Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason

Below is Thomas Paine's outstanding book on God, Deism, Nature, Christianity, the Bible, Judaism, etc., The Age of Reason. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Deism. With this important book, Thomas Paine took Deism out of the intellectual parlors and brought it directly to the people!

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Thomas Paine
(by Matthew Pratt)

THE AGE OF REASON

by Thomas Paine

TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

    I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my

opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I

have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own

opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who

denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his

present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing

it.

    The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason.

I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.

Your affectionate friend and fellow-citizen,

                                                      THOMAS PAINE

                 Luxembourg, 8th Pluvoise,

    Second Year of the French Republic, one and indivisible.

                  January 27, O. S. 1794.

PART FIRST

    IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my

thoughts upon religion. I am well aware of the difficulties that

attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to

a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last

offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and

that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it,

could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove

the work.

    The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total

abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything

appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive

articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but

rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest in the

general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and

false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the

theology that is true.

    As several of my colleagues and others of my fellow-citizens of

France have given me the example of making their voluntary and

individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this

with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man

communicates with itself.

    I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

    I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious

duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make

our fellow-creatures happy.

    But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other

things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work,

declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not

believing them.

    I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by

the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the

Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind
is my own church.

    All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian

or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to

terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

    I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe

otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.

But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally

faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in

disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not

believe.

    It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so

express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man

has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to

subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he

has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He
takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to
qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we
conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?

    Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in

America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the

system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system

of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever

it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so

effectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion upon

established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that

until the system of government should be changed, those subjects
could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that
whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion
would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected;
and man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief
of one God, and no more.

    Every national church or religion has established itself by

pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain

individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus

Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as

if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

    Each of those churches show certain books, which they call

revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God

was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that

their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say,

that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from

Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for

my own part, I disbelieve them all.

    As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I

proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the

word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something
communicated immediately from God to man.

    No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such

a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case,

that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed
to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells
it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth,

and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is

revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and

consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

    It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a

revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in

writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first

communication- after this, it is only an account of something which

that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may

find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to

believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me,

and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

    When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two

tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not

obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it

than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than

some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal

evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral
precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator,
could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural

intervention.*

   *It is, however, necessary to except the declaration which says

that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; it is

contrary to every principle of moral justice.

    When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought
to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of

hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not

see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe

it.

    When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said,

or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a

man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told

him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance

required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but

we have not even this- for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such

matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said

so- it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief

upon such evidence.

    It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was

given to the story of Jesus Christ being the son of God. He was born

when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the

world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of

such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the

heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods.

It was not a new thing, at that time, to believe a man to have been

celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a

matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their

accounts, had cohabited with hundreds: the story, therefore, had

nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to

the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles,

or Mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The

Jews who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more,

and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited

the story.

    It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the

Christian church sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A

direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the

reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that

then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality,

which was about twenty or thirty thousand: the statue of Mary

succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of heroes

changed into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had gods for

everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything;

the church became as crowded with one, as the Pantheon had been
with the other, and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory
is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists,

accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet

remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

    Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant

disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous

and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised
was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of
morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the
Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and
by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

    Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage,

or any thing else; not a line of what is called the New Testament is

of his own writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other

people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension,

it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His

historians having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner,

were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first

part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

    The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told

exceeds every thing that went before it. The first part, that of the

miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and

therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage,

that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected.

They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of

those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the

person of whom it was told could prove it himself.

    But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his

ascension through the air, is a thing very different as to the

evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the

womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken

place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the

ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all Jerusalem at

least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that

the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal;

and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only

evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of

it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead

of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are

introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all

the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears

that Thomas did not believe the resurrection, and, as they say,

would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration

himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for

me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

    It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter.

The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every

mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who
were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us

to be assured that the books in which the account is related were

written by the persons whose names they bear; the best surviving

evidence we now have respecting that affair is the Jews. They are

regularly descended from the people who lived in the times this

resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say,

it is not true. It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency

to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just

the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I

have told you by producing the people who say it is false.

    That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was

crucified, which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical

relations strictly within the limits of probability. He preached

most excellent morality and the equality of man; but he preached

also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and

this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of

priesthood. The accusation which those priests brought against him was
that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which
the Jews were then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that
the Roman government might have some secret apprehensions of the
effects of his doctrine, as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it
improbable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the
Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two,
however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life.

    It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another

case I am going to mention, that the Christian Mythologists, calling

themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which,

for absurdity and extravagance, is not exceeded by anything that is to

be found in the mythology of the ancients.

    The ancient Mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made

war against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks

against him at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder,

and confined him afterward under Mount Etna, and that every time the

Giant turns himself Mount Etna belches fire.

    It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that

of its being a volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that

the fable is made to fit and wind itself up with that circumstance.

    The Christian Mythologists tell us that their Satan made war

against the Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterward,

not under a mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the

first fable suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter

and the Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan.

    Thus far the ancient and the Christian Mythologists differ very

little from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the

matter much farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous

part of the story of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from

Mount Etna; and in order to make all the parts of the story tie

together, they have taken to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for

the Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology

and partly from the Jewish traditions.

    The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a

pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the

fable. He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the shape

of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar

conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk;

and the issue of this tete-a-tete is that he persuades her to eat an

apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.

    After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would

have supposed that the Church Mythologists would have been kind enough
to send him back again to the pit; or, if they had not done this, that they
would have put a mountain upon him (for they say that their faith can
remove a mountain), or have put him under a mountain, as the former
mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women
and doing more mischief. But instead of this they leave him at large,
without even obliging him to give his parole- the secret of which is,
that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of
making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews,
ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and
Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can

doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?

   Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in Heaven, in

which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded- put

Satan into the pit- let him out again- giving him a triumph over the

whole creation- damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these

Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together.

They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at

once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially

begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in

her longing had eaten an apple.

    Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its

absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining

ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to

conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent

with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is.

    In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors

were under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call

Satan, a power equally as great, if not greater than they attribute to

the Almighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating

himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have

made that power increase afterward to infinity. Before this fall

they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they

represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account,

omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He
occupies the whole immensity of space.

    Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him

as defeating, by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation,

all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having
compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of

surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and

sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by

coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the

shape of a man.

    Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is,

had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit

himself on a cross, in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his

new transgression, the story would have been less absurd- less

contradictory. But instead of this, they make the transgressor

triumph, and the Almighty fall.

    That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived

very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime), is

what I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to

believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same

manner. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically

enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to

man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the

idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the
absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more unnatural anything
is, the more it is capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration.

    But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do

they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a

fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born- a world

furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up

the sun, that pour down the rain, and fill the earth with abundance?

Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still

goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in

future, nothing to us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other

subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man

become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice

of the Creator?

    I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it

would be paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear

it on their account; the times and the subject demand it to be done.

The suspicion that the theory of what is called the Christian Church

is fabulous is becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will

be a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion, and

doubting what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the object

freely investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the

books called the Old and New Testament.

    These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation

(which, by the by, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation

to explain it), are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore,

proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit

to give to the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can

tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however,

historically appears to be as follows:

    When the Church Mythologists established their system, they

collected all the writings they could find, and managed them as they

pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such

of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New

Testament are in the same state in which those collectors say they

found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed

them up.

    Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out

of the collection they had made should be the WORD OF GOD, and
which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be
doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books
which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the word of God.
Had they voted otherwise, all the people, since calling themselves
Christians, had believed otherwise- for the belief of the one comes
from the vote of the other. Who the people were that did all this, we
know nothing of; they called themselves by the general name of the
Church, and this is all we know of the matter.

    As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing

these books to be the word of God than what I have mentioned,
which is no evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place,
to examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves.

    In the former part of this Essay, I have spoken of revelation; I

now proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying

it to the books in question.

    Revelation is a communication of something which the person to

whom that thing is revealed did not know before. For if I have done

a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have

done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.

    Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon

earth, of which man himself is the actor or the witness; and

consequently all the historical and anecdotal parts of the Bible,

which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass

of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God.

    When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so

(and whether he did or not is nothing to us), or when he visited his

Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did any thing else, what has

revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could

tell them himself, or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them,

if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were

fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or

not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When
we contemplate the immensity of that Being who directs and governs
the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight
can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry

stories the word of God.

    As to the account of the Creation, with which the Book of

Genesis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which

the Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after

their departure from that country they put it at the head of their

history, without telling (as it is most probable) that they did not

know how they came by it. The manner in which the account opens

shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly; it is nobody that

speaks; it is nobody that hears; it is addressed to nobody; it has

neither first, second, nor third person; it has every criterion of

being a tradition; it has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon

himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other

occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lord spake unto Moses,

saying."

    Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the Creation, I am at

a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such

subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated
among The Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science,
and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the
silence and caution that Moses observes in not authenticating the
account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor
believed it The case is, that every nation of people has been
world-makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the
trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an
Israelite, he might not choose to contradict the tradition. The account,
however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said of many other
parts of the Bible.

    Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries,
the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with
which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that
we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history
of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and,
for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

    We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what

deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the

miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the

Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we

find a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the

power and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher

rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well

before that time as since.

    The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most

probably a collection (because they discover a knowledge of life which

his situation excluded him from knowing), are an instructive table

of ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the

Spaniards, and not more wise and economical than those of the American
Franklin.

    All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the

name of the Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and

itinerant preachers, who mixed poetry,* anecdote, and devotion

together- and those works still retain the air and style of poetry,

though in translation.

    *As there are many readers who do not see that a composition is

poetry unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add

this note.

    Poetry consists principally in two things- imagery and

composition. The composition of poetry differs from that of prose in

the manner of mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long

syllable out of a line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of

it, or put a long syllable where a short one should be, and that line

will lose its poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line

like that of misplacing a note in a song. The imagery in these books,

called the Prophets, appertains altogether to poetry. It is

fictitious, and oft en extravagant, and not admissible in any other

kind of writing than poetry. To show that these writings are composed

in poetical numbers, I will take ten syllables, as they stand in the

book, and make a line of the same number of syllables, (heroic

measure) that shall rhyme with the last word. It will then be seen

that the composition of these books is poetical measure. The instance

I shall produce is from Isaiah:

          "Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth!"

          'Tis God himself that calls attention forth.

    Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to

which I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the

figure, and showing the intention the poet:

          "O! that mine head were waters and mine eyes"

          Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;

          Then would I give the mighty flood release,

          And weep a deluge for the human race.

    There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word

that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that

describes what we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet,

to which latter times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word

for poet, and the word prophesying meant the art of making poetry.

It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any

instrument of music.

    We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns- of

prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with

every other instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to

speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the

expression would have no meaning or would appear ridiculous, and to

some people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning
of the word.

    We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he

prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he

prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets

were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert,
and this was called prophesying.

    The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel is,

that Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming
down with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe and a harp, and that they
prophesied, and that he prophesied with them. But it appears

afterward, that Saul prophesied badly; that is, he performed his

part badly; for it is said, that an "evil spirit from God"* came

upon Saul, and he prophesied.

    *As those men who call themselves divines and commentators, are

very fond of puzzling one another, I leave them to contest the
meaning of the first part of the phrase, that of an evil spirit from God.
I keep to my text- I keep to the meaning of the word prophesy.

  Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible than

this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of

the word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place,

this alone would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and

apply the word prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied,

if we give to it the sense which latter times have affixed to it.

The manner in which it is here used strips it of all religious

meaning, and shows that a man might then be a prophet, or he might

prophesy, as he may now be a poet or a musician, without any regard
to the morality or immorality of his character. The word was originally
a term of science, promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and
not restricted to any subject upon which poetry and music might be

exercised.

    Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they

predicted anything, but because they composed the poem or song that

bears their name, in celebration of an act already done. David is

ranked among the prophets, for he was a musician, and was also
reputed to be (though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the
Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not called prophets; it
does not appear from any accounts we have that they could either
sing, play music, or make poetry.

    We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might

as well tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be

degrees in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there

are degrees in poetry, and therefore the phrase is reconcilable to the

case, when we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets.

    It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any

observations upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. The

axe goes at once to the root, by showing that the original meaning

of the word has been mistaken and consequently all the inferences that
have been drawn from those books, the devotional respect that has been
paid to them, and the labored commentaries that have been written upon
them, under that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about. In
many things, however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a better
fate than that of being bound up, as they now are with the trash that
accompanies them, under the abused name of the word of God.

    If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we

must necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but

of the utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or

accident whatever, in that which we would honor with the name of the

word of God; and therefore the word of God cannot exist in any written
or human language.

    The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words

is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation

necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the

mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of

willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human

language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of

the word of God. The word of God exists in something else.

   Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and

expression all the books that are now extant in the world, I would not

take it for my rule of faith, as being the word of God, because the

possibility would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But

when I see throughout the greater part of this book scarcely

anything but a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the

most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by

calling it by his name.

    Thus much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New

Testament. The New Testament! that is, the new will, as if there could

be two wills of the Creator.

    Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to

establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system
himself, or procured it to be written in his life-time. But there is no
publication extant authenticated with his name. All the books

called the New Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew
by birth and by profession; and he was the son of God in like manner
that every other person is- for the Creator is the Father of All.

    The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not

give a history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached

anecdotes of him. It appears from these books that the whole time of

his being a preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was

only during this short time that these men became acquainted with him.
They make mention of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say,
among the Jewish doctors, asking and answering them questions. As this
was several years before their acquaintance with him began, it is most
probable they had this anecdote from his parents. From this time there
is no account of him for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he
employed himself during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was
working at his father's trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not
appear that he had any school education, and the probability is, that he
could not write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their
not being able to pay for a bed when he was born.

    It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are

the most universally recorded, were of very obscure parentage. Moses

was a foundling; Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was

a mule driver. The first and last of these men were founders of

different systems of religion; but Jesus Christ founded no new system.

He called men to the practice of moral virtues and the belief of one

God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy.

    The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not

much known at that time; and it shows also, that the meetings he

then held with his followers were in secret; and that he had given

over or suspended preaching publicly. Judas could not otherwise betray
him than by giving information where he was, and pointing him out to
the officers that went to arrest him; and the reason for employing and
paying Judas to do this could arise only from the cause already mentioned,
that of his not being much known and living concealed.

    The idea of his concealment not only agrees very ill with his

reputed divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity;

and his being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on

the information of one of his followers, shows that he did not

intend to be apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to

be crucified.

    The Christian Mythologists tell us, that Christ died for the

sins of the world, and that he came on purpose to die. Would it not

then have been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small-pox,

of old age, or of anything else?

    The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam,

in case he eat of the apple, was not, that thou shall surely be

crucified, but thou shalt surely die- the sentence of death, and not

the manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular

manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer,
and consequently, even upon their own tactics, it could make no part of
the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever
would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.

    The sentence of death, which they tell us was thus passed upon

Adam must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live,

or have meant what these Mythologists call damnation; and,

consequently, the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must,

according to their system, apply as a prevention to one or other of

these two things happening to Adam and to us.

    That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die;

and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the

crucifixion than before; and with respect to the second explanation

(including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute

for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind), it is

impertinently representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking

the sentence, by a pun or a quibble upon the word death. That

manufacturer of quibbles, St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear

his name, has helped this quibble on by making another quibble upon

the word Adam. He makes there to be two Adams; the one who sins in

fact, and suffers by proxy; the other who sins by proxy, and suffers

in fact. A religion thus interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun

has a tendency to instruct its professors in the practice of these

arts. They acquire the habit without being aware of the cause.

    If Jesus Christ was the being which those Mythologists tell us

he was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word

they sometimes use instead of to die, the only real suffering he could

have endured, would have been to live. His existence here was a

state of exilement or transportation from Heaven, and the way back

to his original country was to die. In fine, everything in this

strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the

reverse of truth, and I become so tired of examining into its

inconsistencies and absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of

it, in order to proceed to something better.

    How much or what parts of the books called the New Testament,
were written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we
can know nothing of; neither are we certain in what language they were

originally written. The matters they now contain may be classed

under two beads- anecdote and epistolary correspondence.

    The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

are altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken

place. They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did

and said to him; and in several instances they relate the same event

differently. Revelation is necessarily out of the question with

respect to those books; not only because of the disagreement of the

writers, but because revelation cannot be applied to the relating of

facts by the person who saw them done, nor to the relating or

recording of any discourse or conversation by those who beard it.

The book called the Acts of the Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs

also to the anecdotal part.

    All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of

enigmas called the Revelations, are a collection of letters under

the name of epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a

common practice in the world, that the probability is at least

equal, whether they are genuine or forged. One thing, however,
is much less equivocal, which is, that out of the matters contained
in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories,
the Church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to
the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a
religion of pomp and revenue, in pretended imitation of a person
whose life was humility and poverty.

    The invention of purgatory, and of the releasing of souls

therefrom by prayers bought of the church with money; the selling of

pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without

bearing that name or carrying that appearance. But the case

nevertheless is, that those things derive their origin from the

paroxysm of the crucifixion and the theory deduced therefrom, which

was that one person could stand in the place of another, and could

perform meritorious service for him. The probability, therefore, is

that the whole theory or doctrine of what is called the redemption

(which is said to have been accomplished by the act of one person in

the room of another) was originally fabricated on purpose to bring

forward and build all those secondary and pecuniary redemptions

upon; and that the passages in the books, upon which the idea or

theory of redemption is built, have been manufactured and fabricated

for that purpose. Why are we to give this Church credit when she tells

us that those books are genuine in every part, any more than we give

her credit for everything else she has told us, or for the miracles

she says she had performed? That she could fabricate writings is

certain, because she could write; and the composition of the

writings in question is of that kind that anybody might do it; and

that she did fabricate them is not more inconsistent with

probability than that she could tell us, as she has done, that she

could and did work miracles.

    Since, then no external evidence can, at this long distance of

time, be produced to prove whether the Church fabricated the
doctrines called redemption or not (for such evidence, whether
for or against, would be subject to the same suspicion of being
fabricated), the case can only be referred to the internal evidence
which the thing carries within itself; and this affords a very strong
presumption of its being a fabrication. For the internal evidence is
that the theory or doctrine of redemption bas for its base an idea
of pecuniary Justice, and not that of moral Justice.

    If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to

put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and

pay it for me; but if I have committed a crime, every circumstance

of the case is changed; moral Justice cannot take the innocent for the

guilty, even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose Justice to

do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the

thing itself; it is then no longer Justice, it is indiscriminate

revenge.

    This single reflection will show, that the doctrine of

redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that

of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea

corresponds again with the system of second redemption, obtained

through the means of money given to the Church for pardons, the

probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the

other of those theories; and that, in truth there is no such thing

as redemption- that it is fabulous, and that man stands in the same

relative condition with his Maker as he ever did stand since man

existed, and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.

    Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and

morally than by any other system; it is by his being taught to

contemplate himself as an outlaw, as an outcast, as a beggar, as a

mumper, as one thrown, as it were, on a dunghill at an immense

distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by

creeping and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either

a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion,
or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter

case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it; his

prayers are reproaches; his humility is ingratitude; he calls

himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the

blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities; he despises the

choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having
endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against
which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as
if man could give reason to himself.

    Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility and this

contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest

presumptions; he finds fault with everything; his selfishness is never

satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself

to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the

universe; he prays dictatorially; when it is sunshine, he prays for

rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine; he follows the

same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of

all his prayers but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind,

and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say: Thou

knowest not so well as I.

    But some, perhaps, will say: Are we to have no word of God- no

revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a word of God; there is a

revelation.

    THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD and it is in this

word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God

speaketh universally to man.

    Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable

of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal

information. The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they

say, the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth to the

other, is consistent only with the ignorance of those who knew nothing

of the extent of the world, and who believed, as those

world-saviours believed, and continued to believe for several

centuries (and that in contradiction to the discoveries of

philosophers and the experience of navigators), that the earth was

flat like a trencher, and that man might walk to the end of it.

    But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations?
He could speak but one language which was Hebrew, and there are in
the world several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak
the same language, or understand each other; and as to translations,
every man who knows anything of languages knows that it is impossible
to translate from one language to another, not only without losing a
great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and
besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time Christ
lived.

    It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any

end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be

accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and

infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in

accomplishing his ends, from a natural inability of the power to the

purpose, and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power

properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail

as man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end; but

human language, more especially as there is not an universal language,
is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and
uniform information, and therefore it is not the means that God useth
in manifesting himself universally to man.

    It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a

word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language,

independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and

various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every

man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it

cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does

not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or

not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It

preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God

reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

    Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity
of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate 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. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the
book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the
Scripture called the Creation.

    The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a

first cause, the cause of all things. And incomprehensible and

difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he

arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of

disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that

space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It

is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration

of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time

when there shall be no time.

    In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in

itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself Every man

is an evidence to himself that he did not make himself; neither

could his father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his

race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it

is the conviction arising from this evidence that carries us on, as it

were, by necessity to the belief of a first cause eternally

existing, of a nature totally different to any material existence we

know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first

cause man calls God.

    It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.

Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding

anything; and, in this case, it would be just as consistent to read

even the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How, then, is

it that those people pretend to reject reason?

    Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible that convey

to us any idea of God, are some chapters in Job and the 19th Psalm;

I recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions, for

they treat of the Deity through his works. They take the book of

Creation as the word of God, they refer to no other book, and all

the inferences they make are drawn from that volume.

    I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English

verse by Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this

I have not the opportunity of seeing it.

         "The spacious firmament on high,

          With all the blue ethereal sky,

          And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

          Their great original proclaim.

          The unwearied sun, from day to day,

          Does his Creator's power display;

          And publishes to every land

          The work of an Almighty hand.

         "Soon as the evening shades prevail,

          The moon takes up the wondrous tale,

          And nightly to the list'ning earth

          Repeats the story of her birth;

          While all the stars that round her burn,

          And all the planets, in their turn,

          Confirm the tidings as they roll,

          And spread the truth from pole to pole.

         "What though in solemn silence all

          Move round this dark terrestrial ball?

          What though no real voice, or sound,

          Amidst their radiant orbs be found?

          In reason's ear they all rejoice

          And utter forth a glorious voice,

          Forever singing, as they shine,

          THE HAND THAT MADE US IS DIVINE."

    What more does man want to know than that the hand or power
that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this

with the force it is impossible to repel, if he permits his reason

to act, and his rule of moral life will follow of course.

    The allusions in Job have, all of them, the same tendency with

this Psalm; that of deducing or proving a truth that would be

otherwise unknown, from truths already known.

    I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them

correctly; but there is one occurs to me that is applicable to the

subject I am speaking upon. "Canst thou by searching find out God?

Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?"

    I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I

keep no Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of

distinct answers.

    First,- Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes because, in the

first place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence;

and by searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other

thing could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist;

therefore it is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from

this search, that there is a power superior to all those things, and

that power is God.

    Secondly,- Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No;

not only because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the

structure of the Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible, but

because even this manifestation, great as it is, is probably but a

small display of that immensity of power and wisdom by which

millions of other worlds, to me invisible by their distance, were

created and continue to exist.

    It is evident that both these questions were put to the reason

of the person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed;
and it is only by admitting the first question to be answered

affirmatively, that the second could follow. It would have been

unnecessary and even absurd, to have put a second question, more

difficult than the first, if the first question had been answered

negatively. The two questions have different objects; the first refers

to the existence of God, the second to his attributes; reason can

discover the one, but it falls infinitely short in discovering the

whole of the other.

    I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to

the men called apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is. Those

writings are chiefly controversial; and the subjects they dwell

upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the

gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not impossible they

were written, than to any man breathing the open air of the

Creation. The only passage that occurs to me, that has any reference

to the works of God, by which only his power and wisdom can be

known, is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ as a remedy

against distrustful care. "Behold the lilies of the field, they toil

not, neither do they spin." This, however, is far inferior to the

allusions in Job and in the 19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and

the modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the modesty of the man.

    As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species

of Atheism- a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to

believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up

chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism

as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an

opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her

opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this

means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the

whole orbit of reason into shade.

    The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything

upside down, and representing it in reverse, and among the revolutions
it has thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in theology.

    That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole

circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the

study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his

works, and is the true theology.

    As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the

study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is
not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the

works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least

of the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that

it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a

beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag

of superstition.

    The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits

to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in

the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the

original system of theology. The internal evidence of those orations

proves to a demonstration that the study and contemplation of the

works of creation, and of the power and wisdom of God, revealed and

manifested in those works, made a great part in the religious devotion

of the times in which they were written; and it was this devotional

study and contemplation that led to the discovery of the principles

upon which what are now called sciences are established; and it is

to the discovery of these principles that almost all the arts that

contribute to the convenience of human life owe their existence. Every

principal art has some science for its parent, though the person who

mechanically performs the work does not always, and but very seldom,
perceive the connection.

    It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human

invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every

science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and

unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and

governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

    For example: Every person who looks at an almanac sees an

account when an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it

never fails to take place according to the account there given. This

shows that man is acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly

bodies move. But it would be something worse than ignorance, were

any Church on earth to say that those laws are a human invention. It

would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the

scientific principles by the aid of which man is enabled to

calculate and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are a human

invention. Man cannot invent a thing that is eternal and immutable;

and the scientific principles he employs for this purpose must be, and

are of necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the

heavenly bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to

ascertain the time when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take

place.

    The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the

foreknowledge of an eclipse, or of anything else relating to the

motion of the heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of

science which is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle,

which, when applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called

astronomy; when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean,

it is called navigation; when applied to the construction of figures

drawn by rule and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to

the construction of plans or edifices, it is called architecture; when

applied to the measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth,

it is called land surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science; it is

an eternal truth; it contains the mathematical demonstration of

which man speaks, and the extent of its uses is unknown.

    It may be said that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore

a triangle is a human invention.

    But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the

principle; it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the

mind, of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. The

triangle does not make the principle, any more than a candle taken

into a room that was dark makes the chairs and tables that before were
invisible. All the properties of a triangle exist independently of the figure,
and existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by

man. Man had no more to do in the formation of these properties or

principles, than he had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly

bodies move; and therefore the one must have the same Divine origin
as the other.

    In the same manner, as it may be said, that man can make a

triangle, so also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical

instrument called a lever; but the principle by which the lever acts

is a thing distinct from the instrument, and would exist if the

instrument did not; it attaches itself to the instrument after it is

made; the instrument, therefore, cannot act otherwise than it does

act; neither can all the efforts of human invention make it act

otherwise- that which, in all such cases, man calls the effect is no

other than the principle itself rendered perceptible to the senses.

    Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain
a knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to

things on earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely

distant from him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask,

could he gain that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology?

    It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge

to man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every

principle upon which every part of mathematical science is founded.

The offspring of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no

other than the principles of science applied practically. The man

who proportions the several parts of a mill, uses the same

scientific principles as if he had the power of constructing a

universe; but as he cannot give to matter that invisible agency by

which all the component parts of the immense machine of the universe

have influence upon each other, and act in motional unison together,

without any apparent contact, and to which man has given the name
of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he supplies the place of

that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and cogs. All the parts

of man's microcosm must visibly touch; but could he gain a knowledge

of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in practice, we might

then say that another canonical book of the Word of God had been

discovered.

    If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he

alter the properties of the triangle, for a lever (taking that sort of

lever which is called a steelyard, for the sake of explanation) forms,

when in motion, a triangle. The line it descends from (one point of

that line being in the fulcrum), the line it descends to, and the cord

of the arc which the end of the lever describes in the air, are the

three sides of a triangle. The other arm of the lever describes also a

triangle; and the corresponding sides of those two triangles,

calculated scientifically, or measured geometrically, and also the

sines, tangents, and secants generated from the angles, and

geometrically measured, have the same proportions to each other, as

the different weights have that will balance each other on the

lever, leaving the weight of the lever out of the case.

    It may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he

can put wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill.

Still the case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did not

make the principle that gives the wheels those powers. That

principle is as unalterable as in the former case, or rather it is the

same principle under a different appearance to the eye.

    The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each

other, is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two

wheels were joined together and made into that kind of lever I have

described, suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join; for

the two wheels, scientifically considered, are no other than the two

circles generated by the motion of the compound lever.

    It is from the study of the true theology that all out knowledge

of science is derived, and it is from that knowledge that all the arts

have originated.

    The Almighty Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science

in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to

imitation. It is as if He had said to the inhabitants of this globe,

that we call ours, "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and

I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and

the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN
FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER."

    Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his

eye is endowed with the power of beholding to an incomprehensible

distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or

of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man?

What has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with

the star he calls the North Star, with the moving orbs he has named

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow

from their being visible? A less power of vision would have been

sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were given

only to waste itself, as it were, on an immense desert of space

glittering with shows.

    It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as

the book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their

being visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of

vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light he sees

an additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in

vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing.

    As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in

theology, so also has it made a revolution in the state of learning.

That which is now called learning, was not learning originally.

Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in

the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which

language gives names.

    The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not

consist in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman's speaking

Latin, or a Frenchman's speaking French, or an Englishman's speaking

English. From what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that
they knew or studied any language but their own, and this was one
cause of their becoming so learned: it afforded them more time to
apply themselves to better studies. The schools of the Greeks were
schools of science and philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in
the knowledge of the things that science and philosophy teach, that

learning consists.

    Almost all the scientific learning that now exists came to us from

the Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It, therefore,
became necessary for the people of other nations who spoke a different
language that some among them should learn the Greek language, in order
that the learning the Greeks had, might be made known in those nations,
by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy into the mother
tongue of each nation.

    The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same

manner for the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a

linguist; and the language thus obtained, was no other than the means,
as it were the tools, employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It
made no part of the learning itself, and was so distinct

from it, as to make it exceedingly probable that the persons who had

studied Greek sufficiently to translate those works, such, for

instance, as Euclid's Elements, did not understand any of the learning

the works contained.

    As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages,
all the useful books being already translated, the languages are become
useless, and the time expended in teaching and learning them is wasted.
So far as the study of languages may contribute to the progress and
communication of knowledge, (for it has nothing to do with the creation
of knowledge), it is only in the living languages that new knowledge
is to be found; and certain it is that, in general,

a youth will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a

dead language in seven, and it is but seldom that the teacher knows

much of it himself. The difficulty of learning the dead languages does

not arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages

themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely

lost. It would be the same thing with any other language when it

becomes dead. The best Greek linguist that now exists does not

understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian

milkmaid; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or

milkmaid of the Romans; it would therefore be advantageous to the

state of learning to abolish the study of the dead languages, and to

make learning consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge.

    The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the

dead languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is

not capable of exerting any other mental faculty than that of

memory; but that is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a
natural disposition to scientific knowledge, and to the things

connected with it. The first and favorite amusement of a child,
even before it begins to play, is that of imitating the works of
man. It builds houses with cards or sticks; it navigates the little
ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat, or dams the stream
of a gutter and contrives something which it calls a mill; and it
interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that resembles
affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed
by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is
lost in the linguist.

    But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the

dead languages, could not be the cause, at first, of cutting down

learning to the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause,

therefore, must be sought for elsewhere. In all researches of this

kind, the best evidence that can be produced, is the internal evidence

the thing carries with itself, and the evidence of circumstances

that unite with it; both of which, in this case, are not difficult

to be discovered.

    Putting then aside, as a matter of distinct consideration, the

outrage offered to the moral justice of God by supposing him to make

the innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and

low contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a

man, in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his

supposed sentence upon Adam- putting, I say, those things aside as

matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called

the Christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account

of the creation- the strange story of Eve- the snake and the apple-

the ambiguous idea of a man-god- the corporeal idea of the death of a

god- the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the Christian

system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all

irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason that God hath

given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and

wisdom of God, by the aid of the sciences and by studying the

structure of the universe that God has made.

    The setters-up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian

system of faith could not but foresee that the continually progressive

knowledge that man would gain, by the aid of science, of the power
and wisdom of God, manifested in the structure of the universe and in

all the works of Creation, would militate against, and call into

question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it

became necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size

less dangerous to their project, and this they effected by restricting

the idea of learning to the dead study of dead languages.

    They not only rejected the study of science out of the Christian

schools, but they persecuted it, and it is only within about the

last two centuries that the study has been revived. So late as 1610,

Galileo, a Florentine, discovered and introduced the use of

telescopes, and by applying them to observe the motions and

appearances of the heavenly bodies, afforded additional means for

ascertaining the true structure of the universe. Instead of being

esteemed for those discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them,

or the opinions resulting from them, as a damnable heresy. And,

prior to that time, Vigilius was condemned to be burned for

asserting the antipodes, or in other words that the earth was a globe,

and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the truth of

this is now too well known even to be told.

    If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it

would make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove
them. There was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a

trencher, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that it

was round like a globe; neither was there any moral ill in believing

that the Creator made no other world than this, any more than there

was moral virtue in believing that he made millions, and that the

infinity of space is filled with worlds. But when a system of religion

is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true,

and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable

therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground. It is then

that errors not morally bad become fraught with the same mischiefs

as if they were. It is then that the truth, though otherwise

indifferent itself, becomes an essential by becoming the criterion

that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by

contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this

view of the case, it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible

evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of

creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this, the

supporters or partisans of the Christian system, as if dreading the

result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but

persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived three or
four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is
most probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had
Franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would
have been at the hazard of expiring for it in the flames.

    Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals;

but, however unwilling the partisans of the Christian system may be to

believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true that the age

of ignorance commenced with the Christian system. There was more

knowledge in the world before that period than for many centuries

afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as

already said was only another species of mythology, and the

mythology to which it succeeded was a corruption of an ancient

system of theism.*

    *It is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen

mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it

carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which

it ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of

modern invention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that
which is called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species
of theism, that it admitted the belief of only one God. Saturn is
supposed to have abdicated the government in favor of his three
sons and one daughter, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after
this, thousands of other Gods and demi-gods were imaginarily
created, and the calendar of gods increased as fast as the
calendar of saints and the calendars of courts have increased since.

    All the corruptions that have taken place in theology and in

religion, have been produced by admitting of what man calls revealed

religion. The Mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than

the Christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who

were supposed to receive and deliver the word of God verbally, on

almost all occasions.

    Since, then, all corruptions, down from Moloch to modern

predestinarianism, and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the

Christian sacrifice of the Creator, have been produced by admitting of

what is called revealed religion, the most effectual means to

prevent all such evils and impositions is not to admit of any other

revelation than that which is manifested in the book of creation,

and to contemplate the creation as the only true and real word of

God that ever did or ever will exist; and that everything else, called

the word of God, is fable and imposition.

    It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other

cause, that we have now to look through a vast chasm of many
hundred years to the respectable characters we call the ancients.
Had the progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with that
stock that before existed, that chasm would have been filled up
with characters rising superior in knowledge to each other; and
those ancients we now so much admire would have appeared
respectably in the background of the scene. But the Christian
system laid all waste; and if we take our stand about the
beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that
long chasm to the times of the ancients, as over a vast sandy
desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the

vision to the fertile hills beyond.

    It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that

anything should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to

be irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the

universe that God has made. But the fact is too well established to be

denied. The event that served more than any other to break the first

link in this long chain of despotic ignorance is that known by the

name of the Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does

not appear to have made any part of the intention of Luther, or of

those who are called reformers, the sciences began to revive, and

liberality, their natural associate, began to appear. This was the

only public good the Reformation did; for with respect to religious

good, it might as well not have taken place. The mythology still

continued the same, and a multiplicity of National Popes grew out of

the downfall of the Pope of Christendom.

    Having thus shown from the internal evidence of things the cause

that produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for

substituting the study of the dead languages in the place of the

sciences, I proceed, in addition to several observations already

made in the former part of this work, to compare, or rather to

confront, the evidence that the structure of the universe affords with

the Christian system of religion; but, as I cannot begin this part

better than by referring to the ideas that occurred to me at an

early part of life, and which I doubt not have occurred in some degree

to almost every person at one time or other, I shall state what

those ideas were, and add thereto such other matter as shall arise out

of the subject, giving to the whole, by way of preface, a short

introduction.

    My father being of the Quaker profession, it was my good fortune

to have an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock

of useful learning. Though I went to the grammar school,* I did not

learn Latin, not only because I had no inclination to learn languages,

but because of the objection the Quakers have against the books in

which the language is taught. But this did not prevent me from being

acquainted with the subject of all the Latin books used in the school.

    *The same school, Thetford In Norfolk that the present

Counsellor Mingay went to and under the same master.

    The natural bent of my mind was to science. I had some turn, and I

believe some talent, for poetry; but this I rather repressed than

encouraged, as leading too much into the field of imagination. As soon

as I was able I purchased a pair of globes, and attended the

philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became afterward

acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Society,

then living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer.

    I had no disposition for what is called politics. It presented

to my mind no other idea than as contained in the word Jockeyship.

When therefore I turned my thoughts toward matter of government,
I had to form a system for myself that accorded with the moral and

philosophic principles in which I have been educated. I saw, or at

least I thought I saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the

affairs of America, and it appeared to me that unless the Americans

changed the plan they were pursuing with respect to the government

of England, and declared themselves independent, they would not only

involve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out

the prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their

means. It was from these motives that I published the work known by

the name of Common Sense, which was the first work I ever did publish;
and so far as I can judge of myself, I believe I should never have been
known in the world as an author, on any subject whatever, had it not
been for the affairs of America. I wrote Common Sense the

latter end of the year 1775, and published it the first of January,

1776. Independence was declared the fourth of July following.

    Any person who has made observations on the state and progress

of the human mind, by observing his own, cannot but have observed
that there are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts - those

that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking,

and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have always

made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking

care to examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth

entertaining, and it is from them I have acquired almost all the

knowledge that I have. As to the learning that any person gains from

school education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him

in a way of beginning learning for himself afterward. Every person

of learning is finally his own teacher, the reason of which is that

principles, being a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be

impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the

understanding and they are never so lasting as when they begin by

conception. Thus much for the introductory part.

    From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea and acting

upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian

system or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which

it was, but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age,

hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee

of the Church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the

death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the

garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly

recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had

heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act

like a passionate man, that killed his son when he could not revenge

himself in any other way, and as I was sure a man would be hanged
that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached

such sermons. This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had

anything in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious

reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do

such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of

doing it. I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I

moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in

it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.

    It seems as if parents of the Christian profession were ashamed to

tell their children anything about the principles of their religion.

They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the

goodness of what they call Providence, for the Christian mythology has

five deities- there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy

Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the Christian

story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people

to do it (for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be told

by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make

mankind happier and better is making the story still worse- as if

mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him

that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the

incredibility of it.

    How different is this to the pure and simple profession of

Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists

in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in

his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral,

scientifical, and mechanical.

    The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true

Deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by

the Quakers; but they have contracted themselves too much, by

leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their

philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at the conceit, that if the

taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a

silent and drab-colored creation it would have been! Not a flower

would have blossomed its gayeties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.

    Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I

had made myself master of the use of the globes and of the orrery,*

and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and the eternal

divisibility of matter, and obtained at least a general knowledge of

what is called natural philosophy, I began to compare, or, as I have

before said, to confront the eternal evidence those things afford with

the Christian system of faith.

    *As this book may fall into the hands of persons who do not know

what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as the

name gives no idea of the uses of thing. The orrery has its name

from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of clock-work,

representing the universe in miniature, and in which the revolution of

the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon

round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their

relative distances from the sun, as the centre of the whole system,

their relative distances from each other, and their different

magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the

heavens.

    Though it is not a direct article of the Christian system, that

this world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet

it is so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account

of the Creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart

of that story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise,

that is, to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least

as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian system of

faith at once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind

like feathers in the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in

the same mind, and he who thinks that he believes both, has thought

but little of either.

  Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the

ancients, it’s only within the last three centuries that the extent

and dimensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained.

Several vessels, following the tract of the ocean, have sailed

entirely round the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come

round by the contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out

from. The circular dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a

man would measure the widest round of an apple or ball, is only

twenty-five thousand and twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine

miles and a half to an equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in

the space of about three years.*

    *Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour,

she would sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if

she could sail in a direct circle; but she is obliged to follow the

course of the ocean.

    A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be

great; but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is

suspended, like a bubble or balloon in the air, it is infinitely

less in proportion than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of

the world, or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is

therefore but small; and, as will be hereafter shown, is only one of a

system of worlds of which the universal creation is composed.

    It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of

space in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we

follow a progression of ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions

of a room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they

stop; but when our eye or our imagination darts into space, that is,

when it looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot

conceive any walls or boundaries it can have, and if for the sake of

resting our ideas, we suppose a boundary, the question immediately

renews itself, and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the
same manner, what is beyond the next boundary? and so on till the

fatigued imagination returns and says, There is no end. Certainly,

then, the Creator was not pent for room when he made this world no

larger than it is, and we have to seek the reason in something else.

    If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of

which the Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense

system of creation, we find every part of it- the earth, the waters,

and the air that surrounds it- filled and, as it were, crowded with

life, down from the largest animals that we know of to the smallest

insects the naked eye can behold, and from thence to others still

smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance of the

microscope. Every tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as

a habitation but as a world to some numerous race, till animal

existence becomes so exceedingly refined that the effluvia of a

blade of grass would be food for thousands.

    Since, then, no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to

be supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in

eternal waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger

than ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other.

    Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one

thought further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a

very good reason, for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of

making one immense world extending over an immense quantity of

space, has preferred dividing that quantity of matter into several

distinct and separate worlds, which we call planets, of which our

earth is one. But before I explain my ideas upon this subject, it is

necessary (not for the sake of those who already know, but for those

who do not) to show what the system of the universe is.

    That part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning

the system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol,

or in English language, the Sun, is the centre) consists, besides

the Sun, of six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the

secondary called the satellites or moons, of which our earth has one

that attends her in her annual revolution around the Sun, in like

manner as the other satellites or moons attend the planets or worlds

to which they severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of

the telescope.

    The Sun is the centre, round which those six worlds or planets

revolve at different distances therefrom, and in circles concentrate

to each other. Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same track

round the Sun, and continues, at the same time, turning round itself

in nearly an upright position, as a top turns round itself when it

is spinning on the ground, and leans a little sideways.

    It is this leaning of the earth (23.5 degrees) that occasions

summer and winter, and the different length of days and nights.
If the earth turned round itself in a position perpendicular to the
plane or level of the circle it moves in around the Sun, as a top turns

round when it stands erect on the ground, the days and nights would
be always of the same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours
night, and the seasons would be uniformly the same throughout the year.

    Every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round

itself, it makes what we call day and night; and every time it goes

entirely round the Sun it makes what we call a year; consequently

our world turns three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in

going once round the Sun.*

    *Those who supposed that the sun went round the earth every 24

hours made the same mistake in idea that a cook would do in fact,
that should make the fire go round the meat, instead of the meat
turning round itself toward the fire.

    The names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which

are still called by the same names, are Mercury, Venus, this world

that we call ours, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They appear larger to

the eye than the stars, being many million miles nearer to our earth

than any of the stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called

the evening star, and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to

set after or rise before the Sun, which in either case is never more

than three hours.

    The Sun, as before said, being the centre, the planet or world

nearest the Sun is Mercury; his distance from the Sun is thirty-four

million miles, and he moves round in a circle always at that

distance from the Sun, as a top may be supposed to spin round in the

track in which a horse goes in a mill. The second world is Venus;

she is fifty-seven million miles distant from the Sun, and

consequently moves round in a circle much greater than that of

Mercury. The third world is this that we inhabit, and which is

eighty-eight million miles distant from the Sun, and consequently

moves round in a circle greater than that of Venus. The fourth world

is Mars; he is distant from the Sun one hundred and thirty-four

million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than

that of our earth. The fifth is Jupiter; he is distant from the Sun

five hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and consequently moves

round in a circle greater than that of Mars. The sixth world is

Saturn; he is distant from the Sun seven hundred and sixty-three

million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle that surrounds

the circles, or orbits, of all the other worlds or planets.

    The space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space,

that our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their

revolutions in round the Sun, is of the extent in a straight line of

the whole diameter of the orbit or circle, in which Saturn moves round

the Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen

hundred and twenty-six million miles and its circular extent is nearly

five thousand million, and its globular contents is almost three

thousand five hundred million times three thousand five hundred

million square miles.*

    *If it should be asked, how can man know these things? I have

one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate an

eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the planet

Venus, in making her revolutions around the sun will come in a

straight line between our earth and the sun, and will appear to us

about the size of a large pea passing across the face of the sun. This

happens but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about

eight years from each other, and has happened twice in our time,

both of which were foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when
they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to any other
portion of time. As, therefore, man could not be able to do these

things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in

which the revolutions of the several planets or worlds are

performed, the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of

Venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge exists; and as to a

few thousand, or even a few million miles, more or less, it makes

scarcely any sensible difference in such immense distances.

    But this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. Beyond

this, at a vast distance into space, far beyond all power of

calculation, are the stars called the fixed stars. They are called

fixed, because they have no revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or

planets have that I have been describing. Those fixed stars continue

always at the same distance from each other, and always in the same

place, as the Sun does in the centre of our system. The probability,

therefore, is, that each of these fixed stars is also a Sun, round

which another system of worlds or planets, though too remote for
us to discover, performs its revolutions, as our system of worlds does
round our central Sun.

    By this easy progression of ideas, the immensity of space will

appear to us to be filled with systems of worlds, and that no part

of space lies at waste, any more than any part of the globe of earth

and water is left unoccupied.

    Having thus endeavored to convey, in a familiar and easy manner,

some idea of the structure of the universe, I return to explain what

I before alluded to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in

consequence of the Creator having made a plurality of worlds, such

as our system is, consisting of a central Sun and six worlds,

besides satellites, in preference to that of creating one world only

of a vast extent.

    It is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge

of science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and

from thence to our understanding) which those several planets or

worlds of which our system is composed make in their circuit round
the Sun.

    Had, then, the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain

been blended into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would
have been, that either no revolutionary motion would have existed,
or not a sufficiency of it to give to us the idea and the knowledge of
science we now have; and it is from the sciences that all the
mechanical arts that contribute so much to our earthly felicity and
comfort are derived.

    As, therefore, the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it

be believed that he organized the structure of the universe in the

most advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see,
and from experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure
of the universe formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had
the opportunity of enjoying, if the structure, so far as relates to our

system, had been a solitary globe- we can discover at least one reason

why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth

the devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration.

    But it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the

benefits arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. The

inhabitants of each of the worlds of which our system is composed

enjoy the same opportunities of knowledge as we do. They behold the

revolutionary motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. All the

planets revolve in sight of each other, and, therefore, the same

universal school of science presents itself to all.

    Neither does the knowledge stop here. The system of worlds next to

us exhibits, in its revolutions, the same principles and school of

science to the inhabitants of their system, as our system does to

us, and in like manner throughout the immensity of space.

    Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his

wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we

contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary

idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of

space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so

happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion,

instruction to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance, but
we forget to consider how much of that abundance is owing to the

scientific knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.

    But, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of

the Christian system of faith, that forms itself upon the idea of only

one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than

twenty-five thousand miles? An extent which a man walking at the

rate of three miles an hour, for twelve hours in the day, could he

keep on in a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less

than two years. Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and

the almighty power of the Creator?

    From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit

that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his

protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in

our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an

apple? And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in

the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a

redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the

Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to
do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of

deaths, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.

  It has been by rejecting the evidence that the word or works of

God in the creation afford to our senses, and the action of our reason

upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith

and of religion have been fabricated and set up. There may be many

systems of religion that, so far from being morally bad, are in many

respects morally good; but there can be but ONE that is true; and that

one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent

with the ever-existing word of God that we behold in his works. But

such is the strange construction of the Christian system of faith that

every evidence the Heavens afford to man either directly contradicts

it or renders it absurd.

    It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in

encouraging myself to believe it, that there have been men in the

world who persuade themselves that what is called a pious fraud might,
at least under particular circumstances, be productive of some good.
But the fraud being once established, could not afterward be

explained, for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it

begets a calamitous necessity of going on.

    The persons who first preached the Christian system of faith,

and in some measure combined it with the morality preached by Jesus

Christ, might persuade themselves that it was better than the

heathen mythology that then prevailed. From the first preachers the

fraud went on to the second, and to the third, till the idea of its

being a pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being true; and

that belief became again encouraged by the interests of those who
made a livelihood by preaching it.

    But though such a belief might by such means be rendered almost

general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the

continual persecution carried on by the Church, for several hundred

years, against the sciences and against the professors of science,

if the Church had not some record or tradition that it was

originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it

could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure of the

universe afforded.

    Having thus shown the irreconcilable inconsistencies between the

real word of God existing in the universe, and that which is called

the Word of God, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might

make, I proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been

employed in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon

mankind.

    Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy. The two

first are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought

always to be suspected.

    With respect to mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense,

a mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery; the whole vegetable

world is a mystery. We cannot account how it is that an acorn, when

put into the ground, is made to develop itself, and become an oak.

We know not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies

itself, and returns to us such an abundant interest for so small a

capital.

    The fact, however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not

a mystery, because we see it, and we know also the means we are to

use, which is no other than putting the seed into the ground. We know,
therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the
operation that we do not know, and which, if we did, we could

not perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. We

are, therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret,

and left to do it for ourselves.

    But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the

word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity
can be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral
truth, and not a God of mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the

antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures

truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in

mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the

work of its antagonist, and never of itself.

    Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God and the practice of

moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God,

so far from having anything of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the

most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of

necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a

practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our

acting toward each other as he acts benignly toward all. We cannot

serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such

service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God,

is that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that

God has made. This cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the

society of the world and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion.

    The very nature and design of religion, if I may so express it,

prove even to demonstration that it must be free from everything of

mystery, and unencumbered with everything that is mysterious.

Religion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul

alike, and, therefore, must be on a level with the understanding and

comprehension of all. Man does not learn religion as he learns the

secrets and mysteries of a trade. He learns the theory of religion

by reflection. It arises out of the action of his own mind upon the

things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read,

and the practice joins itself thereto.

    When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of

religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation,

and not only above, but repugnant to human comprehension, they
were under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should

serve as a bar to all questions, inquiries and speculation. The word

mystery answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion,
which is in itself without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog
of mysteries.

    As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an

occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the

latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the

legerdemain.

    But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to

inquire what is to be understood by a miracle.

    In the same sense that everything may be said to be a mystery,

so also may it be said that everything is a miracle, and that no one

thing is a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though

larger, is not a greater miracle than a mite, nor a mountain a greater

miracle than an atom. To an almighty power, it is no more difficult to

make the one than the other, and no more difficult to make millions of

worlds than to make one. Everything, therefore, is a miracle, in one

sense, whilst in the other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle.

It is a miracle when compared to our power and to our  comprehension,
if not a miracle compared to the power that performs it; but as nothing
in this description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle,
it is necessary to carry the inquiry further.

    Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what

they call nature is supposed to act; and that miracle is something

contrary to the operation and effect of those laws; but unless we know

the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the

powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether anything that may

appear to us wonderful or miraculous be within, or be beyond, or be

contrary to, her natural power of acting.

    The ascension of a man several miles high in the air would have

everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were

not known that a species of air can be generated, several times

lighter than the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity

enough to prevent the balloon in which that light air is enclosed from

being compressed into as many times less bulk by the common air that
surrounds it. In like manner, extracting flames or sparks of fire from the
human body, as visible as from a steel struck with a flint, and

causing iron or steel to move without any visible agent, would also

give the idea of a miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity

and magnetism. So also would many other experiments in natural

philosophy, to those who are not acquainted with the subject. The

restoring persons to life who are to appearance dead, as is

practised upon drowned persons, would also be a miracle, if it were

not known that animation is capable of being suspended without being

extinct.

    Besides these, there are performances by sleight-of-hand, and by

persons acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which

when known are thought nothing of. And besides these, there are

mechanical and optical deceptions. There is now an exhibition in Paris

of ghosts or spectres, which, though it is not imposed upon the

spectators as a fact, has an astonishing appearance. As, therefore, we

know not the extent to which either nature or art can go, there is

no positive criterion to determine what a miracle is, and mankind,

in giving credit to appearances, under the idea of there being

miracles, are subject to be continually imposed upon.

    Since, then, appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things

not real have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can

be more inconsistent than to suppose that the Almighty would make

use of means such as are called miracles, that would subject the

person who performed them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and

the person who related them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine

intended to be supported thereby to be suspected as a fabulous

invention.

    Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain

belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been

given, that of miracle, however successful the imposition may have

been, is the most inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever

recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief,

(for a miracle, under any idea of the word, is a show), it implies a

lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And, in the

second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a

showman, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and
wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be
set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle,
but upon the credit of the reporter who says that he saw it; and,

therefore, the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of

being believed than if it were a lie.

    Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book,

a hand presented itself in the air, took up the pen, and wrote every

word that is herein written; would anybody believe me? Certainly

they would not. Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had
been a fact? Certainly they would not. Since, then, a real miracle,

were it to happen, would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood,

the inconsistency becomes the greater of supposing the Almighty

would make use of means that would not answer the purpose for
which they were intended, even if they were real.

    If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out

of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that

course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such miracle

by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind

very easily decided, which is, is it more probable that nature

should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We

have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have
good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the

same time; it is therefore, at least millions to one, that the

reporter of a miracle tells a lie.

    The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large

enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have

approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the

whale. In this, which may serve for all cases of miracles, the

matter would decide itself, as before stated, namely, is it more

that a man should have swallowed a whale or told a lie?

    But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone

with it in his belly to Nineveh, and, to convince the people that it

was true, had cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size

of a whale, would they not have believed him to be the devil,

instead of a prophet? Or, if the whale had carried Jonah to Ninevah,

and cast him up in the same public manner, would they not have

believed the whale to have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps?

    The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles,

related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with

Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain, and to

the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and

promising to him all the kingdoms of the World. How happened it that

he did not discover America, or is it only with kingdoms that his

sooty highness has any interest?

    I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to

believe that he told this whale of a miracle himself; neither is it

easy to account for what purpose it could have been fabricated, unless

it were to impose upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne's farthings

and collectors of relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of

miracles ridiculous, by outdoing miracles, as Don Quixote outdid

chivalry; or to embarrass the belief of miracles, by making it

doubtful by what power, whether of God or of the devil, anything

called a miracle was performed. It requires, however, a great deal

of faith in the devil to believe this miracle.

    In every point of view in which those things called miracles can

be placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable and

their existence unnecessary. They would not, as before observed,

answer any useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more

difficult to obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently

moral without any miracle. Moral principle speaks universally for

itself. Miracle could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by

a few; after this it requires a transfer of faith from God to man to

believe a miracle upon man's report. Instead, therefore, of

admitting the recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of

religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its

being fabulous. It is necessary to the full and upright character of

truth that it rejects the crutch, and it is consistent with the

character of fable to seek the aid that truth rejects. Thus much for

mystery and miracle.

    As mystery and miracle took charge of the past and the present,

prophecy took charge of the future and rounded the tenses of faith. It

was not sufficient to know what had been done, but what would be done.
The supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to come; and
if he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand years, to
strike within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of posterity
could make it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly

wrong, it was only to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh,

that God had repented himself and changed his mind. What a fool do

fabulous systems make of man!

    It has been shown, in a former part of this work, that the

original meaning of the words prophet and prophesying has been

changed, and that a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used,

is a creature of modern invention; and it is owing to this change in

the meaning of the words, that the flights and metaphors of the Jewish

poets, and phrases and expressions now rendered obscure by our not

being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at

the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made
to bend to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of

sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Everything unintelligible
was prophetical, and everything insignificant was typical. A blunder
would have served for a prophecy, and a dish-clout for a type.

    If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty

communicated some event that would take place in future, either

there were such men or there were not. If there were, it is consistent

to believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms

that could be understood, and not related in such a loose and

obscure manner as to be out of the comprehension of those that heard

it, and so equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that may happen

afterward. It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to

suppose that he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind, yet

all the things called prophecies in the book called the Bible come

under this description.

    But it is with prophecy as it is with miracle; it could not answer

the purpose even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be

told, could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it

had been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing

that he prophesied, or intended to prophesy, should happen, or

something like it, among the multitude of things that are daily

happening, nobody could again know whether he foreknew it, or

guessed at it, or whether it was accidental. A prophet, therefore,

is a character useless and unnecessary; and the safe side of the

case is to guard against being imposed upon by not giving credit to

such relations.

    Upon the whole, mystery, miracle, and prophecy are appendages
that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means
by which so many Lo, heres! and Lo, theres! have been spread about
the world, and religion been made into a trade. The success of one

imposter gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of

doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from

remorse.

    Having now extended the subject to a greater length than I first

intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from

the whole.

    First- That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in

print, or in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for

reasons already assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the

want of a universal language; the mutability of language; the errors

to which translations are subject: the possibility of totally

suppressing such a word; the probability of altering it, or of

fabricating the whole, and imposing it upon the world.

    Secondly- That the Creation we behold is the real and

ever-existing word of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It

proclaims his power, it demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his

goodness and beneficence.

    Thirdly- That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the

moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation

toward all his creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness

of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practice

the same toward each other; and, consequently, that everything of

persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of

cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.

    I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I

content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the

Power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and

manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears

more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter, than

that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence

began.

    It is certain that, in one point, all the nations of the earth and

all religions agree- all believe in a God; the things in which they

disagree, are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and, therefore,

if ever a universal religion should prevail, it will not be by

believing anything new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and

believing as man believed at first. Adam, if ever there were such a

man, was created a Deist; but in the meantime, let every man follow,

as he has a right to do, the religion and the worship he prefers.

                          END OF THE FIRST PART.

    Thus far I had written on the 28th of December, 1793. In the

evening I went to the Hotel Philadelphia (formerly White's Hotel),

Passage des Petis Peres, where I lodged when I came to Paris, in

consequence of being elected a member of the Convention, but left

the lodging about nine months, and taken lodgings in the Rue Fauxbourg
St. Denis, for the sake of being more retired than I could be in the middle
of the town.

    Meeting with a company of Americans at the Hotel Philadelphia, I

agreed to spend the evening with them; and, as my lodging was

distant about a mile and a half, I bespoke a bed at the hotel. The

company broke up about twelve o'clock, and I went directly to bed.

About four in the morning I was awakened by a rapping at my chamber
door; when I opened it, I saw a guard, and the master of the hotel with
them. The guard told me they came to put me under arrestation, and to
demand the key of my papers. I desired them to walk in, and I would
dress myself and go with them immediately.

  It happened that Achilles Audibert, of Calais, was then in the

hotel; and I desired to be conducted into his room. When we came

there, I told the guard that I had only lodged at the hotel for the

night; that I was printing a work, and that part of that work was at

the Maison Bretagne, Rue Jacob; and desired they would take me there
first, which they did.

    The printing-office at which the work was printing was near to the

Maison Bretagne, where Colonel Blackden and Joel Barlow, of the United
States of America, lodged; and I had desired Joel Barlow to compare the
proof-sheets with the copy as they came from the press. The remainder
of the manuscript, from page 32 to 76, was at my lodging. But besides
the necessity of my collecting all the parts of the work together that
the publication might not be interrupted by my imprisonment, or by any
event that might happen to me, it was highly proper that I should have
a fellow-citizen of America with me during the examination of my papers,
as I had letters of correspondence in my possession of the President
of Congress General Washington; the Minister of Foreign Affairs to
Congress Mr. Jefferson; and the late Benjamin Franklin; and it might be
necessary for me to make a proces-verbal to send to Congress.

    It happened that Joel Barlow had received only one proof-sheet

of the work, which he had compared with the copy and sent it back to

the printing-office.

    We then went, in company with Joel Barlow, to my lodging; and

the guard, or commissaires, took with them the interpreter to the

Committee of Surety-General. It was satisfactory to me, that they
went through the examination of my papers with the strictness they
did; and it is but justice that I say, they did it not only with civility,

but with tokens of respect to my character.

    I showed them the remainder of the manuscript of the foregoing

work. The interpreter examined it and returned it to me, saying, "It

is an interesting work; it will do much good." I also showed him

another manuscript, which I had intended for the Committee of Public

Safety. It is entitled, "Observations on the Commerce between the

United States of America and France."

    After the examination of my papers was finished, the guard

conducted me to the prison of the Luxembourg, where they left me as

they would a man whose undeserved fate they regretted. I offered to

write under the proces-verbal they had made that they had executed

their orders with civility, but they declined it.

                                                  THOMAS PAINE.

THE AGE OF REASON

Part Second

Preface to Part II

    I HAVE mentioned in the former part of the Age of Reason that it

had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon religion; but

that I had originally reserved it to a later period in life

intending it to be the last work I should undertake. The

circumstances, however, which existed in France in the latter end of

the year 1793, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and

humane principles of the revolution, which philosophy had first

diffused, had been departed from. The idea, always dangerous to

society, as it is derogatory to the Almighty, that priests could

forgive sins, though it seemed to exist no longer, had blunted the

feelings of humanity, and prepared men for the commission of all

manner of crimes. The intolerant spirit of Church persecutions had

transferred itself into politics; the tribunal styled revolutionary,

supplied the place of an inquisition; and the guillotine and the stake

outdid the fire and fagot of the Church. I saw many of my most

intimate friends destroyed, others daily carried to prison, and I

had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that the

same danger was approaching myself.

    Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age of

Reason; I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament to refer to,

though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any:

notwithstanding which, I have produced a work that no Bible

believer, though writing at his ease, and with a library of Church

books about him, can refute.

    Toward the latter end of December of that year, a motion was

made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the convention. There

were but two in it, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was

particularly pointed at by Bourdon de l'Oise, in his speech on that

motion.

    Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I

sat down and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible;

and I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has

since appeared, before a guard came there, about three in the
morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of public
Safety and Surety General for putting me in arrestation as a
foreigner, and conveyed me to the prison of the Luxembourg.
I contrived, on my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put
the manuscript of the work into his hands: as more safe than in
my possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the
fate in France either of the writer or the work, I addressed it to
the protection of the citizens of the United States.

    It is with justice that I say that the guard who executed this

order, and the interpreter of the Committee of General Surety who

accompanied them to examine my papers, treated me not only with

civility, but with respect. The keeper of the Luxembourg, Bennoit, a

man of a good heart, showed to me every friendship in his power, as

did also all his family, while he continued in that station. He was

removed from it, put into arrestation, and carried before the tribunal

upon a malignant accusation, but acquitted.

    After I had been in the Luxembourg about three weeks, the

Americans then in Paris went in a body to the convention to reclaim
me as their countryman and friend; but were answered by the
President, Vadier, who was also President of the Committee of
Surety-General, and had signed the order for my arrestation, that
I was born in England. I heard no more, after this, from any person
out of the walls of the prison till the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th
of Thermidor- July 27, 1794.

    About two months before this event I was seized with a fever, that

in its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the

effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered

with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on

having written the former part of the Age of Reason. I had then but

little expectation of surviving, and those about me had less. I

know, therefore, by experience, the conscientious trial of my own

principles.

    I was then with three chamber comrades, Joseph Vanhuele, of

Bruges; Charles Bastini, and Michael Rubyns, of Louvain. The
unceasing and anxious attention of these three friends to me,
by night and by day, I remember with gratitude and mention with
pleasure. It happened that a physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon
(Mr. Bond), part of the suite of General O'Hara, were then in the
Luxembourg. I ask not myself whether it be convenient to them, as
men under the English government, that I express to them my
thanks, but should reproach myself if I did not; and also to the
physician of the Luxembourg, Dr. Markoski.

    I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any other

cause, that this illness preserved me in existence. Among the papers

of Robespierre that were examined and reported upon to the

Convention by a Committee of Deputies, is a note in the hand-writing

of Robespierre, in the following words:

    "Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d'accusation, pour

l'interet de l'Amerique autant que de la France."

    To demand that a decree of accusation be passed against Thomas

Paine, for the interest of America, as well as of France.

    From what cause it was that the intention was not put in execution

I know not, and cannot inform myself, and therefore I ascribe it to

impossibility, on account of that illness.

    The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the

injustice I had sustained, invited me publicly and unanimously to

return into the Convention, and which I accepted, to show I could bear

an injury without permitting it to injure my principles or my

disposition. It is not because right principles have been violated

that they are to be abandoned.

    I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications

written, some in America and some in England, as answers to the former
part of "The Age of Reason." If the authors of these can amuse

themselves by so doing, I shall not interrupt them. They may write

against the work, and against me, as much as they please; they do me

more service than they intend, and I can have no objection that they

write on. They will find, however, by this second part, without its

being written as an answer to them, that they must return to their

work, and spin their cobweb over again. The first is brushed away by

accident.

    They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and

Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much

worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in anything in the

former part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of

some parts of those books than they have deserved.

    I observe that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they

call Scripture evidence and Bible authority to help them out. They are

so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about

authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them

right, that if they should be disposed to write any more, they may

know how to begin.

                                             THOMAS PAINE.

    October, 1795

CHAPTER I

As to the Old Testament

    IT has often been said, that anything may be proved from the

Bible, but before anything can be admitted as proved by the Bible, the

Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not

true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and

cannot be admitted as proof of anything.

    It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the

Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible

on the world as a mass of truth and as the word of God; they have

disputed and wrangled, and anathematized each other about the
supposed meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has
said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing; another
that it meant directly the contrary; and a third, that it meant neither
one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they call

understanding the Bible.

    It has happened that all the answers which I have seen to the

former part of the Age of Reason have been written by priests; and

these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and

pretend to understand the Bible; each understands it differently,

but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in

telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.

    Now, instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in

fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible,

these men ought to know, and if they do not, it is civility to

inform them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether there

is sufficient authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God,

or whether there is not.

    There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express

command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea

we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by

Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the

East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read
in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the

Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as

history itself shows, had given them no offence; that they put all

those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor

infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women, and children; that

they left not a soul to breathe- expressions that are repeated over

and over again in those books, and that, too, with exulting ferocity-

are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of

man commissioned these things to be done? and are we sure that the

books that tell us so were written by his authority?

    It is not the antiquity of a tale that is any evidence of its

truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the

more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the

resemblance of a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in

fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as

any other. To charge the commission of acts upon the Almighty,

which, in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are

crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination

of infants, is matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that

those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To

believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our

belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or

smiling infants offend? And to read the Bible without horror, we

must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in

the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that

the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it

to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.

    But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I

will in the progress of this work produce such other evidence as

even a priest cannot deny, and show, from that evidence, that the

Bible is not entitled to credit as being the word of God.

    But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the

Bible differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the

nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and

this is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the

Bible, in their answers to the former part of the Age of Reason,

undertake to say, and they put some stress thereon, that the

authenticity of the Bible is as well established as that of any

other ancient book; as if our belief of the one could become any

rule for our belief of the other.

    I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively

challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements

of Geometry;* and the reason is, because it is a book of

self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of

everything relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters

contained in that book would have the same authority they now have,

had they been written by any other person, or had the work been

anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical

certainty of who was the author, makes no part of our belief of the

matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with

respect to the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.;

those are books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally

incredible; and therefore, the whole of our belief as to the

authenticity of those books rests, in the first place, upon the

certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel;

secondly upon the credit we give to their testimony. We may believe

the first, that is, we may believe the certainty of the authorship,

and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we may believe
that a certain person gave evidence upon a case and yet not believe
the evidence that he gave. But if it should be found that the books

ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by Moses,

Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of

those books is gone at once; for there can be no such thing as

forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous

testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible, such

as that of talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and

moon standing still at the command of a man. The greatest part of

the other ancient books are works of genius; of which kind are those

ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to Demosthenes, to

Cicero, etc. Here, again, the author is not essential in the credit we

give to any of those works, for, as works of genius, they would have

the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. Nobody
believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true- for it is
the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain,
though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters related
by the Bible authors, (Moses for instance), as we disbelieve the things

related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation,

but an impostor. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to

Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and

credible, and no farther; for if we do, we must believe the two

miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of

curing a lame man and a blind man, in just the same manner as the
same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also

believe the miracle cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia

opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red

Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the

Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the

degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things

naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far

greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable

things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim to our

belief of the Bible, because that we believe things stated in other

ancient writings; since we believe the things stated in these writings

no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are

self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they are elegant,

like Homer; or approve of them because they are sedate, like Plato

or judicious, like Aristotle.

    *Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred

years before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he
was of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt.

    Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the

authenticity of the Bible, and I begin with what are called the five

books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and

Deuteronomy. My intention is to show that those books are spurious,

and that Moses is not the author of them; and still further, that they

were not written in the time of Moses, nor till several hundred

years afterward; that they are no other than an attempted history of

the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived,

and also of the times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and

stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred years after the death

of Moses, as men now write histories of things that happened, or are

supposed to have happened, several hundred or several thousand
years ago.

    The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books

themselves, and I shall confine myself to this evidence only. Were I

to refer for proof to any of the, ancient authors whom the advocates

of the Bible call profane authors, they would controvert that

authority, as I controvert theirs; I will therefore meet them on their

own ground, and oppose them with their own weapon, the Bible.

    In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is

the author of those books; and that he is the author, is an altogether

unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and
manner in which those books were written give no room to believe,
or even to suppose, they were written by Moses, for it is altogether
the style and manner of another person speaking of Moses. In
Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers (for everything in Genesis is prior
to the time of Moses, and not the least allusion is made to him
therein), the whole, I say, of these books is in the third person; it
is always, the Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord,
or Moses said unto the people, or the people said unto Moses;
and this is the style and manner that historians use in speaking
of the persons whose lives and actions they are writing. It may be
said that a man may speak of himself in the third person, and
therefore it may be supposed that Moses did; but supposition
proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that Moses

wrote these books himself have nothing better to advance than
supposition, they may as well be silent.

    But granting the grammatical right that Moses might speak of

himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself in

that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books that it is

Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and
absurd. For example, Numbers, chap. xii. ver. 3. Now the man Moses
was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the
earth. If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of
men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant of coxcombs; and the
advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for
both sides are against them; if Moses was not the author, the books
are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without
credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of meekness, and
is a lie in sentiment.

    In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more

evidently than in the former books that Moses is not the writer. The

manner here used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a

short introductory discourse, and then introduces Moses in the act

of speaking, and when he has made Moses finish his harangue, he (the

writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he brings Moses

forward again, and at last closes the scene with an account of the

death, funeral, and character of Moses.

    This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book;

from the first verse of the first chapter to the end of the fifth

verse, it is the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the

act of making his harangue, and this continues to the end of the

40th verse of the fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses, and

speaks historically of what was done in consequence of what Moses,

when living, is supposed to have said, and which the writer has

dramatically rehearsed.

    The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth

chapter, though it is only by saying, that Moses called the people

of Israel together; he then introduces Moses as before, and

continues him, as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 26th

chapter. He does the same thing, at the beginning of the 27th chapter;

and continues Moses, as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 28th

chapter. At the 29th chapter the writer speaks again through the whole
of the first verse and the first line of the second verse, where he

introduces Moses for the last time, and continues him, as in the act

of speaking, to the end of the 33rd chapter.

    The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Moses,

comes forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter; he

begins by telling the reader that Moses went to the top of Pisgah;

that he saw from thence the land which (the writer says) had been

promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he, Moses, died there,

in the land of Moab, but that no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto

this day; that is, unto the time in which the writer lived who wrote

the book of Deuteronomy. The writer then tells us, that Moses was

120 years of age when he died- that his eye was not dim, nor his

natural force abated; and he concludes by saying that there arose

not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom, says this

anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to face.

    Having thus shown, as far as grammatical evidence applies, that

Moses was not the writer of those books, I will, after making a few

observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of

Deuteronomy, proceed to show from the historical and chronological

evidence contained in those books, that Moses was not, because he

could not be, the writer of them, and consequently that there is no

authority for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men,

women, and children, told of in those books, were done, as those
books say they were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent
on every true Deist, that he vindicate the moral justice of God against

the calumnies of the Bible.

    The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, (for it

is not an anonymous work), is obscure, and also in contradiction

with himself, in the account he has given of Moses.

    After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does

not appear from any account that he ever came down again), he
tells us that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he
buried him in a valley in the land of Moab; but as there is no
antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was
that did bury him. If the writer meant that he (God) buried him,
how should he (the writer) know it? or why should we
(the readers) believe him? since we know not who the writer was
that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not himself tell where
he was buried.

    The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the

sepulchre of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this

writer lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a

valley in the land of Moab? for as the writer lived long after the

time of Moses, as is evident from his using the expression of unto

this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses,

he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is

impossible that Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where

the sepulchre is unto this day. To make Moses the speaker, would
be an improvement on the play of a child that hides himself and cries
nobody can find me; nobody can find Moses!

    This writer has nowhere told us how he came by the speeches

which he has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we

have a right to conclude, that he either composed them himself, or

wrote them from oral tradition. One or the other of these is the

more probable, since he has given in the fifth chapter a table of

commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is
different from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter
of Exodus. In that of Exodus, the reason given for keeping the
seventh day is, "because (says the commandment) God made the
heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh;" but in
that of Deuteronomy, the reason given is that it was the day on
which the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says
this commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the
sabbath day. This makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the
coming out of Egypt. There are also many things given as laws of
Moses in this book that are not to be found in any of the other books;
among which is that inhuman and brutal law, chapter xxi., verses 18,
19, 20 and 21, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother,
to bring their own children to have them stoned to death for what it
is pleased to call stubbornness. But priests have always been fond of
preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tithes; and
it is from this book, chap. xxv., ver. 4, that they have taken the
phrase, and applied it to tithing, that thou shall not muzzle the ox
when he treadeth out the corn; and that this might not escape
observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head
of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines.
Oh, priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the
sake of tithes. Though it is impossible for us to know identically who
the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him

professionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I

shall show in the course of this work, at least three hundred and

fifty years after the time of Moses.

    I come now to speak of the historical and chronological

evidence. The chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology, for

I mean not to go out of the Bible for evidence of anything, but to

make the Bible itself prove, historically and chronologically, that

Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him. It is,

therefore, proper that I inform the reader (such a one at least as may

not have the opportunity of knowing it), that in the larger Bibles,

and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of chronology printed

in the margin of every page, for the purpose of showing how long the

historical matters stated in each page happened, or are supposed to

have happened, before Christ, and, consequently, the distance of

time between one historical circumstance and another.

    I begin with the book of Genesis. In the 14th chapter of

Genesis, the writer gives an account of Lot being taken prisoner in

a battle between the four kings against five, and carried off; and

that when the account of Lot being taken, came to Abraham, he armed

all his household and marched to rescue Lot from the captors, and that

he pursued them unto Dan (ver. 14).

    To show in what manner this expression pursuing them unto Dan

applies to the case in question, I will refer to two circumstances,

the one in America, the other in France. The city now called New York,

in America, was originally New Amsterdam; and the town in France,

lately called Havre Marat, was before called Havre de Grace. New

Amsterdam was changed to New York in the year 1664; Havre de
Grace to Havre Marat in 1793. Should, therefore, any writing be found,

though without date, in which the name of New York should be

mentioned, it would be certain evidence that such a uniting could

not have been written before, but must have been written after New

Amsterdam was changed to New York, and consequently, not till after

the year 1664, or at least during the course of that year. And, in

like manner, any dateless writing with the name of Havre Marat would

be certain evidence that such a writing must have been written after

Havre de Grace became Havre Marat, and consequently not till after
the year 1793, or at least during the course of that year.

    I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that

there was no such place as Dan, till many years after the death of

Moses, and consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the

book of Genesis, where this account of pursuing them unto Dan is

given. The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town

of the Gentiles called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon

this town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan,

who was the father of that tribe, and the great grandson of Abraham.

    To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis,

to the 18th chapter of the book called the Book of Judges. It is there

said (ver. 27) that they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people

that were quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the

sword (the Bible is filled with murder), and burned the city with

fire; and they built a city (ver. 28), and dwelt therein, and they

called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their

father, howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.

    This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and

changing it to Dan, is placed in the Book of Judges immediately

after the death of Sampson. The death of Sampson is said to have

happened 1120 years before Christ, and that of Moses 1451 before

Christ; and, therefore, according to the historical arrangement, the

place was not called Dan till 331 years after the death of Moses.

    There is a striking confusion between the historical and the

chronological arrangement in the book of Judges. The five last

chapters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put

chronologically before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be

28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before

the 13th, 195 before the 9th, 90 before the 4th, and 15 years before

the 1st chapter. This shows the uncertain and fabulous state of the

Bible. According to the chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish

and giving it the name of Dan is made to be 20 years after the death

of Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and by the historical order

as it stands in the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death

of Joshua, and 331 after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses

from being the writer of Genesis, because, according to either of

the statements, no such place as Dan existed in the time of Moses;
and therefore the writer of Genesis must have been some person who
lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan; and who that person
was nobody knows, and consequently the book of Genesis is anonymous
and without authority.

    I proceed now to state another point of historical and

chronological evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding

case, that Moses is not the author of the book of Genesis.

    In the 36th chapter of Genesis there is given a genealogy of the

sons and descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a

list, by name, of the kings of Edom, in enumerating of which, it is

said, (verse 31), And these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before

there reigned any king over the children of Israel.

    Now, were any dateless writings to be found in which, speaking

of any past events, the writer should say, These things happened

before there was any Congress in America, or before there was any

Convention in France, it would be evidence that such writing could not

have been written before, and could only be written after there was

a Congress in America, or a Convention in France, as the case might

be; and, consequently, that it could not be written by any person

who died before there was a Congress in the one country or a

Convention in the other.

    Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation,

than to refer to a fact in the room of a date; it is most natural so

to do, first, because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than

a date; secondly, because the fact includes the date, and serves to

excite two ideas at once; and this manner of speaking by
circumstances implies as positively that the fact alluded to is past as
if it were so expressed. When a person speaking upon any matter,
says, it was before I was married, or before my son was born, or
before I went to America, or before I went to France, it is absolutely
understood, and intended to be understood, that he had been married,
that he has had a son, that he has been in America, or been in France.
Language does not admit of using this mode of expression in any other
sense; and whenever such an expression is found anywhere, it can
only be understood in the sense in which it only could have been used.

    The passage, therefore, that I have quoted- "that these are the

kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the

children of Israel"- could only have been written after the first

king began to reign over them; and, consequently, that the book of

Genesis, so far from having been written by Moses, could not have
been written till the time of Saul at least. This is the positive sense

of the passage; but the expression, any king, implies more kings

than one, at least it implies two, and this will carry it to the

time of David; and if taken in a general sense, it carries it

through all the time of the Jewish monarchy.

    Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed

to have been written after kings began to reign in Israel, it would

have been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It

happens then that this is the case; the two books of Chronicles, which

gave a history of all the kings, of Israel, are professedly, as well

as in fact, written after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse

that I have quoted, and all the remaining verses of the 36th chapter

of Genesis, are word for word in the first chapter of Chronicles,

beginning at the 43d verse

    It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could

say, as he has said, 1st Chron., chap. i., ver. 43, These are the

kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over

the children of Israel, because he was going to give, and has given, a

list of the kings that had reigned in Israel; but as it is

impossible that the same expression could have been used before that

period, it is as certain as anything that can be proved from

historical language that this part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles

and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and probably not so

old as the book of Homer, or as Aesop's Fables, admitting Homer to

have been, as the tables of Chronology state, contemporary with

David or Solomon, and Aesop to have lived about the end of the

Jewish monarchy.

    Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on

which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood,

and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of
stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of
downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his
ark, drops to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being

entertaining; and the account of men living to eight and nine

hundred years becomes as fabulous immortality of the giants of the

Mythology.

    Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the

most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was

the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the

pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation,

committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the

history of any nation, of which I will state only one instance.

    When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and

murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows: Numbers, chap.

xxxi., ver. 13:

    "And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the

congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses

was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over

thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle;
and Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? behold,
these caused the children of Israel, through the council of Balaam, to
commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was
a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now, therefore, kill
every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known
a man by lying with him; but all the women-children, that have not
known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

    Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have

disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than

Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the

boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

    Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers;

one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in

the hands of an executioner; let any daughter put herself in the

situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a

mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain

that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her

course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a

false religion.

    After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder

taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the

profaneness of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes.

Ver. 37 to 40, "And the lord's tribute of sheep was six hundred and

three score and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six

thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was three score and twelve;

and the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred, of which the

Lord's tribute was three score and one; and the persons were sixteen

thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two persons."

In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many

other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read or for

decency to hear, for it appears, from the 35th verse of this

chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery

by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand.

    People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this

pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take

it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they

permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they

form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have

been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens!

it is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and

blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the

wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?

    But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the

author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious.

The two instances I have already given would be sufficient without any

additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that

pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the

matters it speaks of, or refers to, as facts; for in the case of

pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the

children of Israel, not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be

pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be

downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy in the preter

tense.

    But there are many other passages scattered throughout those
books that unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus,

(another of the books ascribed to Moses), chap. xvi. verse 34, "And

the children of Israel did eat manna forty years until they came to

a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the

borders of the land of Canaan.

    Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna

was, or whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small

mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the

country, makes nothing to my argument; all that I mean to show is,

that it is not Moses that could write this account, because the

account extends itself beyond the life and time of Moses. Moses,

according to the Bible, (but it is such a book of lies and

contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or whether

any), died in the wilderness and never came upon the borders of the

land of Cannan; and consequently it could not be he that said what the

children of Israel did, or what they ate when they came there. This

account of eating manna, which they tell us was written by Moses,

extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses; as

appears by the account given in the book of Joshua, after the children

of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came unto the borders of

the land of Canaan. Joshua, chap. v., verse 12. "And the manna

ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the

land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they

did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year."

    But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy,

which, while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book,

shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about

giants. In the third chapter of Deuteronomy, among the conquests

said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of Og, king of

Bashan, v. II. "For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant

of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in

Rabbath of the children of Ammom? Nine cubits was the length

thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a

man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888-1000ths inches; the length, therefore,

of the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4 inches; thus

much for this giant's bed. Now for the historical part, which,

though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former

cases, it is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating

evidence, and is better that the best evidence on the contrary side.

    The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant,

refers to his bed as an ancient relic, and says, Is it not in

Rabbath (or Rabbah) of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is;

for such is frequently the Bible method of affirming a thing. But it

could not be Moses that said this, because Moses could know nothing

about Rabbah, nor of what was in it. Rabbah was not a city belonging

to this giant king, nor was it one of the cities that Moses took.

The knowledge, therefore, that this bed was at Rabbah, and of the

particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to the time when

Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred years after the

death of Moses; for which see 2 Sam. chap. xii., ver. 26. "And Joab

(David's general) fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon,

and took the royal city."

    As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in

time, place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to

Moses, and which prove to a demonstration that those books could not

have been written by Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the

book of Joshua, and to show that Joshua is not the author of that

book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The evidence I

shall produce is contained in the book itself; I will not go out of

the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible.

False testimony is always good against itself.

    Joshua, according to the first chapter of Joshua, was the

immediate successor of Moses; he was, moreover, a military man,

which Moses was not, and he continued as chief of the people of Israel

25 years, that is, from the time that Moses died, which, according

to the Bible chronology, was 1451 years before Christ, until 1426

years before Christ, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua

died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written

by Joshua, reference to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is

evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the book

could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact

which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is

a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those

recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and

the blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those

deeds to the orders of the Almighty.

    In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the

preceding books, is written in the third person; it is the historian

of Joshua that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vain-glorious

that Joshua should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse

of the sixth chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the

country." I now come more immediately to the proof.

    In the 24th chapter, ver. 31, it is said, "And Israel served the

Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that

overlived Joshua." Now, in the name of common sense, can it be

Joshua that relates what people had done after he was dead? This

account must not only have been written by some historian that lived

after Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that outlived

Joshua.

    There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to

time scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in

which the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua,

but without marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the

passage above quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened

between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded

descriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that

the book could not have been written till after the death of the last.

    But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to

quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a

time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained

between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the

passage, chap. x., ver. 14, where, after giving an account that the

sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon,

at the command of Joshua (a tale only fit to amuse children), the

passage says, "And there was no day like that, before it, or after it,

that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man."

    This tale of the sun standing still upon mount Gibeon, and the

moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects

itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being

known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the
sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition
of it would be universal, whereas there is not a nation in the world
that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand still?
What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and that
too while the sun shone? As a poetical figure, the whole is well
enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, The
stars in their courses fought against Sisera; but it is inferior to the

figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons who came to

expostulate with him on his goings on: "Wert thou," said he, "to

come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left,
itshould not alter my career." For Joshua to have exceeded
Mahomet, he should have put the sun and moon one in each pocket,
and carried them as Guy Fawkes carried his dark lantern, and taken
them out to shine as he might happen to want them.

    The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it

is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime

makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the

sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical

fancy, shows the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have
commanded the earth to have stood still.

    The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that

day, being put in comparison with all the time that passed before

it, must, in order to give any expressive signification to the

passage, mean a great length of time: for example, it would have

been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the next week, or the

next month, or the next year; to give, therefore, meaning to the

passage, comparative with the wonder it relates and the prior time

it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less, however, than

one would be trifling, and less than two would be barely admissible.

    A distant but general time is also expressed in the 8th chapter,

where, after giving an account of the taking of the city of Ai, it

is said, ver. 28, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it a heap forever,

even a desolation unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where,

speaking of the king of Ai, whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at

the entering of the gate, it is said, "And he raised thereon a great

heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day," that is, unto the

day or time in which the writer of the book of Joshua lived. And

again, in the 10th chapter, where, after speaking of the five kings

whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave,
it is said, "And he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which remain
unto this very day."

    In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the

tribes, and of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is

said, chap. xv., ver. 63: "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of

Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out; but the

Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.

The question upon this passage is, at what time did the Jebusites

and the children of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem? As this

matter occurs again in the first chapter of Judges, I shall reserve my

observations until I come to that part.

    Having thus shown from the book of Joshua itself without any

auxiliary evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that

book, and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority,

I proceed as before mentioned, to the book of Judges.

    The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore,

even the pretence is wanting to call it the word of God; it has not so

much as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless.

    This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua.

That of Joshua begins, chap. i., verse 1, "Now after the death of

Moses," etc., and this of the Judges begins, "Now after the death of

Joshua," etc. This, and the similarity of style between the two books,

indicate that they are the work of the same author, but who he was

is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves, is that

the author lived long after the time of Joshua; for though it begins

as if it followed immediately after his death, the second chapter is

an epitome or abstract of the whole book, which, according to the

Bible chronology, extends its history through a space of 306 years;

that is, from the death of Joshua, 1426 years before Christ, to the

death of Samson, 1120 years before Christ, and only 25 years before

Saul went to seek his father's asses, and was made king. But there

is good reason to believe, that it was not written till the time of

David, at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before

the same time.

    In the first chapter of Judges, the writer, after announcing the

death of Joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the children

of Judah and the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this

statement, the writer, having abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the

7th verse, says immediately after, in the 8th verse, by way of

explanation, "Now the children of Judah had fought against

Jerusalem, and had taken it;" consequently this book could not have

been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will

recollect the quotation I have just before made from the 15th

chapter of Joshua, ver. 63, where it is said that the Jebusites

dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day, meaning

the time when the book of Joshua was written.

    The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I

have hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom

they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such

persons ever lived, is already so abundant that I can afford to

admit this passage with less weight than I am entitled to draw from

it. For the case is, that so far as the Bible can be credited as a

history, the city of Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David;

and consequently that the books of Joshua and of Judges were not

written till after the commencement of the reign of David, which was

370 years after the death of Joshua.

    The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was

originally Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The

account of David's taking this city is given in II. Samuel, chap.

v., ver. 4, etc.; also in I. Chron. chap. xiv., ver. 4, etc. There

is no mention in any part of the Bible that it was ever taken

before, nor any account that favors such an opinion. It is not said,

either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they utterly destroyed men,

women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe, as is said

of their other conquests; and the silence here observed implies that

it was taken by capitulation, and that the Jebusites, the native

inhabitants, continued to live in the place after it was taken. The

account therefore, given in Joshua, that the Jebusites dwell with

the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day corresponds to no

other time than after the taking of the city by David.

    Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to

Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an

idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a

strolling country-girl creeping slyly to bed with her cousin Boaz.

Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God! It is, however,

one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and

rapine.

    I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to show that those

books were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time

after the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former

books, anonymous and without authority.

    To be convinced that these books have been written much later
than the time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only

necessary to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going

to seek his father's asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of

whom Saul went to inquire about those lost asses, as foolish people

nowadays go to a conjuror to inquire after lost things.

    The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel and the

asses, does not tell it as a thing that has just then happened, but as

an ancient story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the

language or terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges

the writer to explain the story in the terms or language used in the

time the writer lived.

    Samuel, in the account given of him, in the first of those

books, chap ix., is called the seer; and it is by this term that

Saul inquires after him, ver. II, "And as they (Saul and his

servant) went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens

going out to draw water; and they said unto them, Is the seer here?"

Saul then went according to the direction of these maidens, and met

Samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver. 18, "Tell me, I

pray thee, where the seer's house is? and Samuel answered Saul, and

said, I am the seer."

    As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and

answers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they

are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out

of use when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make

the story understood, to explain the terms in which these questions

and answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, when he

says "Before-time, in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God,

thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer; for he that is now

called a Prophet, was before-time called a Seer." This proves, as I

have before said, that this story of Saul, Samuel and the asses, was

an ancient story at the time the book of Samuel was written, and

consequently that Samuel did not write it, and that that book is

without authenticity.

    But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more

positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things

that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel.

Samuel died before Saul; for the 1st Samuel, chap. xxviii., tells that

Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead;

yet the history of the matters contained in those books is extended

through the remaining part of Saul's life, and to the latter end of

the life of David, who succeeded Saul. The account of the death and

burial of Samuel (a thing which he could not write himself) is related

in the 25th chapter of the first book of Samuel, and the chronology

affixed to this chapter makes this to be 1060 years before Christ; yet

the history of this first book is brought down to 1056 years before

Christ; that is, till the death of Saul, which was not till four years

after the death of Samuel.

    The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that

did not happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins

with the reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end

of David's reign, which was forty-three years after the death of

Samuel; and, therefore, the books are in themselves positive

evidence that they were not written by Samuel.

    I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the

Bible to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the

authors of those books, and which the Church, styling itself the

Christian Church, have imposed upon the world as the writings of

Moses, Joshua and Samuel, and I have detected and proved the
falsehood of this imposition. And now, ye priests of every
description, who have preached and written against the former
part of "The Age of Reason," what have ye to say? Will ye, with all
this mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face, still
have the assurance to march into your pulpits and continue to
impose these books on your congregations as the works of inspired
penmen, and the word of God, when it is as evident as demonstration
can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors,
are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are.
What shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the
blasphemous fraud? What have ye still to offer against the pure and
moral religion of Deism, in support of your system of falsehood,
idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the cruel and murderous
orders with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing
executions of men, women and children, inconsequence of those orders,
been ascribed to some friend whose memory you revered, you would
have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge,
and gloried in defending his injured fame. Is it because ye are sunk in
the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your
Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them
with callous indifference? The evidence I have produced, and shall
produce in the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is without
authority, will, while it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve
and tranquilize the minds of millions; it will free them from all those
hard thoughts of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had
infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition
to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence.

    I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of

Chronicles. Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly

confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in

general were a parcel of rascals; but these are matters with which

we have no more concern than we have with the Roman emperors or

Homer's account of the Trojan war. Besides which, as those works are

anonymous, and as we know nothing of the writer, or of his

character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to

give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient histories,

they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of probable and

of improbable things; but which distance of time and place, and change
of circumstances in the world, have rendered obsolete and uninteresting.

    The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of

comparing them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible,

to show the confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended

word of God.

    The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which,

according to the Bible chronology, was 1015 years before Christ; and

the second book ends 588 years before Christ, being a little after the

reign of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and

conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books include
a space of 427 years.

    The two books of Chronicles are a history of the same times, and

in general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be

absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over.

The first book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam

to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters), begins with the

reign of David; and the last book ends as in the last book of Kings,

soon after the reign of Zedekiah, about 588 years before Christ. The

two last verses of the last chapter bring the history forward 52 years

more, that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the book,

as I shall show when I come to speak of the book of Ezra.

    The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David and

Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives

of 17 kings and one queen, who are styled kings of Judah, and of 19,

who are styled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immediately

on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate

kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other.

    These two books are little more than a history of

assassinations, treachery and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had

accustomed themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose country

they had savagely invaded under a pretended gift from God, they

afterward practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their

kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families

were destroyed to secure possession to the successor; who, after a
few years, and sometimes only a few months or less, shared the same

fate. In the tenth chapter of the second book of Kings, an account

is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy in number,

being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the children of

Ahab, and were murdered by the order of Jehu, whom Elisha, the

pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on

purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor.

And in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel

who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, II. Kings,
chap. xv., ver. 16, that Menahem smote the city of Tiphsah, because they
opened not the city to him, and all the women therein that were with child he
ripped up.

    Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would

distinguish any nation of people by the name of His chosen people,

we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of
the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of

ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were; a people who,

corrupted by and copying after such monsters and impostors as Moses

and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel and David, had distinguished themselves

above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and

wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our

hearts, it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that

long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the

flattering appellation of His chosen people is no other than a lie

which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the

baseness of their own characters, and which Christian priests,

sometimes as corrupt and often as cruel, have professed to believe.

    The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes,

but the history is broken in several places by the author leaving

out the reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in

that of Kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah

to kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that

the narrative is obscure in the reading. In the same book the

history sometimes contradicts itself; for example, in the second

book of Kings, chap, i., ver. 17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous

terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or

Joram (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in his stead, in the

second year of Jehoram or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah;

and in chap. viii., ver. 16, of the same book, it is said, and in

the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel,

Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, began to reign; that is, one

chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the second year of
Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram of Israel
began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.

    Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one

history, as having happened during the reign of such and such of their

kings, are not to be found in the other, in relating the reign of

the same king; for example, the two first rival kings, after the death

of Solomon, were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in I. Kings, chap. xii
and xiii, an account is given of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt

incense, and that a man, who was there called a man of God, cried

out against the altar, chap. xiii., ver. 2: "O altar, altar! thus

saith the Lord; Behold, a child shall be born to the house of David,

Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high

places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt

upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard

the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in

Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on

him. And his hand which he put out against him dried up, so that he

could not pull it in again to him."

    One would think that such an extraordinary case as this (which

is spoken of as a judgment), happening to the chief of one of the

parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the

Israelites into two nations, would, if it had been true, have been

recorded in both histories. But though men in latter times have

believed all that the prophets have said unto him, it does not

appear that these prophets or historians believed each other; they

knew each other too well.

    A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs

through several chapters, and concludes with telling, Il. Kings, chap.

ii., ver. II, "And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha)

still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of

fire and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went

up by a whirlwind into heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles,

miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of, though he mentions

Elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the story related in

the second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of

children calling Elisha bald head, bald head; and that this man of

God, verse 24, "Turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in

the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of the

wood, and tore forty-and-two children of them." He also passes over in

silence the story told, II. Kings, chap. xiii., that when they were

burying a man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it

happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver.

21), touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and

stood upon his feet." The story does not tell us whether they buried

the man, notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew

him up again. Upon all these stories the writer of Chronicles is as

silent as any writer of the present day who did not choose to be

accused of lying, or at least of romancing, would be about stories

of the same kind.

    But, however these two historians may differ from each other

with respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike

with respect to those men styled prophets, whose writings fill up

the latter part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of

Hezekiah, is mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these

historians are speaking of that reign; but, except in one or two

instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are so

much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at; although,

according to the Bible chronology, they lived within the time those

histories were written; some of their long before. If those

prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in their day

as the compilers of the Bible and priests and commentators have

since represented them to be, how can it be accounted for that not
one of these histories should say anything about them?

    The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought

forward, as I have already said, to the year 588 before Christ; it

will, therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived

before that period.

    Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in

which they lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to

the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of

the number of years they lived before the books of Kings and

Chronicles were written.

                   TABLE OF THE PROPHETS.

    Names.          Years        Years before            Observations.

                    before        Kings and

                    Christ.        Chronicles

    Isaiah           760            172                     mentioned.

    Jeremiah         629             41          mentioned only in the

                                                  last chap. of Chron.

    Ezekiel          595              7                 not mentioned.

    Daniel           607             19                 not mentioned.

    Hosea            785             97                 not mentioned.

    Joel             800            212                 not mentioned.

    Amos             789            199                 not mentioned.

    Obadiah          789            199                 not mentioned.

    Jonah            862            274                 see the note.*

    Micah            750            162                 not mentioned.

    Nahum            713            125                 not mentioned.

    Habakkuk         620             38                 not mentioned.

    Zephaniah        630             42                 not mentioned.

    Haggai   - after the year 588

    Zachariah- after the year 588

    Malachi  - after the year 588

   *In II. Kings, chap. xiv., verse 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned

on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but

nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book

of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter

with the whale.

    This table is either not very honorable for the Bible

historians, or not very honorable for the Bible prophets; and I

leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little

things, to settle the point of etiquette between the two, and to

assign a reason why the authors of Kings and Chronicles have treated

those prophets whom, in the former part of the Age of Reason, I have

considered as poets, with as much degrading silence as any historian

of the present day would treat Peter Pindar.

    I have one observation more to make on the book of Chronicles,

after which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the

Bible.

    In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage
from the 36th chapter, verse 31, which evidently refers to a time after
kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have

shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as in Chronicles,

chap. i, verse 43, where it stands consistently with the order of

history, which in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis,

and a great part of the 36th chapter, have been taken from Chronicles;
and that the book of Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and
ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured by some unknown person after
the book of Chronicles was written, which was not until at least eight
hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses.

    The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this is regular and

has in it but two stages. First, as I have already stated that the

passage in Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly,

that the book of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself,

was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred and sixty

years after the time of Moses. To prove this, we have only to look

into the thirteenth verse of the third chapter of the first book of

Chronicles, where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the

descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of

Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, 588 years before

Christ and consequently more then 860 years after Moses. Those who

have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the Bible, and

particularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it without

examination, and without any authority than that of one credulous

man telling it to another; for so far as historical and

chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the Bible is

not so ancient as the book of Homer by more then three hundred

years, and is about the same age with Aesop's Fables.

    I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary,

I think it a book of false glory, tending to inspire immoral and

mischievous notions of honor; and with respect to Aesop, though the

moral is in general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of

the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than

the moral does good to the judgment.

    Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in

course, the book of Ezra.

    As one proof, among others I shall produce, to show the disorder

in which this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together,

and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at

the three first verses in Ezra, and the last two in Chronicles; for by

what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the three first

verses in Ezra should be the two last verses in Chronicles, or that

the two last in Chronicles should be the three first in Ezra? Hither

the authors did not know their own works, or the compilers did not

know the authors.

    The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and end in the

middle of the phrase with the word up, without signifying to what

place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in

different books, show, as I have already said, the disorder and

ignorance in which the Bible has been put together, and that the

compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we

any authority for believing what they have done.*

               Two last verses of Chronicles.

    Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that

the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be

accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia,

that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it

also in writing, saying,

    23. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the

earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me: and he hath charged me

to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there

among you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him

go up.

                Three first verses of Ezra.

    Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the

word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the

Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a

proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,

saying,

    2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord God of heaven hath

given me all the kingdoms of earth; and he hath charged me to build

him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

    3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with

him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build

the house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God,) which is in

Jerusalem.

    *I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless

passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough

to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, I. Samuel,

chap. xiii. ver. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one year; and when

he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand

men," &c. The first part of verse, that Saul reigned one year, has

no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say anything of

what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere

absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says

he had reigned two; for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not

to have reigned one.

    Another instance occurs in Joshua, chap. v, where the writer tells

us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head

of the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends

abruptly, and without any conclusion. The story is as follows: Verse

13, "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted

up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against

him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and

said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries?" Verse 14, "And

he said, Nay; but as captain of the hosts of the Lord am I now come.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said

unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?" Verse 15, "And the

captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off

thy foot: for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua

did so." And what then? nothing, for here the story ends, and the

chapter too.

    Either the story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story

told by some Jewish humorist, in ridicule of Joshua's pretended

mission from God; and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the

design of the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of

humor and ridicule it has a great deal of point, for it pompously

introduces an angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in

his hand, before whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth and

worships (which is contrary to their second commandment); and then

this most important embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to
pull off his shoe. It might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.

    It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit everything

their leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in

which they speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. "As for

this Moses" say they, "we wot not what is become of him." Exod.

chap. xxxii, ver. I.

    The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of

Ezra, is the time in which it was written, which was immediately after

the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about 536

years before Christ. Ezra (who, according to the Jewish

commentators, is the same person as is called Esdras in the

Apocrypha), was one of the persons who returned, and who, it is

probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nehemiah, whose book

follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who, it

is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair in the book

that bears his name. But these accounts are nothing to us, nor to

any other persons, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the

history of their nation; and there is just as much of the word of

God in those books as there is in any of the histories of France, or

Rapin's History of England, or the history of any other country.

    But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers

are to be depended upon. In the second chapter of Ezra, the writer

gives a list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number

of souls of each, that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem: and this

enrolment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of the

principal objects for writing the book; but in this there is an

error that destroys the intention of the undertaking.

    The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner, chap.

ii., ver. 3: "The children of Parosh, two thousand a hundred seventy

and two." Ver. 4, "The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy

and two." And in this manner he proceeds through all the families; and

in the 64th verse, he makes a total, and says, "The whole congregation
together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore."

     But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several

particulars will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the

error is 12,542.* What certainty, then, can there be in the Bible

for anything?

    *Particulars of the Families from the second Chapter of Ezra.

Chap. ii

       Brought forward:  12,243            15,953            24,144

Verse 3  2172   Verse 14   2056   Verse 25    743   Verse 36    973

      4   372         15    454         26    621         37   1052

      5   775         16     98         27    122         38   1247

      6  2812         17    323         28    223         39   1017

      7  1254         18    112         29     52         40     74

      8   945         19    223         30    156         41    128

      9   760         20     95         31   1254         42    139

     10   642         21    123         32    320         53    392

     11   623         22     56         33    725         60    652

     12  1222         23    128         34    345

     13   666         24     42         35   3630

-      ------            ------            ------             -----

       12,243            15,953            24,144     Total  29,818

    Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families,

and of the number of each family. He begins, as in Ezra, by saying,

chap. vii., ver. 8, "The children of Parosh, two thousand a hundred

seven and two; and so on through all the families. The list differs in

several of the particulars from that of Ezra. In the 66th verse,

Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had said, "The whole

congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and

threescore." But the particulars of this list makes a total of but

31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These writers may do well

enough for Bible-makers, but not for anything where truth and

exactness is necessary.

    The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madame Esther

thought it any honor to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus,

or as a rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken

king in the midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for
the account says they had been drinking seven days and were merry),
let Esther and Mordecai look to that; it is no business of ours; at

least it is none of mine; besides which the story has a great deal the

appearance of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on to

the book of Job.

    The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have

hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this

book; it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the

vicissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling

against the pressure. It is a highly-wrought composition, between

willing submission and involuntary discontent, and shows man, as he

sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of

being. Patience has but a small share in the character of the person

of whom the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often

impetuous, but he still endeavors to keep a guard upon it, and seems

determined in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself

the hard duty of contentment.

    I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the

former part of the Age of Reason, but without knowing at that time

what I have learned since, which is, that from all the evidence that

can be collected the book of Job does not belong to the Bible.

    I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra
and Spinoza, upon this subject. They both say that the book of Job
carries no internal evidence of being a Hebrew book; that the genius
of the composition and the drama of the piece are not Hebrew; that
it has been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that
the author of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented
under the name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is
mentioned in the Bible) does not correspond to any Hebrew idea, and
that the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made
of those whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which
this supposed Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same
case.

    It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the

production of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far

from being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects

of natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a

different cast to anything in the books known to be Hebrew. The

astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not

Hebrew names, and it does not appear from anything that is to be found
in the Bible, that the Jews knew anything of astronomy or that they
studied it; they had no translation of those names into their own

language, but adopted the names as they found them in the poem.

    That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the

Gentile nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own,
is not a matter of doubt; the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs is an

evidence of this; it is there said, v. i: "The words of King Lemuel,

the prophecy that his mother taught him." This verse stands as a

preface to the Proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of

Solomon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not one of the kings of

Israel, nor of Judah, but of some other country, and consequently a

Gentile. The Jews, however, have adopted his proverbs, and as they

cannot give any account who the author of the book of Job was, nor
how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the

Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other

book and chapter in the Bible, before it and after it, it has all

the circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the

Gentiles.*

    *The prayer known by the name of Agur's prayer, in the 30th

chapter of Proverbs, immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,
and which is the only sensible, well-conceived and well-expressed
prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer
taken from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other
occasion than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer
ascribed to him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words,
that Lemuel and his proverbs are introduced in the chapter that
follows. The first verse of the 30th chapter says, "The words of
Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy." Here the word prophecy
is used in the same application it has in the following chapter of
Lemuel, unconnected with any thing of prediction. The prayer of
Agur is in the 8th and 9th verses, "Remove far from me vanity
and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food
convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is
the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God
in vain." This has not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for
the Jews never prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for
anything but victory, vengeance and riches.

    The Bible-makers and those regulators of time, the

chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and
how to dispose of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical

circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might determine its place in

the Bible. But it would not have answered the purpose of these men

to have informed the world of their ignorance, and therefore, they

have affixed it to the era of 1520 years before Christ, which is

during the time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they

have just as much authority and no more than I should have for

saying it was a thousand years before that period. The probability,

however, is that it is older than any book in the Bible; and it is the

only one that can be read without indignation or disgust.

    We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is

called) was before the time of the Jews, whose practise has been to

calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is

from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens.

But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral

people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but

of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have

been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and

images, as is done nowadays both by statuary and by painting; but it

does not follow from this that they worshiped them, any more than we

do.

    I pass on to the book of Psalms, of which it is not necessary to

make much observation. Some of them are moral, and others are very

revengeful; and the greater part relates to certain local

circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time they were written, with

which we have nothing to do. It is, however, an error or an imposition

to call them the Psalms of David. They are a collection, as song-books

are nowadays, from different song-writers, who lived at different

times. The 137th Psalm could not have been written till more than

400 years after the time of David, because it was written in

commemoration of an event, the captivity of the Jews in Babylon,
which did not happen till that distance of time. "By the rivers of
Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for
there they that carried us away captive required of us a song,
saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion." As a man would say to
an American, or to a Frenchman, or to an Englishman, "Sing us one
of your American songs, or of your French songs, or of your English
songs." This remark,with respect to the time this Psalm was written,
is of no other use than to show (among others already mentioned)
the general imposition the world has been under in respect to the
authors of the Bible. No regard has been paid to time, place and
circumstance, and the names of persons have been affixed to the
several books, which it was as impossible they should write as that
a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.

     The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection,

and that from authors belonging to other nations than those of the

Jewish nation, as I have shown in the observations upon the book of

Job; besides which some of the proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not

appear till two hundred and fifty years after the death of Solomon;

for it is said in the 1st verse of the 25th chapter, "These are also

proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah,

copied out." It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of

Solomon to the time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name

is abroad, he is made the putative father of things he never said or

did, and this, most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It

appears to have been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as it

is now to make jest-books and father them upon those who never saw

them.

    The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to

Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written

as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon

was, who, looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out,

"All is vanity!" A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment

is obscure, most probably by translation; but enough is left to show

they were strongly pointed in the original.* From what is

transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty,

ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy. He lived fast, and

died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years.

    *Those that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an

obscure figure in translation for loss of sight.

    Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines are worse than

none, and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened

enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection by leaving it no

point to fix upon. Divided love is never happy. This was the case with

Solomon, and if he could not, with all his pretentions to wisdom,

discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he

afterward endured. In this point of view, his preaching is

unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary

to know the cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines
would have stood in place of the whole book. It was needless, after this,
to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to
derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of
happiness.

    To be happy in old age, it is necessary that we accustom ourselves

to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and

that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure

is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little

better; whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical

science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite

of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of

these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and to

admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation,

and are unchangeable and of divine origin.

    Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect that his mind

was ever young, his temper ever serene; science, that never grows

gray, was always his mistress. He was never without an object, for

when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid in a

hospital waiting for death.

    Solomon's Songs are amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled
fanaticism has called divine. The compilers of the Bible have placed these
songs after the book of Ecclesiastes, and the chronologists have affixed
to them the era of 1014 years before Christ, at which time Solomon,
according to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was
then forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and
the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better, and
either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less inconsistent
with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was then in the
honeymoon of one thousand debaucheries.

    It should also have occurred to them that, as he wrote, if he

did write, the book of Ecclesiastes long after these songs, and in

which he exclaims, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that

he included those songs in that description. This is the more

probable, because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes, chap.

ii. ver. 8, "I gat me men singers and women singers (most probably

to sing those songs), as musical instruments and that of all sorts;

and behold, (ver. II), all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The

compilers, however, have done their work but by halves, for as they

have given us the songs, they should have given us the tunes, that

we might sing them.

    The books called the Books of the Prophets fill up all the

remaining parts of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning

with Isaiah, and ending with Malachi, of which I have given you a list

in my observations upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all

of whom, except the three last, lived within the time the books of

Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah,

are mentioned in the history of those books. I shall begin with

those two, reserving what I have to say on the general character of

the men called prophets to another part of the work.

    Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to

Isaiah will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions

ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and,

except a short historical part and a few sketches of history in two or

three of the first chapters, is one continued, incoherent, bombastical

rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute

of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for

writing such stuff; it is (at least in the translation) that kind of

composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad.

    The historical part begins at the 36th chapter, and is continued

to the end of the 39th chapter. It relates to some matters that are

said to have passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah; at

which time Isaiah lived. This fragment of history begins and ends

abruptly; it has not the least connection with the chapter that

precedes it, nor with that which follows it, nor with any other in the

book. It is probable that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself,

because he was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but, except

this part, there are scarcely two chapters that have any connection

with each other; one is entitled, at the beginning of the first verse,

"The burden of Babylon;" another, "The burden of Moab;" another
"The burden of Damascus;" another, "The burden of Egypt;" another,
"The burden of the desert of the sea;" another, "The burden of the
valley of vision"*- as you would say, "The story of the Knight of the

Burning Mountain," "The story of Cinderella," or "The Children in

the Wood," etc., etc.

    *See beginning of chapters xiii, xv, xvii, xix, xxi and xxii.

    I have already shown, in the instance of the two last verses of

Chronicles, and the three first in Ezra, that the compilers of the

Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each

other, which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to

destroy the authenticity of any compilation, because it is more than

presumptive evidence that the compilers were ignorant who the

authors were. A very glaring instance of this occurs in the book

ascribed to Isaiah; the latter part of the 44th chapter and the

beginning of the 45th, so far from having been written by Isaiah,

could only have been written by some person who lived at least a

hundred and fifty years after Isaiah was dead.

    These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews

to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild

Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of

the 44th chapter and the beginning of the 45th, are in the following

words: "That saith of Cyrus; He is my shepherd and shall perform all

my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shall be built, and to the

temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his

annointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations
before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the
two-leaved gates and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before
thee," etc.

    What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose

this book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah,

according to their own chronology, died soon after the death of

Hezekiah, which was 693 years before Christ, and the decree of

Cyrus, in favor of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according

to the same chronology, 536 years before Christ, which is a distance

of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the

compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked

up some loose anonymous essays, and put them together under the

names of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have

encouraged the imposition, which is next to inventing it, for it was

impossible but they must have observed it.

    When we see the studied craft of the Scripture-makers, in making

every part of this romantic book of schoolboy's eloquence bend to

the monstrous idea of a Son of God begotten by a ghost on the body

of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting

them of. Every phrase and circumstance is marked with the barbarous

hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was

impossible they could have. The head of every chapter and the top of

every page are blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church,

that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to

read.

    "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son," Isaiah, chap.

vii. ver. 14, has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus

Christ, and his mother Mary, and has been echoed through
Christendom for more than a thousand years; and such has been
the rage of this opinion that scarcely a spot in it but has been
stained with blood, and marked with desolation in consequence of it.
Though it is not my intention to enter into controversy on subjects
of this kind, but to confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious,
and thus, by taking away the foundation, to overthrow at once the
whole structure of superstition raised thereon, I will, however, stop
a moment to expose the fallacious application of this passage.

    Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to

whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to

show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more

reference to Christ and his mother than it has to me and my mother.

The story is simply this: The king of Syria and the king of Israel, (I

have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations,

one of which was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem,
and the other Israel), made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah,
and marched their armies toward Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people
became alarmed, and the account says, verse 2, "And his heart was
moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are
moved with the wind."

    In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and

assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the

prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and

to satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign.

This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason that

he would not tempt the Lord upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker,

says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign,

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the 16th verse

says, "For before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose

the good, the land that thou abhorrest, (or dreadest, meaning Syria

and the kingdom of Israel) shall be forsaken of both her kings."

Here then was the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the

assurance or promise, namely, before this child should know to

refuse the evil and choose the good.

    Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to

him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet and the

consequence thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It

certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find

a girl with child, or to make her so, and perhaps Isaiah knew of one

beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were

any more to be trusted than the priests of this. Be that, however,

as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, "And I took unto me

faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the

son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she

conceived and bare a son."

    Here, then, is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child

and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this

story, that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid

interests of priests in later times, have founded a theory which

they call the Gospel; and have applied this story to signify the

person they call Jesus Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom

they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage, and

afterward married, whom they call a virgin, 700 years after this

foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I

hesitate not to disbelieve, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as

God is true.*

    *In the 14th verse of the 7th chapter, it is said that the child

should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to either of

the children otherwise than as a character which the word signifies.

That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalal-hash-baz, and that of

Mary was called Jesus.

    But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah, we have only

to attend to the sequel of this story, which, though it is passed over

in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in the 28th chapter of

the second Chronicles, and which is, that instead of these two kings

failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had

pretended to foretell in the name of the Lord, they succeeded; Ahaz

was defeated and destroyed, a hundred and twenty thousand of his

people were slaughtered, Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred

thousand women, and sons and daughters, carried into captivity. Thus

much for this lying prophet and impostor, Isaiah, and the book of

falsehoods that bears his name.

    I pass on to the book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is

called, lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in

the reign of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah; and the suspicion was

strong against him that he was a traitor in the interests of

Nebuchadnezzar. Everything relating to Jeremiah shows him to have
been a man of an equivocal character; in his metaphor of the potter
and the clay, chap. xviii., he guards his prognostications in such a
crafty manner as always to leave himself a door to escape by, in
case the event should be contrary to what he had predicted.

    In the 7th and 8th verses of that chapter he makes the Almighty to

say, "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and

concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it.

If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their

evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them."

Here was a proviso against one side of the case; now for the other

side.

    Verses 9 and 10, "And at what instant I shall speak concerning a

nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do

evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice; then I shall repent of

the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." Here is a proviso

against the other side; and, according to this plan of prophesying,

a prophet could never be wrong, however mistaken the Almighty
might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of
speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent
with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.

    As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read

it, in order to decide positively that, though some passages

recorded therein may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the

author of the book. The historical parts, if they can be called by

that name, are in the most confused condition; the same events are

several times repeated, and that in a manner different, and

sometimes in contradiction to each other; and this disorder runs

even to the last chapter, where the history upon which the greater

part of the book has been employed begins anew, and ends abruptly.
The book has all the appearance of being a medley of unconnected
anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time, collected
together in the same rude manner as if the various and contradictory
accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers respecting
persons and things of the present day, were put together without
date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three examples of this
kind.

    It appears, from the account of the 37th chapter, that the army of

Nebuchadnezzar, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had

besieged Jerusalem some time, and on their hearing that the army of

Pharaoh, of Egypt, was marching against them they raised the siege
and retreated for a time. It may here be proper to mention, in order to

understand this confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged
and taken Jerusalem during the reign of Jehoiakim, the predecessor of

Zedekiah; and that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had made Zedekiah king,
or rather viceroy; and that this second siege, of which the book of

Jeremiah treats, was in consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah

against Nebuchadnezzar. This will in some measure account for the

suspicion that affixes to Jeremiah of being a traitor and in the

interest of Nebuchadnezzar; whom Jeremiah calls, in the 43d chapter,

ver. 10, the servant of God.

    The 11th verse of this chapter (the 37th), says, "And it came to

pass, that, when the army of the Chaldeans was broken up from

Jerusalem, for fear of Pharoah's army, that Jeremiah went forth out of

Jerusalem, to go (as this account states) into the land of Benjamin,

to separate himself thence in the midst of the people, and when he
was in the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the ward was there, whose
name was Irijah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah, and he
took Jeremiah the prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans.
Then said Jeremiah, It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans." Jeremiah
being thus stopped and accused, was, after being examined, committed
to prison on suspicion of being a traitor, where he remained, as is stated
in the last verse of this chapter.

    But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of

Jeremiah which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his

imprisonment to another circumstance, and for which we must go back
to the 21st chapter. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent

Pashur, the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah the

priest, to Jeremiah to inquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose
army was then before Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said unto them, ver.
8 and 9, "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of

life, and the way of death; he that abideth in this city shall die

by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that

goeth out and falleth to the Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall

live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey."

    This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of

the 10th verse of the 21st chapter; and such is the disorder of this

book that we have to pass over sixteen chapters, upon various

subjects, in order to come at the continuation and event of this

conference, and this brings us to the first verse of the 38th chapter,

as I have just mentioned.

    The 38th chapter opens with saying, "Then Shepatiah, the son of

Mattan; Gedaliah, the son of Pashur; and Jucal, the son of

Shelemiah; and Pashur, the son of Malchiah (here are more persons

mentioned than in the 21st chapter), heard the words that Jeremiah
had spoken unto all the people, saying, Thus saith the Lord, He that

remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by the famine, and

by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans shall

live, for he shall have his life for prey, and shall live;" (which are

the words of the conference), therefore, (they say to Zedekiah), "We

beseech thee, let us put this man to death, for thus he weakeneth

the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of

all the people in speaking such words unto them; for this man

seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt." And at the 6th

verse it is said, "Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the

dungeon of Malchiah."

    These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one

ascribes his imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city:

the other to his preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his

being seized by the guard at the gate; the other to his being

accused before Zedekiah, by the conferees.*

    *I observed two chapters, 16th and 17th, in the first book of

Samuel, that contradict each other with respect to David, and the

manner he became acquainted with Saul; as the 37th and 38th
chapters of the book of Jeremiah contradict each other with respect
to the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment.

    In the 16th chapter of Samuel, it is said, that an evil spirit

of God troubled Saul, and that his servants advised him (as a

remedy) "to seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp."

And Saul said, [verse 17,] Provide me now a man that can play well,

and bring him to me. Then answered one of the servants, and said,

Behold I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in

playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in

matters, and a comely person, and the LORD is with him. Wherefore
Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, "Send me David thy son."
And [verse 21,] David came to Saul, and stood before him, and he
loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. And when the evil
spirit from God was upon Saul [ver. 23] that David took an harp, and
played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well."

    But the next chapter [17] gives an account, all different to this,

of the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is

ascribed to David's encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by

his father to carry provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th

verse of this chapter it is said, "And when Saul saw David go forth

against the Philistine [Goliah], he said unto Abner, the captain of

the host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy

soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou

whose son the stripling is. And as David returned from the slaughter

of the Philistine, Abner took him, and brought him before Saul with

the head of the Philistine in his hand. And Saul said to him, Whose

son art thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy

servant Jesse the Bethlehemite." These two accounts belie each

other, because each of them supposes Saul and David not to have

known each other before. This book, the Bible is too ridiculous even

for criticism.

    In the next chapter (the 39th) we have another instance of the

disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the

city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the

preceding chapters, particularly the 37th and 38, the 39th chapter

begins as if not a word had been said upon the subject; and as if

the reader was to be informed of every particular concerning it, for

it begins with saying, verse it, "In the ninth year of Zedekiah,

king of Judah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of

Babylon, and all his army, against Jerusalem, and they besieged it,"

etc.

    But the instance in the last chapter (the 52d) is still more

glaring, for though the story has been told over and over again,

this chapter still supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for

it begins by saying, ver. 1, "Zedekiah was one and twenty years old

when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem,

and his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of
Libnah. (Ver. 4,) And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign,
in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar,

king of Babylon, came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and

pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc.

    It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly

Jeremiah, could have been the writer of this book. The errors are such

as could not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose
a work. Were I, or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner,
nobody would read what was written; and everybody would suppose that
the writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to account for
this disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached, unauthenticated
anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-maker, under the name of
Jeremiah, because many of them refer to him and to the circumstances
of the times he lived in.

   Of the duplicity, and of the false prediction of Jeremiah, I shall

mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the Bible.

    It appears from the 38th chapter, that when Jeremiah was in

prison, Zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was

private, Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself

to the enemy. "If," says he (ver. 17,) "thou wilt assuredly go forth

unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live," etc.

Zedekiah was apprehensive that what passed at this conference should

be known, and he said to Jeremiah (ver. 25), "If the princes

[meaning those of Judah] hear that I have talked with thee, and they

come unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou

hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and we will not put thee

to death; and also what the king said unto thee; then thou shalt say

unto them, I presented my supplication before the king, that he

would not cause me to return to Jonathan's house to die there. Then

came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him: and he told them

according to all the words the king had commanded." Thus, this man

of God, as he is called, could tell a lie or very strongly

prevaricate, when he supposed it would answer his purpose; for

certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make his supplication,

neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he

employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender himself to

Nebuchadnezzar.

    In the 34th chapter is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah, in

these words (ver. 2), "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this

city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it

with fire; and thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but shalt surely

be taken, and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the

eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to

mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord,

O Zedekiah, king of Judah, Thus saith the Lord, of thee, Thou shalt

not die by the sword, but thou shalt die in peace; and with the

burnings of thy fathers, the former kings which were before thee, so

shall they burn odors for thee, and they will lament thee, saying, Ah,

lord; for I have pronounced the word, saith the Lord."

    Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of

Babylon, and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace,
and with the burning of odors, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as

Jeremiah had declared the Lord himself had pronounced), the reverse,

according to the 52nd chapter, was the case; it is there said (ver.

10), "And the king of Babylon slew the son of Zedekiah before his

eyes; Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and the king of Babylon

bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison

till the day of his death." What, then, can we say of these

prophets, but that they were impostors and liars?

    As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was

taken into favor by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the

captain of the guard (chap. xxxix. ver. 12), "Take him (said he) and

look well to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall
say unto thee." Jeremiah joined himself afterward to Nebuchadnezzar,
and went about prophesying for him against the Egyptians, who had
marched to the relief of Jerusalem while it was besieged. Thus much
for another of the lying prophets, and the book that bears his name. 

    I have been the more particular in treating of the books

ascribed to Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in

the books of Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The

remainder of the books ascribed to the men called prophets I shall not

trouble myself much about, but take them collectively into the

observations I shall offer on the character of the men styled

prophets.

   In the former part of the Age of Reason, I have said that the word

prophet was the Bible word for poet, and that the flights and

metaphors of Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are

now called prophecies. I am sufficiently justified in this opinion,

not only because the books called the prophecies are written in

poetical language, but because there is no word in the Bible, except

it be the word prophet, that describes what we mean by a poet. I

have also said, that the word signifies a performer upon musical

instruments, of which I have given some instances, such as that of a

company of prophets prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with

pipes, with harps, etc., and that Saul prophesied with them, I.

Sam., chap x., ver. 5. It appears from this passage, and from other

parts in the book of Samuel, that the word prophet was confined to

signify poetry and music; for the person who was supposed to have a

visionary insight into concealed things, was not a prophet but a seer*

(I. Sam., chap. ix., ver. 9); and it was not till after the word

seer went out of use (which most probably was when Saul banished
those he called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of

seeing, became incorporated into the word prophet.

    *I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds to the word

seer in English; but I observe it is translated into French by la

voyant, from the verb voir, to see; and which means the person who

sees, or the seer.

    According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and

prophesying, it signifies foretelling events to a great distance of

time, and it became necessary to the inventors of the Gospel to give

it this latitude of meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they

call the prophecies of the Old Testament to the times of the New;

but according to the Old Testament, the prophesying of the seer, and

afterward of the prophet, so far as the meaning of the word seer

incorporated into that of prophet, had reference only to things of the

time then passing, or very closely connected with it, such as the

event of a battle they were going to engage in, or of a journey, or of

any enterprise they were going to undertake, or of any circumstance

then pending, or of any difficulty they were then in; all of which had

immediate reference to themselves (as in the case already mentioned
of Ahaz and Isaiah with respect to the expression, "Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son,") and not to any distant future time. It

was that kind of prophesying that corresponds to what we call

fortune-telling, such as casting nativities, predicting riches,

fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for lost goods, etc.;

and it is the fraud of the Christian Church, not that of the Jews, and

the ignorance and the superstition of modern, not that of ancient

times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring, dreaming,

strolling gentry into the rank they have since had.

    But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they

had also a particular character. They were in parties, and they

prophesied for or against, according to the party they were with, as

the poetical and political writers of the present day write in defence

of the party they associate with against the other.

    After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and

that of Israel, each party had its prophets, who abused and accused

each other of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc.

    The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the prophets

of the party of Israel; and those of the party of Israel against those

of Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the

separation under the first two rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
The prophet that cursed or prophesied against the altar that Jeroboam

had built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah, where Rehoboam was

king; and he was waylaid on his return home, by a prophet of the party
of Israel, who said unto him (I. Kings, chap. xiii.), "Art thou the

man of God that came from Judah? and he said, I am." Then the

prophet of the party of Israel said to him, "I am a prophet also, as

thou art (signifying of Judah), and an angel spake unto me by the
word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house,
that he may eat bread and drink water: but (says the 18th verse) he
lied unto him." This event, however, according to the story, is that the

prophet of Judah never got back to Judah, for he was found dead on
the road, by the contrivance of the prophet of Israel, who, no doubt,

was called a true prophet by his own party, and the prophet of Judah a

lying prophet.

    In the third chapter of the second of Kings, a story is related of

prophesying or conjuring that shows, in several particulars, the

character of a prophet. Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and Jehoram,

king of Israel, had for a while ceased their party animosity, and

entered into an alliance; and these two, together with the king of

Edom, engaged in a war against the king of Moab. After uniting and

marching their armies, the story says, they were in great distress for

water; upon which Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not here a prophet of

the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord by him? and one of the

servants of the king of Israel said, Here is Elisha." [Elisha was

one of the party of Judah]. "And Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, said,

The word of the Lord is with him." The story then says, that these

three kings went down to Elisha (who, as I have said, was a

Judahmite prophet) saw the king of Israel, he said unto him, "What

have I to do with thee? get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to

the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay,

for the Lord hath called these three kings together, to deliver them

into the hands of Moab." [Meaning because of the distress they were in

for water.] Upon which Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth,

before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of

Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would not look towards thee, nor see

thee." Here is all the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We have

now to see the performance, or manner of prophesying.

    Ver. 15. "Bring me, (said Elisha,) a minstrel: And it came to

pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon

him." Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And

Elisha said, [singing most probably to the tune he was playing,]

Thus saith the Lord, make this valley full of ditches;" which was just

telling them what every countryman could have told them, without

either fiddle or farce, that the way to get water was to dig for it.

    But as every conjurer is not famous alike for the same thing, so

neither were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those

I have spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in

cursing. Elisha, whom I have just mentioned, was a chief in this

branch of prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in

the name of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured.
We are to suppose that those children were of the party of Israel; but
as those who will curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be

given to this story of Elisha's two she-bears as there is to that of

the Dragon of Wantley, of whom it is said:

           "Poor children three devoured he,

              That could not with him grapple;

           And at one sup he ate them up,

              As a man would eat an apple."

    There was another description of men called prophets, that

amused themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or

by day we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless, were but

little mischievous. Of this class are:

    Ezekiel and Daniel; and the first question upon those books, as

upon all the others, is, are they genuine? that is, were they

written by Ezekiel and Daniel?

    Of this there is no proof, but so far as my own opinion goes, I am

more inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My

reasons for this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do

not contain internal evidence to prove they were not written by

Ezekiel and Daniel, as the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Samuel,

etc., prove they were not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.

    Secondly, Because they were not written till after the

Babylonian captivity began, and there is good reason to believe that

not any book in the Bible was written before that period; at least

it is proveable, from the books themselves, as I have already shown,

that they were not written till after the commencement of the Jewish

monarchy.

    Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to Ezekiel

and Daniel are written agrees with the condition these men were in

at the time of writing them.

    Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly

employed or wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle

those books, been carried into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel

were, it would have greatly improved their intellects in comprehending

the reason for this mode of writing, and have saved them the trouble

of racking their invention, as they have done, to no purpose; for they

would have found that themselves would be obliged to write whatever

they had to write respecting their own affairs or those of their

friends or of their country, in a concealed manner, as those men

have done.

    These two books differ from all the rest for it is only these that

are filled with accounts of dreams and visions; and this difference

arose from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or

prisoners of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey

even the most trifling information to each other, and all their

political projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. The

pretend to have dreamed dreams and seen visions, because it was
unsafe for them to speak facts or plain language. We ought, however
to suppose that the persons to whom they wrote understood what they

meant, and that it was not intended anybody else should. But these

busy commentators and priests have been puzzling their wits to find

out what it was not intended they should know, and with which they

have nothing to do.

    Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon under the

first captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the

second captivity in the time of Zedekiah.

    The Jews were then still numerous, and had considerable force at

Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose that men in the situation

of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the recovery of their

country and their own deliverance, it is reasonable to suppose that

the accounts of dreams and visions with which those books are filled,

are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence, to facilitate

those objects- it served them as a cipher or secret alphabet. If

they are not thus, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense; or, at

least, a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of captivity;

but the presumption is they were the former.

    Ezekiel begins his books by speaking of a vision of cherubims

and of a wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river

Chebar, in the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose,

that by the cherubims he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where
they had figures of cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel (which,
as a figure, has always been understood to signify political contrivance)

the project or means of recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part of

this book, he supposes himself transported to Jerusalem and into the

temple; and he refers back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says

(chapter xliii, verse 3), that this last vision was like the vision on

the river Chebar; which indicates that those pretended dreams and

visions had for their object the recovery of Jerusalem, and nothing

further.

    As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the

dreams and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators
and priests have made of those books, that of converting them into

things which they call prophecies, and making them bend to times and

circumstances as far remote even as the present day, it shows the

fraud or the extreme folly to which credulity or priestcraft can go.

    Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men

situated as Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose country was overrun and

in the possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in

captivity abroad, or in slavery at home, or massacred, or in continual

danger of it; scarcely anything, I say, can be more absurd, than to

suppose that such men should find nothing to do but that of

employing their time and their thoughts about what was to happen to

other nations a thousand or two thousand years after they were dead;

at the same time, nothing is more natural than that they should

meditate the recovery of Jerusalem, and their own deliverance and
that this was the sole object of all the obscure and apparently frantic

writings contained in those books.

    In this sense, the mode of writing used in those two books,

being forced by necessity, and not adopted by choice, is not

irrational; but, if we are to use the books as prophecies, they are

false. In the 29th chapter of Ezekiel, speaking of Egypt, it is

said, (ver. II), "No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of

beast shall pass through it; neither shall it be inhabited for forty

years." This is what never came to pass, and consequently it is false,

as all the books I have already reviewed are. I here close this part

of the subject.

    In the former part of the Age of Reason I have spoken of Jonah,

and of the story of him and the whale. A fit story for ridicule, if it

was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to

try what credulity could swallow; for if it could swallow Jonah and

the whale, it could swallow anything.

    But, as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job

and of Proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the

Bible are originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of

the Gentiles into Hebrew; and as the book of Jonah, so far from

treating of the affairs of the Jews, says nothing upon that subject,

but treats altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that it

is a book of the Gentiles than of the Jews, and that it has been

written as a fable, to expose the nonsense and satirize the vicious

and malignant character of a Bible prophet, or a predicting priest.

    Jonah is represented, first, as a disobedient prophet, running

away from his mission, and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the

Gentiles, bound from Joppa to Tarshish; as if he ignorantly

supposed, by some paltry contrivance, he could hide himself where

God could not find him. The vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea, and

the mariners, all of whom are Gentiles, believing it to be a judgment,

on account of some one on board who had committed a crime, agreed
to cast lots to discover the offender, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

But, before this, they had cast all their wares and merchandise

overboard to lighten the vessel, while Jonah, like a stupid fellow,

was fast asleep in the hold.

    After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they

questioned him to know who and what he was? and he told them he
was a Hebrew; and the story implies that he confessed himself to be

guilty. But these Gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once,

without pity or mercy, as a company of Bible prophets or priests would

have done by a Gentile in the same case, and as it is related Samuel

had done by Agag and Moses by the women and children, they

endeavored to save him, though at the risk of their own lives, for the

account says, "Nevertheless (that is, though Jonah was a Jew and a

foreigner, and the cause of all their misfortunes and the loss of

their cargo,) the men rowed hard to bring it (the boat) to land, but

they could not for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against

them." Still, they were unwilling to put the fate of the lot into

execution, and they cried (says the account) unto the Lord, saying,

(v. 14,) "We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not

perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for

thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee." Meaning, thereby, that

they did not presume to judge Jonah guilty, since that he might be

innocent; but that they considered the lot that had fallen to him as a

decree of God, or as it pleased God. The address of this prayer

shows that the Gentiles worshipped one Supreme Being, and that they

were not idolaters, as the Jews represented them to be. But the

storm still continuing and the danger increasing, they put the fate of

the lot into execution, and cast Jonah into the sea, where,

according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up whole and alive.

    We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm in

the fish's belly. Here we are told that he prayed; but the prayer is a

made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without any

connection or consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all

to the condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a

Gentile, who might know something of the Psalms, could copy out for

him. This circumstance alone, were there no other, is sufficient to

indicate that the whole is a made-up story. The prayer, however, is

supposed to have answered the purpose, and the story goes on (taking
up at the same time the cant language of a Bible prophet), saying:
(chap. ii, ver. 10,) "And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited
out Jonah upon the dry land."

    Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he

sets out; and we have now to consider him as a preacher. The

distress he is represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his

own disobedience as the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is

supposed to have had, were sufficient, one would conceive, to have

impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution of his

mission; but, instead of this, he enters the city with denunciation

and malediction in his mouth, crying: (chap. iii. ver. 4,) "Yet

forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown."

    We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act

of his mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a

Bible-prophet, or of a predicting priest, appears in all that

blackness of character that men ascribe to the being they call the

devil.

    Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story,

to the east side of the city. But for what? not to contemplate, in

retirement, the mercy of his Creator to himself or to others, but to

wait, with malignant impatience, the destruction of Nineveh. It came

to pass, however, as the story relates that the Ninevites reformed,

and that God, according to the Bible phrase, repented him of the

evil he had said he would do unto them, and did it not. This, saith

the first verse of the last chapter, "displeased Jonah exceedingly,

and he was very angry." His obdurate heart would rather that all

Nineveh should be destroyed, and every soul, young and old, perish

in its ruins, than that his prediction should not be fulfilled. To

expose the character of a prophet still more, a gourd is made to

grow up in the night, that promised him an agreeable shelter from

the heat of the sun, in the place to which he had retired, and the

next morning it dies.

    Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to

destroy himself. "It is better, said he, for me to die than to

live." This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty

and the prophet, in which the former says, "Doest thou well to be

angry for the gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto

death; Then, said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which

thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a

night, and perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that

great city, in which are more than sixscore thousand persons that

cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?"

    Here is both the winding up of the satire and the moral of the

fable. As a satire, it strikes against the character of all the

Bible prophets, and against all the indiscriminate judgments upon men,
women, and children, with which this lying book, the Bible, is

crowded; such as Noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of

Sodom and Gomorrah, the extirpation of the Canaanites, even to the

sucking infants, and women with child, because the same reflection,

that there are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot
discern between their right hand and their left hand, meaning young

children, applies to all their cases. It satirizes also the supposed

partiality of the Creator for one nation more than for another.

    As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of

prediction; for as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes

inclined to wish it. The pride of having his judgment right hardens

his heart, till at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with

disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of his

predictions. This book ends with the same kind of strong and

well-directed point against prophets, prophecies, and indiscriminate

judgment, as the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the Bible,

about Abraham and the stranger, ends against the intolerant spirit

of religious persecution. Thus much for the book of Jonah.

    Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies,

I have spoken in the former part of the Age of Reason, and already

in this, where I have said that the word prophet is the Bible word for

poet, and that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of
which have become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of

circumstances, have been ridiculously erected into things called

prophecies, and applied to purposes the writers never thought of.
When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably
to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his congregation
as the meaning of the writer. The whore of Babylon has been the
common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of
keeping the strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations.

    There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the

lesser prophets, and as I have already shown that the greater are

impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little

ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the

priests, and both be forgotten together.

    I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a

wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and

the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick

them in the ground, but they will never make them grow. I pass on to

the books of the New Testament.

CHAPTER II

Turning to the New Testament

    The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of

the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

    As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child

before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth

should be executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing

that such a woman as Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus

existed; their mere existence is a matter of indifference about

which there is no ground either to believe or to disbelieve, and which

comes under the common head of, It may be so; and what then? The

probability, however, is that there were such persons, or at least

such as resembled them in part of the circumstances, because almost

all romantic stories have been suggested by some actual

circumstance; as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, not a word of

which is true, were suggested by the case of Alexander Selkirk.

    It is not the existence, or non-existence, of the persons that I

trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in

the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised
thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told,
is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman
engaged to be married, and while under this engagement she is,
to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious
pretence (Luke, chap. i., ver. 35), that "the Holy Ghost shall come
upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."
Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterward marries her, cohabits with
her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the
story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there
is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it.*

    *Mary, the supposed virgin-mother of Jesus, had several other

children, sons and daughters. See Matthew, chap. xiii, verses 55, 56.

    Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a

token of fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious

belief in God that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this

does, into ludicrous interpretations. This story is upon the face of

it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and

Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shows, as

is already stated in the former part of the Age of Reason, that the

Christian faith is built upon the heathen mythology.

    As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns

Jesus Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than

two years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same

spot, the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which

detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them

to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same

abundance. The New Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce
of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of

the unities. There are, however, some glaring contradictions, which,

exclusive of the fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient

to show the story of Jesus Christ to be false.

    I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first,

that the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that

story to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be

false; secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story

proves the whole cannot be true. The agreement does not prove true,

but the disagreement proves falsehood positively.

    The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books

ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first chapter of

Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the

third chapter of Luke, there is also given a genealogy of Jesus

Christ. Did those two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be

true, because it might, nevertheless, be a fabrication; but as they

contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood

absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood, and if

Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood; and as there is no

authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority

for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the

very first thing they say and set out to prove, they are not

entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterward. Truth is a

uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to

admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either,

then, the men called apostles are impostors, or the books ascribed

to them has been written by other persons and fathered upon them,
as is the case with the Old Testament.

    The book of Matthew gives, chap. i., ver 6, a genealogy by name

from David up through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and

makes there to be twenty-eight generations. The book of Luke gives

also a genealogy by name from Christ, through Joseph, the husband of

Mary, down to David, and makes there to be forty-three generations;

besides which, there are only the two names of David and Joseph that

are alike in the two lists. I here insert both genealogical lists, and

for the sake of perspicuity and comparison, have placed them both in

the same direction, that is from Joseph down to David.

  Genealogy according to Matthew.         Genealogy according to Luke.

     Christ        23 Josaphat               Christ        23 Neri

   2 Joseph        24 Asa                  2 Joseph        24 Melchi

   3 Jacob         25 Abia                 3 Heli          25 Addi

   4 Matthan       26 Roboam               4 Matthat       26 Cosam

   5 Eleazar       27 Solomon              5 Levi          27 Elmodam

   6 Eliud         28 David*               6 Melchi        28 Er

   7 Achim                                 7 Janna         29 Jose

   8 Sadoc                                 8 Joseph        30 Eliezer

   9 Azor                                  9 Mattathias    31 Jorim

  10 Eliakim                              10 Amos          32 Matthat

  11 Abiud                                11 Naum          33 Levi

  12 Zorobabel                            12 Esli          34 Simeon

  13 Salathiel                            13 Nagge         35 Juda

  14 Jechonias                            14 Maath         36 Joseph

  15 Josias                               15 Mattathias    37 Jonan

  16 Amon                                 16 Semei         38 Eliakim

  17 Manasses                             17 Joseph        39 Melea

  18 Ezekias                              18 Juda          40 Menan

  19 Achaz                                19 Joanna        41 Mattatha

  20 Joatham                              20 Rhesa         42 Nathan

  21 Ozias                                21 Zorobabel     43 David

  22 Joram                                22 Salathiel

    *From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of 1080

years; and as the lifetime of Christ is not included, there are but 27

full generations. To find therefore the average age of each person

mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it is

only necessary to divide 1080 years by 27, which gives 40 years for

each person. As the lifetime of man was then but the same extent it is

now, it is an absurdity to suppose that 27 following generations

should all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so,

when we are told, that Solomon, the next in succession to David,
had a house full of wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one
years of age. So far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is
not even a reasonable lie. This list of Luke gives about twenty-six years
for the average age, and this is too much.

    Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood

between them as these two accounts show they do) in the very

commencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of whom and of what
he was, what authority (as I have before asked) is there left for

believing the strange things they tell us afterward? If they cannot be

believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to

believe them when they tell us he was the son of God begotten by a

ghost, and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If

they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other?

If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why

are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured

also, and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious

reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story

naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and

related by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it not more

safe that we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief

of one God, which is Deism, than that we commit ourselves on an

ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent and contradictory tales?

    The first question, however, upon the books of the New

Testament, as upon those of the Old, is, Are they genuine? Were they

written by the persons to whom they are ascribed? for it is upon

this ground only that the strange things related therein have been

credited. Upon this point there is no direct proof for or against, and

all that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness, and doubtfulness

is the opposite of belief. The state, therefore, that the books are

in, proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go.

    But exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called

the Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were

not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and that they are

impositions. The disordered state of the history in those four

books, the silence of one book upon matters related in the other,

and the disagreement that is to be found among them, implies that
they are the production of some unconnected individuals, many
years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made
his own legend; and not the writings of men living intimately
together, as the men called the apostles are supposed to have
done - in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books of
the Old Testament have been, by other persons than those whose
names they bear.

    The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the

immaculate conception is not so much as mentioned in the books

ascribed to Mark and John; and is differently related in Matthew and

Luke. The former says the angel appeared to Joseph; the latter says it

was to Mary; but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that

could have been thought of, for it was others that should have

testified for them, and not they for themselves. Were any girl that is

now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten

with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be

believed? Certainly she would not. Why, then, are we to believe the

same thing of another girl, whom we never saw, told by nobody knows

who, nor when, nor where? How strange and inconsistent it is, that the

same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a probable

story, should be given as a motive for believing this one, that has

upon the face of it every token of absolute impossibility and

imposture!

    The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years

old, belongs altogether to the book of Matthew; not one of the rest

mentions anything about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the

universality of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the

thing would have been too striking to have been omitted by any. This

writer tells us, that Jesus escaped this slaughter because Joseph

and Mary were warned by an angel to flee with him unto Egypt; but he

forgot to make any provision for John, who was then under two years
of age. John, however, who stayed behind, fared as well as Jesus, who

fled; and, therefore, the story circumstantially belies itself.

    Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the

same words, the written inscription, short as it is, which they tell

us was put over Christ when he was crucified; and besides this, Mark

says: He was crucified at the third hour (nine in the morning), and

John says it was the sixth hour (twelve at noon).*

    *According to John, the sentence was not passed till about the

sixth hour (noon), and, consequently, the execution could not be

till the afternoon; but Mark says expressly, that he was crucified

at the third hour (nine in the morning), chap. xv, verse 25. John,

chap. xix, verse 14.

    The inscription is thus stated in these books:

       MATTHEW. This is Jesus, the king of the Jews.

       MARK.... The king of the Jews.

       LUKE.... This is the king of the Jews.

       JOHN.... Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.

    We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that

those writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived,

were not present at the scene. The only one of the men called apostles

who appears to have been near the spot was Peter, and when he was

accused of being one of Jesus' followers, it is said, (Matthew,

chap. xxvi., ver. 74,) "Then he [Peter] began to curse and to swear,

saying, I know not the man!" yet we are now called upon to believe
the same Peter, convicted, by their own account, of perjury. For what

reason, or on what authority, shall we do this?

    The accounts that are given of the circumstances that they tell us

attended the crucifixion are differently related in these four books.

    The book ascribed to Matthew says, chap. xxvii, v. 45, "Now from

the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth

hour." Ver. 51, 52, 53, "And, behold, the veil of the temple was

rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and

the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the

saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his

resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many."

Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of Matthew

gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other

books.

    The writer of the book ascribed to Mark, in detailing the

circumstances of the crucifixion, makes no mention of any

earthquake, nor of the rocks rending, nor of the graves opening, nor

of the dead men walking out. The writer of the book of Luke is

silent also upon the same points. And as to the writer of the book

of John, though he details all the circumstances of the crucifixion

down to the burial of Christ, he says nothing about either the

darkness- the veil of the temple- the earthquake- the rocks- the

graves- nor the dead men.

    Now, if it had been true that those things had happened, and if

the writers of those books had lived at the time they did happen,

and had been the persons they are said to be, namely, the four men

called apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it was not possible for

them, as true historians, even without the aid of inspiration, not

to have recorded them. The things, supposing them to have been

facts, were of too much notoriety not to have been known, and of too

much importance not to have been told. All these supposed apostles

must have been witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any;
for it was not possible for them to have been absent from it; the

opening of the graves and the resurrection of the dead men, and

their walking about the city, is of greater importance than the

earthquake. An earthquake is always possible and natural, and proves

nothing but this opening of the graves is supernatural, and directly

in point to their doctrine, their cause, and their apostleship. Had it

been true, it would have filled up whole chapters of those books,

and been the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers; but

instead of this, little and trivial things, and mere prattling

conversations of, he said this, and he said that, are often

tediously detailed, while this, most important of all, had it been

true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash of the

pen, and that by one writer only, and not so much as hinted at by

the rest.

    It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to

support the lie after it is told. The writer of the book of Matthew

should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and

went into the city, and what became of them afterward, and who it

was that saw them- for he is not hardy enough to say he saw them

himself; whether they came out naked, and all in natural buff,

he-saints and she-saints; or whether they came full dressed, and
where they got their dresses; whether they went to their former
habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their
property, and how they were received; whether they entered
ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought actions
of crim. con. against the rival interlopers; whether they remained on
earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or working;
or whether they died again, or went back to their graves alive, and
buried themselves.

    Strange, indeed, that an army of saints should return to life, and

nobody know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that

not a word more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have
anything to tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had
formerly prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to
say. They could have told us everything and we should have had
posthumous prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first,
a little better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses and Aaron
and Joshua and Samuel and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained
in all Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the time
then present, everybody would have known them, and they would have
out-preached and out-famed all the other apostles. But, instead of this,
these saints were made to pop up, like Jonah's gourd in the night, for no
purpose at all but to wither in the morning. Thus much for this part of the
story.

    The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion,

and in this as well as in that, the writers, whoever they were,

disagree so much as to make it evident that none of them were there.

    The book of Matthew states that when Christ was put in the

sepulchre, the Jews applied to Pilate for a watch or a guard to be

placed over the sepulchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the

disciples; and that, in consequence of this request, the sepulchre was

made sure, sealing the stone that covered the mouth, and setting a

watch. But the other books say nothing about this application, nor

about the sealing, nor the guard, nor the watch; and according to

their accounts, there were none. Matthew, however, follows up this

part of the story of the guard or the watch with a second part, that I

shall notice in the conclusion, as it serves to detect the fallacy

of these books.

    The book of Matthew continues its account, and says (chap.

xxviii., ver. 1) that at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to

dawn, toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the

other Mary, to see the sepulchre. Mark says it was sun-rising, and

John says it was dark. Luke says it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna,
and Mary, the mother of James, and other women, that came to the

sepulchre; and John states that Mary Magdalene came alone. So well

do they agree about their first evidence! they all, however, appear to

have known most about Mary Magdalene; she was a woman of a large

acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might be

upon the stroll.

    The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2), "And behold there
was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from
heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat
upon it." But the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor
about the angel rolling back the stone and sitting upon it, and
according to their account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says
the angel was within the sepulchre, sitting on the right side. Luke says
there were two, and they were both standing up; and John says they
were both sitting down, one at the head and the other at the feet.

    Matthew says that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the

outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and

that the women went away quickly. Mark says that the women, upon

seeing the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the

sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was sitting within on the

right side, that told them so. Luke says it was the two angels that

were standing up; and John says it was Jesus Christ himself that

told it to Mary Magdalene, and that she did not go into the sepulchre,

but only stooped down and looked in.

    Now, if the writer of those four books had gone into a court of

justice to prove an alibi (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is

here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by

supernatural means), and had they given their evidence in the same

contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in

danger of having their ears cropped for perjury, and would have justly

deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books that

have been imposed upon the world, as being given by divine

inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.

    The writer of the book of Matthew, after giving this account

relates a story that is not to be found in any of the other books, and

which is the same I have just before alluded to.

    "Now," says he (that is, after the conversation the women had with

the angel sitting upon the stone), "behold some of the watch

[meaning the watch that he had said had been placed over the

sepulchre] came into the city, showed unto the chief priests all the

things that were done; and when they were assembled with the elders

and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers,

saying, Say ye His disciples came by night, and stole him away while

we slept; and if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade

him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were

taught; and this saying [that his disciples stole him away] is

commonly reported among the Jews until this day."

    The expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book

ascribed to Matthew was not written by Matthew, and that it had been

manufactured long after the time and things of which it pretends to

treat; for the expression implies a great length of intervening

time. It would be inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of

anything happening in our own time. To give therefore, intelligible

meaning to the expression, we must suppose a lapse of some
generations at least, for this manner of speaking carries the mind
back to ancient time.

    The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows

the writer of the book of Matthew to have been an exceedingly weak
and foolish man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of

possibility; for through the guard, if there were any, might be made

to say that the body was taken away while they were asleep, and to

give that as a reason for their not having prevented it, that same

sleep must also have prevented their knowing how and by whom it
was done, and yet they are made to say, that it was the disciples
who did it. Were a man to tender his evidence of something that he

should say was done, and of the manner of doing it, and of the

person who did it, while he was asleep, and could know nothing of

the matter, such evidence could not be received; it will do well

enough for Testament evidence, but not for anything where truth is

concerned.

    I come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that

respects the pretended appearance of Christ after this pretended

resurrection.

    The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was

sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two

Marys, chap. xxviii., ver. 7, "Behold Christ has gone before you

into Galilee, there shall ye see him; lo, I have told you." And the

same writer at the next two verses (8, 9), makes Christ himself to

speak to the same purpose to these women immediately after the
angel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to tell it to the

disciples; and at the 16th verse it is said, "Then the eleven

disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had

appointed them; and when they saw him, they worshiped him."

    But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different

to this; for he says, chap. xx., ver. 19, "Then the same day at

evening, being the first day of the week [that is, the same day that

Christ is said to have risen,] when the doors were shut where the

disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood

in the midst of them."

    According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee to meet

Jesus in a mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time when,

according to John, they were assembled in another place, and that

not by appointment, but in secret, for fear of the Jews.

    The writer of the book of Luke contradicts that of Matthew more

pointedly than John does; for he says expressly that the meeting was

in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he [Christ] rose, and

that the eleven were there. See Luke, chap. xxiv, ver. 13, 33.

    Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed

disciples the right of willful lying, that the writer of those books

could be any of the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according

to Matthew, the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain

by his own appointment on the same day that he is said to have

risen, Luke and John must have been two of that eleven; yet the
writer of Luke says expressly, and John implies as much, that the
meeting was that same day, in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the
other hand, if, according to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled
in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew must have been one of that eleven;
yet Matthew says the meeting was in a mountain in Galilee, and
consequently the evidence given in those books destroys each other.

    The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in

Galilee; but he says, chap. xvi, ver. 12, that Christ, after his

resurrection, appeared in another form to two of them as they walked

into the country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would

not believe them. Luke also tells a story in which he keeps Christ

employed the whole day of this pretended resurrection, until the

evening, and which totally invalidates the account of going to the

mountain in Galilee. He says that two of them, without saying which

two, went that same day to a village call Emmaus, three score furlongs

(seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and that Christ, in disguise,

went with them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped
with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and re-appeared that

same evening at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.

    This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this

pretended re-appearance of Christ is stated; the only point in which

the writers agree, is the skulking privacy of that re-appearance;

for whether it was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or a

shut-up house in Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause,

then, are we to assign this skulking? On the one hand it is directly

repugnant to the supposed or pretended end- that of convincing the

world that Christ had risen; and on the other hand, to have asserted

the publicity of it would have exposed the writers of those books to

public detection, and, therefore, they have been under the necessity

of making it a private affair.

    As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred

at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say

it for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and

that, too, of a man who did not, according to the same account,

believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have

happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of the

15th chapter of Corinthians, where this account is given, is like that

of a man who comes into a court of Justice to swear that what he had

sworn before is false. A man may often see reason, and he has, too,

always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty does not

extend to matters of fact.

    I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.

Here all fear of the Jews, and of everything else, must necessarily

have been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal

the whole, and upon which the reality of the future mission of the

disciples was to rest for proof. Words, whether declarations or

promises, that passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain

in Galilee or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even supposing them

to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public; it was therefore

necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of

denial and dispute, and that it should be, as I have stated in the

former part of the Age of Reason, as public and as visible as the

sun at noonday; at least it ought to have been as public as the

crucifixion is reported to have been. But to come to the point.

    In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say

a syllable about it; neither does the writer of the book of John. This

being the case, it is not possible to suppose that those writers,

who effect to be even minute in other matters, would have been

silent upon this, had it been true? The writer of the book of Mark

passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of

the pen, as if he was tired of romancing or ashamed of the story. So

also does the writer of Luke. And even between these two, there is not

an apparent agreement as to the place where his final parting is

said to have been.

    The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they

sat at meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem; he

then states the conversation that he says passed at that meeting;

and immediately after says (as a school-boy would finish a dull story)

"So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up
into heaven and sat on the right hand of God." But the writer of Luke
says, that the ascension was from Bethany; that he [Christ] led them
out as far as Bethany, and was parted from them, and was carried up
into heaven. So also was Mahomet; and as to Moses, the apostle Jude
says, ver. 9 "that Michael and the devil disputed about his body." While
we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we believe

unworthily of the Almighty.

    I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed
to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered that the
whole space of time from the crucifixion to what is called the

ascension is but a few days, apparently not more than three or four,

and that all the circumstances are said to have happened nearly

about the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find

in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities,

contradictions and falsehoods as are in those books. They are more

numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding when I

began this examination, and far more so than I had any idea of when

I wrote the former part of the Age of Reason. I had then neither Bible

nor Testament to refer to, nor could I procure any. My own

situation, even as to existence, was becoming every day more

precarious, and as I was willing to leave something behind me on the

subject, I was obliged to be quick and concise. The quotations I

then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the

opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear

and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are

impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus

Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath

of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous

inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;
that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean

now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character,

or the practice of what are called moral virtues- and that it was

upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all

my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now- and so help me God.

    But to return to the subject. Though it is impossible, at this

distance of time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those

four books (and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and

where we doubt we do not believe), it is not difficult to ascertain

negatively that they were not written by the persons to whom they

are ascribed. The contradictions in those books demonstrate two

things:

    First, that the writers could not have been eye-witnesses and

ear-witnesses of the matters they relate, or they would have related

them without those contradictions; and consequently, that the books

have not been written by the persons called apostles, who are
supposed to have been witnesses of this kind.

    Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in

concerted imposition; but each writer separately and individually

for himself, and without the knowledge of the other.

    The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally

to prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the

men called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted

imposition. As to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question;

we may as well attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration

and contradiction.

    If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they

will, without any concert between them, agree as to time and place

when and where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of

the thing, each one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally

unnecessary; the one will not say it was in a mountain in the country,

and the other at a house in town: the one will not say it was at

sunrise, and the other that it was dark. For in whatever place it was,

at whatever time it was, they know it equally alike.

    And, on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will

make their separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with

each other to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of

fact in the one case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in

the other case, the necessity of a concert. The same contradictions,

therefore, that prove that there has been no concert, prove also

that the reporters had no knowledge of the fact (or rather of that

which they relate as a fact), and detect also the falsehood of their

reports. Those books, therefore, have neither been written by the

men called apostles, nor by impostors in concert. How then have they

been written?

    I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of

that which is called willful lying, or lying originally, except in the

case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for

prophesying is lying professionally. In almost all other cases, it

is not difficult to discover the progress by which even simple

supposition, with the aid of credulity, will, in time, grow into a

lie, and at last be told as a fact; and whenever we can find a

charitable reason for a thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge

a severe one.

    The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story

of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in

vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of

the assassination of Julius Caesar, not many years before; and they

generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in the execution

of innocent persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid

and benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little

further till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost and

credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of

its appearance! one tells it one way, another another way, till

there are as many stories about the ghost and about the proprietor

of the ghost, as there are about Jesus Christ in these four books.

    The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that

strange mixture of the natural and impossible that distinguishes

legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in

and going out when the doors were shut, and of vanishing out of

sight and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial

vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his

supper. But as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for

all the cases, so it is here; they have told us that when he arose

he left his grave clothes behind him; but they have forgotten to

provide other clothes for him to appear in afterward, or to tell us

what he did with them when he ascended- whether he stripped all off,

or went up clothes and all. In the case of Elijah, they have been

careful enough to make him throw down his mantle; how it happened
not to be burned in the chariot of fire they also have not told us. But

as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may

suppose, if we please, that it was made of salamander's wool.

    Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history

may suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever

since the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books

ascribed to Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the

fact is historically otherwise. There was no such book as the New

Testament till more than three hundred years after the time that

Christ is said to have lived.

    At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John

began to appear is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not

the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote

them, nor at what time they were written; and they might as well

have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles,

as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the

possession of any Christian Church existing, any more than the two

tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon

Mount Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews.

And even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the

handwriting in either case. At the time those books were written there

was no printing, and consequently there could be no publication,

otherwise than by written copies, which any man might make or alter
at pleasure, and call them originals.* Can we suppose it is consistent

with the wisdom of the Almighty, to commit himself and his will to
man upon such precarious means as these, or that it is consistent we

should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We cannot make, nor

alter, nor even imitate so much as one blade of grass that he has

made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words

of man.

    *The former part of the “The Age of Reason” has not been published
in two years, and there is already an expression in it that is not mine.
The expression is, The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one voice
only. It may be true, but it is not I that have said it. Some person, who
might know of the circumstance, has added it in a note at the bottom of
the page of some of the editions, printed either in England or in America;
and the printers, after that, have placed it into the body of the work, and
made me the author of it. If this has happened within such a short space
of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration
of copies individually, what may not have happened in a much greater
length of time, when there was no printing, and when any man who could
write could make a written copy, and call it an original by Matthew, Mark,
Luke, or John?

    About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ

is said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of

were scattered in the hands of diverse individuals; and as the

church had began to form itself into a hierarchy, or church

government, with temporal powers, it set itself about collecting

them into a code, as we now see them, called The New Testament.
They decided by vote, as I have before said in the former part of
“The Age of Reason,” which of those writings, out of the collection
they had made, should be the word of God, and which should not.
The Rabbins of the Jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of
the Bible before.

    As the object of the church, as is the case in all national

establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the

means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous

and wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance

of being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote

stands in the place of it, for it can be traced no higher.

    Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling

themselves Christians; not only as to points of doctrine, but as to

the authenticity of the books. In the contest between the persons

called St. Augustine and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter

says: "The books called the Evangelists have been composed long

after the times of the apostles by some obscure men, who, fearing
that the world would not give credit to their relation of matters of

which they could not be informed, have published them under the

names of the apostles, and which are so full of sottishness and

discordant relations, that there is neither agreement nor connection

between them."

    And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those

books, as being the word of God, he says, "It is thus that your

predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many

things, which, though they carry his name agrees not with his

doctrines. This is not surprising, since that we have often proved

that these things have not been written by himself, nor by his

apostles, but that for the greater part they are founded upon tales,

upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what, half-Jews,

but with little agreement between them, and which they have

nevertheless published under the names of the apostles of our Lord,

and have thus attributed to them their own errors and their lies."*

    *I have these two extracts from Boulanger's Life of Paul,

written in French. Boulanger has quoted them from the writings of

Augustine against Fauste, to which he refers.

    The reader will see by these extracts, that the authenticity of

the books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as

tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word

of God.* But the interest of the church, with the assistance of the

fagot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all

investigation. Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe

them, and men were taught to say they believed whether they
believed or not. But (by way of throwing in a thought) the French
Revolution has excommunicated the church from the power of
working miracles; she has not been able, with the assistance of all
her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution began; and as
she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without the aid
of divination, conclude that all her former miracles were tricks and lies.

    *Boulanger, in his Life of Paul, has collected from the

ecclesiastical histories, and from the writings of fathers, as they

are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed

among the different sects of Christians at the time the Testament,

as we now see it, was voted to be the word of God. The following

extracts are from the second chapter of that work.

    "The Marcionists, (a Christian sect,) assumed that the evangelists

were filled with falsities. The Manicheans, who formed a very numerous
sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the
New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they
gave for authentic. The Cerinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted

not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites, and the Severians,

adopted neither the Acts nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a

homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his

time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the

author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time,

reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of Christians,

accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and

contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarines, who were the first

Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul and regarded him as an

impostor. They report, among other things, that he was originally a

pagan, that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that

having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he caused

himself to be circumcised: but that not being able to obtain her, he

quarreled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against

the observance of the sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances.

    When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years

intervening between the time that Christ is said to have lived and the

time the New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even

without the assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding

uncertainty there is of its authenticity. The authenticity of the book

of Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better established

than that of the New Testament, though Homer is a thousand years
the most ancient. It is only an exceedingly good poet that could have

written the book of Homer, and therefore few men only could have

attempted it; and a man capable of doing it would not have thrown
away his own fame by giving it to another. In like manner, there were
but few that could have composed Euclid's Elements, because none but
an exceedingly good geometrician could have been the author of that work.

    But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly

such parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any

person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's

walking could have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly

told. The chance, therefore, of forgery in the Testament, is

millions to one greater than in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the

numerous priests or parsons of the present day, bishops and all, every

one of them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of Latin,

especially if it had been translated a thousand times before; but is

there any among them that can write poetry like Homer, or science
like Euclid? The sum total of a person's learning, with very few

exceptions, is a b ab, and hic haec, hoc; and their knowledge of

science is three times one is three; and this is more than

sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time, to have

written all the books of the New Testament.

    As the opportunities of forgeries were greater, so also was the

inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the name
of Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be better
that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not succeed.
Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the latter. But with
respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all the

inducements were on the side of forgery. The best imagined history

that could have been made, at the distance of two or three hundred

years after the time, could not have passed for an original under

the name of the real writer; the only chance of success lay in

forgery, for the church wanted pretence for its new doctrine, and

truth and talents were out of the question.

    But as is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of

persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions

of such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and

as the people of that day were in the habit of believing such

things, and of the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of

their getting into people's insides and shaking them like a fit of

an ague, and of their being cast out again as if by an emetic- (Mary

Magdalene, the book of Mark tells us, has brought up, or been

brought to bed of seven devils)- it was nothing extraordinary that

some story of this kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus

Christ, and become afterward the foundation of the four books
ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each writer told the tale
as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his book the name of the
saint or the apostle whom tradition had given as the eye-witness. It
is only upon this ground that the contradiction in those books can be

accounted for; and if this be not the case, they are downright

impositions, lies and forgeries, without even the apology of

credulity.

   That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the

foregoing quotations mention, is discernable enough. The frequent

references made to that chief assassin and impostor, Moses, and to
the men called prophets, establish this point; and, on the other band,
the church has complemented the fraud by admitting the Bible and the

Testament to reply to each other. Between the Christian Jew and the

Christian Gentile, the thing called a prophecy and the thing

prophesied, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing

signified, have been industriously rummaged up and fitted together,

like old locks and pick-lock keys. The story foolishly enough told

of Eve and the serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity

between men and serpents (for the serpent always bites about the heel,
because it cannot reach higher; and the man always knocks the

serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to prevent its

biting*) this foolish story, I say, has been made into a prophecy, a

type, and a promise to begin with; and the lying imposition of

Isaiah to Ahaz, That a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, as a sign

that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that he was defeated

(as already noticed in the observations on the book of Isaiah), has

been perverted and made to serve as a winder up.

    *It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel. Genesis,

chap. iii, verse 15.

    Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign or a type. Jonah

is Jesus, and the whale is the grave; for it is said (and they have

made Christ to say it of himself), Matt. chap. xii, ver. 40, "For as

Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall

the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the

earth." But it happens, awkwardly enough, that Christ, according to

their own account, was but one day and two nights in the grave;

about 36 hours, instead of 72; that is, the Friday night, the

Saturday, and the Saturday night; for they say he was up on the
Sunday morning by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite as well
as the bite and the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah,

it will pass in the lump of orthodox things. Thus much for the

historical part of the Testament and its evidences.

    Epistles of Paul.- The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen

in number, almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament. Whether
those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed is
a matter of no great importance, since the writer, whoever he was,
attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to have
been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the
ascension, and he declares that he had not believed them.

    The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying

to Damascus has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he

escaped with life, and that is more than many others have done, who

have been struck with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for

three days, and be unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing

more than is common in such conditions. His companions that were

with him appear not to have suffered in the same manner, for they were
well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey; neither did they
pretend to have seen any vision.

    The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts

given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he

had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterward; the

stroke he had received had changed his thinking, without altering

his constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian, he was the

same zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine
they preach. They are always in extremes, as well of actions as of belief.

    The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument is the

resurrection of the same body, and he advances this as an evidence

of immortality. But so much will men differ in their manner of

thinking, and in the conclusions they draw from the same premises,

that this doctrine of the resurrection of the same body, so far from

being an evidence of immortality, appears to me to furnish an evidence
against it; for if I have already died in this body, and am raised again in
the same body in which I have lived, it is a presumptive evidence that I
shall die again. That resurrection no more secures me against the
repetition of dying, than an ague-fit, when passed, secures me against
another. To believe, therefore, in immortality, I must have a more
elevated idea than is contained in the gloomy doctrine of the resurrection.

    Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather

have a better body and a more convenient form than the present.

Every animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged

insects, without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more

space and with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an

hour. The glide of the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk,

exceeds us in motion almost beyond comparison, and without

weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a

dungeon, where a man, by the want of that ability, would perish; and
a spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful amusement. The

personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy frame so little

constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us

to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the

magnitude of the scene- too mean for the sublimity of the subject.

    But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is

the only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the

continuance of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of

existence, or the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined

to the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life.

    We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same

matter that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet
we are conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms,
which make up almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the

consciousness of existence. These may be lost or taken away, and the

full consciousness of existence remain; and were their place

supplied by wings, or other appendages, we cannot conceive that it

would alter our consciousness of existence. In short, we know not

how much, or rather how little, of our composition it is, and how

exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in us this consciousness

of existence; and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach,

distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the kernel.

    Who can say by what exceedingly fine action of fine matter it is

that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that

thought when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is

capable of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that

has that capacity.

    Statues of brass or marble will perish; and statues made in

imitation of them are not the same statues, nor the same

workmanship, any more than the copy of a picture is the same

picture. But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and

that with materials of any kind- carve it in wood or engrave it on

stone, the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in

every case. It has a capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by

change of matter, and is essentially distinct and of a nature

different from every thing else that we know or can conceive. If,

then, the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal,

it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is

the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be immortal

also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected

with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared

in. The one idea is not more difficult to believe than the other,

and we can see that one is true.

    That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same

form or the same matter is demonstrated to our senses in the works

of the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that

demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches
to us, far better that Paul, the belief of a life hereafter. Their little

life resembles an earth and a heaven- a present and a future state,

and comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in miniature.

    The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged

insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form and

that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and

creeping caterpillar-worm of to-day passes in a few days to a torpid

figure and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes

forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly.

No resemblance of the former creature remains; everything is

changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing.

We cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the
same in this state of the animal as before; why then must I believe
that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to
me the consciousness of existence hereafter?

    In the former part of the Age of Reason I have called the creation

the only true and real word of God; and this instance, or this text,

in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be

so, but that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a

rational belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation; for it is

not more difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a

better state and form than at present, than that a worm should

become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we

did not know it as a fact.

    As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in the 15th chapter

of I. Corinthians, which makes part of the burial service of some

Christian sectaries, it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a

bell at a funeral; it explains nothing to the understanding- it

illustrates nothing to the imagination, but leaves the reader to

find any meaning if he can. "All flesh (says he) is not the same

flesh. There is one flesh of men; another of beast; another of fishes;

and another of birds." And what then?- nothing. A cook could have

said as much. "There are also (says he) bodies celestial, and bodies

terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the

terrestrial is another." And what then?- nothing. And what is the

difference? nothing that he has told. "There is (says he) one glory of

the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the

stars." And what then?- nothing; except that he says that one star

differeth from another star in glory, instead of distance; and he

might as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright as

the sun. All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who

picks up phrases he does not understand, to confound the credulous

people who have come to have their fortunes told. Priests and

conjurors are of the same trade.

    Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist and to prove his

system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation. "Thou

fool, (says he), that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it

die." To which one might reply in his own language and say, "Thou

fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die

not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can

vegetate. It is only the living grains that produce the next crop."

But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile. It is

succession, and not resurrection.

    The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as

from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain

does not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.

    Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him

or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative

or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective and the dogmatical

part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the

same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament. It is not

upon the epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in

the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and upon

the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church calling itself

the Christian Church is founded. The epistles are dependent upon

those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be

fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it as a supposed truth must

fall with it.

    We know from history that one of the principal leaders of this

church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was
formed;* and we know also, from the absurd jargon he left us under
the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New
Testament; and we know also from the same history that the
authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the
time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius, that the Testament
was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a
more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote.
Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of
God, and have no foundation for future happiness; credulity, however,
is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is
strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain
truth. We should never force belief upon ourselves in anything.

    *Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the

year 371.

    I here close the subject of the Old Testament and the New. The

evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries is extracted from the
books themselves, and acts, like a two-edged sword, either way. If the
evidence be denied, the authenticity of the scriptures is denied

with it; for it is scripture evidence; and if the evidence be

admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved. The

contradictory impossibilities contained in the Old Testament and the

New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against.

Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys

reputation.

    Should the Bible and the New Testament hereafter fall, it is not I

that have been the occasion. I have done no more than extracted the

evidence from the confused mass of matter with which it is mixed,

and arranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen

and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader

to judge for himself, as I have judged for myself.

CHAPTER III

Conclusion

    In the former part of “The Age of Reason” I have spoken of the three
frauds, mystery, miracle, and prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in
any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have
there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part
with additions that are not necessary.

    I have spoken also in the same work upon what is called

revelation, and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to

the books of the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation

is out of the question in reciting anything of which man has been

the actor or the witness. That which a man has done or seen, needs

no revelation to tell him he had done it or seen it, for he knows it

already; nor to enable him to tell it or to write it. It is

ignorance or imposition to apply the term revelation in such cases:

yet the Bible and Testament are classed under this fraudulent

description of being all revelation.

    Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and

man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to

man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things
are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed,
and which, bye the bye, it is impossible to prove), is revelation to the
person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another person is
not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the
man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been
deceived, or may have dreamed it, or he may be an impostor and may
lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what
he tells, for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. In all
such cases the proper answer would be, "When it is revealed to me, I will
believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon
me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should
take the word of a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of
God." This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former
part of "The Age of Reason;" and which, while it reverentially admits

revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the

Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one

man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended

revelation.

    But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of

revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did

communicate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any
language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any
means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than
by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and
by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and the
disposition to do good ones.

    The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the

greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their

origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has

been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the

Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness

of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is

better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a

thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the

doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one

such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible

prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and

have credit among us.

    Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of

men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled, and the

bloody persecutions and tortures unto death, and religious wars,

that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes- whence

rose they but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and

this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the

Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of

the other.

    Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by

the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible
that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not the power;
but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful
to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake and fagot, too;
and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut
off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true), he would
have cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able.
Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the Bible, and the
Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use
of it- not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made no converts; they
butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the Testament, and both are called
the word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach
from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both.
It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.

    The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the

only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists

than Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they
call the scriptures a dead letter. Had they called them by a worse name,
they had been nearer the truth.

    It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the

Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial

miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick

among mankind, to expel all ideas of revealed religion, as a dangerous

heresy and an impious fraud. What is that we have learned from this

pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to

man, and everything that is dishonorable to his maker. What is it

the Bible teaches us?- rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the

Testament teaches us?- to believe that the Almighty committed

debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of

this debauchery is called faith.

    As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly

scattered in these books, they make no part of this pretended thing,

revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and

the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it

cannot exist, and are nearly the same in all religions and in all

societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and

where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. The

doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in

Proverbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews,

than it is in the Testament. It is there said, Proverbs xxv, ver.

21, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be

thirsty, give him water to drink;"* but when it is said, as in the

Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the

other also;" it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and

sinking man into a spaniel.

    *According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in

the book of Matthew, where, among some other good things, a great
deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said,

that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries,

was not any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine

is found in Proverbs it must, according to that statement, have been

copied from the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it. Those

men, whom Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called

heathens, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality

than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish;

or in the New. The answer of Solon on the question, Which is the

most perfect popular government? has never been exceeded by any
one since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality. "That,"

says he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is

considered as an insult on the whole constitution." Solon lived

about 500 years before Christ.

    Loving enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has

besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he

does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political

sense, for there is no end to retaliation, each retaliates on the

other, and calls it justice; but to love in proportion to the

injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for crime.

Besides the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a

moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a

proverb. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and

prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in

politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal

intention; and it is incumbent upon as, and it contributes also to our

own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing

that it will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no

motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love

voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically

impossible.

    Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first

place, are impossible to be performed; and, if they could be, would be

productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The

maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this

strange doctrine of loving enemies: for no man expects to be loved

himself for his crime or for his enmity.

    Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies are in

general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so

doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that

hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own

part I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous

morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted

him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution,

or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned

evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action

with a good one, or to return good for evil; and whenever it is

done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It is also absurd to

suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a revealed religion.

We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing with

each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would imply

that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he was

bad.

    If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there

is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we

want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach
to us the existence of an Almighty Power that governs and regulates
the whole? And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our

senses infinitely stronger than anything we can read in a book that

any impostor might make and call the word of God? As for morality,
the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.

    Here we are. The existence of an Almighty Power is sufficiently

demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible

we should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot

conceive how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that

we are here. We must know also that the power that called us into

being, can, if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account

for the manner in which we have lived here; and, therefore, without

seeking any other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe

that he will, for we know beforehand that he can. The probability or

even possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if

we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our

belief would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue.

    Deism, then, teaches us, without the possibility of being

deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is

the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the

Creator himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability

of his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him

forgeries. The probability that we may be called to account

hereafter will, to a reflecting mind, have the influence of belief;

for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the

fact. As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should

be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher,

or even the prudent man, that would live as if there were no God.

    But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the

strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures

related in the Bible, and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the

Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all

these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and

as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all. But

the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things, and

ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods

has enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs

acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided

it is weakened.

    Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of

fact- of notion, instead of principles; morality is banished to make

room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its

origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of God;

an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves

with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the

brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits

of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and

condemn the Jews for doing it. A man, by hearing all this nonsense

lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation with

the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none.

    Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is

none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more

repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing

called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to

convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart

torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of

power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth,

the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in

general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

    The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it

every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism. It

must have been the first, and will probably be the last, that man

believes. But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of

despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine,

but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority
a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by

incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming,

like the government, a party in the system. It is this that forms

the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church

humane, and the state tyrannic.

    Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with

the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of

that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would

not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this

belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts

alone. This is Deism. But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian

scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another

part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible

that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits.*

    *The book called the book of Matthew says, chap, iii, verse 16,

that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well

have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one

is as much of a nonsensical lie as the other. The second of Acts,

verse, 2, 3, says that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the

shape of cloven tongues, perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff

is only fit for tales of witches and wizards.

    It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the

other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the

Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his

rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and

are calculated for mutual support. The study of theology, as it stands

in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on

nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities;

it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no

conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our

being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as

this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the

study of nothing.

    Instead then, of studying theology, as is now done, out of the

Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are always

controverted and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is

necessary that we refer to the Bible of the creation. The principles

we discover there are eternal and of divine origin; they are the

foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be

the foundation of theology.

    We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a

conception of any one attribute but by following some principle that

leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not

the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have

no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it
acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the

Creator of man is the Creator of science; and it is through that

medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.

    Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with the power

of vision, to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the

structure of the universe; to mark the movements of the several

planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order in

which they revolve, even to the remotest comet; their connection and

dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws established
by the Creator, that governs and regulates the whole, he would then
conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach him, the power,
the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the Creator; he would then
see, that all the knowledge man has of science, and that all the mechanical
arts by which he renders his situation comfortable here, are derived from
that source; his mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact,
would increase in gratitude as it increased in knowledge; his religion or his
worship would become united with his improvement as a man; any employment
he followed, that had any connection with the principles of the creation, as
everything of agriculture, of science and of the mechanical arts has, would
teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any
theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects inspire great thoughts;
great munificence excites great gratitude; but the groveling tales and doctrines
of the Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite contempt.

    Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual

scene I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has a

knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed.*

We know that the works can be represented in model, and that the

universe can be represented by the same means. The same principles

by which we measure an inch, or an acre of ground, will measure to

millions in extent. A circle of an inch diameter has the same

geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the

universe. The same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon

paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and when

applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a

minute the time of an eclipse, though these bodies are millions of

miles from us. This knowledge is of divine origin, and it is from

the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from the

stupid Bible of the church, that teacheth man nothing.

    *The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter

of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this, they have

demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have
been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there
was a sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the
cause of day and night, and what is called his rising and setting that
of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to

suppose the Almighty to say, Let there be light. It is the imperative
manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups
and balls, Presto, begone, and most probably has been taken from it;
as Moses and his rod are a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this
expression the sublime; and by the same rule, the conjuror is sublime
too, for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the
same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how
nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like some
parts of Edmund Burke's Sublime and Beautiful, is like a windmill just
visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying mountain,
or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.

    All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the

aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and

without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and

condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and

structure of the universe. The constant and unwearied observations

of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly

bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world,

have brought this knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the

prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The

Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation; the first

philosopher and original teacher of all science. Let us, then, learn

to reverence our master, and let us not forget the labors of our

ancestors.

    Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it

possible that man could have a view, as I have before described, of

the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive

the idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we

now have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in

practice. Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an

orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would

arrive at the same idea. Such an object and such a subject would,

while it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a

member of society, as well as entertaining, afford far better matter

for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in, the

Creator, and of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him,
than the stupid texts of the Bible and of the Testament from which, be

the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can

be preached. If man must preach, let him preach something that is

edifying, and from texts that are known to be true.

    The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of

science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with
the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of

inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy -

for gratitude as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that

if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every

preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly; and every house of

devotion a school of science.

    It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and

the right use of reason, and setting up an invented thing called

revealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have

been formed of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of

the human species to make room for the religion of the Jews. The

Christians have made him the murderer of himself and the founder of

a new religion, to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to

find pretence and admission for these things, they must have

supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable;

and the changeableness of the will is imperfection of the judgement.

The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never

changed with respect either to the principles of science, or the

properties of matter. Why, then, is it supposed they have
changed with respect to man?

    I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing

parts of this work, that the Bible and Testament are impositions and

forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it, to

be refuted, if any one can do it: and I leave the ideas that are

suggested in the conclusion of the work, to rest on the mind of the

reader; certain as I am, that when opinions are free, either in

matters of government or religion, truth will finally and powerfully

prevail.

                         END OF THE SECOND PART.

                                THE END