§ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 
 
 Chap. ..."B_k._L:?./-^ 
 
 ^e// ipi2> 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ 
 
. 7 . -iuU 
 
 V 
 
 THE 
 
 THEOLOGICAL VAMPIRE 
 
 u 
 
 EXPOSED. 
 
 IN A SERIES OF LECTURES 
 
 SHOWING THAT 
 
 THE. MIRACULOUS MYTHOLOGY OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 HAD FOR PROTOTYPE, THE THEOLOGY OF 
 
 THE ANCIENT PAGANS. 
 
 For with strong speech I tore the veil that hid 
 Nature, and Truth, and Liberty. 
 
 Laon and Cvthxa. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, BY 
 
 JOHN BROOKS, 421 OXFORD STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIII. 
 
 C^-|L*4 
 

 
PREFACE. 
 
 I A great and learned prelate of the Church of England 
 has declared that 6 authority is the greatest and most 
 irreconcileable enemy to truth and rational argument 
 that this world ever furnished out since it was in being; — 
 against it there is no defence : — it is authority alone 
 that keeps up the grossest and most abominable errors in 
 the countries around us : it was authority that would 
 have prevented all reformation where it is, and which has 
 put a barrier against it where it is not.' Here are five 
 luminous truths, expressed in the most simple and laconic 
 manner: yet the philosopher, who studies nature, and 
 follows truth ought not to be discouraged on account of 
 this formidable antagonist ; he must have the firmness to 
 speak the truth boldly for the sake of the few who are 
 capable and willing to think for themselves ; for, unless 
 we are allowed to endeavour to convince others of the 
 truth of our opinions, all teaching may as well be laid 
 aside : but as for the bulk of mankind, who take human 
 fictions and fancies for heavenly instructions, and who 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 are the voluntary slaves of prejudices, error, and supersti- 
 tion, they are as incapable of discerning the truth as frogs 
 are of flying. 
 
 The rational and virtuous education of youth can 
 never take place in countries where the mind of man is 
 enslaved by authority, and where the ecclesiastics, who 
 have an opposite and exclusive interest, engross not only 
 the education of youth, but keep the consciences of old 
 men under their control, and being backed by the false 
 zeal and ignorance of the people, the few who have 
 penetration and judgment are obliged to give way to the 
 prevailing absurdities. We are exceedingly apt and 
 ready in condemning the ridiculous creeds of other na- 
 tions, while our own contains as great, if not greater 
 absurdities, to which, nevertheless, we give the most 
 implicit assent ; the articles of our faith and creeds being 
 handed down from our predecessors, and to which we 
 have the title of tradition only. The greater the 
 ignorance and folly of the people, the more easily will 
 they be imposed upon by crafty mystagogues, and when 
 the latter have really no religion, (perhaps a very common 
 case), and the former abound in the wild zeal of the 
 fanatic, the church, we may rest assured, is in a flourish- 
 ing condition. But all systems founded on notions of 
 preternatural revelation, are in great danger when men 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 place their religion in virtue and sound morality ; for 
 then the people have no bigoted veneration for the 
 ' Sacerdotal Stole,' and priests would be held in no esti- 
 mation, except in as far as they set the example of 
 virtuous habits, in promoting the moral good of society :* 
 but wherever morality is not made the ground-work of 
 religion, they have succeeded in making the people 
 believe that eternal happiness can be dispensed by them 
 alone, or at least through their means; and in thus 
 getting the management of what they call spirituals in 
 their own hands, the highest degree of temporal ad- 
 vantage has necessarily followed, and in this latter point 
 they have succeeded so admirably, that in almost all the 
 Christian countries of Europe, the temporal interest of the 
 priesthood is mistaken, and passes for the soul-saving 
 spiritual interest of the laity. 
 
 * Instead of a theological, men should be taught a natural 
 morality, — instead of interdicting intemperance and vice, because 
 they are offensive to God and religion, they should be prevented by 
 convincing man that they are destructive to his existence, and 
 render him contemptible in society; that they are disapproved and 
 forbidden by reason and nature, who aim at his preservation, and 
 direct him to take the path that leads to permanent felicity ; and 
 independently of the future rewards and punishments announced 
 by religion, it is easy to prove to every man that it is in this world 
 his interest to preserve his health, to respect virtue, acquire the 
 esteem of his fellow creatures, and, in fine, to be chaste, temperate, 
 and virtuous. — Ecce Homo. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 We all have sufficient means of knowing how widely 
 the Christian world differ in the religion they teach ; 
 what absurd revolutions of opinion have been amongst 
 them, and the horrid scenes of inhuman cruelty which 
 these differences have occasioned ; what monstrous ab- 
 surdities prevail in most places, and what excessive 
 ignorance everywhere; — the madness of inventing a 
 revelation to patch up what they call the defects of 
 reason, and again super-adding reason to supply the 
 defects of revelation. 
 
 When we duly consider these melancholy realities, 
 and the sad evils they produce, we are warranted in 
 asserting that such a state of things would not be 
 tolerated or endured amongst men, were they not com* 
 pelled by that power and authority which the Church 
 derives from its pernicious connection with the State ; 
 for it was one of the grandest points ever effected by the 
 clergy of any country in former times, to get their super- 
 stition made ' part and parcel of the law of the land/ 
 This was clenching the fetters upon men's minds, for 
 whoever ventured to attack the knavish absurdities of 
 the priest,* was punished by the civil magistrate : and 
 thus the honest and the virtuous became sufferers for 
 
 * Scioppius gives us this definition of a Catholic church : — * We 
 are/ says he, * a stall, or herd, or multitude of beasts and asses, 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 obeying their reason in preference to revelation, it 
 appearing to them more certain that God is the author 
 of human reason, than that he is the author of any- 
 particular book. It is perfectly amazing that it should 
 enter the head of any man to suppose that he has, or can 
 possibly have, a right to dictate to others in matters of 
 opinion, and still more so that men should be so weak as 
 to admit and allow of such tyranny: yet such is the 
 credulity of those who have never been allowed to think 
 for themselves, that the clergy find it an easy task to 
 impose any thing upon the obedient people, if they 
 recommend it with a convenient gravity and solemnity ; 
 this holds good with respect to all religions, whatever 
 may be their component parts, for if we take a look into 
 Pagan or Christian traditions, we shall find that their 
 Theological legends were chiefly composed of Mytho- 
 logical fables, — the Jews copying from the Egyptians, 
 Phenicians, and Chaldeans ; and the Christians, after the 
 second century, when the primitive principles of the 
 Son of Mary no longer existed, imitated all of them in 
 the way of parody. 
 
 and they (the priests) bridle us, they saddle us, they harness us, 
 they spur us, they lay yokes and burdens upon us.' I will add, that 
 our own priests would do all that Scioppius complains of, if they 
 had the power. 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians, from the use of hieroglyphics 
 in their religious ceremonies, gradually introduced the 
 greatest absurdities ; — the Ox, that patient and laborious 
 animal, was at first nothing more than a symbolical 
 representation of the means by which the earth was 
 cultivated ; but this-simple idea was afterwards forgotten 
 in the ignorance of the people, who began in downright 
 earnest to adore the beast itself; — in like manner, but 
 with still greater absurdity, we of modern times, having 
 created our deity, degrade him into a similitude with 
 ourselves, and then we eat and drink him ! ! ! 
 
 The hierophants, or religious impostors of antiquity, 
 taught their silly followers to adore female deities, who, 
 by their own account, were guilty of every species of 
 debauchery, — to worship goddesses greatly inferior to 
 the courtesans. Such in every age has been the true 
 character of all those traffickers in divine commodities, 
 or preternatural deceptions, that whenever any chimera, 
 no matter how shameful and humiliating to reason, was 
 adopted, and suited their interest, they would never 
 allow themselves to be undeceived, but imagined a 
 thousand wretched shifts, rather than abandon the most 
 palpable error : but this is not to be wondered at, since 
 they live by the weakness and folly of the bulk of 
 mankind. 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 To multiply human virtues depends upon societies 
 well ordered and regulated by good laws, to nourish and 
 protect those virtues ; — instead of which, the most effec- 
 tual means are most commonly applied to ends that are 
 of all others the least to be desired, and every vigilance 
 and anxious care is taken to instil in early youth non- 
 sensical creeds which of necessity can have no other 
 ground to rest upon than the supposed knowledge and 
 veracity of those deeply-interested teachers ; and it is 
 too certain that in this predicament, a very large 
 majority of our fellow creatures continue to be children 
 all their lives. Partly from an indolence of mind, and 
 partly from a superstitious timidity, they never once 
 attempt to examine matters thoroughly, but contentedly 
 take up with such notions, right or wrong, as their 
 instructors see their own interest in adopting for them 
 and what thus begins in faith cannot end in reason. 
 It is obvious therefore that the pliant, passive belief of 
 this vast majority of mankind, must be entirely at the 
 discretion of the ruling powers in church and state, and 
 consequently, should these powers adopt a new religion, 
 with rituals and creeds diametrically opposite to the 
 present, the mass* of the people would go on to think 
 
 * St Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, says, ' since the Nicene Synod, 
 we have done nothing but write creeds, while we fight about words, 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 themselves bound to believe in the manner prescribed 
 by authority ; or in whatsoever way their godfathers and 
 godmothers had engaged for them to believe; — and 
 hereby the ignominious fetters of mental slavery are 
 rivetted, although there is nothing in the case that has 
 any thing to do with belief, properly so called, because, 
 that which alone deserves that name, is the result of a 
 full and satisfactory conviction of the judgment; and 
 for any man to say that he believes in that which he 
 never allowed himself to examine thoroughly, is as 
 direct a falsehood as it is possible for him to utter. 
 
 Any thing in the form of apology for self-evident truths, 
 cannot have any effect on these who have so little sense 
 as to deny them : — they are the foundation of all reason- 
 ing, and the only just bottom on which men can proceed 
 in convincing one another, and by consequence, whoever 
 is capable of denying them, is not in a condition to be 
 informed, and under such a distempered state of mind, it 
 remains only for them to follow their own disordered 
 fancies, or what is more common, to be guided by the 
 
 and quarrel about things doubtful ; we decree every year of the 
 lord, a new creed concerning God ; nay, every change of the moon 
 our faith is altered. We repent of our decrees,' (as we have made 
 God repent of his), ' we defend those who have repented of them, 
 and we anathematize those we have defended.' 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 dictates of artful, and deeply interested men ; or by crazy- 
 brained fanatics, for as truth will never serve the purposes 
 of knaves, so it will never suit the understanding of 
 fools ; and the latter will ever be as well pleased in 
 being deceived, as the former in deceiving : and when 
 we consider that private interest is a more formidable 
 enemy to truth than ignorance, and that in the present 
 case, its chief security consists in the fostering of igno- 
 rance, the prospect of any very considerable mental 
 improvement amongst the bulk of mankind, is greatly 
 darkened, and almost hopeless, for this private interest in 
 the priesthood creates the love of wealth, avarice, ease, 
 and power ; disguised under the imposing robes of the 
 order, giving them that ascendancy in society that is well 
 calculated to perpetuate these evils; and having igno- 
 rance and prejudice as their steady upholders, they are 
 likely to continue as they ever have done, fatally to 
 mislead the million by subduing their reason, palming 
 upon them absurd and unintelligible dogmas as the clear 
 and equitable precepts of the Supreme Being, and 
 hereby banishing truth and honest sincerity, and conse- 
 quently, goodness and virtue, all arising from the foun- 
 dation of truth ; for there cannot possibly be any thing 
 deserving of the name of goodness, unless it has truth's 
 impression. 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 As the growth of miracles appears most abundant in 
 
 the compilation of what is called the Old Testament, it 
 
 may be observed here, in the prefatory way, that, although 
 
 the Mosaic accounts of the originals of men and things 
 
 are in many instances so perfectly ridiculous as to excite 
 
 our risibility, yet such is the force of custom* and 
 
 pre-instilled opinions, that they are embraced without 
 
 the least scruple or examination ; but if we had read stories 
 
 of a like absurd and incredible nature in the writings of 
 
 one of the early Mahometans, or in those of a Grecian 
 
 philosopher, our minds would have been filled with 
 
 objections, and the relation of each prodigy would have 
 
 met with scorn and sarcasm rather than belief; and how 
 
 can this difference arise, but from the early impression 
 
 that is made on our minds that Moses had heavenly 
 
 inspirations ? 
 
 The title of an atheistical or heretical pamphlet will be 
 bestowed upon these lectures by any fiery zealot into 
 
 * « The queen of slaves, 
 
 The hood-winked angel of the blind and dead, 
 Custom, with iron mace, points to the graves 
 Where her own standard desolately waves 
 Over the dust of prophets and of Kings. 
 Many yet stand in her array ; she paves 
 Her path with human hearts, and o'er it flings 
 The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings. 
 
 Laon and Cvtiina. 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 whose hands they may fall ; and under the pretence of 
 being a champion for truth, he is supported by ignorance 
 and malice as his seconds. But does he know wherein 
 the nature of atheism consists ? It would be atheism to 
 assert that there is no Almighty Power ruling the universe, 
 or to deny the benevolent providence of that power. 
 Men holding such opinions as these would be atheists, 
 but not so much so as those bigoted fanatics who, building 
 upon false premises, continue obstinately in the most 
 absurd errors. The unthinking herd of mankind, whose 
 superstition is grounded upon the assimilation of the 
 Supreme Being with themselves, are apt to think that 
 every one they hate is the enemy of the Almighty Power, 
 and that all who differ from them in opinion are atheists ; 
 not rightly considering that he is the best Christian who 
 is the most honest man. And, therefore, if any man 
 blames me for comparing Christianity with Paganism, he 
 shows nothing but his unworthy distrust of the sufficiency 
 of the religion he professes. 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 Somewhat I would say, 
 
 But fear, — let fear, for once, to truth give way. 
 
 Dryden. 
 Thou, reader, who art free from other cares, 
 Receive right reason's truth with well purged ears ; 
 Lest what I write, and send you for your good, 
 Be scorned and damn'd before well understood. 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 ON MIRACLES. 
 
 It is contrary to nature, to reason, and to all experi- 
 ence, that a miracle should be true ; but it is not contrary 
 to nature, to reason, or to experience, that a man, or a 
 class of men who lived about two thousand years ago, 
 should propagate falsehoods : on the contrary, falsehood 
 is a coin that has ever been in ready currency amongst 
 mankind, and the more outrageous it is against truth 
 and common sense, the more readily it has generally 
 been received by the ignorant and deluded multitude ; 
 because, in things supernatural the weak mind is taken 
 
2 LECTURE I. 
 
 by surprise, is strongly affected, and adheres, unites, and 
 commits itself without ever comprehending them, " and 
 it is too late to make use of reason after we have long 
 subjected it to the obedience of faith." 
 
 A very profound philosopher has observed that, " A 
 miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm 
 and unalterable experience has established these laws, the 
 proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, 
 is as entire as any argument from experience can possi- 
 bly be imagined ; and therefore, no testimony is suffi- 
 cient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of 
 such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous 
 than the fact which it endeavours to establish." — The 
 stupendous order of nature, the revolution of hundreds 
 of millions of globes or worlds, round a million of suns, 
 may be called miraculous, yet in all this nature is still in 
 an even and invariable course, acting by self-existing 
 laws, immutable and inviolable. If it should be asked, 
 " Cannot a law that is established by God himself be 
 suspended by its author ?" we reply that it cannot ; for, 
 beside the impossibility, there is the highest degree of 
 impious arrogance in venturing to suppose that the 
 omnipotent all-ruling power would act as men do in 
 making laws that were afterwards to be suspended or 
 violated . 
 
ON MIRACLES. 3 
 
 It appears clearly enough that the mass of miraculous 
 stuff that has been handed down to us from the early 
 times of our holy church, and which we are called upon 
 to believe, was manifestly confuted even in those very 
 times ; and for this strong reason, some of the primitive 
 priests or fathers, viz. Origen, Eusebius of Csesaria, 
 Julius Africanus, and others, have taken care to destroy 
 or mutilate the works of almost all those philosophers 
 and men of learning who lived in or near their own 
 times, and who exposed the tricks and legerdemain of 
 the early fabricators of our religion, who had even then 
 departed entirely from the moral simplicity of the origi- 
 nal : they have left us nothing of Berosus, or of Celsus 
 the epicurean, except as much of them as it suited their 
 ends to quote in their own works ; and as for Manetho, 
 Porphyry Symmachus, and others, they are so mutilated 
 that we have only fragments of them remaining.* After 
 destroying or suppressing the works of those learned 
 men whose arguments they could not answer, — after 
 making away with such respectable authorities against 
 
 * The books written by the most learned philosophers were 
 forbidden, on pretence that they were written by heathens ; and 
 the bishops themselves, at the Council of Carthage, about the year 
 400, were interdicted the reading of heathen authors ; for they 
 said that Saint Jerome himself had been whipped with rods by an 
 angel sent expressly from heaven, /w reading Cicero 1 s works. 
 
 / 
 
4 LECTURE I. 
 
 their artful and imposing systems, their successors in 
 the church now tell us that miracles are no longer 
 wanted, but that formerly they were wrought in favour 
 of mankind, for the purpose of establishing the Christian 
 religion ; but had not all the old religions the same pre- 
 tensions to miracles ? Are not the Pagan legends and 
 traditions full of them ? And have not a vast number of 
 them been imitated and dressed up afresh by the Chris- 
 tians ? But the most absurd and extravagant miracle of 
 all is to imagine that the supreme power should, in 
 favour of a few ants on their little ball of earth, derange 
 the operation of those eternal and immutable laws inhe- 
 rent in, and inseparable from matter, and which govern 
 the vast machinery of the universe. Such departures 
 from nature are the delusive ravings of theological art, 
 but everything that has not reason in it and for it, is 
 man's superstition, and not religion of God's or nature's 
 making ; so all religions except that of nature and rea- 
 son, bear the impression of man, that is, of fraud and 
 falsehood. The favours of that supreme power which 
 rules all nature (by nature's laws alone) consist in its 
 laws themselves, and therefore to dare to ascribe mira- 
 cles, or what is the same thing, fickleness and imbeci- 
 lity to it, is an impious insult, allowing for a moment 
 that poor miserable man can insult that power so tran- 
 
ON xMIRACLES. 5 
 
 scendently great as to be altogether beyond his compre- 
 hension. 
 
 We have seen that all religions from the highest anti- 
 quity have had their miracles, and why should not the 
 Christians have theirs also ? for their priests stood as 
 much in need of them as did those of the older systems 
 of the Pagan religions ; so accordingly they adopted as 
 an example the Pagan and Jewish mythology and rites, 
 perceiving the immense power and influence that mira- 
 cle and mystery held over the vulgar mind ; but this 
 species of delusion was everywhere, and in all ages, 
 almost wholly confined to the illiterate rabble ; " for all 
 the philosophers and historians of Greece and Rome are 
 either silent in regard to such fooleries, or treat them 
 with derision and contempt ; for these sages were very 
 far from admitting the tricks of priests, or the bigotry 
 of the lower orders of mankind, as the standard of 
 truth." 
 
 It is not only remarkable but surprising, that all na- 
 tions who have given up the simplicity of nature, and 
 become what is called civilized and polished, have fabri- 
 cated books of theological mysteries and prodigies which 
 may justly be regarded as the source of the greatest 
 evils and calamities experienced by mankind : in them 
 we discover the root and germ of intolerance, the ran- 
 
b LECTURE I. 
 
 corous hatred that springs from the conflicting dogmas 
 of priests, the religious wars consequent thereon, and 
 the dreadful devastations which superstition, backed by- 
 authority, has entailed upon the human raee. This is 
 the religion of unnatural prodigies, that has rendered 
 men morose and unsociable, gloomy-minded, fierce, and 
 cruel; and to act in everything throughout their lives 
 with a tendency to all that is destructive of their com- 
 mon welfare ; but chiefly in the expedient which they 
 have found out, at a vast expense, of hiring persons to 
 bewilder reason and common sense. As these religions 
 have multiplied, and again been subdivided into sects, 
 the erection of more churches entailed so much addi- 
 tional expense upon the industry of the people to main- 
 tain them, while the black train of evils already noted 
 has increased in equal proportion. 
 
 Nothing but reasoning can improve reason, and no 
 book can improve my reason in any point, unless it gives 
 me convincing proofs of its reasonableness ; and a reve- 
 lation that will not suffer us to examine and judge of its 
 dictates by our reason, is so far from improving, that it 
 forbids the use of reason, and if that faculty is left 
 unexercised, it will have as little force as unexercised 
 limbs. 
 
 All belief in miracles must necessarily exclude reason 
 
ON MIRACLES. 7 
 
 and experience, and so general has been the infatuated 
 belief in them, that it would be difficult to mention a 
 single nation in which the most incredible prodigies have 
 not been performed ; and it has always happened that 
 the most monstrous and absurd have been invented in 
 those countries where the mass of the people had little 
 knowledge of reading and writing, and consequently 
 they were the secure and easy prey of their spiritual 
 lords the priests. Thus we see, that amongst the nume- 
 rous systems of revealed religion with which the credu- 
 lity of man has been saddled, not one of them has been 
 without its code of miracles, and the priests of each have 
 invariably denied the truth of every one except their 
 own ; and each of these infallible guides will give you 
 an unerring rule, one that, according to their own asse- 
 veration, cannot err, that is, by an implicit belief by 
 faith in the particular doctrine that each of them pro- 
 mulgates. Now, that which proceeds from reason and 
 common sense, we know to be true, but what proceeds 
 from faith is believed only as a sort of obligation.* 
 
 * Neither reason nor study, says Boulanger, are necessary to 
 men who submit their judgments to the yoke of faith. From the 
 confession of Christians themselves, the founders of their religion 
 were simple and ignorant men. Their disciples must be as little 
 enlightened as they were, to admit the fables and reveries they 
 have received from them. It has always been remarked that the 
 
8 LECTURE U 
 
 There is a vast difference between knowing and believ- 
 ing ; and yet it must be confessed that with the excep- 
 tion of that famous old personage, the devil, faith is the 
 best working tool in the shop of every priest, for by it 
 he secures a blind obedience, but without the former he 
 can do nothing whatever ; indeed they are mutually 
 necessary to each other, for the devil can do nothing 
 without the church, because his dominion and power 
 are ever most extensive when the theologians succeed 
 in preventing all freedom of inquiry and discussion, 
 which they will do while their numbers are multi- 
 plied everywhere, and their power enlarged even to the 
 use of the temporal sword. Let them therefore lay 
 aside the folly of pretending to weaken or destroy his 
 Satanic Majesty, whether his existence be real or imagi- 
 
 most enlightened men seldom make the best Christians, — science is 
 apt to embarrass faith. If science be serviceable to political society, 
 ignorance is much more so to revealed religion and its ministers. 
 Those ages destitute of science and industry, were the golden ages 
 of the Christian church. Then were kings dutifully submissive to 
 priests : then the coffers of priests held all the riches of society. The 
 ministers of a very numerous sect have kept from the eyes of their 
 followers the sacred pages which contain the laws of their religion. 
 This conduct is undoubtedly very discreet ; for reading the bible 
 is the surest of all means to prevent its being respected. If in 
 fact, the maxims of the Christian religion respecting science were 
 rigorously and universally followed, no political society could 
 subsist. 
 
ON MIRACLES. V 
 
 nary, since it is evident that their own interest is mainly 
 promoted by increasing his name and power ; and with 
 respect to himself, he may rest assured that he would 
 cut but a sorry figure in the world were it not for the 
 church.* 
 
 The belief in miracles is nearly related to the detes- 
 table folly of crediting the foul accusations for witchcraft, 
 and in the darker ages, when the church had more 
 power, the clergy were commonly the chief promoters 
 of the prosecutions against the unhappy and helpless 
 creatures who were charged with this imaginary crime, 
 the executions of whom cannot be looked upon as any- 
 thing else than so many murders; and all good men 
 who endeavoured to expose them as such were branded 
 by the church as Atheists ; but these, unhappily, being 
 very few in number, were quite unequal to the task of 
 wresting out of the priests' hands the power of taking 
 away so many innocent people's lives and reputations. 
 
 The greatest philosophers of antiquity ranked super- 
 stition amongst the vices, making the happiness of man 
 
 * Men vainly imagine they have discovered the principles of 
 good and evil by calling the one God and the other Devil, when in 
 reality they have only personified these relative terms which are 
 expressive of our perceptions; and worship a creature of their own 
 imagination, for an immaterial deity exists only in the mind of 
 man. 
 
10 LECTURE I. 
 
 in life to consist in the practice of virtue, and freedom 
 from superstition; and on the contrary, the greatest 
 misery in life to consist in being vicious, and believing 
 in supernaturals. Another great mind amongst the an- 
 cients describes superstition as a terrible evil, arising 
 from education, or the natural weakness of the human 
 mind, oppressing nearly the whole of mankind. If you 
 give way to it, says he, it will ever haunt and plague 
 you : all the tranquillity of the mind will be destroyed j 
 and sleep itself, which seems to be an asylum and refuge 
 from all trouble and uneasiness, does by the phantoms of 
 superstition increase your troubles and fears. From all 
 which evils you can alone be freed by following that 
 plain, consistent, and rational system of religion, which 
 is obvious in the book of nature, and whose basis is 
 truth and morality : all other systems give rise to those 
 vicious passions which spring from the clouds of error 
 and falsehood. 
 
 In what are called the schools of divinity, youth 
 learns to believe in the manner that suits the theolo- 
 gian ; but the man of unbiased reflection believes that 
 only which appears to him true, and cannot believe 
 otherwise ; therefore, belief cannot be a duty, and the 
 attempt to make it even meritorious, or the want of it 
 criminal, is a downright mark of imposture ; for truth 
 
ON MIRACLES. 11 
 
 requires only a reasonable conviction, not a blind obedi- 
 ence. But if miracles were formerly performed for the 
 purpose of converting mankind, and supposing that all 
 the believing part of the world had turned infidels, as 
 the consequence of their having ceased, yet not a single 
 sensible miracle could now be produced to re-save the 
 world, or what is more to Christian priests, to save their 
 livings and dignities. That the majority of the educated 
 in society are still priest-ridden is perfectly evident, 
 yet such a fable as the New Testament story of the 
 devils and the swine 9 would not in these days be ven- 
 tured upon; and if the same crime had been laid 
 to the charge of Mahomet in terms so ill judged as to 
 confess such atrocious iniquity, he would have been 
 branded by your divines as an abominable wizard, inde- 
 pendent of the robbery committed On the owners of the 
 swine. # The ingenuous and truth-loving Meslier, a 
 
 * It appears that the devils possessing the two demoniacs who 
 lived among the tombs, could not be dislodged without terms of 
 capitulation, one article of which was that they should be allowed 
 to go into the swine. The spokesman of these devils announced 
 that he was legion, or called legion, probably from being the chief 
 of a detachment consisting of that number. The treaty being con- 
 cluded, the devils took possession of their new subjects accord- 
 ingly, who, feeling a most devilish commotion within them, com- 
 mitted suicide immediately : nor was this rash act wonderful when 
 we consider that there were onlv " about two thousand" swine, so 
 
12 LECTURE I. 
 
 French curate, treats the ridiculous adventure of the devil 
 carrying away Jesus to the top of a mountain, the mar- 
 riage of Cana, and the story of the loaves and fishes, as 
 absurd tales, injurious to the goodness of the Supreme 
 Being, and which, for more than the three first centuries, 
 were altogether unknown in the Roman empire ; and at 
 last brought forward from the lowest dregs of the com- 
 munity, and palmed by the priests upon the wicked and 
 worthless emperors, after their apostacy from the religion 
 of their forefathers ; and when policy compelled them to 
 adopt the nonsense and foolish bigotry of the people, in 
 order to keep them the better in subjection. 
 
 To rectify abuses that have kept their ground for so 
 many centuries, and remove such a host of prejudices so 
 long instilled by habit and education, is now become ex- 
 ceedingly difficult; for, besides private interest, pride, 
 passion, and obstinacy, stand as bulwarks in their de- 
 fence, and men will rarely suffer correction in those reli- 
 gious points where they think their judgment and good 
 sense have been arraigned ; and in the rancour of that 
 
 that there would be the proportion of three devils to each pig, 
 reckoning a legion of devils to consist of the same number as a 
 Roman legion. I wish that some theologian or commentator would 
 inform me whether Jesus or the devils were most guilty in this 
 wholesale iiogicide. 
 
ON MIRACLES. 13 
 
 fanatical hatred,* which of all others is the most deadly, 
 they will even condemn reason and the light of nature 
 as forming an ignis-fatuus to lead the world to perdi- 
 tion. 
 
 In former times, when ignorance was more prevalent 
 than it now is, it was believed as certain, that the 
 almighty power denounced his anger by means of 
 miracle, and other marvellous phenomena, but in these 
 times all such appearances are known, even to demon- 
 stration, to be common effects of natural causes, de- 
 termined by laws that nothing can change ; but still 
 the vanity of this sensible, intelligent, thinking being 
 called man, in the pride of his heart, believes himself 
 to be the sole object of divine predilection, forming his 
 God after his own peculiar model ; and hugging himself 
 
 * In the time of that wise heathen philosopher Ammianus Mar- 
 cellinus, the Christians bore such hatred to each other, that, as he 
 complains, "no beasts were such deadly enemies to men, as the 
 more savage Christians were generally to one another." What 
 would he have said of them if he had lived in the sixteenth century, 
 when in Catholic countries he beheld the princes and nobles proud 
 of serving the inquisition in the most inhuman and detestable 
 offices, such as carrying with their own hauds the holy faggots for 
 the burning of heretics ? Our religion is said to be one of peace ; 
 yet upon a moderate calculation it has destroyed in the world nine 
 millions seven hundred and eighteen thousand eight hundred per- 
 sons, burnt, hanged, drowned, shot, and tortured, all for the love 
 of God and the honor of his Son. 
 
\ 
 
 14 LECTURE I. 
 
 with this favourite notion, he wants no proof of that 
 which he wishes to believe ; and we know of no demon- 
 stration that is strong enough to prove the falsehood of 
 a favourite opinion. But the most monstrous of all the 
 miracles that knavery has devised, and folly sanctioned, 
 is perhaps the Jewish one, of the creation of matter 
 out of nothing, a proposition so unsightly and enormous, 
 that the rational mind rejects it at once, as the ravings 
 of insanity ; but on the other hand, the reflecting mind 
 has no difficulty in the simple idea of the eternity of 
 matter ; even the theologian himself must agree that it 
 would require one of his miracles to annihilate a single 
 atom of matter, yet he will maintain that a being which 
 he describes as an immaterial existence, without extent, 
 drew from its own source the thousands of globes which 
 we behold, and which source is declared to be nothing. 
 This is arriving at the acme of absurdity, through the 
 wanderings of a distempered fancy, for it is beyond the 
 grasp of human intellect to conceive any distinct idea of 
 such a being ; but when the light of nature and reason 
 are discarded, faith and miracle come readily into play. 
 In thus setting aside all miracle and all prodigy, as the 
 inventions of knavery to impose upon weak and credu- 
 lous minds, it may be asked, " Do you then, when you 
 fully allow that there is an omnipotent power which 
 
ON MIRACLES. 15 
 
 rules everything-, deny that it has the power to work 
 miracles if necessary?" The answer is, that it never 
 can be necessary, or even possible for that power to vio- 
 late its own modes of action, or those laws by which it 
 necessarily operates : this would be inconsistency with 
 itself, which is utterly impossible. But in this matter, 
 as in everything else, the pride and folly of man will not 
 allow him to refrain from measuring the supreme all-in- 
 all by the scale of human conception ; and being in the 
 constant habit of violating the laws which he has made 
 in society, lie attributes the same frailties and passions 
 to his deity. The same infatuation, infused by false 
 education, has made him believe that he himself was 
 produced at first by a miracle; but to talk of the first 
 man is as silly and unphilosophical as it would be to talk 
 about the first blade of grass, the first elephant, the first 
 worm, or the first fish. These animals, and this blade 
 of grass, are so many natural productions of the surface 
 of this globe, and man himself, with all his pretensions, 
 is nothing else : and should superstition, war, and pesti- 
 lence, those perpetual scourges of the earth, remove en- 
 tirely by one fell sweep the whole of the human race 
 from the face of the earth, the sun would still give his 
 light, day and night would succeed each other, rain would 
 fall, rivers would run, and woods would grow, in the same 
 
16 LECTURE I. 
 
 manner as if nothing had happened to this pretended 
 favourite of heaven. 
 
 If man would get rid of such follies (with which his 
 miseries are nearly connected), and arrive at that happi- 
 ness of which his natural organization is capable, it is 
 sufficient that he wills it, by removing those obstruc- 
 tions by which his mind is enslaved ; and this he must 
 owe wholly to himself, — to his own free exertions in 
 finding out what human existence really is; and a 
 knowledge of his true wants, and proper manner of 
 life, will necessarily follow ; but this useful knowledge 
 never can be derived from the vain and shadowy study 
 of imaginary beings, with their supposed train of super- 
 natural actions, but from the study of the physical and 
 intellectual powers displayed in nature herself, in which 
 there is no deception. The idea of a miracle being 
 indisputably contrary to the course of nature, and of 
 all experience, the question arises, who can really in his 
 mind believe or consent to anything that is so flatly 
 opposed to his reason ? for denying a thing with a man's 
 heart is nothing else than the gain-saying and dissent 
 of a man's reason; — yet men will subject that excellent 
 and unerring light to the dead letter of a book, which 
 has been varied, corrupted, and misinterpreted in thou- 
 sands of different ways, to suit human passions and 
 
ON MIRACLES. 17 
 
 interests; and which, in all probability, was compiled 
 by many different hands, and at various periods, in 
 rude imitation of oriental books of much higher anti- 
 quity; such as the scriptures of the Bramins, called 
 the Shaster, the scriptures of the Persees, called the 
 Zundavastaw ; or those of the Bonzes of China, which 
 they say were written by Fo-He, whom they call 
 God, and Saviour of the world, by giving satisfaction 
 for the sins of men. We have also the scriptures of 
 Sommonocodom, whom the Talapoins of Siam say 
 was born of a virgin,* and was the God expected by 
 the universe. 
 
 * The story of what is called the miraculous conception, can 
 be accounted for in a very easy and natural way. " According to 
 the apocryphal Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, which father Jerome 
 Xavier entirely adopts, Mary, when a child, was consecrated to 
 the Lord, by the usual vow, and was brought up in the Temple, 
 which she did not leave until she was sixteen years of age. This 
 naturally created a suspicion that her pregnancy was the effect of 
 some intrigue of the priests, who made her believe, or say, that 
 it was God who had begotten a child upon her." — Codex Apocryph, : 
 N.T. 
 
 The high priest himself was, in all probability, the chief actor 
 in this sacerdotal intrigue, for he anxiously pitched upon old 
 Joseph to be the husband of Mary; and St Epiphanius assures us 
 in his book of ' Heresie/ that Joseph was very old at the time of 
 his marriage with the Virgin ; and adds, that he was the father of 
 six children by his first wife. And, moreover, the Gospel ascribed 
 to St James the Younger, declares that the good old man espoused 
 
18 LECTURE I. 
 
 Let us call to mind how many juggling tricks of 
 heathen and popish priests are recorded in history for 
 miracles, and numerous other impositions for the 
 wonderful works of their gods and saints ; but are they 
 capable of the same evidence as other historical facts ? 
 How easy it is for the pious mind (especially in females) 
 to be induced to believe the most notorious frauds that 
 have the face of piety, and seem done to promote it ! 
 But prophecies and miracles have no foundation in 
 God or nature, and consequently none in truth ; but 
 are created wholly in the imaginations of men, to 
 answer the purposes of fraud, or arise from the false 
 ideas that men have of the supreme power, the false 
 gods they have imagined and set up, which strike 
 profound awe and terror into the distorted conceptions 
 of their abject supplicants. 
 
 Mary with very great reluctance, as the disparity of their ages 
 intimidated him exceedingly, but the high priest prevailed on him 
 at last; and it further informs us of the very ill humour of Joseph, 
 when he found that his wife had been pregnant before their 
 marriage, and the reproaches with which he loaded her, on ac- 
 count of her lewdness, unworthy, as he thought, of a virgin 
 reared under the eyes of the priests. Mary, as is usual in such 
 cases, "excused herself, with tears and protestations, and swore by 
 the living God, that she did not know who begot the child upon 
 her;" which might indeed be true, if there was a sacerdotal co- 
 partnership in the business. " It appears that in her distress, she 
 even forgot the adventure of the arch-angel Gabriel. ,, 
 
 / 
 
ON MIRACLES. 19 
 
 The votaries of superstitious folly tell us that our 
 reason is blinded and lost, so as in nowise to be trusted 
 as a guide, and at the same time they declare that it 
 is abominable wickedness to suspect the letter and 
 authenticity of those books already alluded to, and 
 which they pretend to idolize, as being heaven- 
 descended. They account it great piety in a man not to 
 trust his reason and judgment, but perverse wickedness 
 to doubt the fidelity of those who compiled, and caused 
 to be adopted as the word of God, the dissonant 
 volumes in question. If the host of miracles that are 
 related in the said books, called scriptures, are, as 
 priests tell us they are, so many appeals to our reason 
 and senses, for the truth and authority of the heavenly 
 commission of those by whom they are said to have 
 been wrought, then we say, let them be tried at the 
 same tribunal of our reason and senses; and if they 
 cannot abide the test thereof, let them be rejected, and 
 their authorities along with them; for the liberty of 
 thinking, w T riting, and judging for ourselves in religion, 
 is a natural, and even a Protestant right, for the pre- 
 servation of which we ought to be incessantly on our 
 guard ; otherwise our understandings, as well as our 
 purses, will be ridden and oppressed by a designing 
 and tyrannical priesthood. 
 
20 LECTURE I. 
 
 Nothing that is rational and consistent can be under- 
 stood from what are called the ' commands of God/ 
 except the concatenation of natural causes and things ; 
 and by his decrees nothing else is meant than the 
 universal laws of nature, Or eternal verity and necessity, 
 which are one and the same thing ; and, therefore, the 
 more we know of natural things, the more we have 
 acquired of the knowledge of the supreme power ; and 
 to be able to account for effects by knowing their causes, 
 is to know so much of the immutable essence of that 
 power. When the ancient philosophers said that such 
 a thing was done by a god, or the gods, they were 
 only using words suited to the capacity of the vulgar, 
 and their meaning was that the thing was done ac- 
 cording to the invariable and eternal rules of nature; 
 and not, as the ignorant imagine, that nature was idle, 
 or her laws interrupted or suspended. 
 
 There is nothing more improbable than that the 
 reformer, who is a follower of nature, and a moralist, 
 and whose endeavour it is to expose the arts of theolo- 
 gians, should have any pretensions to preternatural 
 powers ; and, therefore, there is no reason to believe 
 that the reputed founder of the christian religion, either 
 wrought, or pretended to work miracles ; but as soon as 
 that system, to which his name has been affixed, began 
 
ON MIRACLES. 21 
 
 to have a hireling priesthood, then were miracles 
 attributed to him in abundance; and that they have 
 been believed through these latter ages of the church, 
 is not at all wonderful : the priest had his interest in 
 them ; the ignorant and superstitious had a comfort in 
 them, and the wise and considerate, from the fear of 
 persecution, dared not to inquire into their foundation, 
 however marvellous and absurd ; although they appeared 
 to them the most manifest and the most self-evident 
 impostures that were ever put upon the world, yet they 
 have been successful in passing through many ages and 
 nations, with a reputation that is perfectly wonderful ; 
 and all by mere dint of the zealous exertions, and over- 
 powering influence of that privileged body of men, 
 whose interest will still be the same and indivisible in 
 every part of the world, and whose cunning and well 
 adapted oratory tickles the ears, whilst it warps the 
 understandings of the million, stupifying their minds 
 with dogmas and doctrines about faith and mystery, 
 which are past all understanding.* Thus has truth been 
 
 * The first of the christian virtues is faith ; — it consists in an 
 impossible conviction of the revealed doctrines, and absurd 
 fables, which our religion commands its disciples to believe. 
 Hence it appears, that this virtue exacts a total renunciation of 
 reason, an impracticable assent to improbable facts, and a blind 
 submission to the authority of priests, who are the only guarantees 
 
22 LECTURE I. 
 
 debased and degraded by faith, — a faith that has made 
 men mad, exciting the nearest relations to hate, 
 persecute, and even to destroy each other. 
 
 In addition to the invention of miracles, the compilers 
 of the Jewish Scriptures have also ascribed to the Supreme 
 Being the most downright inconsistencies and contra- 
 dictions, and those who maintain that the bible con- 
 tains no such direct imputations, assert what is not true, 
 for of this there are numerous instances; but for the 
 sake of brevity we shall notice only the two following in 
 Deuteronomy, chap. 4th and verse 24th. Moses, or 
 some person for him, expressly declares that God is a 
 consuming fire, although he had directly before, in the 
 
 of the truth of the doctrines and miracles that every christian 
 must believe, under the penalty of damnation. It forbids all doubt 
 and inquiry ; it reduces man to the passive acquiescence of brutes, 
 in matters which he is, at the same time, told are of all things the 
 most important to his eternal happiness. Hence it is plain, that 
 faith is a virtue invented by men, who, shrinking from the light of 
 reason, deceived their fellow creatures, in order to subject them to 
 their own authority. If faith be a virtue, it is certainly useful 
 only to the spiritual guides of the christians, for the}' alone gather 
 its fruits. They represent this reason as perverted, and an un- 
 faithful guide, by which they seem to intimate that it was not 
 intended for reasonable beings. What grounds then has the 
 christian for entertaining such a belief? — His confidence in his 
 spiritual guides. But what is the foundation of this confidence ? — 
 Revelation. On what then is revelation itself founded ? — On the 
 authority of .spiritual guides ! ! — Boulanger. 
 
ON MIRACLES. 23 
 
 12th verse of the same chapter, denied that God was 
 visible, or like any visible thing. In 1st Samuel, 15th 
 chap, verse 29th, it is directly denied that God ever 
 repents of his decrees ; but Jeremiah, on the contrary, 
 affirms, in chap. 18th, verse 8th and 10th, that God re- 
 pents both of the good and evil that he had purposed 
 and decreed. Besides such abominable contradictions, 
 the fanatic devoutly accuses the Almighty Power of 
 crimes that are rarely committed by the worst of men, 
 such as requiring the sacrifice of the innocent to expiate 
 the crimes of the guilty. 
 
 A miracle, being a pretended fact that is contrary to 
 nature, admits of no natural evidence, however positively 
 the fact may be asserted ; but anything deserving of the 
 name of evidence cannot possibly exist, because the fact 
 in its own nature excludes all evidence ; but on the other 
 hand, the conceptions that any man frames to himself, 
 agreeably to the course of nature from his own experi- 
 ence and observation, are not prejudices depending on 
 his will or imagination, but have their foundation in 
 sense and reason, which can never contradict the truth 
 of things, and truth requires no man's assent without 
 conviction. But he that is persuaded to believe any- 
 thing contrary to the known laws of nature, because 
 there are things which he never can know, is seduced to 
 
24 LKCTURE I. 
 
 give up his understanding. It is therefore of the highest 
 importance that men should be on their guard against a 
 blind and implicit faith, — against believing anything out 
 of the sight and reach of their reason and judgment; but 
 on all occasions to assert the right, and even the neces- 
 sity, of having the unquestionable liberty to think, speak, 
 and write freely about religion, for the correction of 
 error and discovery of truth, — to restore the world when 
 it shall be ripe for it, to the primitive religion of nature, 
 which, according to Jesus himself, " is the end of the 
 law and the prophets;" from which expression, together 
 with a number of others which have been attributed to 
 him, it sufficiently appears that the reformation he in- 
 tended was the establishment of this religion amongst 
 his countrymen, the wiser part of whom being wearied 
 out with their old superstitions, and sick of the burden 
 and bondage of their priests, were ready and willing 
 to embrace it. One of the most ancient fathers of the 
 church, even Justin Martyr himself, expressly declares 
 that they who lived according to the u law of nature, 
 were true christians." But in process of time the 
 adulterated church perverted this doctrine of primitive 
 simplicity, by strange and fraudulent inventions, to 
 suit the corrupt views of the inventors, by which the 
 minds of the people were subjugated and entangled 
 
ON MIRACLES. 25 
 
 with another and worse yoke of bondage, — the into- 
 lerable mischiefs of an hireling priesthood ; the abolition 
 of which is indispensable to the happiness of the human 
 race ; for all history makes it plain, that clerical conten- 
 tions, and the bitter animosities, and wars arising there- 
 from, have been the bane of society, and the pest of 
 nations ; causing unnatural strife in families, " making 
 those of a man's own household his foes." 
 
 Would any reflecting person believe that the Span- 
 iards ever could have been guilty of such monstrous 
 cruelties and wickedness towards the simple and inno- 
 cent natives of America, if such horrid butcheries had 
 not been sanctioned and pompously set forth in the 
 massacres of the bible, where a blood-thirsty robber, — a 
 general of banditti, blasphemously declares that these 
 crimes were done by command of the Almighty?* 
 
 * Proud of the protection of their Jehovah, the Jews marched 
 forth to victory ; heaven authorized them to commit knavery and 
 cruelty ; religion, united to avidity, rendered them deaf to the cries 
 of nature; and, under the conduct of inhuman chiefs, they destroyed 
 the Canaanitish nations, with a barbarity at which every man must 
 revolt, whose reason is not annihilated by superstition; their fury 
 destroyed every thing, even infants at the breast, in those cities 
 whither these monsters carried their victorious arms, by the com- 
 mands of their God, or his prophets ; good faith was violated, jus- 
 tice outraged, and the most unheard-of cruelties exercised. — 
 
26 LECTURE I. 
 
 Mystery, miracle, and obscurity, never can be pro- 
 ductive of virtue and knowledge, because they are the 
 regions of imposture and ignorance, where reason and 
 the light of nature are condemned ; — in these dominions 
 therefore, knaves only reign, and fools alone obey ; for 
 goodness, virtue, and knowledge, are not likely to be 
 found in such company. The religion that is not natural 
 is necessarily artificial, and is made up of delusive in- 
 ventions, the pretended mysteries and inspirations of 
 impostors ; but truth being within (and not beyond) the 
 boundaries of nature, needs not the support of inspiration, 
 which is capable of as many deceptions as any impostor 
 pleases, while he thrusts out truth to introduce falsehood 
 in its room ; sanctifying the greatest enormities as the 
 will and wisdom of God, demolishing virtue, dethroning 
 reason and setting up the most unnatural barbarities for 
 the worship of the supreme power. This inspiration has 
 also given birth to all saintly villainy, to religious lies, 
 and lying wonders, made way for everything that is 
 impious and false ; for all that is scandalous of Almighty 
 power, and pernicious to man. 
 
 In all the systems of religion that pretend to revela- 
 tion (that is, all those of art), mystery is only another 
 word for fraud ; yet, in the hands of dexterous spiritual 
 craftsmen, it becomes a formidable auxiliary, accounting 
 
ON MIRACLES. 27 
 
 for everything that is rejected by common sense and 
 experience, and claiming its full share of credit with any 
 of the other religious dogmas, the disbelief of which 
 consigns man to eternal perdition ; but he who may be 
 so easily damned out of his reason, may be damned into 
 any belief or opinion ; for nothing can be too monstrous 
 for his pliable timidity, or too shocking to his easy 
 credulity, if the terrors of damnation are properly held 
 over him. In this manner are the light of nature and 
 human judgment thrown down, and the authority of the 
 priest set up in their place, and that authority must not 
 be examined by reason, for if it be, reason will throw it 
 down by a single flash of her torch. When all these 
 things are duly considered, there arises a conviction that 
 every hypothesis that is not founded in nature is absurd, 
 and therefore cannot be the object of rational belief; — 
 for nature is as it ever has been, and is ever likely to 
 continue ; so the only true religion can have no other 
 foundation than nature, which never deceives ; and the 
 laws of omnipotence cannot be different, or if you please, 
 cannot be less evident than nature's laws. 
 
 The Pentateuch, or the books attributed to Moses, 
 are full of miracles and prodigies the most astonishing ; 
 but before those books were fabricated, which could not 
 
28 LECTURE I. 
 
 possibly be before the restoration from Babylon by 
 Cyrus, the Jews had been successively in slavery amongst 
 five or six of the Pagan nations around them, and could 
 not therefore be unacquainted with the fabulous legends 
 of those countries ; and accordingly we find the ground- 
 work of many, if not of all their miraculous stories, in 
 fabulous traditions of much higher antiquity.* 
 
 The unity of the Supreme Being was the secret of the 
 
 * All superstitions have resemblances and affinities. The heathens 
 perceived in their religion circumstances conformable to, and which 
 gave rise to those adopted in Christianity. They had miracles, 
 oracles, and predictions : their mythology exhibited gods dethroned 
 and replacing one another : there we see gods persecuted, exiled, 
 and put to death ; an Osiris killed by Typhon, and raised again 
 from the dead; an Apollo expelled from heaven; and especially we 
 find many points of conformity between Esculapius and Jesus 
 Christ. The heathen god was son of Apollo and the maid (or 
 virgin) Boebias; and, like Jesus, performed a great number of 
 miraculous cures ; he was punished and thunderstruck by Jupiter, 
 for having raised the dead and restored them to a better life. After 
 his death, he too went and rejoined the god his father. 
 
 The fathers of the church themselves have found striking con- 
 formities between Jesus and Prometheus, who was called the 
 wisdom of the father. He was punished by Jupiter for having 
 saved the human race, who were on the point of being precipitated 
 into Tartarus. Suidas says, that they gave Prometheus a surname 
 which signifies, he who died for the people. He was crucified on 
 Caucasus, and Tertullian speaks of crosses found there. — Rondel on 
 Superstition. 
 
ON MIRACLES. 29 
 
 initiated in the Egyptian mysteries of Isis (or Nature), 
 and Moses being a priest of Isis, knew it as a matter of 
 course, and made it the foundation of his scheme. 
 
 The story of the creation of the world in six days 
 is taken from a fable that was famous amongst the 
 Indians, Chaldeans, and other nations of the east, " who 
 taught that God made the world in six periods, or 
 gahambars, according to the ancient Zoroaster, who was 
 so celebrated amongst the Persians." The learned main- 
 tain that, in the original Hebrew Talmud, the expression 
 in the first verse of Genesis, is in the plural, viz., " the 
 Gods made heaven and earth ; " which is another proof 
 of the falseness of our translation. 
 
 Their story about the first man seems to be taken 
 from Apollodorus's fable of Prometheus, who made the 
 first man and woman with clay, and afterwards animated 
 them with fire, which he had stolen from the chariot of 
 the sun, and thus imitated in Genesis, " breathed into 
 their nostrils the breath of life." 
 
 The passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites is copied 
 from the triumphant march of Bacchus, when from 
 Egypt he went to conquer India, as the fable goes, — 
 and the Arabian name of Bacchus, which, according to 
 the learned Taylor, is Mises, has been, by a very slight 
 disguise, converted into the Jewish name Moses. 
 
30 LECTURE I. 
 
 Bacchus, in a jovial mood, drew wine from the rock by 
 a stroke of his rod, but in this particular Moses does not 
 imitate him, very wisely giving preference to water, 
 rather than to wine, in a desart. 
 
 The miracle of the manna has long been detected and 
 exposed ; for Josephus tells us that in his time it was 
 found in great quantities in Arabia, and the plant which 
 produces it is now cultivated in Cicily and Southern 
 Italy. 
 
 The trick of the Brazen Serpent was no doubt an 
 invention which Moses had learnt of the Egyptian 
 priests, a sort of automaton worked in a particular way 
 so as to make the ignorant people believe that their 
 diseases were cured by a miracle. 
 
 It was a part of military discipline amongst the 
 Persians, Arabians, and other nations of the east, when 
 marching large armies through the desarts, to carry in 
 the van during the night, fires made with such combus- 
 tible matter as would produce a great flame, which was 
 elevated so high as to be distinctly seen by all in the 
 rear, appearing as a " jrillar of fire" pointing out and 
 directing the line of march: sometimes these lights 
 were elevated upon long poles near the General's tent, 
 having at a distance the appearance of balls of fire : — 
 and to show the line of march during the day, such com- 
 
ON MIRACLES. 31 
 
 bustibles were burnt as would produce the greatest 
 cloud, or "pillar of smoke" This military usage is 
 mentioned both by Herodotus and Quintus Curtius ; 
 and Alexander himself adopted it from the Persians. 
 This is a remarkable instance wherein the Jewish com- 
 pilers, or fabricators, have, with a shameless effrontery 
 that is altogether matchless, except by their own books, 
 contrived to turn a common military usage into a 
 miracle. 
 
 The story of Jephtha's sacrificing his daughter has 
 every mark of being an imitation of the Greek tradition 
 of Agamemnon's immolation of his daughter Iphigenia, 
 in the famous expedition against Troy, which was taken 
 by the Greeks full two hundred years before the Jews 
 had either a country or writings of their own. 
 
 The exploits of Samson are borrowed from those of 
 Hercules, and the imitation appears close and servile in 
 the story of the gates of Gaza, as taken from that of 
 Hercules and the pillars of Gadez, or Cadiz.* 
 
 * The Phoenicians related nearly the same exploits of their 
 Hercules, (according to Varro, there were no less than forty-four 
 Herculeses) as the Jews relate of Samson in the book of Judges ; 
 and as lion-killing was common to both, the Jew, as usual, far ex- 
 ceeding the other in the hyperbole ; we may reasonably conclude 
 that the Jewish Samson was only an imitation of the Phoenician 
 giant. — See Isaac Vossius. 
 
32 LECTURE T. 
 
 The shocking tale of slaying all the eldest male 
 children of Egypt seems to be taken from the historical 
 fact that the seventh Ptolemy caused all the young men 
 of Alexandria to be murdered ; and if this be the foun- 
 dation of the story, it adds another proof that the Pen- 
 tateuch is anything but an ancient book. 
 
 The fable of Arion on the dolphin's back has served 
 for the ground work of the monstrously absurd tale of 
 Jonah and the whale. The former is pretty and amusing 
 enough as a fiction, but its recoinage in the Jewish mint 
 has given it all the features of the most barbarous 
 ignorance. 
 
 There are several floods mentioned in the Pagan 
 legends, such as the Egyptian inundation of Prometheus, 
 the Grecian floods of Ogyges and Deucalion, from 
 some one of which has sprung the Jewish story of 
 Noah. The three former were only partial floods, 
 deluging a few low countries, whereas the ridiculous 
 boldness of the Jewish hyperbolist deluges the whole 
 earth, although he could not know that the American 
 Continent existed : — the Grecian floods were of such 
 antiquity that writers mention them only as traditional 
 stories handed down from the remotest ages. The 
 Egyptians and Greeks having thus their ancient floods 
 as monuments of antiquity, why should not the Jews 
 
ON MIRACLES. 33 
 
 get up one also, when they had become a petty nation, 
 so they borrowed from the legend of Deucalion, imi- 
 tating in detail almost every circumstance, as we have 
 it related in the Syrian Goddess of Lucian; but the 
 narrator, in order to conceal the identity of the stories, 
 must make a change of names, by putting Noah, or Noe, 
 in place of Deucalion, which suited his purpose. The 
 Chaldeans, either admitting the Grecian floods, or 
 claiming the honor of having one of their own, from 
 some great overflowing of the Euphrates, called their 
 pilot by the name of Noe, a name no doubt familiar 
 to the Jews when they were slaves to the Babylonians, 
 and hence their name of Noah, which is nearly the 
 same as Noe, in sound. 
 
 The writer of Genesis, after the eating of the apple, 
 and the expulsion of the destitute couple from the 
 delicious abodes of Paradise, places cherubim, or angels, 
 as centinels at the doors of the garden, armed with 
 flaming two-handed swords, lest the forlorn wanderers 
 should attempt, by stratagem or force, to regain the 
 apple tree, and their happy mansions. This appears to 
 be a close imitation of the ancient fable of the poets, 
 who placed a terrible dragon to guard the golden apples 
 of the Hesperides. If the angelical guard of Eden was 
 kept up until the flood (as some of the saints have 
 
 D 
 
34 LECTURE I. 
 
 supposed) without the usual relief of centinels, the poor 
 angels must have been on duty sixteen hundred and 
 fifty years ! ! ! 
 
 If Amphion, by the music of his flute alone, caused 
 the stones to rise spontaneously, and place themselves so 
 as to form the walls of Thebes, why should not Joshua 
 reverse the miracle, by tumbling down the walls of 
 Jericho, merely by the sound of trumpets ? 
 
 The miracle of the hermaphrodite created in Genesis, 
 1st c, 27th v., had not, we may presume, been found to 
 answer the end that is so pointedly recommended in the 
 28th v., and, therefore, another miracle became necessary 
 in converting one of Adam's ribs into a more suitable 
 helpmate, who was not intended to partake of both 
 sexes, but to be purely feminine (c. 2, v. 22), which 
 was no doubt more agreeable to our first parent, as it 
 gave him fairer means of fulfilling the injunction laid 
 in the first part of the 28th verse, to s multiply and reple- 
 nish the earth.' But in regard to the question that has 
 been started — namely, which of the two shall rise with 
 this rib at the resurrection, or which of them shall then 
 be best entitled to it — I shall not pretend to judge ; 
 but certain it is, that English lawyers would make an 
 excellent thing out of such a case in Chancery. A story 
 something like the above about Adam, is to be found in 
 
ON MIRACLES. 35 
 
 the Symposium of Plato, where the first man, according 
 to him, was named 'Androginus, who was afterwards 
 divided into two parts, male and female.'* 
 
 Romulus and Remus had a god for their father, and a 
 virgin for their mother ; — Christianity has similar cases. 
 
 Heres spent a couple of weeks in hell, and afterwards 
 came back to the earth, — Esculapius raised Hyppolitus 
 
 * In the Iranian, or ancient Persian manuscripts, there are two 
 distinct stories about the creation of man, and from which those of 
 Genesis appear to be taken ; but the compiler, not knowing which 
 of the accounts to prefer, has very foolishly mingled them together, 
 yet still leaving the two creations we find in Genesis. In chapter 1, 
 God (in the original it is in the plural, Elohim, or the Gods) is said 
 to have created man out of nothing ; and on this first creation there 
 were no restrictions whatsoever imposed upon them as to what 
 they should eat. ' Behold/ said God, * I have given you every 
 herb bearing seed upon earth, and all trees which have in them seed 
 according to their kind, that it may be to you for food.' But to 
 Adam of the second creation (chapter 2) God said, ' Thou mayest 
 eat of every tree in the garden ; but of the tree of knowledge of 
 good and evil thou shalt not eat, for in the day thou eatest of it thou 
 shalt die the death.' In the first creation, man and woman were 
 formed out of nothing at the same moment, male and female, or 
 an individual possessing both sexes ; which, probably, was found not 
 to answer ; and therefore, in the second creation, God said, * Let 
 us make a helper like unto himself;' and to effect this, God sent a 
 deep sleep upon Adam, and while he slept God took one of his ribs, 
 and closed up its place with flesh, and of this rib a companion was 
 made for this second first man, who was called Adam, which signifies 
 clay, or red earth. 
 
36 LECTURE I. 
 
 from the dead, — Hercules saved Alcestes from the hand 
 of death ; — Christianity has parallel miracles. 
 
 Nearly all of the above are so many instances wherein 
 the Jewish compilers of the Pentateuch have copied 
 from the mythological fables, or the traditions of paga- 
 nism ; and it is very remarkable that, whatever might be 
 the nature of the story or legend thus imitated, these 
 compilers have never failed to render that which in the 
 original was lively and amusing, into what is now 
 deformed and hideous, in a manner that is perfectly 
 characteristic of their own semi-savage condition. The 
 story of Joseph may be quoted as an exception to the 
 above observation ; and it is truly strange that we should 
 have it through them in such affecting simplicity ; but 
 the impartial amongst the learned are agreed that it cer- 
 tainly is not Jewish, and that in the Pentateuch it is 
 given almost literally as it stands in the Arabian original; 
 but they say that the same justice has not been done to 
 the book of Job, taken from the Arabian also. 
 
 All our divines who call themselves orthodox seem to 
 agree in declaring that God is infinite ; and yet they 
 assert, at the same time, that there are other beings and 
 existences besides him whom they have asserted to be 
 infinite, which appears to be a contradiction in terms ; 
 but the wiser sort of the ancient pagans reasoned with 
 
ON MIRACLES. 37 
 
 much more consistency when they maintained that God 
 made all things of nothing — but himself, whom they held 
 to be infinite, and therefore their denial of the existence 
 of any other thing besides him necessarily followed ; for, 
 said they, if anything else besides him exists, he cannot 
 be infinite, but only co-existent with other things. 
 
 END OF LECTURE THE FIRST. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 Our superstitions with our life begin, 
 
 Th' obscene old grand-dam, or the next of kin. 
 
 PEKSIUS. 
 
 ^ Every wonder has a veiU 
 
 ON MIRACLES AND OTHER 
 SUPERNATUllALS. 
 
 " Another true foundation can no man lay than that 
 which God has ever laid in nature." 
 
 There is a famous sect amongst the Mahometans in 
 Turkey, noted for their wisdom and strong reasoning 
 powers, who maintain that " the great power never has, 
 and never can discover itself, with any certainty, in any 
 other way than by speaking to the reason and under- 
 standing of men ; for if we depend, say they, on oral 
 tradition, we lay ourselves open to the greatest falsities 
 and impositions, there being nothing so liable to endless 
 changes and alterations. Numberless mistakes, additions, 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 39 
 
 and subtractions, according as men's opinions vary by 
 the change of times and circumstances. Nor are books 
 more exempt from such doubtfulness and uncertainty ; 
 since we find so much disagreement and contradiction 
 among books written by different men, in different coun- 
 tries, and in different ages, and even among the varying 
 books written by the same men. The only sure way 
 then, say they, is to consult reason, as it comes from 
 nature,* or God; live just and honest lives; be kind and 
 beneficent to our fellow creatures." 
 
 All attempts to set aside, or to render the laws of 
 nature useless and ineffectual, are in the highest degree 
 pernicious to man, and a supernatural religion is the 
 main-spring of all such evils ; for that religion only can 
 be true which is reasonable and convincing to all men ; 
 and if it be not generally held, that is a proof that it is 
 not convincing. But how few people there are in a 
 nation who take the pains to consider the bottom of any 
 religion ! ! Whatever is established will attract the 
 
 * It is true, reason is not sufficient to bring us to a perfect know- 
 ledge of all things ; but it is able to furnish us with enough to make 
 us happy, and that is as much as we need care for; and, as it is the 
 supreme and primitive director of every man, to infringe its liberty 
 of directing is to invade the common charter of nature, and every 
 man's right and property ; so that those who do so, are justly to be 
 looked on as the enemies of the human race. 
 
40 LECTURE II. 
 
 million, who never inquire beyond it, and the thinking 
 few who believe it not, afford a proof positive that the 
 evidence for it is not strong enough to make them 
 believe. And with regard to books of any sort, whether, 
 they go by the imposing names of Scriptures or Gospels, 
 if found inconsistent with natural religion, and with 
 eternal reason — which, being the offspring of truth, never 
 varies — then let them be at once rejected, that we may 
 free ourselves from those absurdities which the folly or 
 the knavery of men has introduced, in opposition to the 
 only unerring guides of human conduct. 
 
 " For zeal, fanatic zeal, once wedded fast 
 To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last/' 
 
 " The Athenians of old, even long before the time of 
 Solon, had a prophetic and mysterious book, called in 
 their language the Testament, on which they pretended 
 the safety of the republic depended. This work of 
 darkness appears to have been of the same nature as the 
 books of the sybils at Rome, to which also the destiny 
 of the nation was attached, at least so pretended the 
 priests and pontiffs of both nations, and the more such 
 gross impostures were impressed on the minds of their 
 victims, the people, the more easily did the politicians 
 and theologians united, gain their objects. Yet there 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 41 
 
 was this difference, that, according to Roman history, 
 the books of the sybils were always produced, while at 
 Athens the Testament was buried in the same artful 
 silence as the mysteries of Ceres or Eleusis. Dicearchus 
 mentions this Testament in his harangue against De- 
 mosthenes, whom he accuses of having failed in respect 
 towards this ineffable volume, which contained, as the 
 learned say, nothing but a collection of pretended mira- 
 cles and predictions by two noted Grecian impostors, 
 named Bacis and Antiphylus." 
 
 If such books, instead of being veiled with impene- 
 trable clouds, had been examined by the rules of criticism, 
 it would have appeared that the sybilline books of Rome 
 were only an imitation of the Athenian Testament, fitted 
 up to suit the paganism of the Latins. 
 
 " The most dangerous superstitions of the Greeks 
 were precisely those which brought money both to the 
 priests and to the states ; for the Athenians protected the 
 mysteries of Ceres and of Eleusis, for no other reason 
 than because they had a moiety of the profits from the 
 hierophants, or priests. When Diagoras of Melos 
 afterwards maintained openly that those ceremonies were 
 contrary to virtue, and corrupted the manners of the 
 Greeks, no person could, nor even endeavoured to 
 confute him ; but the priests secretly offered an attic 
 
42 LECTURE II. 
 
 talent to whoever would take away his life." (i Such wa» 
 to be the reward of Diagoras ; for even in those days the 
 theologists reasoned with poniards and burning fagots, 
 instead of the ordinary rules of logic, which they con- 
 fessed were not made for them." 
 
 There is nothing more to be feared than the plain 
 fact, that the hireling priests in all religions cannot 
 possibly have an interest in leading men to opinions that 
 are true, but to such opinions only as they have enlisted 
 themselves to profess ; and he that believes and vindicates 
 things that are false, in as much as they are contrary to 
 nature and reason, is an enemy to truth. He that 
 believes and justifies what is dishonourable to God, 
 and pernicious to reason and right action, embraces 
 impious and unjust principles, and when these are put 
 into practice he is unrighteous in fact. Nor should we 
 stifle in silence the truths we have discovered, for we 
 must either vindicate the liberty of truth, or submit to 
 the slavery of error ; and believing without seeing, that 
 is, without evidence, is nonsense and absurdity. But, on 
 the contrary, fanatics see nothing but what is invisible, 
 and believe nothing but what is incredible. 
 
 Deists and other lovers of truth think it reasonable 
 that, as those histories containing relations of miracles 
 and other supernaturals, relate more improbable, and 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 43 
 
 much more incredible things than other histories, they 
 ought to bring with them more substantial proofs than 
 other histories, to confirm the truth of such prodigies 
 as they relate, or else, that every relation in them which 
 is not as probable as other true history, should stand for 
 nought: for why should we (say they) believe on the 
 bare report of unknown reporters, things naturally im- 
 possible, or out of the range of experience, because they 
 are generally believed by those who never made any 
 inquiry ?* Many believers have no disposition, others no 
 capacity to examine rightly ; — besides when creeds and 
 principles are fixed by authority as being the only right 
 and allowable, it discourages all examination; and 
 throughout all the systems of pretended revelation, they 
 are fixed and established for that end alone, lest men 
 should see differently from those who mislead them. 
 
 Fraud and force will always be unavoidable in support- 
 ing the inconsistent belief, that things which have no 
 
 * Should we not — ought we not, as thinking beings, naturally to 
 wish to satisfy our understandings of the wisdom of these asserted 
 ways of providence, instead of silently letting them rest on the un- 
 questioned ground on which imposture ever seeks to entrench 
 itself? Do not truth, liberty, and virtue, court inquiry as much, and 
 with as just right and reason, as tyranny ? Dogmatism and falsehood 
 insist on substituting for it blind implicit faith and obedience. 
 
 Ibrahim in Orient ; Mission. 
 
44 LECTURE II. 
 
 foundation in nature and reason, are necessary parts of 
 religion ; and the histories of all churches exhibit con- 
 tinued scenes of villany for upholding such inventions ; 
 and truth, with all her willingness to come to light, is 
 kept in the back ground ; for the more that a man is en- 
 dowed with good sense, natural piety, and virtue, the 
 more he is secretly hated as a dangerous enemy to the 
 priestly order. 
 
 The universality of superstition is owned and confir- 
 med in effect, by each distinct sect, in declaring that it 
 has crept into all other sects, (their own always excepted), 
 the respective teachers of whom find their interest in 
 promoting it. Nor is it possible to be otherwise, so long 
 as men are taught to build their religion upon an 
 artificial, and less extended foundation than that on 
 which religion has been laid by the Universal Being of 
 nature. And to suppose any thing can be true from 
 revelation that is evidently false by reason, is to under- 
 mine the revelation of nature ; because nothing unreas- 
 onable, nay, which is not highly reasonable, can come 
 from that all ruling power of eternal reason. 
 
 The irreconcileable enemies of rational religion, per- 
 ceiving it to be too gross, in the present dawn of the 
 light of nature, to attack it openly as such, do it covertly 
 under the names of infidelity, atheism, &c. — trusting that 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 45 
 
 the times of ignorance and fanaticism will return, when 
 the ghastly incubus of false zeal shall again brood over the 
 grovelling laity, stifling every natural conception of their 
 minds, as being the suggestions of the devil ; particularly 
 if they clash with the interests, the real or pretended 
 opinions of their priests. 
 
 No system of revealed religion ever was, nor ever can 
 be made known to all men, therefore no revealed re- 
 ligion can be necessary : for a rule that is not generally 
 known cannot be generally obeyed; and since all these 
 superstitions differ widely from, and are indeed opposed 
 to each other, and you cannot prove one of them to be 
 truer than the rest before you can prove that one of 
 them is true : all of them have had similar mysteries 
 and miracles, and if such things are sacred only because 
 they are secret, expose them, and the witchcraft is at an 
 end, the spell is broken, and the charm has lost its force ; 
 it is but varnish that appears, and nothing of the splendid 
 pomp remains but shreds and rottenness. The more 
 intrinsic worth a thing has, the better will it bear investi- 
 gation ; but fraud and its usual saintly train are the 
 fruits and friends of darkness ; so the religion that will 
 not bear examination is the kingdom of darkness, 
 whereas truth, if not prevented, will always court the 
 light that it may be manifest. But it is not intended to 
 
46 LECTURE IT. 
 
 be seen wherever mystery and miracle are resorted to, — 
 like wisdom, it delights to appear in public, it loves 
 freedom, openness, and plain dealing ; but the mansion 
 of mystery is the pride of ignorance, the delusion of 
 madmen and fools, where enthusiasm is born, and the 
 prophetic visions of future events are brought forth, — 
 where bigots and fanatics are trained, — where the voice 
 of reason is stopt, and inquiry is confounded, — and 
 where superstition, like fire, resolves everything into 
 itself.* 
 
 Man proudly assumes that he is the only creature 
 that has a knowledge of God, and if it be so, he is the 
 only animal that sins against God, whom he professes 
 
 * A mysterious and unintelligible tone is essentially necessary to 
 the ministers of all religions. A clear intelligible religion, without 
 mystery, would appear less divine to the generality of men, and 
 would be less useful to the sacerdotal order, whose interest it is 
 that the people should comprehend nothing of that which they 
 believe to be the most important to them : here is without doubt 
 the secret of the clergy. The priest must have a metaphysical and 
 incomprehensible Deity, whom he makes speak and act in an 
 unintelligible manner, reserving to himself the right of explaining 
 to mortals his pleasure in his own manner, while the people, who in 
 o-eneral wish to have their imaginations pleased rather than their 
 understandings instructed, give a preference to a god that is most 
 concealed, most mysterious, and most unknown. Hence the 
 transition of many nations who adored the sun, to the worship of 
 an invisible agency.—" The System of Nature." 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATUR ALS. 47 
 
 to know; for no one amongst the brute creatures ever 
 did a thing so bad as he does, when, for a few pence 
 per day, he hires himself to kill in foreign wars men 
 who never did him any wrong. Birds never quarrel 
 with each other except for things necessary to their 
 nature, such as food and females ; but men, instigated 
 by preternatural chimeras, with which they ought to 
 have no concern, destroy one another. If men really 
 knew that the only thing necessary to be known in 
 regard to God and religion, is principally that of their 
 duty towards each other, in their different stations in life, 
 they would not be so easily deceived, and deterred from 
 exercising their reasoning faculties by theological terrors, 
 which inculcate the fear of death, owing, as it is said, to 
 the dubious fate of the vital spark afterwards ; for the 
 assertions of divines about a very small number of souls 
 in the beatitude of celestial joys, and the vast majority 
 of others in infernal agonies,* is as hard to prove as the 
 existence of the river Styx, the Acheron, or the Elysian 
 
 * There was not anything, however ridiculous and absurd, that 
 the superstitious villany of the priests could not introduce ; — they 
 declared that the supreme power would suffer a declared enemy so 
 far to prevail against him, that when he wished to save all mankind, 
 this enemy, or devil, would so far overrule, that through his insti- 
 gation a thousand men would be damned for every one that is 
 saved ! 
 
 / 
 
48 LECTURE II. 
 
 fields of pagan mythology. The more rational belief, there- 
 fore is, that as thought and sensibility are the consequence 
 of a particular organization of a portion of matter, it 
 follows that when that organization ceases, the conjunction 
 of those parts is dissolved, and the man is no more ; the 
 vital part, or what is called the soul, being the requisite 
 compound of air and fire, which rejoin their own elements, 
 and although the man is annihilated, the different elements 
 which composed his body and mind are eternal. This 
 opinion is agreeable to that of one of the earliest fathers 
 of the Latin church, Tertullian, who cries out, " O 
 man, think what thou wast before created, for if any- 
 thing, thou couldst not but remember it ! Thou then 
 that wast nothing before thy creation, shall, when thou 
 ceasest to live, again return to nothing." 
 
 As all Nature's laws are just and necessary,* she 
 requires nothing of us that ought to excite either fear 
 or the idea of severity, she being as much in her course 
 when men and other animals die, as when she organizes 
 them into life ; but if men were taught to have no fear 
 of death, where then would be the pride, the power, 
 and the profit, that now arise from mysteries and super- 
 
 * Even Tertullian himself says, " Why pain yourselves in seeking 
 for a divine law, whilst you have that which is common to mankind, 
 and engraven on the tablets of nature ? — Tertull. de corona Militis. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 49 
 
 naturals ? The idle fears of eternal punishments would 
 fall into the ridicule they deserve ; the assuming arro- 
 gance of the mystagogues of the church would be laid 
 low with all their pageantry and ceremonies, and men 
 would have veneration only for truth and wisdom, with 
 the moral virtues in their train ; and as they no longer 
 imbibed those mischievous principles which have never 
 failed to set the world at variance, so no fiery persecuting 
 zeal would be required for their maintenance ; and the 
 harmony of good will and social virtue would unite 
 men peacefully in society. 
 
 It is true, that in these latter enlightened ages, the 
 church has not been able to maintain its absurd pre- 
 tensions to miracles : but that does not hinder the priests 
 from still upholding the reality of those of antiquity, 
 with the use of which, together with their other 
 machinery of inspiration, mystery, and prophesy, they 
 are enabled to carry on their trade in as flourishing a 
 manner as ever it was at any former period ; but the 
 dreadful charge of supporting such numbers of men as 
 are now in pay to maintain impositions, is a cruel burden 
 upon the industrious portion of society, which was 
 never felt in pagan antiquity,* or even in the earliest 
 
 * According to the mythology of the ancients, their theogony 
 consisted of fully thirty thousand, including both bearded and 
 
 E 
 
50 LECTURE II. 
 
 time of Christianity ; for the revenues now belonging to 
 the different orders of priests, monks, and friars, in 
 popish countries, and the dignitaries of our own church, 
 are a greater tax on labouring man, and have introduced, 
 a greater degree of poverty, than has ever been oc- 
 casioned by any lay-tyrants, or conquerors : for the 
 latter have been contented with temporary plunder only, 
 without concerning themselves how to find out ways and 
 means to prey upon mankind for ever. The charge 
 alone, therefore, of supporting so vast a number of 
 ecclesiastics, is a great and melancholy evil in society, 
 even if they were employed in the most innocent 
 manner, in mere eating and drinking; but this, un- 
 happily, is not the case, for as the peace and good order 
 of human society consist in the practice of moral duties, 
 every diversion of the mind from this proper object, to 
 other concerns of a hurtful tendency, or at least, of no 
 practical utility, must abate men's zeal in the observance 
 
 unbearded divinities. We have reduced that establishment 
 to three only; but nevertheless, and unaccountable as it may 
 appear, it has been so contrived by our modern hierophants, that 
 on earth the service of these three, together with their train of 
 deputies and saints, holy-days, &c, has entailed upon human 
 industry a tax of an hundred times the amount per annum of that 
 which was contributed yearly to regale the nasal senses of all the 
 celestial army of antiquity. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 51 
 
 and discharge of the moral duties, and consequently, 
 prejudice the peace and general good of society. 
 
 Ambition, political tyranny, revenge, and covetous- 
 ness, have in all ages more or less plagued the world, 
 and been the source of great disorders; but a blind 
 zeal to impose preternatural speculations has not only 
 had the same effects as these evils, but has carried men 
 to a pitch of wickedness, which otherwise, "eye had 
 not seen, nor ear heard, nor had entered into the heart 
 of man to conceive;" for what ancient or modern 
 history can parallel the malign brutality of religious 
 fanatics? The most irregular of our passions decay 
 with time, and their mischievous effects are restrained 
 by common sense, and the policy of society ; and there 
 are in us some good passions, or natural feelings of the 
 heart, such as compassion, good nature, and humanity, 
 which when left free, serve tolerably well to equilibrate 
 human conduct ; but that furious zeal which flows from 
 religious systems of pretended revelation, gathers 
 strength with time, bears -down all those rational and 
 useful lessons which we derive from the light of nature, 
 overleaping the bounds of the material and animal world, 
 and subduing all the tender passions. 
 
 But of all the supernatural engines of mischief that 
 have ever been played off upon poor deluded man, 
 
52 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 reason has perhaps had the most powerful adversary in 
 the invention of heavenly inspiration, for it is ever in 
 readiness as a salvo, to smooth down, and account for 
 whatever is rejected by reason and experience, however 
 absurd or unsightly : and upon it also is artfully founded 
 all legitimate authority against human understanding, 
 siniply on its being asserted, (by whom, where, or when, 
 we know not) that there have been some men so divinely 
 taught of God, that to question their fidelity, or 
 doubt their veracity, or not indubitably to receive their 
 tales, is, they say, to call to account God himself, 
 because their affirmations are stamped with what they 
 declare to be the divine impression ; thus their delusions 
 are sanctioned, and hence arises the power of the church 
 to overawe men into a prescribed belief, without daring 
 to make any inquiry ; but let men only learn to treat 
 the grave malediction of the priest, when he denounces 
 damnation, in the way that it deserves, that is, with 
 perfect scorn and contempt; then, and then only, will 
 the honest world begin to see that they have as much 
 right to judge of these matters as of anything else. 
 
 The voice of truth, being nothing else than the 
 language of nature, is plain and easy, soft and harmo- 
 nious, the source of all wisdom for informing the head, 
 and of all virtue in reforming the heart ; no schisms can 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 53 
 
 ever proceed from that fountain of perfect consistency 
 and rectitude, which never can give birth to contention, 
 or plans of imperious ambition, for the subjugation of 
 the human mind. But, on the other hand, Christianity 
 is now become a trade of gain, (godliness is a great 
 gain, saith the scripture),* a regular scheme of dominion, 
 and a school of contention ; the pure and simple system 
 which its reputed founder taught, is now the severest 
 satire in the world against the priestcraft of the present 
 day. It is true, that in these times the church cannot 
 so easily indulge its propensity to set fire to people, 
 as it did in former ages, but if Jesus had, by means of 
 a miracle similar to some of those ascribed to him, 
 revisited the earth about the fourteenth century of his 
 own era, and preached the same system of nature that 
 he formerly did, he would most assuredly have been put 
 to death ; but previous to a second catastrophe in this 
 way, we may suppose some catholic priest, with more 
 good nature and humanity, than is common in the order, 
 to have addressed him in this manner : — " My good 
 
 * " We know from no less an authority than documents laid on 
 the table of the House of Commons some years ago, that we 
 christians not only make a traffic in our own religion in India, but 
 in that of the Pagans also, by actually compelling the natives to 
 pay a tax for admission to their own temples, to worship the Idol 
 Jaggernaut I " 
 
54 LECTURE II. 
 
 friend, you cannot but remember that your countrymen, 
 the Jews, crucified you for exposing the folly of their 
 superstitions and idle ceremonies, and that the mild and 
 tolerant government of the Romans could not save you ; 
 but if on this occasion you will listen to good advice, 
 you may make your fortune, and be no longer under 
 the necessity of working as a carpenter, or in danger 
 from violence a second time ; for know that of your 
 scheme of natural religion and good morals, not a single 
 vestige remains, save the name alone ; but upon that 
 name, we have contrived to raise the most ambitious 
 system of grandeur, riches, power, and dominion, that 
 was ever devised by the head of man ; and with a degree 
 of success at which you will be astonished, when I tell 
 you, that we have done all this merely by reversing the 
 principles which you strove to establish : for you judged 
 too favourably of human nature, when you supposed 
 that the simple religion of deism, together with govern- 
 ments founded upon principles of pure ethics, would 
 serve to guide the great mass of mankind ; and the 
 strongest proof of your ignorance appears in our having 
 established a system, by strictly inverting every principle 
 of yours ; only by calling in to our aid as much machinery 
 from the Pagan mythology, as suited our purpose ; such 
 as mystery, miracle, and prophesy, using all our art 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 55 
 
 to foster as much ignorance as possible, that being 
 an indispensable ingredient in our mixture ; and to 
 strengthen the above, we add the terrors of eternal 
 perdition to all who oppose, or do not believe us. 
 These are the only proper nostrums for the bulk of 
 mankind ; therefore, I say again, be wise for the future, 
 — become one of us, and you are sure of a Bishopric, 
 on the first vacancy." 
 
 After this address we may easily conceive what would 
 be the reply of the virtuous moralist, using his former 
 words, — " O ye generation of vipers, ye have made use 
 of my name to enslave the human mind, which I en- 
 deavoured to set free. I reverenced nature, truth, and 
 reason, as my pole-stars, in everything; ye have subverted 
 these unerring guides to the utmost of your power, and 
 on the ruins thereof have ye raised the empire of hypo- 
 crisy and superstitious delusion ye have just described ! 
 And being thus arrived at the highest summit of human 
 grandeur and power, wallowing in riches and luxury, 
 maintained by the earnings of the industrious but credu- 
 lous people, ye have held over their weak minds the 
 terrors of an imaginary futurity which I never taught, 
 grossly deceiving and abusing them in my name, im- 
 piously ascribing to me, at the same time, miracles and 
 other prodigies which I never wrought, and which are 
 
56 LECTURE II. 
 
 equally false and abhorrent in the ways of the almighty 
 power. " Ye are not my followers, but the followers of 
 that wild and inconsistent visionary Saul, or Paul, who 
 in my name taught unintelligible dogmas, and absurd 
 reveries about my deification, and upon which false foun- 
 dation ye have raised your present boasted edifice of 
 superstitious grandeur. I taught my followers to be 
 like sheep among wolves, but ye are wolves among 
 sheep." 
 
 In descending from the miracles of antiquity, down to 
 those attributed to the early Christians, we are told by 
 Lucian, Celsus, Julian, and others, that these seeming 
 prodigies were performed by crafty jugglers, expert at 
 their trade, — miracle-mongers by profession. Celsus 
 represents all the Christian wonder-workers as mere va- 
 gabonds and common cheats, "who rambled about to 
 fairs and markets; not in the circles of the wiser or 
 better sort, for among such they never ventured to ap- 
 pear ; but where they saw a set of raw young fellows, 
 slaves, or fools, here they obtruded themselves, and prac- 
 tised all their arts of deception." Csecilius calls them a 
 " lurking nation, shunning the light ; mute in public — 
 prating in corners." The charge of fraud and imposture 
 was constantly urged against them by their opponents, 
 and with good reason, as their constant pretension was 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 57 
 
 to the command of supernatural power. Did they ever 
 exhibit their miracles amongst the learned, intelligent, 
 or higher ranks of the people ? No. To whom then ? 
 To the lowest classes, to the uninformed, weak, and 
 ignorant only. What were those miracles ? Such only 
 as might easily be counterfeited, when aided by collu- 
 sion, — casting out what they called devils, healing the 
 sick, lame, blind, and causing those to speak who pre- 
 tend to be dumb.* 
 
 The most notorious, and withal the most accomplished, 
 of all those vagabond quacks in theology, appears to have 
 
 * Miracles appear to have been invented to supply the want of 
 good reasons. Truth and evidence have no need of miracles to 
 ensure their reception. Is it not very astonishing that God Almighty 
 should find it easier to derange the order of nature, than to con- 
 vince mankind of truths the most evident, and calculated to force 
 their assent ? Miracles were introduced to prove things which it is 
 impossible to believe, — things incredible are here adduced in proof 
 of incredible things. Almost all impostors who have fabricated reli- 
 gions, have announced incredibilities to mankind; and they have 
 afterwards fabricated miracles in proof of those incredibilities. 
 " You cannot (they said) comprehend what I tell you ;. but I will 
 clearly prove that I tell the truth, by doing things which you can- 
 not comprehend." Truth is simple and evident; the marvellous is 
 ever to be suspected. Nature is always true to herself; she acts 
 by invarying laws. To say that God performs miracles, is to say 
 that he contradicts himself, and violates the laws which he has pre- 
 scribed to nature; it is to say, that he renders useless human 
 reason, of which he is the author.— Christianity Unveiled. 
 
58 LECTURE II. 
 
 been Saul, alias Paul, of saintly memory, and a whole- 
 sale manufacturer of miracle, mystery, and quibble. The 
 most probable account we have of this man is in the 
 Acts of the Ebionites, who tell us that he was not origi- 
 nally a Jew, but a Gentile, or Pagan proselyte, whose 
 itinerant propensities led him to Jerusalem, where he 
 was employed as a menial servant by Gamaliel, who was 
 then the high priest of the Jews. Here his active and 
 overbearing disposition soon distinguished itself in fer- 
 reting out, and running down, the new sect of Galileans, 
 or Christians, the better to ingratiate himself with the 
 high priest, to whose daughter he had impudence enough 
 to have pretensions in marriage ; and for that purpose 
 he submitted to the operation of circumcision. But his 
 circumcision availed him nothing, and he might well 
 ask, as he does in Romans, chap. 3rd, verse 1st, " what 
 profit is there of circumcision?" for both the young 
 lady and her father were sadly against the match. Nor 
 was this aversion on the part of the daughter to be won- 
 dered at, if we consider the personal description given 
 of him by Lucian and others, viz. that he was bald 
 headed, short in stature, hook nosed, bandy legged, with 
 a fierce forbidding look. Thus repulsed in his views of 
 marriage, he wreaked his revenge on Gamaliel ; — saw 
 visions from heaven, " brighter than the sun at noon- 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 59 
 
 day," left his master the high priest, and went over to 
 the Galileans. It is not necessary to say much about 
 the three varying accounts he gives of himself in the 
 Acts of the Apostles, but these inconsistent statements 
 verify the old adage, that those who depart from the 
 truth ought to have good memories. Having been driven 
 out of Antioch in Phrygia (Acts, chap. 13th) for his mal- 
 practices, he proceeded to the town of Iconium (Acts, 
 chap. 14th) where the fathers say he made a convert of 
 St Thecla, the first female martyr. She had been con- 
 tracted to Thamirus, a man handsome, rich, noble, and 
 of the first rank in the city ; but Paul having converted 
 her, she renounced her marriage to embrace virginity. 
 Enraged at this seduction, Thamirus complained thereof 
 to the Roman pro-consul, Sextilius, who caused the 
 saint to be scourged, and driven out of the city. From 
 thence he went to Lystra, where he played one of his 
 juggling tricks by collusion, causing a cripple to walk; 
 but being followed by some Jews who had seen his leger- 
 demain at Antioch and Iconium, he was detected by 
 them, and the miracle of the cripple ended in his saint- 
 ship being cast out of the city, stoned, and left for dead. 
 Soon after this he returned to Antioch, and here the 
 fathers tell us he was joined by his convert Thecla, who, 
 as a matter of course, would be abandoned by her rela- 
 
60 LECTURE II. 
 
 tions ; but with Paul she had no doubt a very proper 
 asylum for the preservation of her chastity, for where 
 could it be so safe as in the keeping of a saint ? Good 
 repute is not much cared for, in the wanderings of female 
 adventurers, especially in those who follow vagrant 
 preachers. The saint was again flogged at Thyatira, 
 for his old habit of tampering with the women; and 
 practising the same sly custom again at Thessalonica, the 
 same reward was prepared for him, but he was concealed 
 by his friend Jason, and sent from thence in the night 
 (Acts 17th, verse 10th) to Bera, or Berea, from which 
 place he soon absconded likewise, being afraid of another 
 flogging, leaving behind him in that town his compa- 
 nions, Silas and Timotheus, who were less obnoxious 
 than himself, probably from having less of the libido, 
 dinis, in them. At Ephesus his outrageous conduct 
 would in all likelihood have cost him his life, and some of 
 his companions were caught, but he himself escaped into 
 Macedonia, not choosing to abide the mode of trial that 
 was recommended by the town clerk. It is certain that 
 although Paul abounded in miracles to benefit others, 
 yet the poor fellow could not perform a single one to 
 save himself, or his companions, even when they stood 
 most in need of them ; nor could he preach himself out 
 of bonds. In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SU PERN ATURA LS. Gl 
 
 (chap, lltli) he tells us that the Jews flogged him five 
 times, and that each time he received thirty-nine lashes ; 
 that he was thrice beaten with rods, and once stoned, 
 punishments which were then commonly inflicted on 
 such turbulent and seditious demagogues. But the asto- 
 nishing part of the matter is, his success in causing a vast 
 majority of the Christian world to believe that he never 
 outraged the peace of society, nor committed any crimes 
 to deserve those chastisements. He tells us farther, that 
 he had been " a night and a day in the deep," which 
 showed a laudable ambition not to be outdone by Jonah 
 and his whale, but he does not tell us how he found him- 
 self after such a ducking.* The above are a few sketches 
 of the true character and conduct of a vagrant, unruly 
 mystagogue, who, nevertheless, has commanded the faith 
 and veneration of those called true believers (that is, all 
 who believe whatever has been taught them in childhood) 
 for more than sixteen centuries ! ! ! 
 
 After venturing so far to take a peep into the holy of 
 holies, to examine the great arcanum of priestcraft, it 
 
 * He himself tells us that he was ravished up to the third 
 heaven ; but why this ravishment, — for what good end was he forced 
 thither, and what did he learn by this miraculous journey? " Things 
 
 UNSPEAKABLE, WHICH NO MAN COULD COMPREHEND." This is your 
 
 grandest flight, O, Paul ! but you forget to tell us what advantage 
 we are to derive from these unspeakables. 
 
62 LECTURE II. 
 
 may not be improper to digress a little in giving a dis- 
 section of another special character, which has long been 
 impiously held up by priests and their ignorant followers, 
 as being the man according to God's own heart. Now, 
 the Hebrew historian relates that this man, David, " col- 
 lected about six hundred vagabonds, overwhelmed with 
 debts and crimes, and at the head of these banditti, pil- 
 laged his countrymen. After these robberies he resolved 
 to destroy Nabal and his whole family, because he refused 
 to pay contributions to him. He hired out his services 
 as a mercenary to King Achish, the enemy of his 
 country, and soon afterwards betrays this Achish, not- 
 withstanding his kindness to him, which he requites by 
 sacking the villages in alliance with that king, massacreing 
 every human being, including even infants at the breast, 
 that no one might be found at a future day to give testi- 
 mony of his depredations ; as if an infant could have pos- 
 sibly disclosed his villany ! Another exploit of his was 
 to destroy all the inhabitants of some other villages, 
 under saws, and harrows, and axes, and by burning them 
 in brick-kilns. His ambition now aspires to the top of 
 the ladder, and he wrests the throne from Ishbosheth, 
 the son of Saul, by an act of perfidy, which he follows 
 up by despoiling of his property, and afterwards putting 
 to death, Mephibosheth, the son of Saul, and brother 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 63 
 
 of his own peculiar friend and generous protector Jona- 
 than ; he has also the horrible wickedness to deliver up 
 to the Gibeonites, another son of Saul, and five of 
 his grandsons, who perished by the gallows ! ! ! After 
 these crimes we need hardly notice his numerous concu- 
 bines, his intrigue with Bathsheba, or the murder of her 
 husband Uriah." 
 
 The veneration in which such characters have long 
 been, and are still held by folly and ignorance, shows 
 that superstition is a mad error ; it exalts the unworthy 
 and profligate, it fears those who deserve to be loved, 
 and it injures whatever it worships: and how 9 indeed, 
 can it be expected that the same evil which has in all 
 ages, and in all countries, been hurtful to truth and true 
 religion, should in any age become the guardian of 
 them? 
 
 That the church should have particular respect and 
 veneration for this St Paul, is not at all surprising, since 
 he has furnished out a greater number of mysterious 
 nothings, or nonsensical quibbles, than any other of the 
 contributors to the writing of the New Testament ; and 
 as his Gospel formed an excellent foundation for theolo- 
 gical power and corruption, it is eminently esteemed ; 
 whilst that of Barnabas, which seems to have been one 
 of moral simplicity, has been suppressed, and declared 
 
64 LECTURE II. 
 
 to be apocryphal, because it did not favour clerical great- 
 ness. It is said, however, to be held in respect by the 
 Mahometans, who, after making such interpolations as 
 suited their own superstition, found that Mahomet was 
 expressly the promised paraclet, or comforter, there men- 
 tioned; and that the said Gospel of Barnabas was the 
 only true one amongst the many hundreds of Gospels, 
 Epistles, Acts, and Revelations of the Christians. 
 
 If Paul was not the first, he certainly must have been 
 amongst the very first who corrupted and metamorphosed 
 the system of Jesus from its original principles of natural 
 light and simplicity ; the strongest proof of which we find 
 in his quarrels with Barnabas, James and Peter, who 
 directly charge him with this perversion ; and Peter, in 
 a letter to James, which is quoted by Cotelerius, 
 and prefixed by him to the Clementines, complains 
 that his true and legal preaching had been rejected 
 amongst the Gentiles, " who had embraced the trifling 
 and lawless doctrine of a man who was his enemy." 
 Now this could allude to no one else than Paul, who 
 was both the apostle of the Gentiles, and the enemy of 
 Peter. , 
 
 That Talmud, which was composed by the Jews of 
 Mesopotamia, about the fifth century, relates that there 
 have been many Christians who, after comparing the 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUFERNATURALS. 65 
 
 miracles of the Old Testament with those of the New, 
 embraced Judaism, considering" it impossible that the 
 Sovereign Lord of nature should have wrought such stu- 
 pendous prodigies for a religion which he intended to 
 annihilate. What impious inconsistency ! exclaimed 
 they, in supposing that the Almighty power should, for a 
 series of ages, have exhibited a train of the most amazing 
 miracles in favour of a true religion that was soon to 
 become a false one that ! — he would send his own Son, 
 who is declared to be no other than himself, to make that 
 untrue and nugatory, which he took so many ages to 
 erect and establish ! 
 
 One of the Talmtids makes the Almighty gather toge- 
 ther his celestial army in the reign of Ahab, and he asks 
 the spirits, " Who amongst you will go and deceive Ahab, 
 and persuade him to go up to war against Ramoth 
 Gilead ? " and there came forth a lying spirit, and stood 
 before the Lord and said, " I will persuade him." Here 
 we have a lying angel, and God Almighty himself 
 prompting to a falsehood, or endeavouring to deceive. 
 The belief of such impious absurdities is alone sufficient 
 to show that the credulity of man has no bounds what- 
 ever ; that it is even greater than anything which his 
 mind can possibly conceive. 
 
 In another Lecture it has already been observed, that 
 
66 LECTURE II. 
 
 as the reputed founder of Christianity was a follower of 
 nature, and a preacher of good morals, it is inconsistent 
 to suppose that he even believed in miracles ; but on the 
 contrary, his earnest intention was to reclaim his country- 
 men, the Jews, from all such absurd perversions of rea- 
 son and common sense. It does not anywhere appear 
 that he himself wrote anything ; and it was not until 
 near two hundred years after the time of his death, that 
 some obscure pretended followers, using his name, pro- 
 duced the books containing the alleged miracles. And as 
 the church grew strong in wealth and power, these books 
 have been altered and interpolated, at the will and plea- 
 sure of the early fathers, to suit their own, and the general 
 interests of the church; for, however strange it may 
 appear, it is a well-ascertained fact that they were 
 frequently engaged in altering, remodelling, and fitting 
 up their Gospels, that is, settling what should be, and 
 what should not be, the word of God ! ! ! Tithes, and all 
 other temporal benefits that served to promote the riches 
 and power of the clergy, always formed part of the 
 word of God. % 
 
 * What is called the word of God, can have no intelligible mean- 
 ing, unless it is taken metaphorically to signify the order or course 
 of nature, because it follows and depends upon the immutable and 
 eternal laws of nature. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 67 
 
 It is recorded by Victor of Tunis, an African bishop, 
 and the same is also stated by Scaliger, that a general 
 alteration of the four Gospels took place in the sixth 
 century, by command of the Emperor Anastasius, as 
 follows :— " That the holy Gospels, as written, IDIOTIS 
 EVANGELISTIS, are to be corrected and amended." 
 
 Mahomet expressly declares that he wrought no mira- 
 cles ; but exactly as in the case of Christianity, his less 
 judicious followers make him work many of a very asto- 
 nishing description ; and many Christians, prompted by 
 a false zeal against him, accuse him of boasting of certain 
 miracles which the Arabian writers never attributed to 
 him. His accusers even go so far as to say that when 
 he made his rapid journey to visit all the heavens in a 
 single night, he was mounted on the mysterious mare 
 Borak, which he had borrowed from his friend, the arch- 
 angel Gabriel, (making good the old proverb, that a 
 borrowed horse goes far), and that he was so ungrateful 
 as not to return the mare, but kept her for his own 
 stud. 
 
 One error naturally leads to another, and the art of 
 drawing dogmas, or infallible conclusions from false foun- 
 dations, which never can be allowed by truth and reason, 
 has ever been one of the principal strong-holds of theo- 
 logy, which, in endeavouring to support its favourite 
 
 / 
 
68 LECTURE II. 
 
 assertion of the creation of matter, rushes headlong into 
 a greater difficulty, (if that be possible), for having no 
 material to work with, it is forced into the palpable 
 absurdity of creating matter out of nothing. The super- 
 ficial reasoner cries out, " This clock did not make 
 itself, it had an artificer, and therefore matter must have 
 had a creator and artificer also." — " Very true, my 
 friend, your clock did not always exist as a clock, but 
 most assuredly the matter of which it is composed did 
 always exist, and ever will exist in some form or other, 
 and has undergone thousands of millions of different 
 modes and states of being, before nature produced the 
 particular substances of wood and metal of which it is 
 composed." 
 
 One of the fatal errors impressed upon the mind of 
 man in early youth, is the folly of measuring the Almighty 
 power, and the endless resources and changes of nature, 
 by his own poor, weak, and perverted understanding; 
 always taking a distorted or mistaken view of her com- 
 mon process in the dissolution, decomposition, and the 
 separation of the elementary particles of bodies, for the 
 entire and radical annihilation of them, which, if true, 
 would indeed be a miracle. It is therefore not repug- 
 nant to reason, or contrary to what appears from experi- 
 ence to be the universal order of things, to acknowledge 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 69 
 
 that matter is self-existent, self-ruled, and self-modified 
 by motion, which is co-eternal with its own nature, and 
 may be said to be its executive, or energetic power ; and 
 that the annihilation of any part of it, even by its own 
 power, which cannot be subject to control, is utterly im- 
 possible ; and as there can be no such thing as the 
 organization or production of animal life without mo- 
 tion, so is it equally necessary in the death and decom- 
 position of every creature that has life ; in all which pro- 
 cess nature is pursuing her own invariable course of 
 perpetual change into new modifications of matter ; but 
 utterly denying, by her immutable laws, that any man, 
 or other animal that has once been dead in reality, did 
 ever come to life again, although it is quite in the pro- 
 cess of nature that dead animals (the dissolution of gross 
 bodies being wrought by fermentation) should give rise 
 to other and very different organizations both animal and 
 vegetable. 
 
 A power to work miracles would be superior, and 
 external to, the universal and immanent laws by which 
 the systems of things are governed ; and exists nowhere 
 but in the fantastic imagination of man, being directly 
 contrary to the attributes of Almighty power, — to that 
 which is the most clear of all others, its unchangeable- 
 ness; and the more men are amused with miraculous 
 
70 
 
 LECTURE II, 
 
 tales, the more will they be diverted from exercising- 
 their reason. But when truth is valued, the rational 
 faculties will be freely used, and superstition will inevi- 
 tably sink, with fanaticism its offspring. The more 
 respect that is paid to anything substituted in the room 
 of truth and moral righteousness, the less will these be 
 practised and regarded ; and whenever the resurrection 
 and prevalence of these shall take place, the death-blow 
 is given to the false righteousness of faith, and all preter- 
 natural religions. 
 
 The infinite number of pretenders in all ages to reve- 
 lations from heaven, # supported by miracles, and the 
 perpetual introduction of new notions of the Deity, new 
 
 * All the religions on earth declare that they have emanated 
 from God, and pretend to possess an exclusive right to his favours. 
 The Indian asserts that the Brama himself is the author of his 
 worship. The Scandinavian derives his from the awful Odin. If 
 the Jew and the Christian have received theirs from Jehovah, by 
 the ministry of Moses and Jesus, the Mahometan affirms that he 
 has received his from his prophet, inspired by the same God. Thus 
 all religions pretend to a divine origin, and they all interdict the 
 use of reason in the examination of their sacred titles. Each pre- 
 tends to be the only true one, to the exclusion of all others j and 
 all acquire the character of falsehood by the palpable contradictions 
 with which they are filled ; by the misshapen, obscure, and often 
 odious ideas, which they give of the Godhead ; by the whimsical 
 laws which they attribute to him ; in short, they all appear to be 
 a mass of impostures and reveries equally disgusting to reason. — 
 Ecce Homo. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 71 
 
 commands, new doctrines, and new modes of worship, 
 make free inquiry into these matters absolutely neces- 
 sary ; and although none of them will be considered as 
 the messengers of heaven by the few that are wise and 
 considerate, yet the impostors ought to be detected for 
 the benefit of the misled many, who either cannot or dare 
 not think for themselves ; for it is equally inconsistent 
 and ridiculous that we should be required to believe men 
 the more, for those very reasons upon which common 
 sense tells us we should believe them the less. Tertul- 
 lian, speaking of a certain miracle, says, " It is no shame 
 to own it, because it is a thing to be ashamed of" Again 
 he says, " It is wholly credible, because it is absurd." 
 And again, speaking of the same miracle, " It is certain, 
 because it is impossible." St Austin said, that " He be- 
 lieved some things, because they were absurd and impos- 
 sible" Cicero, that all-accomplished philosopher, though 
 he was himself an honorary priest, wrote a treatise on 
 divination, wherein he has exposed and destroyed the 
 whole revealed religion of the Greeks and Romans, by 
 showing the imposture of all their miracles and oracles ; 
 and he records a saying of the wise Cato, the censor, 
 which shows that he understood the whole fraud and 
 mystery of the Roman religion as by law established. 
 
72 ' LECTURE II. 
 
 " I wonder," says Cato, " how one of our priests 
 can forbear laughing when he sees another, at the 
 thoughts of that fraud they live by;" and had the 
 profound Cato lived in the nineteenth century, he 
 would have made the same observation ; for the Chris- 
 tian priests, as well as those of other religions, do, we 
 may be well assured, secretly make themselves merry, 
 when over their cups, at the success of their own 
 craft, and at the weakness of the people in being so 
 easily imposed upon, but more especially for the silly 
 absurdity of maintaining them in luxury as the price of 
 their fables. 
 
 The oracles of antiquity formed another order of su- 
 pernatural, and Eusebius takes occasion to triumph in 
 charging his antagonist Porphyry with being the head 
 and advocate for a number of the oracles of Greece, 
 making part of the heathen religion ; but he takes care 
 to withhold from us the matter which accompanies those 
 writings of Porphyry, which he quotes ; and this omis- 
 sion alone gives us every reason to believe that the 
 latter was in reality condemning and exposing oracles, 
 instead of being an advocate for them. However, it is 
 certain, that although all the lower and many persons in 
 the higher classes amongst the Greeks did consult ora- 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 73 
 
 cles in their important affairs, yet in the three greatest 
 schools of philosophy they were treated as the absolute 
 impostures of priests, and as such they are treated by 
 Eusebius. But like all other priests, as he could do 
 nothing without the devil, or some of his subaltern imps, 
 he assures us that these oracles were delivered by de- 
 mons. Though he could not but see clearly that they 
 were nothing else than cheats, still he would not confess 
 them to be so, because it served the interest and stabi- 
 lity of the church, that the devil should have the chief 
 direction of the oracles, the better to run down and ex- 
 plode the old religion. 
 
 The origin of oracles was like everything else of the 
 preternatural order, an imposition on the easy credulity 
 of man ; a propensity so notorious in him, that you have 
 only to persuade a few people that it is not the sun that 
 causes the appearance of day, and having succeeded in 
 this, you need not despair of making whole nations em- 
 brace the same opinion ; for let any notion be ever so 
 monstrous or ridiculous, you have only to maintain it 
 by authority for a time until it becomes sanctioned 
 by antiquity, and then the truth of it is proved suffi- 
 ciently. 
 
 All the false religions in the world, or that have 
 
74 LECTURE II. 
 
 pestered it, have pretended to inspiration, and this 
 shows very clearly that this sort of revelation is, by the 
 common consent of mankind, the very best foundation 
 of supernatural religion, and therefore every impostor 
 pretends to it ; but if we would not suffer ourselves to 
 be beguiled, we must be strictly on our guard against 
 deceit, and preserve and protect the moral virtues ; for 
 sincerity, fidelity, and honesty, are as truly the life and 
 soul of true religion, as deception and hypocrisy are the 
 bane of it. 
 
 Wicked and designing men, who have conjured up a 
 power superior to nature and reason, solely for the pur- 
 pose of destroying both, " have depreciated the true- 
 born daughter of God, Faithfulness, and anointed the 
 bastard Faith in her room." 
 
 In concluding this Lecture, I shall shortly observe that, 
 since as men we are all liable to error, the above reason- 
 ing has certainly no claim to be exempt from it ; but my 
 chief care has been to advance nothing that is not 
 consonant to reason and experience, free from every- 
 thing that is mysterious ; and to show that the only 
 true religion of moral righteousness, whose basis can 
 be no other than truth, cannot be founded upon any 
 traditional or historical faith, which has no other sup- 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURAXS. 75 
 
 port than the relation of prodigies and preternatural 
 actions, which have no other proofs than such as are 
 quite as suspicious as the actions themselves, and 
 altogether inconsistent with common sense and expe- 
 rience. 
 
 END OF LECTURE THE SECOND. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 These fears, this darkness that o'erspreads j'our souls, 
 Day can't disperse, but those eternal rules 
 That from firm premises right reason draws, 
 And a deep insight into nature's laws. 
 
 Lucretius. 
 " Miracles for fools, and reasons for wise men." 
 
 MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS 
 
 FURTHER CONSIDERED. 
 
 In dealing with the important subject of supernaturals 
 for the third time, it is analogous with our highest 
 admiration of the All-ruling Power again to observe, 
 that with the exception of the faint and glimmering 
 light which we have of the works of nature before us, 
 all knowledge of the Almighty and Self-directing power 
 is of infinitely too sublime a nature to be comprehended 
 in any degree by poor mortals. And, as we can discover 
 but very few of the causes of the endless effects we see 
 in nature, it is the most ridiculous of all follies to 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERN A TURA LS. 77 
 
 imagine others, and place them beyond, or external to, 
 the empire of nature. Therefore, none are such 
 great atheists as those men who gain an ascendency 
 over the minds of their fellow men, and therewith the 
 riches and luxuries of the world, by propagating or 
 maintaining falsehoods, — in impiously pretending, by 
 secret inspiration, to have an exclusive knowledge of 
 that All-ruling Power. Such men have introduced pro- 
 digies and doctrines, not only impertinent to, but absurd 
 and unworthy tenets concerning that power, with- 
 drawing men as well from their reason, as from the 
 study and practice of truth. This sacerdotal villany 
 has more or less prevailed in all ages, and must have 
 been well known to the cynic, Diogenes, who made 
 the following answer to a priest who wanted him to join 
 his order : — " Wilt thou (says he) have me to believe 
 that those famous men, Epaminondas and Agesilaus, 
 shall be miserable hereafter, when thou, who art but an 
 ass, and doest nothing of any work, shalt be happy 
 only because thou art a priest !" 
 
 Early in the fifth century, a highly respectable Bishop 
 of our church, makes the following observations: — 
 " Whoever writes anything for the people (says he), 
 or addresses his speech to them, must necessarily be 
 popular in his doctrine, and invent or discourse what 
 
78 LECTURE III. 
 
 gratifies them ; for they being unlearned, are therefore 
 pertinacious and intractable defenders of their senseless 
 prejudices, in so much, that if any one declines from 
 the rites and foolish ceremonies of his country, he must 
 prepare to drink the juice of the hemlock." In other 
 words, the amiable Bishop meant to say that the 
 preacher of learning and genius might philosophize at 
 home, but abroad he must talk popular nonsense; for 
 no sort of brute is more cross-grained, or requires 
 more cunning to manage than the superstitious brute, 
 especially if he be ignorant. 
 
 Natural powers are amply fit to answer all the ends 
 of virtue and true religion ; therefore, supernatural 
 powers (allowing for a moment the existence of them) 
 are needless. No extraordinary inspiration is necessary 
 to teach the most excellent morals that were ever 
 taught, # with the reasonable belief of one ruling power 
 
 * The few precepts of sound morality that are to be found in 
 the New Testament, and which are so much boasted of by Christians, 
 are almost a literal copy of the Morals of Confucius, who wrote 
 about six hundred years before the time of Moses, and nearly two 
 thousand years before the birth of Christ. This will appear evident 
 from some of the following extracts. 
 
 24th Moral — " Do to another what you would he should do to 
 you, and do not unto another what you would should not be done 
 unto you : thou needest only this law alone ; it is the foundation and 
 principle of all the rest." 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS . 79 
 
 supreme ; but so far as regards the name by which we 
 designate that power, it cannot possibly be otherwise 
 than a matter of perfect indifference. It may be laid 
 down as a maxim, that as error and falsehood may be 
 confuted, as well by one man, as by a thousand, so 
 reason and truth have no more to fear from one thousand, 
 than from one man. Let us remember the excellent 
 Confucius, the great philosopher of China, who was 
 inferior to no man that ever lived : yet neither pre- 
 tending to inspiration above nature, nor the power of 
 working miracles, he was the revivor of a religion, of 
 which nature was the author, which is older than even 
 the Chinese race, and as old as their country, which 
 
 51st Moral — " Desire not the death of thine enemy ; thou 
 wouldst desire it in vain ; his life is in the hands of heaven." 
 
 53rd Moral — "- Acknowledge thy benefits by the return of other 
 benefits, but never revenge injuries." 
 
 63rd Moral — " We may have an aversion for an enemy without 
 desiring revenge ; the motions of nature are not always criminal." 
 
 " Do those things which you think right, though you think that 
 after you have done them, you shall be disesteemed ; for the vulgar 
 are ill judges of good things, and as you despise their praise, so 
 despise their censure." 
 
 The disciples of Confucius are yet numerous, after the lapse of 
 four thousand years since he lived. He instructed as well by his 
 example as by his precepts ; and it would be well if his morals were 
 taught in all the schools of Christendom, instead of creeds and 
 dogmas which are unintelligible. 
 
80 LECTURE III. 
 
 their wise men still esteem and enjoy, and which God 
 never abolished by any new will, though he has per- 
 mitted fools that dislike it, to choose other religions. 
 How widely different are such incomparable legislators 
 and moralists, from those impostors of antiquity and of 
 more modern times, teaching their wild and baneful 
 schemes of preternatural revelation ; and who, when 
 they perceived that what they established by fraud, 
 could only be supported by force, coalesced with corrupt 
 legislators, to get it made a capital offence to question 
 their dictates, and highly disreputable so much as to 
 examine, but perdition to doubt them. The priests, 
 for their own interest, were never wanting anywhere 
 to promote, and cruelly to enforce all such penal laws ; 
 and hence no room was left for the propagation of truth, 
 except at the expense of a man's life or liberty, or at 
 least of his reputation and employments, of which the 
 examples are innumerable in all ages. The Philoso- 
 phers therefore, and other well-wishers of mankind, 
 were constrained by this holy tyranny, to make use of 
 two doctrines, the one public, and accommodated to the 
 prejudices of the vulgar; the other philosophical, and 
 conformable to reason and the nature of things, con- 
 sequently to truth, and which they communicated only 
 to friends of known probity, prudence, and capacity; 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 81 
 
 they being well aware from experience that, in matters 
 of theology, truth can hardly be declared anywhere, 
 except at the hazards that have already been stated. 
 This chaos of error and absurdity, in which men are 
 bewildered, naturally produces the woful effects of 
 mental bondage, superstitious fopperies, pious frauds, 
 unintelligible jargons, gross ignorance, hypocrisy, and 
 human persecution : from all of which proceeds that 
 mass of profligacy and crime that pervades society. 
 
 We learn from Zosimus and others, that the Emperor 
 Constantine, whom priests have called the great, after 
 he had committed those horrible crimes and cruelties, 
 which the Pagan priests told him were not to be ex- 
 piated in their religion, was assured by an Egyptian 
 bishop of our church, that there was no crime, no 
 villany so great, but was to be expiated by the sacra- 
 ments of the Christian religion ; and therefore, to get 
 himself white-washed, he embraced the new impiety, 
 (so Zosimus unfortunately calls the Christian religion), 
 and so quitted the religion of his ancestors ; for which, 
 however, the priests did not brand him with the epithet 
 of apostate, although he was one in the strictest and 
 worst sense of the word. But on his nephew, Julian, one 
 of the best and greatest of human beings, they bestowed 
 this stigma, in spite of the clearest evidence that he was 
 
82 LECTURE III. 
 
 i 
 the very reverse of an apostate, inasmuch as he never 
 
 did embrace the Christian religion in his heart ; for it is 
 a known truth that, in his boyhood, he was forced to an 
 outward conformity with its rites; but this was in 
 semblance only, and that was absolutely necessary in 
 order to save his life from the bloodthirstiness of his 
 imperial cousin. To show the truth of the above 
 remarks, let us see how he satirises our religion;— 
 " Whoever," says he, " is guilty of rapes, murders, 
 sacrilege, or any other abominable crimes, let him be 
 washed with water, and he will become pure and holy ; 
 if he relapses into the same impieties, he will again 
 become pure and holy, by thumping his breast, and 
 beating his head." 
 
 Traditional and historical facts may be precarious and 
 uncertain, and the most wonderful will always be the 
 most improbable. If the laws of nature are un- 
 changeable, no work can be wrought, or event take 
 place contrary to them, nor can they contradict them- 
 selves ; if they are changeable, there can be no depend- 
 ence on anything ; for whatever can interfere with, or 
 set them aside, must of necessity set aside all criterions 
 of truth, and all possible knowledge of it. If then 
 there be any truth that may be depended on, what is 
 founded on the laws of nature must remain evidently, and 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 83 
 
 unchangeably so, — till nature changes, — and can suffer 
 no mutation by miracles. Nature cannot divest itself 
 of itself; and that which may be supposed or imagined 
 capable to do it, is altogether supposition and imagina- 
 tion, because it can only be said, the proof being 
 contrary to nature. The argument on the side of deism, 
 therefore, is so far from being pernicious, or destructive 
 of true religion, that it tends to fix it on true, solid, 
 and eternal principles, which are everywhere of the 
 same importance, stability, and lustre. 
 
 Naturalists have observed that there is no species of 
 animals that have not some innate defect or weakness, 
 whereby they are rendered an easy prey to other 
 animals. Now the most vulnerable part of man is on 
 the side of his credulity in super naturals, that is to say, 
 his belief in that which has no existence ; this unhappy 
 propensity has at all times made him ready to be 
 practised upon by the interested cunning ones of his 
 own species, who, by an impudent and confident pre- 
 tence of knowing more than those around them, have 
 subdued the reason and understanding of the weak and 
 unwary multitude, through whose means they have 
 forced the wise and free-thinking few, into the back 
 ground of non-resistance. 
 
 " Anciently, as at this day, numbers of vagabond 
 
84 LECTURE III. 
 
 priests and wandering theologians subsisted by trans- 
 porting their superstitions beyond the seas ; and some- 
 times, indeed, they became grand pontiffs in countries 
 converted by them to new errors, perhaps much more 
 pernicious to truth and virtue than those they had 
 destroyed."* 
 
 The word spiritual is admirable in its efficacy, and 
 endless in its applications, inasmuch as things naturally 
 false and absurd, when tried by the rules of reason and 
 common sense, may by it be made perfectly true and 
 consistent ; or, in other words, that which appears evi- 
 dently false in a temporal sense, is capable of being 
 made true in the sense spiritual, alias, the nonsensical 
 sense ; and therefore, when considered as a tool in the 
 hands of a skilful divineling, it is perhaps entitled to 
 
 * " The missions have for their particular object to extend the 
 power and influence of the clergy. The church sends enthusiasts 
 or knaves to the extremities of the earth, to beat up for subjects, 
 and these missionaries transact their business vastly well, and open 
 to themselves new branches of commerce ; but their insolence and 
 imprudence have occasioned the proscription of the Christian 
 religion, in Japan, China, &c. Our missionaries were everywhere 
 well received in the beginning, and in general suffered expulsion or 
 martyrdom, only when their real designs were discovered. Kambi, 
 emperor of China, asked the Jesuit missionaries, at Pekin, what 
 they would say, if he would send missionaries to their nation ? A 
 holy missionary has been heard to say, that without muskets 
 missionaries never could make proselytes." 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 85 
 
 rank as high as inspiration itself; however, they may 
 justly be called the watch-words of theology. 
 
 If we may depend upon anything that Origen has 
 given us, as being the arguments of Celsus against him, 
 it appears the latter asserted that it was the want of 
 strict examination and scrutiny into the reports of re- 
 puted miracles, that gained them credit in the credulous 
 world at first. He makes Celsus say, that some of the 
 Christians, neither examining what it was they believed, 
 nor caring to be examined,* used this expression : — 
 " Do not examine into matters, but believe, and thy 
 faith shall infallibly save thee." Celsus would have 
 made the same observation if he had lived in these 
 
 * Men blindly follow on in the paths which their fathers trod ; 
 they believe, because in infancy they were told they must believe ; 
 they hope, because their progenitors hoped ; and they tremble, 
 because they trembled. In youth, the ardour of our passions, and 
 the continual ebriety of our senses, prevent us thinking seriously of 
 a religion too austere and gloomy to please. If by chance a young 
 man examines it, he does it with partiality, or without perseve- 
 rance; he is often disgusted with a single glance of the eye, on 
 contemplating an object so revolting. In riper age, new passions 
 and cares, ideas of ambition, greatness, power, the desire of riches,. 
 and the hurry of business, absorb the whole attention of man, or 
 leave him but few moments to think of religion, which he never 
 has the leisure to scrutinize. In old age, the faculties are blunted, 
 habits become incorporated with the machine, the senses are debi- 
 litated by time and infirmity, and we are no longer able to penetrate 
 back to the source of our opinions ; besides, the fear of death then 
 
86 LECTURE III. 
 
 times, when all scrutiny and exposure is punished by 
 the strong arm of tyranny. This mental darkness and 
 oppression degrades, and prevents man from becom- 
 ing what nature intended he should be, a rational being ; 
 and the foolish reveries and deceptions of some vagrant 
 preachers, who lived nobody knows exactly when, or 
 where, whose veracity was either denied by, or unknown 
 to, the men of genius and learning who lived in, and after 
 the time of Celsus ; and whose barefaced assertions and 
 inconsistencies are forcibly planted as the standards of 
 other men's faith, by the canting art of priests, who con- 
 demn arguments they cannot confute, a method practised 
 everywhere by the promoters of error, and those who 
 prefer interest to truth, which they strive to reduce to 
 the level of falsehood ; but no power can make that to 
 be true, which is found false when tried by nature and 
 reason; so no wise man would regard their sentence, 
 if it was not unhappily backed by the power of doing 
 mischief. 
 
 It has already been observed that, to avoid being ac- 
 cused of impiety by the priests, the lovers of truth have 
 
 renders an examination, over which terror commonly presides, very 
 liable to suspicion. Civil authority also flies to the support of the 
 prejudices of mankind ; compels them to ignorance, by forbidding 
 inquiry ; and holds itself in continual readiness to punish all who 
 attempt to undeceive them. — Boulanger. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 87 
 
 in almost every country, been obliged to conceal their 
 deistical opinions from motives of self-preservation, while 
 they despised the mob, scorned the priest, and enjoyed 
 their silent liberty of conscience. 
 
 The famous Lord Shaftesbury, when conferring one 
 day with Major Wildman, about the many sects of reli- 
 gion in the world, all hostile to each other, they came to 
 this conclusion, that, notwithstanding those infinite divi- 
 sions caused by the interests of the priests, and the con- 
 sequent ignorance of the people, all wise men, in all 
 ages and countries, have always been of the same reli- 
 gion ; whereupon a lady in the room, who till then 
 seemed to mind her needle more than their discourse, 
 demanded with much concern, " what that religion 
 was ? " to whom Lord Shaftesbury immediately replied, 
 " Madam, wise men never tell" 
 
 Aristotle, that consummate philosopher, did, during the 
 life of his pupil and patron, Alexander the Great, freely 
 read to his scholars the lessons of truth and philosophical 
 freedom ; but after the death of Alexander, Eurimedon, 
 a priest, accused him of impiety, for introducing some 
 philosophical opinions contrary to the religion of the 
 Athenians, and he was forced to steal privately from 
 Athens, giving this reason to his friends — " That he left 
 Athens that he might not give the Athenians occasion 
 
88 LECTURE III. 
 
 to commit again the same wickedness they committed 
 against Socrates, and be guilty of a double crime against 
 philosophy. 
 
 It is no wonder that one miracle is said to be wrought 
 to prove another. Miracles can be defended by nothing 
 but miracles, for if they could be proved by anything 
 else, that proof would be a miracle. Homogeneous 
 things nourish and support each other ; animal organiza- 
 tion can alone be supported by that which has itself been 
 organized, either in animal or in vegetable life ; truth is 
 supported by truth; lies by lies; fraud by fraud, and 
 force by force. But it seems very unreasonable that 
 the worst story-tellers should demand the best credit, 
 and that on the severest penalties. This of itself is a suf- 
 ficient demonstration of the badness of such stories, and 
 of the cause in which they are told, that they need such 
 penalties to make them pass ; for the most shining truth 
 is always attended with the clearest evidence, and virtue, 
 being the offspring of truth, is wholly without com- 
 pulsion. They go hand in hand, always attended by 
 freedom ; but error dwells with dissimulation, vice, and 
 compulsion. 
 
 To shew how far some of the garbled and ridiculous 
 stories, as related in the Bible, differ from the very same 
 stories told in a rational and historical manner, by Jose- 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 89 
 
 phus, a tolerably good historian of the Jews, — speaking 
 of Cain, he says, "that after a tedious journey through 
 several countries, he took up at length at Nais, and 
 settled his abode ; but was so far from mending upon 
 his affliction, that he went rather from bad to worse, 
 abandoning himself to all manner of outrage, without 
 any regard to common justice ; he enriched himself by 
 rapine and violence, and made choice of the most 
 profligate of monsters for his companions, instructing 
 them in the very mystery of their profession. He 
 corrupted the simplicity of former times, with a novel 
 invention of weights and measures; and exchanged the 
 innocency of that primitive generosity and candour, for 
 the new tricks of policy and craft. All of which shews 
 plainly enough, that the world had been full of inhabi- 
 tants long before the father of Cain existed.* 
 
 The story of Nebuchadnezzar is truly beastly as told 
 in Daniel, who says " he was driven from men and did 
 
 * Both the Hebrew and Samaritan texts support this truth, for 
 Cain, when lamenting his doom, says to God (or Shaddai) — " When 
 driven from thy presence, I shall be a fugitive upon the earth, and 
 it will happen that whosoever shall meet me will kill me." and God 
 said "No, for I will put a mark upon you, so that you shall not he 
 killed by any person who may meet you." Now as Abel was killed, 
 and Seth not yet born, whom could Cain possibly meet in his 
 wanderings to kill him, except his own father, if other inhabitants 
 had not existed upon the earth ? 
 
X 
 
 90 LECTURE III. 
 
 eat grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the 
 the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles 
 feathers, and his nails like birds' claws." Josephus tells 
 the story thus, " that Nebuchadnezzar, after seven years 
 spent in solitude, and no one daring during that time 
 to disturb his government, God was prevailed on to 
 reinstate him in the exercise of his kingly power.' ' He 
 farther says that the passage of the Red Sea by the 
 Israelites, was effected by the same means and manner 
 as that which happened to the Macedonians under the 
 command of Alexander, at the Pamphilian sea, in which 
 there was nothing miraculous, if Alexander himself is 
 to be believed. 
 
 When he relates the miraculous appearance of Moses's 
 God on Mount Sinai, he adds, " that the reader may 
 take this as he pleases" — a judicious hint, that he may 
 believe as much or as little of the story as he pleases. 
 If any priest, or lover of the marvellous, should ask me 
 why I prefer the relations of Josephus to those of the 
 Bible, I answer, simply because the accounts of the 
 former are plain, rational, and perfectly consistent with 
 experience in matters of fact and history, whereas 
 the latter are exactly the reverse in all these parti- 
 culars. 
 
 We are told that God has wrought wonders for the 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 91 
 
 benefit and satisfaction of one generation and not for 
 another ; but if such violations of nature's laws could be 
 at all necessary, they would be equally so at all tim^s, 
 and to every people. By this impious charge the justice, 
 mercy, goodness, and wisdom of the supreme being is 
 degraded, inasmuch as he is represented to us as a 
 partial God, full of capricious levity, now choosing 
 one thing, then another, and frequently repenting of 
 his actions, so as to be under the necessity of amending 
 them by the working of miracles ! The belief of such 
 absurdities is destructive to the moral character of the 
 deity. " The wonders which are said to have been 
 wrought in one age, can never convince a sober thinker 
 in the next, unless there be such lasting monuments 
 of them, and they are so clearly and fully evidenced 
 that they appear true against all contradiction : " nor is 
 it fit they should; because, to believe that miracles 
 were performed in a certain manner, time, and place, 
 of which no shadow of proof remains more than in the 
 bare report, is putting faith in the reporters, not in the 
 operators ; thus I may be always amused by fabulous 
 tales as often as simple or bad men please to relate them, 
 unless I can be sure that no man will tell a lie to serve 
 his own ends, or be imposed upon by others to believe 
 a false storv. 
 
92 LECTURE III. 
 
 As the Supreme power always acts towards man 
 agreeably to the moral fitness of things, there can be 
 neither room nor occasion for prodigies ; for if reasonable 
 exhortations to virtue, and dissuasions from vice, — if the 
 example of moral goodness and just laws will not make 
 people virtuous, nothing can. But pretended miracles 
 and inspirations rather force the passions by violent, than 
 guide them by gentle means, and drive men on without 
 rational sense, instead of driving it into them. Surprise 
 seizes the imagination, the person no longer hesitates 
 concerning truth, or deliberates of virtue, but is carried 
 away, in the rapid torrent of his misguided passions, by 
 the power of supernatural chimeras, which astonish and 
 subvert the imagination. Such is the gloomy conse- 
 quence when priests succeed in making whatever im- 
 pressions they please on the minds of the people, and 
 that which reason rejects, and refuses to support, is upheld 
 by force and custom. This settled habit, or custom, 
 maybe called the goddess of the multitude,* who, when 
 backed by their theological leaders, which they are sure 
 
 * Ye seek for happiness — alas, the day ! 
 Ye find it not in luxury nor gold, 
 Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway 
 For which, O willing slaves to custom old, 
 Severe task mistress ! ye your hearts have sold. 
 
 Laon and Cythna. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERN A TURALS. 93 
 
 to be in all superstitions, are then very dangerous, as 
 well as ridiculous opponents of common sense ; for their 
 inconsiderate fury has in all ages proved the greatest 
 support of the priests against reason, and hence the 
 generally received axiom, that the ignorance of the laity 
 is the revenue of the clergy.* While matters stand thus, 
 it will be a hard matter to come at truth ourselves, and 
 dangerous to publish it to others. 
 
 Amongst the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and other 
 nations of antiquity, their numerous gods and goddesses 
 were taken by the ignorant rabble to be so many real 
 personages, and this folly was carefully inculcated and 
 taught them by their priests : but amongst the wise and 
 the initiated they were considered to be nothing else 
 than so many names for the various physical powers of 
 nature, for causes, qualities, incidents, &c. : but as the 
 prudent and the wise alone were initiated, they carefully 
 concealed their opinions respecting the principles of 
 
 * Dr Echard wrote a book on the " contempt of the clergy," 
 and Lord Hallifax observed to him that in the said book he had 
 not hit on the true cause of that contempt, viz, — the knowledge of 
 the laity; to which the doctor readily replied, " God be thanked, 
 there was ignorance enough still among the laity to support the 
 authority of the clergy." <\ 
 
94 LECTURE III. 
 
 things, and truth was delivered only under enigmas and 
 symbols ; under allegories and metaphors ; thus the 
 famous Isis of the Egyptians, whom the vulgar believed 
 to have been a queen, and of whom they had thousands 
 of fables, meant nothing but nature, or the nature of all 
 things, according to the philosophers, who held the 
 universe, or all matter, to be the ruling principle, or 
 God. And consequently the Supreme Being was said to 
 be obscure, or beyond comprehension, none seeing 
 deeper than the surface of nature ; which in some degree 
 deciphers the inscription upon the figure of Isis at Sais, 
 " I AM ALL THAT WAS, IS, AND SHALL 
 BE ; NOR HAS ANY MORTAL DISCOVERED 
 WHAT IS UNDER MY HOOD." 
 
 It is very remarkable that in the Mosaic story of the 
 burning bush, Moses puts into the mouth of the God, 
 whose hinder parts he pretends to have seen there, 
 the very name which the Almighty power had always 
 borne in the sacred mysteries of Isis, viz. — "1 am," or, 
 " I am that I am, — thou shalt say to the people of Israel, 
 I am hath sent thee," which shows that Moses was an 
 adept in those mysteries, and that he knew how to 
 turn them to his own account, in imposing upon his 
 ignorant followers. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 95 
 
 If pure deism was universally diffused, then all the 
 stocks and branches of the numerous systems of revealed 
 religion would be rooted out and destroyed, tainted and 
 deeply corrupted as every one of them is with the 
 interest and riches of the clergy. # 
 
 Then farewell to all the holy wars of the Church : 
 farewell to all the holy burnings and massacres of the 
 infuriated zealots of these religions. Nature, being as it 
 were denied with the sacred poison, would resume her 
 purity and rights; and truth and virtue would prevail 
 everywhere; but he who rears up in his own mind 
 altars to superstition, is a worshipper of the most abomin- 
 able of idols, and is incapable of feeling the force and 
 energy of truth. 
 
 A celebrated philosopher has said, that if God had 
 deigned to make himself a man, and a Jew, and to die 
 in Palestine by an infamous punishment, to expiate the 
 crimes of mankind, and to banish sin from the earth, 
 there ought to have been no longer any sin, or crime on 
 the face of it, whereas, says he, religious crimes seem 
 only to have commenced since the time when that event 
 is said to have happened ; and the Christians have been 
 
 * Interest is the father of all revealed religions ; implicit be- 
 lief begets and fosters ignorance, and ignorance is the mother of 
 devotion. 
 
96 LECTURE III. 
 
 more abominable monsters than all the sectaries of the 
 other religions put together;*' and he brings for an 
 evident proof of this, the massacres, the wheels, the 
 gibbets, and the horrible burnings at the stake of nearly 
 a hundred thousand human creatures in a single province 
 — the massacres of the anabaptists — the massacres of the 
 Lutherans and Papists, from the Rhine to the extremities 
 of the north, — the massacres in Ireland, England, and 
 Scotland, in the time of Charles the First, who was 
 himself massacred, — the massacres ordered by Henry the 
 Eighth, and his daughter Mary, — the massacres of St 
 Bartholomew in France, and forty years more of other 
 massacres between the time of Francis the First, and 
 the entry of Henry the Fourth into Paris, — the massacres 
 by the inquisition, which are more execrable still, as 
 being judicially committed — the massacre of twelve 
 millions of the inhabitants of the new world, executed 
 
 * The Jews may perhaps be regarded as an exception on a small 
 scale, for " their history displays the most memorable examples of 
 the evils arising from superstition and fanaticism: for from these 
 arose the numerous revolutions, the horrid and bloody wars, and 
 at last the total destruction of that people as a nation, from 
 their submission to priests, and their endless credulity ; and from 
 this roguery of their priests alone, they became beyond all contra- 
 diction the most despicable people that ever existed, being con- 
 tinually misled by the knavish commissions which their priests had 
 from heaven." 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 97 
 
 crucifix in hand, and this, without reckoning all the 
 massacres precedently committed in the name of Jesus 
 Christ, to say nothing of the innumerable schisms, and 
 twenty wars of popes against popes, bishops against 
 bishops, the poisonings, the assassinations, the rapines of 
 more than a dozen of popes, who far exceeded a Nero 
 or a Caligula, in every species of crime and wickedness ; 
 in short, he observes that this horrid and almost unin- 
 terrupted chain of religious wars for fourteen centuries, 
 never subsisted but among Christians, and that no people 
 but themselves ever spilt a drop of human blood for 
 theological arguments. We are obliged to grant to this 
 philosopher that all this is true, and to which may be 
 added the horrors with which so many Christian churches, 
 from the very first of their existence, have stained them- 
 selves ; the cowardly barbarity of the magistrates who 
 eould sacrifice to the priests so many worthy subjects; 
 the princes, who, to please them, have become infamous 
 persecutors ; so much downright nonsense in all eccle- 
 siastical quarrels ; so many abominations in the course 
 of them ; the people murdered or ruined ; the thrones of 
 so many priests composed of the spoils, and cemented 
 with the blood of men ;* the enormous chaos of absur- 
 
 * " The cross was the banner under which madmen assembled to 
 glut the earth with blood !" 
 
 H 
 
98 LECTURE III. 
 
 dities accompanying these crimes, all supported by the 
 then main-stay of the church, the fires of the inquisition; 
 and mark well that our priests would act the same 
 tragedies at this day if law and usage did not restrain 
 them.* Should all the Christians have murdered each 
 other, brothers cut the throats of brothers for the sake of 
 arguments, and should there remain no more than a 
 single Christian on the face of the earth, let him look at 
 the sun, and it is impossible that he should not acknowledge 
 and adore one single, eternal, and almighty being, which 
 comprehends within itself everything that exists, — that 
 infinite, material, and intellectual sphere, " the centre 
 of which is everywhere, and the circumference no- 
 where." 
 
 Even atheism itself may perhaps be only false reason- 
 ing; whereas superstition is not only false reasoning, 
 but superinduces the passion of fear, which is destitute 
 
 * The modern religion of Europe, says Mirabaud, has visibly 
 caused more ravages and troubles than any other superstition, and 
 is in that respect very accordant to its principles. The theology 
 of the present day is a subtile venom, calculated, through the 
 importance which is attached to it, to infect every one. By dint of 
 metaphysics, modern theologians have become systematically absurd 
 and wicked. By once admitting the odious ideas which they 
 entertain of the divinity, it is impossible to make them understand 
 that they ought to be humane, equitable, pacific, indulgent, and 
 tolerant. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 99 
 
 both of courage and reason, and renders us stupid, 
 distracted, and inactive ; for of all fears none confounds 
 a man so thoroughly as the fear of the religionist ; and 
 of all mobs none are so sanguinary and dangerous to the 
 votaries of reason as the fanatical mob, stirred up at the 
 instance of their priests ; and those of antiquity differed in 
 nothing from the rabble of the present day, except in 
 having a more innocent, and less absurd superstition. 
 
 Those men who use their understanding must have 
 more sense than those who use it not, but allow others to 
 understand for them ; yet if any man presumes to think 
 for himself, and in consequence of that, refuses to follow 
 the sentiments of the common herd of mankind around 
 him, he cannot fail to draw upon himself the most virulent 
 malice of the priest, and all his believing adherents, 
 together with all those who hope to forward their 
 interests by pretending to believe in him, which will be 
 about nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand ; 
 so that our votary of truth and reason can have no credit 
 but for what his virtue necessarily procures for him, in 
 spite of the malice of his enemies ; whereas, any profli- 
 gate fellow is sure of credit, countenance, and support in 
 any sect or party whatsoever, although he has no other 
 quality to recommend him than the worst of all vices, a 
 blind zeal for his own sect or party. 
 
100 LECTURE III. 
 
 The philosopher already alluded to goes so far as to tell 
 us of a miracle that is recorded in the appendix of the first 
 council of Nice, wherein it is said, that the holy bishops, 
 being full of zeal to distinguish the canonical books from 
 the false, placed all the immense collection confusedly 
 upon a great table, and a prayer was addressed to the 
 Holy Ghost, that he would be pleased to cause the 
 apocryphal writings to fall to the ground, — that they did 
 so of themselves accordingly, and went under the table, 
 whilst those that were genuine remained upon it. He 
 even hazards a conjecture that the Holy Ghost might 
 possibly receive some assistance in the night, in selecting 
 those to be the word of God, which favoured the temporal 
 interests of the clergy, and the grandeur of the church ; 
 whilst the story of the priests of Bel, or Baal, and all 
 such books, would be decidedly apocryphal, for exposing 
 the tricks of the priests in consuming the provisions of 
 the God, during the night. 
 
 Photius relates that the celebrated Synesius, originally 
 a heathen of great learning and abilities, was, like the 
 wise Celsus, a disbeliever in all miracles ; yet he easily 
 came into the belief of the resurrection, after he was 
 made a bishop ; and after receiving the new light, as the 
 consequence of his promotion, he declared that exact 
 philosophical truth was not necessary for " the vulgar, 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 101 
 
 who might receive hurt from their knowledge ; I shall 
 therefore (says he) tell fables to the people, suffering 
 them to live in their prejudices." So do the dignitaries 
 of the church in the present day. 
 
 It cannot be too often repeated that supernaturals of 
 all descriptions form the market in which the mental 
 liberties, properties, and the souls of men are bought and 
 sold. This trade is beneficial to the teachers or venders, 
 but prejudicial in practice to the customers ; the doctors 
 gain what the disciples lose by it ; the more poverty it 
 causes to the stupid believers, the more opulence and 
 luxury the preachers enjoy, — the more the simple convert 
 gives, the more the church receives. All concerned in 
 a false religion must necessarily be either sheepish prey, 
 or preying wolves, but the true religion is equally within 
 the comprehension of all, and allows of no inlet to 
 designing knavery, being agreeable to, and worthy of 
 God and nature, therefore pure and perfect. But all 
 revealed, or artificial religions, puzzle and confound their 
 victims, bewildering them in amaze of confusion, wherein 
 they cannot distinguish between good and evil, labouring 
 as they do under the uncertainty of moral right and 
 wrong. But that of nature clears the apprehension, and 
 informs the judgment, producing satisfaction and serenity 
 
102 LECTURE III. 
 
 of mind. Reason and nature, uncorrupted by bad 
 education, or regenerated from it, afford the possessor 
 pleasures pure and harmonious, widely different from the 
 ghastly starts and convulsive raptures of the saintly 
 fanatic, whose high tide of spiritual folly rolls rapidly on, 
 and leaves the channel dry. " Not so the charms of 
 philosophy, — it has all the serene majesty and harmony 
 of nature within, and without, it is all manly, just, and 
 good." But religion formed by human inventions pro- 
 duces perplexity and discord ; because it is founded upon 
 false, unnatural, and precarious principles ; and in the 
 paroxysms of a blind and heated zeal, is a hell in the 
 minds of its votaries, as well as occasioning a hell with- 
 out to the world. What horrors has it not begotten ? 
 What species of iniquity has it not brought forth ? By 
 its fruits it may be known. Thus, from what has been 
 shown, it follows that a religion built on fallible human 
 traditions (as all the revealed systems are) is necessarily 
 fallible and human. Why then should that be infallibly 
 depended on, or how can that be safely credited, which 
 is not erected on infallible principles, but on fables and 
 legends that are equally absurd and uncertain ? or, if it 
 was possible they should be true, we cannot possibly 
 know them to be so. Again let it be repeated, that 
 
 hA 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 103 
 
 obscurity and uncertainty are the best cloaks for falsehood 
 to wrap itself in. 
 
 It is true that the fatted calf of superstition is now 
 staggering as from a fatal thrust, yet if men are not 
 incessantly on their guard for the conservation of their 
 liberties, what security have we that those times may not 
 return, when a hireling priesthood, backed by mad 
 fanatics, will, as they already have done, destroy the 
 supporters of these truths with fire and fagot ? But the 
 truths themselves can never be destroyed, because they 
 are founded in nature and right reason. Let the soaring 
 irrational enthusiast mount as high as the aspiring 
 ladder of man's sublimest stretch of imagination can 
 carry him, it is nature all the way : • beyond it no 
 philosopher, but fools alone presume, or knaves, in their 
 insincerity. 
 
 To believe things dishonourable of God is certainly 
 bringing no honour to him ; for instance, to believe that 
 he cannot, or will not pardon guilty persons, unless he 
 takes vengeance on an innocent person ; that he will not 
 save the unrighteous, unless he condemns the righteous ; 
 "that God the Father is not good nor beneficent to 
 man, unless God the Son makes him so ; and that God 
 the Holy Ghost is implacable, and will not forgive sins 
 committed against himself, — can this faith be called 
 
104 LECTURE III. 
 
 righteousness which makes the gods unrighteous ? # And 
 is this the faith that must save mankind, which damns 
 both gods and men ? Here is an impious and unrighteous 
 faith, which we are required to believe in as righteous- 
 ness." To believe, or acquiesce in such blasphemous 
 absurdities, requires that ample share of stupidity which 
 the Supreme power has granted to true believers only ; 
 and if thou, O Lord, art not more gracious and benignant 
 than thy worshippers represent thee, thou wilt have but 
 little praise or adoration from honest infidels, whose 
 minds are capable of rational and just reflection, however 
 fond thou may est be of the abject homage of human 
 worship ; for they will sooner believe with fools that 
 there is no supreme power necessarily existing in the 
 government of the universe, than that there is such a 
 God as knaves represent thee.f And if they are to be 
 
 * Sacerdotal knavery has engendered, and ignorance and implicit 
 belief have sanctioned ideas, so monstrous as to charge the Almighty 
 power with having devised the murder of innocence to atone for 
 guilt ! ! ! Such a faith as this is more preposterous, more wicked, 
 and more impious than downright Atheism itself. " The immolating 
 or sacrificing of one person or thing, to atone for the guilt of 
 another, can make no part of the economy of an all-wise and all- 
 powerful being; such unjust substitution involving a virtual denial 
 of these sublime attributes." 
 
 f " The odious dogmas of predestination and effectual calling, 
 which make God the most fanatical and cruel of tyrants, by 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 105 
 
 damned for this, they will be damned with a good con- 
 science, so that even the hell of priests cannot be a bad 
 one while a consciousness of rectitude remains. If there 
 is no material fire in that hell for the body, there is no 
 immaterial that can hurt a good conscience. 
 
 But granting for a moment the hypothesis that super- 
 stition has in any instance, or at any time, proved 
 beneficial to human society, owing to its distortion ; yet 
 at other times, without number, and in things of incom- 
 parably greater importance, it is found to have been 
 detrimental, destructive, and utterly pernicious; nor 
 advantageous to any, except to priests or princes, who 
 dexterously turn it to their own interest, and always 
 direct it according to their own pleasure. But the crafty 
 empirics do not stop here ; they know full well that the 
 falsity of facts, and the utterly untenable ground of 
 their arguments, may at any time be detected by men of 
 penetration, and therefore they have always boasted of a 
 superior, or what they call a divine knowledge above 
 
 supposing that he punishes to all eternity those to whom he refuses 
 the means, or the will, of saving themselves, — this gives us the idea 
 of nothing but a whimsical tyrant, who, if he be lavish of his favours 
 to a few, is at least cruel and unjust to the rest : surely nothing can 
 be more inconsistent with the just notions of an immutable deity, 
 whose mercies are infinite, and whose goodness is inexhaustible." 
 
106 * LECTURE III. 
 
 nature, and which, they say, is not subject to the rules of 
 criticism, nor in any respect an object of the under- 
 standing. In this metaphysical strong-hold they have 
 hitherto sheltered themselves against the light of nature 
 and common sense, and the effects have been in the 
 highest degree pernicious and deadly to reason, freedom, 
 and the happiness of mankind, by introducing and 
 establishing spiritual tyranny in the clergy, and the most 
 abject slavery of mind in their silly believers. 
 
 It may be objected, that God can do things contrary 
 to nature, but we repeat that, setting aside all foolish and 
 inconsistent traditions, what proof is there that the 
 supreme power ever did, or ever will suspend, or depart 
 from, the eternal laws of nature ("that it can, is doubtful; 
 that it never will, is certain"). And therefore every man 
 of judicious reflection may suspend his belief until he is 
 rationally convinced, and by a noble effort spurn from 
 his mind the priestly scourge of damnation which hangs 
 over him for doubting. This famous scourge "drives faith 
 into the timorous, as a mallet drives a wedge into a 
 block ; and in like manner divides, rends, and weakens 
 the understanding." 
 
 Common sense, if not suppressed, is alone sufficient to 
 destroy all the evidence in the world of a thing that is 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 107 
 
 diametrically opposed to it; for it would be a foolish 
 attempt to prove a fact true, by other facts which equally 
 want proof themselves. 
 
 On a faith so pernicious every unprejudiced person 
 must look with abhorrence, and hold in suspicion the 
 professors thereof, whether they are induced to it by 
 their own blind ignorance, or by hire and bribery ; the 
 former class deserve our pity, from their neglect of 
 common sense ; the latter merit our contempt from their 
 shameless selfishness and delusions. In the present 
 dawn of rational light, the minds of the rising generation 
 should therefore be taught to be on their guard, as to 
 the compass by which they direct their judgment and 
 conduct ; — let them scrupulously weigh arguments, and 
 the reason of things impartially ; and let not men be 
 deluded by holy names and a face of godliness ; since it 
 has generally happened that those whom Holy Mother 
 Church has designated as saints, have been the vilest of 
 men ; insomuch that saint and villian have commonly 
 meant the same thing, and may be considered as synoni- 
 mous terms ; for it has seldom escaped the penetration 
 of those who are capable of thinking, that all who appear 
 more sanctified than others whose pretensions go not 
 beyond the standard of moral honesty, have only been so 
 much more secretly and artfully wicked. And therefore, 
 
108 LECTURE III. 
 
 if we would not be choused out of our understanding 
 and substance, by base hypocrisy in every grave and 
 holy shape, let us remember the old maxim, " when you 
 see a saint, look to yourself " 
 
 Since all the authority that we have of the authenticity 
 of the earliest Christian writings and traditions, is from 
 the fathers of the church, it is highly proper that the 
 character and conduct of these men should not wholly 
 escape observation; and against some of them it has 
 been strongly contended by many of the pagan writers 
 of credit, that those writings called gospels, had no exis- 
 tence as we now see them, until very long (some say 
 more than two centuries) after the times in which it is 
 said the Apostles lived ; that they were compiled by 
 obscure persons from the writings of the Egyptian 
 monks, or Therapeutse, who prefixed the names of cer- 
 tain Apostles to their writings, the better to obtain 
 credit ; that these were again altered, amended, and fitted 
 up at will by the early fathers of the church, to suit 
 their own interest, and the ignorance of the times ; of 
 which fact we have sufficient proofs ; and amongst others 
 the younger Scaliger expressly declares, that " they put 
 into their scriptures, or gospels, whatever they thought 
 would serve their purpose." Faustus says, "we have 
 frequently proved that these things were neither writ- 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SLPERXATUR ALS. 109 
 
 ten by himself (Jesus Christ) nor by his Apostles, and 
 that they were picked up long after their decease, from 
 vao-ue stories and flying reports." Of such suspicious 
 materials did a few of the fathers compose and trim up 
 the gospels ; each espousing those parts as canonical in 
 which his interest, and his peculiar tenets were to be 
 found, rejecting* such parts as did but indifferently favour 
 the views of the clergy, as being apocryphal : but of all 
 these trimmers, none equalled the famous Eusebius, 
 bishop of Csesarea, at getting up, and dressing off a 
 gospel to suit the general interests of the church. 
 
 But, "to be particular about the fathers, — any at- 
 tempt to delineate their ambition, insolence, avarice, 
 ignorance, faction, sedition, persecution of each other, 
 cruelty, murders,* lies and forgeries, and other flagrant 
 vices, would be endless; yet these are the men whose 
 honesty we are to depend upon for conveying to us the 
 oracles of truth. Are we to learn our religion from 
 men immersed in such vices, and who wanted charity ? 
 From men who were perpetually quarrelling with, and 
 
 * Episcopius says of the Council of Nice, and others of that 
 early period, " that they were led on by fury, faction, and madness," 
 which is corroborated by another author, who relates, that at the 
 second synod of Ephesus, Dioscoru.s, bishop of Alexandria, 
 knocked and kicked Flavianus, Patriarch of Constantinople, with 
 such fury that within three days after he died." — V Abb : Condi. 
 
110 LECTURE III. 
 
 cursing each other? No people upon earth ever differed 
 more, or proceeded with greater fury and bitterness in 
 their differences : — they were constantly quarrelling 
 about the smallest, as well as the greatest points ; and 
 for the smallest as well as the greatest they damned 
 one another. That these foul marks belong to many of 
 the fathers, and all of them to some, is too manifest. 
 In a word, a man might fill volumes with the bare 
 recital only, and that from the very best authorities, of 
 the impieties and senseless vanities of the fathers ; but 
 indeed ecclesiastical history has done it already to our 
 hands, being itself nothing but a compendium of their 
 vices."* 
 
 If we have the relations of foolish and unnatural 
 stories, said to have happened nearly two thousand years 
 before our time, and cannot possibly come at the true 
 characters of the first relators, there is surely no evidence 
 that can be relied upon ; but if the characters of the 
 intermediate relaters are well known, and we have every 
 reason to believe from their writings, and all we have 
 been able to learn of them otherwise, that they were 
 
 * We learn from Burnet's Exposition, that the practice of unna- 
 tural lusts had been so general amongst the dignitaries of the church, 
 that Saint Bernard, in a sermon preached to the clergy of France, 
 affirmed sodomy to be so common in his time, that bishops with 
 bishops lived in it. 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. Ill 
 
 botli weak and enthusiastical, self-interested, and design- 
 ing knaves, easily imposed on themselves when lucre led 
 the way, and ever readily disposed to deceive others, 
 then the relation deserves no credit whatever. " And 
 such a set of men the fathers, or heads of the contending 
 sects, appear evidently to have been, almost to a man, 
 during the four first centuries; injudicious in all they 
 relate, taken up with every idle report, uncharitable, 
 ignorant of true religion, bigots, knavish in all favourite 
 points of theology, and betrayers of the simple deism 
 of primitive Christianity; and instead of establishing 
 the books called scriptures by their testimonies, they 
 have rendered them the most precarious and suspicious 
 writings in the world." 
 
 Such were the men who compiled, amended, and 
 changed at pleasure, what they have called the word of 
 God, founding thereon a system of religion which has 
 taken root in a considerable portion of the world ; and to 
 the shame of abused and credulous mankind, it has been 
 established, as it were, in defiance of the light of nature, 
 reason, common sense, and all experience ; and, what is 
 yet still more strange and revolting, by those very means 
 and agencies which men ought to hold most in contempt 
 and detestation ;— viz., forgery, mystery, pretended mira- 
 cles, prophecy, fraud, hypocrisy, avarice, cruelty, tyranny, 
 
112 LECTURE III. 
 
 wars and massacres which have deluged the earth with 
 blood, and sacrificed hundreds of millions of human 
 beings to the baleful demon of superstition. 
 
 However painful the confession may be, we are 
 obliged to acknowledge that all these horrid wars and 
 massacres on account of religious opinions, have afflicted 
 mankind only since the introduction of Christianity, and 
 during its progress for the last fifteen hundred years ; 
 for, in the former times, the men called heathens, or 
 pagans, had no exclusive religion, and every man was at 
 full liberty to worship his God in any way he pleased ; 
 every thing in their mythology was easy, pliant, and 
 harmonious, and they never thought of cutting each 
 others' throats on account of speculative notions in reli- 
 gion, except in a few solitary instances, when goaded on 
 by their priests against enlightened individuals, as in the 
 case of Socrates, Aristotle, &c. ; but, generally, the 
 priests thought only of multiplying the sacrifices, and 
 other offerings for their own support; and they were 
 even so indulgent as to permit their votaries to laugh as 
 much as they pleased at the ridiculous notion of sticking 
 a knife into the neck of a calf, in order to disarm the 
 wrath of all the gods and goddesses, provided the veal 
 was of a proper age, fat, and well flavoured. This was 
 an easy, light, and jocular superstition, which, like all 
 
MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 113 
 
 artificial religions, stood most endangered from disuse 
 and oblivion ; and, therefore, if numerous sacrifices were 
 continually offered, and Jupiter was invoked at all, the 
 priests did not much concern themselves about the 
 manner, or the many names under which he received 
 worship and adoration ; only they took special care that 
 this worship should not be deemed efficacious without 
 their intervention. Thus we see that superstition suffers 
 neither God, man, nor the other animals to live in peace, 
 as evidently appears from the sacrifices of antiquity, as 
 well as from the more gloomy and costlier religions of 
 more modern invention. In those times, the foolish 
 enthusiasts often saddled their family inheritances with 
 an annual routine of entailed sacrifices, which burdened 
 the land, and rendered it less valuable; for all purchasers 
 wished to have the land sine sacris, sine sumptu, as people 
 now wish to get rid of tithes. 
 
 The numerous herd of believers in miracles, in place 
 of being the best, is the very worst touchstone of truth, 
 since the number of fools so far exceeds that of the wise ; 
 and he is not to be thought impious who pourtrays the 
 god of the priest-led multitude, but he who applies the 
 opinions of the multitude to the Supreme Being. 
 
 It has been observed elsewhere that, if the pretended 
 miracles which are brought forward to prove the truth of 
 
114 LECTURE III. 
 
 any set of dogmas, stand themselves equally in need of 
 proof, and that proof naturally impossible, they only add 
 to the string of absurdities ; and it cannot be denied, that 
 all the three religions that now inthral the human mind 
 in Europe, part of Africa, and a great portion of western 
 Asia, have had abundance of miracles, but the code of 
 the last invented one is the smallest in number, and these 
 have been fabricated by Mahometan priests since the 
 time of the founder. Now, since about three fourths of 
 mankind are neither Jews, Christians, nor Mahometans, 
 these miracles (allowing for a moment the truth of them) 
 have been wrought with more partiality than justice, 
 there having been thousands of millions of men who 
 never heard of Moses, Jesus Christ, or Mahomet. 
 
 6 The Supreme Being is best displayed in the fixed and 
 unalterable order of nature.' 
 
 Tully says — 
 
 " The superstitious man, asleep or awake, 
 Enjoys no repose : 
 He lives not happity, 
 
 Nor dies securely, 
 Who, living and dying, 
 Is a prey to silly priests." 
 
 END OF THE THIRD LECTURE ON SUPERNATURALS. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 Wolves shall succeed for teachers ; grievous wolves 
 Who all the sacred mysteries of nature 
 To their own vile advantages shall turn, 
 Of lucre and ambition ; and the truth, 
 Plain truth, shall then retire 
 
 Bestuck with sland'rous darts 
 
 So shall the world go on, 
 
 To good malignant, to bad men benign ; 
 Under her own weight groaning, till the day 
 Appear of respiration to the just. 
 
 Milton. 
 
 ON TRUTH, AS THE BEST BOND OF 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 When the free and unprejudiced mind takes a com- 
 prehensive view of the present structure of society in all 
 its degrees, particularly in what are called the higher 
 walks of it, the best feelings of our nature are shocked 
 and outraged, on perceiving that deceit and dissimu- 
 lation, are the indispensable pre-requisites in the strife of 
 making way in the world, and seem to be regularly 
 
116 LECTURE IV. 
 
 taught in youth, both by precept and example, so as to 
 make the perfection of education to consist in the prac- 
 tice of that falseness of intellectual conduct, which causes 
 every man, and every woman, to appear exactly the 
 reverse of what they are in reality. Nor is there any 
 remedy for this horrid condition of things. " So shall the 
 world go on," while superstition maintains her pestiferous 
 sway ; and every attempt to remodel society from the 
 foundation, will be vain and hopeless, so long as that 
 arch fiend remains, to mix and poison the wholesome 
 streams that flow from the pure fountain of morality ; 
 for the fatal mixture of this foul ingredient has rendered 
 man so depraved by errors, so tainted with the most 
 atrocious crimes, and so excessively ferocious, through 
 having nearly destroyed the original mildness of his 
 nature, that there is now hardly any animal viler than 
 man. 
 
 ' But if the principles of society were calculated for 
 the general good of mankind, and founded upon a 
 basis in nature, truth never could be injurious to 
 any human being; and it is unsuitable to man only 
 in consequence of his departure from nature, and his 
 having been long immersed in the follies and super- 
 stitions of an absurd education, and afraid to look 
 truth in the face. There is hardly any usage or 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 117 
 
 custom in society that is not so unnatural, false, 
 and pernicious, that it may be doubted whether the 
 very reverse of every one of them, would not be 
 beneficial to it, and place humanity on a better footing 
 than that on which it stands at present. This enormous 
 mass of corruption has given rise to the beautiful allegory 
 of the well: for truth, seeing herself despised, and 
 her throne usurped by the hags of hypocrisy and super- 
 stition, modestly creeps back into the bottom of her well, 
 out of which her small still voice is seldom heard, 
 drowned as it is by the thundering and overbearing tones 
 of her opponents, the votaries of error, and theologic 
 vision. But when mankind shall be prepared to make 
 the light of nature, truth, and virtue, the only ground- 
 work and bond of society, in place of human artifice, 
 falsehood, and the vicious notions which they have 
 always been addicted to, in forming their deity after 
 their own image and character, then will truth come 
 forth from the bottom of her well, and appear in her 
 native loveliness and simplicity, no longer to be deemed 
 injurious to the human race, as there will then be an end 
 to that juggling imposture that has hitherto ruled the 
 world. 
 
 In the present distorted order of things, error is 
 
118 LECTURE IV. 
 
 carefully propagated and handed down from father to 
 son, from family to family, and the mind is debauched 
 in early youth by the folly of impressions instilled by 
 superstitious parents, and the craft of interested hirelings, 
 whose visionary ravings are founded on faith in super- 
 natural mysteries and prodigies ; and as that which is the 
 object of faith, never can be that of reason, so we have 
 bigotry and intolerance in its place. These are some of 
 the unhappy results of man's having swerved so far from 
 the laws and principles of his nature, as to become quite 
 unnatural in almost every institution and custom in 
 which his happiness is mainly concerned ;j and hence 
 arise all his miseries in society. 
 
 Amongst the numerous objections that would readily 
 be started against a conformity to the laws of nature, 
 a very prominent one would be to the free intercourse 
 between the sexes, at which the slave of artificial society 
 would take the alarm, and declare that if the laws of 
 marriage did not exist as they are at present, and if love 
 was not shackled by their prohibitions, how would a man 
 be able to know his children if he had not the exclusive 
 possession of his wife ? This is an old question, but it 
 is only measuring the magnitude of an evil by others 
 which surround, and are connected with it ; for while the 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 119 
 
 whole structure of society is indeed nothing but a Pan- 
 dora's box, where evil is created to prop up evil against 
 the light and laws of nature, I repeat that, any attempt 
 to remedy an individual ill would be unavailing ; and, 
 therefore, nothing short of a radical reformation of 
 society, on the basis of nature, truth, and reason, can 
 restore man to that happiness which his mind and organi- 
 zation are capable of enjoying. In a state well regulated 
 by good and equal laws, which nourish the moral 
 virtues, love would be free to man as it is to all the 
 other animals, and would mainly console and sweeten 
 his existence, — 
 
 " And love made free, — a hope which we have nurst 
 " As nature's choicest solace, — " 
 
 instead of serving to be the pest of his life, as it now is 
 generally; and the bringing forth of children to that 
 state, under any circumstances whatsoever, would tend 
 to the good repute and honor of the women, in place of 
 being what it now is, a stigma, a reproach, a curse, to all 
 who are not in the commonly unfortunate monopoly of 
 marriage, which comprises hardly a half of the sex, whilst 
 the other moiety are condemned to contend against 
 nature through life. 
 
 Laws, which appear to be a perfect rule for the most 
 
120 LECTURE IV. 
 
 perfect of all things, they being no other than the laws 
 of Almighty Power, must certainly be allowed to be the 
 most perfect rule for the conduct of mankind. Cicero, 
 who possessed the highest gifts of mind and genius, 
 declares that, " it is impossible to err as long as we follow 
 the guidance of nature ;" and again, — " there is no man, 
 who, following the dictates of nature, may not arrive at 
 perfection," — meaning all the perfection his nature is 
 capable of. 
 
 So long as man shall continue the idle attempt to 
 distinguish nature from herself, and from truth, so long 
 will his senses and reason be hoodwinked and bewil- 
 dered; with a mind enervated by idle tales of gross 
 superstitious folly, he trembles before idols, the creation 
 of his own fancy; perpetually occupied in disarming 
 their wrath by forms of prayer and adulation, borrowed 
 from the meanest human usages, and taught him by 
 those whose interest it is to uphold those systems of 
 delusion, by which they enjoy in ease and affluence the 
 good things of the world ; he has wantonly wasted the 
 fruits of his industry in building fine houses for these 
 imaginary beings to dwell in, or at least for their 
 occasional accomodation ; he has sacrificed his own species 
 by millions, to serve and glorify them; he has made 
 psalms and ballads and sung them in their praise, in 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 121 
 
 imitation of the flatterers of great men ; he has scourged 
 himself; he has danced, he has lamented, he has clothed 
 himself gorgeously ; he has gone naked, and in nasti- 
 ness; he has sat upon nails run into his flesh; in a 
 word, there is hardly a whim or a prank that the imagi- 
 nation can devise, which has not been in exercise 
 to disarm, or propitiate those unreal forms of his own 
 fancy. 
 
 To all this has man submitted in times past, and what 
 is worse, he may continue to do so for centuries to come, 
 before he can effectually discard the foolish mummeries 
 that blind him, and rally round the standard of his 
 reason, a task that is exceedingly difficult, for, as we 
 have already observed, the pride of men will endure no 
 correction in these matters, judging every attempt of 
 the kind to be a reflection upon their understanding, 
 although, in truth, these faculties of the mind had npt 
 been consulted or exercised ; y etr they are ever ready to 
 defend, with the most passionate obstinacy, whatever 
 they have been accustomed to reverence in the shape of 
 religion, or other customs, however preposterous; and 
 the voice of reason prevails with few indeed. 
 
 It has often been urged, by those who candidly 
 acknowledge the prevalence of such absurd abuses, that 
 it is better to sanction their continuance than to attack 
 
122 LECTURE IV. 
 
 and expose them, as such notions of preternatural powers 
 serve a good purpose in society, by keeping the lower 
 orders in fear and subjection. But any strength that 
 is in this argument, does, in reality, favour the true 
 and rational side of the question, as it amounts to a 
 broad admission that there is a general secession 
 from the simplicity of nature, that insincerity is re- 
 quired to prop up falsehood, and that errors, and 
 absurd follies form the constitution and texture of 
 society. 
 
 Taking the aggregate of the pains and pleasures 
 which man experiences through life, whatever may be 
 his rank or condition, the probability is, that he is one 
 of the least happy of all the animals that come under our 
 observation ; and this preponderance of evil, which few 
 will dispute, is chiefly occasioned by his egregious 
 departure from nature, in his education, religion, laws, 
 and customs, from which have sprung all the follies of- 
 his known and acknowledged credulity: for all expe- 
 rience shows that nothing is more facile than to make 
 him believe the greatest absurdities, under the imposing 
 names of sanctified mysteries, after having imbued him 
 from his infancy with maxims calculated to suppress his 
 reasoning powers — to prevent him from examining that 
 which he is told he must believe, on the authority of the 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 123 
 
 church, and that of his forefathers.* This tyranny over 
 the mind is not confined to Christendom, but exists 
 wherever men have been weak and silly enough to sup- 
 port an expensive and luxurious priesthood ; witness the 
 extent of countries, and the millions of human beings 
 who, faithfully, and without examination, have adopted 
 the crafty dreams, the rank and bold absurdities, of 
 that most successful of all impostors, Mahomet, who 
 well knew the endless credulity of the human mind, 
 
 * Oh wearisome condition of humanity ! 
 
 Born under one law, to another bound ; 
 Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity, 
 
 Created sick, commanded to be sound. 
 What meaneth nature by these diverse laws ? 
 Passion and reason, self-division cause. 
 
 Is it the mark or majesty of power 
 
 To make offences that it may forgive ? 
 Nature herself doth her own self deflower, 
 
 To hate those errors she herself doth give ; 
 For how should man think that he may not do, 
 If nature did not fail and punish too ? 
 
 We that are bound by vows and by promotion,-]- 
 
 With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites, 
 To teach belief in good and still devotion, 
 
 To preach of heaven's wonders and delights ; 
 Yet when each of us in his own heart looks, 
 He finds the God there, far tinlike Ms books. 
 
 ' Chorus SacerdotumJ 
 
 t Priests, 
 
124 LECTURE IV. 
 
 and the difficulty there is in not believing those 
 things that claim a supernatural original, though there 
 be neither sense, argument, nor reason to confirm 
 them. 
 
 Our divines tell us, perhaps in the way of allegory, 
 that the Almighty Being is said frequently to swear, and 
 even to swear in wrath; that he smiles, loves, hates, 
 gives, receives, wrestles, fights, &c. ,* but having no 
 superior, whom can he invoke or swear by ? unless, like 
 the Jupiter of old, he shakes his imperial curls in token 
 of swearing by himself.* 
 
 The only way to account for this theological nonsense 
 is, that everything said of the All-ruling Power, by 
 priests, is borrowed from the passions and conduct of 
 men towards each other; and vainly endeavouring to 
 establish an analogy that is not only vicious and imper- 
 fect, but perfectly ridiculous. But even here they stop 
 not, for wicked priests have represented the Supreme 
 Being under opposite characters, causing him to make a 
 will, or testament, which he afterwards revokes (as a 
 man does), and makes another, giving rules of conduct 
 in one that, are contrary to those of the other.f In this 
 
 * Vide Iliad. 
 
 f If God always acts for the good of his creatures, what reason 
 can be assigned why he should not, from the beginning, have dis- 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 125 
 
 case, as in all similar cases, the revoked will ought to 
 have no validity ; yet our priests make use of either the 
 one or the other, just as it serves their interest; telling 
 us, almost in the same breath, that God has a body, and 
 that he has no body ; yet still possessing a spiritual body, 
 having the form and likeness of man's body, in which 
 he underwent incarnation ! !* 
 
 covered such things as make for their good, but defer the doing of 
 it till the time of Tiberius ; and then, that the same God should 
 receive satisfaction from, and give satisfaction to, the same God ; 
 and that the same God, who thus receives and gives satisfaction, 
 should neither give nor receive any satisfaction, since the Holy 
 Ghost, the same God with God the Father, and God the Son, 
 neither gives nor receives any satisfaction. " 
 
 * The French priest, Menot, tells a ludicrous story about the 
 incarnation. He says " that from all eternity God had made up his 
 mind to send his Son for the salvation of the human race, but was 
 resolved that this boon should not be granted without much 
 entreaty on the part of some great personages ; and Adam, Enos, 
 Enoch, Noah, Moses, David, &c, having failed successively in 
 their embassy, they resolved to send some female embassadors. 
 Madame Eve presented herself first, to whom God made answer, 
 " Eve, thou hast sinned, thou art not worthy of my Son." After- 
 wards they sent Madame Sarah, who cried " O God, do thou help 
 us ;" but God said, " thou hast rendered thyself unworthy of it by 
 the incredulity thou shew'dst when I informed thee that thou 
 shouldst be the mother of Isaac." The third was Madame Rebecca, 
 to whom God said, "thou hast done a great injury to Esau, in 
 favour of Jacob." The fourth was Madame Judith, to whom God 
 said, "thou art an assassin." The fifth was Madame Esther, to 
 whom he said, "thou hast been too great a coquette; thou hast 
 
12G LECTURE IV. 
 
 When men eminent for learning and abilities can 
 with seeming seriousness maintain assertions so per- 
 fectly contradictory of each other, using all the powers 
 of eloquence in their defence, and hold forth such wild 
 and whimsical doctrines to the ignorant and credulous, 
 as being the word of the Supreme Power, there is no 
 wonder that they become confounded and stupified in the 
 maze of such absolute contradictions. 
 
 " For zealous crowds in ignorance adore, 
 And still the less they know, they fear the more." 
 
 Such irrational notions and opinions amongst mankind 
 are evidently founded in, and are the fruits of a pernicious 
 education, infused into them as well traditionally as from 
 books, confirmed by habit and example, and enforced by 
 authority, to the exclusion of examination, which rarely 
 takes place, as they are considered as inviolable from 
 respect to their progenitors, and indubitable, because it 
 is never permitted to question them : it is therefore not 
 surprising that very few indeed have the intrepidity to 
 examine their basis.* 
 
 spent thy time in dressing thyself to please Ahasuems." At length 
 they sent the chamber-maid, Mary, who was only fourteen years of 
 age. She cast down her eyes with a bashful countenance, kneeled, 
 
 , and was completely successful." 
 
 * It is by stimulating mankind to inquiry that they must be freed 
 from the shackles of superstition. The reign of the priesthood 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 127 
 
 The total departure from nature and truth in matters 
 of religion, lias never been known to originate amongst 
 the common people, for in every instance the new 
 inventions of revelation, and other changes from bad to 
 worse, have sprung up in the sacerdotal order, or with 
 knaves who aspire to it ; and therefore, this crime ought 
 to be imputed solely to them, together with political 
 rulers, who act with them for the same corrupt and 
 fallacious end, in every country ; and not to the populace, 
 who, moulded by habit and authority, are reduced to 
 passive obedience. And when we look back to the bottom- 
 less fountain of the ethnical superstitions of antiquity, 
 out of which has been sewered down to us, the more 
 turbid stream of modern folly and absurdity, it seems 
 hopeless to find a thread of truth, by the assistance of 
 which the abused laity may extricate themselves from the 
 labyrinth of error, in which the great mass of them have 
 all along been immersed, otherwise than by a total 
 
 will cease when men cease to be ignorant and credulous. Then 
 shall we see 
 
 " Religion's pomp made desolate by the scorn 
 Of wisdom's faintest smile." 
 
 Credulity is the offspring of ignorance, and 
 Superstition is the child of credulity. 
 
128 LECTURE IV. 
 
 change in society, a radical recurrence to nature and 
 reason, for they may be assured that the clergy of all 
 denominations will, for the sake of the good things they 
 enjoy, " Maintain those doctrines which maintain them." 
 Can these men, I say, under all the temptations and 
 interested prejudices this world affords, be proper per- 
 sons for the laity to depend on in matters equally 
 unknown to all ? — or, are they, who are not permitted to 
 choose their own religion, fit to choose a religion for 
 others ? 
 
 A very intelligent author has observed, that " the dis- 
 putes between Christian priests have always been scenes 
 of animosity, hatred, and heresy. We find these to have 
 existed since the infancy of the church. A religion 
 founded on wonders, fables, and obscure oracles, could 
 only be a fruitful source of quarrels. Priests attended 
 to ridiculous doctrines, instead of useful knowledge, and 
 when they should have studied true morality, and taught 
 mankind their real duties, they only strove to gain 
 adherents. They busied themselves in useless specu- 
 lations on a barbarous and enigmatical science, which 
 under the pompous title of the science of God, or 
 theology, excited in the vulgar a reverential awe. They 
 invented a bigoted, presumptious, and absurd system, as 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 129 
 
 incomprehensible as the God whom they affected to wor- 
 ship.* Hence arose disputes on disputes concerning 
 puerile subtilties, odious questions and arbitrary opinions, 
 which, far from being useful, only tended to poison the 
 peace of society. " In these contentions, we regret to 
 find the most profound geniuses occupied, and are 
 forced to censure the prostitution of talents worthy of a 
 better cause. The people, ever fond of turbulence, 
 entered into quarrels they could not understand. Princes 
 undertook the defence of those priests they wished to 
 favour, and orthodoxy was decided by the longest sword. 
 This assistance the church never hesitated to receive 
 in times of danger; for on such occasions the clergy 
 rely rather on human assistance than on the promise of 
 God, who declared that the sceptre of the wicked should 
 not rest upon the lot of the righteous. The heroes 
 
 * From the very few fragments of the best pagan writers which 
 Eusebius, and other fathers of the church have suffered to come 
 down to us, it clearly appears that the ancient term God, or any 
 other appellative such as the I-a-ho of the Phoenicians, (which 
 Moses turned into Jehovah), the Isis, or Knef, of the Egyp- 
 tians ; the Zeus, or Jupiter of the Greeks, &c, all of them 
 being expressive of power in the superlative degree meant nothing 
 more than a Personification of Nature, as the whole, or all-in-all ; 
 and the inferior train of subaltern gods and goddesses signified the 
 different physical powers of nature. 
 
130 LECTURE IV. 
 
 found in the annals of the church, have been obstinate 
 fanatics, factious rebels, or furious persecutors ; they 
 were monsters of madness, sedition, and cruelty. The 
 world, in the days of our ancestors, was depopulated in 
 the defence of extravagancies which excite laughter in a 
 posterity not indeed much wiser than they were." 
 
 If there is a law of nature, it can be no other than the 
 religion of nature, with the observance of which the 
 Supreme Power will not dispense, either in itself, or in 
 its creatures ; and no religion can be true that, in the 
 most minute circumstance, is contrary to its invariable 
 righteousness: and certainly nothing can be a greater 
 libel on that only true religion, than to suppose it does 
 not contain such internal marks, as will, even to the 
 meanest capacity, distinguish it from all the false religions 
 that now distract the world ; so as that a man, although 
 unable to read in his mother tongue, may, without 
 pinning his faith on any set of priests, know what the 
 Almighty Power requires of him. But, under the present 
 mental bondage, the mass of the people will be enabled 
 to know this only by a fearless search after truth, under 
 the guidance of unerring reason : in place of which, they 
 hitherto have, from sloth and blind obedience, examined 
 none of the marvellous things they have been taught, 
 but like beasts of burden, patiently crouched down, and 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 131 
 
 with donkey indifference, have undergone whatever their 
 oppressors have laid upon them. 
 
 When commonly received notions are attacked, and 
 which cannot be defended, because they have no found- 
 ation in truth and reason, the usual cry and alarm is — 
 " Why will you pull down these, and substitute nothing in 
 their place, to overawe and keep the multitude in order ?" 
 The answer to this question is, that we have only to open 
 our eyes to be convinced ; that religion, among high and 
 low, restrains nobody, not even the priests who preach 
 and .live by it. The most devout nations of Europe, 
 such as the Spaniards and Portuguese, are alike distin- 
 guished by their bigotry and corruption of manners; the 
 clergy themselves show them the example of perfidy, 
 cruelty, and the most unbridled licentiousness. To restrain 
 men, there is need neither of falsehoods nor fables, but 
 of good laws, good education, cultivated reason, science, 
 good examples, rewards, and equitable punishments, — 
 all these produce the most excellent morals ; ' whereas, 
 when chimeras only are opposed to the irregularities of 
 mankind, they are not capable of vanquishing their 
 inclinations: error must be removed before truth can 
 take its place, for they cannot exist for a single moment 
 together; and in the present case we have only to remove 
 the rotten materials of a false and groundless fabric, 
 
132 LECTURE IV. 
 
 to make way for truth and the eternal reason of 
 things. 
 
 The Epicureans of old were the chief sect who held, 
 and taught the mortality of the soul ; yet notwithstanding 
 this opinion, they were generally esteemed as the most 
 exemplary and virtuous of all the ancients, and the most 
 noted for the value of their moral actions. We may 
 gather from the writings of Cicero and Diogenes 
 Laertius, that they did more scrupulously observe the 
 laws, piety, and fidelity among men, than any other 
 sect whatsoever, not excepting even the stoicks them- 
 selves. They held that a man was either good or bad 
 according to education and custom : being above all 
 others strict observers of truth and honesty, they were 
 often chosen to manage the inheritances of orphans, and 
 it was common with them to rear and educate, at their 
 own expense, the children of deceased friends: their 
 known integrity frequently procured for them offers from 
 the Roman Consuls and Emperors, to fill places of high 
 employments and trusts, but these offers were often 
 declined, from the strong desire they had to lead pri- 
 vate lives, free from care and anxiety: they were 
 not ambitious, for where a future state is utterly denied, 
 there could be but little desire for posthumous renown. 
 
 But in modern times society is in a great measure 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 133 
 
 destitute of such pure morality, all being mixed up with 
 the ever-changing alloy of theology, which is consistent 
 in nothing but its exclusive interests, and in forbiding all 
 inquiry into its mysteries. It has dictated creeds for the 
 bulk of mankind in all countries, followed up by the 
 assertion, that what is generally believed must be true ; 
 but this will hold good only when men shall take nature, 
 reason, andr experience, alone for their guides. Of this 
 grand truth many instances might be adduced, such as 
 the following : — Before the times of Copernicus and the 
 famous Galileo, men were taught by their priests that 
 the sun revolved round the earth, that the latter was flat 
 like a table, and one-third longer than it was broad, and 
 hence our terms of longitude and latitude. Copernicus 
 showed the absurd falsity of these notions, and taught 
 that the sun was the centre of his own, or, what is called 
 the solar, system, and that the earth had a double motion — 
 in revolving on its own centre, and also round the sun. 
 But knowing of the hosts of priests who were ready to 
 pounce upon him, if he discovered these truths openly, he 
 never could be prevailed upon to publish his works until 
 near the time of his death, and he lived just long enough 
 to receive a corrected copy of them. Galileo, at the 
 distance of more than a hundred years after the former, 
 offended the holy conclave still more, in asserting, that 
 
134 LECTURE IV. 
 
 the sole cause of the appearance of day and night, was 
 owing to the earth's revolution on its own axis in twenty- 
 four hours. These, and many other scientific discoveries 
 of this great man, drew down upon his head the implac- 
 able vengeance of the whole Catholic church, and he 
 was condemned by that wicked conclave which calls 
 itself holy, for daring to know and to propogate truths 
 that are now known to every school-boy.* 
 
 These well-attested facts ought to press strongly on 
 every unprejudiced mind, leaving the lasting effect of 
 showing that all such great luminaries in science, for the 
 developement of natural truths, are still as unpalatable 
 to clerical dominion, as ever they were at any former 
 period. But to the great detriment of that dominion, the 
 day of burning at the stake has now passed away in the 
 reformed countries of Europe, and the light of nature 
 and reason have happily gained some ground; and science, 
 whose foundation is truth, has ventured to clip the wings 
 of the demon of ecclesiastical power ; but nothing can be 
 more certain than that the ever-living thirst after this 
 
 • All that could be done in favor of Galileo, by the greatest an 
 most learned men of his time, was merely to save him from being 
 burnt by the priests : he was confined for life, and died a prisoner of 
 the inquisition. 
 
 Anaxagoras was prosecuted by the theologians of his time, for 
 daring to assert that the sun was bigger than the Peloponnesus ! ! 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 135 
 
 power, with the free inquisitorial exercise of it, will for 
 ever be the same in the officers of all superstitions, so 
 long as man shall have the folly to maintain an hireling 
 priesthood, to drain his purse and enslave his mind. 
 
 A modern philosopher has observed, that it was evi- 
 dently from the Timseus, and other writings of Plato, that 
 the early fathers of the Christian church fabricated their 
 trinity, and were generally instructed in the arts of 
 mystery and ambiguity ; and hence they have called him 
 divine, for furnishing them with three hypostases, or 
 existencies, by personifying the goodness, wisdom, and 
 power of the Supreme Being, that is, by converting these 
 divine attributes into so many persons. Thus, by perverting 
 and twisting the obscure physicks of this philosopher to 
 suit their own spiritual fantasy, they have contrived to fit 
 up their trinity, and thereby to establish one of their 
 strongest holds over the vulgar mind. Other grounds 
 of the Christian trinity have been found in the writings 
 of Plato, as when he says, " the son, the wonderful pro- 
 ducer of good;" but here, under a kind of punning 
 metaphor, it is evident he alludes to the sun which we 
 behold, and which he calls " the most sensible image of, 
 or most eximious representation of that supreme God, or 
 all ruling power, of which the sun was only a repre- 
 sentative, but forming a most glorious part of the 
 
r 
 136 LECTURE IV. 
 
 unbounded all-in-all. The "word" comes next to complete 
 the Platonic trinity,* and, by this, in all probability, he 
 meant only to signify the nature of all earthly things, meta- 
 phorically represented by the god Pan, or Mercury, who 
 according to pagan mythology, was the "word" of Jupiter, 
 the then supreme god. However, out of these materials, 
 the early Christian fathers drew the idea, and contrived 
 to get up their trinity, from the writings of a heathen 
 philosopher, who would sometimes require a revelation 
 to explain him.t But his obscurity may easily be 
 
 * The word Trinity was first used by Theophilus, bishop of 
 Antioch, in the year 150, to express persons, as they are called, in 
 the Godhead. The passage in the 1st epistle of John, chap. 5, v. 7, 
 never appeared till the second edition of Erasmus's New Testament, 
 about 1560. The 1st edition was printed in 1514, and the text 
 alluded to is not in it. 
 
 f Even the idea of Mediator is borrowed from the famous 
 Zoroastes, or Zoroaster of Persia, who, according to Plutarch, 
 taught, that there existed two principles, one of good, and the other 
 evil ; the first was called Oromazus, or Oromasdes, the Ancient 
 of Days, being the principle of good or light; the other, Arimanes, 
 was the genius of evil and darkness. Between these two he placed a 
 third power, called Mithras, to which the Persians gave the name of 
 Mediator, and this Mithras, or Mediator, was no other than the 
 physical sun, which we behold, and which was also called Triple, 
 either from power, wisdom, and goodness, or from heat, light, and 
 influence. Oromazus is the name which the followers of Zoroaster 
 gave to the Supreme Being, and which signifies, in the Chaldean 
 language, a burning light. The bad principle, Arimanes, signifies my 
 enemy, or cunning and deceitful. From these principles of good 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 137 
 
 accounted for, inasmuch that even in his day the influ- 
 ence of the priests made it dangerous to speak those 
 truths which exposed their arts ; for if he had expressed 
 in full and clear terms the convictions of his great and 
 luminous mind, he could not have escaped the fate of his 
 master Socrates, who (it cannot be too often repeated), 
 was put to death at the instigation of the Athenian 
 priests, for his adherence to truth. 
 
 The ancient Brahmins of India were probably the first 
 who corrupted human society by the invention of spiritual, 
 or celestial existencies ; and all the successive religions 
 that have sprung up in the west, (and they have been 
 many in number), have adopted the same machinery, 
 varied according to time and place. And from the past we 
 are warranted in concluding that new religions will 
 always be springing up, all inimical to truth and reason, 
 nineteen in every twenty of which will fail to take root, 
 and a very few, from particular circumstances, will be 
 successful and flourish for a time — perhaps for many 
 centuries — and then be exploded in their turn, to 
 make place for others invented to suit the interested 
 
 and evil were taken also, the Osiris and Typhon of the Egyptians, 
 the Jupiter and Pandora of the Greeks, the Jehovah and Satan of 
 the Jews, as well as the God and Devil of the Christians. The 
 idea of a Mediator is not only derogatory of, but virtually denies, 
 the infinite mercy of the Supreme Power. 
 
138 LECTURE IV. 
 
 views of theologians, leagued with tyrannical govern- 
 ments. 
 
 In such a manner have mankind been always abused, 
 and as there seems to be, unhappily, a large portion of 
 credulity in man's very nature, which easily subjects him 
 to such thraldom of the mind, nothing but the strongest 
 efforts of natural reason, aided by the impartial school of 
 experience, and the utter exclusion of all artificial 
 religions, can enable him to overthrow the altars of 
 error, and guide him in the paths enlightened by nature 
 and common sense ; for it may be taken as a general rule, 
 that whatever is contrary to nature is against reason, and 
 whatever is against reason ought be rejected as absurd. 
 
 To the free and unprejudiced inquirer, it cannot but 
 appear perfectly plain, that in Christian society, from the 
 earliest times, theology has ever exerted itself in the 
 suppression of all natural truths of the higher order, 
 wherever man has had the genius to discover them, in- 
 somuch as virtually to admit that any deep knowledge of 
 nature, is so incongruous with theology, that they can 
 have no existence together; and numerous instances 
 might further be adduced, such as the following : — Virgil, 
 bishop of Saltzburgh, was condemned by the church for 
 daring to maintain the existence of the Antipodes. The 
 great Descartes died in a foreign land, from church 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 139 
 
 persecution. Julius Vanini was burnt by the clergy for 
 saying that " God is both the beginning and the end, 
 without being in need of either ; in no one place,, yet 
 present every where ; he is within and without every- 
 thing, his power is his will." For such tenets did the 
 theologians burn poor Vanini ; and the learned Stephen 
 Dolet, was burnt by the inquisition for exposing the 
 clergy and asserting the unity of God. Thus, in all 
 ages, has religion been employed as an instrument in 
 the persecution of great men. " Thus has superstition 
 incessantly disturbed the harmony of mankind, raised 
 up the most inextinguishable flames of hatred and 
 discord, arming the infuriate maniacs to strew the earth 
 with unhappy victims to madness and error ;* peaceable 
 and innocent victims, whose only crime was in using their 
 own reason, and their inability to dream after the 
 
 * "The inhabitants of the new world were not treated as men, 
 because they were not Christians. This prejudice, more degrading 
 to the tyrants than the victims, stifled all sense of remorse ; and 
 abandoned, without control to their inextinguishable thirst for gold 
 and for blood, those greedy and unfeeling men that Europe dis- 
 gorged from her bosom. The bones of five millions of human 
 beings have covered the wretched countries to which the Spaniards 
 and Portuguese transported their avarice, their superstition, and 
 their fury. These bones will plead to everlasting ages against the 
 doctrine of the political utility of religions, which is still able to 
 find its apologists in the world." 
 
140 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 manner of their persecutors." All of which shows clearly 
 the truth that, the wild delirium of fanaticism is as 
 incompatible with the calm tranquillity of reason, as 
 fire is with water. 
 
 Mankind will never be disposed to use their own 
 strength, or make free inquiry whilst an undisturbed 
 laziness, ignorance, and prejudice, give them full satisfac- 
 tion as to the truth of their opinions ; but where there is a 
 sincere desire to elicit truth, she will never want profes- 
 sors; and she can never be wholly banished, exceptwhere 
 human decisions, backed by power, carry all before 
 them, putting men out of the way of truth by mere 
 force of authority ; for when the Magistrate, the Church, 
 and the zeal of that numerous class who believe all that 
 divines tell them, unite their strength, the three make 
 the most formidable bond imaginable against the just 
 liberties of mankind. 
 
 In the diiferent systems of revealed religion that 
 hitherto have, and now continue to distract the world, 
 the dogmatical machinery of the various churches, have 
 been nearly the same in all, admitting of no other proof 
 than what arises from faith and ignorance ; the first being 
 a quiet and sottish submission of the judgment, to the 
 guidance and control of others, who are deeply inter- 
 ested in the maintenance of those delusions which support 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 141 
 
 them, — submission of that judgment which the ruling 
 power of nature bestowed upon every individual, for the 
 study of her own broad book, in which alone is to be 
 found the only true religion. " Father Garasse, of the 
 Jesuits, declared that he could very easily invent a much 
 better religion than any of those that now divide and 
 disturb the world, if he could only pick up a dozen of 
 scoundrels, who would submit themselves to be burnt in 
 defence of his notions." 
 
 A great poet has said, " that things naturally bad make 
 strong themselves by ill." So, in like manner, things 
 that are in themselves absurd and unnatural, are not only 
 strengthened, but rendered all-powerful by superstitious 
 folly and credub'ty, which, in the fulness of their power, 
 have shed oceans of human blood in support of fantastical 
 whimsies, which have been turned into theological 
 dogmas, that are inconsistent with, and entirely beyond 
 the conception of reason, giving birth to the most 
 rancorous spirit of discord. 
 
 If any man of an impartial and enlightened mind 
 should address himself to the contending parties in a 
 manner such as the following — " The men who lived in 
 the world three thousand years ago, appear to have been 
 better men than you are, and had no disputes about 
 religion, but served their God, or gods, just in any way 
 
142 LECTURE IV. 
 
 they pleased, and with the only union required, the union 
 of affection amongst themselves," — all that such a man 
 would get by this admonition would be, to be called 
 Atheist by both the hostile parties, and persecuted 
 accordingly. 
 
 To arrive at the purest standard of morality, it is 
 necessary that the minds of men should break the 
 shackles of superstitious respect, know the limits which 
 ought, and will, eternally separate reason from all the 
 systems of revealed religion, and remove the obstacles 
 placed against its progress by the corrupt legislator, the 
 priest, and the fanatic; the two former will never fail 
 to exert their united influence in fostering and protect- 
 ing ignorance, as the surest means of giving stability to 
 their power ; and it is hereby that they render them- 
 selves the most cruel enemies of the human race. Men 
 generally are more stupid than wicked; and in curing 
 them of the errors which arise from sluggish credulity, 
 we should cure them at the same time of most of 
 their vices; and whoever endeavours to oppose that 
 cure, commits the crime of treason against human 
 nature. 
 
 The base and servile timidity which dreads inquiry 
 into things reputed divine, generates a blind and scru- 
 pulous attachment to the superstitions imbibed in youth, 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 143 
 
 making a vast majority of mankind become the fools of 
 the common folly, whatever that may happen to be,* 
 and the more foolish an opinion is, the more readily will 
 it be received as praiseworthy, and consequently, the 
 more dangerous it will be to prove its folly. 
 
 Nature speaks to man in the following language : — 
 " It is in vain, O thou fantastical being, to seek after 
 "happiness beyond the limits of universal matter in 
 6( which I have placed thee ; in vain dost thou expect it 
 " in those fanciful regions which have no existence but 
 " in thine own delirious imagination, which is filled with 
 " capricious systems and illusions, the baneful effects 
 " of an absurd education, inculcated in youth by selfish 
 " and interested men, who have taught thee to depart 
 " from the simplicity of my laws, which are mild and easy 
 " in comparison with those of theological bigotry. The 
 " tyranny of the mind is unknown in my dominion : 
 " benevolence and humanity, the offspring of wise and 
 " equitable laws, are the fruit of the soil, and imposture, 
 "with his obscuring mists, are unknown in the land. 
 " As members of society, be kind, be just, be virtuous, 
 
 * Grotius, in quoting Curtius, says — " The multitude, ensnared 
 by superstition, are more apt to be governed by their priests than 
 princes; and that kings and emperors have learnt this at their 
 cost, insomuch that to produce examples of this kind, would in a 
 manner be transcribing the history of all nations." 
 
144 LECTURE IV. 
 
 " be merciful, and peace of mind will be your portion. 
 " But beware of the transient pleasure that arises from 
 " seductive crime, for it is I who punish the crimes of the 
 " fanatical wicked, who are blind to my laws, and shudder 
 "with horror at the name of truth and sacred reason 
 " — those free gifts which I have bestowed on man. 
 " Waste not, therefore, your substance in supporting 
 "priests, those costly drones of human society that 
 " eat up the fat of the land, spreading their useless 
 " systems of pretended revelation : but there is no reve- 
 " lation except that which I have, with perfect impartiality, 
 " made to you all, and which is perpetually before your 
 " eyes — the broad book of nature, — in which there is no 
 " imposture, and which requires not an expensive priest- 
 " hood to expound its mysteries, but only reason and ex- 
 " perience to conduct you to happiness. The earth is 
 " teeming with my benefits and bounties, yet ye starve 
 " yourselves to feed the locusts that prey upon you. Re- 
 " turn to me therefore, thou misled being, and let the 
 " basis of thy social laws be in accordance with mine — 
 " with the laws of that power which called thee into 
 " organized existence ; for of all the animals inhabiting 
 " the millions of globes which revolve in the endless ple- 
 " num, thou hast departed the farthest from me, as thy 
 " crimes witness against thee — crimes, in the commission 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 145 
 
 " of which thou standest alone amongst all the other 
 " animals." 
 
 In such language does nature cry aloud to man, but 
 she calls in vain, while he continues in the besotted 
 belief of what his interested guides have taught about 
 fallacious divinities, the splendid trumpery of superna- 
 tural, and seeing visions, the workings of human fancy ; 
 — while he shuts his eyes to the physical realities which 
 surround him, and which never deceive his senses. Such 
 is the language ever held by unerring reason, which is 
 marked by the contempt and detestation of the priest, 
 insulted by the fanatic, and left unexercised by the 
 stupid devotee who follows those wild reveries that over- 
 whelm common sense, and which man can neither prac- 
 tise nor understand ; making it consequently a virtue to 
 favour imposture, which constantly endeavours to en- 
 trench itself artfully behind the rampart of truth. " But 
 the worshipper of truth will never compromise with 
 falsehood — the adorer of nature will not be the apostle 
 of deceitful chimeras, turning this world into an abode of 
 illusions," and by a total departure from truth, reason, 
 and virtue, destroying the happiness of the human 
 race. 
 
 On taking a view of the numerous traditionary reli- 
 gions which have overspread the earth, all pretending to 
 
146 LECTURE IV. 
 
 divine revelation, we readily allow the gross falsehoods 
 and absurd notions which the priests of all have impu- 
 dently imposed on their silly followers. Yet our own 
 priests, forsooth, must always be allowed to be such 
 faithful representers of truth, that we may as well deny 
 all historical facts as doubt the truth of things believed 
 on their authority. Priests of other religions, we know, 
 will propagate falsehoods to support their own interest ; 
 and knowing that no revealed religion will bear exami- 
 nation, they take care to have them guarded by penal 
 laws. But, I pray you, my friend, have not our own 
 priests done all these things ? 
 
 We have only to consult ecclesiastical history, to find 
 that the worst of tyrannical princes nave been the most 
 sure of obtaining the assistance of the theologians of all 
 religions, even for the purposes of carrying on the vilest 
 and most barbarous designs, provided the interest of the 
 church was promoted in so doing. And any prince, 
 having the good intention to forward and protect the 
 interest of pure natural religion, free from priestcraft 
 and superstition, was sure to meet with their most ran- 
 corous opposition.* In mixing up chimerical notions in 
 
 * " The ambitious man, who is raised above his fellow-citizens ; 
 the tyrant who tramples them under his feet, and the fanatical 
 priest who keeps them prostrate; all these several scourges of the 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 147 
 
 their religions — fooleries equally inconsistent with the 
 invariable nature of the All-ruling Power and the good 
 of man, they have even had the audacity to declare, that 
 the common people will never be influenced by, or satis- 
 fied with, plain and simple truths; and therefore the 
 supernatural weapons of inspirations, visions, conference 
 with spirits, trances, extasies, miracles, and the fires of 
 hell, were absolutely necessary to keep them in order : 
 and from this foul source have issued most of those 
 absurdities which, to the shame and scandal of mankind, 
 have overrun human nature. " Indeed so doltish have 
 the laity generally been, and so seldom have they 
 thought of asserting their natural rights in matters of 
 religion, that they have commonly sacrificed to the 
 malice of the priests, all who have endeavoured to main- 
 tain these rights ; and as often as the people have suc- 
 ceeded in throwing off one set of ecclesiastical tyrants, it 
 
 human race, all these different kinds of flagitious men, forced by 
 their private interest to establish laws contrary to the general good* 
 have been sensible that their power had no other foundation than 
 the ignorance and weakness of mankind. They have therefore 
 imposed silence on whosoever, by discovering to the people the 
 true principles of morality, would have opened their eyes with 
 respect to their misfortunes and their rights, and have armed them 
 against injustice." 
 
148 LECTURE IV. 
 
 has been only to become slaves to another. Yet they 
 have ever been ready to join against any one who endea- 
 voured to set them free for all theological tyranny.* In 
 former times it is too notorious that, whenever a gleam 
 of light issued from a mind capable of discerning the 
 path of truth, it was immediately extinguished in the 
 blood of its author. 
 
 It is a sad, and I hope an unjust reflection upon 
 human nature, that in the most ancient times of which 
 we have any any records, as well as in the present, the 
 bulk of mankind were held to be unfit to hear the truth. 
 Clemens of Alexandria declares, that the greater pagan 
 mysteries were open to none but men of superior rank, 
 education, merit, and learning; and Varro says they 
 were instituted for the conveyance of certain truths, 
 which it was not expedient the people should know. 
 Now, these mysteries detected and disclosed to the ini- 
 tiated alone the errors and absurdities of the vulgar 
 polytheism, whilst they taught the union of the Supreme 
 Being, or nature. Thus also Parmenides, in his Exote- 
 
 * Aristippus says that, " to be able to think is to draw upon 
 ourselves the irreconcileable hatred of the ignorant, the weak, the 
 superstitious, and the corrupt, who all loudly declare themselves 
 against those who would take hold of, and maintain the truth." 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 149 
 
 rics, or books accommodated to the public taste, says, 
 " fire and water are the beginning or principle of all 
 things," as if he had acknowledged the creation of 
 matter ; but in his Esoterics, or books composed accord- 
 ing to truth, he says, " the universe is one, infinite, and 
 immutable. 17 
 
 The origin of man (as we have elsewhere observed) 
 and the ridiculous distinctions which vanity and selfish- 
 ness have drawn between him and the rest of animated 
 nature, have given rise to the wildest arrogance of con- 
 jecture, whilst what appears to be the plain and simple 
 truth in this matter, has been kept as much in the back 
 ground as it usually is in all points which admit not of 
 demonstration. The origin of man, and the propagation 
 of the species, perfectly resemble that of other animals, 
 and the cause of the existence of all, is in the very 
 existence itself. If we examine the actions and 
 behaviour of many of those we call brutes, such as the 
 monkey, the elephant, the beaver, &c, it is perfectly 
 evident that they could not act in the manner they do, 
 without a mind and understanding ; and these faculties 
 being proved in them beyond all contradiction, why 
 then, O ye fanatics, will ye deny them this undefinable 
 something called soul, which ye say yourselves are 
 
150 LECTURE IV. 
 
 possessed of ? Permit me to answer the question. It is 
 your excessive pride and self-love,* which are mainly 
 nursed and cherished by the illusions of a preternatural 
 futurity, which your priests buoy you up with, in 
 exchange for the pampered luxury and ease enjoyed 
 by them through your credulity. Well, you at last 
 reluctantly grant that the other animals have souls ; but 
 in making this concession, you contend, as your last 
 refuge, that such paltry half-inch souls as theirs, are not 
 worthy to be immortal, as those of men are, and con- 
 sequently perish with the body.f Here again is another 
 distinction that is equally worthy of the pride and self- 
 love of man, and of theological ingenuity, for it is the 
 pure offspring of both; but the truth of it is utterly 
 denied by nature and reason. This story of the soul's 
 immortality must have been unknown, or at least not in 
 
 * Lord Bolingbroke observes, that from an excess of pride, man 
 avoids and hates everything that in the least assimilates him to the 
 brute, and consequently gets out of sight when he performs the 
 business of procreation, as well as in some other humiliating 
 actions, by which he seems to think his dignity is lowered, and 
 which place him on the same level with the quadruped. — Philo- 
 sophical Essays. 
 
 f "It is well known that even the Pharisees among the Jews 
 did not openly maintain the doctrine of the immortality of the 
 soul, and of rewards and punishments after death, until about the 
 time of Herod." 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 151 
 
 vogue at the time in which it is said that Moses lived, 
 since no allusion whatever is made to it throughout the 
 books attributed to him.* It is true, that amongst the 
 ancient Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Greeks, 
 a notion existed that the vital part of animals was im- 
 mortal (which probably had its rise in the Metempsy- 
 chosis), and no one could deny that this vital part was 
 breath, since the body dies instantly when deprived of 
 it. The next difficulty was, of what is it composed ?f 
 Some said air, others fire, others ether; and a fourth 
 class declared that it was the requisite compound of the 
 above elements, adjusted by nature, so as to sustain 
 animal life; this was the pneuma of the Greeks, and the 
 anima of the Latins, to which they attached no other 
 meaning than simply the breath of life, in all animals ; 
 and when it left the body, at death, it was said to fly 
 upwards in joining the lighter, or more subtle elements 
 
 * Aristotle maintained the eternity of matter, and did not believe 
 that the Supreme Governing Power of the universe, extended any 
 particular providence to sublunary things, and as for the immor- 
 tality of the soul, it seems to have been quite inconsistent with 
 his principles ; " yet he was at one and the same time, the Master 
 of the Theologians, and the chief of the Atheists." 
 
 f When the theologian is pressed to tell what soul or spirit is, 
 he is obliged to resort to the negative, by telling what it is not. 
 
 "Philosophy consists in stopping when the torch of physical 
 science fails us." 
 
152 LECTURE IV. 
 
 to which it belongs ; and these elements being eternal, 
 the soul, in this sense, may justly be entitled to what is 
 called immortality. Philosophers reasoned after the 
 above manner long before the time of Plato ; but he 
 gave a new light on the subject, by declaring that 
 the soul was a compound of the same, and the other, — a 
 most divine definition indeed! and admirably well calcu- 
 lated for the use of the fathers of our holy church ; for 
 out of it they could make anything they pleased. It has 
 already been observed that, the obscure writings of this 
 philosopher was the ordinary source from whence the 
 fathers drew their mysticisms ; and in this instance he 
 has furnished them with the idea of those souls which 
 the theologians of the present times traffick in, and which 
 they turn to such excellent account. 
 
 The soul, then, is nothing but an empty term, of 
 which we can form no idea, and which a man of a right 
 understanding ought to make use of only to express that 
 part or faculty in us which thinks. # 
 
 * Amongst the pagans, Pliny spoke the fullest and plainest on 
 this subject, — thus, " After the interment of our bodies, there is a 
 great diversity of opinions concerning the future state of our souls, 
 or ghosts ; but the most general is this, that they return to the same 
 state in which they were before they were born. However, such 
 is the folly and vanity of men, that they extend its existence even to 
 future ages; and some crown it with immortality, others pretend a 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 153 
 
 In treating of impostors in this, and the foregoing 
 lectures on miracles, the writer distinctly and unequivo- 
 cally disclaims all intention of placing Jesus Christ at 
 the head of the impostors of Christianity, because he is 
 fully convinced, after the most impartial investigation of 
 the subject, that the person in question ought rather to be 
 considered as the Socrates, (in epitome), of the Jews, 
 and resembling in many points of character, and perse- 
 cuted virtue, several of the philanthropists of the present 
 day ; for, like them, his whole aim and endeavour was to 
 release his countrymen from the superstitious thraldom 
 of their priests, — to establish amongst them a pure 
 and practical morality, and laws calculated to guide 
 them in paths more congenial to nature, and their 
 
 transfiguration, and others render unto the soul of the departed, 
 honour and worship, making a god of him that was not so much 
 as a man; as if the manner of men's breathing differed from that of 
 other living creatures, or as if there were not to be found in the 
 world many animals that live much longer than man. Now these 
 are surely but fantastical, foolish, and childish toys, devised by men 
 who would fain live always ; the like foolery is there in preserving 
 the bodies. But what a folly of follies it is to think that death 
 should be the way to a second life ! Certainly this foolish credulity, 
 and easiness of belief, destroy the benefit of the best gift of nature, 
 — death. How much more easy, and greater security were it for 
 each man to ground his reasons and resolutions upon an assurance, 
 that he should be in no worse a condition than he was before he 
 was born !"— Nat. Hist. 
 
154 v LECTURE IV. 
 
 true happiness : that such alone were his views, is 
 proved to satisfaction in the single circumstance of his 
 having all the priests of his day as his most bitter 
 enemies ; and by them, and their blind-led abetters, he 
 was put to death for exposing the irrationality and folly 
 of their absurd systems. That such should be the result 
 of his earnest exertions to benefit mankind, is no way 
 surprising, for all experience assures us that, without 
 the protection of wise and equitable laws, no description 
 of priests that the world has yet seen, would have 
 suffered such a man to live, and be the occasion of 
 destruction to their trade; a consequence inevitable, 
 because his religion was too natural and too simple to 
 require a hireling priesthood. His doctrine was the 
 system of nature, of which he appears to have been the 
 enthusiastic admirer, as may be shown from many of the 
 aphorisms and parables attributed to him ; such, for 
 instance, as that in Luke, chap. 6th, v. 48, where his 
 intention is to compare the follower of the religion of 
 nature to a man who lays the foundation of his house 
 upon a rock; and in the same book, chap. 12th, v. 27, 
 we have the beautiful simile of the lilies, evincing 
 thereby his reverence towards the common parent of all 
 existence. 
 
 As a follower of nature, he would have abolished 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 155 
 
 marriage, his aversion to which seems to have been 
 notorious amongst his acquaintance, and what he says 
 in Luke, chap. 20th, v. 34, is confirmatory of that 
 aversion; but when he admonishes, as he does in 
 Matthew, chap. 5th, v. 34, saying, "swear not at all" 
 he abolishes marriage in the most positive manner. 
 When he says, "what God has joined together, let no 
 man put asunder," he assuredly means, that while mutual 
 love and concord join a couple happily together, no 
 man should put them asunder, because, in so doing he 
 would commit a crime against nature, in disturbing the 
 union of congenial hearts ; but it is utterly impossible he 
 should mean to include, or have any allusion to, the vast 
 majority of marriages, which are cemented by Mammon 
 and the priest, wherein nine-tenths of the parties turn 
 out to be mutual torments to each other. He was no 
 doubt desirous to render marriage that which reason 
 requires it should be, viz., a simple contract only, and 
 dissolvable at the pleasure of the parties ; and so it was 
 originally, until the usurpations of the church made it a 
 sacrament, or divine obligation, thereby converting it 
 into that which the generality of mankind have found it 
 to be — a life-lasting bond of the most woful description; 
 and so confessedly was it so, that the priests of former 
 times took special care to preserve for themselves the 
 
156 LECTURE IV. 
 
 privilege of being exempt from its trammels. Matthew, 
 Mark, and Luke, state severally, that certain questions 
 were put to him (Jesus) regarding marriage and divorce ; 
 and it is quite evident that these questions were put 
 solely with the view of entrapping him into such answers 
 as would have been contrary to the Jewish laws, and 
 thereby afford the priests a pretext for seizing him ; so 
 he seems to have been on his guard accordingly; 
 but as to the precise answers which he gave to these 
 questions, the three Evangelists are as much at variance 
 with each other, as they are in almost everything else. 
 He must have been satisfied, that if marriage was 
 abolished, adultery could have no existence ; for the 
 former unnatural yoke, is not only the cause of the 
 latter crime, but constitutes its criminality; carrying 
 along with it at the same time, thousands of other evils 
 which are entailed on a vast portion of the female sex ; 
 — first, because the galling shackles of monogamy 
 prevent nearly the half of the male sex from entering 
 into a state, where misery is so likely to follow for life ; — 
 and secondly, because of the false and preposterous 
 odium which the perverse condition of society has 
 attached to poor unhappy woman, if she follows the 
 impulse of nature ; and if she resists that impulse, another 
 abyss of misery is before her, and she becomes the prey 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 157 
 
 of a certain malady, in the paroxysms of which, the 
 mode of gratification will not be much considered ; and 
 if the necessities of nature find not a remedy, the 
 unhappy sufferer falls the victim of a disease, for the 
 cure of which the world is full of physicians. He must 
 have been of opinion also, that prostitution is only a 
 consequence of marriage, for without the latter, the 
 former could have no existence : in short, he seems to 
 have fully coincided in opinion with two of the ancient 
 sages in regard to matters of love. Plato, in his republic, 
 abolished marriage ; and Zeno declared, " that women 
 ought to be unrestrained in their amours, in order that 
 that their children might be equally dear to all men. 
 Jesus evidently wished to annul paternity also ; as 
 appears from the admonition he gives in Matthew 23rd, 
 and v. 9th ; and he elsewhere declares that " all children 
 proceed from the spirit of nature, or God, and in regard 
 to himself, he never would acknowledge any other 
 paternity." 
 
 The principal impostors in Christianity (Paul perhaps 
 excepted) arose some centuries subsequent to the time of 
 Jesus, and they have fallaciously reared up, and ascribed 
 to him, a theological fabric, so monstrous, chimerical, and 
 absurd, as to be altogether inconsistent with his principles 
 and views — with the generous exertions he made to 
 
158 LECTURE IV. 
 
 enlighten his countrymen in the laws of nature, and with 
 the truth and simplicity of his doctrines. 
 
 He was a teacher of such men only as would receive 
 the truth with pleasure, — he found few of these; but 
 that did not prevent his teaching, or, at least, his en- 
 deavours to teach that very system that was afterwards 
 held forth, and taught by Justin Martyr, viz, " that 
 Christ (or Chrestus, which signifies any good man), the 
 first begotten of God, means nothing else but reason, of 
 which all mankind are partakers ; and all those that live 
 by or according to reason, though they are esteemed 
 atheists, and worshippers of no God, are Christians; 
 and such were Socrates, and the like." 
 
 Every age, as well in ancient as in modern times, has 
 produced a few of these, the disguised or oppressed 
 friends and adherents of truth and reason, some of whom, 
 in one way or other, became the victims of priestly 
 rage ; and others, from possessing less of moral courage, 
 were reduced to silence, giving way to the torrent of 
 power, which is chiefly supported by men who even 
 glory in rejecting that light which reason oifers to them ; 
 whilst they are ever ready in supporting theological 
 speculations, which no one understands, and which 
 have so frequently disturbed the repose of the world, 
 through the stubborn dispositions of those who give 
 
TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 159 
 
 them credence; whereas they ought to be treated as inven- 
 tions calculated to give scope to knaves and jugglers, to 
 apply them for the purposes of deception. 
 
 The laity of the present day are become pretty gene- 
 rally acquainted with the audacious impositions of the 
 church of Rome, and are astonished at the childish 
 credulity of their progenitors; but they seem far from 
 perceiving, or duly acknowledging, the very few acci- 
 dental circumstances upon which depended the incom- 
 plete reformation of the church, which took place in the 
 sixteenth century. This rested wholly on the honest, 
 truth-loving boldness of two or three men, who happened 
 to be more enlightened than those around them; and 
 but for this fortuitous event alone, the mass of mankind 
 in Europe would have continued in the same grovelling 
 submission to knavery, and Catholic delusion up to this 
 very hour. And how were these men treated and 
 esteemed in their day, by the adherents of superstition? 
 The exposures they made, and their writings, were looked 
 upon, and treated by the whole Roman church, precisely 
 in the same manner as the writings of Thomas Paine 
 are now treated by the votaries of superstition through- 
 out Great Britain, — " Not all the devils in hell," cried 
 the Catholic priests, "can equal the blasphemous wicked- 
 ness of Martin Luther, and his impious adherents." But 
 
160 LFXTURE IV. 
 
 behold the result of this pretended wickedness ! The 
 reformed countries of Europe bear witness at this day, 
 of the salutary effects produced by even the partial 
 victory that was then gained over superstitious tyranny. 
 The reformers went but half way in the work that was 
 required by reason and common sense, — " they but 
 scotched the snake, not killed it." For in England, and in 
 Ireland, the church still forms an incubus that is almost 
 as grievous upon human industry as ever it was at any 
 former period. Still let us do the reformers the justice 
 they deserve, by confessing that, although they did only 
 a half of the work, they wrought wonders, and it was 
 perhaps impossible for man to do more at the time, more 
 especially when we consider the extreme tenaciousness 
 with which mankind adhere to the superstitious follies 
 of early youth. They went great lengths in venturing 
 to expose the enormous extent to which clerical usur- 
 pations had reached ; but any attempt at that period, to 
 compel the clergy to relinquish all their temporal advan- 
 tages, would have been fruitless, and would have made 
 them fly to arms much more readily than even the 
 attempt to rend the veil wherewith they concealed the 
 truth. 
 
 THE END OF LECTURE THE FOURTH. 
 
DIALOGUE, 
 
 PHYSIOLOGICAL 
 
 AND 
 
 THEOLOGICAL. 
 
 " Man has lost himself in the wanderings of a fantastic imagination, in the 
 fleeting dreams of fanaticism, and the malignant fury of a blind superstition ; he 
 has sought for truth where it is not to be found : his mind has diverged from the 
 line of reality, and he has become the victim of innumerable prejudices." ' 
 
 Ignorance becoming triumphant, begets credulity ; credulity unavoidably occa- 
 sions lies, and lies have recourse to force for their support against reason. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, BY 
 
 JOHN BROOKS, 421 OXFORD STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIII. 
 
DIALOGUE. 
 
 Lest j r ou should start at these bold truths, and fly 
 These lines, as maxims of impiety ; 
 Consider that religion did, and will 
 Contrive, promote, and act the greatest ill. 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 STRATO AND MODERATUS. 
 
 Mod. — I have observed, Strato, that your opinions 
 on most subjects are strangely at variance with those 
 that are sanctioned by the highest authorities of the 
 church and state ; and when a man differs so very widely 
 in his way of thinking from the generally received 
 notions of his countrymen, and those around him, his 
 reasons ought to be well founded, and he ought to be 
 sure in his own mind that there is no mixture of 
 affected singularity in the matter. 
 
 Strato. — The remark you have just made is very 
 true, but if these reasons appear to him clear, satis- 
 factory, and conclusive, it is quite impossible for him 
 to think otherwise ; and one of our most enlightened 
 
\ 
 
 4 DIALOGUE. 
 
 divines allows, that a man cannot believe and disbelieve 
 at pleasure, inasmuch as belief is not the work of the 
 will, but of the judgment alone, and arises irresistibly 
 upon conviction ; and therefore, to assert that a man 
 is bound to believe either one thing or another, is so 
 far from being true, that it is not common sense. 
 
 Mod. — I have no difficulty in granting your position, 
 yet still a man may be a good member of society, ful - 
 filling in an exemplary manner all the moral duties, 
 and glide quietly through life, while he believes, or 
 fancies he believes, in all those popular notions, which 
 you are pleased to call the preposterous delusions that 
 guide the great herd of mankind. 
 
 Strato. — This is precisely the case with ninety-nine 
 in every hundred of the human race, in all countries ; 
 they either cannot, or will not think for themselves ; 
 and it is in vain that nature sometimes sends amonsfst 
 them a spark of her own fire, to enlighten the mind of 
 genius and penetration, for every ray of the light of 
 truth gives offence, and they shrink with horror at the 
 idea of giving way to inquiry, so fettered are their 
 minds with the bands of early impressions, the pre- 
 judices of education; — this uniformly applies to the 
 weak and the ignorant, who are very numerous, and 
 not always confined to the working classes, — besides, 
 
STltATO AND MODERATUS. 5 
 
 few will readily " separate themselves from error, when 
 vanity, the companion of ignorance, has rendered it 
 dear to them." 
 
 Mod. — Allowing what yon have said to pass for the 
 present, still matters are not in reality the worse on 
 that account, for in every age and country of the 
 world, the lower orders of mankind have always been 
 weak and credulous, and their minds governed by an 
 order of men who are appointed and paid to think for 
 them ; and this condition of things forms one of the 
 strongest bonds of society, for its peace and security : 
 so that which you complain of is so far from being an 
 evil, that I am reluctantly induced to believe, that the 
 more irrational and absurd the superstition is, so much 
 the better does it answer the intended purpose ; ambi- 
 guity, mystery, and obscurity, coming in as useful 
 auxiliaries, and are indeed the main pillars that support 
 the superstructure ; so here is a positive good arising 
 out of what you denounce as an intolerable evil. But, 
 to change the subject, what do you think of the 
 peopling of America ? 
 
 Strato. — You might as well ask me how the oak 
 and the ash got there — who carried over the dogs, cats, 
 hogs, &c. &c, for I am quite satisfied that the same 
 power which produced animals and trees in the other 
 
b DIALOGUE. 
 
 parts of the world, produced them in America also. 
 But why do you insist on having that hemisphere 
 peopled from Asia, when the proposition might with 
 equal propriety be reversed, in maintaining that Asia 
 was peopled from America ? The plain truth of the 
 matter is undoubtedly this, that the discovery of this 
 vast portion of the globe, was a stumbling block to the 
 theological worthies of our holy church, and placed a 
 considerable portion of the ground-work of their edifice 
 in a ludicrous point of view; for the heavenly in- 
 spirations of the early fathers of our church, did not, 
 it seems, convey even a single hint of the existence of 
 that immense continent ; but since the restless inno- 
 vations of profane science (which the church dislikes 
 above all things) did make that discovery, the priests 
 found themselves under the necessity of peopling it in 
 the best way they could, and in as straight a line from 
 father Adam as possible : so to work they went with all 
 the zeal and anxiety which the untowardness of the case 
 inspired ; but, working against nature, as they always 
 do, they have made a most bungling and laughable 
 business of it. If bishop Eusebius, of Csesaria, had 
 been alive, he would have peopled the western hemis- 
 phere with more address and plausibility than all of 
 them put together. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 7 
 
 The thesis laid down is, that America was peopled 
 from Asia, and the antithesis goes to establish the 
 reverse ; but both propositions will appear equally 
 absurd, when we consider the perfectly different spe- 
 cies of man found upon each continent $* for the 
 white-skinned native of northern Asia, could no 
 more beget the copper-coloured, beardless native of 
 America, than a bull dog could beget a fox, — the 
 Negro of Africa, the Laplander ; the leopard, the lion ; 
 the ass, the horse ; or an Esquimaux, a Hottentot, &c. 
 No one species could by any possibility spring unmixed 
 from any of the others, because of the specific dis- 
 tinctions made by nature herself, f and she has, in 
 
 * " None, but those who are blind, can have any doubt that the 
 whites, the negroes, the Albinos, the Hottentots, the Laplanders, 
 the Chinese, and the Americans," are altogether different species, 
 although they perhaps come under the genus Homo. 
 
 -j- The grandsons of Noah, as soon as they were landed from the 
 ark, had a Herculean task to perform,— the sons of Ham, for no 
 fault of their own, were exiled to the interior of Africa, and the 
 coasts of Guinea and Congo, a distance of more than five 
 thousand miles, there to beget a prodigious number of children 
 of a species of Homo, entirely different from their own, with 
 skins as black as ebony. " Magog, Tubal, and Gomer, after sub- 
 duing Germany, Spain, and Gaul, had to propagate their own 
 species in begetting vast quantities of children, with white skins, 
 to people those countries, in a very few years. Even children in 
 the nursery now begin to laugh at such obscene absurdities." 
 
8 DIALOGUE. 
 
 her own immaculate way, wonderfully adapted every 
 animal and every plant on the earth, for the particular 
 region or climate, where each of the various kinds 
 is produced; the pride and prejudice of man not- 
 withstanding. 
 
 Mod. — You seem to have forgotten, or rather not to 
 have reap!, the many goodly volumes written by divines 
 and others, all clearly proving that America must 
 have been peopled from Asia ; — since we are told from 
 authority, which it is not permitted us to doubt, that 
 the first human being was produced there by a miracle, 
 and that being was Adam, from whom all the different 
 varieties of homo have sprung. 
 
 Strato. — All your deductions arise from your build- 
 ing upon false and groundless premises, and drawing 
 conclusions from such premises as never have for a 
 moment been admitted in the eye of reason ; and as for 
 your Jewish story about the first man called Adam, his 
 wife Eve, and a serpent, to say nothing of its gross 
 impiety, it is too silly and ridiculous for old women to 
 tell in the nursery. A very few philosophers who 
 ventured to exercise their own reason on this grand 
 subject, "had the boldness to affirm that nature had 
 always produced in America, the animals and plants that 
 were proper to the climate and soil;" but as these 
 
STRATO AND MODERATES. V 
 
 rational and home arguments struck at the the root of 
 that old and rotten system, which our theologians are so 
 much interested in upholding, there is no wonder in 
 their taking the alarm, and endeavouring, by their usual 
 methods, to stifle sense and the common suggestions of 
 nature ; and this they attempt by strings of ridiculous 
 conceits and absurdities, which excite only the smile of 
 the lovers of truth, but unhappily hold fast upon the 
 credulity of the great bulk of mankind, who are ever 
 ready to believe fabulous narrations, and take part with 
 the marvellous, against nature and reason. 
 
 Mod. — Whatever may be the subject under inquiry, 
 you seldom fail to reflect on the ecclesiastical order, as 
 a class of men who are chiefly blameable for the apathy 
 and ignorance of the lower orders of the people, and 
 perhaps for their vices also; but this is unfair and 
 illiberal, for priests are neither better nor worse than 
 other men ; and having been at the expense of learning 
 a profession, which is generally allowed to be one that 
 is necessary, why should they not live by that profession ? 
 But suspecting what your answer will be, rather than 
 hear it, I will once more change the subject, trusting 
 that your opinions on geology will be less offensive. 
 
 As the surface of this globe does evidently undergo 
 great changes, apparently by very slow degrees, most of 
 
10 DIALOGUE. 
 
 the smaller islands appearing to be only the tops of so 
 many mountains, separated by some efficient, but un- 
 known cause, from the continents, or greater lands 
 adjacent to them, to what are we- to attribute such 
 phenomena? — whether to violent concussions of nature, 
 to earthquakes and subterraneous fires, &c, or to time, 
 and the slow action of the elements ? 
 
 Strato. — Although no portion of matter can be anni- 
 hilated, it is subject to continual change of form, from 
 its own inherent, or self-existing operations ; thus, that 
 part of our globe which we call land, is everlastingly 
 acted upon by that portion of its surface which we call 
 sea, or water, of which element there is a certain 
 quantity on, or belonging to our globe : and this parti- 
 cular quantity cannot, by any power whatsoever, be 
 either added to, or diminished. This portion of matter 
 then, of which the sea is the grand reservoir, is un- 
 ceasingly in motion, and by a slow, but sure process, 
 in co-operation with the elements of air and fire, is 
 continually reducing into a loose, or fluid state, those 
 particles which it had, perhaps millions of years pre- 
 viously, laid as loose sediment, and which, after being 
 raised by accumulation to such a height as to be, in the 
 ordinary routine of alternation, left by the sea, became 
 solid rock, from the action of the atmosphere, perhaps 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 11 
 
 owing to the consolidating power of some unknown 
 ingredients thereof. Thus the perpetual action of the 
 element of water, together with the aid of other 
 physical powers, is unceasingly reducing, or unmaking 
 the land formed of old, in the manner as aforesaid (for 
 it is a demonstrable fact that all high land is necessarily 
 in a state of diminution), and forming other lands that 
 will again be reduced in endless succession ; motion 
 being essential to matter, and one of the properties of 
 its self-existence, of which it cannot divest itself. For 
 a solution of your doubt, therefore, I see no necessity 
 for having recourse to what are called convulsions of 
 nature, to which the geological changes that have taken 
 place on the surface of the globe, have been ignorantly 
 attributed, for they never do materially change the face 
 of countries, their effects being always sudden, partial, 
 and by no means lasting.* 
 
 * The universe admitteth neither generation nor corruption, for 
 it ever was, and ever shall be ; if any man should conceive it to 
 have been made, he would not be able to know from what material 
 it was made, or into what it should be corrupted and dissolved, — 
 so that the universe is without beginning or ending : but always 
 remaineth in the same condition it is now in, equal and like itself: 
 the evident signs whereof, are the orders, fit proportions, figures, 
 situations, intervals, faculties, mutual swiftness and slowness of 
 essential motions, numbers and periods of time ; all things admitting 
 of alteration according to progress. Now I call universal matter 
 
12 DIALOGUE. 
 
 Mod. — If the great changes that take place in that 
 part of the globe which is land, are caused in the way 
 you state, we must suppose a prodigious length of time as 
 
 by the name of universe, which appellation it obtaineth in that it 
 comprehendeth all things, being an absolute and perfect collection 
 of all natures, and besides the universe there is nothing, for all is 
 contained in it, either as a part, or excrescence, and therefore it 
 stands in need of nothing besides itself, being eternal, perfect, and 
 permanent for ever. If we suppose the universe to be dissolved, 
 it must of necessity be dissolved into something, or into nothing, — 
 not into something, inasmuch as there would not in that case be a 
 total annihilation of matter, — not into nothing, for it is impossible 
 that something should either be made of nothing, or that any part 
 of matter should be annihilated. Wherefore the universe can 
 admit neither production nor annihilation ; and there can be nothing 
 without, or external to that which comprehends all things, — but 
 men and other animals, do in a more inferior manner finish the 
 progress of their nature, since they do not return to their first age, 
 neither have they a reciprocal change into one another, as it is in fire, 
 air, water, and earth ; but after they have passed their several ages, 
 they die, and are dissolved, becoming in the same state as they were.* 
 These, therefore, are arguments sufficient to prove, that the universe 
 remaineth perfect and uncorrupted ; as also that the excrescence 
 and results thereof suffer only a mutation, and not an annihilation ; 
 there being no such thing as quies in natura, all things being in a 
 perpetual circular motion. Nay, that the figure, motion, time, and 
 substance thereof, are without beginning or end, and therefore 
 infinite. Nor hath man had any original production from the earth, 
 or elsewhere, as some believe ; but hath always been, as he now 
 is, co-existent with the world, whereof he is a part. — Nature and 
 generation govern all things. 
 
 Ocellus Lucanus, on the Universe. 
 
 * " Quo non nati jaccnt," a ■ saith both Seneca and Pliny. 
 
 Note by the Latin Translator. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 13 
 
 being requisite to bring them round in succession ; indeed 
 it is almost beyond human conception the idea of the 
 time required in such a slow process as you have sugges- 
 ted ; for we find shells and other marine productions on 
 the tops of the highest mountains, and according to your 
 theory, these mountains must have been covered by the 
 sea, otherwise they could not have been formed by its 
 deposition or sediment : and by the same theory, these 
 mountain tops, so covered, and having these shell-fish 
 remains upon them, must have been in a loose, uncon- 
 solidated state, like a sand, or shell bank under water, 
 until they were gradually raised so high as naturally to 
 be above the medium level of the sea, and then hardened 
 into solid rock by the action of the more subtile elements. 
 Strato. — The great difficulty, as well as the fun- 
 damental error in this matter arises, as you state, from 
 unfounded and false notions about time, — notions at first 
 invented and propagated by the sacerdotal orders of 
 former times, and now chiefly supported by their modern 
 successors, to suit their own ends; they tell us that, 
 something less than six thousand years ago, there was 
 no sun, no moon, no stars, no earth, no matter of any 
 sort, and even no time itself ; for they make God to say, 
 < Before time was, I was.' Now, by this bold invention 
 of the priests, the silly multitude of mankind have not 
 
14 DIALOGUE. 
 
 quite six thousand years allowed them to account for the 
 
 production of the stupendous order of nature which they 
 
 see before them : — and having thus confined within the 
 
 comparative period of a day, the very existence of nature 
 
 herself, our theological rulers have prepared a suitable 
 
 place of torment to receive all such of mankind as dare 
 
 attempt to open their eyes to the light of nature and 
 
 reason : — this place is exactly the Tartarus of antiquity ; 
 
 but to show that they borrow nothing from the ancients, 
 
 they have changed its name, and called it hell.* The true 
 
 philosopher will never find difficulty, or suffer himself to 
 
 be hampered in regard to time, for if a million of years 
 
 are deemed insufficient for the working of such changes, 
 
 he will readily allow an hundred million, or whatever 
 
 lapse of time nature required to work them by her own 
 
 process. 
 
 " Dark flood of time ! 
 Roll as it listeth thee — I measure not 
 By months or moments thy ambiguous course." 
 
 The quantity of water on our globe not being sufficient 
 to immerse its whole surface, part of it, perhaps about 
 
 * " The word Cheol has been translated hell (enfer) although 
 it is evident that this word implies merely sepulchre or tomb. They 
 have in like manner translated the Hebrew word Topheth, into 
 hell ; but, on examining the term closely, we find that it designates 
 a place of punishment near Jerusalem, where malefactors were pun- 
 ished, and their carcases burned." 
 
STIIATO AND MODERATUS. 15 
 
 one third thereof, must necessarily in regular alternation, 
 remain dry land, but this land must always be by far the 
 smallest portion of the globe's surface : and for reasons 
 already stated, it is, as it were, moulded by, and sub- 
 jected to, this greater, more powerful, and more active 
 element of water ; for the slow, but everlasting impres- 
 sion that is made by the sea, is aided by rains, rivers, 
 and torrents from all the high lands, sweeping down the 
 loose and separated particles to the bosom of the sea, 
 there again to be desposited in the form of sediment, in 
 the formation of new land, which will again become 
 solid rock when raised so high as to be acted upon by the 
 upper elements: — thus it is chiefly the power and do- 
 minion of that quantity of the element of water that is 
 upon our globe, acting absolutely and perpetually all 
 over the surface thereof, alternately making and unmak- 
 ing land, by that unceasing motion which constitutes 
 its power, and by which the process is carried on in a 
 gradual, and sometimes in an almost imperceptible 
 manner.* If it were possible for us to examine the bot- 
 
 * This system of geology is alluded to in the way of allegory, 
 in the fable of Proteus, who, according to the poets, was Neptune's 
 herdsman, and whose name properly signifies primary, or oldest 
 meaning that he represented matter, and the eternal nature thereof; 
 his changeableness expresses the endless operations, and new modi- 
 fications of matter, principally wrought in a fluid state by the unceas- 
 
16 DIALOGUE. 
 
 toms of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, their surfaces 
 would be found as rugged and mountainous as any of 
 the great continents are, and probably we should find 
 many mountains elevated to such a height as to approach 
 very nearly to the level of the sea, and which will, in 
 the course of some thousands of years, emerge above it in 
 the appearance of islands, or the mountain tops of future 
 continents, now in the progress of being formed by 
 the sea. 
 
 Mod. — According to this watery theory of yours, we 
 will suppose, for the sake of a case, that the Canary 
 Islands are the remaining tops of so many mountains, all 
 of which did at some exceedingly remote period, form a 
 part of the continent of Africa, and of course that the 
 peak of Teneriffe was a huge mountain of that continent ; 
 now, I wish to ask you what length of time this for- 
 midable agent, the sea, has taken to work its way so as 
 to effect so wide a separation between these islands them- 
 selves, and between all of them and the main land of 
 
 ing motion^ of the sea, (Neptune) and the other elements : he 
 was said to take all kinds of shapes and miraculous forms, as fire, 
 water, monstrous animals, &c. denoting that in him was personified 
 all the various forms and appearances produced by the perpetual 
 action of the elements : he was represented as the servant of Neptune, 
 and said to reside in a cave, meaning the vast concavity of the 
 heavens. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 17 
 
 Africa,— I will likewise ask you whether this separation 
 took place before or after the flood ? 
 
 Strato. — The peak of Teneriffe cannot be considered 
 as any thing else than the top of a vast mountain, which, 
 in very remote times did (together with the other 
 islands around it ) unquestionably stand in Africa, its 
 basis probably still extending near to that continent, of 
 which, some half a million of years ago, it must have 
 formed a part, until a separation was effected by the 
 searching and never sleeping action of the sea. In 
 regard to the length of time that might be requisite for 
 the sea to wear so wide a channel between these moun- 
 tain tops and the main land of Africa, and such consider- 
 able channels between each other, I will not deal scru- 
 pulously with you, for if five hundred thousand years are 
 deemed insufficient for so great a work, you may double 
 or triple the amount. In alluding to a flood, I suppose 
 you mean the monstrously absurd Jewish one of Noah, 
 — a caricature drawn by the Jewish priests or scribes, 
 from the fabulous floods of Egyptian and Grecian tradi- 
 tions, — -but more on this subject elsewhere. ' The high- 
 est delight of theology is the destruction of the beauty, 
 order, and harmony of the universe. A world regularly 
 existing from all eternity, and continuing so to exist 
 through an endless futurity, would be, in the estimation 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 DIALOGUE. 
 
 of supernatural theology, an object of disgust. To nour- 
 ish the superstitious pride and folly of man, it is neces- 
 sary to derange, overturn, and destroy the splendid beau- 
 ties, and majestic grandeur of the vast empire of nature/ 
 by preternatural floods, or any other mode of des- 
 truction. 
 
 Mod. — Whatever may be the apparent inconsistency 
 of our despising the Jews as a people, and at the same 
 time holding in reverence and adoration their sacred 
 writings, we cannot possibly have a doubt of the divine 
 origin of their books, impressed as they are, not only 
 with the marks of the very highest antiquity, but com- 
 mencing with the creation of matter itself; and hence 
 it follows that all other nations, even the most ancient of 
 the Pagans, must have imitated their religion, customs, 
 and traditions, varying all of them, according to times, 
 circumstances, and countries. 
 
 Strato. — Just the reverse of all this appears to have 
 been the case, as will hereafter be shown on the autho- 
 rity of their historian Josephus; and even by their Bible 
 accounts, if we admit them ; but the fact is, we can 
 hardly depend on the truth of any one statement con- 
 tained in their Pentateuch, as they deal in little else than 
 the miraculous, or the marvellous, and their stories are 
 scarcely ever supported by any corroborating historical 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 19 
 
 testimony. The first thing we learn of them with any 
 certainty is, their slavery in Egypt, and herein for once 
 their own account agrees with what Tacitus and several 
 other authors have said on the subject : as to how and 
 when they became slaves there, is not so certain, but 
 from all that has been gathered regarding this point, the • 
 probability is that, as a wandering horde of the desart, 
 they had entered Egypt for plunder, and were there 
 made slaves for their robberies, &c. : they still continued 
 to observe their own customs and habits ; and as the be- 
 getting of children was always a primary object with 
 them, they are said to have used every means to attain 
 this end, living filthily and incestuously together, until 
 they became so formidable, both from their number and 
 nastiness, that the Egyptian king determined on expel- 
 ling them. The species of leprosy they were subject to 
 (all lepers are more libidinous than other people) was 
 the scab, or scabies, as it is rendered from Tacitus, which 
 caused them to become loathsome to their Egyptian 
 masters. After this expulsion or flight from Egypt, 
 they tell us one of their absurd fables, namely, that they Irz&t^ 
 found themselves able to take the field with six hundred 
 thousand men capable of bearing arms. Now this story, 
 if true, would only show them to be rank cowards, for, 
 except in fabulous history, it cannot be shown that any 
 
20 DIALOGUE. 
 
 king- of Egypt ever brought into the field the half of 
 that number of fighting men ; however, it is certain that 
 at the time of this expulsion, or flight, the Greeks, the 
 nations of Asia Minor, and all those of the east, were 
 great and powerful, while this outcast horde of freeboot- 
 ers wandered in the desarts around Mounts Horeb and 
 Sinai, having clearly no dialect, except such gibberish of 
 their own as they had formed out of the Egyptian lan- 
 guage. Leaving this desart, and not knowing where 
 they were, being as ignorant of geography as of every 
 thing else, they wandered north-east through Idumsea, 
 invading the Hebrew countries towards the lake Asphal- 
 tites, or, in the words of Tacitus, in the fifth book of his 
 history, " encroaching upon the Hebrew countries and 
 borders of Syria" Now, mark well that, when Taci- 
 tus here speaks of " the Hebrew countries,'' he cannot 
 possibly mean any thing else than the Phoenician coun- 
 tries, whose language was the ancient Hebrew, which 
 had been in existence for many thousands of years be- 
 fore a Jew or an Israelite was known or heard of; at 
 least this much is incontestibly certain, that as an illite- 
 rate caste they could know nothing of the Hebrew while 
 they were in Egypt, nor until their invasion of the He- 
 brew or Phoenician countries, where, it appears by their 
 own account, they were afterwards deservedly overpow- 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 21 
 
 ered by, and made slaves to these Hebrews, whose lan- 
 guage they adopted and barbarized to suit themselves ; 
 and, agreeably to their usual endeavours to mystify and 
 conceal the truth, they called this their bondage, or sla- 
 very to the Philistines, in place of Phoenicians. 
 
 Mod. — It appears from the sacred records, that it was 
 the Hebrew language in which God himself wrote, or 
 dictated to Moses, the tables containing the Decalogue 
 and the laws, which were in that language, engraved on 
 tables by that legislator, together with all the books of 
 the Pentateuch ; and since all this was done by miracle, 
 consistency requires ns to believe that the Hebrew was 
 already prepared as a language by God himself, and 
 communicated to Moses for the express purpose of ful- 
 filling his will ; and this being the case, that language 
 would very quickly be disseminated not only amongst 
 the Jewish people, but also in those countries where they 
 settled; this accounts for the Hebrew language being 
 afterwards found in use amongst the Phoenicians, and 
 establishes the antiquity of the Jews. 
 
 Strato. — You did well in calling in miracles to your 
 aid to solve your difficulties, as reason and the common 
 course of things would not serve your turn. But are 
 you not ashamed of the impious knavery of this 
 Egyptian priest Moses, in pretending to be tete-a-tete 
 
22 DIALOGUE. 
 
 with God Almighty, and charging him with being a 
 party to crimes and villanies so derogatory to, and un- 
 worthy of the majesty and power of the Supreme 
 Being ? The truth is, that since he himself and all his 
 followers were born in Egypt, it follows as certain that, 
 if he wrote any thing in the desart (laying aside your 
 miracles, if you please), it could be only in the Egyptian 
 language, because, allowing that he could write in any 
 other, it would have been useless to his ignorant people : 
 \ but the plain likelihood is, that with the connivance of 
 his brother priest Aaron, he could easily deceive the 
 rabble with a few hieroglyphics, cut upon blocks of wood 
 or stone, and give them whatever interpretation suited 
 his own ends. As to the matter of antiquity, their his- 
 torian, Josephus, has conceded that point, for in his dis- 
 course against Apion, after magnifying his countrymen 
 as being the first inhabitants of the earth, confesses that 
 he dares not, nevertheless, compare the monuments of 
 the Jews with those of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and 
 Phoenicians, as the air of those countries, from being 
 less subject to corruption, was proper for preserving 
 written records ; which is as much as to say, that as no 
 other nations but the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoeni- 
 cians had preserved the old records of their originals, 
 he would not contend with them for antiquity, but only 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 23 
 
 witli those who, like his countrymen, had no such re- 
 cords to show.* 
 
 Mod. — I have no difficulty in allowing that when the 
 Jews quitted Egypt they might have few, or perhaps no 
 written records of their own as a people ; but you are 
 not disposed to credit what they say in regard to the ex- 
 ceeding remote antiquity of that event, or even to admit 
 their just pretensions to letters and civilization, when 
 they afterwards became a nation. 
 
 Strato. — There are numerous proofs in their own 
 books (some of which will be adduced hereafter), suffi- 
 cient to convince us that they had no books or writings 
 of their own until long after their guilty invasion of the 
 Hebrew country; and when, after a time, they had 
 formed their dialect out of that language, and committed 
 some of their traditions or legends to writing, these 
 seem to have been concealed from all but their priests, 
 and rulers, at least the neighbouring nations knew 
 
 * Justin Martyr informs us that Moses was the grandson of a 
 great magician, who communicated to him all his art. Manethon 
 and Chereman, Egyptian historians, respecting whom testimonies 
 have been transmitted by Joseph the Jew, state that a multitude of 
 lepers were driven out of Egypt, and that these exiles elected for 
 their leader a priest of Heliopolis, whose name was Moses, who 
 formed for them a religion, and a code of laws. — Josephus against 
 Apion. 
 
24 DIALOGUE. 
 
 nothing whatever of their writings, until the second 
 Ptolemy of Egypt (to whom the Jews were then sub- 
 ject) demanded their assistance in making a translation 
 of their secret books from the Hebrew into Greek, 
 which was done accordingly at Alexandria, but in a 
 manner so untoward and against the grain, and with such 
 studied deception, that all the learned Jews of after 
 times, and many learned Christians have declared that 
 this Septuagint translation, which is our Bible, is the 
 most faithless version that ever was made of any book 
 whatsoever ; # and that such was the result is no way 
 surprising, as the eastern Jews of Judaea looked upon it 
 as a sad national calamity, perhaps more grievous and 
 intolerable than any one of their many captivities, to be 
 required to disclose the mysteries of that pretended 
 theocracy which their crafty priests and rulers had taught 
 the ignorant to believe in, as being sacred and heaven- 
 descended. It is therefore not wonderful that the Jews, 
 thus tasked by an authority which they dared not to re- 
 sist, should deviate as widely from the original as the 
 nature of the task would allow. The learned Jew Philo, 
 
 * St Jerome himself bears testimony of this, who, being engaged 
 in the revisal and correction of the Latin or Vulgate version of the 
 Bible, assures us that for explication he had recourse to the Greek 
 version, and that he found those copies as defective, and as much 
 altered by the transcribers as those of the Latin. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 25 
 
 confesses that before the Septuagint translation, the 
 Jewish writings were utterly* unknown to other nations ; 
 and, as this authority is undeniable, how was it possible 
 for those nations to borrow from the Hebrew books, 
 which were not only kept out of sight and unknown, but 
 of a very recent origin compared with the allegorical 
 traditions and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Phoe- 
 nicians, and all the nations of the east ? 
 
 Mod. — When you deny the great antiquity of the 
 Jews, and will not allow that they were either the 
 most ancient people on earth, or the most in favour 
 with the Supreme Being, can you account for the 
 silence throughout the Bible with respect to the pyra- 
 mids, in any other way than that they had not been 
 erected at the time when the Israelites were in captivity 
 in Egypt ? If this is admitted as a fact, it will alone 
 establish a very high antiquity for the Jews, since Hero- 
 dotus tells us that when he travelled in that country 
 about two thousand three hundred years ago, he heard 
 various accounts of their origin, most of which appeared 
 to be fabulous ; and his account is corroborated by Dio- 
 dorus Siculus. It is also remarkable that, although the 
 latter of these historians (and I believe the former also) 
 enumerates long successions of the ancient kings of 
 Egypt, for some thousands of years before their times, 
 
26 DIALOGUE. 
 
 tliey no where, that I remember, mention the name 
 of Pharaoh, which leads me to suppose that this scrip- 
 ture name must have been a designation common 
 to a race of Egyptian kings, who reigned anterior to the 
 times of the two Sesostris, Busiris, or even that of 
 Menis. 
 
 Strato. — Notwithstanding the evident endeavours of 
 the Jews to keep their origin out of sight, there is some 
 historical evidence, besides the proofs contained in their 
 own books, all of which are opposed not less to the 
 respectability, than they are to the great antiquity of 
 their origin. The first translator of Tacitus into English, 
 either out of compliment to the Jews, or to the church, 
 either omitted, or stopped short at the account which 
 that historian gives of that people; and subsequent 
 translators have not rendered him fairly, inasmuch as 
 Tacitus says that, " as an ignorant people, they assented 
 to put themselves under the conduct of Moses." And 
 again, that by whatsoever means their customs and 
 observances had been introduced, " they have no anti- 
 quity for their patronization" 
 
 From the many proofs that may be quoted against the 
 antiquity of the books attributed to Moses, I shall here 
 for the present give only one, which is of itself beyond 
 all contradiction destructive of any such pretensions. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 27 
 
 In Genesis, chap. 36, verse 31, it is said, " And these 
 are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before 
 the children of Israel had any king ;" which shows 
 clearly that this first book of the Pentateuch could not 
 possibly have been written until after the reign of 
 several kings of Israel, and therefore it is only a fair 
 inference to conclude, when backed by so much concur- 
 rent testimony, that it was not written until after the 
 Babylonish captivity, and the restoration of part of them 
 to Jerusalem by Cyrus, who gave them leave to rebuild 
 their temple on their paying him a large sum of money 
 ("for many of them had grown rich at Babylon by their 
 usual trade in old clothes and money clipping") ; so with 
 this encouragement many of them returned to Judea. 
 After this period their high priests or pontiffs were com- 
 monly their rulers, and from this arose their division 
 into opposing sects, the never-failing consequence of 
 theological dominion; but having now the advantage 
 of adding some Chaldean to their Phoenician lore, their 
 scribes began to arrange their traditions for the short 
 time they had been a nation, intermixing therewith the 
 ancient fables of those countries where they had been in 
 slavery. But first of all it was necessary to forge for 
 themselves a more respectable origin than the true one ; 
 so they adopted the name of Ibraham, or Ibrahim, as 
 
28 DIALOGUE. 
 
 the name of the imaginary personage who was to be the 
 common stock or root of the chosen people. This name 
 is famous in Arabia and other eastern countries, and 
 signifies, in the Arabic and Chaldean languages, " the 
 father of a people." The adoption of this name was 
 crafty and ingenious on the part of the compiler, but his 
 changing it into Abraham was a poor and petty disguise, 
 for the names are precisely the same. In order to raise 
 scions from this stock, Abraham is dispatched into 
 Egypt,* with Sarah his wife, whom, as the story goes, he 
 turned to excellent good account in using as the means 
 to secure both wealth and progeny. This is the plan 
 devised for the purpose of accounting for, and giving a 
 respectable origin to this singular people, fabricated and 
 put together after their return from Babylon, in or 
 about the time of Ezra and Hilkiah, who are supposed 
 by some of the learned to have been the compilers, and 
 
 * " The book of Genesis tells us that Abraham departed from 
 Haran, after the death of his father, at the age of seventy-five 
 years. But in the same book of Genesis, we are told that Terah, 
 his father, begat him, when seventy years old, and lived to the age 
 of two hundred and five years ; so that Abraham must have quitted 
 Chaldea at the age of a hundred and thirty-five years ; and it cer- 
 tainly seems strange, that at that age he should abandon the fertile 
 plains of Mesopotamia for the far distant and stony country of 
 Sichem." From Sichem they represent him as going to Memphis, 
 to buy corn a distance of six hundred miles ! ! 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 29 
 
 others are of opinion that the whole mass was fitted up, 
 and arranged in the order we now see it, under the 
 superintendence of Esdras, and other scribes of the day. 
 Now, as it was six hundred years between the time 
 when the king of Assyria carried all the twelve tribes in 
 bondage to the countries east of the Euphrates, and the 
 time when the two and a half tribes were restored by 
 Cyrus ; if we add to this the time spent in their other 
 slaveries, together with their chronology while they 
 were a nation, under their judges and kings, we shall 
 find a period of not less than nine hundred years (per- 
 haps it was much more) between the time in which it is 
 said Moses lived, and the restoration of the two and a 
 half tribes to Jerusalem by Cyrus. Thus, the Penta- 
 teuch was not composed until at least nine hundred 
 years after the time of Moses. 
 
 Mod. — A great deal of what you have said seems to 
 rest on probability, or presumptive evidence only, which 
 is not sufficient in a matter of such importance. You 
 have no authority that I know of for alleging that the 
 Jews sprung from a horde of banditti, who had been 
 made slaves in Egypt for their robberies, and were 
 thence expelled afterwards for similar crimes ; yet if all 
 this had even been true, they might still become the 
 chosen people of God ; and it is not for us to judge of 
 
30 DIALOGUE. 
 
 this predilection. As you have said nothing in reply to 
 what I suggested respecting the pyramids, and the race 
 of Egyptian kings bearing the name of Pharaoh, I sup- 
 pose you mean not to notice my observation. 
 
 Strato. — Enough has already been said to show that 
 the Jews, but more especially their books, can have no 
 just pretensions to a remote antiquity, and I have 
 farther proof to offer in support of what has been ad- 
 vanced respecting their origin. As for their being the 
 chosen and most favoured people of God, their own con- 
 fessed crimes and horrible narrations, their barbarous 
 cruelty and ignorance, and the contempt and detestation 
 in which they were held by all the nations where they 
 i were known, sufficiently testify against them. # Their 
 constant efforts to overcloud and disguise everything 
 relating to themselves, by change of names and varia- 
 tion of events, has been so far effectual, that it is diffi- 
 cult to reconcile the greater part of their writings with 
 any other historical testimony, and no person will deny 
 that they are often at variance with their own state- 
 ments, forgetting the old adage, that a certain descrip- 
 tion of people require good memories. But if we take 
 
 * Josephus informs us that the surrounding nations considered 
 the Jews " the most stupid of barbarians, and that they had never 
 invented anything useful to man." — Joseph. Con. Apion. 
 
STKATO AND MODEUATUS. 31 
 
 a look into Diodorus Siculus, we shall find what is very 
 satisfactory, as what he relates to the following purport is 
 perfectly applicable to the primitive Jews, being consistent 
 with what Tacitus and others have written, as well as 
 with their own accounts. He informs us that long after 
 the death of the two Sesostrises, Actisanes, an Ethiopian 
 prince, invaded and conquered Egypt ; that at the time 
 of this conquest the country was infested by bands of 
 robbers, who were probably some of the wandering 
 hordes of the desarts ; and King Actisanes being deter- 
 mined to get rid of all such vermin, collected together 
 all such of them as had upon trial been convicted of the 
 crimes laid to their charge, cut off all their noses (some 
 say their ears also), and banished them into that desart 
 which is between Egypt and Syria, at the north-east 
 extremities of the Red Sea ; here they were in great 
 danger of perishing from the want of water, there being 
 very little except salt or brackish ponds around them. 
 In this predicament, however, they contrived to live for 
 some considerable time, by subsisting on quails, which 
 they caught in great abundance from the immense flocks 
 in which these birds make their passage, and this was 
 done by entangling the birds in long nets made with 
 reeds. As a horde of freebooters they now, by their 
 own account, journeyed towards the north-east, taking 
 
32 DIALOGUE. 
 
 forcible possession of lands belonging to the Phoenicians, 
 whom, for reasons already stated, they called Philistines, 
 and, for the same reason, they have concealed the real 
 name of the Egyptian king who held them in slavery, 
 under the fictitious name of Pharaoh,* — a name which, 
 if I am not much mistaken, is not acknowledged either 
 in the fabulous or the authentic history of the kings of 
 Egypt, although the Jewish books seem to speak of 
 many of that name. But whoever amongst their scribes 
 might be the compilers of their traditions or legends, 
 they had good reasons for keeping the truth in the back 
 ground, for if the real name of the king who expelled 
 them, or permitted them to go, had been given, the time 
 of their departure from Egypt, and the true cause 
 thereof, would have been known by history, which would 
 at once have destroyed both their credit and their pre- 
 tensions to antiquity; for the same reasons, perhaps, 
 they have nowhere, that I can find, mentioned the 
 Pyramids, and as there is no consent or agreement 
 
 * It would appear from Lucan, that the word Pharius was often 
 used to express any thing Egyptian, and therefore it is more than 
 probable that the angry Jews gave the appellative of Pharaoh to 
 their master, because he was Egypt's king, rather than as being the 
 proper name of the man. It is true that Josephus mentions the 
 name of Pharaon as being an appellative common to the male line 
 of Egyptian princes. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 33 
 
 amongst historians, or other authors, respecting the times 
 when they were built, or of the king or kings who 
 erected any, one of them, but all is enveloped in fable : 
 the fact seems to be, that Jiey were erected long before 
 the time of this king Actisanes. Another of the kings 
 of Egypt, whose name was Nileus, so far excelled all his 
 predecessors in improving the advantages derived from 
 the great river, that, after his death, his name (Nile) 
 was, by common consent, given to the river, which pre- 
 viously had been called by different names, viz. Eagle, 
 Oceanus, Egyptus, &c. Now, at the time when the 
 Jewish books were compiled, the river was known by its 
 modern name of Nile, and lest this fact should betray 
 the recent origin of these pretenders to antiquity, they 
 seem studiously to have avoided the name of Nile, giv- 
 ing it the general term of river, or the river of Egypt, 
 wiiile the Euphrates, Jordan, &c. go by their proper 
 names. In the 39th chapter of Ezekiei, the writer 
 speaks of some one of the conquests of Egypt (which 
 had no doubt already taken place), and in verse 14th he 
 says, " I will make Pathros desolate." For the sake of 
 information, I ask any divine, or commentator, to tell 
 me what or where this Pathros was, and whether the 
 compiler does not, by the poor disguise of transposing a 
 few of the letters, allude to the famous light tower of 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 DIALOGUE. 
 
 Pharos, which was accounted one of the wonders of the 
 world, and was built by two of the Ptolemies, after the 
 time of Alexander? So much for the antiquity of Eze- 
 kiel. In short, when all that we can gather from ancient 
 history regarding this people, is compared with the very 
 little that is rational and intelligible in their own ac- 
 counts, it amounts almost to a certainty that Diodorus 
 has direct allusion to the expulsion of the Jews from 
 Egypt, for they themselves declare that they wandered 
 in this very desert for a great length of time, confirming 
 almost every circumstance and occurrence (except the 
 rape of the noses and ears), as related by Diodorus. 
 After the battle of Issus, when Alexander conquered 
 Syria and Phoenicia, the same historian mentions nothing 
 at all of the Jews as an independent nation, and there- 
 fore they must have been conquered by, and then in 
 slavery to the Phoenicians, who had them in bondage 
 three different times. 
 
 Mod. — You have said, in such terms as cannot be 
 mistaken, that the Jews were nothing more than rude 
 copyists, clumsy and barbarous imitators in the different 
 countries where they were so frequently in slavery ; but 
 unless you produce facts to warrant such alarming 
 charges, I shall continue to believe that you judge 
 through prejudice, or at least too hastily, owing to some 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 35 
 
 apparent inconsistencies which are observable in their 
 books. 
 
 Strato. — No one will deny that it is quite in the 
 nature and reason of things, that a people who were 
 always extremely barbarous, more frequently in slavery 
 than free, and, by their own confession, perpetually pick- 
 ing up the usages and superstitions of the nations which 
 so held them in slavery, should imitate the customs of 
 their masters, rather than be taken as an example by 
 them. I have already noticed the ridiculous caricature 
 which they have made of Ogyges,' or Deucalion's flood, 
 and there is no difficulty in showing, by their own books, 
 that the whole of their theology was taken from the 
 mythological fables of paganism, particularly those of 
 the Egyptians, fitted up and disguised by the priests, to 
 impose upon the ignorance of the people ; but the first 
 and particular consideration was, to suit every thing to 
 their own interest. In like manner the theocracy of the 
 Jews, or their government by God, was made up of 
 shreds and patches of oriental fable, absurdly strung- 
 together in a fantastical way, corresponding to their 
 own rude notions of things, — 
 
 " An inhuman and uncultured race, who 
 Howl'd hideous praises to their 'jealous God.' ** 
 
 Mod. — Let us for the present, however, so pass by 
 
36 DIALOGUE. 
 
 these things as to leave them with a retrospect at conve- 
 nience ; and here I shall only observe that I can by no 
 means agree in your contemptuous endeavour to make it 
 appear, that the Jews have never been any thing better 
 than the vagabond old clothesmen of the world, except 
 during the very short time they held, as a nation, a small 
 corner of Coelo-Syria, and which, you say, they wrested 
 by force from the right and proper owners ; but herein I 
 am bound to differ from you so much, that I request 
 leave again to change the subject. You will readily al- 
 low, I presume, that this globe which we inhabit is only 
 a single speck, or atom, in comparison with what we see 
 around us, and as all these immense bodies of dense mat- 
 ter, discoverable from this earth, and at distances so pro- 
 digious as to be beyond the mind's conception, appear to 
 be governed in the most consummate order and harmony, 
 we cannot avoid acknowledging that there is an Omnipo- 
 tent Being who directs and governs the whole order of 
 the universe. 
 
 Strato. — That there is such a POWER, no man 
 can reasonably deny ; but still I must affirm that no man 
 who is free from prejudice, and capable of using his rea- 
 soning faculties fairly and impartially, will ever pretend 
 to know any thing more of that POWER, than the very 
 little that he sees and understands of the works, or the 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 37 
 
 common process of nature, which is daily before his 
 eyes. Let the silly and contemptible pride of man im- 
 piously personify it in his own, or any other earthly like- 
 ness he pleases, — let him ascribe to it his own miserable 
 passions, — let him charge it with having written, or dic- 
 tated books of a sh amefu lly immoral tendency, * and in 
 a tyrannical manner, regarding the great mass of man- 
 kind, and partially to benefit a handful of the most des- 
 picable banditti, and such like ridiculous fooleries. But 
 deluded man, with all his sottish forms, his idle puppet- 
 show ceremonies, and with all his pretensions to heavenly 
 inspirations, never can know any thing of that All- 
 Ruling Power, farther than he sees it set forth and ex- 
 ercised in the works of nature. This is the boundary of 
 his very limited perceptions, and when free and unbiased, 
 the utmost point his faculties can arrive at is, a i^ational 
 conviction that this Omnipotent Power is not distinct, or 
 
 * We are required to believe that from the All-ruling Power pro- 
 ceeded such immoral and malevolent desires and sentiments as the 
 following : — " Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow; 
 let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg ; let them also 
 seek their bread out of their desolate places j let the extortioner 
 catch all that he hath, and let the stranger spoil his labour ; let 
 there be none to extend mercy to him, neither let there be any to 
 favour his fatherless children ; let his posterity be cut off, and in the 
 generation^following let their name be blotted out ! ! " Here is a 
 specimen of Bible morality. 
 
38 DIALOGUE. 
 
 separable from, or external to, nature herself; * and that 
 the innumerable bodies of apparently solid matter that 
 revolve in the endless plenum (for all is matter in some 
 form or other), are regulated by the natural and self-ex- 
 istent properties of matter and motion; and in the 
 mutual relation which all bodies, composing the different 
 systems, have to their common centre, or sun, and to 
 each other by the powers of attraction and repulsion : 
 these systems appear to be in nothing different from the 
 Cartesian Vortices. Most of the globes which we be- 
 hold may consist of matter similar to that of this earth, 
 and like all matter existing of itself, and therefore eter- 
 nal, subject to change of form alone, which change of 
 form is the necessary consequence of motion, one of its 
 essential properties.-)* 
 
 Mod. — Men are so much accustomed to the construc- 
 tion of all artificial objects, that it seems to them anala- 
 
 * Amongst the initiated in the mysteries of antiquity, the term 
 God was used only as a name expressive of an effect, whose cause 
 is nature. 
 
 f " We may conclude boldly, then, that there is only one sub- 
 stance, differently modified, in the whole universe." This is not an 
 hypothesis raised on the strength of things required, or of things 
 merely supposed to be true, nor of my own reason alone ; but ex- 
 perience has spoken to me in confirmation of what reason continu- 
 ally points out; and thus I have joined them together, as the torch 
 which leads us in the path of nature. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 39 
 
 gous to suppose that matter itself must have been pro- 
 duced, or created, by an infinite power, and this power 
 being- itself immaterial, stood in no need of materials to 
 work with, as it created every thing out of itself, thai is, 
 out of nothing. 
 
 Strato. — It is just this superficial mode of drawing 
 inference from the works of man, that gives rise to the 
 idea of the creation of matter, because he cannot distin- 
 guish between nature and a clock-maker ; for it is the 
 invariable propensity of men to prefer the prodigy and 
 the miracle, to that which is naturally easy and reasonable ; 
 and they either cannot, or will not, perceive the thou- 
 sand-fold difficulty of supposing a time when matter did 
 not exist, and that it was created out of nothing, to this 
 plain, simple, and rational proposition, that it did always 
 exist in and of itself The word creation, in its common 
 acceptation, has therefore no proper meaning, nor does 
 it admit of any fixed definition, except when applied to 
 the creation of new forms, from pre-existing forms of 
 matter. We see nature, or if you will have it so, God, 
 in every thing ; and St Thomas tells us that, " he is 
 nature, and the agent." This All-Ruling Power, then, 
 call it God, or nature, or by any other name you please, 
 (for names are truly nothing except in as far as they 
 serve to convey clear ideas, and that which is alone all 
 
40 LOG UE. 
 
 n all, needs no name, for. there is nothing with which it 
 can be confounded), must be in all places where there is 
 existence ; and is by, and of itself, every thing that ex- 
 ists, filling every thing, and leaving no space for any 
 other substance : therefore, every thing that presents 
 itself to the senses, or of which the mind can possibly 
 form any conception, being material, or matter in some 
 form or other, it follows that every existing thing is 
 comprehended in this unbounded and Almighty material 
 power, which has been called, or designated by thousands 
 of different names, in the thousands of artificial, and ever 
 fluctuating religions that have distracted the world. 
 
 Mod. — I imagine, as you have stated, that no distinct 
 and rational conception can be formed in the mind, of 
 any thing that is not material; and even allowing the 
 absurdity of supposing that the mind can form any idea 
 of a thing that is essentially nothing, still it does not 
 necessarily follow that matter is self-existent, self-ruled 
 and modified; for all appearances in nature seem to 
 warrant, and even to force us to the conclusion, that so 
 much harmony and order cannot exist without the direc- 
 tion of some infinite power or being, which exists not 
 only independently of nature or matter, but having these 
 principles dependent upon itself; and this power, or 
 being, we call God. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 41 
 
 Strato. — If you admit that nature is the principle, 
 there is no room left for supposing any other existence ; 
 for if matter and its nature be the principle, as such, it 
 can have no cause, no antecedent, and must therefore be 
 self-existent and eternal. But this does not suit with 
 your favourite theory of a being which you are taught 
 to believe exists externally to, or beyond, the bounds of 
 nature and of matter, which is altogether boundless"; 
 and this creature of your imagination, you figure in your 
 mind to be something that is essentially nothing ; and as 
 names with you take precedence of ideas, you are pleased 
 to describe this being of yours as an immaterial sub- 
 stance, which substance, you say again, is spiritual, and 
 although spiritual and immaterial, yet possessing the 
 form or likeness of a man ! ! An astonishing piece of 
 impious arrogance, in which it is hard to say whether the 
 pride or the folly of man is uppermost^ In regard to 
 
 * Since nothing is more impossible than for human conception to 
 take such a mighty flight as to equal, much less can it pass beyond 
 the first principles of things : that is, the self-existence, and self- 
 ruled motions of matter. 
 
 f Zenophanes observed, that if the ox or the elephant understood 
 sculpture or painting, they would not fail to represent the Deity 
 under their own peculiar figure. In this they would have as much 
 reason as Polycletus, or Phidias, who gave him the human form. 
 
 " And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith 
 Nurs'd by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon." 
 
42 DIALOGUE. 
 
 the inherent powers and energies which govern matter, 
 all that man has yet discovered respecting them, are cer- 
 tain qualities, or properties which he has called by the 
 names of gravitation, repulsion, attraction, motion, &c. 
 and there are probably thousands 01 other qualities be- 
 longing to matter, which are beyond tfte powers of the 
 human mind to discover ; all constituting those immutable 
 laws of nature, or matter, and of which it cannot be 
 divested, not even by its own powers. And in all this 
 there is nothing more surprising than there is in water 
 running downwards, when left to itself, a property 
 of which no power whatever can divest it. Thus, 
 matter acting by its own laws, is the principle of prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 Mod. — You seem to have a particular aversion to the 
 commonly-received notion that, God made man in his 
 own image or likeness, a fable which, you say, was in- 
 vented by the priests, in times of ignorance ; and in a 
 cynical sneering way, you have elsewhere said that man 
 hag returned the compliment by making his God in 
 human likeness ; but this idea, even if erroneous, appears 
 to be perfectly harmless; and if the pride of man has pre- 
 sumed a little too far in this particular, you are still com- 
 pelled to allow that he is an animal far superior to any 
 other on the globe, and as he rules all others, he must 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 43 
 
 have a natural right over them ; and if so, they must 
 have been made for his use and subsistence. 
 
 Strato. — "This is as much as to say that, as noses 
 wear spectacles, therefore noses were made for specta- 
 cles." The seliish and contemptible notion that the 
 Omnipotent Power, which rules every thing, made man 
 in its own form or likeness, had its origin, no doubt, 
 amongst those whose interest it always is to mislead the 
 multitude, (the personifying of Deities being common in 
 the remotest antiquity) by buoying up the false pride 
 and folly of men, between whom, and their three Deities, 
 they have constituted themselves as the legal and autho- 
 rized mediators. Man differs from the other animals in 
 the structure of his body, and is superior to them only 
 in some qualities, which are greatly improved in educa- 
 tion by the experience and combination of society, as 
 may be proved beyond contradiction, by comparing him 
 as the educated production of society, with what he is 
 in the wild, or natural state; for in the latter condition he is 
 so far from being superior, or formidable, that lie hardly 
 holds a middle rank with the larger animals, many of 
 whom look upon him as destined by nature for their sub- 
 sistence, and use him accordingly ; and by the same rule 
 of right that guides man in such cases, viz. having the 
 art, or the force to subdue their prey. 
 
44 DIALOGUE. 
 
 Mod. — To sav nothing- of what we call a divine right 
 in man to the other animals, his superiority over them is 
 proved, in as much as no other is capable of reasoning 
 or speech ; of calling assemblies, and holding consulta- 
 tion for promoting the common good of society; of 
 making written laws for the government of countries, 
 and, under the protection of these laws, to build cities 
 for national convenience and safety. 
 
 Stuato. — In society man has now before him the 
 written learning and experience of his species for more 
 than two thousand years, to which 3 if we add his natural 
 ingenuity and subtility, arising from his large proportion 
 of brain, we will not be at all surprised at his having 
 subdued so many of the other animals to his own use and 
 service : but in doing all this by dint of combination in 
 society, has he truly improved his condition for the short 
 term of life which nature has allotted for him ? Are not 
 the evils which spring from the present distorted condi- 
 tion of society, greater than its advantages ? After sub- 
 duing the other animals, has not man left himself, 
 his own species to contend against, corrupted as they 
 are by false and ridiculous systems of religion, by unna- 
 tural and iniquitous laws which, in a great measure, 
 spring from those sources, and by a general hypocrisy 
 and falseness of character, which pervades society from the 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 45 
 
 highest to the lowest ? — Under sucli deplorable circum- 
 stances, let any man of candour and observation lay his 
 hand upon his heart, and honestly declare whether his 
 fellow men, and even those he calls his friends, are not 
 the cause and prime source of all his inquietudes and 
 miseries, — whether man is not the animal that he is 
 obliged to be more continually on his guard against than 
 any other ! These melancholy evils arise, not from any 
 thing innately vicious in his nature, but from the accu- 
 mulated mass of absurdity, error, and falsehood that has 
 overwhelmed society, and to which I have already ad- 
 verted ; but it may be farther observed here, that all this 
 perverse degeneracy is chiefly to be attributed to a 
 general apostacy from nature and in place of her plain 
 and wholesome laws, men have substituted the arts of 
 insincerity and fraud, with institutions, manners, customs, 
 &c. the most pernicious to human happiness. In proof 
 of this perversion of nature, take as a single instance for 
 the present, the baleful effects of the laws relating to 
 monogamy, or single marriage, so pregnant with mis- 
 chief and misery to nine-tenths of mankind who unhap- 
 pily bind themselves by them ; — love constitutes the 
 chief happiness of all animals except man, to him alone 
 it brings misery, owing to this atrocious law, now be- 
 come still more intolerable since the ministration thereof 
 
46 DIALOGUE. 
 
 has been usurped by the church, where the priest, by a 
 few conjoining syllables takes upon him to unite amicably 
 together, dispositions of the most discordant nature, the 
 union of which may turn out to be as fire with water; 
 and that too by a bond which cannot be cancelled but in 
 death : but although the priest may thus violate nature, 
 he cannot extinguish her : his two persons turned into 
 one, soon find that they not only continue to be two 
 still, but that they are at all points opposed to each 
 other ; and then follows a scene of clouds and tempests, 
 where there is no haven of peace, and therefore ship- 
 wreck or ransomless captivity is the inevitable doom. 
 The only thing that could ever render monogamy at all 
 bearable, would be the liberty of divorce to the fullest 
 extent, at the instance of either party, but without that 
 remedy the intention of nature is thwarted doubly, and 
 the obligatory tie is a cruel and unnatural imposition, 
 standing as it does in full opposition to those free and 
 voluntary means which nature intended as the means of 
 procreation. This glaring fact daily presents itself be- 
 fore us, — that, the horror of such unnatural trammels con- 
 demns nearly the half of the female sex to that pining, 
 cheerless state of celibacy, that is far more than any 
 thing else, abhorrent to nature: — in youth men will 
 be blinded by the animal passion of love, which is com- 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 47 
 
 monly too strong for headlong inexperience ; but in riper 
 years, people of sense and observation, who value their 
 liberty, will not readily be induced to commit themselves 
 so egregiously for life, well knowing that such a yoke, 
 under such conditions, is in the highest degree repug- 
 nant to nature, which teaches us that, if galling fetters 
 so contrary to will and conscience, cannot be removed 
 or rectified by law, they should be eluded by preven- 
 tion. " If law forbids the cancelling of cruel bonds, 
 nature directs us not to sign and seal them:" and, 
 
 " Since many are so bad, 'tis wisdon* to beware, 
 And better shun the bait than struggle in the snare." 
 
 It is remarkgJble that man should be the only animal on the 
 earth that has had the folly to bind himself through life 
 by shackles so inimical to, and subversive of his natural 
 liberty, — all the others reason better in marrying during 
 the season of love only, and the offspring is in little 
 danger, save from the rapaciousness of man. In short, 
 4 marriage almost always represents nothing more than 
 the picture of two unfortunate human beings, who are 
 chained together, to be a reciprocal torment to each 
 other/ 
 
 Mod. — You seem to despise a beaten tract; and if it be 
 truth that you are really in search of, you seek it only in 
 
48 DIALOGUE. 
 
 bye-patlis wliicli lead you to strange conclusions ; and 
 although you draw your premises from nature, many of 
 them still appear questionable, at least so they will 
 appear if tried by commonly -received creeds, usages, 
 and customs ; so they will not bear you out in arraigning 
 the religion and other institutions of your country, or in 
 your attempts to show that, by disregarding the obvious 
 principles of nature, man has become a mere artificial 
 animal in society, the patch-work of dissimulation and 
 superstition: — but these attacks are ill judged, and will 
 certainly gain you no credit, for even if the whole of 
 what you allege was strictly true, yet men neither can 
 nor ought to bear to be told such truths, because every 
 endeavour to lower or vilify an established order of 
 things, whether that be in itself good or bad, serves more 
 or less to unhinge society. And you know little of 
 human nature, if you suppose yourself able to convince a 
 majority of the people you live amongst, that man is not 
 the most favoured creature of the Supreme Being, who 
 has bestowed upon him such excellent qualities of mind 
 and body, as show indisputably his vast superiority over 
 the brute creation. 
 
 Strato.— I have no wish to deprive you of any of 
 your consolations, whatever may be their foundation. 
 Animal life is merely a portion of matter organized in a 
 
ST11AT0 AND MODERATUS. 49 
 
 certain manner by a hidden process of nature, and of this 
 organization, thought and action are the necessary 
 consequence ;* and that which the ancients simply 
 called the breath of life, and we call soul, is the same in 
 all animals, and may, not without reason, be said to be 
 immortal, since it certainly forms part of, and belongs to 
 that elementary matter which we call air, and must 
 therefore be eternal. Those qualities which go by the 
 
 * "Let us view man when within the shell, and when out of it: 
 let us take a microscope and examine the youngest embryos, those 
 of the growth of four, six, eight, or fifteen days ; after this age we 
 may discover them with our naked eyes. Then we can perceive 
 the head only, a round egg with two blackish specks, which repre- 
 sent the eyes. Before this time, all being unformed, we can see 
 nothing but a pulp of marrow, which is the brain, where the original 
 of the nerves is first formed, where the principle of feeling is first 
 seated, and the heart, which begins already to beat in this soft 
 pulp : this is the punctum saliens of Malpighi, part of the liveliness 
 of which does perhaps already proceed from the influence of the 
 nerves. Then we see the head by degrees stretch forth the neck, 
 which being widened, first forms the thorax, where the heart im- 
 mediately descends, and takes up its situation. The belly is framed 
 next, which is divided into two parts by a partition, called by 
 anatomists the diaphragm. These parts being expanded, furnish 
 the arms, the hands, the fingers, the nails, and the hair ; the other 
 gives the thighs, the legs, the feet, &c, with the known difference 
 only of situation, which forms the support and balance of the body. 
 It is a surprising vegetation, but not more surprising in man than in 
 any other animal. Here you see the hairs that cover the tops of 
 our heads, and there you behold the leaves and flowers ; the same 
 luxury of nature shines throughout." 
 
50 DIALOGUE. 
 
 names of mind and reason, in man, exist to a certain 
 degree in all animals, and are even much more perfect 
 in some of them than they are in man ; but his excessive 
 pride, and love of dominion, prevents his seeing and 
 acknowledging this truth, while he arrogantly contemns 
 all the other creatures ; and his interested teachers have 
 found out another name to express precisely that quality 
 which we call reason in man, and this name is 
 instinct ; a term which, forsooth, we must never fail 
 to apply, when speaking of the mental faculties of those 
 animals we call brutes, lest they should too nearly 
 approach the dignity of the " lords of the creation ;" and 
 herein they are right, for reason and all experience at 
 once confess the truth, that the sole difference is in the 
 distinction of terms. To deny mind and reason to the 
 dog, the bee, the ant, and hundreds of others, is as 
 absurd and false as it would be to deny that the eagle 
 had wings.* To judge of rationalty and irrational ty from 
 apprehending, or not apprehending, the meaning of vocal 
 sounds, or from silence, or speech not understood, shows 
 a shallowness of judgment truly deserving"of our con- 
 
 * When two rams retire backwards to a distance from each other, 
 in order to make their blow the stronger, do they not reason as 
 correctly as if they had known from mechanical art, that their 
 strength is the product of their weight multiplied by their velocity ? 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 51 
 
 tempt. You say that brutes have no walled cities, no 
 written laws; I answer, neither had men, while they 
 were happy, and had not become victims of that society 
 which is now monstrously unnatural, with all its train of 
 follies and superstitions. If pride and prejudice would 
 allow, man would see clearly that many of the animals 
 even far surpass him in those reasoning powers of the 
 mind that serve as guides towards preservation and 
 health ; for all the grazing classes have a perfect know- 
 ledge of the herbage that is deleterious to them, by the 
 smell alone ; but to avoid what is injurious, man requires 
 generally to unite smell, taste, and experience, to guide 
 him in safety : many of the domestic animals have a fore- 
 knowledge that amounts to certainty, of approaching 
 atmospherical changes, impending storms, &c, for we 
 see that they provide against them, and are never de- 
 ceived. These instances show what may be called a 
 utility of mind, or a degree of useful wisdom that leaves 
 man at a distance ; and many others might be quoted of 
 the wonderful foresight, providence, and reasoning* 
 powers of those we call the brute creation. 
 
 * That defect which hinders vocal communication between man 
 and the other animals, why may it not be in him, as well as in 
 them ? for we understand them no more than they do us : and by 
 the same rule and reason they may therefore despise our ignorance, 
 
52 DIALOGUE. 
 
 Mod. — The true meaning and tendency of your argu- 
 ment is, to establish the fact that the dominion of man 
 over the other animals, is wholly and exclusively owing 
 to the following causes, viz. — the learning and experi- 
 ence of his species, handed down to him, generation after 
 generation, for more than two thousand years ; his com- 
 bination in society against the other animals ; and the 
 cunning and dexterity which his ample allowance of 
 brain naturally gives him. But, granting that he has 
 benefited by the writings of antiquity, and those of his 
 forefathers, still those writings are the effects of the 
 ingenuity of man, and cannot have any other origin, 
 however far back you may trace them ; and it follows 
 that each succeeding generation have a right to avail 
 themselves of the advantages handed down to them by 
 their ancestors. 
 
 Strato. — That the orang-outang and others of the 
 greater monkies have never yet written testaments, 
 creeds, and foolish catechisms, is no proof of their utter 
 incapability of learning to write, and even to arrange 
 their ideas ; but this in all probability would add nothing 
 to the comfort and happiness of their lives, since it 
 
 as well as we do theirs : and, following up the absurdity, we may 
 call the Chinese beasts, because we do not understand them. — 
 Montaigne. 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 53 
 
 appears pretty plainly that all the useful knowledge and 
 experience of former generations is handed down 
 amongst them (as well as amongst men), in a manner not 
 undeserving of the name of oral tradition ; for nothing 
 can be more evident than the perfect understanding that 
 is amongst them, and which is communicated most likely 
 by signs as well as by sounds ; and for any thing we can 
 ever know to the contrary, that tradition of their's may, 
 in some respects, be more perfect than it is with man. 
 
 Mod. — I cannot account for your apparent wish to 
 undervalue the true rank of your own species, in the 
 scale of animated being, while at the same time you 
 cannot refrain from blaming them for exercising those 
 powers of bodily strength or dexterity, which surely 
 were not given them in vain, but intended by nature for 
 their advantage against their enemies. If it is thus you 
 mean to argue, it is wrong in principle, and in experience, 
 for it is quite evident that if man had not, in some way 
 or other, subdued the greater part of the land animals, 
 they would have overrun, and exterminated his whole 
 race ; so that his conduct herein is perfectly defensible on 
 the strong ground of natural right. 
 
 Strato. — Nothing can be further from my intention 
 than to blame man for enforcing all his natural rights to 
 secure his safety and subsistence ; and although I am one 
 
54 DIALOGUE. 
 
 of the very few who are satisfied that nature never in- 
 tended man should eat the flesh of animals ; yet it seems 
 a very common order of things that one animal should 
 live upon another ; and the only excuse that I can find 
 for man's degeneracy in this particular, is the probability 
 that he began to kill and eat animals in self-defence, to 
 prevent his being devoured by them ; and as soon as he 
 began to relish this diet, the priests with one consent 
 made the discovery, that the gods were much better 
 pleased with the grateful fumes of fat roasted beef or 
 venison, than they were with those of myrrh and frankin- 
 cense ; so these innocent and bloodless altars of primi- 
 tive simplicity were forsaken for those of the knife and 
 the bloody priest, who, on particular occasions required the 
 immolation of human victims beneath his murderous hand;* 
 nor would he have spared the gods themselves if they had 
 been fat, and tangible. But what is most deserving of 
 derision is, that silly fondness in man which makes him 
 
 * The priests of antiquity declared that their wicked and inhu- 
 man sacrifices were done by the express command of God. 
 
 "This is the origin of all those sacrifices of human victims, which 
 have disgraced almost every part of the world. What father or 
 mother could act so contrary to every principle and feeling of 
 nature, as to bring their son or daughter to the priest, to be sacrifi- 
 ced upon the altar, if they had not been previously convinced, that 
 the god of the country commanded the sacrifice to be made." 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 55 
 
 believe and assert that all living creatures were made for 
 his use ; whereas his true right to all such as he can 
 subdue, either by force or dexterity, is precisely the 
 same as that which lions or tigers have over their prey, 
 that is, the right of conquest, and no more. To account 
 for this conceited folly in men, we have only to consider 
 the early impressions that have been made upon their 
 minds by that long-robed class, whom they have the in- 
 fatuation to maintain in sloth and idleness, under their 
 own pretence of being the mediators between heaven 
 and earth ; and while that idleness is supported by con- 
 tinuing the pay, (for it is the pay that makes the priest), 
 the indulged party will, in grateful return, never fail to 
 make man the most favoured of all earthly creatures, by 
 the supreme power ; and in doing this the theologian is 
 sure to succeed, because he works upon the pride, the 
 ignorance, and the selfishness of ninety-nine in every 
 hundred of mankind, securing to himself thereby the fat 
 of the land ; for the small voice of truth has always been 
 disregarded when heard from the very few who worship 
 her for her own sake. 
 
 Mod. — I have listened to you with patience, and 
 with a desire to elicit truth, but there are some of your 
 opinions that appear singular, and too daring to deserve 
 support ; and^ as I have already observed, whatever may 
 
56 DIALOGUE. 
 
 be the subject in discussion, you are sure in the end to 
 throw aspersions upon the sacerdotal order, and the 
 superstitions of the people ; and therefore I beg leave 
 again to divert your attention to other matters : — You 
 have wholly denied the creation of matter, and you 
 attribute the continual change of its forms, and new com- 
 binations, to its own inherent powers of modification, 
 acting by energies and impulses inseparable from itself? 
 one of which is motion ; and that property, you say, is 
 essential to it ; but who communicated the first motion 
 to matter ? 
 
 Strato. — If you allow that matter is eternal, (and 
 this grand truth is admitted by all the ancient, and 
 most of the modern philosophers) you preclude my 
 allowing you what you call a first motion, and the sup- 
 position would be illogical, after it is granted that matter 
 is eternal, and motion essential to it, for then it follows 
 that motion must be co-eternal with it. There can be no 
 absolute rest for any portion of matter, and any 
 change, whether organic or otherwise, cannot possibly 
 be effected without motion. All things are so perpe- 
 tually moved as to make it appear that there is a pro- 
 cess and recess in infinitum, and although the series of 
 changes that matter necessarily undergoes from motion, 
 are eternal, yet no precise form of matter can be eternal, 
 
ST11AT0 AND MODEKATUS. 57 
 
 all existing forms having been only renewed, or modified 
 from the materials that had anteriorly constituted other 
 forms ; and hence is derived the only rational idea that 
 we can attach to the word creation. 
 
 Mod. — There have always been, and still are so many 
 thousands of conflicting opinions upon these subjects, as 
 well as upon all sorts of religions, natural as well as 
 those called revealed, that the impartial inquirer, who is 
 in search of truth alone, is lost and bewildered in the 
 endless mazes of controversy, and we are obliged to take 
 shelter in Pyrrhonism at last. 
 
 Strato. — Right reason is the best criterion of truth, 
 and is a law befitting nature, extended to all, consistent 
 with itself, plain to every capacity, and everlasting. I 
 quite agree with you in the very proper observation you 
 have made regarding the perfect order and harmony of 
 the universe, which so pleasingly leads us to the belief 
 that there does necessarily exist an all-sufficient, and 
 eternal power in nature, which is properly the only 
 object of the contemplation and admiration of mankind; 
 and the religion arising from this source, and which is 
 joined to the knowledge of nature, is the only religion 
 that is rational, promoting peace and kindness amongst 
 men, and requiring not the expense of an hireling priest- 
 hood : — this is the religion of nature, and no other is 
 
58 DIALOGUE. 
 
 calculated to pluck up the roots of error and superstition. 
 But as for the numerous systems that have, and do still 
 pretend to particular revelations, all different from, and 
 opposed to each other, we have only to look at the fruit 
 they have borne — the rivers of human blood that has 
 been shed to support them against truth and reason. No 
 sect amongst all these various inventions can brook a 
 contradition, and much less endure that their doctrines 
 should be charged with absurdity and falsehood, and 
 their ceremonies with vanity and folly; for in these 
 points the priests will proceed to a degree of fury and 
 hatred against their antagonists that is hardly con- 
 ceivable, for attacking their honesty and credit, and 
 thereby endangering the very existence of those arts 
 and illusions whereby they secure, in ease and affluence, 
 the good things of the world, which mainly depend 
 on the belief, or at least the acquiescence, which their 
 preachings meet with. All things are sent them from 
 heaven, although it is evident they are human inven- 
 tions, superfluous, empty, and often ridiculous fictions, 
 frequently so far pernicious as to be hurtful to virtue 
 and public tranquility, as can be shown from history, 
 and all experience. If it is objected that it is not pos- 
 sible, that none of all their conflicting opinions should 
 be true, it is at least equally impossible that more 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 59 
 
 than one of them should be true. Their opponents, 
 the Deists, on the other hand, who cannot agree to the 
 ravings of theological theories, are abominated and 
 persecuted ; the fierce devotee would have them pro- 
 hibited fire and water whilst alive, and such is their 
 implacable hatred that they would have them eternally 
 tormented when dead, to effect which laudable and 
 humane purpose, they have invented a suitable place 
 for the end they had in view, Such has superstition 
 ever been when vested in power and authority, and its 
 cruelty and intolerance have always been commensurate 
 with its power.* It is, therefore, the reason of nature, 
 that every good and virtuous member of society should 
 use all his endeavours to pluck out the teeth, if he 
 cannot destroy this most pernicious of monsters, that 
 has abused in a certain degree the ignorant credulity 
 of mankind in all ages, and in a greater degree amongst 
 the Christians ever since the second century. 
 
 * In the true spirit of persecution, John Calvin, when armed 
 with power, wrote to the high Chamberlain of the King of Navarre, 
 of date the 30th Sept. 1561, thus : " Honor, glory, and riches, shall 
 be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the 
 country of those zealous scoundrels, who stir up the people to re- 
 volt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have 
 exterminated Michael Servetus, the Spaniard." 
 
 Vide Eccles. Researches, 
 
60 DIALOGUE. 
 
 Mod. — By your own admission, antiquity will show 
 that mankind have always been prone to superstition, — 
 that they will stick by, and defend whatsoever sort of it 
 was first imposed upon their minds ; and although the 
 ground-work of the ever-varying religions was change- 
 able, yet notions of a supernatural deity, or deities, 
 entered into all of them ; nor can such indispensable 
 apparatus be excluded from any religion that is calculated 
 to foster the love of the marvellous, and the faith in 
 prodigies, which is so much interwoven with human 
 nature, — it is preternatural weapons and machinery alone 
 that can act upon the hopes and fears of men in regard 
 to a future state. Now, you would overturn the present 
 fabric of theology, without substituting any thing in 
 its room, to answer the above purpose, except the simple 
 religion of nature and reason, which, by your own 
 confession, cannot be appreciated by more than one in 
 every hundred of mankind ; thus you would not only 
 loosen, but altogether untie those bonds which churches 
 and states, with united power, have found so necessary 
 to govern society. 
 
 Strato.— A very excellent philosopher informs us, 
 that — "In Pennsylvania there is no religion established 
 by the government; every person adopts the one he 
 likes best, — the priest is no charge to the state, — the 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 61 
 
 individuals provide for them as they find it convenient, 
 and tax themselves accordingly; the priest is there, 
 like the merchant, maintained at the expense of the 
 consumer ; — he who has no priest, and consumes no part 
 of the commodity he deals in, pays no part of his 
 expense. Pennsylvania is a model for other nations." 
 
 In like manner I would have all religions, except 
 that of nature and reason (which requires no hireling 
 priests), made marketable commodities, so that every 
 votary, or consumer, might supply himself at that 
 preaching shop, where the article best suited his fancy, 
 and there to pay the vender for the quantity purchased. 
 This would be fair and reasonable. But to support the 
 present profligate superstition, authority comes to stand 
 in the place of reason, and is the natural result of the 
 evil of having an established religion ; and then comes 
 the tenfold evil of the adulterous connection between 
 that religion and the state, confirmed by laws which 
 were no doubt procured through the immense wealth 
 and power of the clergy in former times, when they 
 secured to themselves peculiar privileges and immuni- 
 ties ; and by the strength of that common interest, which 
 is exclusively their own, and is the strongest imagin- 
 able, they formed a distinct state within the political 
 state, in almost every nation in Europe, and these 
 
62 DIALOGUE. 
 
 sacerdotal states being firmly united, although at a 
 distance from each other, were often formidable to the 
 civil governments of Europe ; and where they bear 
 sway and rule in the executive of any nation, as at 
 present they do in Spain and Portugal, that nation is 
 doomed to the most abject slavery, to ignorance, weak- 
 ness, degradation, and the contempt of other nations. 
 Witness the present condition of the two countries 
 above mentioned, where the two millstones of knavery 
 and folly will grind on till some rational powers of 
 genius shall start up, and rouse the people from their 
 sloth and stupidity. 
 
 Mod. — In every age and in every country of the 
 world, there have always been religions of some sort or 
 other, and of course there must have been priests 
 attached to all of them, to administer and expound; 
 and when men of learning are set apart for a public 
 office, a public expense will be incurred for their 
 maintenance. 
 
 Strato. — The inference you draw from the position 
 laid down, is quite correct ; but have the mass of man- 
 kind in any age or country, ever freely and impartially 
 ventured to examine into the reputed necessity, or 
 whether there is really any indispensable obligation on 
 their part to support such establishments, which the 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 63 
 
 very few in every country, who are capable of just and 
 wise reflections, know to be wholly illusory; and thus 
 to encourage idleness and luxury in this numerous class 
 of men, who eat up such an unconscionable share of the 
 earnings of industry ; while a vast portion of that 
 property which ought to form part of the resources of 
 the state, is ingulfed and squandered upon bishops, and 
 other dignitaries, who profess to be patterns of all that 
 is humble, poor, and self-denying, yet whose lives 
 generally, are so many examples of the full-blown vices 
 that stand in natural opposition to the virtues they 
 profess ; and it is through their powerful influence, the 
 better to support that glare and pomp which dazzles the 
 weak vulgar, that the land is groaning with churches in 
 every corner,* with their heaven-directed spires, and 
 
 * To build churches and temples, says Zeno Citticus, is no 
 way necessary, for nothing ought to be accounted sacred by right, 
 or esteemed holy, which men themselves erect ; neither among 
 the Persians of old, nor among the primitive Hebrews, were there 
 any temples dedicated to divine service, till at last one was founded 
 by Solomon, for which he is reproved by the prophet Isaiah. 
 Cornelius Agrippa also observes, that amongst the Gentiles there 
 were some very eminent for the structures of their temples ; but 
 others there were who never made use of any, of which number 
 was Xerxes, who is reported to have burnt all the temples of the 
 lesser Asia, at the request of his magicians, esteeming it no less 
 than impiety to enclose the gods in walls. 
 
64 DIALOGUE. 
 
 all the other expensive and imposing decorations, so 
 well calculated to over-awe those who have been taught 
 to think what others think ; not how to think for them- 
 selves. All this, taken together, composes the enormous 
 fabric, called generally, the Church, at first invented by- 
 Priests, in league with tyrants, supported from the 
 labour and sweat of the people, and dedicated to 
 theologic visions and chimeras. 
 
 Mod. — With all your strange hostility to churches 
 and their decorations, you never can make it appear 
 that the people derive no real benefit or advantage from 
 them ; for even if we lay aside the obligation of their 
 divine institution, the mere erection of them diffuses 
 wealth, and affords employment for the necessitous, who 
 might otherwise be destitute; and besides this grand 
 object, we ought to make due allowance for the orna- 
 ment and grandeur which cities and towns receive from 
 such public buildings. 
 
 Strato. — What hinders men from combining what 
 is nationally beneficial with the agreeable and the orna- 
 mental ? Can we conceive any thing of greater utility, 
 and at the same time more ornamental than the cultiva- 
 tion of waste lands, — the conversion of those unprofitable 
 wildernesses into so many beautiful fields and gardens, 
 all conducive to the health and subsistence of man ? In 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 65 
 
 England, the prodigious expense lavished upon the 
 monuments of superstition, in the shape of churches, 
 together with the church lands and revenues of those 
 fatlings, the dignitaries, would alone have turned a vast 
 portion of the waste lands in the kingdom, into culti- 
 vated and fruitful fields, and intersected many convenient 
 parts of it with useful canals, and defrayed the expense 
 of other national works of unquestionable utility ; whilst 
 our ' tithe pigs metropolitan,'* with their trains of 
 subaltern drones, would have been taught to follow up 
 the intentions of nature, by labouring for their sub- 
 sistence in the cultivation of mother earth, or other 
 employment that would be really useful in society. 
 You have said that this order of men are not to be 
 blamed for living by a trade that is generally considered 
 as being indispensably necessary : — be it so, but I say 
 again, let those alone bear the expense who are silly 
 enough to be led to believe that such institutions are at 
 all important or useful to humanity, abolishing all 
 established, or state religions, leaving every man at 
 
 * ' Fleury informs us that, in the early periods of Christianity, all 
 the clergy, even to the bishops, lived after a poor, at least a plain 
 and ordinary manner. St Jerome highly disapproved of the dis- 
 tinction of bishops and priests, or curates. He asserted that, 
 according to St Paul, they were the same thing, till by the in- 
 stigation of the devil, there were ranks, or distinctions in religion.* 
 
66 DIALOGUE. 
 
 liberty to pay his priest (if he keeps one) as it suits his 
 will and convenience; and then the article vended by 
 the preacher, will find its intrinsic value in the market. 
 To render Ireland nourishing and happy, nothing is so 
 much wanted at this moment, as the abolition of all 
 favoured, or established religion, and a free trade granted 
 in theology. 
 
 Mod. — The church itself has always insisted on the 
 absolute obligation that states and communities are 
 under, by the fiat of heaven, to settle permanent re- 
 venues for the maintenance of the clergy, and for the 
 support of respectability generally, as well as to set the 
 whole concern above any danger that might proceed 
 from the alienation of the minds of men from its creeds 
 and dictates ; and without some such independent pro- 
 vision, I do not see how any church could stand against 
 the increasing numbers of those who are declared ene- 
 mies to all the systems of revealed religion. 
 
 Strato. — The most formidable enemies of all those 
 religions which pretend to revelation, and the most 
 daring exposures of their absurd dogmas, have come from 
 amongst those who were educated for the church, many 
 of whom refused to take orders at all; and others, from a 
 rare honesty and tenderness of conscience, abandoned 
 the profession altogether, refusing longer to be supported 
 
A- 
 
 STRATO AND MODERATUS. 67 
 
 by an avocation which they considered to be, in no small 
 degree, inconsistent with truth and good morals; the 
 supernatural part of it, which is nearly the whole, being 
 a practical imposition upon the weak-minded portion of 
 mankind. This self-denial, and virtuous dignity of mind 
 in those individuals, arose from the rare coincidence of 
 certain moral qualities, — viz., an incorruptible love of 
 truth, integrity of heart, with learning and genius 
 sufficient to distinguish between truth and falsehood. 
 In speaking of the ill effects and irrationality of national 
 churches, it must be readily allowed that there are many 
 good and virtuous men belonging to the clerical order ; 
 and although it cannot well be doubted that thousands 
 of them hold the same opinions that the honest infidels 
 hold, yet this is somewhat excusable when we consider 
 how society is constituted, and that falsehood is the 
 present goddess thereof; consequently, being thus sanc- 
 tioned, most of men will think themselves warranted in 
 leaving conscience out of the question, when an easy and 
 comfortable subsistence can be obtained by means which 
 they judge of no more concern than a temporal conveni- 
 ence. This is speaking of the subordinate functionaries 
 of the church, but how much more will those high digni- 
 taries exert all their powers by every stratagem to reduce 
 men's reason to those particular opinions which alone 
 
 JL. * ' * 
 
68 DIALOGUE. 
 
 support clerical greatness, and by which they fish for 
 their own profit and glory with so easy a bait as the 
 gullibility of the multitude ; whilst by the united energies 
 of all, and the designing knavery of the greatest number 
 of their body, they will use the most strenuous endeavours 
 to secure themselves in the advantages arising from these 
 abuses, until men shall begin to open their eyes, and the 
 free exercise of truth and reason shall burst the mighty 
 bubble.* 
 
 Mod. — The immense riches of the church, which 
 constitutes its power, — the number, the learning, and 
 the common interest of the clergy, will support it in 
 perpetuity against all the innovations of reason and 
 natural religion ; but there is yet another sustaining 
 power which will never fail to stand by it so long as 
 mankind shall be propagated — I mean the devotion of the 
 female sex, for whatsoever may be the system of theology, 
 or revealed religion, that prevails in any country, the 
 female mind clings to it without the slightest examina- 
 
 * " The wealth of nations has hitherto been wasted in the service 
 of superstition, of vanity, or in accomplishing the destructive objects 
 of ambition, but happily the power of superstition is gradually 
 declining in the world ; yet still a numerous class of idlers are 
 aggrandized by it, and while that continues, it may again bring upon ' 
 free nations, whether victorious or vanquished, the greatest of all 
 calamities, the loss of freedom, and of public and private virtues." 
 
STRATO AND MODERATUS. 69 
 
 tion, with devotedness and fervour, exercising at the 
 same time so subtle an influence over the weaker part of 
 the male sex, that I confess having some doubts on my 
 mind whether any one of all those religions pretending 
 to revelation would stand for twenty years, without this 
 never-failing prop; for it is equally important in all 
 superstitions, in all countries. A learned clergyman, in 
 writing to a female friend, makes this remark, — "if, 
 indeed, your sex should enter into the irreligious notions, 
 which now prevail too much among men, the next 
 generation would be irrecoverably lost," which is as 
 much as to confess that the church is in no danger 
 while it holds its deep-rooted impulsive power over the 
 female mind. 
 
 Strato. — I quite agree with the learned divine you 
 have quoted, and his observation applies not only to the 
 church of England, but to all fabrics of superstition 
 grounded upon particular revelations ; for nothing can be 
 more notorious than that women have, in all ages, been 
 the upholders of superstition ; owing in the first place, to 
 " their very nature, which is more weak and fearful than 
 the nature and disposition of men," (so says Hippocrates) ; 
 and, secondly, to the fanciful and timorous notion of the 
 superintendence of spiritual powers that are beyond the 
 pale of nature ; to which may be added, the gaudy and 
 
70 DIALOGUE. 
 
 imposing pomp of ceremonies, all of which, taken 
 together, render the female mind as it were, a softer and 
 more pliant wax to receive the theological impression. 
 And hence it is that the zeal and devotion of the ladies 
 for their respective religions, appear to be exactly the 
 same amongst the Pagans, Jews and Mahometans, as it 
 is throughout the Christian world. Strabo makes the 
 following strong remark, — " It is a thing universally 
 taken for granted, that women are the ringleaders of 
 superstition ; they tease their husbands into all sorts of 
 worship of the gods, into the observation of feasts and 
 fasts; but it is a rare thing that any man, leading a 
 single life, is found to be such a person" 
 
 I shall close my authorities on this subject, with a 
 quotation from the learned Selden. " When priests 
 come into a family," says he, " they do as a man that 
 would set fire to a house, — he does not put fire to the 
 brick wall, but puts it into the thatch ; — they work upon 
 the women, and let the men alone" 
 
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