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 THE 
 
 IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 OP 
 
 ATTRIBUTED TO 
 
 LORD BOIJNGBROKE, 
 
 WRITTEN BY M. VOLTAIRE, 
 
 AXD FIRST PUBLISHED I\ 1736. 
 
 NOW FIRST TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. 
 
 iionDou : 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARL1LE, 55, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1819.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE ambition of domineehng over the mind, is one 
 of the strongest passions. A theologian, a missionary, 
 or a partisan of any description, is always for con- 
 quering like a prince, and there are many more sects 
 than there are sovereigns in the world. To whose 
 guidance shall I submit my mind? Must I be a 
 Christian, because I happened to be born in London, 
 or in Madrid ? Must I be a Mussulman, because I 
 was born in Turkey ? As it is myself alone that I 
 ought to consult, the choice of a religion is my greatest 
 interest. One man adores God by Mahomet, another 
 by the Grand Lama, and another by the Pope. Weak 
 and foolish men ! adore God by your own reason. 
 
 The stupid indolence which takes possession of the 
 generality of men, and sets aside this most important 
 of all concerns, seems to intimate to us that they are 
 nothing but stupid machines, endowed with animal 
 functions, whose instinct never occupies itself beyond 
 the present moment. We make use of our under- 
 standings in the same way as we use our bodies ; both 
 are frequently abandoned to quacks, whose chief con- 
 cern is to get possession of our money. 
 
 The prodigious multitude of Christian sects already 
 forms a great presumption that they are all founded on 
 erroneous systems. The wise man says to himself 
 If God had intended us to render him any particular 
 Hgorsbip, this worship would have been necessary to 
 species. It this worship were necessary, he him-
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 self would have communicated it to each of us, as in- 
 variably as he has given us two eyes and one mouth." 
 This worship would likewise have been uniform, since 
 we have not been able to discover any thing necessary 
 to the human race that does not possess this uni- 
 formity. The universal principles of reason are common 
 to all civilized nations ; all acknowledge a Deity ; and 
 they may thence infer, that this belief is founded in 
 truth. But each nation has a different religion ; they 
 ought, therefore, to conclude, that reason tells them 
 to adore a God ; but that they have uniformly fallen 
 into errors by wishing to overstep the bounds pre- 
 scribed them. 
 
 The principle, then, in which the whole universe is 
 in agreement, appears to be true ; other principles 
 whose consequences are diametrically opposite must 
 appear to be false, and it is natural for us to mistrust 
 them. We have a still greater diffidence when we 
 find that the sole aim of those at the head of each 
 sect is to domineer and enrich themselves as much as 
 they can ; and that from the Dairis of Japan to the 
 Bishop of Rome, they are occupied in raising to the 
 Pontiff a throne founded on the misery of the people, 
 and often cemented with their blood. 
 
 Let the Japanese, then, examine how long the 
 Dairis have held them in subjection ; Jet the Tartars make 
 use of their reason in order to judge whether the Grand 
 Lama be immortal ; give the Turks permission to judge 
 their Alcoran, and let us, as Christians, examine our 
 Gospels. 
 
 I have learnt that a French Vicar, of the name of 
 John Meslier, who died a short time since, prayed on 
 his death-bed that God would forgive him for having 
 taught Christianity. I have seen a Vicar in Dorset- 
 shire relinquish a living of 200 a year, and confess 
 to his parishioners, that his conscience would not per- 
 mit him to preach the shocking absurdities of the 
 Christians. But neither the will or testament of John
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Meslier, nor the declaration of this worthy Vicar, are what 
 I consider decisive proofs. Uriel Acosta, a Jew, pub- 
 licly renounced the Old Testament in Amsterdam ; 
 however, I pay no more attention to the Jew Acosta 
 than to Parson Meslier. I will read the arguments on 
 both sides of the trial, with careful attention, not suf- 
 fering the lawyers to tamper with me ; but will weigh, 
 before God, the reasons of both parties, and decide 
 according to my conscience. I commence by being 
 my own instructor. 
 
 NOTE BY THE EDITOR. Some passages have been omitted in 
 the translation of this work, not because they were too strong for in- 
 sertion, but because they were not to the point in the general style 
 of the writings in the DEIST.
 
 THE 
 
 IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 Sfc. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 OF THE BOOKS OF MOSES. 
 
 .CHRISTIANITY is founded on Judaism; let us, 
 then, examine if Judaism be the work of God. The 
 books of Moses are handed to me, and the first point 
 I have to ascertain is, whether or not these books were 
 actually written by Moses. 
 
 In the first place. Is it possible that Moses could 
 have engraven the Pentateuch, or the books of the 
 law, on stone, and that he found engravers and stone- 
 cutters in a frightful wilderness, where, it is said, that 
 his people had neither tailors, shoemakers, raiment, nor 
 bread, and where God was compelled to work a con- 
 tinued miracle, for the space of forty years, in order 
 to clothe and feed them ? 
 
 Secondly. The book of Joshua tells us that Deu- 
 teronomy was written on an altar of rough stone, 1 co- 
 vered over with plaster. How could a whole book be 
 written on plaster ? Would not the letters soon be 
 effaced by the blood which continually flowed on this 
 altar ? And how could this altar, this monument of 
 Deuteronomy, subsist so long, in a country where the 
 Jews had been such a length of time reduced to a 
 
 1 J"ilma viii. 31, 32.
 
 8 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 state of slavery, which their plunders had so fully 
 justified ? 
 
 Thirdly. The innumerable geographical and chrono- 
 logical errors and contradictions which we find in the 
 Pentateuch, have compelled many, both Jewsand Chris- 
 tians, to declare, that the Pentateuch could not have 
 been written by Moses. The learned Le Clerc, a 
 number of divines, even our great Newton, have em- 
 braced this opinion, which appears, at least, very pro- 
 bable. 
 
 I likewise ask any reasonable man, if it be at all 
 likely that Moses, when he was in the wilderness, 
 would have given precepts for Jewish kings, who did 
 not exist for several centuries after him ; and if it be 
 possible that, when in the same wilderness, he could 
 have allotted forty-eight cities and their suburbs to the 
 tribe of the Levites alone, independent of the tenths 
 which the other tribes ought to pay them? It is, 
 doubtless, very natural to suppose that the priests would 
 lay hold of every thing, but we cannot imagine that 
 they had forty-eight cities given them, in a little can- 
 ton where at that time two villages scarcely existed : 
 as many cities would, at least, have been necessary for 
 each of the other Jewish tribes, and the whole would 
 have amounted to four hundred and eighty cities with 
 their suburbs. The Jews have not written their history 
 in any other manner. Each trait is a ridiculous hyper- 
 bole, a stupid falsehood, or an absurd fable. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 OF THE PERSON OF MOSES. 
 
 WAS there ever such a person as Moses ? There is 
 so much of prodigy in him from his cradle to his 
 death, that he appears to be an imaginary personage
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 
 
 like our magician Merlin. It' he had really existed, if 
 he had performed the dreadful miracles attributed to him 
 in Egypt, would it have been possible that no Egyptian 
 author should have spoken of these miracles, and that 
 the Greeks, the lovers of the marvellous, had not 
 recorded a single word respecting him ? Flavius Jose- 
 phus, who, to extol his despicable nation, seeks after 
 the testimony of the Egyptian authors who have spo- 
 ken of the Jews, has not the face to quote one that 
 makes mention of the prodigies of Moses. Is not 
 this universal silence a proof that Moses is only a fabu- 
 lous personage ? 
 
 Those who have paid any attention to antiquity, 
 know that the ancient Arabs invented many fables, 
 which succeeding ages made known to other nations. 
 They had imagined the history of ancient Bacchus, 
 whom they suppose to have lived long anterior to the time 
 when the Jews tell us their Moses made his appear- 
 ance. This Bacchus, or Back, who was born in Ara- 
 bia, had written his laws on two tables of stone ; he 
 was called Misem ; a name which has some resem- 
 blance to that of Moses ; he was picked up in a box 
 on the waters, and the signification of his name is, 
 " saved from the waters ;" he had a rod with which he 
 performed miracles, and he could change his rod into 
 a serpent at his own pleasure. This same Misem 
 passed the Red Sea dry shod at the head of his army ; 
 he divided the waters of Orontes and Hydaspus, and 
 suspended them to the right and left, and a fiery co- 
 lumn lighted his army during the night. The ancient 
 Orphic verses which were sung in the orgies of Bac- 
 chus, celebrated a part of these extravagancies. This 
 fable was so ancient, that the fathers of the church 
 believed Misem or Bacchus to have been Noah. 1 
 
 1 We mutt observe that Bacchus was known in Egypt, Syria, 
 Alia Minor, and Greece, a long while before any nation had heard 
 the name of Moses, or even of Noah and the whole of hit genea- 
 logy. Every thing that belonged exclusively to the Jewish writ- 
 
 B
 
 10 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 Is it not highly probable that the Jews adopted this 
 fable, and that it was written as soon as they had ob- 
 tained some knowledge of literature under their kings? 
 They must have a little of the marvellous as well as 
 other people, but they were not the inventors ; never 
 was there a petty nation more stupid ; all their false- 
 hoods were plagiarisms ; and all their ceremonies were 
 visibly performed in imitation of those of the Phoeni- 
 cians, Assyrians, and Egyptians. 
 
 What they themselves have added appear to be 
 such disgusting stupidities and absurdities, that they 
 excite both our indignation and pity. In what ridicu- 
 lous romance could we bear to hear of a man changing 
 all the waters into blood by a flourish of his rod, in the 
 name of a God unknown, while the magicians can do 
 tire same thing in the name of their local deities ? 
 The only superiority that Moses obtains over the king's 
 magicians is, in creating lice, which they were unable 
 to perform. This made a great prince say, that as far 
 as lice were concerned, the Jews could do more than 
 all the magicians in the world. 
 
 How did an angel of the Lord come and kill all the 
 cattle in Egypt ? How did it happen that the king of 
 Egypt had afterwards an army of cavalry ? And how 
 did the cavalry proceed to cross the muddy bottom of 
 the Red Sea ? How did the same angel of the Lord 
 slay all the first-born of the Egyptians in a single 
 night? It was then that the pretended Moses ought to 
 have taken possession of this beautiful country, iustead 
 
 ings, was absolutely unknown to both Fastern and Western na- 
 tions, from the name of Adam to t hat of David. 
 
 The wretched Jews had their own chronology and fables apart, 
 which bore only a slight resemblance to lho>e of other nations. 
 Their writers, who were very tardy in commencing their labours, 
 ransacked every thing they could find umongtheir neighbours, and 
 disguised their thefts very badly; witness tie fable of Moses, bor- 
 rowed from that of Bacchus, their ridiculous Sampson from that 
 of Hercules, Jephtha^'s daughter from Iphigenia, Lot's wife imi- 
 tated from Eurvdice, &c.
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 11 
 
 of running away like a coward and a vagabond, with 
 two or three millions of men, among whom it is said 
 that there were six hundred and thirty thousand com- 
 batants. It was this prodigious multitude that he 
 took with him to wander and die in the wilderness, 
 where they could not even find water to drink. To 
 facilitate this grand expedition, his God divides the 
 waters of the sea, which he raises like two mountains 
 to the right and left, in order that his favourite people 
 may perish with hunger and thirst. 
 
 AH the rest of the history of Moses is equally ab- 
 surd and barbarous. His quails ; his manna ; his 
 conversations with God ; twenty-three thousand of 
 the people killed by order of the priest; twenty-four 
 thousand massacred at another time ; and six hundred 
 and thirty thousand combatants in a wilderness where 
 they could never find two thousand men ! Assuredly 
 the whole of this appears to be the height of extrava- 
 gance ; and it has been said, that Orlando Furioso and 
 Don Quixote are geometrical books in comparison with 
 those of the Hebrews. If we could find only a few 
 rational and honest actions in the fable of Moses, we 
 might then in reality believe that such a person had 
 existed. 
 
 They have the face to tell us, that the feast of the 
 Passover among the Jews, is a proof of the passage of 
 the Red Sea. At this feast they thanked the Jewish 
 God for his goodness in killing all the first-born of 
 Egypt; and they tell us, that nothing could be more 
 true than this holy and divine butchery. 
 
 "Can we conceive/' says that declaimer and trifling 
 reasoner, Abbadie, " that it was possible for Moses to 
 institute sensible memorials of an event, recognized to 
 be false by more than six hundred thousand witnesses?" 
 Poor man ! thou shouldst have said by more than two 
 millions of witnesses, for six hundred and thirty thou- 
 sand combatants, whether they were fugitives or not, 
 assuredly lead us to suppose that then; were more than 
 two millions of inhabitants. Thou sayest, then, that
 
 W THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 Moses read his Pentateuch to two or three millions of 
 Jews. Thou believest, likewise, that these two or 
 three millions would have written against Moses if 
 they had discovered any errors in his Pentateuch, and 
 that they would have had their remarks inserted in the 
 journals of the country. Thou hast forgot nothing, 
 except telling us that these three millions have signed 
 as witnesses, and that thou hast seen their signature. 
 
 Thou believest, then, that the temples and rites in- 
 stituted in honour of Bacchus, Hercules, and Persius, 
 evidently prove that Persius, Hercules, and Bacchus, 
 were the sons of Jupiter ; and that among the Romans, 
 the temple of Castor and Pollux was a demonstration 
 that Castor and Pollux had fought for the Romans. 
 Thus they always beg the question ; and in matters of 
 the greatest importance to the human race, these con- 
 troversial traffickers make use of arguments that Lady 
 Blackacre durst not hazard on the stage. 
 
 We see that these tales have been written by fools, 
 commented upon by simpletons, taught by knaves, 
 and given to children to be learned by heart ; yet the 
 sage is called a blasphemer because he becomes indig- 
 nant, and is irritated at the most abominable fooleries 
 that ever disgraced human nature. 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 Of THE INSPIRATION ATTRIBUTED TO THE JEWISH BOOKS. 
 
 How can we suppose that God would choose a 
 horde of Arabs to be his favourite people, and that he 
 would arm this horde against all other nations ? And 
 why, when fighting at the head of them, did he so 
 frequently suffer his people to be vanquished and to 
 become slaves ? 
 
 In giving them laws, why did he forget to inculcate
 
 OF THE I10LY SCRIPTURES. 13 
 
 among this little troop of thieves, the belief of the 
 immortality of the soul, and the rewards and punish- 
 ments after death, 1 while all the great neighbouring na- 
 tions, such as the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Assyrians, 
 and Phoenicians, had so long embraced this salutary 
 belief? 
 
 Is it possible that, God should explain to the Jews 
 the manner of going to the privy in the wilderness,* 
 and hide from them the dogma of a future life. 
 
 Herodotus tells us, that the famous temple of Tyre, 
 was built two thousand three hundred years before his 
 time ; and they say, that Moses conducted his troop 
 in the desert, about sixteen hundred years before our 
 aera. Herodotus wrote five hundred years before the 
 vulgar aera, so that the temple of the Phoenicians sub- 
 sisted twelve hundred years before Moses, and the 
 Phoenician religion was established long before that 
 time. 
 
 1 This is the strongest argument against the Jewish law, and 
 which the great Bolingbroke did not sufficiently insist upon. 
 What ! The legislator* of the Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians, 
 Greeks, and Romans, all taught the immortality of the soul, which 
 we find in twenty places even in Homer, and yet the pretended 
 Moses does not speak of it ? Not a single word is said of it either 
 in the Jewish Decalogue or in the Pentateuch. 
 
 It became necessary for commentators, who were either very 
 ignorant, or more inclined to knavery than folly, to twist some 
 passages of Job, who was not a Jew, in order to make it believed by 
 men more ignorant than themselves, that Job had spoken of a 
 future life, because he said, " For I know that my Redeemer 
 liveth, and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in 
 my flesh shall f see God." Job xix. 25. What connection is 
 there, I pray you, between a sick man, who is suffering in hopes of 
 being cured, and the immortality of the soul, hull, and paradise ? 
 
 If Warburton had contented himself with proving that the 
 Jewish law did not mention a future life, he would have rendered a 
 very great service. But by the most incomprehensible madness, 
 he wished to have it believed that the stupidity of the Pentateuch 
 was a proof of its divinity, and his excessive pride supported this 
 chimera with the most intolerant insolence. 
 
 ' Swift said, that according to the Pentateuch, God had taken 
 more cars of the Jews' hinder parts than he did of their souls.
 
 14 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 This religion, as well as that of the Chaldeans and 
 Egyptians, announced the immortality of the soul, 
 which was never a fundamental dogma with the Jews. 
 We are told that they were a rude people, and that 
 God put himself upon a level with them. With 
 whom ? Jewish robbers ! God more stupid than his 
 people ! Is -not this blasphemy ? 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 WHO IS THE AtTHOR OF THE PENTATEUCH ? 
 
 I AM asked, who is the author of the Pentateuch ? 
 I would as soon be asked who wrote the Four Sons of 
 Aimon, Robert the Devil, and the history of Merlin 
 the magician. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton, who so far degraded himself as 
 to examine this question seriously, pretends that 
 Samuel wrote these reveries, apparently to render the 
 name of king odious to the Jewish horde, whom this 
 detestable priest wished to govern by himself. I am 
 of opinion myself, that the Jews could neither read 
 nor write, till the time of their captivity under the 
 Chaldeans, because their letters were first Chaldaic, 
 and afterwards Syriac. We have never had an alpha- 
 bet purely Hebraic. 
 
 I fancy that Esdras forged all these tales of a tub 
 after the captivity. He wrote them in Chaldean cha- 
 racters in the jargon of the country, in the same way 
 as the peasantry of the North of Ireland make use of 
 the English alphabet. 
 
 The Cuteans who inhabited Samaria wrote the 
 same Pentateuch in Phoenician characters, which they 
 made use of in that country, and this Pentateuch is 
 still extant. 
 
 I believe Jeremiah might contribute a good deal to
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 15 
 
 the composition of this romance. We know that he 
 had a strong attachment to the Babylonish kings ; it is 
 evident from his rhapsodies that he was paid by the 
 Babylonians, and that he betrayed his own country ; 
 he wishes even,' thing to yield to the king of Babylon. 
 The Egyptians were at that time enemies of the Baby- 
 lonians, and it was to make his court to the great king 
 who was master of Hershalaitn Kedusha, called by us 
 Jerusalem, which made Jeremiah and Esdras conspire 
 to instil into the Jews such an horror for the Egyp- 
 tians. They took care to say nothing about the peo- 
 ple of the Euphrates. They are slaves that keep upon 
 good terms with their masters. They confess, indeed, 
 that the Jewish horde has almost always been enslaved, 
 but they respect those to whom they were then in 
 subjection. 
 
 Whether or not any other Jews have written the feats 
 and tricks of their kings, is a matter as unimportant to 
 me, as the Elistory of the Knights of the Round Table ; 
 and the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne ; and I fancy 
 the most useless of all researches must be that of finoV 
 ing out the name of the author of a ridiculous book. 
 
 Who first wrote the histories of Jupiter, Neptune, 
 and Pluto ? I do not know, nor do I care about 
 knowing it. 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 THAT THE JEWS HAVE BORROWED ALL FROM OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 IT has frequently been said, that petty enslaved 
 states always endeavour to imitate their masters; that 
 a weak and uncivilized people rudely conform to the 
 customs of great nations. Cornwall apes London, 
 London does not ape Cornwall. Can any thing be 
 more natural than the supposition, that the Jews have
 
 1C THE IMPORTANT EXAMIIHATION 
 
 borrowed what they could of the religious worship, 
 laws, and customs of their neighbours ? 
 
 It is now quite certain, that their God whom we 
 call Jehovah, pronounced by them Yaho, was the in- 
 effable name of the God of the Phoenicians and Egyp- 
 tians, and was known to be so by the ancients. 
 
 Clemens Alexandrinus, in the first book of his 
 Stromates, relates, that those who entered the Egyp- 
 tian temples, were compelled to carry a species of talis- 
 man about them, which was composed of this word 
 Yaho ; and when they had acquired a certain method 
 of pronouncing this word, he who heard it fell down dead, 
 or at least into a swoon. This is what the jugglers of 
 the temple endeavoured to persuade the superstitious. 
 
 It is well known that the form of the serpent, the 
 cherubims, the ceremony of the red cow, ablutions, 
 since called baptism, linen robes reserved for the priests, 
 fastings, abstinence from pork and other meats, and 
 circumcision, were all imitations of the Egyptians. 
 
 The Jews confess that they were a long time with- 
 out a temple, and that they had none for more than 
 five hundred years after Moses, according to their own 
 chronology, which is always erroneous. At length they 
 invaded a small city, in which they built a temple in 
 imitation of great nations. What had they before ? 
 A box. This was customary among the Nomades, 
 and the Canaanites of the interior, who were very 
 poor. There was an ancient tradition among the Jews, 
 that when they were Nomades, that is to say, wan- 
 derers in the deserts of Arabia Petrea, they carried a 
 box containing a rude image of a god named Remphan, 
 or a species of star, cut out in wood. You will find 
 traces of this worship in some of the prophets, and 
 particularly in the pretended discourse which the 
 " Acts of the Apostles" puts into the mouth of 
 Stephen. 1 
 
 Even according to the accounts of the Jews them- 
 
 1 Acts vii. 43.
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTI'RIX 17 
 
 selves, the Phauiicians, (whom they call Philistines) 
 had the temple of Dagon, before the Jewish troop l^ul 
 a house. If this were the case, if all their worship in 
 the wilderness consisted in having ii !KX to the honour 
 of the god Kemphan, who was nothing urore than a 
 star revered by the Arabs, it is clear, that the Jews in 
 their origin were only a band of wandering Arabs, 
 whose pillaging enabled them to establish themselves in 
 Palestine, who afterwards formed a religion to their own 
 taste, and who composed a history containing nothing 
 but fables. They .took a part of the lable of the an- 
 cient Back or Bacchus, and gave their hero the name 
 of Moses ; but that we should revere these fables, that 
 we should have made them the basis of our religion, 
 and that these fables should still be credited in a philo- 
 sophical age, is what raises the indignation of all wise 
 men. The Christian church sings Jewish prayers, 
 mid burns those that adhere to the Jewish law ! How 
 pitiful, how contradictory, and how horrible ! 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 OF GENESIS. 
 
 ALL the nations by whom the Jews were encom- 
 had a Genesis, a Theogony, a Cosmogony, 
 long before the Jews existed. Is it not evident, that 
 the Genesis of the Jews was taken from the ancient 
 fables of their neighbours ? 
 
 Yaho the ancient god of the Phoenicians unravelled 
 the chaos, the Khautereb ; he arranged matter, Muth ; 
 he formed man with his breath, Calpi ; he gave him a 
 garden for his habitation, Aden or Eden ; he forbade 
 him to meddle with the great serpent Ophioneus, as 
 we are told in the ancient fragment of Pherecidus. 
 What a conformity with the Genesis of the Jews !
 
 18 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 Is it not natural to suppose that a petty ignorant peo- 
 ple would in the course of time, borrow the fables of 
 the great people who invented the arts ? 
 
 It was likewise a received opinion in Asia, that God 
 had formed the world in six periods of time, which 
 the Chaldeans who were so long anterior to the Jews, 
 called six gahambars. This was also an opinion of 
 the ancient Indians. The Jews, then, who wrote Gene- 
 sis, are merely imitators ; they mixed their own absurdi- 
 ties with these tables, and we must confess, it is diffi- 
 cult for us to abstain from laughter, when we hear of 
 a serpent talking fifmiliarly with Eve ; of God speaking 
 to the serpent ; of God's promenade, in the garden of 
 Eden at noon-day ; of God making small-clothes for 
 Adam, and an apron for his wife Eve. All the rest 
 appears equally senseless. Many Jews themselves are 
 ashamed of these tales, and they have been considered 
 by them as allegorical fables. How can we interpret 
 literally what the Jews have regarded as allegories ? 
 
 Neither the histories of Judges, Kings, nor any of 
 the Prophets quote a single passage of Genesis. None 
 of them have spoken of Adam's rib being taken from 
 his side, to make a woman of; nor of the tree of know- 
 ledge of good and evil; nor of the serpent that tempt- 
 ed Eve ; nor of original sin ; nor, in short, of any of 
 these imaginations. Once more ; have we any rational 
 motives for believing them ? 
 
 Their rhapsodies demonstrate, that they have pil- 
 fered all their notions from the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, 
 and Egyptians, in the same way as they pilfered their 
 goods, when they had it in their power. Even the name 
 of Israel was borrowed from the Chaldeans, as Philo 
 confesses in the first page of the narrative of his depu- 
 tation to Caligula. These are his words, " the Chal- 
 deans give to the righteous the name of Israel, seeing 
 God!' Yet we are such simpletons in the West, as 
 to fancy that every thing which these Eastern barba- 
 rians had stolen belonged exclusivelv to themselves.
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 -M. ' * ,' 
 
 Or THE MANNERS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 IF we pass from Jewish fables to Jewish manners, 
 do we not find them as abominable as their tales are 
 absurd ? According to their own confession, they an- 
 a troop of brigands, who carry into the wilderness all 
 that they stole from the Egyptians. Joshua, their 
 chief, passes the Jordan by a miracle similar to that of 
 the Red Sea, and for why ? To put lire and sword to 
 a city he was an entire stranger to, the walls of which 
 God caused to fall by the sound of trumpets. 
 
 The fables of the Greeks had more of humanity iu 
 them. Amphion built cities by the sound of his 
 flute ; Joshua destroys them, and gives up to fire and 
 sword, old men, women, children, and cattle. Was 
 there ever a more senseless brutality ? He pardons 
 only a prostitute who had betrayed her country. 
 What occasion had he for the perfidy of this miserable 
 woman, since the walls fell at the sound of his trumpet, 
 which may be compared to the trumpet of Astolphus, 
 that made every body run away from him ? We must 
 remark, by the bye, that this woman called Rahab, the 
 prostitute, was an ancestor of the Jew whom we have 
 since transformed into a God, who likewise reckons 
 himself a descendant of the incestuous Tamar, the 
 impudent Ruth, and the adulterous Bathsheba. 
 
 We are then told, that this same Joshua smote thirty- 
 one kings of the country, that is to say, thirty-one 
 village chiefs, who had defended their fire-sides against 
 this troop of assassins. If the author of this history 
 had formed a design of rendering the Jews execrable 
 among other nations, could he have adopted a surer 
 method ? To add blasphemy to robbery and barbarity, 
 the author dares say, that all these abominations were 
 committed in the name and by the express command
 
 20 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 of God, to whom they were offered up as so many 
 human sacrifices. 
 
 These are God's people! Certainly the Hurons, 
 Canadians, and Iroquois were philosophers of huma- 
 nity, compared to the children of Israel ; and yet it 
 was to favour these monsters, that the sun and moon 
 stood still at noon-day! And for why? To give 
 them time to pursue and slay fhe miserable Ammo- 
 rites, who were already crushed to .death by a shower 
 of sjeat stones, covering a space of five leagues, which 
 God had thrown upon them from the sky. Is this the 
 history of Gargantua ? Is this the history of God's peo- 
 ple? And which do we find the most insupportable, 
 the excess of horror, or the excess of foolery, con- 
 tinued therein ? Is it not increasing this stupidity, to 
 amuse ourselves by combating this detestable collec- 
 tion of fables, which are equally disgraceful to com- 
 mon sense, to virtue, to nature, and to the Deity ? 
 If a single adventure, related of this people, had un- 
 fortunately been true, all nations would have united 
 to exterminate them ; and if they be false, it is not 
 possible to tell lies in a more stupid manner. 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE MANNERS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 WHAT shall we say of a Jephthah, who immolates 
 his own daughter to his imaginary God, of the left- 
 handed Ehud, who assassinates Eglon his king, in the 
 name of the Lord ; of the divine Jael, who assas- 
 sinates General Sisera, by driving a nail into his head ; 
 and of the drunken Sampson, whom God favours with 
 so many miracles ? 
 
 This last is a gross imitation of the fable of 
 Hercules. 
 
 Shall we speak of a Levite, who brings his concu-
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 21 
 
 bine on an ass, with straw and hay, into Cuba which 
 belonged to the tribe of Benjamin ; and behold, the 
 Benjamites wish to commit sodomy with this vile 
 priest, in the same way as the Sodomites wished to 
 violate the angels. 1 The Levite makes an arrange- 
 ment, and abandons his mistress or concubine to them ; 
 they abuse her all night, and the next morning she 
 dies. The Levite takes his knife, and cuts his concu- 
 bine into twelve pieces, (a thing not very easily done) 
 and thence arises a civil war. 
 
 The eleven tribes arm four hundred thousand sol- 
 diers, against the tribe of Benjamin. Four hundred 
 thousand soldiers, good God ! in a territory which 
 did not measure fifteen leagues in length, by five or 
 six in breadth ! The Grand Seignior never had half 
 uch an army. These Israelites exterminate the tribe 
 of Benjamin, both old and young, women and girls, 
 according to their laudable custom. Six hundred bovs 
 
 t/ 
 
 escape. It would not be proper to let one tribe perish, 
 therefore six hundred girls, at least, must be given to 
 these six hundred boys. 
 
 What do the Israelites do ? There was in the neigh- 
 bourhood a small city named Jabez ; they take it 
 
 1 The illustrious author has forgot to spenk of the angels of 
 Sodom, yet this article was worthy of his attention. If ever there 
 were any abominable extravagancies in the Jewish history, that of 
 the angels, whom the magistrates, officers, and boys, of a whole 
 city wished absolutely to violate, is so horrible, that it cannot be 
 paralleled by any heathen fable, and rtally makes one's hair stand 
 uii end. And yet they dare to write a commentary on these abomi- 
 nable tales ! And they wish to make youth respect them ! And 
 they have the insolence to pity the Brachmans of India, and the 
 Magi of Persia, because God has not revealed these things to them, 
 and because they were not God's people ! 
 
 And even among ourselves there are muddy souls, so cowardly, 
 ud M> impudent, as to say to us, believe these infamous stones ; 
 believe them, or the wrath of an avenging God shull fall upon 
 you ; believe, or we will persecute you either in the consistory, or 
 in the conclave ; or at the bar; or iu the buvette ! How long will 
 knaves make wi.-e men tremble?
 
 22 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 by surprize, kill all, massacre every thing, even the 
 cattle, reserving only four hundred girls for four hun- 
 dred Benjamites ! 
 
 Two hundred boys remain to be provided for, and 
 it is agreed, that they shall ravish two hundred of the 
 daughters of Shiloh, when they go to dance at the 
 gates of the city I 1 
 
 Come on, Tillotson, Sherlock, Clarke, and the rest 
 of your tribe ; say something to justify these cannibal 
 fables ; prove to us that these are all types and figures 
 announcing Jesus Christ ! 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 OF THE JEWISH MANNERS UNDER THEIR KINGS AND PONTIFFS, TO 
 THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY THE ROMANS. 
 
 THE Jews obtain a king in spite of the priest 
 Samuel, who does all he can to preserve his usurped 
 authority, and he has the hardihood to say, that " to 
 choose a king is to reject God." 8 
 
 At length, a herdsman, who sought his father's asses, 
 is elected king by lot. The Jews were then under the 
 yoke of the Canaanites ; they had never had a temple; 
 their sanctuary was an ark that could be put into a 
 cart.* 
 
 The Canaanites had taken their ark from them, at 
 which God was much displeased ; yet he, nevertheless, 
 suffered them to take it, but to be revenged, he gave 
 the piles to the conquerors, and sent mice into their 
 fields. The victors appeased God by returning him 
 his ark, accompanied with five golden mice. 4 
 
 No vengeance nor sacrifice could be more worthy of 
 
 \ Judges xxi. 21. ' 1 Sam. viii. 7. 1 Sam. vi. 11. 
 4 1 Sam. vi. 4. A
 
 or THE nonr SCRIPTURES. ts 
 
 the Jewish God. He pardons the Canaanites, but 
 kills fifty thousand and seventy of his own people for 
 having looked into the ark. 1 
 
 It is under these propitious circumstances that Saul 
 is elected king of the Jews. In their miserable coun- 
 try there was neither sword nor spear; the Canaanites 
 or Philistines did not permit their Jewish slaves even 
 to sharpen their plough-shares and axes ; they were 
 forced to apply to the Philistine labourers for this as- 
 sistance ;* and yet we are told that king Saul had, at 
 first, an army of three hundred thousand men, with 
 whom he gained a great battle. 3 Our Gulliver has 
 similar fables, but not such contradictions. 
 
 In another battle Saul comes to terms with the pre- 
 tended king Agag. The prophet Samuel arrives and 
 asks, in the name of the Lord, <l Wherefore didst 
 thou not obey the voice of the Lord, to slay both man 
 and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel 
 and ass ?"* and he takes a hatchet and hews king Agag 
 in pieces. 5 If such an action were true, what kind of 
 people and priests were the Jews ? 
 
 Siaul, who was reproved by the Lord because he 
 had not himself slain king Agag, his prisoner, goes at 
 length to fight against the Philistines, after the death 
 of the meek prophet Samuel. He consults a witch 
 respecting the success ot the battle. It is known 
 that witches can raise ghosts. This witch brings out 
 of the ground the ghost of Samuel, but this merely 
 regards the fine philosophy of the Jews. Now for 
 their morality. 
 
 A player of the harp, for whom the Deity had 
 caught a tender affection, causes himself to be anointed 
 king during Samuel's life-time ; he revolts against his 
 sovereign, and, as the Scripture tells us, collects four 
 hundred wretches. " Every one that was in distress, 
 
 1 Sam. TI. 10. * Ib. xiii. 19, 20. * Ib. xt. 8. 
 
 4 JSm.*T.3. Mb. 33.
 
 24 THE IMPORTANT UXAM1NATION 
 
 and every one that was in debt, and every one that 
 was discontented, gathered themselves unto him." 1 
 
 This was a man after God's own heart ; so the first 
 thing he does is to assassinate a farmer, named Nabal, 
 because he refused to pay contributions, lie marries 
 Nabal's widow, and eighteen other women, without 
 reckoning concubines. He goes to an enemy of his 
 own country, king Achish, who receives him we'll; 
 and as a recompence for this kind reception, he sacks 
 the villages of the allies of Achish, whom he persuades 
 that he has not meddled with any towns except such 
 as belonged to the Hebrews. We must confess, that 
 highwaymen are less culpable in the eyes of men ; but 
 the ways of the Jewish God are not like our ways. 
 
 The good king David robs Saul's son, Ishbosheth, 
 of his crown. He causes Mephibosheth, son of his 
 protector, Jonathan, to be assassinated. He delivers 
 up to the Gibeonites two sons of Saul, and five of his 
 grandsons to be put to death. He assassinates Uriah, 
 to screen his adultery with Bathsheba, and yet this 
 abominable Bathsheba was the mother of Solomon, 
 who was an ancestor of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The remainder of the Jewish history is nothing but 
 a tissue of consecrated crimes. Solomon begins by 
 killing his brother Adonijah. 
 
 If God granted to this Solomon the gift of wisdom, 
 he appears to have refused him the gifts of humanity, 
 justice, continence, and honour. He has seven hun- 
 dred wives and three hundred concubines. The song 
 
 O 
 
 imputed to him is written in the style of these inde- 
 cent books, which are calculated to put modesty to the 
 blush. It is altogether about bubbies, and kisses on 
 the mouth, a belly like a heap of wheat, voluptuous 
 attitudes and agitations. At length he finishes by 
 saying, " We have a little sister, and she has no 
 breasts. What shall we do for our sister in the day 
 when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we 
 
 1 1 Sam. xxii. 2.
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 25 
 
 will build upon her a palace of silver : and if she be a 
 door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar." 1 
 
 Such were the manners of the wisest man among 
 the Jews, or, at least, the manners imputed to him out 
 of respect by miserable rabbins, and Christian divines, 
 whose notions are still more absurd. 
 
 At length, to unite an excess of ridicule with this 
 excess of immodesty, the priests have decided, that the 
 belly, the bubbies, and kisses of the Shulamite, are an 
 emblem and a type of the marriage of Jesus Christ 
 with his church. 
 
 Of all the kings of Judah and of Samaria, there 
 were very few of them who were not either assassins 
 or assassinated, until this den of robbers, who mas- 
 sacred one another in the public places and the temple 
 during the time that Titus besieged them, fell under 
 the iron chains of the Komans with the rest of this 
 miserable people of God, of whom five-sixths had long 
 been dispersed over Asia, and sold in the markets of 
 the Roman cities, each Jew being valued at the price 
 of a pig, an animal which was certainly less impure 
 than this nation, if it were such as its historians and 
 prophets represent it. 
 
 No one can deny that the Jews have written these 
 abominations ; and when we thus assemble them be- 
 fore our eyes, our hearts revolt at them. These, then, 
 are the heralds of Providence, the forerunners of the 
 reign of Jesus. Sayest thou, O Abbadie, that all the 
 Jewish history is a prediction of the Church ; that all 
 the prophets have foretold Jesus? Let us, then, 
 examine the prophets. 
 
 Solomon'* Sni-, viii. 8,
 
 2f THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 PROPHET, Nabim, Roheim speaking, seeing, 
 guessing, is all the same thing. All ancient authors 
 agree that the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and all the 
 Asiatic nations had their prophets and conjurors. 
 These nations were long anterior to the little people 
 called the Jews, which, when it formed a horde in a 
 corner of land, had no language but that of its neigh- 
 bours, and which, as we have before shewn, borrowed 
 from the Phoenicians even the names of its God, 
 Eloha, Jehovah, Adonai, Sadai ; which, in short, took 
 all its rites and ceremonies from its surrounding neigh- 
 bours, though it continually declaimed against them. 
 
 It was said by some writer, that the first seer, or pro- 
 phet, was the first knave that met with a simpleton ; 
 thus is prophecy established from the most remote an- 
 tiquity. But to fraud, let us add fanaticism ; these 
 two monsters dwell together very peaceably in human 
 skulls. We have witnessed the arrival in London of 
 hordes from the heart of Languedoc and Vivarais, who 
 were as much prophets as those of the Jews, and joined 
 the most horrible enthusiasm to the most disgusting 
 falsehoods. We have witnessed Jurieu prophesying 
 in Holland. There were always such impostors, and 
 not only wretches who predicted, but other wretches 
 who imagined prophecies spoken by ancient personages. 
 
 The world has been filled with Sibyls and Nostra- 
 damuses. The Alcoran reckons two hundred and 
 twenty-four thousand prophets. Bishop Epiphanius, 
 in his notes on the pretended Canon of the Apostles, 
 reckons seventy-three Jewish prophets, and ten pro- 
 phetesses. The trade of prophet among the Jews was 
 neither a dignity nor a degree, nor a profession in the 
 state ; they were not admitted prophets as doctors are
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRJPTUHKS. *7 
 
 admitted at Oxford and Cambridge. Let those pro- 
 phesy that would ; it was sufficient to have, or to be- 
 lieve they had, or to feign they had, the calling of the 
 spirit of God. Futurity was announced by dancing 
 and playing on the psaltery. Saul, although he was 
 rebuked, took it into his head fo be a prophet. During 
 civil wars each party had its prophet, as we have our 
 Grub Street writers. The parties treated each other 
 reciprocally as fools, visionaries, liars, and knaves, and 
 in this alone they spoke truth. " The prophet is a 
 fool, the spiritual man is mad," says ilosea, chap. ix. 
 ver. 7. 
 
 The prophets of Jerusalem are fanciful and de- 
 ceitful men, said Saphoniah, a Jerusalem prophet. 
 They are all something like our apothecary, Moore, 
 who inserts in the newspapers, " Take ray pills and 
 beware of counterfeits." 
 
 When the prophet Micaiuh is predicting misfor- 
 tunes to the kings of Samaria and Judah, the prophet 
 Zedekiah gives him a box on the cheek, saying, 
 " Which way went the spirit of the Lord from me 
 to speak unto thee r" 1 
 
 Jeremiah, who prophesied in favour of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, a Jewish tyrant, put cords round his neck, 
 and a yoke on his back, which was a type, and he 
 was to send this type to the neighbouring petty kings, 
 to invite them to submission to Nebuchadnezzar. The 
 prophet Ananias, who looked upon Jeremiah as a 
 traitor, took his cords from him, and threw his yoke 
 on the ground. 
 
 Here we have Hosea, whom God orders to take 
 a whore, and to beget sons of a whore : * Go, take unto 
 thee a wife of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms."* 
 Hosea punctually obeys ; he takes Corner, daughter 
 of Diblaim, who brings him three children ; thus this 
 prophecy, and this whoredom, lasted at least three 
 
 1 2 Cliroo. xviii. 23. * H<>* i. 2.
 
 28 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 years. But this would not satisfy the Jewish God, 
 who orders Hosea to sleep with a woman that had al- 
 ready cuckolded her husband. This cost the prophet 
 no more than fifteen pieces of silver, and a bushel and 
 a half of barley, which is purchasing adultery at a 
 cheap rate. 1 
 
 It cost the patriarch Judah still less, in his incest 
 with his daughter-in-law, Tamar. 2 
 
 There we have Ezekiel, who after having slept three 
 hundred and ninety days on his left side, and forty on 
 his right side ; after having swallowed a roll of parch- 
 ment, and eaten a sir reverend on his bread, by the 
 express command of God, introduces God himself, the 
 Creator of the Universe, who speaks thus to young 
 Aholibah : " Thou hast increased and waxed great ; thy 
 breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown ; and I 
 spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy naked- 
 ness." 3 " But thou hast built thy high place at every 
 head of the way> and hast opened thy feet (or thighs) 
 to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy 
 whoredoms/' 4 
 
 " Her sister Aholibah was more corrupt in her 
 inordinate love than she for she doated upon her 
 paramours, whose flesh is like the flesh of asses, and 
 whose issue is like the issue of horses/' 5 
 
 One day, when our friend General Withers heard 
 these prophecies read to him, he asked in what brothel 
 the holy scriptures had been written ? 
 
 Prophecies are seldom read ; it is difficult to go 
 through these lengthy and enormous rhapsodies. 
 Fashionable men who have read Gulliver and Atlantis, 
 know neither Hosea nor Ezekiel. 
 
 When we point out to sensible people, these execra- 
 ble passages, buried in the rubbish of prophecy, they 
 cannot recover from their astonishment. 
 
 1 Hosea iii. 2. ' Gen. xxxviii. 18. s Ezek. xvi. 7, 8. 
 4 Ib. 25. ' Ch. xxiii. 11, 20.
 
 OF THE II01.Y KCRUTUKKS. 29 
 
 They cannot conceive, that an Isaiah 1 should walk 
 stark naked in the middle of Jerusalem ; that an Eze^ 
 kiel should cut his beard into three portions; that a 
 Jonah should be three days in a whale's belly, &c. 
 Were they to read these shameless indecencies in a 
 profane book, they would throw it away in disgust. 
 It is the BiMe ; they remain confounded ; they hesitate ; 
 they condemn the abominations, and dare not con- 
 demn the book that contains them, it requires time, 
 before they dare to make use of common sense, but, 
 in the on;i, they detest what knaves and simpletons 
 have taught them to adore. 
 
 When were these irrational and immodest books 
 written? Nobody knows. The most probable opinion 
 is that the greater part of the books attributed to Solo- 
 mon, Daniel, and others, were written in Alexandria ; 
 but what matters it as to time and place? Is it not 
 sufficient to witness in them the most outrageous folly, 
 and the most infamous debauchery ? 
 
 How is it, then, that the Jews have held them in 
 veneration ? Because they were Jews. We must 
 likewise consider, that all these extravagant monu- 
 ments were preserved only by priests and scribes. 
 We know how scarce books were in all countries, 
 where the art of printing (which the Chinese invented) 
 reached us so late. We shall be still more astonished 
 when we see fathers of the Church adopt these dis- 
 gusting reveries, or allege them in support of their 
 sects. 
 
 We come, at length, from the old covenant to the 
 new one. Let us proceed to Jesus, and to the esta- 
 blishment of Christianity. 
 
 Isaiah xx. JJ.
 
 30 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 CHAP. XI. 
 
 OF THE PERSON OF JESUS. 
 
 JESUS was born at a time when fanaticism was still 
 dominant, but when decency began to shew itself a 
 little. The long commerce of' the Jews with the 
 Greeks and Romans, had given to the respectable part 
 of the nation manners less vulgar and irrational ; but 
 the populace, who are always incorrigible, preserved 
 the same spirit of folly. 
 
 Some Jews, who were oppressed under the kings of 
 Syria, and under the Romans, had then imagined that 
 God would at some time send them a Liberator, a 
 Messiah. This expectation ought naturally to be ful- 
 filled in the person of Herod. He was their king, and 
 an ally of the Romans ; he had rebuilt their temple, 
 the architecture of which greatly surpassed that of 
 Solomon, since he had filled up a precipice on which 
 that edifice was erected. The people no longer groan- 
 ed under a foreign yoke ; they paid no imposts but to 
 their own monarch ; the Jewish worship flourished, 
 and the ancient laws were respected ; Jerusalem, we 
 must confess, was then in its greatest splendour. 
 
 Idleness and superstition brought forth many factions 
 or religious societies ; Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenians, 
 Judaites, Therapeutae, and Johnists, or disciples of 
 John, in the same way as the Papists have their Moli- 
 nists, Jansenists, Jacobins, and Cordeliers. However, 
 at that time no one spoke of the expectation of a Mes- 
 siah. Neither Josephus nor Philo, who have entered 
 into such minute details of the Jewish history, say 
 that there was any expectation of the coming of a 
 Christ, an Anointed, a Liberator, a Redeemer, of 
 whom they had then less need than ever. And if 
 there had been one, it must have been Herod. There
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 31 0| 
 
 was, in reality, a party or sect railed Herodians, who 
 acknowledged Herod to be the messenger of God. 
 
 At all times this people had given the names of 
 Anointed, of Messiah, of Christ, to any one that had 
 been serviceable to them ; sometimes it was given to 
 their own pontiffs, and sometimes to foreign princes. 
 The Jew who compiled the reveries of Isaiah, makes 
 him employ a vile flattery, very worthy of a Jewish 
 slave : " Thus saith the Lord to his Anoipted, to 
 Cyrus, whose right hand 1 have holden to subdue na- 
 tions before him," 1 &c. The 1st book of Kings 2 calls 
 the wicked Jehu, Anointed. A prophet announces to 
 Hazael, king of Damascus, that he is the Messiah and 
 the Anointed of the Most High. 
 
 Ezekiel says to the king of Tyrus, " Thou sealest 
 up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty 
 thou art the Anointed Cherub." 3 If this prince of 
 Tyrus had known that these titles were given to him 
 in Judea, it rested only with himself to have been a 
 kind of demi-god. He had an apparent right to such 
 a title, supposing Ezekiel to have been inspired. The 
 Evangelists have not said so much for Jesus. 
 
 However, it is certain, that no Jew either hoped, 
 desired, or announced an Anointed, a Messiah, in 
 the time of Herod the Great, under whom, it is said, 
 Jesus was born. After the death of Herod, when 
 Judea was governed as a Roman Province, and ano- 
 ther Herod was established, by the Romans, tetrarch 
 of the little barbarous district of Galilee, many fana- 
 tics took upon themselves to preach among the igno- 
 rant people, particularly in this Galilee, where the 
 Jews were more ignorant than elsewhere. It is thus, 
 that Fox, a poor cobbler, established in our own 
 times the sect of the Quakers, among the peasantry in 
 one of our counties. The first that founded a Calvi- 
 nist church in France, was a woollen carder, named 
 
 1 Isaiah xlv. 1. * 2King*ix.ff. ' Ezek. xxriii. 12, 14.
 
 3* THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 John Le Clerc. It is thus, that Muncer, John of 
 Leydon, and others, founded Anabaptism among the 
 poor people in some of the cantons of Germany. 
 
 1 have seen the Convulsionists in France, institute 
 a small sect, among the mob in one of the Fauxbourgs 
 of Paris. Sectarians began in this way all the world 
 over. They are generally beggars who rail against the 
 government, and finish either by becoming chiefs of a 
 party, or by being hanged. Jesus was put to death 
 at Jerusalem, without having been anointed ; John 
 the Baptist had already been condemned to death. 
 Each of them left some followers among the dregs of 
 the people. Those of John established themselves 
 towards Arabia, where they still exist. Those of 
 Jesus were at first very obscure, but as soon as they 
 became associated with some of the Greeks, they 
 began to be known. 
 
 The Jews under Tiberius having carried their accus- 
 tomed knaveries to a higher pitch than ever, and 
 having likewise seduced and robbed Fulvia, wife of 
 Saturninus, were driven from Rome, and could not 
 be re-established there, except by giving much money. 
 They were likewise severely punished under Caligula 
 and Claudius. 
 
 Their disasters served in some measure to embolden 
 the Galileans, who comprised the new sect, to sepa- 
 rate themselves from the Jewish communion. At 
 length, they found some who were a little acquainted 
 with letters, who put themselves at their head, and 
 who wrote in their favour against the Jews. This was 
 what produced such an immense number of Gospels, 
 a Greek word, signifying " Good-news." Each gave 
 a life of Jesus ; none of them agreed with the rest, 
 but all of them had some resemblance by the number 
 of incredible prodigies which, to vie with each other, 
 they attribute to their founder. 
 
 The Synagogue, on its part, seeing that a new sect 
 had sprang up in its bosom, and that it was vending
 
 OF THE H01.T SCRIPTURES. *: 
 
 a life of Jesus, very injurious to the Sanhcdrii), be- 
 gan to make enquiries respecting tiiis man, to whom 
 it had not hitherto paid any attention. 
 
 We have still a stupid work of that time, entitled 
 " Sepher Toldos Jeschut." It appears to have been 
 written many years after the death of Jesus, during 
 the time when the Gospels were compiled. This 
 book, like all others of the Jews and Christians, is 
 full of prodigies, but extravagant as it is, we must 
 confess that many statements contained in it are much 
 more probable than those related in our Gospels. 
 
 It is said in the " Toldos Jeschut/' that Jesus was 
 the son of a woman named Mirja, who was married in 
 Bethlehem to a poor man of the name of Jocanam. 
 There was in the neighbourhood a soldier of the name of 
 Joseph Pander, a well-shaped, good-looking man, who 
 fell in love with Mirja or Maria. As the Hebrews do 
 not express their vowels, they frequently take a forj. 
 
 Mirja became with child by Pander. Jocanam, who 
 was seized with confusion and despondency, quitted 
 Bethlehem, and went to secrete himself in Babylon, 
 where there were still many Jews. The conduct of 
 Mirja disgraced her. and her son Jesus or Jeschut, was 
 declared a bastard by the judges of the city. When 
 he became old enough to be admitted into the public 
 school, he placed himself among the legitimate chil- 
 dren ; however, he was compelled to leave this class. 
 
 Hence arose the animosity against priests, which 
 he manifested when he had attained manhood ; 
 he lavished on them the most opprobrious epithets, 
 calling them a race of vipers and whitened sepul- 
 chres/' 
 
 Having, at length, quarrelled with Judas, a Jew, 
 regarding a question of interest, as well as concerning 
 some religious points, Judas denounced him to the 
 Sanhedrin. He was arrested, began to cry, and begged 
 pardon, but in vain ; he was flogged, stoned, and 
 afterwards put to death. 
 
 Such is the substance of this history. Insipid fables,
 
 34 THK IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 and impertinent miracles, have since been added, 
 which injured it much, but the book was known in the 
 second century. Celsus quotes it ; Origen refutes it, 
 and it has reached us quite disfigured. 
 
 The chief part of what I have just stated is cer- 
 tainly more probable, more natural, and more con- 
 formable, to what passes in the world in our own days, 
 than any of the fifty gospels of the Christians. It 
 was much more likely that Joseph Pander was the 
 father of Mirja's child, than that an angel came from 
 heaven, with God's compliments to a carpenter's wife, 
 in the same way as Jupiter sent Mercury to visit 
 Alcrnena. 
 
 Every thing that they tell us about Jesus is wor- 
 thy of the Old Testament, and of Bedlam. They 
 bring I know not what kind of Agion pneuma, a 
 Holy Ghost, that had hitherto never been spoken of, 
 and which they have since told us is the third part 
 of God. 
 
 Jesus then becomes the Son of God, and of a 
 Jewess ; he is not yet God himself, but he is a supe- 
 rior Being. He works miracles. The first he per- 
 forms is, to have himself conveyed by the devil to the 
 top of one of the mountains of Judea, where he 
 could discover all the kingdoms of the earth. His 
 raiment appeared white ; what a miracle ! He changes 
 water into wine at a repast, where the guests were already 
 drunk. 1 He dries a fig tree, because it does o tfurnish 
 him with figs to his breakfast in the month of February. 
 Yet the author of this tale has at least the honesty 
 
 1 It is difficult to say which of those pretended prodigies is the 
 most ridiculous. Many people give a preference to that of the 
 wine at the marriage of Cana. That God should say to his mother, 
 the Jewess, " Woman, what have I to do with thee?" is a strange 
 thing; but that he should fea>twith drunkards, and should change 
 six pitchers of water into wine for men that had already drank too 
 much, is a blasphemy as f>:ecrab!e as it is impertinent. The He- 
 brew text uses a word which answers to " tipsy," or half drunk ; 
 the Vulgate say ' inebriate."
 
 OF THE HOI.V SCKIHIliRtS. tt 
 
 to tell us, that it was not tin- season lor figs, lie 
 goes to sup with women, and then with publicans, 
 and yet it is pretended in his history that he looked 
 upon these publicans as bad characters. He goes into 
 the temple, that is to say, into the large iuclosure 
 where the priests resided, in the court where i 
 dealers were authorized by law to sell fowls, pigeoi^, 
 and lambs, to those who came to sacrifice, lie takes 
 a whip, and plays upon the shoulders of the dealers, 
 whom he drives out, as well as their fowls, pigeons, 
 sheep, and oxen, and strews their money on the 
 ground. Vet he is suffered to proceed without inter- 
 ruption ! And if we believe the book attributed to 
 John, they content themselves with asking him to 
 work a miracle, in order to shew his authority, to 
 play pranks like these in a place so respected. 
 
 It was a very great miracle, for thirty or forty trades- 
 men to suffer themselves to be kicked, and to lose 
 their money, by one man, without saying any thing to 
 him. There is nothing in Don Quixote which ap- 
 proaches such extravagance as this. But instead of per- 
 forming the miracle they demand of him, he contents 
 himself with saying, " Destroy this temple, and in 
 three days I will raise it up." 1 The Jews reply, ac- 
 cording to John, " Forty and six years was this temple 
 building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days ?" 
 
 It was asserting a great falsehood to say that He- 
 rod had been employed forty-six years in building the 
 temple of Jerusalem. The Jews, in their reply, could 
 not make use of such a falsehood. By the bye, this 
 alone shews us that the Gospels have been written, 
 by men who were scarcely acquainted with any thing. 
 
 After this foolish enterpri/e, Jesus is said to have 
 preached in the villages. What kind of discourses do 
 they make him hold forth ? He compares the kingdom 
 of heaven to a grain of mustard seed ; to a morsel of 
 leaven, mixed in three measures of meal ; t > a net, 
 
 1 John ii. i'.
 
 3C TH IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 that catches both good and bad fish ; to a king, who 
 kills his chickens to make a feast at his son's wedding, 
 and sends his servants to invite the neighbours to it. 
 The neighbours kill the servants that request them to 
 dine, and the king kills the people who killed his ser- 
 vants, and burns their city. He then sends tocompel the 
 beggars on the highway to come and dine with him, 
 and perceiving a poor guest who had no garment, in- 
 stead of giving hi Hi one, he causes him to be thrown 
 into a dungeon. This is the kingdom of heaven, 
 according to Matthew. 
 
 In the other discourses, the kingdom of heaven is 
 always compared to a usurer, who will absolutely have 
 cent, per cent, profit. They confess, that our Arch- 
 bishop Tillotson preaches in a different style. 
 
 How did tht* history of Jesus finish? By events, 
 which have happened, both in our own country and 
 in the rest of the world, to many people who wished 
 to stir up the populace, without being sufficiently capa- 
 ble either of arming that population, or of gaining to 
 themselves powerful protectors. They most commonly 
 finish by being hanged. Jesus was put to death, for 
 having called his superiors, " a race of vipers, and 
 whited sepulchres." 1 He was executed publicly, but 
 he rose from the grave privately. At length he ascend- 
 ed into heaven, in the presence of eighty of his disciples, 
 without any other person in Judea seeing his ascen- 
 sion in the clouds, which was, however, easy to be 
 seen, and ought to have made a great noise in the 
 world. 
 
 Our Creed, called by the Papists Credo, which 
 was attributed to the apostles, though evidently fabri- 
 cated more than four hundred years after these apostles, 
 acquaints us, that before Jesus ascended into heaven, 
 he went on a tour into hell. You will remark, that 
 not a single word is said about this journey in the 
 Gospels, and yet it is one of the principal articles of 
 
 1 Matt, xxiii. 27.
 
 OF THE MOI.Y SCRIPTURES. 37 
 
 the Christian faith. We cannot be Christians, it \\< 
 do not believe that Jesus descended into hell. 
 
 Who was, then, the first that imagined this journey ? 
 It was Athanasius, about three hundred and fitly years 
 after the event. It is in his treatise against Apollina- 
 rus, on the incarnation of the Lord, where he men- 
 tions that the soul of Jesus descended into hell, while 
 his body remained in the sepulchre. 
 
 His words are worthy of attention, and shew us 
 with what sagacity and wisdom Athanasius reasoned. 
 
 Here follow his own words : " It was necessary af- 
 ter his death, that his divers essential parts should per- 
 form divers functions ; that his body should remain in 
 the sepulchre to destroy corruption, and that his soul 
 should go into hell to vanquish death." 
 
 The African St. Augustin, in a letter that he wrote 
 to Evodus, seems to agree with him, Quis ergo nisi 
 tn/idelis negaverit fuisse apud inferos Christum? 
 
 Jerome, his cotemporary, was nearly of the same 
 opinion ; and it was during the time of Augustin and 
 Jerome, that this Credo was composed, which, umong 
 ignorant people, passed for the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 Thus were opinions, creeds, and sects, established. 
 But how could these detestable fooleries be credited ? 
 How did they overturn the other absurdities of the 
 Greeks and Romans, and, at last, the empire itself? 
 How have they caused so many evils, so many civil 
 wars, lighted so many faggots, and spilled so much 
 blood ? We are going to account for it. 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OP CHRISTIANITY, AND PARTICULARLY 
 
 OF PAUL. 
 
 WHEN the first Galileans spread themselves among 
 the^ populace of the Greeks and Romans, they found 
 this populace infected with all the absurd traditions
 
 38 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION' 
 
 that can take possession of ignorant minds enamoured 
 with fables. They had gods disguised in the shape 
 of bulls, horses, swans, and serpents, to seduce 
 women and girls. Magistrates, and respectable citi- 
 zens, did not admit of these extravagancies, but the 
 populace fed on them, and these constituted the pagan 
 mob. 1 fancy I see the followers of Fox dispute with 
 those of Brown. It was not difficult for Jews, possess- 
 ed with devils, to make their reveries believed by the 
 ignorant, who believed other reveries equally impertinent. 
 Novelty attracted weak minds, who grew tired of 
 their old follies, and ran to hear new tales, just like the 
 mob at Bartholomew fair, demanding a new farce, and 
 becoming disgusted with the old one, which they have 
 so often seen repeated. 
 
 If we believe the books of the Christians, we are 
 told that Peter, son of Jonas, 1 dwelt with Simon the 
 tanner, in a garret at Joppa, where he brought to life 
 again the mantua-maker, Dorcas. 
 
 In the Chapter of Lucian, entitled Philopatris^ he 
 speaks of a Galilean " with a bald forehead, and 
 large nose, who was carried to the third heaven." 
 
 See how he speaks of an assembly of Christians, 
 whom he fell in with : " Tatterdemalions almost naked, 
 with fierce looks and the walk of madmen, who moan 
 and make contortions ; swearing by the Son who was 
 begotten by the Father, predicting a thousand misfor- 
 tunes to the empire, and cursing the emperor." Such 
 were the first Christians. 
 
 He who had given the greatest notoriety to this sect 
 was this Paul with the large nose and bald forehead, 
 whom Lucian ridicules. The writings of Paul, it 
 appears to me, are sufficient to shew how far Lucian 
 was right. What nonsense he writes to the society of 
 Christians, forming at Rome among the Jewish rabble. 
 " Circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law, but 
 if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made 
 
 1 Acts ix. 3<J.
 
 OF HIE HOLY sCKIl'ILKl-.*. Utf 
 
 uncircumcision." 1 Do we then make void the law 
 through faith ? God forbid ; yea, we establish the law.* 
 If Abraham were justified by works, he hath when of to 
 glory, but not before (jod." J 
 
 In thus expressing himself, Paul spoke evidently ;s 
 .1 l \v, and not as a Christian. 
 
 What a discourse to the Corinthians, " Our fathers 
 were all Implied unto Moses, in the cloud and in the 
 sea."* Was not Cardinal Bembo right in calling these 
 epistles Epistolacia:, and advising people not to read 
 them ? 
 
 Whut shall \ve think of a man who says to the 
 Thessalonians, " Let your women keep silence in the 
 churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak," 5 
 and who in the same epistle announces that they ought 
 to pray and prophesy with their heads covered ?* 
 
 Is his quarrel with the other apostles that of a 
 wise and moderate man ? Does not every thing, shew 
 him to be a party man ? He is a Christian ; he 
 teaches Christianity, and goes seven days successively 
 to sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem, by the advice 
 of James. He writes to the Galatians, " Behold, 1 
 Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ 
 shall profit you nothing." 7 And he afterwards cir- 
 cumcises his disciple Timothy, who, as the Jews 
 pretend, was the son of a Greek, and a prostitute, 
 lie obtrudes himself among the apostles, and boasts 
 of being as much an apostle as the rest of them : 
 " Am 1 not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus 
 Christ, our Lord ? Are not ye my work in the Lord ? 
 1 f I be not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to 
 you. Have we not a power to eat and to drink ? 
 nave we not a power to lead about a sister, a wife, 
 as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of 
 the Lord ? Who goeth a warfare any time at his own 
 charges ?" What frightful things in this passage ! The 
 ___ 
 
 1 Rom. ii. 25. * Chap. iii. 31. ' Chap. iv. 2. 4 1 Cor. x. 1, 2. 
 1 Cor. xiv. 34. I Cor. i. 5. ' Gal. v. 2.
 
 40 THF. IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 right of living at the expence. of those he has subju- 
 gated ; the right of making them pay the expences of 
 his wife or his sister ; and, at last, the proof that Jesus 
 had brothers, and the presumption that Mary, or Mirja, 
 was brought to bed more than once. 
 ., I. should be glad to know of whom he is speaking 
 again in his 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xi. 
 " For such are false apostles. Howbeit, wherein 
 soever any is bold, I am bold also. Are they He- 
 brews ? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham ? 
 Soamjlfj Are they the ministers of Christ? lam 
 more ; in labours more abundant, in stripes above 
 measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Five 
 times received I forty stripes, save one ; thrice was 1 
 beaten with rods; once was I stoned; a night and a 
 day I have been in the deep." 
 
 tebold this Paul, who was twenty-four hours iri the 
 deep without being drowned ! It is a third of the^d-; 
 venture of Jonah. But does he not here clearly mani- 
 fest his base jealousy of Peter and the other apostles, 
 by thinking to carry the palm from them, because he 
 has received more stripes and floggings than they 
 have done ? 
 
 Does hot his fury for domineering appear in all its 
 insolence,, when he says to the same Corinthians, 
 " This is the third time I am coming to you. In the 
 mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be 
 established. Being now absent, I write to them which 
 heretofore /have sjnned, and to all other, that, if 1 
 come again, I will not spare." 1 To what simple fools, 
 to what kind of besotted creatures, did he thus address 
 himself like a tyrannical master ? Those to whom he 
 had, the, hardihood to assert that he Was carried to- the 
 third heaven. Impudent and dastardly impostor! 
 ?reis this third heaven in which thqu test, travelled?" 
 
 ' * . Ti v i * i * 4 * 4 * * 
 
 n 
 We laugh at Mahomet, when his commentators pre- 
 
 v ,:!.', .^v . 
 
 2 Cor. *m. 1. 2.
 
 OF THE HOLY ftCRlPTt'Rf& 41 
 
 tend that he visited seven heavens in succession, in a 
 single night ; but Mahomet, in the Alcoran at least, 
 does not speak of such an extravagance as that which 
 is imputed to him ; yet Paul dares to assert that he 
 has performed half of this journey. 
 
 Who xvas this Paul, then, Who still makes so much 
 noise, and who is every day quoted at random ? He 
 says he was a Roman citizen, which I dare affirm to 
 be an impudent falsehood. No Jew was a Roman 
 citizen, except under the Decii and Philips. If he 
 were of Tarsus, it was neither a Roman city nor a 
 Roman colony for more lhan a hundred years aftef 
 Paul. If he were a native of Giscalus, as St. Jerome 
 states, this village was in Galilee, and, assuredly, the 
 Galileans had never the honour of being Roman 
 citizens. 
 
 He was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel ; that is 
 to say, he was one of Gamaliel's domestics. Indeed, 
 it is remarked, that he took care of the clothes of 
 those who stoned Stephen, which is the employ of a 
 valet. The Jews pretend that he wished to marry 
 Gamaliel's daughter. We see some traces of this ad- 
 venture in the ancient book which contains the history 
 of Thecla, 
 
 It is not astonishing that the daughter of Gamaliel 
 should reject a little bald-headed valet, whose eye- 
 brows hung oter a deformed nose, and who was bandy* 
 legged. It is thus that the " Acts of Thecla" de- 
 scribe him. Disdained, as he deserved to be, by 
 Gamaliel and his daughter, he joined himself with the 
 infant sect of Cephas, James, Matthew, and Barnabas, 
 in order to annoy the Jews. 
 
 Any one, who has the least spark of reason would 
 judge, that this cause, which has been assigned for the 
 apostacy of this miserable Jew, is more natural than 
 that attributed to him. How can we persuade our- 
 selves that a celestial light knocked him off horseback 
 at noon-day ; that a heavenly voice addressed him ;
 
 42 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 that God said to him, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest 
 thou me ?" Ought we not to blush at such stupidity ? 
 If God had wished to prevent the disciples of Jesus 
 from being persecuted, would he not have addressed 
 himself to the princes of the nation, rather than to 
 Gamaliel's valet ? Have they met with less chastise- 
 ment since Saul fell from his horse ? Was not Saul, 
 Paul himself, chastised ? What was the utility of this 
 ridiculous miracle? I call heaven and earth to wit- 
 ness, (if I may be permitted to make use of these im- 
 proper words, heaven and earth) that there never was 
 a legend more stupid, more fanatical, more disgusting, 
 nor more deserving of our horror and contempt. 
 
 -.ri<! j>HjnHI> -.lift f>UK ',:rotffc'f'-r>,rr> - ft^Xttul Of ii^MV* 
 
 ns ' }'* ' 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 .!>>-;>; I ,tfeJ(K*btt:totti',ir<'f4*;Tr.'4i >,' iif*i fr/rnf* .'ViK't* * 
 
 OT THE GOSPELS. 
 
 p''b\ v.^n ;'>" '>vif .n*rt' Jp/f .n i' '.") "fVMU ?n .hiv." v***/ 7 
 As soon as the societies of half Jews, half Christians, 
 had by degrees established themselves among the igno- 
 rant people at Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, 
 and Alexandria, some time after Vespasian, each of 
 these little societies wished to make its own gospel. 
 Fifty of them have been reckoned, and there were 
 many more. It is known that they all contradict one 
 another ; this could not be otherwise, since they were 
 all composed in different places. All of them agree 
 only that their Jesus "/as the son of Mary, or Mirja, 
 and that he ( was put to death; all of them likewise 
 ascribe to him as many prodigies as are to be found in 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
 
 'JLii^' dresses up a genealogy for him quite different 
 to that planned by Matthew ; and neither of them 
 dream about giving us the genealogy of Mary, who 
 was l his only parent. The enthusiast Pascal cries out, 
 "This is not 'acting in concert/' Undoubtedly not. 
 
 ''.."'!! Mf5i;t||^trf,-_, > I '> ;'' *
 
 OF TffE HOLY SCHIITT'RKS. 43 
 
 Each has written extravagancies' for his little society, 
 according to his own fancy. Tins accounts for one 
 Evangelist pretending that the little .Irxiis was brought 
 up in Kgypt, and another saying that he was brouirht 
 up at Bethlehem. One of them makes him go only 
 once to Jerusalem, whilrt the otln rs say that he went 
 three times. One of them ratios tln . \\ise men, 
 whom we call three kings, to be conducted by a new 
 star, and causes all the little children of the country to 
 be put to death by the first Herod, who Was thru near 
 the end of his days. The others are silent aborit t lu- 
 ster, and the wise men, and the massacre. 1 At length, 
 to explain these contradictions, we have i.. n com- 
 pelled to make a concordance, and this concordanc 
 less concordant than the matters they wished to recon- 
 cile. 
 
 Almost all the Gospels, which the Christians never 
 made known but to their own little flocks, were visi- 
 bly forged after the taking of Jerusalem. We hav< a 
 very evident proof of it in that attributed to Matthew. 
 This book puts into the mouth of Jesus these words 
 to the Jews. " That upon you may come all the 
 righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of 
 righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of 
 Barachias, whom ye slew between die temple and the 
 altar." A forger is always discovered in some part of 
 his work. During the siege of Jerusalem, there was 
 a /arharias. son of Barachias, killed between the tem- 
 ple and the altar, by the (action of the zealots. This 
 Hint/. yi >_. _j 
 
 1 Tlie massacre of the innocents is certainly the height of folly, 
 i well ;u the tail* of the three wise men conducted by a star. Ho* 
 could Herod, who was thru almost on hi deathbed* f*r beiog dt> 
 
 throned by the son pfa village rut neuter, who waa just born. Herod 
 (I i<l only two or three \ears wfter, at the age of M-vriitv. It would 
 h-.ivr ben necessary for thi. child to rimke war jitfiiinst the empire. 
 C'onld tuch a fear take |><Hcuion of any maw, 1 who <** not an ab- 
 solute fo.l ? U it po^ible that thry Imve proposetl t<o human cre- 
 dulity ^urh ftnp'ul t'oc.lt-rus, u!i:c!i ouriio Kohnt the Pe\il. 
 JorVh rf Pan- ? M.HI i* ^ \ i\ < ont^iir.iiiljk licin;j wncil'llC bU 
 lf to be Kovtrntd in such a wav !
 
 44 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 enables us easily to detect the imposition, otherwise 
 we might have read over the whole Bible to enable us 
 to do so. The Greeks ajicj Romans read but little, 
 and the Gospels were entirely unknown to them. Liea 
 were told with impunity. 
 
 An evident proof that the Gospel attributed to 
 Matthew, was not written till a long time after him by 
 soine miserable half Jew, half Christian Hellenist, is 
 this famous passage : If he neglect to hear the 
 church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and 
 a publican. '%;*** 
 
 There was no church in the time of Jesus and of 
 Matthew. Church is a Greek word. The assembly 
 pf the people of Athens styled itself Ecclesia. This 
 expression was only adopted by the Christians in pro- 
 cess of time, when they had obtained a kind of govern- 
 ment, It is clear, then, that an impostor took the 
 name of Matthew, and wrote his Gospel in very bad 
 Greek. J confess it would be comical enough for 
 Matthew, who had himself been a publican, to com- 
 pare the heathens with publicans. Hut whoever might 
 have been the author of this ridiculous comparison, 
 none but a mad-cap among the most illiterate of the 
 people would have looked upon a Roman knight, 
 who was authorized to receive the imposts established 
 by government, as a man that ought to be despised. 
 The idea alone is destructive of all administration, and 
 not only unworthy of a man whom God had inspired, 
 but unworthy the lackey of an honest citizen. 
 
 There are two Gospels of the infancy. The first 
 reja.tes^ that 3. young beggar patted the little Jesus, 
 his comrade, behind, and that the little Jesus imme- 
 diately killed him.' Kaipara kremet peson apeidonen. 
 At anpther time he made birds of clay, which flew 
 away, tjismethpd of learning the alphabet was quite 
 divine. Those tales are not more ridiculous than that 
 $f his being carried! off by the devil, that of histfans- 
 
 flfett, *\iii. 17.
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 45 
 
 figuration on Mount Tabor, that of the water changed 
 into wine, and that of the devil's being sent into a 
 herd of awine. Thus this Gospel of the infancy was 
 long in veneration. 
 
 'i he second Gospel of the infancy is not less curious. 
 Mary, who was conducting her son into Egypt, met 
 with some girls that were deploring the loss of their 
 brother, who had been transformed into a mule. 
 Mary and her iittleone did not fail to change the mule 
 into its former shape of a man, but we do not know 
 whether or not the miserable animal was any better for 
 the change. As they proceeded on the road, the 
 wandering family met with two robbers, One named 
 Dumachus, the other Titus. Dumachus was for rob- 
 bing the Virgin, and doing something still more scan- 
 dalous, but Titus took Mary's part, and gave forty 
 drachms to persuade him to let the family go by, with- 
 out doing them any injury. Jesus declared to the 
 Holy Virgin, that Dumachus should be the wicked 
 thief, and Titus the good thief; that they would one 
 day be executed with him ; that Titus should go into 
 paradise, and Dumachus to the devil. 
 
 The Gospel according to St. James, elder brother of 
 Jesus, or that of Peter Barjonas, a Gospel known and 
 boasted of by Tertullian and by Origen, was in still 
 greater repute. It was called Proto~Evangelion, or 
 First Gospel. It was perhaps the first which spoke of 
 the new star, of the arrival of the wise men, and of 
 the little children whom the first Herod ordeireWta be 
 massacred. 
 
 There is still a kind of Gospel or Acts of John in 
 which Jesus is said to have danced with 
 
 the evening before he died ; and the 'circumstance in 
 rendered probable, as the Therapeutae wero rraHy ac- 
 customed to dance in a ?in, a ceremony that must In* 
 verv pleasing to our heswe^rtt ^ttfcte* wn \ 
 
 ^ * j *w 
 
 Why dors the most scrupulous Christian 'nbSv faugh 
 without remorse at all these gospels and acts which are
 
 46 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 no longer in the canon ; and why does he not dare to 
 laugh at those adopted by the church ? They are nearly 
 the same tales; but fanaticism adores in one name 
 what appears the height of ridicule in another. 
 
 At length, four Gospels are chosen ; and the great 
 reason for having that number, as stated by St. Irenaeus, 
 is, that there are only four cardinal points ; that God is 
 seated on cherubims, and that cherubims have four dif- 
 ferent shapes. St. Jerome, in his preface to Mark's 
 Gospel, adds to the four winds and four-shaped ani- 
 mals, the four rings of the poles, on which the box 
 called the ark was carried. 
 
 Theophilus, of Antioch, proves that as Lazarus was 
 dead only four days, we can consequently admit only 
 four Gospels ; St. Cyprian proves the same thing by 
 the four rivers that watered paradise. We must be 
 very impious not to yield to such reasons as theseJ >ilv, 
 
 However, previous to any preference being given to 
 these four Gospels, the fathers of the two first centu- 
 ries scarcely ever quoted any except the gospels which 
 are now styled apocryphal. This is an incontestible 
 proof, that our four Gospels were not written by those 
 to whom they are attributed. I wish they were so. 
 I wish, for example, Luke had written that which 
 goes under his name. I would say to Luke, " How 
 darest thou maintain that Jesus was born under the 
 governorship of Cyreneus, or Quirinus, when it is 
 attested that Quirinus was not governor of Syria, till 
 more than ten years afterwards ? How hast thou the 
 face to say, that Augustus ordered all the world to be 
 taxed, and that Mary went to Bethlehem for that pur- 
 pose ? "A tax on all the world ! What an expression ! 
 Thou hast heard that Augustus had a book which con- 
 tained a detail of the forces of the empire, and its 
 finances ; but d Htx on all the subjects of the empire 
 is what he never could have thought of, still less could 
 he think of a tax on all the world. No writer, either 
 Greek, Roman, or barbarian, has mentioned such an
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 47 
 
 extravagance. Behold thee, then, convicted of a most 
 enormous falsehood, and yet thy book must be re- 
 spected !" 
 
 But who fabricated these four Gospels ? Is it not 
 probable that they , were written by Christian Hellenists, 
 si MCA- the Old Testament is scarcely ever quoted, ex- 
 cept from the Septant version, wiiich was unknown in 
 Judea? The apostles knew no more about the Greek 
 language than Jesus did. How could they have quoted 
 the Septant? Nothing but the miracle of Pentecost 
 could teach Greek to ignorant Jews. 
 
 What a collection of contrarieties and falsehoods 
 remain in these four Gospels ! Were there only one, 
 it would suffice to shew them to be works of ignorance. 
 Did we find only the single tale given by Luke, that 
 Jesus was born under the governorship of Cyreneus, 
 when Augustus ordered all the world to be taxed ; 
 would not this falsehood alone cause us to throw away 
 the book with contempt ? In the first place, there 
 never was such a taxation, and no author speaks of it. 
 Secondly, Cyreneus was not governor of Syria, till 
 ten years after the epocha of the birth of Jesus. In 
 the Gospels there are almost as many errors as words, 
 and thus it is they succeed with the people. 
 . 
 
 Uil ,$11/4 t* -,o(ri*y **' i * 
 
 I-LTAP YfV 
 
 x\ n MO* ,<it ii !?$ ftA^ii ' 
 
 HOW f m FrRST CHRISTIANS COXDlHTTtD-HfalMtelivfiB 
 
 THE ROMANS, AND HOW TJfBY POIKJKU VKfeSKS 
 , AITIUBUTB11 JU THK 3ID\ Ui. &c. 
 
 hn HKmri Mlt'ti, . |, r i-h jj honinl 
 
 HKmri Mti, . , r i-h jj honinl 
 
 E ol coininun sense ask lio\v this IISMH- ot 
 fable* so stupidly oil'eiwivc to reason, tlu-M- l>l,t^|iln - 
 mie, wiiich impute ir $o,,nuu)y horrid crimes to tin- 
 Ucity,; cpjLUdqbtajn.^pjy qre^yt^.TIu-y mi-ht, iiul--d, 
 have been astonished if the first Christians had con-
 
 48 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 verted the emperor'* court, or the Roman senate j but 
 an abject mob addressed itself to a populace not less 
 despicable. This is so true, that the Emperor Julian 
 said in Discourse to the Christians, " It was enough 
 for you at first to seduce a few servants, a few beggars, 
 such as Cornelius and Sergius. But let me be regarded 
 as the most impudent of impostors, if among those 
 who embraced your sect under Tiberius and Claudius, 
 there was a single man of birth or merit." 
 
 The first reasoning Christians, then, exclaimed in 
 the public places and victualling-houses, to the Pagans 
 who attempted to reason with them. " Be not startled 
 with our mysteries ; you have recourse to expiations 
 to purge yourselves of your crimes, but we have an 
 expiation far more salutary. Your Oracles are inferior 
 to ours ; and what we offer as a proof to convince 
 you that our sect is the only true one is, that your 
 own oracles have predicted all that we teach, and all 
 that was done by our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you 
 not heard of the Sibyls ?" " Yes," replied the Pagan 
 disputants to those of Galilee, " all the Sibyls were 
 inspired by Jupiter himself; their predictions are all 
 true/' * Very well," replied the Galileans, " we will 
 shew you Sibyline verses which clearly announce 
 Jesus Christ, and then you must acknowledge we are 
 right." 
 
 Behold them immediately forging the most stupid 
 Greek verses that were ever composed ; verses similar 
 to those of Blackmore and Gibson, of Grub Street. 
 They ascribe them to the Sibyls, and for the space of 
 more than four hundred years they did not cease to 
 establish Christianity on this proof, which was on a 
 level with the understandings of both the deceivers 
 and the deceived. This first attempt having succeed- 
 ed, we even find these puerile impostors attributing to 
 the Sibyls acrostic verses, all of which commenced by 
 the letters composing the name of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Lactantius has preserved, as authentic pieces, a great 
 portion of these rhapsodies. To these fables they
 
 OF lilt Hun MKlt'U Ui >. 4i> 
 
 a/ided miracle*,, win s.,nu i.im > performed even 
 
 in public. , It is true, that they did not raise (lie dead, 
 like Klisha,'" t;:. ,i in its course, 
 
 ma; they did Ji'.. : - i dry-shod, like 
 
 Muses ; they d.d not, like .1 tin msvlvcs to 
 
 Ix; transported l>\ the d< \ iJ to the k>j> of a little moun- 
 tain ID i ...A ( ould,iiJHCQver all the- k; 
 
 dpins of tljc earth; but tlu-y euted the te\xr uUe.ii on 
 its decline, and t:\cii the itch i as the patient 
 
 had been bathed, blooded, purpd, and rubbed, 'i lit \. 
 likewise, aist out devils, which \vas tin. jiiiucipal oi>- 
 ject of the apostles' mission. It is said, in more than 
 gne Gospel, that Jesus sent them purposely to east 
 out devils. This was au ancient prerogative of (ji 
 people. We know that there were exorcists at Jen 
 lein, ^jip cured the possessed .. by puttiug into their 
 liases a little, of the rout called Baruth, ajid.by.aiuUej-- 
 ing a Jew words taken from Solomon's bong. .Jesus 
 himself o.>niesses that the Jew* had this powuv yet 
 no devils i-ver durst take possession of the governor of 
 a province, of a senator, upr even 01 a centurion. 
 None but the poor were ver possessed by them. 
 
 If the devil ought to have seized hold of any parti- 
 cular individual, it should have been I'lla^e, ,yot he 
 never durst apprpacl^l^ o/ 4Mh9 l teft tl^ t( Cbii>tjan 
 sect was in reality established "by tnis custom, yet.jfc is 
 Almost ^yery where abolished, excep^justate^^^if^ient 
 to the Tope, amj in some of the Germau caotons, 
 where the ignorant people are , w$#uj)ptfjy AW. sub- 
 jection .to bishops and monks, ; ttt ul .>fa t .\nvx y*AT 
 
 Thus the Christians gained credit among ilw iguo 
 r.mt people during a whole cetitury. 1 he ^ovt-riinifni 
 let them aloue, regarding them a* ,-h ht^*t, and 
 
 AS were tolerated. Tiiey p^jcyted AW'thttV 
 Pharisees, nor Saddu ir,jfo ^bardpcut*:, nor 
 
 . Judaites; und they 
 reason" jp p^r^ th^ 

 
 50 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 ignorance, that of their being unknown. They were 
 so little thought of, that neither Josephus, nor Philo, 
 nor Plutarch, deigns to speak of them ; and if Tacitus 
 says a few words respecting them, it is by confounding 
 them with the Jews, and stigmatizing them in the 
 most contemptible manner. They possessed, there- 
 fore, the greatest facility of extending their sect. 
 
 They were a little enquired after under Domitian ; 
 some of them were punished under Trajan, and it 
 was then that they began to unite a thousand false ac- 
 counts of martyrs, to some others that were but too 
 true. 
 
 CHAP. XV. 
 
 **.'.. p 
 
 HOW THE CHRISTIANS CONDUCTED THEMSELVES TOWARDS 
 
 THE JEWS. THEIR RIDICULOUS EXPLANATION OF 
 
 THE PROPHECIES. 
 
 THE Christians could never succeed so well among 
 the Jews as they did among the populace of the Gen- 
 tiles. So long as they continued to live according to 
 the Mosaic law, which Jesus had observed all his life- 
 time ; so long as they abstained from meats pretended 
 to be impure, and did not proscribe circumcision, they 
 were regarded only as a particular society of the Jews, 
 such as the Sadducees, Essenians, and Therapeutae. 
 They said that it was wrong to put Jesus to death, 
 that he was a holy man sent by God, and that he had 
 risen again from the dead. 
 
 These discoveries, it is true, were punished at Jeru- 
 salem ; it is said that they cost Stephen his life, but 
 otherwise this division produced only altercations 
 between the rigid Jews and half Christians. They 
 disputed ; and the Christians fancied that they had 
 found in the Scriptures some passages that might be 
 twisted in favour of their cause.
 
 OF THE HOI.Y SCRIP I! i:;>. ;M 
 
 They pretended that the Jewish prophets had pre- 
 dicted Jesus Christ, and quoted Isaiah, who said to 
 king Ahaz, 1 " Behold, a virgin (or a \<>im<: woman, 
 A L.M A*) shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his 
 name Iiuniauuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that 
 he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. 
 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and 
 choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be 
 forsaken of both her kings. And it shall come to pass 
 in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in 
 the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the 
 bee that is in the land of Assyria. In the same day 
 shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, 
 by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the 
 head and the hair of the feet; and it shall also consume 
 the beard." 
 
 Chap. viii. " Moreover, the Lord said unto me, 
 Take thee a great roil, and write in it with a man's pen, 
 concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz. And I went unto 
 the prophetess, and she conceived, and bare a son. 
 Then said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-sha- 
 lal-hash-baz," which signifies, " Divide quickly the 
 spoils." 
 
 " You see clearly," said the Christians, " that the 
 whole of this evidently signifies the coming of Jesus 
 Christ. The young woman who has a child is the 
 Virgin Mary. * Immanuei' and * Divide quickly the 
 spoils/ signify our Lord Jesus Christ. As for the 
 razor * that is hired to shave the hair of the king of 
 Assyria,' that is another matter." All these explana- 
 tions perfectly resemble those of Lord Peter in Dean 
 Swift's Tale of a Tub. 
 
 ' Isaiah vii. 
 
 ' By what fraudulent impudence have the Christians maintained 
 that AI M\ always signifie- a virgin ? There are in the Old T<- la- 
 ment twenty passage >, where alma is taken tor a woman, and even 
 for a concubine, as in Solomon'* Song, chap, vi., and J<el chap. ;. 
 Till tne time of Abbe Tutheme, noaeoi the doctor* of the church, 
 knew Hebrew, except Origen, Jerome, ami E^Uruiu, wbo were 
 brought up in th country. 
 
 MUVBtSnVOF 
 
 UUNOIS LIBRARY 
 AT URBANA4HAMPAJG*
 
 t2 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 The .lews answered, " We do not see so clearly as 
 you do, that Divide quickly the spoils,' and * Irri- 
 manuel' signify Jesus ; that Isaiah's young woman is 
 a virgin ; nor that a/wa, which is equally expressive 
 both of girl and young woman, signifies Mary." And 
 they laughed in the faces of the Christians. 
 
 When the Christians said that Jesus -is predicted by 
 the patriarch Judah, who was to " bind his foal unto 
 the vine, and wash his garments in wine/' 1 and Jesus 
 having entered Jerusalem on an ass, then Judah is 
 a type of Jesus. This made the Jews to laugh still 
 more. 
 
 If they pretended that Jesus was the Shiloh who was 
 to come before the sceptre had departed from Judah, r 
 the Jews confounded them by saying, that, since the 
 Babylonish captivity, the sceptre had never been in 
 Judah, and that even during the time of Saul, the rod 
 was not in Judah. Thus the Christians, far from 
 being able to convert the Jews, were despised and de- 
 tested by them, and are so still. They were looked 
 upon as bastards, who, under false titles, wished to 
 strip the heir of his possession. They then renounced 
 the hope of converting the Jews to their cause, and 
 addressed themselves wholly to the Gentiles. 
 
 CHAP. XVI. 
 
 OF FALSE QUOTATIONS AND PREDICTIONS IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 To encourage the first they had to instruct previous 
 to baptism, it was thought good to quote old prophe- 
 cies, and to make new ones. In the Gospels they 
 quoted old prophecies at random. Matthew, or he 
 who took the name, says that Joseph " dwelt in a city 
 called Nazareth ; that it might be fulfilled which was 
 
 1 Gen. xlix. l'l. * Ib. 10.
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 53 
 
 spoken by the prophet, He shall be called a Nazarene." 
 No prophet had inadr usi- of theso words, Matthew 
 wrote therefore at random. 
 
 Luke dares to say, chap, xxi., " And there shall be 
 signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars ; 
 the sea and the waves roaring. Men's hearts failing 
 them for fear, and for looking after those things which 
 are coming on the earth. For the powers of heaven 
 shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of 
 of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 
 Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass 
 away till all be fulfilled." The generation passed away, 
 and if nothing of this kind happened, it is not my 
 fault. Paul says nearly as much about it, in his 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians : " Then we, which are 
 alive and remain, shall be caught up with them in 
 the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." 1 
 
 Let any one here interrogate himself, whether or 
 not he considers it possible to carry imposture and 
 the stupidity of fanaticism to a higher pitch ? When 
 it was seen that such gross falsehoods had been asserted, 
 the fathers of the church did not fail to say that Luke 
 and Paul had understood by these predictions the de- 
 struction of Jerusalem. But, I pray you, what has 
 the destruction of Jerusalem to do with Jesus cominy 
 in the clouds, in great power and majesty ? 
 
 There is, in the Gospel attributed to John, a pas- 
 sage which shews clearly that this book was not com- 
 posed by a Jew. Jesus said, " A new commandment 
 I give unto you, that ye love one another." This 
 commandment, so far from being a new one, is en- 
 joined in a much more forcible manner in Leviticus, 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."* 
 
 In short, whoever will give himself the trouble of read- 
 ing, with attention, the passages where the Old Testa- 
 ment is quoted, will find only a manifest abuse of words, 
 and the seal of falsehood almost in every page. 
 
 1 1 Thw. v. 17. I.evit. xix. 18.
 
 64 THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 'Jjsrffr iV .it-'.* flu--*- ,Hi-rc :v >;!*>:' rv r 'rtf<tsflfai 
 
 -nj '* *wi?(W**i H.|. o^ .>**<**' - .t*oc*> 
 
 CHAP. XVII. 
 
 OF THE END OF THE WORLD, AND THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 Iff ttf'iUTO-MHM -fW .i.Ofc/TMO .:fjf-- % \ -> > ^Jfi t ."'? U'C 
 
 NOT only have they introduced Jesus on the scene 
 predicting the end of the world, even during his own 
 life-time, but this was also the fanaticism of all those 
 called apostles and disciples. 
 
 Peter Barjonas says, in the first Epistle attributed to 
 him, " For 'this cause was the Gospel preached also to 
 them that are dead ; but the end of all things is at 
 hand." 1 In his 2d Epistle, " We look for new heavens 
 and a new earth. " 
 
 The first Epistle attributed to John says, formally, 
 " Even now are there many ariti-christs, whereby we 
 know that it is the last time." 3 
 
 The Epistle put to the account of this Thaddeus, 
 surnamed Jude, announces the'same folly : " Behold, 
 the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to 
 execute judgment upon all." 4 
 
 In short, it was this kind of madness which served 
 as a foundation for the other respecting the new Jeru- 
 salem which was to descend from heaven. The Apo- 
 calypse announced this approaching adventure ; all the 
 Christians believed it. New Sibyline verses were 
 written, in which this Jerusalem was predicted ; this 
 new city even made its appearance, and the Christians 
 were to dwell in it for a thousand years after the con- 
 flagration of the world. It descended from heaven 
 forty nights successively. Tertullian saw it himself. 
 
 The day will come when every honest man will say, 
 Is it possible that men have spent their time in refuting 
 this tale of a tub ? 
 
 Behold the opinions that caused half the earth to be 
 ravaged ! Behold what has given principalities and 
 
 .' 1 Peter iv. 6, 7. 9 2 Peter iii. 13. '_ 1 John. ii. 18. 4 Jude 14.
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE*. 65 
 
 kingdoms to hypocritical priests, and which, in all 
 Catholic countries, still precipitates simpletons into the 
 dungeons of a cloister ! 
 
 It is by means of these spider-webs that they have 
 twisted the cords that bind us, and they have found 
 out the secret of transforming them into chains of 
 iron ! Great God ! It is for such fooleries that 
 Europe has weltered in blood, and that Charles I. died 
 on the scaffold ! O destiny ! When a parcel of 
 half Jews wrote their dull impertinences in barns, did 
 they perceive that they were preparing thrones for the 
 abominable Pope Alexander Vlth., and for this brave 
 villain of a Cromwell ? 
 
 CHAP. XVIII. 
 
 OF ALLEGORIES. 
 
 THOSE whom we call fathers of the church, adopted 
 a trick singular enough, to confirm those who were 
 preparing to be baptised, in their new belief. In the 
 course of time, they found disciples who reasoned a 
 little, and adopted the plan of teaching them, that all 
 the Old Testament is only a type of the new. The 
 piece of scarlet cloth which the prostitute Rahab hung 
 out at her window to avert the spies of Joshua, signi- 
 fies the blood of Jesus Christ shed for our sins. 
 
 Sarah, and her servant Hagar, blear-eyed Leah and 
 beautiful Rachel, are the synagogue and the church. 
 Moses lifting up his hands when he gave battle to the 
 Amalekites, is evidently the sign of the cross, for we 
 are exactly in the shape of a cross when we stretch out 
 our arms to the right and to the left. Joseph sold by 
 his brethren is Jesus Christ. The kisses given on 
 the mouth of the Shulamite, &c. in Solomon's Song, 
 are visibly the marriage of Jesus Christ with his church. 
 The bride had then no dowry, at that time she was not 
 well established.
 
 The people did not know what to believe ; no dogma 
 was yet precisely agreed upon. Jesus had written no- 
 thing. What a strange legislator must that man have 
 been whose hand did not trace a single line ! This made 
 it necessary to write ; they then abandon themselves to 
 this good news; to these gospels, to these acts of which 
 we have already spoken, and all the Old Testament is 
 turned into allegories of the new. It is not surprising 
 that Catechumens, fascinated by those who wished to 
 form a party, suffered themselves to be seduced by 
 those fancies that are always pleasing to the people. 
 
 This plan contributed more than any thing else to 
 the propagation of Christianity, which spread itself 
 secretly from one end of the empire to the other, with- 
 out the magistrates at that time deigning to take any 
 notice of it. 
 
 What a ridiculous and foolish notion to make the 
 history of a horde of beggars, a type and a prophecy 
 of every thing that should happen in the world in all 
 succeeding ages ! 
 
 CHAP. XIX. 
 
 OF FALSIFICATIONS AND SUPPOSITITIOUS BOOKS. 
 
 THE better to enable them to seduce the uninitiated 
 during the first centuries, they did not fail to state that 
 the sect had been respected by the Romans, and even 
 by the emperors themselves. It was not enough to 
 forge a number of writings which they attributed to 
 Jesus ; they also made Pilate write. Justin and Ter- 
 tullian quote the " Acts of Pilate/' and they are 
 inserted in the Gospel of Nicodemus. 
 
 Here follow some passages of the first letter of 
 Pilate to Tiberius, which are curious. 
 
 " It has lately happened, and I have witnessed it,
 
 OF THE I10LY SCRIPTURES. 57 
 
 that the envy of the Jews has drawn upon them a cruel 
 judgment. Their (iod having promised to send them 
 his saint from heaven, to be their true king, and 
 having promised that he should be the son of a virgin, 
 the God of the Hebrews did really send him while 1 
 presided in Judea. The principal Jews denounced 
 him tome as a magician, I believed it, ordered him t< 
 be flogged, and then abandoned him to them. They 
 crucified him, put guards round his sepulchre, and he 
 rose again the third day." This ancient letter is very 
 important, as it shews us that, at that time, the Chris- 
 tians had not yet dared to suppose that Jesus was God. 
 They merely say he was sent from God. If he had 
 then been a God, Pilate, whom they cause to speak, 
 would not have failed to say so. 
 
 In the 2d letter he says, that if he had not feared 
 a sedition, perhaps this noble Jew would still have 
 lived. " Fortasse vir itle nobilis viveret." They 
 likewise forged a more detailed account which was attri- 
 outed to Pilate. 
 
 Eusebius of Caesarea, book vii. of his Ecclesiasti- 
 cal History, assures us, that the woman troubled with 
 the flux, who was cured by Jesus Christ, was a citi- 
 zeness of Caesarea ; he has seen her statue at the foot 
 of that of Jesus. Round the base there are herbs 
 which cure all kinds of diseases. 
 
 They likewise gave out a pretended edict of Tibe- 
 rius, to rank Jesus among the gods. They invented 
 letters from Paul to Seneca, and from Seneca to Paul. 
 Emperors, philosophers, and apostles were all put to 
 contribution ; it was an uninterrupted course of frauds ; 
 some of them merely fanatical, the others political. 
 
 A fanatical lie, for example, is that of writing the 
 Revelation and attributing it to John, which is only 
 an absurdity ; a political lie is that of writing the book 
 of Constitutions, and attributing it to the apostles. 
 
 AH these supposititious books, all these falsehoods, 
 which have been denominated pious, were put only 
 into the hands of the faithful. It was an enormous 
 
 H
 
 5b THE IMPORTANT EXAMINATION 
 
 offence to communicate them to the Romans, who 
 had scarcely any knowledge of them during the space 
 of two hundred years ; thus the flock increased daily. 
 
 CHAP. XX. 
 
 ,OF THE PRINCIPAL IMPOSITIONS OF THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 
 
 ONE of the oldest impositions of these new demo- 
 niacs, was the " Testament of the twelve Patriarchs," 
 and we still have entire the Greek translation of it by 
 John, surnamed'St. Chrysostom. 
 
 This ancient book, which was written in the first 
 century of our aera, is visibly the production of a 
 Christian, because it makes Levi say in the 8th arti- 
 cle of his Testament, " The third shall have a new 
 name, because he shall be a king of Judah." This 
 signifies Jesus Christ, who has never been designated 
 but by such like impostures. 
 
 They invented the Testaments of Moses, Enoch, 
 and Joseph, their ascension or assumption into heaven, 
 that of Moses, Abraham, Elda, Moda, Elias, Sophonia, 
 Zachariah, and Habakkuk. At the same time they 
 forged the famous book of Enoch, which is the only 
 foundation for all the mystery of Christianity, since 
 it is in this book alone that we find the history of the 
 rebellious angels who had sinned. It is certain, that 
 the writings attributed to the apostles were not com- 
 posed till after the fable of Enoch, which was written 
 jn Greek by some Christian of Alexandria. Jude, in 
 his Epistle, quotes this Enoch more than once ;* he 
 reports his own words, and is so destitute of common 
 sense, as to assert that Enoch, who was the seventh 
 man after Adam, had written prophecies. 
 
 Here, then, we have two vile impositions well at- 
 tested ; that of the Christian who invented the book 
 
 1 Jude 14.
 
 OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. S 
 
 of Enoch, and that of the Christian who invented the 
 Epistle of Jude, in which the words of Enoch are 
 related. There was never a more stupid falsehood. 
 
 It is very useless to enquire who was the principal 
 author of these frauds, which insensibly gained credit, 
 but there is some probability that it was Hegesippus, 
 whose fables had a great run, and who was quoted by 
 Tertullian, and afterwards copied by Eusebius. 
 
 The supposititious letter of Jesus Christ to a pre- 
 tended king of the city of Edessa, which had not thru 
 a king, and the journey of Thaddeus (or Jude) to this 
 king, were four hundred years in vogue among the 
 first Christians. 
 
 Whoever wrote a gospel, or undertook to teach his 
 little rising flock, imputed to Jesus discourses and 
 actions which are not mentioned in our four Gospels. It 
 is thus that in the 20th chapter of the Acts of the 
 Apostles, Paul quotes these words of Jesus: " It is 
 more blessed to give than to receive." 1 These words 
 are not to be found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, nor 
 John. 
 
 . The travels of Peter, the revelation of Peter, tin- 
 acts of Paul and of Thecle, the letters from Paul to 
 Seneca, and from Seneca to Paul, the acts of Pilate 
 and the letters of Pilate, are sufficiently known among 
 the learned, and it is useless to rummage among these 
 archives of falsehood and absurdity. 
 
 They carried their nonsense to such a pitch, as 
 to write the history of Claudia Procula, who was 
 Pilate's wife. 
 
 1 Acts xz. 35.
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I CONCLUDE, that every sensible man, every honest 
 man, ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. " The 
 great name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently 
 revere," 1 is the only name we ought to adopt. 
 
 The only gospel we should read is the grand book 
 of nature, written with God's own hand, and stamped 
 with his own seal. The only religion we ought to pro- 
 fess is, " to adore God, and act like honest men/' 
 It would be as impossible for this simple and eternal 
 religion to produce evil, as it would be impossible for 
 Christian fanaticism not to produce it. 
 
 Natural religion can never be made to say, " Think 
 not that I am come to send peace on earth ; I came not 
 to send peace, but a sword/' 2 Yet this is the first con- 
 fession they put into the mouth of a Jew whom they 
 call Christ. 
 
 Men are very blind and wretched to prefer an absurd 
 and sanguinary sect, maintained by hangmen and sur- 
 rounded by funeral piles ; a sect which could find no 
 admirers but among those to whom it communicated 
 wealth and power, a particular sect received only in a 
 small portion of the globe, in preference to a simple 
 and universal religion which even, by the confession 
 of Christians, was the religion of the human race 
 during the ages of Seth, Enoch, and Noah. If the 
 religion of the first patriarchs were true, certainly the 
 religion of Jesus must be false. 
 
 Sovereigns have submitted themselves to this sect, 
 thinking they would be more respected by their own 
 subjects, by loading themselves with the yoke which 
 
 1 Shaftesburv. 3 Matt. x. 34.
 
 CONCLUSION. 61 
 
 was imposed upon the people. They did not perceive 
 that they made themselves the first slaves of the priests, 
 and in one halt of Europe they have not yet been 
 enabled to render themselves independent. And pray 
 what king, what magistrate, what father of a family, 
 would not rather be the master of his own house, than 
 be the slave of a priest ? 
 
 What ! The innumerable number of citizens that 
 have been injured, excommunicated, reduced to beg- 
 gary, killed, and their bodies cast on the high way ; 
 the number of princes dethroned and assassinated, has 
 not yet opened men's eyes ! And when we do open 
 them, we perceive that this fatal idol is not yet demo- 
 lished ! 
 
 But what shall we substitute in its place, say you ! 
 What ? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of 
 my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this 
 beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place ! 
 Is it you that put this question to me ? Then you 
 are a hundred times more odious than the pagan pon- 
 tiffs, who permitted themselves to enjoy tranquillity 
 among their ceremonies and sacrifices, who did not 
 attempt to enslave the mind by dogmas, who never 
 disputed the powers of the magistrates, and who intro- 
 duced no discord among mankind. You have the face 
 to ask what you must substitute in the place of your 
 fables ? I answer you, " God, truth, virtue, laws, 
 rewards, and punishments." Preach probity, and do 
 not preach dogmas ; be the priests of God, and not 
 the priests of a man. 
 
 After having, in the presence of God, weighed 
 Christianity in the balance of truth, we must likewise 
 weigh it in the balance of policy. It would be both 
 dangerous and irrational to give all at once such a blow 
 to Christianity as was given to Popery. 
 
 I am of opinion, that in our own island, the hierar- 
 chy ought to be suffered to exist as by Act of Parlia- 
 ment established, always keeping it in subjection to 
 the civil power, and preventing it from doing mischief.
 
 02 CONCLUSION. 
 
 It is doubtless desirable, that the idol were demolished, 
 and that we might be permitted to offer God a more 
 simple adoration, but the people are not yet ready for 
 the change. It will be sufficient at the present time 
 for our church to be kept within proper bounds. As 
 the laymen become more enlightened, less mischief 
 will be experienced from the priesthood. Let us en- 
 deavour to enlighten the clergy themselves, to make 
 them blush for their errors, and to persuade them, by 
 degrees, to become useful citizens 
 
 THE END.