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+Project Gutenberg's The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume IV., by Thomas Paine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume IV.
+       1794-1796.
+
+Author: Thomas Paine
+
+Editor: Moncure Daniel Conway
+
+Release Date: February, 2003  [Etext #3743]
+Posting Date: February 12, 2010
+[Last updated: January 4, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Norman M. Wolcott
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE
+
+By Thomas Paine
+
+
+Collected And Edited By Moncure Daniel Conway
+
+VOLUME IV.
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF REASON
+
+
+(1796)
+
+
+   Contents
+
+   Editor's Introduction
+
+                     Part One
+  Chapter I - The Author's Profession Of Faith
+  Chapter II - Of Missions And Revelations
+  Chapter III - Concerning The Character of Jesus Christ, And His History
+  Chapter IV - Of The Bases Of Christianity
+  Chapter V - Examination In Detail Of The Preceding Bases
+  Chapter VI - Of The True Theology
+  Chapter VII - Examination Of The Old Testament
+  Chapter VIII - Of The New Testament
+  Chapter IX - In What The True Revelation Consists
+  Chapter X - Concerning God, And The Lights Cast On His Existence And
+              Attributes By The Bible
+  Chapter XI - Of The Theology Of The Christians; And The True Theology
+  Chapter XII - The Effects Of Christianism On Education; Proposed Reforms
+  Chapter XIII - Comparison Of Christianism With The Religious Ideas
+                 Inspired By Nature
+  Chapter XIV - System Of The Universe
+  Chapter XV - Advantages Of The Existence Of Many Worlds In Each Solar
+               System
+  Chapter XVI - Applications Of The Preceding To The System Of The
+                Christians
+  Chapter XVII - Of The Means Employed In All Time, And Almost
+                 Universally, To Deceive The Peoples
+  Recapitulation
+
+                          Part Two
+  Preface
+  Chapter I - The Old Testament
+  Chapter II - The New Testament
+  Chapter III - Conclusion
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
+
+WITH SOME RESULTS OF RECENT RESEARCHES.
+
+IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its
+king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every
+tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a
+great English and American heart--Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis
+Capet--"Kill the king but spare the man." Now he pleaded,--"Disbelieve
+in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of
+Mankind!"
+
+In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason" he
+describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year
+1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has
+since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an
+order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General,
+for putting me in arrestation." This was on the morning of December 28.
+But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted--"in the state it has
+since appeared." For on August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an
+appeal for Paine's liberation, wrote as follows: "I deliver to Merlin
+de Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason],
+formerly our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding
+foreigners from the national representation. This book was written by
+the author in the beginning of the year '93 (old style). I undertook its
+translation before the revolution against priests, and it was published
+in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent it, seemed
+offended with me for having translated this work."
+
+Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of
+Robespierre, this early publication seems to have been so effectually
+suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France
+or elsewhere. In Paine's letter to Samuel Adams, printed in the present
+volume, he says that he had it translated into French, to stay the
+progress of atheism, and that he endangered his life "by opposing
+atheism." The time indicated by Lanthenas as that in which he submitted
+the work to Couthon would appear to be the latter part of March, 1793,
+the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees
+against them of March 19 and 26. If the moral deformity of Couthon, even
+greater than that of his body, be remembered, and the readiness with
+which death was inflicted for the most theoretical opinion not approved
+by the "Mountain," it will appear probable that the offence given
+Couthon by Paine's book involved danger to him and his translator.
+On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name of Lanthenas was
+included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day Danton persuaded
+Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might be in danger.
+Whether this was because of the "Age of Reason," with its fling at the
+"Goddess Nature" or not, the statements of author and translator
+are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the manuscript, with
+considerable additions and changes, for publication in English, as he
+has stated in the Preface to Part II.
+
+A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence,
+proved to me that the translation sent by Lanthenas to Merlin de
+Thionville in 1794 is the same as that he sent to Couthon in 1793. This
+discovery was the means of recovering several interesting sentences
+of the original work. I have given as footnotes translations of such
+clauses and phrases of the French work as appeared to be important.
+Those familiar with the translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded
+that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the manuscript
+before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an
+instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor would
+Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his translation.
+This original work was divided into seventeen chapters, and these I have
+restored, translating their headings into English. The "Age of Reason"
+is thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its original
+completeness.
+
+It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his
+"Age of Reason" (Part I.) which went through the press while he was in
+prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as
+abbreviated in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the
+dropping out of his estimate of Jesus the words rendered by Lanthenas
+"trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu." The addition of these
+words to Paine's tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only
+recognition of the human character and life of Jesus by any theological
+writer of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel.
+
+To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be
+attributed the preservation in it of the singular error already alluded
+to, as one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have
+corrected. This is Paine's repeated mention of six planets, and
+enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of Uranus. Paine
+was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be
+supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of
+Herschel's discovery. The omission of any allusion to it convinces me
+that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written
+before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Unfamiliar with French in 1793,
+Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas' translation,
+and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as
+possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for English
+readers. But he had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an
+erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light
+on the paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work. He
+states that soon after his publication of "Common Sense" (1776), he "saw
+the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government
+would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion," and that
+"man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of
+one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his
+intention to publish his thoughts upon religion, and he had made a
+similar remark to John Adams in 1776. Like the Quakers among whom he
+was reared Paine could then readily use the phrase "word of God" for
+anything in the Bible which approved itself to his "inner light," and
+as he had drawn from the first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation
+of monarchy, John Adams, a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the
+inspiration of the Old Testament. Paine replied that he did not, and
+at a later period meant to publish his views on the subject. There is
+little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during
+the American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on
+the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable
+method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery) without
+publishing it. At any rate it appears to me certain that the part of
+"The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite science, astronomy,
+was written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.
+
+Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian
+phraseology, was a birthright. It appears clear from several allusions
+in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers that in his early life, or
+before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called were
+substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of Paine's statements
+concerning them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo
+Tolstoi to the London 'Times' of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy
+(The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last century,
+and the narrative says:
+
+"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya'
+were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia. The fundamental
+idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God
+himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives
+in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually. To Christ, as to an
+historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance...
+Christ was God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves
+'sons of God.' The purpose of Christ's sufferings was no other than to
+show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in 1818,
+visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious
+subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus
+Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From the Old and New
+Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,' mostly the moral
+teaching.... The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the following:--All
+men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may
+be, are worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have
+directed further, against the State authority.... Amongst themselves
+they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be
+contrary to their ideas."
+
+Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the
+birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American
+Quakers refused burial among them. Although Paine arraigned the union
+of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious; it was based on
+a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. This
+faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by
+a "Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or
+an Aristocracy. Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's
+"inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous
+republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age
+of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the
+apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox.
+
+Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.
+That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before
+publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out
+some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which he
+believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine in
+making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in England,
+in 1786: "My employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the
+common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem to establish
+any for himself." But five years later Paine was able to lay the
+corner-stone of his temple: "With respect to religion itself, without
+regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of
+mankind to the 'Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to
+his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ
+from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of
+every one, is accepted." ("Rights of Man." See my edition of Paine's
+Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of George Fox
+confuting the doctor in America who "denied the light and Spirit of
+God to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians.
+Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him 'whether or not, when
+he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that
+reproved him for it?' He said, 'There was such a thing in him that did
+so reprove him; and he was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken
+wrong.' So we shamed the doctor before the governor and the people."
+(Journal of George Fox, September 1672.)
+
+Paine, who coined the phrase "Religion of Humanity" (The Crisis, vii.,
+1778), did but logically defend it in "The Age of Reason," by denying a
+special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in
+any particular creed of church; and the centenary of this much-abused
+publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of
+Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his "Foundations of Belief,"
+affirms that "inspiration" cannot be denied to the great Oriental
+teachers, unless grapes may be gathered from thorns.
+
+The centenary of the complete publication of "The Age of Reason,"
+(October 25, 1795), was also celebrated at the Church Congress, Norwich,
+on October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of Manchester,
+read a paper in which he said: "I cannot deny that the increase of
+scientific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier books of the
+Bible of the historical value which was generally attributed to them by
+our forefathers. The story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we
+play fast and loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought
+into harmony with what we have learnt from geology. Its ethnological
+statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories of
+the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are incredible in
+their present form. Some historical element may underlie many of the
+traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot
+hope to recover." Canon Bonney proceeded to say of the New Testament
+also, that "the Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly
+contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations
+and even inaccuracies in details being introduced by oral tradition."
+The Canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be
+serious, but that any question of this kind is left open proves the Age
+of Reason fully upon us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are
+as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like
+it "serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors
+their charities. When men interpolate, it is because they believe their
+interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen by a note in Part II. of
+the work, that Paine calls attention to an interpolation introduced into
+the first American edition without indication of its being an editorial
+footnote. This footnote was: "The book of Luke was carried by a majority
+of one only. Vide Moshelm's Ecc. History." Dr. Priestley, then in
+America, answered Paine's work, and in quoting less than a page from the
+"Age of Reason" he made three alterations,--one of which changed "church
+mythologists" into "Christian mythologists,"--and also raised the
+editorial footnote into the text, omitting the reference to Mosheim.
+Having done this, Priestley writes: "As to the gospel of Luke being
+carried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine's
+own invention, of no better authority whatever." And so on with further
+castigation of the author for what he never wrote, and which he himself
+(Priestley) was the unconscious means of introducing into the text
+within the year of Paine's publication.
+
+If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man,
+and one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley could
+make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very
+wonderful when I state that in a modern popular edition of "The Age
+of Reason," including both parts, I have noted about five hundred
+deviations from the original. These were mainly the accumulated efforts
+of friendly editors to improve Paine's grammar or spelling; some were
+misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from the sale
+in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from the
+manuscript. These facts add significance to Paine's footnote (itself
+altered in some editions!), in which he says: "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."
+
+Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the
+far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into
+which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of
+their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance, speaking
+of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the acuteness,
+common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says
+"there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the
+adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation," and that
+they shared with their adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness of
+a priori philosophizing." [NOTE: Science and Christian Tradition, p.
+18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name Paine, evidently
+because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the
+turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced the
+'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside
+pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the
+Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many things from the
+rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the
+first to expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from Renan (being the
+first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and notably from Huxley,
+who has repeated Paine's arguments on the untrustworthiness of the
+biblical manuscripts and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives
+of Christ's resurrection, and various other points. None can be more
+loyal to the memory of Huxley than the present writer, and it is even
+because of my sense of his grand leadership that he is here mentioned as
+a typical instance of the extent to which the very elect of free-thought
+may be unconsciously victimized by the phantasm with which they are
+contending. He says that Butler overthrew freethinkers of the eighteenth
+century type, but Paine was of the nineteenth century type; and it was
+precisely because of his critical method that he excited more animosity
+than his deistical predecessors. He compelled the apologists to defend
+the biblical narratives in detail, and thus implicitly acknowledge
+the tribunal of reason and knowledge to which they were summoned. The
+ultimate answer by police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years
+ago England was suppressing Paine's works, and many an honest Englishman
+has gone to prison for printing and circulating his "Age of Reason."
+The same views are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of
+learning, and even in the Church Congress; but the suppression of Paine,
+begun by bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of
+the representatives of our Age of Reason to their pioneer and founder.
+It is a grievous loss to them and to their cause. It is impossible to
+understand the religious history of England, and of America, without
+studying the phases of their evolution represented in the writings
+of Thomas Paine, in the controversies that grew out of them with such
+practical accompaniments as the foundation of the Theophilanthropist
+Church in Paris and New York, and of the great rationalist wing of
+Quakerism in America.
+
+Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of Paine's
+time took the "Age of Reason" very seriously indeed. Beginning with
+the learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, a large number of
+learned men replied to Paine's work, and it became a signal for the
+commencement of those concessions, on the part of theology, which have
+continued to our time; and indeed the so-called "Broad Church" is to
+some extent an outcome of "The Age of Reason." It would too much enlarge
+this Introduction to cite here the replies made to Paine (thirty-six are
+catalogued in the British Museum), but it may be remarked that they
+were notably free, as a rule, from the personalities that raged in
+the pulpits. I must venture to quote one passage from his very learned
+antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., "late Fellow of Jesus
+College, Cambridge." Wakefield, who had resided in London during all the
+Paine panic, and was well acquainted with the slanders uttered against
+the author of "Rights of Man," indirectly brands them in answering
+Paine's argument that the original and traditional unbelief of the Jews,
+among whom the alleged miracles were wrought, is an important evidence
+against them. The learned divine writes:
+
+"But the subject before us admits of further illustration from the
+example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his opposition to
+the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries,
+and such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in
+blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions
+and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an
+impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a
+wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to
+identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will
+a true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited at that future
+period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and
+mighty accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently
+extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated
+by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a
+melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance
+from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of
+upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned
+in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these
+very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner of the
+kingdom?" After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine
+pleaded so earnestly,--while in England he was denounced as an
+accomplice in the deed,--he devoted himself to the preparation of a
+Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions and
+adding to them. This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in what
+was variously known as White's Hotel or Philadelphia House, in Paris,
+No. 7 Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early and fresh
+manuscripts (if my theory be correct) was labelled, "The Age of Reason,"
+and given for translation to Francois Lanthenas in March 1793. It is
+entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under the year 1793, but with
+the title "L'Age de la Raison" instead of that which it bore in
+1794, "Le Siecle de la Raison." The latter, printed "Au Burcau de
+l'imprimerie, rue du Theatre-Francais, No. 4," is said to be by "Thomas
+Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de l'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire
+du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre
+d'Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES
+DROITS DE L'HOMME."
+
+When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine,
+unwilling to participate in the decrees of a Convention whose sole legal
+function was to frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion
+and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose
+researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are
+original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives
+at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's
+landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I had
+supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to
+the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The
+arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on "Forgetfulness"
+(Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was
+that he had kept in his house "Paine and other Englishmen,"--Paine
+being then in prison,--but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry
+accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord."
+This Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis,
+whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or
+Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion
+(said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour),
+and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution
+(October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades,
+that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last literary bequest
+to the world,--"The Age of Reason,"--in the state in which it has since
+appeared, as he is careful to say. There was every probability, during
+the months in which he wrote (November and December 1793) that he would
+be executed. His religious testament was prepared with the blade of
+the guillotine suspended over him,--a fact which did not deter pious
+mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having written
+the book.
+
+In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first
+edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no
+doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on
+his way to the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American
+ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French archives cast an
+unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were
+taken with Paine's proofs.
+
+I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work
+on Paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any
+punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I
+will now add that in following Paine's quotations from the Bible I have
+adopted the Plan now generally used in place of his occasionally too
+extended writing out of book, chapter, and verse.
+
+Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and
+released on November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his old
+friend, James Monroe (afterwards President), who had succeeded his
+(Paine's) relentless enemy, Gouverneur Morris, as American Minister in
+Paris. He was found by Monroe more dead than alive from semi-starvation,
+cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken to the Minister's
+own residence. It was not supposed that he could survive, and he owed
+his life to the tender care of Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. It was while thus
+a prisoner in his room, with death still hovering over him, that Paine
+wrote Part Second of "The Age of Reason."
+
+The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October 25, 1795,
+and claimed to be "from the Author's manuscript." It is marked as
+"Entered at Stationers Hall," and prefaced by an apologetic note of
+"The Bookseller to the Public," whose commonplaces about avoiding both
+prejudice and partiality, and considering "both sides," need not be
+quoted. While his volume was going through the press in Paris, Paine
+heard of the publication in London, which drew from him the following
+hurried note to a London publisher, no doubt Daniel Isaacs Eaton:
+
+"SIR,--I have seen advertised in the London papers the second Edition
+[part] of the Age of Reason, printed, the advertisement says, from the
+Author's Manuscript, and entered at Stationers Hall. I have never sent
+any manuscript to any person. It is therefore a forgery to say it is
+printed from the author's manuscript; and I suppose is done to give the
+Publisher a pretence of Copy Right, which he has no title to.
+
+"I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent to London.
+I wish you to make a cheap edition of it. I know not by what means any
+copy has got over to London. If any person has made a manuscript copy
+I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish you would talk to Mr.
+----- upon this subject as I wish to know by what means this trick has
+been played, and from whom the publisher has got possession of any copy.
+
+"T. PAINE.
+
+"PARIS, December 4, 1795"
+
+Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter on
+the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably "Symonds"
+in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed upon. Eaton,
+already in trouble for printing one of Paine's political pamphlets, fled
+to America, and an edition of the "Age of Reason" was issued under a new
+title; no publisher appears; it is said to be "printed for, and sold by
+all the Booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland." It is also said to
+be "By Thomas Paine, author of several remarkable performances." I have
+never found any copy of this anonymous edition except the one in my
+possession. It is evidently the edition which was suppressed by the
+prosecution of Williams for selling a copy of it.
+
+A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many clerical
+and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the sense. The
+worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the misleading
+date "1790" is given as the year at whose close Paine completed Part
+First,--an error that spread far and wide and was fastened on by his
+calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to prove his inconsistency.
+The editors have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in
+different ways, the following sentence of the preface in Symonds: "The
+intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into
+politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of the
+Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and Faggot
+of the Church." The rogue who copied this little knew the care with
+which Paine weighed words, and that he would never call persecution
+"religious," nor connect the guillotine with the "State," nor concede
+that with all its horrors it had outdone the history of fire and faggot.
+What Paine wrote was: "The intolerant spirit of church persecution had
+transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary,
+supplied the place of an Inquisition and the Guillotine, of the Stake."
+
+An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen, ex-M.P.,
+which that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides being one
+of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the original
+publication. Although the name of the correspondent does not appear on
+the letter, it was certainly written to Col. John Fellows of New
+York, who copyrighted Part I. of the "Age of Reason." He published the
+pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine confided his manuscript on his
+way to prison. Fellows was afterwards Paine's intimate friend in New
+York, and it was chiefly due to him that some portions of the author's
+writings, left in manuscript to Madame Bonneville while she was a
+freethinker were rescued from her devout destructiveness after her
+return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen sends me, is dated at
+Paris, January 20, 1797.
+
+"SIR,--Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure for
+America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you. I received two
+letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which
+you inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the Age
+of Reason: when I return to America we will settle for that matter.
+
+"As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past
+you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection with
+his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of the
+second part of the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin] Bache.
+I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and the copy-right by my
+own direction was entered by him. The books did not arrive till April
+following, but he had advertised it long before.
+
+"I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages,
+from me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of
+Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to be forwarded
+to America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who since his return
+from America told me that he put it into the post office at New York for
+Bache. I have yet no certain account of its publication. I mention this
+that the letter may be enquired after, in case it has not been published
+or has not arrived to Mr. Bache. Barnes wrote to me, from London 29
+August informing me that he was offered three hundred pounds sterling
+for the manuscript. The offer was refused because it was my intention it
+should not appear till it appeared in America, as that, and not England
+was the place for its operation.
+
+"You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several
+works, in order to publish a collection of them. This is an undertaking
+I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs to me of right,
+but nobody but myself can do it; and as every author is accountable (at
+least in reputation) for his works, he only is the person to do it. If
+he neglects it in his life-time the case is altered. It is my intention
+to return to America in the course of the present year. I shall then
+[do] it by subscription, with historical notes. As this work will employ
+many persons in different parts of the Union, I will confer with you
+upon the subject, and such part of it as will suit you to
+undertake, will be at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by
+disinterestedness and inattention to money matters, and by accidents,
+that I am obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have done. The
+printer (an Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part
+of 'the Age of Reason' made a manuscript copy of the work while he was
+printing it, which he sent to London and sold. It was by this means that
+an edition of it came out in London.
+
+"We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the federal
+elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you that the
+French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as minister. While
+Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of softening matters with
+this government, for he was in good credit with them tho' they were in
+high indignation at the infidelity of the Washington Administration.
+It is time that Mr. Washington retire, for he has played off so much
+prudent hypocrisy between France and England that neither government
+believes anything he says.
+
+"Your friend, etc.,
+
+"THOMAS PAINE."
+
+It would appear that Symonds' stolen edition must have got ahead of that
+sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its errors continue in
+all modern American editions to the present day, as well as in those of
+England. For in England it was only the shilling edition--that
+revised by Paine--which was suppressed. Symonds, who ministered to the
+half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was
+left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the
+suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who
+sold pious tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold
+one copy of the "Age of Reason." Erskine, who had defended Paine at his
+trial for the "Rights of Man," conducted the prosecution of Williams.
+He gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by
+it, especially after a certain adventure on his way to Lincoln's Inn. He
+felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in tears.
+She led him into the small book-shop of Thomas Williams, not yet called
+up for judgment, and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a
+wretched little room, where there were three children, two suffering
+with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin and even a sort of murder to
+take away to prison the husband, who was not a freethinker, and lamented
+his publication of the book, and a meeting of the Society which had
+retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the Bishop of
+London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded them that Williams was
+yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had witnessed,
+and Williams' penitence, and, as the book was now suppressed, asked
+permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy, he urged, was a part
+of the Christianity they were defending. Not one of the Society took his
+side,--not even "philanthropic" Wilberforce--and Erskine threw up his
+brief. This action of Erskine led the Judge to give Williams only a year
+in prison instead of the three he said had been intended.
+
+While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating
+Erskine's speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous sermon "On the
+Existence and Attributes of the Deity," all of which was from Paine's
+"Age of Reason," except a brief "Address to the Deity" appended.
+This picturesque anomaly was repeated in the circulation of Paine's
+"Discourse to the Theophilanthropists" (their and the author's names
+removed) under the title of "Atheism Refuted." Both of these pamphlets
+are now before me, and beside them a London tract of one page just sent
+for my spiritual benefit. This is headed "A Word of Caution." It begins
+by mentioning the "pernicious doctrines of Paine," the first being "that
+there is No GOD" (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine
+existence taken from Paine's works. It should be added that this one
+dingy page is the only "survival" of the ancient Paine effigy in the
+tract form which I have been able to find in recent years, and to this
+no Society or Publisher's name is attached.
+
+The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years' war
+for religious liberty in England, in the course of which occurred many
+notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at Choring
+Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned,--its head imprisoned
+more than nine years for publishing the "Age of Reason." This last
+victory of persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth, not adherents
+of Paine, helped in setting Carlile up in business in Fleet Street,
+where free-thinking publications have since been sold without
+interruption. But though Liberty triumphed in one sense, the "Age of
+Reason." remained to some extent suppressed among those whose attention
+it especially merited. Its original prosecution by a Society for the
+Suppression of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel
+upon a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families; and the
+fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was alone
+prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion that the
+"Age of Reason" was vulgar and illiterate. The theologians, as we
+have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist,
+the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the
+University of Pennsylvania had conferred the degree of Master of
+Arts,--but the gentry confused Paine with the class described by Burke
+as "the swinish multitude." Skepticism, or its free utterance, was
+temporarily driven out of polite circles by its complication with the
+out-lawed vindicator of the "Rights of Man." But that long combat has
+now passed away. Time has reduced the "Age of Reason" from a flag of
+popular radicalism to a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as
+its negations are concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth
+he heard a sermon in which the preacher declared that "Tom Paine was
+so wicked that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box
+which was bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer;
+and now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!"
+This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as
+unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be
+recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in
+holding clerical vestments together.
+
+But the careful reader will find in Paine's "Age of Reason" something
+beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially call attention to
+the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a
+famous aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery
+already mentioned, that Part I. was written at least fourteen years
+before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while
+the earlier work is an amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the
+phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases belief in God on
+"the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by
+that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition
+to do good ones." This exaltation of the moral nature of man to be the
+foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar, was a hundred
+years ago a new affirmation; it has led on a conception of deity
+subversive of last-century deism, it has steadily humanized religion,
+and its ultimate philosophical and ethical results have not yet been
+reached.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - THE AUTHOR'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.
+
+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 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 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 anything 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 priest-craft
+would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
+unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.
+
+CHAPTER II - OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.
+
+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 shows 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
+accuses 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 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 hand 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 carrying 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. [NOTE: It is,
+however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits
+the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every
+principle of moral justice.--Author.]
+
+When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to
+Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to 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 chose 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 the 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.
+
+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 practiced 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
+anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his
+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
+everything 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 this
+affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who
+lived in the time 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 priest-hood. 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 apprehension 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. [NOTE: The French work has
+here: "However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions
+this virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated,
+too much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life."--Editor.
+(Conway)]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.
+
+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 afterwards 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 that their Satan made war against the
+Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, 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 ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of
+this tete-a-tate 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--given him a triumph over the whole
+creation--damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there 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 [NOTE: The French
+work has: "yielding to an unrestrained appetite."--Editor.] had eaten an
+apple.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.
+
+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 afterwards 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 is it capable of becoming the object
+of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has "blind and" preceding
+dismal.--Editor.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
+
+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 that
+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 subject freely investigated. I therefore
+pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and the New
+Testament.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
+
+THESE books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which,
+by the bye, 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 the 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 call 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 is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the
+historical and anecdotal part 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 anything 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 Lords 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 chose to
+contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is
+more than can be said for 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 [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by
+the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone.--Editor.] 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 own 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 oeconomical 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. [NOTE: 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 those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to
+poetry. It is fictitious, and often 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 those books is
+poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from Isaiah:--
+
+  "Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth
+  'T is 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 of 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."--Author.]
+
+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 a later times
+have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word
+'propesying' 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 afterwards, that Saul
+prophesied badly, that is, he performed his part badly; for it is said
+that an "evil spirit from God [NOTE: As thos; 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 of God. I keep to my text. I keep to the meaning of the word
+prophesy.--Author.] came upon Saul, and he prophesied."
+
+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 later times have affixed to it. The manner in which it is
+here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews 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 the 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 there-fore 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 laboured 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 honour 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 an 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
+wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that 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 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 greatest 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 dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
+
+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 those 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. [NOTE: One of the few
+errors traceable to Paine's not having a Bible at hand while writing
+Part I. There is no indication that the family was poor, but the reverse
+may in fact be inferred.--Editor.]
+
+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 the 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 no otherways 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 causes 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 ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but,
+thou shale surely die. The sentence was 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 tactic, 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.
+
+This 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 heads:
+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 persons
+who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any discourse
+or conversation by those who heard 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 of revenue in pretended
+imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.
+
+The invention of a 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 proxysm of the crucifixion,
+and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could stand
+in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services 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 of 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 has 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
+should 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 doctrine 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 of 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
+has for its basis 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 redemptions, 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 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 out-law, as an out-cast, 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 endeavoured 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 govemment 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.
+
+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 unto the other, is
+consistent only with the ignorance of those who know 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 a 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 into 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 end, 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 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE
+
+AND ATTRIBUTES BY THE BIBLE.
+
+THE only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first
+cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly 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 etherial 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;
+  Whilst 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, nor 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 that 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 of 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 gloominess of the subject 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
+
+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 man-ism 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 of 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
+inventions;' 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 almanack 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 an 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 an human invention.
+Man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable; and the
+scientific principles he employs for this purpose must, 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 any thing else relating to the motion of the
+heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science that
+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 a rule
+and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction
+of plans of 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 are unknown.
+
+It may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a
+triangle is an 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 those 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, can act no 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 an 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 steel-yard, 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 chord 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. This principle is as
+unalterable as in the former cases, 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 our 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED
+REFORMS.
+
+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 to 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, or 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 in 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 a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect
+to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. 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 this
+is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a natural disposition to
+scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it. The first and
+favourite amusement of a child, even before it begins to play, is that
+of imitating the works of man. It builds bouses 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 unites with it; both of
+which, in this case, are not difficult to be discovered.
+
+Putting then aside, as 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
+amphibious 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 has
+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 these discoveries, he was
+sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting from them, as a
+damnable heresy. And prior to that time Virgilius 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. [NOTE: I cannot
+discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author
+whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British
+Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogiunt) which was the pretext
+of the charge of heresy made by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against
+Virgilius, Abbot--bishop of Salzburg, These were leaders of the
+rival "British" and "Roman parties, and the British champion made a
+countercharge against Boniface of irreligious practices." Boniface had
+to express a "regret," but none the less pursued his rival. The Pope,
+Zachary II., decided that if his alleged "doctrine, against God and his
+soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other men, or
+sun and moon," should be acknowledged by Virgilius, he should be
+excommunicated by a Council and condemned with canonical sanctions.
+Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation with "canonicis
+sanctionibus," in the middle of the eighth century, it did not fall on
+Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it is probable
+that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen of
+the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of
+the progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He
+bore until his death, 789, the curious title, "Geometer and Solitary,"
+or "lone wayfarer" (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his
+memory until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside
+his accuser, St. Boniface.--Editor. (Conway)]
+
+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 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 partizans 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 flames.
+
+Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but,
+however unwilling the partizans 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. [NOTE by
+Paine: 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 govemment in favour of his three sons and one daughter,
+Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other
+gods and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods
+increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar 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 every thing else called the word of God is fable and
+imposition.--Author.]
+
+It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause,
+that we have now to look back 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 the 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 any
+thing 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 had 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII - COMPARISON OF CHRISTIANISM WITH THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS
+INSPIRED BY NATURE.
+
+HAVING thus shewn, 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 the 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
+other 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
+subjects of all the Latin books used in the school.
+
+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 afterwards
+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 was called politics. It presented to
+my mind no other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship. When,
+therefore, I turned my thoughts towards matters of government, I had to
+form a system for myself, that accorded with the moral and philosophic
+principles in which I had 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 then 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 is 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. [NOTE: The pamphlet Common Sense was first
+advertised, as "just published," on January 10, 1776. His plea for the
+Officers of Excise, written before leaving England, was printed, but not
+published until 1793. Despite his reiterated assertion that Common Sense
+was the first work he ever published the notion that he was "junius"
+still finds some believers. An indirect comment on our Paine-Junians
+may be found in Part 2 of this work where Paine says a man capable of
+writing Homer "would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to
+another." It is probable that Paine ascribed the Letters of Junius to
+Thomas Hollis. His friend F. Lanthenas, in his translation of the Age of
+Reason (1794) advertises his translation of the Letters of Junius from
+the English "(Thomas Hollis)." This he could hardly have done without
+consultation with Paine. Unfortunately this translation of Junius cannot
+be found either in the Bibliotheque Nationale or the British Museum, and
+it cannot be said whether it contains any attempt at an identification
+of Junius--Editor.]
+
+Any person, who has made observations on the state and progress of the
+human mind, by observing his own, can not 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 the way of beginning learning
+for himself afterwards. Every person of learning is finally his own
+teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of 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 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 those kind of thoughts
+that had any thing 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 to 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 any thing 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
+endeavouring to imitate him in every thing 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 can not 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 gaieties, 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, [NOTE by
+Paine: As this book may fall into the bands 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 the 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 center 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.--Author.] and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and
+of the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least, a general
+knowledge of what was called natural philosophy, I began to compare, or,
+as I have before said, to confront, the internal evidence those things
+afford with the christian system of faith.
+
+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 can not 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 is 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 a ball, is only twenty-five thousand and
+twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and an half to an
+equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three
+years. [NOTE by Paine: 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.--Author.]
+
+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 a 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 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 surround 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 an 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 that already know, but for those who do not) to show what the
+system of the universe is.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV - SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.
+
+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 center) consists, besides the Sun, of
+six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies,
+called the satellites, or moons, of which our earth has one that attends
+her in her annual revolution round 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 center round which those six worlds or planets revolve at
+different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each other.
+Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract 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 1/2 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 round 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 season
+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.
+
+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 center, 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 tract 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 strait 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 globical content is almost three thousand five
+hundred million times three thousand five hundred million square miles.
+[NOTE by Paine: 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 round the Sun, will come in a
+strait 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.--Author.]
+
+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 center of our system. The probability, therefore, is that each of
+those 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 our globe of earth and water is left
+unoccupied.
+
+Having thus endeavoured 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV - ADVANTAGES OF THE EXISTENCE OF MANY WORLDS IN EACH SOLAR
+SYSTEM.
+
+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 us the ideas 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI - APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE
+CHRISTIANS.
+
+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 death, with scarcely a momentary
+interval of life.
+
+It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God in
+the creation, affords 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 affords 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
+persuaded 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 afterwards 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 with it 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 interest 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII - OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST
+UNIVERSALLY, TO DECEIVE THE PEOPLES.
+
+HAVING thus shown the irreconcileable 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 first two
+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 in 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 any thing 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 towards each other as he acts benignly towards 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 every thing of mystery,
+and unincumbered with every thing that is mysterious. Religion,
+considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and,
+therefore, must be on a level to 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 speculations. 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 every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also
+may it be said that every thing 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 a million of worlds than to
+make one. Every thing, 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. It is 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 a 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 any thing 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 into 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 inclosed, from being compressed
+into as many times less bulk, by the common air that surrounds it. In
+like manner, extracting flashes or sparks of fire from the human body,
+as visibly 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 slight 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 criterion to determine
+what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit to appearances, under
+the idea of their 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 show-man, 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 any body 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 a 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 marvellous; 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 probable 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
+have cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale,
+would they not have believed him to have been the devil instead of a
+prophet? or if the whale had carried Jonah to Nineveh, 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 miracles, as is sometimes practised
+upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne's farthings, and collectors of
+relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of miracles ridiculous,
+by outdoing miracle, 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, any thing 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 shewn, 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. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every
+thing 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 might happen afterwards. It is
+conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to suppose 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 pretended to prophesy, should happen, or some thing
+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 impostor gave
+encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by
+keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.
+
+RECAPITULATION.
+
+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 the reasons already
+assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of an 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 proclaimeth 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 towards 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 practise the same towards
+each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and
+revenge between man and man, and every thing 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 nations of the earth and all
+religions agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they disgrace
+are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if ever an
+universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing any thing
+new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed
+at first. ["In the childhood of the world," according to the first
+(French) version; and the strict translation of the final sentence is:
+"Deism was the religion of Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being;
+but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their
+right, the religion and worship they prefer."--Editor.] Adam, if ever
+there was such a man, was created a Deist; but in the mean time, let
+every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he
+prefers.
+
+
+END OF PART I
+
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF REASON - PART II
+
+
+   Contents
+
+  * Preface
+  * Chapter I - The Old Testament
+  * Chapter II - The New Testament
+  * Chapter III - Conclusion
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+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 callously prepared men for the
+commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church persecution
+had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, stiled
+Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the Guillotine
+of the Stake. 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 [It must be borne in mind
+that throughout this work Paine generally means by "Bible" only the Old
+Testament, and speaks of the New as the "Testament."--Editor.] 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. Towards the latter end of December of that year, a motion
+was made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the Convention. There
+were but two, 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,
+[This is an allusion to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part
+of 1793. See Introduction.--Editor.] 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 conveying me to the prison of the Luxembourg. I
+contrived, in 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 justice that I say, that the guard who executed this order, and
+the interpreter to 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, Benoit, a man of good heart,
+shewed 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 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. [These excited Americans
+do not seem to have understood or reported the most important item in
+Vadeer's reply, namely that their application was "unofficial," i.e. not
+made through or sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister.
+For the detailed history of all this see vol. iii.--Editor.] 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 Vanheule of Bruges,
+Charles Bastfni, and Michael Robyns of Louvain. The unceasing and
+anxious attention of these three friends to me, by night and 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, [The officer who at Yorktown, Virginia, carried out
+the sword of Cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to
+Rochambeau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him 300 pounds when he
+(O'Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of
+his cell-door.--Editor.] 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 I 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, 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."
+
+[Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, 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 publickly and unanimously to return into the
+Convention, and which I accepted, to shew 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 any thing, in the former
+part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts
+than they 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 - THE OLD TESTAMENT
+
+IT has often been said that any thing may be proved from the Bible; but
+before any thing can be admitted as proved by 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 any thing.
+
+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 have anathematized each other about the supposeable
+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 have called
+understanding the Bible.
+
+It has happened, that all the answers that 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 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 any thing 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 the history itself shews, 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 those things to be done? 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 an 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 charger the commission of things 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 every thing that is tender,
+sympathising, 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 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;
+[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.--Author.] and the reason is, because it
+is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its
+author, and of every thing 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, 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 an 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 imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we
+credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no
+further: 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 miracles 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 that we believe the things stated
+in those 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 them because they are sedate, like
+Plato; or judicious, like Aristotle.
+
+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
+shew 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 afterwards; 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 will confine myself to this evidence only. Were I to
+refer for proofs to any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of
+the Bible call prophane 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 altogether an
+unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and manner
+in which those books are 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 every thing in Genesis is prior to the times 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 person 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 those 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 xii. 3: "Now the man Moses was very MEEK, above all the
+men which were on 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 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 as in the act of speaking, and when
+he has made Moses finish his harrangue, 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 harrangue, 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 33d 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 up 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, that he buried him in a valley 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 one hundred and ten 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 shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implies, 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 shew, 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 vindicates the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the
+Bible.
+
+The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it is an
+anonymous work, is obscure, and also contradictory 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 no where 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 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 kee 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, xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the
+father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned
+to death for what it pleased them to call stubbornness.--But priests
+have always been fond of preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy
+preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, xxv. 4, they have taken
+the phrase, and applied it to tything, that "thou shalt 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. O
+priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake
+of tythes. [An elegant pocket edition of Paine's Theological Works
+(London. R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a
+Moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his "Age of Reason"
+to a farmer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work)
+has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the
+summit of a well stocked hill.--Editor.]--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 shew 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 any thing, 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 readers (such an 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 Genesis xiv., 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, that he armed all his household and marched to
+rescue Lot from the captors; and that he pursued them unto Dan. (ver.
+14.)
+
+To shew in what manner this expression of 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 the year
+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 writing could not have been written before, and
+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
+chapter xviii. 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 [ver. 29,] 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
+Samson. The death of Samson is said to have happened B.C. 1120 and
+that of Moses B.C. 1451; 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 last five 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, go before the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter. This
+shews 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 twenty 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 a
+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 come 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 Genesis xxxvi. 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 writing 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,
+because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly,
+because the fact includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at
+once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies as positively
+that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so expressed. When a
+person in 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 has 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 only it
+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 itself through all times 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 give 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 Genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, In 1
+Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.
+
+It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could say as
+he has said, 1 Chron. i. 43, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom,
+before there reigned any king ever 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 any thing 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 as the
+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 xxxi. 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 counsel 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 profaneings of
+priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, "And the
+Lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen;
+and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute
+was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which
+the Lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen
+thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two." 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 know not 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, refers to, them 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,) xvi. 35: "And the children of Israel did
+eat manna 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 no
+part of 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 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 Canaan; 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 into the
+borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 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
+Deuteronomy iii. 11, among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is
+an account of the taking of Og, king of Bashan: "For only Og, king
+of Bashan, remained of the race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a
+bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine
+cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after
+the cubit of a man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 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, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating
+evidence, and is better than 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 relick, 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. xii. 26: "And Joab
+[David's general] fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and
+took the royal city," etc.
+
+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 demonstration that those books could not be written by
+Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and
+to shew 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 Joshua i., 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 twenty-five years; that is, from the time
+that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C.
+1451, until B.C. 1426, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua
+died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written
+by Joshua, references 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 vainglorious 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 Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all the days
+of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived 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 out-lived 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, x.
+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) [NOTE: This tale of the sun standing still
+upon Motint 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 whilst the sun shined? 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, it should 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 Faux carried his
+dark lanthorn, 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, shews
+the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have
+stood still.--Author.] the passage says: "And there was no day like
+that, before it, nor after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a
+man."
+
+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 chapter viii.; where,
+after giving an account of the taking the city of Ai, it is said, ver.
+28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, 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 chapter x. 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, xv. 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 judges i. I shall reserve my
+observations till I come to that part.
+
+Having thus shewn 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. 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 stile 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, B.C. 1426 to the
+death of Samson, B.C. 1120, 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 Judges i., 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 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 Joshua xv. 63,
+where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at
+Jerusalem at 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 an history, the city of
+Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David; and consequently, that
+the book 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 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1
+Chron. xiv. 4, etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it
+was ever taken before, nor any account that favours 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 at this day,
+corresponds to no other time than after taking 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 slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of
+Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine's words are likely to
+convey.--Editor.] 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 shew 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 enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a
+conjuror to enquire after lost things.
+
+The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, does
+not tell it as a thing that had 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. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after
+him, ver. 11, "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, where he says,
+"Before-time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he
+spake, Come 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 the 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 i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch
+of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of
+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 i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology
+affixed to this chapter makes this to be B.C. 1060; yet the history of
+this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to 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 murdering orders, with which the Bible
+is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and
+children, in consequence 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. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition,
+or feel no interest in the honour 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 still produce in the course of this
+work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it
+wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize 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 books 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 B.C. 1015; and the second
+book ends B.C. 588, 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 an 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 B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter
+bring the history 52 years more forward, 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
+seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and
+of nineteen, who are stiled 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 afterwards
+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 2 Kings
+x., 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 orders 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, 2 Kings
+xv. 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 imposters 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 2 Kings, i. 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 viii. 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, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat 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 or 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 xii. and xiii. an account is given
+of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who
+is there called a man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O
+altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto
+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 burned 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 again to him."
+
+One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is
+spoken of as a judgement,) 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 later times, have believed all that the
+prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or
+historians, disbelieved 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, 2 Kings ii. 11, "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; and that
+this man of God (ver. 24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed
+them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of
+the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over
+in silence the story told, 2 Kings 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 up on 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 the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the
+present day, who did not chose 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 Hezekiab, is
+mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these histories 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; though, according to the Bible chronology,
+they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of
+them 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 those 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 B.C. 588; 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, with the time in which they lived before Christ,
+and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:
+
+                      Years     Years before
+       NAMES.         before     Kings and     Observations.
+                      Christ.   Chronicles.
+
+  Isaiah............... 760      172            mentioned.
+
+
+                                                (mentioned only in
+  Jeremiah............. 629       41            the last [two] chapters
+                                                of Chronicles.
+
+  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.
+
+  Zepbaniah............ 630       42            not mentioned.
+
+Haggai Zechariah all three after the year 588 Medachi [NOTE In 2 Kings
+xiv. 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.--Author.]
+
+This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or
+not very honourable 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 of 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 more observation 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
+xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to
+reign over the children of Israel; and I have shown that as this
+verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 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 1 Chronicles iii. 15,
+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, B.C. 588, and consequently more than
+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 other 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 than 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, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous
+notions of honour; 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 shew 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 first
+three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind
+of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra
+should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2
+Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not
+know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors.
+
+Last Two Verses of 2 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.
+
+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.
+***
+
+First Three 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 the 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.
+
+*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends 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. [NOTE 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, 1 Samuel xiii. 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 the verse, that Saul reigned
+one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor
+say any thing 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 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:--Ver. 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 host 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 this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told
+by some Jewish humourist 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 humour 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 every thing 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. xxxii. 1.--Author.
+
+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 B.C. 536. 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. Nebemiah, 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 those accounts are nothing to us, nor to any
+other person, 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 Ezra ii., 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 (ii. 3): "The
+children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four." 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 any thing?
+
+[Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the Bible of all
+the children listed and the total thereof. This can be had directly from
+the Bible.]
+
+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 (vii. 8):
+"The children of Parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two;"
+and so on through all the families. (The list differs in several of the
+particulars from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66, 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 make a total but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These
+writers may do well enough for Bible-makers, but not for any thing where
+truth and exactness is necessary.
+
+The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther thought
+it any honour 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 endeavours 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 an 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) [In a later work Paine notes that in "the Bible" (by which
+he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1
+Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is
+in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah ("Essay on Dreams"). In these
+places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means "adversary," and is so
+translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25.
+As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the Old Testament
+only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of the passage
+in Zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the
+proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some opinion
+met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his
+paragraph.--Editor.] 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 any
+thing 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 any thing that is to be found in the Bible that the Jews
+knew any thing 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. [Paine's Jewish critic, David
+Levi, fastened on this slip ("Defence of the Old Testament," 1797, p.
+152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil' (Orion),
+Kimah' (Pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in
+the A.S.V. have been questioned.--Editor.]
+
+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; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there
+said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which 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 Proverbs
+xxx.,--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 says, "The words
+of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:" here the word prophecy
+is used with the same application it has in the following chapter of
+Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is
+in the 8th and 9th verses, "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give
+me neither riches nor poverty, but 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,
+or riches.--Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1) the word "prophecy" in
+these verses is translated "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised
+version.--The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the
+officers of Excise, 1772.--Editor.]
+
+The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible 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 serve to 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 aera of B.C. 1520, 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 practice 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
+now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from
+this that they worshipped 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 now-a-days, 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
+is 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
+your French songs, or 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 with 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 shewn 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 xxv. i,
+"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. [A "Tom
+Paine's Jest Book" had appeared in London with little or nothing of
+Paine in it.--Editor.]
+
+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. [Those that look out of the window shall
+be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of
+sight.--Author.] 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.
+
+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 pretensions to wisdom,
+discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he
+afterwards 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 those
+things is the study of 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 grey, was
+always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease
+to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for
+death.
+
+Solomon's Songs, 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 aera of B.C. 1014, 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 honey-moon 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 ii. 8, I got me men-singers,
+and women-singers [most probably to sing those songs], and musical
+instruments 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
+part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and
+ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations
+upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the
+last three 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 the first two or
+three 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 translation) that kind of composition and false taste
+that is properly called prose run mad.
+
+The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the
+end of chapter xxxix. It relates 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 glassen slipper, the
+story of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, etc., etc.
+
+
+I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2
+Chronicles, and the first three 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 an compilation, because it is more than presumptive
+evidence that the compilers are 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 an 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 [Isaiah] are in the following
+words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all
+my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to
+the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his
+enointed, 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
+B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to
+Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; 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 school-boy'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 are 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 (Isa. vii. I4), 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 towards Jerusalem.
+Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2),
+Their hearts were moved 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, "And
+before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,
+the land which 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 shall 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
+consequences 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 interest 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 afterwards married, whom they call a
+virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory
+which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as
+fabulous and as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, 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-shalalhash-baz, and
+that of Mary was called Jesus.--Author.]
+
+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 2 Chronicles, xxviii;
+and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt
+against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the
+name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an
+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 imposter
+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 interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating to
+Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an equivocal character: in
+his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. 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 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 me
+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, "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 will repent me 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 chapter xxxvii. that the army of
+Nebuchadnezzer, 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 Jehoakim, the redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it
+was Nebuchadnezzar who had make 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
+itself to Jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of
+Nebuchadnezzar,--whom Jeremiah calls, xliii. 10, the servant of God.
+
+Chapter xxxvii. 11-13, says, "And it came to pass, that, when the army
+of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh'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... and he took Jeremiah the
+prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said,
+It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans." Jeremiah being thus
+stopt 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 chapter
+xxi. 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 enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose army was then before
+Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8, "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 chapter xxi.; 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 chapter xxxviii., as I have just mentioned. The
+chapter opens with saying, "Then Shaphatiah, 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 chapter xxi.) heard
+the words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, Thus saith
+the Lord, He that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by
+famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans
+shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and shall live";
+[which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say they to
+Zedekiah,) "We beseech thee, let this man be put 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 they took Jeremiah, and put 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 in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.)
+that contradict each other with respect to David, and the manner he
+became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict
+each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment.
+
+In 1 Samuel, xvi., 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, ver. 17, "Provide me
+now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one
+of his servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the
+Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty 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 armour-bearer; and when the
+evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23) David took his harp, and
+played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well."
+
+But the next chapter (xvii.) 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 to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner,
+whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 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 unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And
+David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite,"
+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 for criticism.--Author.]
+
+In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) 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 xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as
+if not a word had been said upon the subject, and as if the reader was
+still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins
+with saying, ver. 1, "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 besieged it," etc.
+
+But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) 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. i, "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, 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, no
+body would read what was written, and every body would suppose that the
+writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to
+account for the 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 predictions of Jeremiah, I shall
+mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the
+Bible.
+
+It appears from chapter xxxviii. 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 this 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 chapter xxxiv. 2-5, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah in these
+words: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city into the hand
+of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou
+shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou 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, Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou
+shalt die in Peace; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former
+kings that were before thee, so shall they burn odours 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 odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had
+declared the Lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to
+chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the case; it is there said, that the king of
+Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: then he put out the
+eyes of Zedekiah, and 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 are impostors and
+liars?
+
+As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was taken into
+favour by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the
+guard (xxxix, 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 afterwards 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 signified 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, 1 Sam. x., 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 know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds
+to the word seer in English; but I observe it is translated into French
+by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see, and which means the person who
+sees, or the seer.--Author.]
+
+[The Hebrew word for Seer, in 1 Samuel ix., transliterated, is
+chozeh, the gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13, "the
+stargazers."--Editor.] (i Sam, ix. 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.
+
+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 afterwards of the prophet,
+so far as the meaning of the word "seer" was 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 way-laid on his return home by a prophet of the party of Israel,
+who said unto him (i Kings 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 unto thine house, that he may eat bread and drink
+water; but (says the 18th verse) he lied unto him." The 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 2 Kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that
+shews, in several particulars, the character of a prophet. Jehoshaphat
+king of Judah, and Joram 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 enquire of the Lord by him? and one of
+the servants of the king of Israel said here is Elisha. [Elisha was 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; and when 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 the prophets of
+thy mother. Nay but, said the king of Israel, the Lord hath called these
+three kings together, to deliver them into the hands of the king 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, king
+of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee." Here is all
+the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are 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 conjuror 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 be,
+     That could not with him grapple;
+     And at one sup he eat 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 these 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 Babylonish
+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 carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly
+have 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. They 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 these
+books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence
+to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret
+alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense;
+or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of
+captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former.
+
+Ezekiel begins his book 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 his book he supposes
+himself transported to Jerusalem, and into the temple; and he refers
+back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says, (xliii- 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 over-run, 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 any thing, 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 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 writing 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 Ezekiel xxix.
+11., speaking of Egypt, it is said, "No foot of man shall pass through
+it, nor foot of beast 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, [I have read in an ancient Persian poem
+(Saadi, I believe, but have mislaid the reference) this phrase: "And now
+the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun set."--Editor.] and that it has been
+written as a fable to expose the nonsense, and satyrize 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 such a 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 judgement 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 over-board 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 an 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 endeavoured 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 the boat
+to land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous
+against them." Still however they were unwilling to put the fate of the
+lot into execution; and they cried, says the account, unto the Lord,
+saying, "We beseech thee, O Lord, 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 upon 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 encreasing,
+they put the fate of the lot into execution, and cast Jonah in 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
+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-off at the same
+time the cant language of a Bible-prophet,) saying, "The Lord spake unto
+the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon 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, "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 promises him
+an agreeable shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he
+is 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 laboured, neither madest it to 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 threescore thousand persons, that cannot discern
+between their right hand and their left?"
+
+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 judgements 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 suckling infants, and women with
+child; because the same reflection 'that there are more than threescore
+thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their
+left,' 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 judgements, as the chapter that Benjamin
+Franklin made for the Bible, about Abraham and the stranger, ends
+against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions--Thus much for
+the book Jonah. [The story of Abraham and the Fire-worshipper, ascribed
+to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my "Sacred Anthology," p. 61.) Paine
+has often been called a "mere scoffer," but he seems to have been among
+the first to treat with dignity the book of Jonah, so especially liable
+to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the highest
+conception of Deity known to the Old Testament.--Editor.]
+
+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 for 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 - 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 then the existence or the 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 i.
+35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
+Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards
+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 Matt. xiii. 55, 56.--Author.]
+
+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 shews, 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 truth, 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 these 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 afterwards. Truth is an
+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 were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have
+been written by other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in
+the Old Testament.
+
+The book of Matthew gives (i. 6), a genealogy by name from David, up,
+through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be
+twent 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 is 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            Genealogy, according to
+        Matthew.                                Luke.
+
+        Christ                                  Christ
+      2 Joseph                                2 Joseph
+      3 Jacob                                 3 Heli
+      4 Matthan                               4 Matthat
+      5 Eleazer                               5 Levi
+      6 Eliud                                 6 Melchl
+      7 Achim                                 7 Janna
+      8 Sadoc                                 8 Joseph
+      9 Azor                                  9 Mattathias
+     10 Eliakim                              10 Amos
+     11 Abiud                                11 Naum
+     12 Zorobabel                            12 Esli
+     13 Salathiel                            13 Nagge
+     14 Jechonias                            14 Maath
+     15 Josias                               15 Mattathias
+     16 Amon                                 16 Semei
+     17 Manasses                             17 Joseph
+     18 Ezekias                              18 Juda
+     19 Achaz                                19 Joanna
+     20 Joatham                              20 Rhesa
+     21 Ozias                                21 Zorobabel
+     22 Joram                                22 Salathiel
+     23 Josaphat                             23 Neri
+     24 Asa                                  24 Melchi
+     25 Abia                                 25 Addi
+     26 Roboam                               26 Cosam
+     27 Solomon                              27 Elmodam
+     28 David *                              28 Er
+                                             29 Jose
+                                             30 Eliezer
+                                             31 Jorim
+                                             32 Matthat
+                                             33 Levi
+                                             34 Simeon
+                                             35 Juda
+                                             36 Joseph
+                                             37 Jonan
+                                             38 Eliakim
+                                             39 Melea
+                                             40 Menan
+                                             41 Mattatha
+                                             42 Nathan
+                                             43 David
+
+[NOTE: * From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of
+1080 years; and as the life-time 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 by 27, which gives 40 years for each
+person. As the life-time of man was then but of 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.
+The list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and
+this is too much.--Author.]
+
+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 who, and of what he was, what
+authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the
+strange things they tell us afterwards? 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 these 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 productions 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 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 is it, 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 tell us,
+that Jesus escaped this slaughter, because Joseph and Mary were warned
+by an angel to flee with him into Egypt; but he forgot to make provision
+for John [the Baptist], who was then under two years of age. John,
+however, who staid 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, (xix. 14)
+the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour (noon,) and
+consequently the execution could not be till the afternoon; but Mark
+(xv. 25) Says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine
+in the morning,)--Author.]
+
+The inscription is thus stated in those 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 the 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 to the spot was Peter, and when he was accused
+of being one of Jesus's followers, it is said, (Matthew xxvi. 74,) "Then
+Peter began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man:" yet
+we are now called to believe the same Peter, convicted, by their own
+account, of perjury. For what reason, or on what authority, should we do
+this?
+
+The accounts that are given of the circumstances, that they tell us
+attended the crucifixion, are differently related in those four books.
+
+The book ascribed to Matthew says 'there was darkness over all the land
+from the sixth hour unto the ninth hour--that the veil of the temple
+was rent in twain from the top to the bottom--that there was an
+earthquake--that the rocks rent--that the graves opened, that the bodies
+of many of the saints that slept arose and came out of their graves
+after the 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 these things had happened, and if the
+writers of these 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 resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the city, is
+of still 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 conversation of 'he said this and she 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 afterwards, and who it was that saw them; for he
+is not hardy enough to say that 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 retum 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 any thing
+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 times 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 are
+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
+septilchre, 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 those books.
+
+The book of Matthew continues its account, and says, (xxviii. 1,) that
+at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards 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 large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might
+be upon the stroll. [The Bishop of Llandaff, in his famous "Apology,"
+censured Paine severely for this insinuation against Mary Magdalene, but
+the censure really falls on our English version, which, by a
+chapter-heading (Luke vii.), has unwarrantably identified her as the
+sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and irrevocably branded her.--Editor.]
+
+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 [Mark
+says "a young man," and Luke "two men."--Editor.] 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 writers of these 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 cropt 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 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, and shawed 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, that 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 has been manufactured
+long after the times 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 any thing 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 exceeding weak and foolish
+man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility;
+for though 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 any thing
+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 (xxviii. 7), "Behold Christ is gone before you into Galilee, there
+ye shall 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 it is said (ver. 16),
+"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where
+Jesus had appointed them; and, when they saw him, they worshipped him."
+
+But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different to
+this; for he says (xx. 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 xxiv. 13, 33-36, 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.
+
+Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples the
+right of wilful lying, that the writers of these 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
+destroy each other.
+
+The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in
+Galilee; but he says (xvi. 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. [This belongs to the late addition to Mark, which
+originally ended with xvi. 8.--Editor.] Luke also tells a story, in
+which he keeps Christ employed the whole of the 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 called 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
+reappeared that same evening, at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.
+
+This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended
+reappearance of Christ is stated: the only point in which the writers
+agree, is the skulking privacy of that reappearance; for whether it
+was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in 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 was 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 Corinthians xv.,
+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 was 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 every thing 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 noon-day; 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, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect
+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 this final parting is said to have been. [The last
+nine verses of Mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension
+rests exclusively on the words in Luke xxiv. 51, "was carried up into
+heaven,"--words omitted by several ancient authorities.--Editor.]
+
+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 there, 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 reported 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
+upon 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, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;--that
+the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean
+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 retum 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 cannot 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 and 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 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 imposters
+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 wilful 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 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
+farther, 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 are 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 afterwards, 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 burnt 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 hand-writing in either case. At the time
+those four 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 'Age of Reason' has not been
+published 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 that 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 erected 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?--Author.]
+
+[The spurious addition to Paine's work alluded to in his footnote drew on
+him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical
+Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in
+his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added
+by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added:
+"Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley omits. In a modern
+American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the
+above footnote.--Editor.]
+
+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 divers individuals; and as the church had
+begun to form itself into an 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 Robbins 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 person 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, agree not with his doctrine." 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
+greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put
+together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between
+them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the
+apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their own errors
+and their lies. [I have taken 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.--Author.]
+
+This Bishop Faustus is usually styled "The Manichaeum," Augustine having
+entitled his book, Contra Frustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in which
+nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted.--Editor.]
+
+The reader will see by those 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 faggot, 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 are
+tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the
+ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the 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) asserted that the evangelists were
+filled with falsities. The Manichaeans, 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 Corinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts
+of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians 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 the Christians, accused the scriptures of being
+filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or
+Nazarenes, 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 had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to
+obtain her, he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision,
+and against the observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal
+ordinances.--Author.] [Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de
+St. Paul, by N.A. Boulanger, 1770.--Editor.]
+
+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 was
+only an exceeding 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 exceeding 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 has been translated
+a thousand times before; but is there any amongst them that can write
+poetry like Homer, or science like Euclid? The sum total of a parson'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 forgery 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 it 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 had 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 afterwards the
+foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
+Each writer told a 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 contradictions 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 discernible enough. The frequent references
+made to that chief assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called
+prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church
+has complimented 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
+of, 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;) ["It shall bruise thy head,
+and thou shalt bruise his heel." Gen. iii. 15.--Author.] 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.
+
+Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and 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. xii. 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 that 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 afterwards; 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 action 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 be 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 died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again. That
+resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an
+ague-fit, when past, 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 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 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 could 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 exceeding 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 and 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
+of, 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 than 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; every thing 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 Agee of Reason.' I have called the creation
+the true and only 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 1 Corinthians xv., which
+makes part of the burial service of some Christian sectaries, it is
+as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at the 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 beasts, 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 the other." 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 come to have their fortune 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 dependant 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; [Athanasius
+died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371--Author.] and
+we know also, from the absurd jargon he has 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 true 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 any thing.
+
+I here close the subject on 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-edge 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 Testament hereafter fall, it is not that I
+have done it. I have done no more than extracted the evidence from
+the confused mass of matters 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 celled 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 any thing of which man has been the actor or the
+witness. That which man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell
+him he has 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 any thing ever was revealed, and which,
+by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only
+to whom it is made. His account of it to another 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 should be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be
+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 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, whilst 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
+any thing 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 disposition to good ones. [A fair parallel of the then
+unknown aphorism of Kant: "Two things fill the soul with wonder and
+reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more closely upon them:
+the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." (Kritik
+derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788). Kant's religious utterances at the
+beginning of the French Revolution brought on him a royal mandate
+of silence, because he had worked out from "the moral law within" a
+principle of human equality precisely similar to that which Paine had
+derived from his Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" of every man.
+About the same time Paine's writings were suppressed in England. Paine
+did not understand German, but Kant, though always independent in
+the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the
+literature of the Revolution, in America, England, and France.--Editor.]
+
+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 dishonourable 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 arose 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 faggot 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
+cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides
+this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] 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 [New]
+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. [This is an interesting and correct
+testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was
+Paine's father.--Editor.] 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 a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an
+impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing
+called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every
+thing that is dishonourable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches
+us?--repine, 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 those 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, (Xxv. 2 I) "If thine enemy be hungry,
+give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:"
+[According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book
+of Matthew, where, among some other [and] 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 idolators have abusively called heathen, 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 govemment," has never
+been exceeded by any man 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.--Author.] 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.
+
+Loving, of 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 a 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 us, 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 wherever 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 any thing we can read in a book, that any
+imposter 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 hand-writing 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 reflecting minds,
+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, nor even the prudent man, that will 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 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 principle: 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 a 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 human, and the state tyrannic.
+
+Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the
+belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of
+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, (iii.
+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 a nonsensical lie as the other. Acts, ii. 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 fit only for tales of
+witches and wizards.--Author.]
+
+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 him 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 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 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 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 grovelling 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 knowledge of the
+principles upon which the creation is constructed. We know that the
+greatest 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 those
+bodies are millions of miles distant 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 teaches
+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 any 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, be gone--and most probably has been taken from it,
+as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this
+expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer 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.--Author.]
+
+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 not forget
+the labours 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, whilst 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
+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 the 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
+light 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 the 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 to be
+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 govemment or
+religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
+
+
+END OF PART II
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume
+IV., by Thomas Paine
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