light ; Typhon, the elder brother, is darkness, because darkness, was supposed to be more ancient than light : Osiris is the good light who rules during the summer months, and brings forth the fruits of the earth, and is the favorite, as Abel is said to have been, for which Typhon hates him ; and when the winter comes, and cold and darkness overspread the earth, Typhon is represented as having killed Osiris out of malice, as Cain is said to have killed Abel.
The two stories are alike in their circumstances and their event, and are probably but the same story ; what corroborates this opinion, is, that the fifth chapter of Genesis historically contradicts the reality of the story of Cain and Abel in the fourth chapter, for though the name of Seth^ a son of Adam, is mentioned in the fourth chapter, he is spoken of in the fifth chapter as if he was the first born of Adam. The chapter begins thus : —
392 AGE OF REASON.
' ' This is the book of \\\^ generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God created he him. Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat a son, in his own likeness and after his own image, and called his name Seth^ The rest of the chapter goes on with the genealogy.
Any body reading this chapter, cannot suppose there were any sons born before Seth. The chapter begins with what is called the creation of Adam ^ and calls itseli the book of the generations of Adam^ yet no mention is made of such persons as Cain and Abel : one thing, how- ever, is evident on the face of these two chapters, which is, that the same person is not the writer of both ; the most blundering historian could not have committed himself in such a manner.
Though I look on every thing in the first ten chapters of Genesis to be fiction, yet fiction historically told should be consistent, whereas these two chapters are not. The Cain and Abel of Genesis appear to be no other than the ancient Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris — the dark- ness and the light — which answered very well as an allegory without being believed as a fact.
THE TOWER OF BABEL.
THE story of the Tower of Babel is told in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. It begins thus : — ''And the whole earth (it was but a very little part of it they knew) was of one language and of one speech. — And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. — And they said one to another Go to^ let us make brick and burn them thoroughly, and they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. — And they said go to^ let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. — And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. — And the Lord said, behold the people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. — Go to^ let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. — So (that is, by that means) the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city."
This is the story, and a foolish inconsistent story it is. In the first place, the familiar and irreverent manner in which the Almighty is spoken of in this chapter, is offen- sive to a serious mind. As to the project of building a tower whose top should reach to heaven, there never could be a people so foolish as to have such a notion ; but to represent the Almighty as jealous of the attempt, as the
394 AGE OF REASON.
writer of the story has done, is adding profanation to folly. ^^Go io^^^ says the builders, "let us build us a tower whose top shall reach to heaven." ^^Go to^^'' says God, "let us go down and confound their language." This quaintness is indecent, and the reason given for it is worse, for, "now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do." This is representing the Almighty as jealous of their getting into heaven. The story is too ridiculous, even as a fable, to account for the diversity of languages in the world, for which it seems to have been intended.
As to the project of confounding their language for the purpose of making them separate, it is altogether incon- sistent ; because, instead of producing this effect, it would, by increasing their difficulties, render them more necessary to each other, and cause them to keep together. Where could they go to better themselves?
Another observation upon this story is, the incon- sistency of it with respect to the opinion that the Bible is the word of God given for the information of mankind ; for nothing could so effectually prevent such a word being known by mankind as confounding their language. The people, who after this spoke different languages, could no more understand such a word generally, than the builders of Babel could understand one another. It would have been necessary, therefore, had such word ever been given or intended to be given, that the whole earth should be, as they say it was at first, of one language and of one speech, and that it should never have been confounded.
The case, however, is, that the Bible will not bear examination in any part of it, which it would do if it was the word of God. Those who most believe it are those who know least about it, and priests always take care to keep the inconsistent and contradictory parts out of sight. T. P.
TO MEMBERS OP THE SOCIETY STYLING ITSELF THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
The New York Gazette of the i6th {August) co7itains the following article — " 0)1 Tuesday, a committee of the Mis- sionary Society, consistiyig chiefly of distinguished Clergy- men, had an interview at the City Hotels with the chiefs of the Osage tribe of Indians^ now hi this city, {New York) to whom they presented a Bible, together with a7i Address, the object of ivhich was, to inform than that this good book C07i- tained the will and laws of the Great Spirit."
IT is to be hoped some humane person will, on ac- count of our people on the frontiers, as well as of the Indians, undeceive them with respect to the present the Missionaries have made them, and which they call digood book^ containing, they say, the will and laws of the Great Spirit. Can those Missionaries suppose that the assassination of men, women, and children, and sucking infants, related in the books as- cribed to Moses, Joshua, &c., and blasphemously said to be done by the command of the Lord, the Great Spirit, can be edifying to our Indian neighbors, or advantageous to us? Is not the Bible warfare the same kind of war- fare as the Indians themselves carry on, that of indis- criminate destruction, and against which humanity shudders ? Can the horrid examples and vulgar obscenity, with which the Bible abounds, improve the morals or civilize the manners of the Indians ? Will they learn
396 AGE OF REASON.
sobriety and decency from drunken Noah and beastly Lot ; or will their daughters be edified by the example of Lot's daughters? Will the prisoners they take in war be treated the better by their knowing the horrid story of Samuel's hewing Agag in pieces like a block of wood, or David's putting them under harrows of iron ? Will not the shocking accounts of the destruction of the Canaanites, when the Israelites invaded their country, suggest the idea that we may serve them in the same manner, or the accounts stir them up to do the like to our people on the frontiers, and then justify the assassin- ation by the Bible the Missionaries have given them ? Will those Missionary Societies never leave off doing mischief?
In the account which this missionary committee give of their interview, they make the chief of the Indians to say, that, "as neither he nor his people could read it, he begged that some good white man might be sent to instruct them. ' '
It is necessary the General Government keep a strict eye over those Missionary Societies, who, under the pre- tence of instructing the Indians, send spies into their country to find out the best lands. No society should be permitted to have intercourse with the Indian tribes, nor send any person among them, but with the knowledge and consent of the Government. The present adminis- tration has brought the Indians into a good disposition, and is improving them in the moral and civil comforts of life ; but if these self-created societies be suffered to in- terfere, and send their speculating Missionaries among them, the laudable object of government will be defeated. Priests, we know, are not remarkable for doing anything gratis ; they have in general some scheme in every thing they do, either to impose on the ignorant, or derange the operations of government.
A Friend to the Indians.
OF THE RELIGION OF DEISM
COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AND THE SUPERIORITY OF THE FORMER OVER THE LATTER.
EVERY person, of whatever religious denomination he may be, is a Deist in the first article of his Creed. Deism, from the Latin word Deus^ God, is the belief of a God, and this belief is the first article of every man's creed.
It is on this article, universally consented to by all mankind, that the Deist builds his church, and here he rests. Whenever we step aside from this article, by mixing it with articles of human invention, we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty and fable, and become exposed to every kind of imposition by pretenders to revelation. The Persian shows the Zendavista of Zoroaster, the law-giver of Persia, and calls it the divine law ; the Bramin shows the Shaster^ revealed, he says, by God to Brama, and given to him out of a cloud ; the Jew shows what he calls the law of Moses, given, he says, by God, on the Mount Sinai ; the Christian shows a collection of books and epistles, written by nobody knows who, and called the New Testament ; and the Mahometan shows the Koran, given, he says, by God to Mahomet : each of these calls itself revealed religion and the only true word of God, and this the followers of each profess to believe from the habit of education, and each believes the others are imposed upon.
But when the divine gift of reason begins to expand itself in the mind and calls man to reflection, he then
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reads and contemplates God in his works, and not in the books pretending to be revelation. The Creation is the Bible of the true believer in God. Every thing in this vast volume inspires him with sublime ideas of the Creator. The little and paltry, and often obscene tales of the Bible sink into wretchedness when put in com- parison with this mighty work. The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself and his own existence?
There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly under- stood, that is not to be found in any other system of religion. All other systems have some things in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them. But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and every thing we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim his attributes. It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in his works, and imitate him in his ways. When we see his care and goodness extended over all his creatures, it teaches us our duty towards each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to him. It is by forgetting God in his works, and running after the books of pretended revelation that man has wandered from the straight path of duty and happiness, and become by turns the victim of doubt and the dupe of delusion.
Except in the first article in the Christian creed, that of believing in God, there is not an article in it but fills the mind with doubt, as to the truth of it, the instant man begins to think. Now every article in a creed that is necessary to the happiness and salvation of man, ought to be as evident to the reason and comprehension of man
AGE OF REASON. 399
as the first article is, for God has not given us reason for the purpose of confounding us, but that we should use it for our own happiness and his glory.
The truth of the first article is proved by God himself, and is universal ; for the creation is of itself denionstra- tio7i of the existence of a Creator. But the second article, that of God's begetting a son, is not proved in like manner, and stands on no other authority than that of a tale. Certain books in what is called the New Testament tell us that Joseph dreamed that the angel told him so. (Matthew, chap. i. ver. 20.) "And behold the Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." The evidence upon this article bears no comparison with the evidence upon the first article, and therefore is not entitled to the same credit, and ought not to be made an article in a creed, because the evidence of it is defective, and what evidence there is, is doubtful and suspicious. We do not believe the first article on the authority of books, whether called Bibles or Korans, nor yet on the visionary authority of dreams, but on the authority of God's own visible works in the creation. The nations who never heard of such books, nor of such people as Jews, Christians, or Mahometans, believe the existence of a God as fully as we do, because it is self evident. The work of man's hands is a proof of the existence of man as fully as his personal appearance would be. When we see a watch, we have as positive evidence of the existence of a watch-maker, as if we saw him ; and in like manner the creation is evidence to our reason and our senses of the existence of a Creator. But there is nothing in the works of God that is evidence that he begat a son, nor any thing in the system of creation that corroborates such an idea, and, therefore, we are not authorized in believing it.
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But presumption can assume any thing, and therefore it makes Joseph's dream to be of equal authority with the existence of God, and to help it on calls it revelation. It is impossible for the mind of man in its serious moments, however it may have been entangled by edu- cation, or beset by priest-craft, not to stand still and doubt upon the truth of this article and of its creed. But this is not all.
The second article of the Christian creed having brought the son of Mary into the world, (and this Mary, according to the chronological tables, was a girl of only fifteen years of age when this son was born,) the next article goes on to account for his being begotten, which was, that when he grew a man he should be put to death, to expiate, they say, the sin that Adam brought into the world by eating an apple or some kind of forbidden fruit.
But though this is the creed of the church of Rome, from whence the protestants borrowed it, it is a creed which that church has manufactured of itself, for it is not contained in, nor derived from, the bock called the New Testament. The four books called the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which give, or pretend to give, the birth, sayings, life, preaching, and death of Jesus Christ, make no mention of what is called the fall of man ; nor is the name of Adam to be found in any of those books, which it certainly would be if the writers of them believed that Jesus was begotten, born, and died for the purpose of redeeming mankind from the sin which Adam had brought into the world. Jesus never speaks of Adam himself, of the Garden of Eden, nor of what is called the fall of man.
But the Church of Rome having set up its new religion which it called Christianity, and invented the creed which it named the apostle's creed, in which it calls Jesus the only son of God ^ conceived by the Holy Ghost^ and born of the Virgin Mary — things of which it is im-
AGE OF REASON, 40I
possible that man or woman can have any idea, and consequently no belief but in words, and for which there is no authority but the idle story of Joseph's dream in the first chapter of Matthew, which any designing im- poster or foolish fanatic might make. It then manufac- tured the allegories in the book of Genesis, into fact, and the allegorical tree of life and the tree of knowledge into real trees, contrary to the belief of the first christians, and for which there is not the least authority in any of the books of the New Testament ; for in none of them is there any mention made of such place as the Garden of Eden, nor of any thing that is said to have happened there.
But the church of Rome could not erect the person called Jesus into a Saviour of the world without making the allegories in the book of Genesis into fact, though the New Testament^ as before observed, gives no author- ity for it. All at once the allegorical tree of knowledge became, according to the church, a real tree, the fruit of it real fruit, and the eating of it sinful. As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignor- ance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.
The church of Rome having done this, it then brings forward Jesus, the son of Mary as suffering death to redeem mankind from sin, which Adam, it says, had brought into the world by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But as it is impossible for reason to believe such a story, because it can see no reason for it, nor have any evidence of it, the church then tells us we must not regard our reason but mnst believe^ as it were, and that through thick and thin, as if God had given man reason like a plaything, or a rattle, on purpose to make fun of him. Reason is the forbidden tree of priest- craft, and may serve to explain the allegory of the
402 AGE OF REASON.
forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may reasonably suppose the allegory had seme meaning and application at the time it was invented. It was the practice of the eastern nations to convey their meaning by allegory, and relate it in the manner of fact. Jesus followed the same method, yet nobody ever supposed the allegory or parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the prodigal son, the ten virgins, &c., were facts. Why then should the tree of knowledge, which is far more romantic in idea than the parables in the New Testament are, be supposed to be a real tree. * The answer to this is, because the church could not make its new fangled system, which it called Christianity, hold together without it. To have made Christ to die on account of an allegorical tree would have been too bare-faced a fable.
But the account, as it is given of Jesus in the New Testament^ even visionary as it is, does not support the creed of the church that he died for the redemption of the world. According to that account he was crucified and buried on the Friday, and rose again in good health on the Sunday morning, for we do not hear that he was sick. This cannot be called dying, and is rather making fun of death than suffering it. There are thousands of men and women also, who if they could know they should come back again in good health in about thirty- six hours, would prefer such kind of death for the sake of the experiment, and to know what the other side of the grave was. Why then should that which would be only a voyage of curious amusement to us be magnified into merit and suffering in him? If a God he could not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as a man his death could be no more than the death of any other person.
* The remark of the Emperor Julian, on the story of The Tree of Knowledge, is worth observing. " If," said he, " there ever had been, or could be, a Tree of Know- ledge, instead of God forbidding man to eat thereof, it would be that of which he would order him to eat the most."
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The belief of the redemption of Jesus Christ is altogether an invention of the church of Rome, not the doctrine of the New Testajnent. What the writers of the Neiu Testament attempted to prove by the story of Jesus is the resurrection of the sa?ne body from the grave ^ which was the belief of the Pharisees, in opposition to the Sadducees (a sect of Jews) who denied it. Paul, who was brought up a Pharisee, labors hard at this point, for it was the creed of his own Pharisaical church. The fifteenth chapter of ist Corinthians is full of supposed cases and assertions about the resurrection of the same body, but there is not a word in it about redemption. This chapter makes part of the funeral service of the Episcopal church. The dogma of the redemption is the fable of priestcraft invented since the time the New Testament was compiled, and the agreeable delusion of it suited with the depravity of im.moral livers. When men are taught to ascribe all their crimes and vices to the temptations of the Devil, and to believe that Jesus, by his death, rubs all off and pays their passage to heaven gratis, they become as careless in morals as a spendthrift would be of money, were he told that his father had engaged to pay off all his scores. It is a doctrine, not only dangerous to morals in this world, but to our happiness in the next world, because it holds out such a cheap, easy, and lazy way of getting to heaven as has a tendency to induce men to hug the delusion of it to their own injury.
But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian Religion, and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability, and irration- ality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved. He may
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believe that such a person as is called Jesus (for Christ was not his name) was born and grew to be a man, because it is no more than a natural and probable case. But who is to prove he is the son of God — that he was begotten by the Holy Ghost? Of these things there can be no proof; and that which admits not of proof, and is against the laws of probability, and the order of nature which God himself has established, is not an object for belief. God has not given man reason to embarrass him, but to prevent his being imposed upon.
He may believe that Jesus was crucified, because many others were crucified, but w^ho is to prove he was crucified for the sins of the world? This article has no evidence, not even in the New Testament ; and if it had, where is the proof that the New Testament^ in relating things neither propable nor provable, is to be believed as true? When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of probability, the salvo is to call it revelation ; but this is only putting one difficulty in the place of another, for it is as impossible to prove a thing to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was gotten with child by the Holy Ghost.
Here it is that the religion of Deism is superior to the Christian religion. It is free from all those invented and torturing articles that shock our reason or injure our humanit}^, and with which the Christian religion abounds. Its creed is pure and sublimely simple. It believes in God, and there it rests. It honors reason as the choicest gift of God to man, and the faculty by which he is enabled to contemplate the power, wisdom and goodness of the Creator displayed in the creation ; and reposing itself on his protection, both here and hereafter, it avoids all presumptuous beliefs, and rejects, as the fabulous inventions of men, all books pretending to revelation.
T. P.
THE SABBATH DAY OF CONNECTICUT.
The word Sabbath, means rest, that is, cessation from labor, but the stupid Blue Laws* of Connecticut make a labor of rest, for they oblige a person to sit still from sun-rise to sun-set on a Sabbath day, which is hard work. Fanaticism made those laws, and hypocrisy pre- tends to reverence them, for where such laws prevail hypocrisy will prevail also.
One of those laws says, "No person shall run on a Sabbath-day, nor walk in his garden, nor elsewhere, but reverently to and from meeting." These fanatical hypocrites forgot that God dwells not in temples made with hands, and that the earth is full of his glory. One of the finest scenes and subjects of religious contempla- tion is to walk into the woods and fields, and survey the works of the God of the Creation. The wide expanse of heaven, the earth covered with verdure, the lofty forest, the waving corn, the magnificent roll of mighty rivers, and the murmuring melody of the cheerful brooks, are scenes that inspire the mind with gratitude and delight : but this the gloomy Calvinist of Connecticut, must not behold on a Sabbath-day. Entombed within the walls of his dwelling, he shuts from his view the temple of creation. The sun shines no joy to him. The gladden- ing voice of nature calls on him in vain. He is deaf,
* They were called Blue Laws because they were originally printed on blue paper
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dumb, and blind to every thing around liini that God has made. Such is the Sabbath-day of Connecticut.
From whence could come this miserable notion of devotion ? It comes from the gloominess of the Calvin- istic creed. If men love darkness rather than light, because their works are evil, the ulcerated mind of a Calvinist, who sees God only in terror, and sits brooding over the scenes of hell and damnation, can have no joy in beholding the glories of the creation. Nothing in that mighty and wondrous system accords with his prin- ciples or his devotion. He sees nothing there that tells him that God created millions on purpose to be damned, and that the children of a span long are born to burn forever in hell. The creation preaches a different doc- trine to this. We there see that the care and goodness of God is extended impartially over all the creatures he has made. The worm of the earth shares his protection equally with the elephant of the desert. The grass that springs beneath our feet grows by his bounty as w^ell as the cedars of Lebanon. Every thing in the Creation reproaches the Calvinist with unjust ideas of God, and disowns the hardness and ingratitude of his principles : therefore he shuns the sight of them on a Sabbath- day.
An Enemy to Cant and Imposition.
ANCIENT HISTORY.
Hints towm^ds inquiring into the truth of Ancient History^ so far as history is connected with Systems of Religioft,
IT has been customary to class history into three divis- ions, distinguished by the names of Sacred, Profane, and Ecclesiastical. By the first is meant the Bible ; by the second, the history of nations — of men and things ; and by the third, the history of the church and priesthood.
Nothing is more easy than to give names, and, there- fore, mere names signify nothing unless they lead to the discovery of some cause for which that name was given. For example, Sunday is the name given to the first day of the week, in the English language, and it is the same in the Latin, that is, it has the same meaning, {Dies solis,) and also in the German, and in several other languages. Why then was this name given to that day? Because it was the day dedicated by the ancient world to the luminary which in English we call the Sun, and, therefore, the day Sun-day^ or the day of the Sun ; as in the like manner we call the second day Monday, the day dedicated to the Moon.
Here the name Sunday^ leads to the cause of its being called so, apd we have visible evidence of the fact, because we behold the Sun from whence the name comes ; but this is not the case when we distinguish one p \xi of history from another by the name of Sacred. All histories have been written by men. We have no evidence, nor any cause to believe, that any have been written by God. That part of the Bible called the Old Testament^ is the history of the Jewish nation, from the time of Abraham, which begins in the nth chap, of Genesis, to the downfall of that nation by Nebuchadnezzar, and is no more entitled to be called sacred than any other
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history. It is altogether the contrivance of priestcraft that has given it that name. So far from its being sacred^ it has not the appearance of being true in many of the things it relates. It must be better authority than a book, which any impostor might make as Mahomet made the Koran, to make a thoughtful man believe, that the sun and moon stood still, or that Moses and Aaron turned the Nile, which is larger than the Delaware, into blood, and that the Egyptian magicians did the same. These things have too much the appear- ance of romance to be believed for fact.
It would be of use to inquire and ascertain the time when that part of the Bible called the Old Tesfa?nent first appeared. From all that can be collected there was no such book till after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, and that it is the work of the Pharisees of the Second Temple. How they came to make the 19th chapter of the 2d book of Kings, and the 37th of Isaiah, word for word alike, can only be accounted for by their having no plan to go by, and not knowing what they were about. The same is the case with respect to the last verses in the 2nd book of Chronicles, and the first verses of Ezra, they also are word for word alike, which shows that the Bible has been put together at random.
But besides these things there is great reason to believe we have been imposed upon, with respect to the antiquity of the Bible, and especially with respect to the books ascribed to Moses. Herodotus, who is called the father of history, and is the most ancient historian whose works have reached to our time, and who travelled into Egypt, conversed with the priests, historians, astronomers, and learned men of that country, for the purpose of obtaining all the information of it he could, and who gives an account of the ancient state of it, makes no mention of such a man as Moses, though the Bible makes him to have been the greatest hero there, nor of any one circum-
AGE OF REASON. 409
stance mentioned in the book of Exodus, respecting Egypt, such as turning the rivers into blood, the dust into lice, the death of the first born throughout all the land of Eg>'pt, the passage of the Red Sea, the drowning of Pharaoh and all his host, things which could not have been a secret in Egypt, and must have been generally known, had they been facts ; and, therefore, as no such things were known in Egypt, nor any such man as Moses, at the time Herodotus was there, which is about two thousand two hundred years ago, it shows that the account of these things in the books ascribed to Moses is a made story of later times, that is, after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him.
With respect to the cosmogony, or account of the creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, of the Garden of Eden in the second chapter, and of what is called the fall of man in the third chapter, there is something con- cerning them we are not historically acquainted with. In none of the books of the Bible, after Genesis, are any of these things mentioned, or even alluded to. How is this to be accounted for? The obvious inference is, that either they were not known, or not believed to be facts, by the writers of the other books of the Bible, and that Moses is not the author of the chapters where these accounts are given.
The next question on the case is, how did the Jews come by these notions, and at what time were they written ?
To answer this question we must first consider what the state of the world was at the time the Jews began to be a people, for the Jews are but a modern race compared with the antiquity of other nations. At the time there were, even by their own account, but thirteen Jews or Israelites in the world, Jacob and his twelve soris^ and four of these were bastards, the nations of Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, and India, were great and populous,
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abounding in learning and science, particularly in the knowledge of astronomy, of which the Jews were always ignorant. The chronological tables mention, that eclipses were observed at Babylon above two thousand years before the Christian era, which was before there was a single Jew or Israelite in the world.
All those ancient nations had their cosmogonies, that is, their accounts how the creation was made, long before there was such people as Jews or Israelites. An account of these cosmogonies of India and Persia, is given by Henry Lord, Chaplain to the East India Company, at Surat, and published in London in 1630. The writer of this has seen a copy of the edition of 1630, and made ex- tracts from it. The work, which is now scarce, was dedicated by Lord to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
We know that the Jews were carried captive into Babylon, by Nebuchadnezzar, and remained in captivity several years, when they were liberated by Cyrus, king of Persia. During their captivity they would have had an opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of the cosmogony of the Persians, or at least of getting some ideas how to fabricate one to put at the head of their own history after their return from captivity. This will account for the cause, for some cause there must have been, that no mention nor reference is made to the cosmogony in Genesis in any of the books of the Bible, supposed to have been written before the captivity, nor is the name of Adam to be found in any of those books.
The books of Chronicles were written after the return of the Jews from captivity, for the third chapter of the first book gives a list of all the Jewish kings from David to Zedekiah, who was carried captive into Babylon, and to four generations beyond the time of Zedekiah. In the first verse of the first chapter of this book the name of Adam is mentioned, but not in any book in the Bible written before that time, nor could it be, for Adam and
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Eve are names taken from the cosmogony of the Persians. Henry Lord, in his book, written from Snrat, and dedicated, as I have already said, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, says, that in the Persian cosmogony, the name of the first man was Adainoh^ and of the woman Hevah^ From hence comes the Adam and Bve of the book of Genesis. In the cosmogony of India, of which I shall speak in a future number, the name of the first man was Pourous^ and of the woman Parcoutee. We want a knowledge of the Sanscrit language of India to understand the meaning of the names, and I mention it in this place, only to show that it is from the cosmogony of Persia, rather than that of India, that the cosmogony in Genesis has been fabricated by the Jews, who returned from captivity by the liberality of Cyrus, king of Persia. There is, however reason to conclude, on the authority of Sir William Jones, who resided several years in India, that these names were very expressive in the language to which they belonged, for in speaking of this language, he says, (see the Asiatic Researches^) "The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of wonderful stucture ; it is more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either." These hints, which are intended to be continued, will serve to show that a society for inquiring into the ancient state of the world, and the state of ancient history, so far as history is connected with systems of religion, ancient and modern, may become a useful and instructive institution. There is good reason to believe we have been in great error with respect to the antiquity of the Bible, as well as imposed upon by its contents. Truth ought to be the object of every man ; for without truth there can be no real happiness to a thoughtful mind, or any assurance of happiness hereafter. It is the duty of man to obtain all the knowledge he can, and then make the best use of it. T. P.
TO MR. MOORE, OP NEW YORK,
COMMONLY CALLED BISHOP MOORE.
I HAVE read in the newspapers your account of the visit you made to the unfortunate General Hamilton, and of administering to him a ceremony of your church which you call the Holy Communion.
I regret the fate of General Hamilton, and I so far hope with you that it will be a warning to thoughtless man not to sport away the life that God has given him ; but with respect to other parts of your letter I think it very reprehensible, and betrays great ignorance of what true religion is. But you are a priest, you get your living by it, and it is not your wordly interest to undeceive yourself.
After giving an account of your administering to the deceased what you call the Holy Communion, you add, " By reflecting on this melancholy event let the humble believer be encouraged ever to hold fast that precious faith which is the only source of true consolation in the last extremity of nature. Let the infidel be persuaded to abandon his opposition to the Gospel."
To show you, sir, that your promise of consolation from scripture has no toundation to stand upon, I will cite to you- one of the greatest falsehoods upon record, and which was given, as the record says, for the purpose, and as a promise, of consolation.
In the epistle called "the First Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians," (chap, iv, ) the writer consoles the Thes-
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salonians as to the case of their friends who were already dead. He does this by informing them, and he does it he says, by the word of the Lord, (a most notorious false- hood,) that the general resurrection of the dead and the ascension of the living, will be in his and their days ; that their friends will then come to life again ; that the dead in Christ will rise first. — "Then WE (says he, v. 17) which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with THEM in the clouds^ to meet the Lord in the air^ and so shall we ever be with the Lord — wherefore comfort one another with these words. ' '
Delusion and falsehood cannot be carried higher than they are in this passage. You, sir, are but a novice in the art. The words admit of no equivocation. The whole passage is in the first person and the present tense, ^^We which are alive^ Had the writer meant a future time, and a distant generation, it must have been in the third person and the future tense. "77/^jKwho shall then be alive." I am thus particular for the pur- pose of nailing you down to the text, that you may not ramble from it, nor put other constructions upon the words than they will bear, which priests are very apt to do.
Now, sir, it is impossible for serious man, to whom God has given the divine gift of reason, and who employs that reason to reverence and adore the God that gave it, it is, I say, impossible for such a man to put confidence in a book that abounds with fable and false- hood as the New Testament does. This passage is but a sample of what I could give you.
You call on those whom you style ''Hnjidels^''^ (and they in return might call you an idolator, a worshipper of false gods, a preacher of false doctrine,) '4o abandon their opposition to the Gospel." Prove, sir, the Gospel to be true, and the opposition will cease of itself; but until you do this (which we know you cannot do) you
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have no right to expect they will notice your call. If by mfidels yon mean Deists^ (and you must be exceedingly ignorant of the origin of the word Deist, and know but little oi Deus^ to put that construction upon it,) you will find yourself over-matched if you begin to engage in a controversy with them. Priests may dispute with priests, and sectaries with sectaries, about the meaning of what they agree to call scripture, and end as they began, but when you engage with a Deist you must keep to fact. Now, sir, you cannot prove a single article of your reli- gion to be true, and we tell you so publicly. Do it, if you can. The Deistical article, the belief of a God^ with which your creed begins, has been borrowed by your church from the ancient Deists, and even this article you dishonor by putting a dream-begotten phantom* which you call his son, over his head, and treating God as if he was superannuated. Deism is the only profession of reli- gion that admits of worshipping and reverencing God in purity, and the only one on which the thoughtful mind can repose with undisturbed tranquillity. God is almost forgotten in the Christian religion. Every thing, even the creation, is ascribed to the son of Mary.
In religion, as in every thing else, perfection consists in simplicity. The Christian religion of Gods within Gods, like wheels within wheels, is like a complicated machine that never goes right, and every projector in the art of Christianity is trying to mend it. It is its defects that have caused such a number and variety of tinkers to be hammering at it, and still it goes wrong. In the visible world no time-keeper can go equally true with the sun ; and in like manner, no complicated religion
* This first chapter of Matthew relates that Joseph, the betrothed husband of Mary, dreamed that the angel told him that his intended bride was with child by the Holy Ghost. It is not every husband, whether carpenter or priest, that can be so easily satisfied, for lo ! it was a dream. Whether Mary was in a dream when this was done we are not told. It is, however, a comical story. There is no woman living can understand it.
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can be equally true with the pure and unmixed religion of Deism.
Had you not offensively glanced at a description of men whom you call by a false name, you would not have been troubled nor honored with this address; neither has the writer of it any desire or intention to enter into controversy with you. He thinks the temporal estab- lishment of your church politically unjust and offensively unfair ; but with respect to religion itself, distinct from temporal establishments, he is happy in the enjoyment of his own and he leaves you to make the best you can of yours.
A Member ok the Deisticai. Church.
TO JOHN MASON,
One of the Ministers of the Scotch Presbyterian Church of Neiv York^ with remarks on his account of the visit he made to the late General Hamilton.
''/^^OME now, let us reason together saith the V^_^ Ivord. ' ' This is one of the passages you quoted from your Bible, in your conversation with General Hamilton, as given in your letter, signed with your name, and published in the Commercial Advertiser^ and other New York papers, and I re-quote the passage to show that your text and your Religion contradict each other.
It is impossible to reason upon things not comprehen- sible by reason; and, therefore, if you keep to your text, which priests seldom do, (for they are generally either above it, or below it, or forget it,) you must admit a reli- gion to which reason can apply, and this certainly is not the Christian Religion.
There is not an article in the Christian religion that is cognizable by reason. The Deistical article of your religion, the belief of a God^ is no more a Christian article, than it is a Mahometan article. It is an univer- sal article, common to all religions, and which is held in greater purity by Turks than by Christians; but the Deistical church is the only one which holds it in real purity ; because that church acknowledges no co-partner-
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ship with God. It believes in him solely ; and knows nothing of Sons, married Virgins, nor Ghosts. It holds all these things to be the fables of priestcraft.
Why then do you talk of reason, or refer to it, since your religion has nothing to do with reason, nor reason with that? You tell people as you told Hamilton, that they must '^'^m^ faith! Faith in what? You ought to know that before the mind can have faith in any thing, it must either know it as a fact, or see cause to believe it on the probability of that kind of evidence that is cogniz- able by reason ; but your religion is not within either of these cases ; for, in the first place, you cannot prove it to be fact ; and in the second place, you cannot support it by reason, not only because it is not cognizable by reason, but because it is contrary to reason. What reason can there be in supposing, or believing, that God put Imnself to deaths to satisfy himself and be revenged on the Devil on account of Adam; for tell the story which way you will it comes to this at last.
As you can make no appeal to reason in support of an unreasonable religion, you then (and others of your pro- fession) bring yourselves off by telling people, they must not believe in reason but in revelation. This is the artifice of habit without reflection. It is putting words in the place of thiiigs ; for do you not see that when you tell people to believe in revelation, you must first prove that what you call revelation, is revelation ; and as you cannot do this, you put the wordv^\\\Q\\ is easily spoken, in the place of the thing you cannot prove. You have no more evidence that your Gospel is revelation, than the Turks have that their Koran is revelation, and the only difference between them and you is, that they preach their delusion and you preach yours.
In your conversation with General Hamilton, you say to him, "The simple truths of the Gospel which require no abstruse investigation^ but faith in the veracity of
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God^ who cannot lie^ are best suited to your present condition."
If those matters you call ''^simple truths ^'^'^ are what you call them, and require no abstruse investigation, they would be so obvious that reason would easily com- prehend them ; yet the doctrine you preach at other times is, that the mysteries of the Gospel are beyond the reach of reason. If your first position be true, that they are simple truths^ priests are unnecessary, for we do not want preachers to tell us the sun shines ; and if your second be true, the case, as to effect, is the same, for it is waste of money to pay a man to explain unexplainable things, and loss of time to listen to him. That God can- not lie^ is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests cannot, or that the Bible does not. Did not Paul lie when he told the Thessalonians that the general resurrection of the dead would be in his life- time, and that he should go up alive along with them into the clouds to meet the lyord in the air? i Thes. chap. 4, verse 27.
You spoke of what you call, ''^the precious blood of Christ. ' ' This savage style of language belongs to the priests of the Christian religion. The professors of this religion say they are shocked at the accounts of human sacrifices of which they read in the histories of some countries. Do they not see that their own religion is founded on a human sacrifice, the blood of man, of which their priests talk like so many butchers? It is no wonder the Christian religion has been so bloody in its effects, for it began in blood, and many thousands of human sacrifices have since been offered on the altar of the Christian religion.
It is necessary to the character of a religion, as being true, and immutable as God himself is, that the evidence of it be equally the same through all periods of time and circumstance. This is not the case with the Christian
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religion, nor with that of the Jews that preceded it, (for there was a time and that within the knowledge of history, when these religions did not exist,) nor is it the case with any religion we know of but the religion of Deism. In this the evidences are eternal and universal. — ^^The heavens declare the glory of God ^ and the firma- ment sheweth his handy ivork^ — Day unto day uttereth speech^ and 7iight unto night showeth knowledge. ' ' * But all other religions are made to arise from some local circumstance, and are introduced by some temporary trifle which its partisans call a miracle, but of which there is no proof but the story of it.
The Jewish religion, according to the history of it, began in a wilderness^ and the Christian religion in a stable. The Jewish books tell us of wonders exhibited upon mount Sinai. It happened that nobody lived there to contradict the account. The Christian books tell us of a star that hung over the stable at the birth of Jesus. There is no star there now, nor any person living that saw it. But all the stars in the heavens bear eternal evidence to the truth of Deism. It did not begin in a stable, nor in a wilderness. It began every where. The theatre of the universe is the place of birth.
As adoration paid to any being but God himself is idolatry, the Christian religion by paying adoration to a man, born of a woman, called Mary, belongs to the idolatrous class of religions, consequently the consolation drawn from it is delusion. Between you and your rival
*This Psalm (19) which is a Deistical Psalm is so much in the manner of some parts of the book of Job, (which is not a book of the Jews, and does not belong to the bible,) that it has the appearance of having? been translated into Hebrew from the same language in which the book of Job was originally written, and brought by the Jews from Chaldeaor Persia, when they returned from captivity. The contemplation of the Heavens made a great part of the religious devotion of the Chaldeans and Persians, and their religious festivals were regmated by the progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the Zo- diac. But tlie Jews knew nothing about the Heavens, or they would not have told the foolish story of the sun's standing still upon a hill, and the moon in a valley. What could they want the moon for in the day time ?
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in communion ceremonies, Dr. Moore of the Episcopal church, you have, in order to make yourselves appear of some importance, reduced General Hamilton's character to that of a feeble-minded man, who in going out of the world wanted a passport from a priest. Which of you was first or last applied to for this purpose is a matter of no consequence.
The man, sir, who puts his trust and confidence in God, that leads a just and moral life, and endeavors to do good, does not trouble himself about priests when his hour of departure comes, nor permit priests to trouble themselves about him. They are in general mischievous beings where character is concerned ; a consultation of priests is worse than a consultation of physicians.
A Member of the Deistical Congregation.
OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Address to the believers in the book called the Scriptures.
THE New Testament contains twenty-seven books, of which four are called Gospels ; one called the Acts of the Apostles ; fourteen called Epistles of Paul ; one of James ; two of Peter ; three of John ; one of Jude ; and one called the Revelation.
None of those books have the appearance of being written by the persons whose names they bear, neither do we know who the authors were. They come to us on no other authority than the church of Rome, which the Protestant Priests, especially those of New England, call the Whore of Babylon. This church appointed sundry councils to be held, to compose creeds for the people, and to regulate church affairs. Two of the principal of these councils were that of Nice, and of Ivaodocia, (names of the places where the councils were held,) about three hundred and fifty years after the time that Jesus is said to have lived. Before this time there was no such book as the New Testament, But the church could not well go on without having something to show, as the Persians showed the Zendavista — revealed, they say, by God to Zoroaster; the Bramins of India, the Shaster — revealed, they say, by God to Brama — and given to him out of a dusky cloud ; the Jews, the books they call the Law of Moses — given they say also out of a cloud on Mount Siuai j the church set about forming a code
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for itself out of such materials as it could find or pick up. But where they got those materials, in what language they were written, or whose hand writing they were, or whether they were originals or copies, or on what authority they stood we know nothing of, nor does the New Testament tell us. The church was resolved to have a New Testament^ and as after the lapse of more than three hundred years, no hand-writing could be proved or disproved, the church, who like former im- postors, had then gotten possession of the state, had every thing its own way. It invented creeds, such as that called the Apostle's Creed, the Nicean Creed the Athanasian Creed, and out of the loads of rubbish that were presented, it voted four to be Gospels, and others to be Epistles, as we now find them arranged.
Of those called Gospels, above forty were presented, each pretending to be genuine. Four only were voted in, and entitled, the Gospel accordiiig to St. Matthew — the Gospel according to St. Mark — the Gospel according to St. Luke — the Gospel according to St. John.
This word according^ shows that those books have not been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but according to some accounts or traditions, picked up con- cerning them. The word according means agreeing with, and necessarily includes the idea of two things, or two persons. We cannot say. The Gospel written by Matthew according to Matthew ; but we might say,, the Gospel of some other person according to what was reported to have been the opinion of Matthew. Now we do not know who those other persons were, nor whether what they wrote accorded with any thing that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John might have said. There is too little evidence, and too much contrivance, about those books to merit credit.
The next book after those called Gospels, is that called the Acts of the Apostles. This book is anonymous ;
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neither do the councils that compiled or contrived the New Testament tell us how they came by it. The church, to supply this defect, says it was written by Luke, which shows that the church and its priests have not compared that called the Gospel according to St. Luke, and the Acts together, for the two contradict each other. The book of Luke, chap. 24, makes Jesus ascend into heaven the very same day that it makes him rise from the grave. The book of Acts, chap. i. v. 3, says, that he remained on the earth forty days after his crucifixion. There is no believing what either of them says.
The next to the book of Acts is that entitled "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle* to the Romans." This is not an Epistle, or letter, written by Paul or signed by him. It is an Epistle, or letter, written by a person who signs himself Tertius, and sent, as it is said at the end by a servant woman called Phebe. The last chapter, ver. 22, says. "I Tertitus, who wrote this Epistle, salute you." Who Tertius or Phebe were, we know nothing of. The Epistle is not dated. The whole of it is written in the first person, and that person is Tertitus, not Paul. But it suited the church to ascribe it to Paul. There is nothing in it that is interesting except it be to contending and wrangling sectaries. The stupid meta- phor of the potter and the clay is in the 9th chapter.
The next book is entitled '^The first Epistle of Paul the Apostle, to the Corinthians." This, like the former, is not an Epistle written by Paul, nor signed by him. The conclusion of the Epistle says, ' ' The first Epistle to the Corinthians was written from Philippi, by Stephanas and Fortunatus, and Achaicus and Timotheus." The second Epistle entitled, "The second Epistle of Paul the
* According to the criterion of the church, Paul was not an apostle; that appellation being given only to those called the twelve, Two sailors belonging to a man of war, got into a dispute upon this point, whether Paul was an apostle or not, and they agreed to refer it to the boatswain, who decided very canoaically that Paul was an acting apostle but not rated.
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Apostle, to the Corinthians," is in the same case with the first. The conclusion of it says, "It was written from Philippi, a city of Macedonia, by Titus and Lucas.
A question may arise upon these cases, which is, are these persons the writers of the epistles originally, or are they the writers and attestors of copies sent to the councils who compiled the code or canon of the Nezv Testament? If the epistles had been dated this question could be decided ; but in either of the cases the evidences of Paul's hand-writing and of their being written by him is wanting, and, therefore, there is no authority for call- ing them Epistles of Paul. We know not whose Epistles they were, nor whether they are genuine or forged.
The next is entitled, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians." It contains six short chapters. But short as the epistle is, it does not carry the appearance of being the work or composition of one person. The fifth chapter, ver. 2, sa3^s, "If ye be circumcised, Christ shall avail you nothing." It does not say circumcision shall profit you nothing, but Christ shall profit you nothing. Yet in the sixth chap., v. 15, it says, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." These are not reconcilable passages, nor can contrivance make them so. The conclusion of the Epistle says, it was written from Rome, but it is not dated, nor is there any signature to it, neither do the compilers of the New Testament S2iy how they came by it. We are in the dark upon all these matters.
The next is entitled, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians." Paul is not the writer. The con- clusion of it says, "Written from Rome unto the Ephes- ians by Tychicus."
The next is entitled, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians. " Paul is not the writer. The con- clusion of it says, "It was written to the Philippians
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from Rome by Epaphroditus. " It is not dated. Query ^ Were those men who wrote and signed those Epistles journeymen Apostles, who undertook to write in Paul's name, as Paul is said to have preached in Christ's name?
The next is entitled, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians." Paul is not the writer. Doctor Luke is spoken of in this Epistle as sending his compliments. "Luke, the beloved physician, and Denias greet you." Chap, iv., ver. 14. It does not say a word about his writing any Gospel. The conclusion of the Epistle says, "Written from Rome to the Collossians by Tychicus and Onesimus."
The next is entitled, "The first and the second Epistles of Paul the Apostle, to the Thessalonians. " Either the writer of these Epistles was a visionary enthusiast, or a direct impostor, for he tells the Thessalonians, and, he says he tells them by the w^ord of the Lord, that the world will be at an end in his and their time ; and after telling them that those who are already dead shall rise, he adds, chapter 4, verse 17, "Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we be ever with the Lord." Such detected lies as these, ought to fill priests with confusion, when they preach such books to be the word of God. These two Epistles are said in the conclusion of them, to be written from Athens. They are without dates or signatures.
The next four Epistles are private letters. Two of them are to Timothy, one to Titus and one to Philemon. Who they were, nobody knows.
The first to Timothy, is said to be written from Laodicea. It is without date or signature. The second to Timothy, is said to be written from Rome, and is without date or signature. The Epistle to Titus is said to be wTitten from Nicopolis in Macedonia. It is with- out date or signature. The Epistle to Philemon is
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said to be written from Rome by Onesimus. It is with- out date.
The last Epistle ascribed to Paul is entitled, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews," and is said in the conclusion to be written from Italy, by Timothy. This Timothy (according to the conclusion of the Epistle called the second Epistle of Paul to Timothy) was bishop of the church of the Ephesians, and consequently this is not an Epistle of Paul.
On what slender cob-web evidence, do the priests and professors of the Christian religion hang their faith ! The same degree of hearsay evidence, and that at third and fourth hand, would not, in a court of Justice, give a man title to a cottage, and yet the priests of this profes- sion presumptuously promise their deluded followers the kingdom of Heaven. A little reflection would teach men that those books are not to be trusted to ; that so far from there being any proof they are the word of God, it is unknown who the writers of them were, or at what time they were written, within three hundred years after the reputed authors are said to have lived. It is not the interest of priests, who get their living by them, to examine into the sufficiency of the evidence upon which those books were received by the popish councils who compiled the New Testament,
The cry of the priests that the church is in danger, is the cry of men who do not understand the interest of their own craft, for instead of exciting alarms and apprehensions for its safety, as they expect, it excites suspicion that the foundation is not sound, and that it is necessary to take down and build it on a sure foundation. Nobody fears for the safety of a mountain, but a hillock of sand may be washed away ! Blow then, O ye priests, ' ' the Trumpet in Zion, ' ' for the Hillock is in danger.
Detector— P.
ON DEISM, AND THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE.
THE following reflections, when written, were occa- sioned by certain expressions in some of the public papers against Deism and the writings of Thomas Paine on that subject.
^'' Great is Diana of the Ephesians^^^ was the cry of the people of Ephesus ;* and the cry of ''''our holy religion^'''' has been the cry of superstition in some instances, and of hypocrisy in others, from that day to this.
The Brahmin, the follower of Zoroaster, the Jew, the Mahometan, the church of Rome, the Greek church, the Protestant church, split into several hundred contradic- tory sectaries, preaching, in some instances, damnation against each other, all cry out, ''^our holy religion^ The Calvinist, who damns children of a span long to hell to burn for ever for the glory of God, (and this is called Christianity,) and the Universalist, who preaches that all shall be saved and none shall be damned, (and this also is called Christianity,) boast alike of their holy religion and their Christian faith. Something more, therefore, is necessary than mere cry and wholesale asser- tion, and that something is Truth ; and as inquiry is the road to truth, he that is opposed to inquiry is not a friend to truth.
* Acts, chap. xLx, ver. 28.
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The God of Truth is not the God of fable ; when, therefore, any book is introduced into the world as the word of God, and made a ground-work for religion, it ought to be scrutinized more than other books to see if it bear evidence of being what it is called. Our reverence to God demands that we do this, lest we ascribe to God what is not his, and our duty to ourselves demand it, lest we take fable for fact, and rest our hope of salvation on a false foundation. It is not our calling a book holy that makes it so, any more than our calling a religion holy that entitles it to the name. Inquiry, therefore, is necessary in order to arrive at truth. But inquiry must have some principle to proceed on, some standard to judge by, superior to human authority.
When we survey the works of creation, the revolutions of the planetary system, and the whole economy of what is called nature, which is no other than the laws the Creator has prescribed to matter, we see unerring order and universal harmony leigning throughout the whole. No one part contradicts another. The sun does not run against the moon, nor the moon against the sun, nor the planets against each other. Every thing keeps its appointed time and place. This harmony in the works of God is so obvious, that the farmer of the field, though he cannot calculate eclipses, is as sensible of it as the philosophical astronomer. He sees the God of order in every part of the visible universe.
Here, then, is the standard to which every thing must be brought that pretends to be the word of God, and by this standard it must be judged, independently of any thing and every thing that man can say or do. His opinion is like a feather in the scale compared with the standard that God himself has set up.
It is therefore, by this standard, that the Bible, and all other books pretending to be the word of God, (and there are many of them in the world,) must be judged,
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and not by the opinions of men or the decrees of ecclesiasti- cal councils. These have been so contradictory, that they have often rejected in one council what they had voted to be the word of God in another ; and admitted what ha4 been before rejected. In this state of uncertainty in which we are, and which is rendered still more uncertain by the numerous contradictory sectaries that have sprung up since the time of Luther and Calvin, what is man to do? The answer is easy. Begin at the root — begin with the Bible itself Examine it with the utmost stiictness. It is our duty so to do. Compare the parts with each other, and the whole with the harmonious, magnificent order that reigns throughout the visible universe, and the result will be, that if the same almighty wisdom that created the universe, dictated also the Bible, the Bible will be as harmonious and as magnificent in all its parts, and in the whole, as the universe is. But if, instead of this, the parts are found to be discordant, con- tradicting in one place what is said in another, (as in 2nd Sam., chap, xxiv., ver. i, and istChron., chap, xxi., ver. I, where the same action is ascribed to God in one book and to Satan in the other,) abounding also in idle and obscene stories, and representing the Almighty as a passionate, whimsical Being, continually changing his mind, making and unmaking his own works as if he did not know what he was about, we may take it for certainty that the Creator of the universe is not the author of such a book, that it is not the word of God, and that to call it so is to dishonor his name. The Quakers, who are a people more moral and regular in their conduct than the people of other sectaries, and generally allowed so to be, do not hold the Bible to be the word of God. They call it a history of the times ^ and a bad history it is, and also a history of bad men and of bad actions, and abounding with bad examples.
For several centuries past the dispute has been about
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doctrines. It is now about fact. Is the Bible the word of God, or is it not? for until this point is established, no doctrine drawn from the Bible can afford real consola- tion to man, and he ought to be careful he does not mistake delusion for truth. This is a case that concerns all men alike.
There has always existed in Europe, and also in America, since its establishment, a numerous descrip- tion of men, (I do not here mean the Quakers,) who did not, and do not believe the Bible to be the word of God. These men never formed themselves into an established society, but are to be found in all the sectaries that exist, and are more numerous than any, perhaps equal to all, and are daily increasing. From Deiis^ the I^atin word for God, they have been denominated Deists^ that is, believers in God. • It is the most honorable appellation that can be given to man, because it is derived imme- diately from the Deity. It is not an artificial name like Episcopalian, Presbyterian, &c., but is a name of sacred signification, and to revile it is to revile the name of God.
Since then there is so much doubt and uncertainty about the Bible, some asserting, and others denying it to be the word of God, it is best that the whole matter come out. It is necessary, for the information of the world, that it should. A better time cannot offer than whilst the government, patronizing no one sect or opinion in preference to another, protects equally the rights of all ; and certainly every man must spurn the idea of an ecclesiastical tyranny, engrossing the rights of the press, and holding it free only for itself.
Whilst the terrors of the church, and the tyranny of the state, hung like a pointed sword over Europe, men were commanded to believe what the church told them, or go to tlie stake. All inquiries into the authenticity of the Bible were shut out by the inquisition. We ought.
AGE OF REASON. 43I
therefore, to suspect, that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been suppressed by the united tyranny of church and state, for the purpose of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known.
The Bible has been received by the Protestants on the authority of the church of Rome, and on no other authority. It is she that has said it is the word of God. We do not admit the authority of that church with respect to its pretended infallibility^ its manufactured miracles, its setting itself up to forgive sins, its amphi- bious doctrine of transubstantiation, &c. ; and we ought to be watchful with respect to any book introduced by her, or her Ecclesiastical Councils, and called by her the word of God : and the more so, because it was by propa- gating that belief and supporting it by fire and fagot, that she kept up her temporal power. That the belief of the Bible does no good in the world, may be seen by the irregular lives of those, as well priests as laymen, who profess to believe it to be the word of God, and the moral lives of the Quakers who do not. It abounds with too many ill examples to be made a rule for moral life, and were a man to copy after the lives of some of its most celebrated characters, he would come to the gallows.
Thomas Paine has written to show that the Bible is not the word of God, that the books it contains were not written by the person to whom they are ascribed, that it is an anonymous book, and that we have no authority for calling it the word of God, or for saying it was written by inspired penmen, since we do not know who the writers were. This is the opinion not only of Thomas Paine, but of thousands and tens of thousands of the most respectable characters in the United States and in Europe. These men have the same right to their opinions as others have to contrary opinions, and the
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same right to publish them. Ecclesiastical tyranny is not admissible in the United States.
With respect to morality, the writings of Thomas Paine are remarkable for purity and benevolence ; and though he often enlivens them with touches of wit and humor, he never loses sight of the real solemnity of his subject. No man's morals, either with respect to his Maker, himself, or his neighbor, can suffer by the writings of Thomas Paine.
It is now too late to abuse Deism, especially in a country where the press is free, or where free presses can be established. It is a religion that has God for its patron and derives its name from him. The thoughtful mind of man, wearied with the endless contentions of sectaries against sectaries, doctrines against doctrines, and priests against priests, finds its repose atjast in the contemplative belief and worship of one God and the practice of morality, for as Pope wisely says,
'* He can't be wrong whose life is in the right."
MAY 2 0 I94C