The Writings of Thomas Paine

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

WITH SOME RESULTS OF RECENT RESEARCHES.

In the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the
wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed
to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a great English and American
heart—Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Capet—“Kill the
king but spare the man.” Now he pleaded,—“Disbelieve in the
King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of Mankind!”

In Paine’s Preface to the Second Part of “The Age of Reason”
he describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year 1793.
“I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since
appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an order signed
by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in
arrestation.” This was on the morning of December 28. But it is necessary
to weigh the words just quoted—“in the state it has since
appeared.” For on August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an appeal for
Paine’s liberation, wrote as follows: “I deliver to Merlin de
Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason], formerly
our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding foreigners from the
national representation. This book was written by the author in the beginning
of the year ’93 (old style). I undertook its translation before the
revolution against priests, and it was published in French about the same time.
Couthon, to whom I sent it, seemed offended with me for having translated this
work.”

Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of
Robespierre, this early publication seems to have been so effectually
suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France or
elsewhere. In Paine’s letter to Samuel Adams, printed in the present
volume, he says that he had it translated into French, to stay the progress of
atheism, and that he endangered his life “by opposing atheism.” The
time indicated by Lanthenas as that in which he submitted the work to Couthon
would appear to be the latter part of March, 1793, the fury against the
priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees against them of March 19
and 26. If the moral deformity of Couthon, even greater than that of his body,
be remembered, and the readiness with which death was inflicted for the most
theoretical opinion not approved by the “Mountain,” it will appear
probable that the offence given Couthon by Paine’s book involved danger
to him and his translator. On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name
of Lanthenas was included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day Danton
persuaded Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might be in
danger. Whether this was because of the “Age of Reason,” with its
fling at the “Goddess Nature” or not, the statements of author and
translator are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the manuscript, with
considerable additions and changes, for publication in English, as he has
stated in the Preface to Part II.

A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence, proved
to me that the translation sent by Lanthenas to Merlin de Thionville in 1794 is
the same as that he sent to Couthon in 1793. This discovery was the means of
recovering several interesting sentences of the original work. I have given as
footnotes translations of such clauses and phrases of the French work as
appeared to be important. Those familiar with the translations of Lanthenas
need not be reminded that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the
manuscript before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an
instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor would
Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his translation. This
original work was divided into seventeen chapters, and these I have restored,
translating their headings into English. The “Age of Reason” is
thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its original
completeness.

It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his
“Age of Reason” (Part I.) which went through the press while he was
in prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as
abbreviated in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the dropping
out of his estimate of Jesus the words rendered by Lanthenas “trop peu
imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu.” The addition of these words to
Paine’s tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only
recognition of the human character and life of Jesus by any theological writer
of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel.

To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be
attributed the preservation in it of the singular error already alluded to, as
one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have corrected. This is
Paine’s repeated mention of six planets, and enumeration of them, twelve
years after the discovery of Uranus. Paine was a devoted student of astronomy,
and it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not participated in the
universal welcome of Herschel’s discovery. The omission of any allusion
to it convinces me that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript
written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Unfamiliar with French in
1793, Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas’
translation, and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as
possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for English readers. But
he had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an erratum which, if my
conjecture be correct, casts a significant light on the paragraphs in which he
alludes to the preparation of the work. He states that soon after his
publication of “Common Sense” (1776), he “saw the exceeding
probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by
a revolution in the system of religion,” and that “man would return
to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God and no more.”
He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his intention to publish his
thoughts upon religion, and he had made a similar remark to John Adams in 1776.
Like the Quakers among whom he was reared Paine could then readily use the
phrase “word of God” for anything in the Bible which approved
itself to his “inner light,” and as he had drawn from the first
Book of Samuel a divine condemnation of monarchy, John Adams, a Unitarian,
asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament. Paine replied
that he did not, and at a later period meant to publish his views on the
subject. There is little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious
points, during the American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he
worked on the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a
practicable method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery) without
publishing it. At any rate it appears to me certain that the part of “The
Age of Reason” connected with Paine’s favorite science, astronomy,
was written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.

Paine’s theism, however invested with biblical and Christian phraseology,
was a birthright. It appears clear from several allusions in “The Age of
Reason” to the Quakers that in his early life, or before the middle of
the eighteenth century, the people so called were substantially Deists. An
interesting confirmation of Paine’s statements concerning them appears as
I write in an account sent by Count Leo Tolstoi to the London
‘Times’ of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy (The Times, October
23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last century, and the narrative says:

“The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards
‘Dukhoborcheskaya’ were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to
Russia. The fundamental idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man
dwells God himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives
in nature physically and in man’s soul spiritually. To Christ, as to an
historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance… Christ
was God’s son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves
‘sons of God.’ The purpose of Christ’s sufferings was no
other than to show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in
1818, visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious
subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus Christ (that
he was a man), exclaimed ‘Darkness!’ From the Old and New
Testaments,’ they say, ‘we take only what is useful,’ mostly
the moral teaching…. The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the
following:—All men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions,
whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing. This idea of men’s equality
the Dukhoborts have directed further, against the State authority…. Amongst
themselves they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to
be contrary to their ideas.”

Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the birth of
Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American Quakers refused
burial among them. Although Paine arraigned the union of Church and State, his
ideal Republic was religious; it was based on a conception of equality based on
the divine son-ship of every man. This faith underlay equally his burden
against claims to divine partiality by a “Chosen People,” a
Priesthood, a Monarch “by the grace of God,” or an Aristocracy.
Paine’s “Reason” is only an expansion of the Quaker’s
“inner light”; and the greater impression, as compared with
previous republican and deistic writings made by his “Rights of
Man” and “Age of Reason” (really volumes of one work), is
partly explained by the apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor
of George Fox.

Paine’s mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.
That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before publishing his
religious convictions was due to a desire to work out some positive and
practicable system to take the place of that which he believed was crumbling.
The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine in making the model of his iron
bridge, wrote to his friends in England, in 1786: “My employer has Common
Sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic theories of Divinity,
but does not seem to establish any for himself.” But five years later
Paine was able to lay the corner-stone of his temple: “With respect to
religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the
universal family of mankind to the ‘Divine object of all adoration, it is
man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may
differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of
every one, is accepted.” (“Rights of Man.” See my edition of
Paine’s Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of George Fox
confuting the doctor in America who “denied the light and Spirit of God
to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians. Whereupon I
called an Indian to us, and asked him ‘whether or not, when he lied, or
did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that reproved him for
it?’ He said, ‘There was such a thing in him that did so reprove
him; and he was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken wrong.’ So we
shamed the doctor before the governor and the people.” (Journal of George
Fox, September 1672.)

Paine, who coined the phrase “Religion of Humanity” (The Crisis,
vii., 1778), did but logically defend it in “The Age of Reason,” by
denying a special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in
any particular creed of church; and the centenary of this much-abused
publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of Church and
State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his “Foundations of Belief,” affirms
that “inspiration” cannot be denied to the great Oriental teachers,
unless grapes may be gathered from thorns.

The centenary of the complete publication of “The Age of Reason,”
(October 25, 1795), was also celebrated at the Church Congress, Norwich, on
October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of Manchester, read a
paper in which he said: “I cannot deny that the increase of scientific
knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier books of the Bible of the
historical value which was generally attributed to them by our forefathers. The
story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we play fast and loose either
with words or with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have
learnt from geology. Its ethnological statements are imperfect, if not
sometimes inaccurate. The stories of the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower
of Babel, are incredible in their present form. Some historical element may
underlie many of the traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but
this we cannot hope to recover.” Canon Bonney proceeded to say of the New
Testament also, that “the Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly
contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations and
even inaccuracies in details being introduced by oral tradition.” The
Canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be serious, but
that any question of this kind is left open proves the Age of Reason fully upon
us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are as spurious as the three
heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it “serious” enough to
have cost good men their lives, and persecutors their charities. When men
interpolate, it is because they believe their interpolation seriously needed.
It will be seen by a note in Part II. of the work, that Paine calls attention
to an interpolation introduced into the first American edition without
indication of its being an editorial footnote. This footnote was: “The
book of Luke was carried by a majority of one only. Vide Moshelm’s Ecc.
History.” Dr. Priestley, then in America, answered Paine’s work,
and in quoting less than a page from the “Age of Reason” he made
three alterations,—one of which changed “church mythologists”
into “Christian mythologists,”—and also raised the editorial
footnote into the text, omitting the reference to Mosheim. Having done this,
Priestley writes: “As to the gospel of Luke being carried by a majority
of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine’s own invention, of no
better authority whatever.” And so on with further castigation of the
author for what he never wrote, and which he himself (Priestley) was the
unconscious means of introducing into the text within the year of Paine’s
publication.

If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man, and
one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley could make four
mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very wonderful when I state
that in a modern popular edition of “The Age of Reason,” including
both parts, I have noted about five hundred deviations from the original. These
were mainly the accumulated efforts of friendly editors to improve
Paine’s grammar or spelling; some were misprints, or developed out of
such; and some resulted from the sale in London of a copy of Part Second
surreptitiously made from the manuscript. These facts add significance to
Paine’s footnote (itself altered in some editions!), in which he says:
“If this has happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding
the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually; what
may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no
printing, and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call
it an original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.”

Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the far-reaching
effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into which some of our ablest
contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of their not having studied Paine.
Professor Huxley, for instance, speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth
century, admires the acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of
the best of them, but says “there is rarely much to be said for their
work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult
investigation,” and that they shared with their adversaries “to the
full the fatal weakness of a priori philosophizing.” [NOTE: Science and
Christian Tradition, p. 18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name
Paine, evidently because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the
turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced the
‘a priori’ method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside
pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the
Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many things from the
rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the first to
expatiate on “Christian Mythology”), from Renan (being the first to
attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and notably from Huxley, who has repeated
Paine’s arguments on the untrustworthiness of the biblical manuscripts
and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives of Christ’s
resurrection, and various other points. None can be more loyal to the memory of
Huxley than the present writer, and it is even because of my sense of his grand
leadership that he is here mentioned as a typical instance of the extent to
which the very elect of free-thought may be unconsciously victimized by the
phantasm with which they are contending. He says that Butler overthrew
freethinkers of the eighteenth century type, but Paine was of the nineteenth
century type; and it was precisely because of his critical method that he
excited more animosity than his deistical predecessors. He compelled the
apologists to defend the biblical narratives in detail, and thus implicitly
acknowledge the tribunal of reason and knowledge to which they were summoned.
The ultimate answer by police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years ago
England was suppressing Paine’s works, and many an honest Englishman has
gone to prison for printing and circulating his “Age of Reason.”
The same views are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of
learning, and even in the Church Congress; but the suppression of Paine, begun
by bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of the
representatives of our Age of Reason to their pioneer and founder. It is a
grievous loss to them and to their cause. It is impossible to understand the
religious history of England, and of America, without studying the phases of
their evolution represented in the writings of Thomas Paine, in the
controversies that grew out of them with such practical accompaniments as the
foundation of the Theophilanthropist Church in Paris and New York, and of the
great rationalist wing of Quakerism in America.

Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of Paine’s time
took the “Age of Reason” very seriously indeed. Beginning with the
learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, a large number of learned men
replied to Paine’s work, and it became a signal for the commencement of
those concessions, on the part of theology, which have continued to our time;
and indeed the so-called “Broad Church” is to some extent an
outcome of “The Age of Reason.” It would too much enlarge this
Introduction to cite here the replies made to Paine (thirty-six are catalogued
in the British Museum), but it may be remarked that they were notably free, as
a rule, from the personalities that raged in the pulpits. I must venture to
quote one passage from his very learned antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield,
B.A., “late Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.” Wakefield, who had
resided in London during all the Paine panic, and was well acquainted with the
slanders uttered against the author of “Rights of Man,” indirectly
brands them in answering Paine’s argument that the original and
traditional unbelief of the Jews, among whom the alleged miracles were wrought,
is an important evidence against them. The learned divine writes:

“But the subject before us admits of further illustration from the
example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his opposition to the
corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries, and such a swarm
of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in blackening his character
and in misrepresenting all the transactions and incidents of his life, will it
not be a most difficult, nay an impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse
of 1700 years, if such a wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient,
should intervene, to identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the
man? And will a true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited at that
future period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and mighty
accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently extraordinary, I
had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated by candid and reasonable
minds, that a writer whose object was a melioration of condition to the common
people, and their deliverance from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the
numberless blessings of upright and equal government, should be reviled,
persecuted, and burned in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and
execration, by these very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner
of the kingdom?” After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine
pleaded so earnestly,—while in England he was denounced as an accomplice
in the deed,—he devoted himself to the preparation of a Constitution, and
also to gathering up his religious compositions and adding to them. This
manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in what was variously known as
White’s Hotel or Philadelphia House, in Paris, No. 7 Passage des Petits
Peres. This compilation of early and fresh manuscripts (if my theory be
correct) was labelled, “The Age of Reason,” and given for
translation to Francois Lanthenas in March 1793. It is entered, in Qudrard (La
France Literaire) under the year 1793, but with the title “L’Age de
la Raison” instead of that which it bore in 1794, “Le Siecle de la
Raison.” The latter, printed “Au Burcau de l’imprimerie, rue
du Theatre-Francais, No. 4,” is said to be by “Thomas Paine,
Citoyen et cultivateur de l’Amerique septentrionale, secretaire du
Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre
d’Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES
DROITS DE L’HOMME.”

When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine, unwilling to
participate in the decrees of a Convention whose sole legal function was to
frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion and garden in the Faubourg St.
Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose researches in personal details connected
with the Revolution are original and useful, recently showed me in the National
Archives at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit,
Paine’s landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as
I had supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to
the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The arrest of
Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on “Forgetfulness”
(Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was that he
had kept in his house “Paine and other Englishmen,”—Paine
being then in prison,—but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry
accusations brought against him by his Section, the “Faubourg du
Nord.” This Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St.
Denis, whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or
Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion (said by
Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour), and it would
appear, by his account, that it was after the execution (October 31, 1793) Of
his friends the Girondins, and political comrades, that he felt his end at
hand, and set about his last literary bequest to the world,—“The
Age of Reason,”—in the state in which it has since appeared, as he
is careful to say. There was every probability, during the months in which he
wrote (November and December 1793) that he would be executed. His religious
testament was prepared with the blade of the guillotine suspended over
him,—a fact which did not deter pious mythologists from portraying his
death-bed remorse for having written the book.

In editing Part I. of “The Age of Reason,” I follow closely the
first edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no
doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on his way to
the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American ex-clergyman, a
speculator on whose career French archives cast an unfavorable light, and one
cannot be certain that no liberties were taken with Paine’s proofs.

I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work on
Paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any punctuation
which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I will now add that in
following Paine’s quotations from the Bible I have adopted the Plan now
generally used in place of his occasionally too extended writing out of book,
chapter, and verse.

Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and released on
November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his old friend, James Monroe
(afterwards President), who had succeeded his (Paine’s) relentless enemy,
Gouverneur Morris, as American Minister in Paris. He was found by Monroe more
dead than alive from semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess contracted in
prison, and taken to the Minister’s own residence. It was not supposed
that he could survive, and he owed his life to the tender care of Mr. and Mrs.
Monroe. It was while thus a prisoner in his room, with death still hovering
over him, that Paine wrote Part Second of “The Age of Reason.”

The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October 25, 1795, and
claimed to be “from the Author’s manuscript.” It is marked as
“Entered at Stationers Hall,” and prefaced by an apologetic note of
“The Bookseller to the Public,” whose commonplaces about avoiding
both prejudice and partiality, and considering “both sides,” need
not be quoted. While his volume was going through the press in Paris, Paine
heard of the publication in London, which drew from him the following hurried
note to a London publisher, no doubt Daniel Isaacs Eaton:

“SIR,—I have seen advertised in the London papers the second
Edition [part] of the Age of Reason, printed, the advertisement says, from the
Author’s Manuscript, and entered at Stationers Hall. I have never sent
any manuscript to any person. It is therefore a forgery to say it is printed
from the author’s manuscript; and I suppose is done to give the Publisher
a pretence of Copy Right, which he has no title to.

“I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent to London.
I wish you to make a cheap edition of it. I know not by what means any copy has
got over to London. If any person has made a manuscript copy I have no doubt
but it is full of errors. I wish you would talk to Mr. ——- upon
this subject as I wish to know by what means this trick has been played, and
from whom the publisher has got possession of any copy.

“T. PAINE.

“PARIS, December 4, 1795”

Eaton’s cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter on
the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably
“Symonds” in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed
upon. Eaton, already in trouble for printing one of Paine’s political
pamphlets, fled to America, and an edition of the “Age of Reason”
was issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is said to be
“printed for, and sold by all the Booksellers in Great Britain and
Ireland.” It is also said to be “By Thomas Paine, author of several
remarkable performances.” I have never found any copy of this anonymous
edition except the one in my possession. It is evidently the edition which was
suppressed by the prosecution of Williams for selling a copy of it.

A comparison with Paine’s revised edition reveals a good many clerical
and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the sense. The worst are
in the preface, where, instead of “1793,” the misleading date
“1790” is given as the year at whose close Paine completed Part
First,—an error that spread far and wide and was fastened on by his
calumnious American “biographer,” Cheetham, to prove his
inconsistency. The editors have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in
different ways, the following sentence of the preface in Symonds: “The
intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into
politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of the
Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and Faggot of the
Church.” The rogue who copied this little knew the care with which Paine
weighed words, and that he would never call persecution
“religious,” nor connect the guillotine with the
“State,” nor concede that with all its horrors it had outdone the
history of fire and faggot. What Paine wrote was: “The intolerant spirit
of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals,
styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition and the Guillotine,
of the Stake.”

An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen, ex-M.P., which
that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides being one of general
interest makes clear the circumstances of the original publication. Although
the name of the correspondent does not appear on the letter, it was certainly
written to Col. John Fellows of New York, who copyrighted Part I. of the
“Age of Reason.” He published the pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom
Paine confided his manuscript on his way to prison. Fellows was afterwards
Paine’s intimate friend in New York, and it was chiefly due to him that
some portions of the author’s writings, left in manuscript to Madame
Bonneville while she was a freethinker were rescued from her devout
destructiveness after her return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen
sends me, is dated at Paris, January 20, 1797.

“SIR,—Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure
for America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you. I received two
letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which you
inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the Age of Reason:
when I return to America we will settle for that matter.

“As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past you
will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection with his
grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of the second part of
the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin] Bache. I gave him notice of
it in September 1795 and the copy-right by my own direction was entered by him.
The books did not arrive till April following, but he had advertised it long
before.

“I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages, from
me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of Philadelphia
carried the letter from me over to London to be forwarded to America. It went
by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who since his return from America told me that
he put it into the post office at New York for Bache. I have yet no certain
account of its publication. I mention this that the letter may be enquired
after, in case it has not been published or has not arrived to Mr. Bache.
Barnes wrote to me, from London 29 August informing me that he was offered
three hundred pounds sterling for the manuscript. The offer was refused because
it was my intention it should not appear till it appeared in America, as that,
and not England was the place for its operation.

“You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several works,
in order to publish a collection of them. This is an undertaking I have always
reserved for myself. It not only belongs to me of right, but nobody but myself
can do it; and as every author is accountable (at least in reputation) for his
works, he only is the person to do it. If he neglects it in his life-time the
case is altered. It is my intention to return to America in the course of the
present year. I shall then [do] it by subscription, with historical notes. As
this work will employ many persons in different parts of the Union, I will
confer with you upon the subject, and such part of it as will suit you to
undertake, will be at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by
disinterestedness and inattention to money matters, and by accidents, that I am
obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have done. The printer (an
Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part of ‘the Age of
Reason’ made a manuscript copy of the work while he was printing it,
which he sent to London and sold. It was by this means that an edition of it
came out in London.

“We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the federal
elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you that the French
government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as minister. While Mr. Monroe
was minister he had the opportunity of softening matters with this government,
for he was in good credit with them tho’ they were in high indignation at
the infidelity of the Washington Administration. It is time that Mr. Washington
retire, for he has played off so much prudent hypocrisy between France and
England that neither government believes anything he says.

“Your friend, etc.,

“THOMAS PAINE.”

It would appear that Symonds’ stolen edition must have got ahead of that
sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its errors continue in all modern
American editions to the present day, as well as in those of England. For in
England it was only the shilling edition—that revised by
Paine—which was suppressed. Symonds, who ministered to the half-crown
folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was left undisturbed
about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the suppression of Vice and
Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who sold pious tracts but was also
convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold one copy of the “Age of
Reason.” Erskine, who had defended Paine at his trial for the
“Rights of Man,” conducted the prosecution of Williams. He gained
the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by it, especially after
a certain adventure on his way to Lincoln’s Inn. He felt his coat
clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in tears. She led him into the
small book-shop of Thomas Williams, not yet called up for judgment, and there
he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a wretched little room, where there
were three children, two suffering with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin
and even a sort of murder to take away to prison the husband, who was not a
freethinker, and lamented his publication of the book, and a meeting of the
Society which had retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the
Bishop of London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded them that Williams
was yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had witnessed,
and Williams’ penitence, and, as the book was now suppressed, asked
permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy, he urged, was a part of the
Christianity they were defending. Not one of the Society took his
side,—not even “philanthropic” Wilberforce—and Erskine
threw up his brief. This action of Erskine led the Judge to give Williams only
a year in prison instead of the three he said had been intended.

While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating
Erskine’s speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous sermon “On
the Existence and Attributes of the Deity,” all of which was from
Paine’s “Age of Reason,” except a brief “Address to the
Deity” appended. This picturesque anomaly was repeated in the circulation
of Paine’s “Discourse to the Theophilanthropists” (their and
the author’s names removed) under the title of “Atheism
Refuted.” Both of these pamphlets are now before me, and beside them a
London tract of one page just sent for my spiritual benefit. This is headed
“A Word of Caution.” It begins by mentioning the “pernicious
doctrines of Paine,” the first being “that there is No GOD”
(sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine existence taken from
Paine’s works. It should be added that this one dingy page is the only
“survival” of the ancient Paine effigy in the tract form which I
have been able to find in recent years, and to this no Society or
Publisher’s name is attached.

The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years’ war for
religious liberty in England, in the course of which occurred many notable
events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at Choring Cross, and the
whole Carlile family imprisoned,—its head imprisoned more than nine years
for publishing the “Age of Reason.” This last victory of
persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth, not adherents of Paine, helped
in setting Carlile up in business in Fleet Street, where free-thinking
publications have since been sold without interruption. But though Liberty
triumphed in one sense, the “Age of Reason.” remained to some
extent suppressed among those whose attention it especially merited. Its
original prosecution by a Society for the Suppression of Vice (a device to,
relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel upon a morally clean book, restricting
its perusal in families; and the fact that the shilling book sold by and among
humble people was alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally
false notion that the “Age of Reason” was vulgar and illiterate.
The theologians, as we have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their
antagonist, the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the
University of Pennsylvania had conferred the degree of Master of
Arts,—but the gentry confused Paine with the class described by Burke as
“the swinish multitude.” Skepticism, or its free utterance, was
temporarily driven out of polite circles by its complication with the out-lawed
vindicator of the “Rights of Man.” But that long combat has now
passed away. Time has reduced the “Age of Reason” from a flag of
popular radicalism to a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as its
negations are concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth he heard a
sermon in which the preacher declared that “Tom Paine was so wicked that
he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box which was bandied
about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer; and now Paine is
travelling round the world in the form of buttons!” This variant of the
Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as unconscious homage to the author
whose metaphorical bones may be recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some
even found useful in holding clerical vestments together.

But the careful reader will find in Paine’s “Age of Reason”
something beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially call attention
to the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a famous
aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery already
mentioned, that Part I. was written at least fourteen years before Part II.,
led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while the earlier work is an
amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the phenomena of planetary motion,
the work of 1795 bases belief in God on “the universal display of himself
in the works of the creation and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad
actions, and disposition to do good ones.” This exaltation of the moral
nature of man to be the foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar,
was a hundred years ago a new affirmation; it has led on a conception of deity
subversive of last-century deism, it has steadily humanized religion, and its
ultimate philosophical and ethical results have not yet been reached.

THE AGE OF REASON — PART I

CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR’S PROFESSION OF FAITH.

It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon
religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from
that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I
intended it to be the last offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all
nations, and that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it
could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work.

The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total abolition of
the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to
compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only
precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly
necessary, lest, in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of
government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of
the theology that is true.

As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of France, have
given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of
faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and
frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself.

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

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in
doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures
happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to
these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not
believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman
church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church,
nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish,
appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave
mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they
have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to
the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does
not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to
believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that
mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and
prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief
to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of
every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and,
in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we
conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?

Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw the
exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be
followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection
of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by pains and penalties, every
discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that
until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be
brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be
done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and
priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.

CHAPTER II.
OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some
special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have
their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and
the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the
Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face
to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration;
and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel
from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my
own part, I disbelieve them all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed
further into the subject, offer some observations on the word
‘revelation.’ Revelation when applied to religion, means something
communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that
something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other
person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second
person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a
revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and
hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that
comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is
necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an
account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and
though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me
to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I
have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the
commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to believe him,
because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have
no other authority for it than some historian telling me so, the commandments
carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good
moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could
produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE:
It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God
‘visits the sins of the fathers upon the children’. This is
contrary to every principle of moral justice.—Author.]

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by
an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and
second hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and
therefore I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out,
that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her
betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to
believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than
their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary
wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said
so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such
evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the
story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen
mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology
had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the
extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the
sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a
man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was
then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts,
had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new,
wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed
among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only
that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and
no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the
story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church,
sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took
place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially
begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction
of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue
of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes
changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for
everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church
became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and
Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the
idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and
revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious
fraud.

CHAPTER III.
CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to
the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The
morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind; and
though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some
of the Greek philosophers, many years before, by the Quakers since, and by many
good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything
else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing. The
history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account
given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to
the story of his birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a
supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or
the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds
everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous
conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the
tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might
not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not be expected to
prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of proof, and it
was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself.

But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through
the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the
invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension,
supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular
demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day,
to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe,
requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and
universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only
evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to
the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small
number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for
the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called
upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the
resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and
manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as
good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far
as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition
stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us
now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account
is related were written by the persons whose names they bear. The best
surviving evidence we now have respecting this affair is the Jews. They are
regularly descended from the people who lived in the time this resurrection and
ascension is said to have happened, and they say ‘it is not true.’
It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof
of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will
prove the truth of what I have told you, by producing the people who say it is
false.

That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified, which
was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations strictly within
the limits of probability. He preached most excellent morality, and the
equality of man; but he preached also against the corruptions and avarice of
the Jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the
whole order of priest-hood. The accusation which those priests brought against
him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which
the Jews were then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the
Roman government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his
doctrine as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that Jesus
Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage
of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and
revolutionist lost his life. [NOTE: The French work has here: “However
this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions this virtuous reformer,
this revolutionist, too little imitated, too much forgotten, too much
misunderstood, lost his life.”—Editor. (Conway)]

CHAPTER IV.
OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.

It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I am going
to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian
Church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not
exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.

The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war against
Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him at one throw;
that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him afterwards under Mount
Etna; and that every time the Giant turns himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It
is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a
volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and
wind itself up with that circumstance.

The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the Almighty,
who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a mountain, but in a
pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable suggested the idea of the
second; for the fable of Jupiter and the Giants was told many hundred years
before that of Satan.

Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very little from
each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much farther.
They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story of Jesus Christ
with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and, in order to make all the parts
of the story tie together, they have taken to their aid the traditions of the
Jews; for the Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology,
and partly from the Jewish traditions.

The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged
to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced
into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a serpent, and in that
shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no ways surprised
to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades
her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.

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

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the
combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into the
pit—let him out again—given him a triumph over the whole
creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there Christian
mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this
virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and man, and
also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because
they say that Eve in her longing [NOTE: The French work has: “yielding to
an unrestrained appetite.”—Editor.] had eaten an apple.

CHAPTER V.
EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.

Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or
detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an
examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory
to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his
power, than this story is.

In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the
necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a power equally as great,
if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty. They have not only given
him the power of liberating himself from the pit, after what they call his
fall, but they have made that power increase afterwards to infinity. Before
this fall they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they
represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent.
He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of
space.

Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as defeating by
stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom
of the Almighty. They represent him as having compelled the Almighty to the
direct necessity either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the
government and sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption
by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of
a man.

Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they
represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a cross in
the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new transgression, the story
would have been less absurd, less contradictory. But, instead of this they make
the transgressor triumph, and the Almighty fall.

That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives
under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no doubt of. In
the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed
anything else in the same manner. There are also many who have been so
enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of
God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea
has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and
profaneness of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more is it
capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has
“blind and” preceding dismal.—Editor.]

CHAPTER VI.
OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.

But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present
themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to
receive us the instant we are born—a world furnished to our hands, that
cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and
fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of
the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate
in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other
subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so
intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?

I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be paying too
great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that account. The times
and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion that the theory of what is
called the Christian church is fabulous, is becoming very extensive in all
countries; and it will be a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion,
and doubting what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely
investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the Old
and the New Testament.

CHAPTER VII.
EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which, by the
bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it) are, we are
told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper for us to know who told us so,
that we may know what credit to give to the report. The answer to this question
is, that nobody can tell, except that we tell one another so. The case,
however, historically appears to be as follows:

When the church mythologists established their system, they collected all the
writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter
altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear
under the name of the Old and the New Testament, are in the same state in which
those collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged,
or dressed them up.

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

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

In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now proceed
further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the books in
question.

Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom that
thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it
done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to
enable me to tell it, or to write it.

Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of which
man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical
and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within
the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word
of God.

When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so, (and
whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah, or
caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these
things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or his secretary, if he
kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and
if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or
not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we
contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the
incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but
a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.

As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis opens, it has
all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them
before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country, they
put it at the head of their history, without telling, as it is most probable
that they did not know, how they came by it. The manner in which the account
opens, shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that
speaks. It is nobody that hears. It is addressed to nobody. It has neither
first, second, nor third person. It has every criterion of being a tradition.
It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with
the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying,
“The Lords spake unto Moses, saying.”

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

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel
and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than
half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by the “Bible”
Paine always means the Old Testament alone.—Editor.] is filled, it would
be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God.
It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize
mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything
that is cruel.

We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves
either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the miscellaneous parts
of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the Psalms, and the Book of Job,
more particularly in the latter, we find a great deal of elevated sentiment
reverentially expressed of the power and benignity of the Almighty; but they
stand on no higher rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as
well before that time as since.

The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon’s, though most probably a
collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his situation
excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of ethics. They are
inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards, and not more wise and
oeconomical than those of the American Franklin.

All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of the
Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers, who mixed
poetry, anecdote, and devotion together—and those works still retain the
air and style of poetry, though in translation. [NOTE: As there are many
readers who do not see that a composition is poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it
is for their information that I add this note.

Poetry consists principally in two things—imagery and composition. The
composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of mixing long
and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a line of poetry, and
put a short one in the room of it, or put a long syllable where a short one
should be, and that line will lose its poetical harmony. It will have an effect
upon the line like that of misplacing a note in a song.

The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to poetry.
It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in any other kind
of writing than poetry.

To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will take ten
syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the same number of
syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the last word. It will then
be seen that the composition of those books is poetical measure. The instance I
shall first produce is from Isaiah:—

“Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth
’T is God himself that calls attention forth.

Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which I shall
add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the figure, and showing
the intention of the poet.

“O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes
Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
Then would I give the mighty flood release
And weep a deluge for the human race.”—Author.]

There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that
describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we call
poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a later times have affixed
a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word ‘propesying’
meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a
tune upon any instrument of music.

We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns—of prophesying with
harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other instrument of music
then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a
pipe and tabor, the expression would have no meaning, or would appear
ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous, because we have changed the
meaning of the word.

We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he prophesied; but
we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he prophesied. The case is,
there was nothing to tell; for these prophets were a company of musicians and
poets, and Saul joined in the concert, and this was called prophesying.

The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel, is, that Saul met a
company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down with a psaltery, a
tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they prophesied, and that he prophesied
with them. But it appears afterwards, that Saul prophesied badly, that is, he
performed his part badly; for it is said that an “evil spirit from God
[NOTE: As those men who call themselves divines and commentators are very fond
of puzzling one another, I leave them to contest the meaning of the first part
of the phrase, that of an evil spirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to the
meaning of the word prophesy.—Author.] came upon Saul, and he
prophesied.”

Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible, than this, to
demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of the word prophesy,
and substituted another meaning in its place, this alone would be sufficient;
for it is impossible to use and apply the word prophesy, in the place it is
here used and applied, if we give to it the sense which later times have
affixed to it. The manner in which it is here used strips it of all religious
meaning, and shews that a man might then be a prophet, or he might Prophesy, as
he may now be a poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or the
immorality of his character. The word was originally a term of science,
promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any subject
upon which poetry and music might be exercised.

Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted anything, but
because they composed the poem or song that bears their name, in celebration of
an act already done. David is ranked among the prophets, for he was a musician,
and was also reputed to be (though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the
Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not
appear from any accounts we have, that they could either sing, play music, or
make poetry.

We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as well tell us
of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees in prophesying
consistently with its modern sense. But there are degrees in poetry, and
there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to the case, when we understand by it the
greater and the lesser poets.

It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon what
those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at once to the root, by
showing that the original meaning of the word has been mistaken, and
consequently all the inferences that have been drawn from those books, the
devotional respect that has been paid to them, and the laboured commentaries
that have been written upon them, under that mistaken meaning, are not worth
disputing about.—In many things, however, the writings of the Jewish
poets deserve a better fate than that of being bound up, as they now are, with
the trash that accompanies them, under the abused name of the Word of God.

If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must necessarily
affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the utter impossibility of
any change taking place, by any means or accident whatever, in that which we
would honour with the name of the Word of God; and therefore the Word of God
cannot exist in any written or human language.

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject,
the want of an universal language which renders translation necessary, the
errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and
printers, together with the possibility of wilful alteration, are of themselves
evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the
vehicle of the Word of God.—The Word of God exists in something else.

Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression all the
books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my rule of faith, as
being the Word of God; because the possibility would nevertheless exist of my
being imposed upon. But when I see throughout the greatest part of this book
scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the
most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it
by his name.

CHAPTER VIII.
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Thus much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The
new Testament! that is, the ‘new’ Will, as if there could be two
wills of the Creator.

Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a new
religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it
to be written in his life time. But there is no publication extant
authenticated with his name. All the books called the New Testament were
written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by profession; and he was
the son of God in like manner that every other person is; for the Creator is
the Father of All.

The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not give a
history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached anecdotes of him. It
appears from these books, that the whole time of his being a preacher was not
more than eighteen months; and it was only during this short time that those
men became acquainted with him. They make mention of him at the age of twelve
years, sitting, they say, among the Jewish doctors, asking and answering them
questions. As this was several years before their acquaintance with him began,
it is most probable they had this anecdote from his parents. From this time
there is no account of him for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he
employed himself during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was
working at his father’s trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not
appear that he had any school education, and the probability is, that he could
not write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not being
able to pay for a bed when he was born. [NOTE: One of the few errors traceable
to Paine’s not having a Bible at hand while writing Part I. There is no
indication that the family was poor, but the reverse may in fact be
inferred.—Editor.]

It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are the most
universally recorded were of very obscure parentage. Moses was a foundling;
Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was a mule driver. The first and
the last of these men were founders of different systems of religion; but Jesus
Christ founded no new system. He called men to the practice of moral virtues,
and the belief of one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy.

The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not much known, at
that time; and it shows also that the meetings he then held with his followers
were in secret; and that he had given over or suspended preaching publicly.
Judas could no otherways betray him than by giving information where he was,
and pointing him out to the officers that went to arrest him; and the reason
for employing and paying Judas to do this could arise only from the causes
already mentioned, that of his not being much known, and living concealed.

The idea of his concealment, not only agrees very ill with his reputed
divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and his being
betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the information of one
of his followers, shows that he did not intend to be apprehended, and
consequently that he did not intend to be crucified.

The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the world,
and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been the same if he
had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or of anything else?

The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case he ate
of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but, thou shale
surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of dying. Crucifixion,
therefore, or any other particular manner of dying, made no part of the
sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently, even upon their own tactic,
it could make no part of the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of
Adam. A fever would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for
either.

This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam, must
either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or have meant what
these mythologists call damnation; and consequently, the act of dying on the
part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their system, apply as a prevention to
one or other of these two things happening to Adam and to us.

That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die; and if their
accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the crucifixion than
before: and with respect to the second explanation, (including with it the
natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute for the eternal death or
damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently representing the Creator as
coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a pun or a quibble upon the word
death. That manufacturer of, quibbles, St. Paul, if he wrote the books that
bear his name, has helped this quibble on by making another quibble upon the
word Adam. He makes there to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and
suffers by proxy; the other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion
thus interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to instruct
its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the habit without
being aware of the cause.

If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he was, and that
he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they sometimes use instead
of ‘to die,’ the only real suffering he could have endured would
have been ‘to live.’ His existence here was a state of exilement or
transportation from heaven, and the way back to his original country was to
die.—In fine, everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it
pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth, and I become so tired of examining
into its inconsistencies and absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of
it, in order to proceed to something better.

How much, or what parts of the books called the New Testament, were written by
the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know nothing of, neither are
we certain in what language they were originally written. The matters they now
contain may be classed under two heads: anecdote, and epistolary
correspondence.

The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are altogether
anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place. They tell what Jesus
Christ did and said, and what others did and said to him; and in several
instances they relate the same event differently. Revelation is necessarily out
of the question with respect to those books; not only because of the
disagreement of the writers, but because revelation cannot be applied to the
relating of facts by the persons who saw them done, nor to the relating or
recording of any discourse or conversation by those who heard it. The book
called the Acts of the Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the
anecdotal part.

All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas, called
the Revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of epistles; and
the forgery of letters has been such a common practice in the world, that the
probability is at least equal, whether they are genuine or forged. One thing,
however, is much less equivocal, which is, that out of the matters contained in
those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has
set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person
whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in
pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom, by
prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons,
dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that name or
carrying that appearance. But the case nevertheless is, that those things
derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion, and the theory deduced
therefrom, which was, that one person could stand in the place of another, and
could perform meritorious services for him. The probability, therefore, is,
that the whole theory or doctrine of what is called the redemption (which is
said to have been accomplished by the act of one person in the room of another)
was originally fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those
secondary and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the books
upon which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been manufactured
and fabricated for that purpose. Why are we to give this church credit, when
she tells us that those books are genuine in every part, any more than we give
her credit for everything else she has told us; or for the miracles she says
she has performed? That she could fabricate writings is certain, because she
could write; and the composition of the writings in question, is of that kind
that anybody might do it; and that she did fabricate them is not more
inconsistent with probability, than that she should tell us, as she has done,
that she could and did work miracles.

Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time, be
produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called redemption
or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be subject to the
same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only be referred to the
internal evidence which the thing carries of itself; and this affords a very
strong presumption of its being a fabrication. For the internal evidence is,
that the theory or doctrine of redemption has for its basis an idea of
pecuniary justice, and not that of moral justice.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in
prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But
if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral
justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would
offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its
existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is
indiscriminate revenge.

This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on
a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person
might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of
second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for
pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and
the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as
redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative
condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is
his greatest consolation to think so.

Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally, than by
any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an
out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on
a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his
approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives
either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or
becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he
consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are
reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the
fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name
of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON;
and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against
which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could
give reason to himself.

Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human
reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with
everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an
end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the
govemment of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he
prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same
idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his
prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise
than he does? It is as if he were to say—thou knowest not so well as I.

CHAPTER IX.
IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.

But some perhaps will say—Are we to have no word of God—no
revelation? I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no
human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being
used as the means of unchangeable and universal information. The idea that God
sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad tidings to all nations,
from one end of the earth unto the other, is consistent only with the ignorance
of those who know nothing of the extent of the world, and who believed, as
those world-saviours believed, and continued to believe for several centuries,
(and that in contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the
experience of navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a
man might walk to the end of it.

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

It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be equal
to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplished. It is in
this that the difference between finite and infinite power and wisdom discovers
itself. Man frequently fails in accomplishing his end, from a natural inability
of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply
power properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as
man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human
language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is incapable
of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information;
and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself
universally to man.

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God
can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human
speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever
existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be
counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be
suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be
published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other.
It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to
man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the
creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable
order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to
contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the
earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding
that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God
is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make,
but the scripture called the Creation.

CHAPTER X.
CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES BY THE
BIBLE.

The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the
cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to
conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the
tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond
description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to
conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal
duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time
when there shall be no time.

In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the
internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence to
himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make himself,
nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or
animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this evidence, that
carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to the belief of a first cause
eternally existing, of a nature totally different to any material existence we
know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause, man
calls God.

It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God. Take away that
reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and in this case
it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the Bible to a
horse as to a man. How then is it that those people pretend to reject reason?

Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible, that convey to us any idea
of God, are some chapters in Job, and the 19th Psalm; I recollect no other.
Those parts are true deistical compositions; for they treat of the Deity
through his works. They take the book of Creation as the word of God; they
refer to no other book; and all the inferences they make are drawn from that
volume.

I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English verse by
Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this I have not the
opportunity of seeing it:

The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue etherial sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator’s power display,
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the list’ning earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball
What though no real voice, nor sound,
Amidst their radiant orbs be found,
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
THE HAND THAT MADE US IS DIVINE.

What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made these
things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this, with the force it is
impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and his rule of moral life
will follow of course.

The allusions in Job have all of them the same tendency with this Psalm; that
of deducing or proving a truth that would be otherwise unknown, from truths
already known.

I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them correctly; but
there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I am speaking
upon. “Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou find out the
Almighty to perfection?”

I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no Bible; but
it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct answers.

First, Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes. Because, in the first place,
I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by searching into
the nature of other things, I find that no other thing could make itself; and
yet millions of other things exist; therefore it is, that I know, by positive
conclusion resulting from this search, that there is a power superior to all
those things, and that power is God.

Secondly, Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Not only because
the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the Creation that I
behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this manifestation, great as
it is is probably but a small display of that immensity of power and wisdom, by
which millions of other worlds, to me invisible by their distance, were created
and continue to exist.

It is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of the person
to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is only by admitting
the first question to be answered affirmatively, that the second could follow.
It would have been unnecessary, and even absurd, to have put a second question,
more difficult than the first, if the first question had been answered
negatively. The two questions have different objects; the first refers to the
existence of God, the second to his attributes. Reason can discover the one,
but it falls infinitely short in discovering the whole of the other.

I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the men called
apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is. Those writings are chiefly
controversial; and the gloominess of the subject they dwell upon, that of a man
dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the gloomy genius of a monk in a
cell, by whom it is not impossible they were written, than to any man breathing
the open air of the Creation. The only passage that occurs to me, that has any
reference to the works of God, by which only his power and wisdom can be known,
is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy against distrustful
care. “Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they
spin.” This, however, is far inferior to the allusions in Job and in the
19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the imagery is
correspondent to the modesty of the man.

CHAPTER XI.
OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY.

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism;
a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than
in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and
is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and
his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her
opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a
religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of
reason into shade.

The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything upside down,
and representing it in reverse; and among the revolutions it has thus magically
produced, it has made a revolution in Theology.

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of
science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works
of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true
theology.

As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human
opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God
himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writings that man
has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that the Christian
system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful
system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to
make room for the hag of superstition.

The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the church admits to be more
ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the
Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
The internal evidence of those orations proves to a demonstration that the
study and contemplation of the works of creation, and of the power and wisdom
of God revealed and manifested in those works, made a great part of the
religious devotion of the times in which they were written; and it was this
devotional study and contemplation that led to the discovery of the principles
upon which what are now called Sciences are established; and it is to the
discovery of these principles that almost all the Arts that contribute to the
convenience of human life owe their existence. Every principal art has some
science for its parent, though the person who mechanically performs the work
does not always, and but very seldom, perceive the connection.

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences ‘human
inventions;’ it is only the application of them that is human. Every
science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as
those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make
principles, he can only discover them.

For example: Every person who looks at an almanack sees an account when an
eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails to take place
according to the account there given. This shows that man is acquainted with
the laws by which the heavenly bodies move. But it would be something worse
than ignorance, were any church on earth to say that those laws are an human
invention.

It would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the scientific
principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate and foreknow when
an eclipse will take place, are an human invention. Man cannot invent any thing
that is eternal and immutable; and the scientific principles he employs for
this purpose must, and are, of necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws
by which the heavenly bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to
ascertain the time when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take place.

The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the foreknowledge of an
eclipse, or of any thing else relating to the motion of the heavenly bodies,
are contained chiefly in that part of science that is called trigonometry, or
the properties of a triangle, which, when applied to the study of the heavenly
bodies, is called astronomy; when applied to direct the course of a ship on the
ocean, it is called navigation; when applied to the construction of figures
drawn by a rule and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the
construction of plans of edifices, it is called architecture; when applied to
the measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is called
land-surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science. It is an eternal truth: it
contains the mathematical demonstration of which man speaks, and the extent of
its uses are unknown.

It may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a triangle
is an human invention.

But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the principle: it
is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind, of a principle that
would otherwise be imperceptible. The triangle does not make the principle, any
more than a candle taken into a room that was dark, makes the chairs and tables
that before were invisible. All the properties of a triangle exist
independently of the figure, and existed before any triangle was drawn or
thought of by man. Man had no more to do in the formation of those properties
or principles, than he had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly
bodies move; and therefore the one must have the same divine origin as the
other.

In the same manner as, it may be said, that man can make a triangle, so also,
may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument called a lever. But the
principle by which the lever acts, is a thing distinct from the instrument, and
would exist if the instrument did not; it attaches itself to the instrument
after it is made; the instrument, therefore, can act no otherwise than it does
act; neither can all the efforts of human invention make it act otherwise. That
which, in all such cases, man calls the effect, is no other than the principle
itself rendered perceptible to the senses.

Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a knowledge of
them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things on earth, but to
ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant from him as all the
heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask, could he gain that knowledge, but from
the study of the true theology?

It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to man. That
structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle upon which every
part of mathematical science is founded. The offspring of this science is
mechanics; for mechanics is no other than the principles of science applied
practically. The man who proportions the several parts of a mill uses the same
scientific principles as if he had the power of constructing an universe, but
as he cannot give to matter that invisible agency by which all the component
parts of the immense machine of the universe have influence upon each other,
and act in motional unison together, without any apparent contact, and to which
man has given the name of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he supplies
the place of that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and cogs. All the
parts of man’s microcosm must visibly touch. But could he gain a
knowledge of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in practice, we might
then say that another canonical book of the word of God had been discovered.

If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he alter the
properties of the triangle: for a lever (taking that sort of lever which is
called a steel-yard, for the sake of explanation) forms, when in motion, a
triangle. The line it descends from, (one point of that line being in the
fulcrum,) the line it descends to, and the chord of the arc, which the end of
the lever describes in the air, are the three sides of a triangle. The other
arm of the lever describes also a triangle; and the corresponding sides of
those two triangles, calculated scientifically, or measured
geometrically,—and also the sines, tangents, and secants generated from
the angles, and geometrically measured,—have the same proportions to each
other as the different weights have that will balance each other on the lever,
leaving the weight of the lever out of the case.

It may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can put wheels
of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill. Still the case comes back
to the same point, which is, that he did not make the principle that gives the
wheels those powers. This principle is as unalterable as in the former cases,
or rather it is the same principle under a different appearance to the eye.

The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each other is in
the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two wheels were joined
together and made into that kind of lever I have described, suspended at the
part where the semi-diameters join; for the two wheels, scientifically
considered, are no other than the two circles generated by the motion of the
compound lever.

It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of science is
derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts have originated.

The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure
of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if he had
said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, “I have made an
earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to
teach him science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, AND
LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER.”

Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is endowed
with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an immensity of
worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is it that this
immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do with the Pleiades,
with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the north star, with the moving
orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to
follow from their being visible? A less power of vision would have been
sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were given only to waste
itself, as it were, on an immense desert of space glittering with shows.

It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the book and
school of science, that he discovers any use in their being visible to him, or
any advantage resulting from his immensity of vision. But when he contemplates
the subject in this light, he sees an additional motive for saying, that
nothing was made in vain; for in vain would be this power of vision if it
taught man nothing.

CHAPTER XII.
THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED REFORMS

As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so also has
it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is now called
learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the
schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the
knowledge of things to which language gives names.

The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not consist in
speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman’s speaking Latin, or a
Frenchman’s speaking French, or an Englishman’s speaking English.
From what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that they knew or studied
any language but their own, and this was one cause of their becoming so
learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to better studies. The
schools of the Greeks were schools of science and philosophy, and not of
languages; and it is in the knowledge of the things that science and philosophy
teach that learning consists.

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

The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for the
Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and the language
thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it were the tools, employed
to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It made no part of the learning itself;
and was so distinct from it as to make it exceedingly probable that the persons
who had studied Greek sufficiently to translate those works, such for instance
as Euclid’s Elements, did not understand any of the learning the works
contained.

As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages, all the
useful books being already translated, the languages are become useless, and
the time expended in teaching and in learning them is wasted. So far as the
study of languages may contribute to the progress and communication of
knowledge (for it has nothing to do with the creation of knowledge) it is only
in the living languages that new knowledge is to be found; and certain it is,
that, in general, a youth will learn more of a living language in one year,
than of a dead language in seven; and it is but seldom that the teacher knows
much of it himself. The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not
arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their
being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same thing
with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek linguist that now
exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian
milkmaid; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of
the Romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the
cows that she milked. It would therefore be advantageous to the state of
learning to abolish the study of the dead languages, and to make learning
consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge.

The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the dead languages
is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not capable of exerting any
other mental faculty than that of memory. But this is altogether erroneous. The
human mind has a natural disposition to scientific knowledge, and to the things
connected with it. The first and favourite amusement of a child, even before it
begins to play, is that of imitating the works of man. It builds houses with
cards or sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper
boat; or dams the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it calls a
mill; and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that
resembles affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed
by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is lost in the
linguist.

But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead languages,
could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning to the narrow and
humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore must be sought for elsewhere.
In all researches of this kind, the best evidence that can be produced, is the
internal evidence the thing carries with itself, and the evidence of
circumstances that unites with it; both of which, in this case, are not
difficult to be discovered.

Putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage offered to
the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the innocent suffer for the
guilty, and also the loose morality and low contrivance of supposing him to
change himself into the shape of a man, in order to make an excuse to himself
for not executing his supposed sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things
aside as matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called
the christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the
creation—the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple—the
amphibious idea of a man-god—the corporeal idea of the death of a
god—the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian system
of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irreconcilable,
not only to the divine gift of reason, that God has given to man, but to the
knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom of God by the aid of the
sciences, and by studying the structure of the universe that God has made.

The setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of faith,
could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge that man would
gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of God, manifested in the
structure of the universe, and in all the works of creation, would militate
against, and call into question, the truth of their system of faith; and
therefore it became necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size
less dangerous to their project, and this they effected by restricting the idea
of learning to the dead study of dead languages.

They not only rejected the study of science out of the christian schools, but
they persecuted it; and it is only within about the last two centuries that the
study has been revived. So late as 1610, Galileo, a Florentine, discovered and
introduced the use of telescopes, and by applying them to observe the motions
and appearances of the heavenly bodies, afforded additional means for
ascertaining the true structure of the universe. Instead of being esteemed for
these discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting
from them, as a damnable heresy. And prior to that time Virgilius was condemned
to be burned for asserting the antipodes, or in other words, that the earth was
a globe, and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the truth of
this is now too well known even to be told. [NOTE: I cannot discover the source
of this statement concerning the ancient author whose Irish name Feirghill was
Latinized into Virgilius. The British Museum possesses a copy of the work
(Decalogiunt) which was the pretext of the charge of heresy made by Boniface,
Archbishop of Mayence, against Virgilius, Abbot—bishop of Salzburg, These
were leaders of the rival “British” and “Roman parties, and
the British champion made a countercharge against Boniface of irreligious
practices.” Boniface had to express a “regret,” but none the
less pursued his rival. The Pope, Zachary II., decided that if his alleged
“doctrine, against God and his soul, that beneath the earth there is
another world, other men, or sun and moon,” should be acknowledged by
Virgilius, he should be excommunicated by a Council and condemned with
canonical sanctions. Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation
with “canonicis sanctionibus,” in the middle of the eighth century,
it did not fall on Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it
is probable that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen
of the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of the
progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He bore until
his death, 789, the curious title, “Geometer and Solitary,” or
“lone wayfarer” (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his
memory until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside his
accuser, St. Boniface.—Editor. (Conway)]

If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make no part
of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no moral ill in
believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more than there was moral
virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither was there any moral ill
in believing that the Creator made no other world than this, any more than
there was moral virtue in believing that he made millions, and that the
infinity of space is filled with worlds. But when a system of religion is made
to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite
itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an
entirely different ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become
fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth,
though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the
criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by
contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this view of the
case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible evidence that the
structure of the heavens, or any other part of creation affords, with respect
to systems of religion. But this, the supporters or partizans of the christian
system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected
the sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived
three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is
most probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had Franklin drawn
lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at the hazard of
expiring for it in flames.

Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but, however
unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to believe or to
acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced
with the Christian system. There was more knowledge in the world before that
period, than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the
Christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and
the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of
theism. [NOTE by Paine: It is impossible for us now to know at what time the
heathen mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it
carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which it
ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of modern invention.
The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that which is called the heathen
mythology, and was so far a species of theism that it admitted the belief of
only one God. Saturn is supposed to have abdicated the govemment in favour of
his three sons and one daughter, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this,
thousands of other gods and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar
of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of courts
have increased since.

All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion have
been produced by admitting of what man calls ‘revealed religion.’
The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the christians do.
They had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to receive and
deliver the word of God verbally on almost all occasions.

Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modern predestinarianism, and
the human sacrifices of the heathens to the christian sacrifice of the Creator,
have been produced by admitting of what is called revealed religion, the most
effectual means to prevent all such evils and impositions is, not to admit of
any other revelation than that which is manifested in the book of Creation.,
and to contemplate the Creation as the only true and real word of God that ever
did or ever will exist; and every thing else called the word of God is fable
and imposition.—Author.]

It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause, that we
have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred years to the
respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had the progression of knowledge
gone on proportionably with the stock that before existed, that chasm would
have been filled up with characters rising superior in knowledge to each other;
and those Ancients we now so much admire would have appeared respectably in the
background of the scene. But the christian system laid all waste; and if we
take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back
through that long chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast sandy
desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile
hills beyond.

It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that any thing should
exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be irreligious to study
and contemplate the structure of the universe that God had made. But the fact
is too well established to be denied. The event that served more than any other
to break the first link in this long chain of despotic ignorance, is that known
by the name of the Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does not
appear to have made any part of the intention of Luther, or of those who are
called Reformers, the Sciences began to revive, and Liberality, their natural
associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the Reformation did;
for, with respect to religious good, it might as well not have taken place. The
mythology still continued the same; and a multiplicity of National Popes grew
out of the downfall of the Pope of Christendom.

CHAPTER XIII.
COMPARISON OF CHRISTIANISM WITH THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS INSPIRED BY NATURE

Having thus shewn, from the internal evidence of things, the cause that
produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for substituting the
study of the dead languages, in the place of the Sciences, I proceed, in
addition to the several observations already made in the former part of this
work, to compare, or rather to confront, the evidence that the structure of the
universe affords, with the christian system of religion. But as I cannot begin
this part better than by referring to the ideas that occurred to me at an early
part of life, and which I doubt not have occurred in some degree to almost
every other person at one time or other, I shall state what those ideas were,
and add thereto such other matter as shall arise out of the subject, giving to
the whole, by way of preface, a short introduction.

My father being of the quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have an
exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful learning.
Though I went to the grammar school, I did not learn Latin, not only because I
had no inclination to learn languages, but because of the objection the quakers
have against the books in which the language is taught. But this did not
prevent me from being acquainted with the subjects of all the Latin books used
in the school.

The natural bent of my mind was to science. I had some turn, and I believe some
talent for poetry; but this I rather repressed than encouraged, as leading too
much into the field of imagination. As soon as I was able, I purchased a pair
of globes, and attended the philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and
became afterwards acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal
Society, then living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer.

I had no disposition for what was called politics. It presented to my mind no
other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship. When, therefore, I turned
my thoughts towards matters of government, I had to form a system for myself,
that accorded with the moral and philosophic principles in which I had been
educated. I saw, or at least I thought I saw, a vast scene opening itself to
the world in the affairs of America; and it appeared to me, that unless the
Americans changed the plan they were then pursuing, with respect to the
government of England, and declared themselves independent, they would not only
involve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out the
prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their means. It was
from these motives that I published the work known by the name of Common Sense,
which is the first work I ever did publish, and so far as I can judge of
myself, I believe I should never have been known in the world as an author on
any subject whatever, had it not been for the affairs of America. I wrote
Common Sense the latter end of the year 1775, and published it the first of
January, 1776. Independence was declared the fourth of July following. [NOTE:
The pamphlet Common Sense was first advertised, as “just
published,” on January 10, 1776. His plea for the Officers of Excise,
written before leaving England, was printed, but not published until 1793.
Despite his reiterated assertion that Common Sense was the first work he ever
published the notion that he was “junius” still finds some
believers. An indirect comment on our Paine-Junians may be found in Part 2 of
this work where Paine says a man capable of writing Homer “would not have
thrown away his own fame by giving it to another.” It is probable that
Paine ascribed the Letters of Junius to Thomas Hollis. His friend F. Lanthenas,
in his translation of the Age of Reason (1794) advertises his translation of
the Letters of Junius from the English “(Thomas Hollis).” This he
could hardly have done without consultation with Paine. Unfortunately this
translation of Junius cannot be found either in the Bibliotheque Nationale or
the British Museum, and it cannot be said whether it contains any attempt at an
identification of Junius—Editor.]

Any person, who has made observations on the state and progress of the human
mind, by observing his own, can not but have observed, that there are two
distinct classes of what are called Thoughts; those that we produce in
ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the
mind of their own accord. I have always made it a rule to treat those voluntary
visitors with civility, taking care to examine, as well as I was able, if they
were worth entertaining; and it is from them I have acquired almost all the
knowledge that I have. As to the learning that any person gains from school
education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of
beginning learning for himself afterwards. Every person of learning is finally
his own teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct
quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of
mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when
they begin by conception. Thus much for the introductory part.

From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it by
reflection, I either doubted the truth of the christian system, or thought it
to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was: but I well remember, when
about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine,
who was a great devotee of the church, upon the subject of what is called
Redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went
into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly
recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and
thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man,
that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I
was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what
purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of those kind of thoughts
that had any thing in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection,
arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and
also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same
manner to this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that
has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.

It seems as if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell their
children any thing about the principles of their religion. They sometimes
instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call
Providence; for the Christian mythology has five deities: there is God the
Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess
Nature. But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or
employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,)
cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make
mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind
could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a
mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true
deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating the power,
wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavouring to imitate
him in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechanical.

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in the
moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the quakers: but they have
contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system.
Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help smiling at the conceit,
that if the taste of a quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a
silent and drab-colored creation it would have been! Not a flower would have
blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.

Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had made myself
master of the use of the globes, and of the orrery, [NOTE by Paine: As this
book may fall into the bands of persons who do not know what an orrery is, it
is for their information I add this note, as the name gives no idea of the uses
of the thing. The orrery has its name from the person who invented it. It is a
machinery of clock-work, representing the universe in miniature: and in which
the revolution of the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of
the moon round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their
relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system, their
relative distances from each other, and their different magnitudes, are
represented as they really exist in what we call the heavens.—Author.]
and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and of the eternal divisibility
of matter, and obtained, at least, a general knowledge of what was called
natural philosophy, I began to compare, or, as I have before said, to confront,
the internal evidence those things afford with the christian system of faith.

Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this world that
we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is so worked up
therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the creation, the story of
Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story, the death of the Son of
God, that to believe otherwise, that is, to believe that God created a
plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the
christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the
mind like feathers in the air. The two beliefs can not be held together in the
same mind; and he who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of
either.

Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the ancients, it is
only within the last three centuries that the extent and dimensions of this
globe that we inhabit have been ascertained. Several vessels, following the
tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely round the world, as a man may march in
a circle, and come round by the contrary side of the circle to the spot he set
out from. The circular dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a man
would measure the widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only twenty-five
thousand and twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and an half to an
equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three years.
[NOTE by Paine: Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour,
she would sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if she could
sail in a direct circle, but she is obliged to follow the course of the
ocean.—Author.]

A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be great; but if
we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is suspended, like a
bubble or a balloon in the air, it is infinitely less in proportion than the
smallest grain of sand is to the size of the world, or the finest particle of
dew to the whole ocean, and is therefore but small; and, as will be hereafter
shown, is only one of a system of worlds, of which the universal creation is
composed.

It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of space in which
this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we follow a progression of
ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions of, a room, our ideas limit
themselves to the walls, and there they stop. But when our eye, or our
imagination darts into space, that is, when it looks upward into what we call
the open air, we cannot conceive any walls or boundaries it can have; and if
for the sake of resting our ideas we suppose a boundary, the question
immediately renews itself, and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the
same manner, what beyond the next boundary? and so on till the fatigued
imagination returns and says, there is no end. Certainly, then, the Creator was
not pent for room when he made this world no larger than it is; and we have to
seek the reason in something else.

If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the Creator
has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of creation, we find
every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air that surround it, filled,
and as it were crowded with life, down from the largest animals that we know of
to the smallest insects the naked eye can behold, and from thence to others
still smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance of the microscope.
Every tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a
world to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly
refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for thousands.

Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be supposed
that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal waste? There is
room for millions of worlds as large or larger than ours, and each of them
millions of miles apart from each other.

Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought
further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good reason
for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making one immense world,
extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred dividing that
quantity of matter into several distinct and separate worlds, which we call
planets, of which our earth is one. But before I explain my ideas upon this
subject, it is necessary (not for the sake of those that already know, but for
those who do not) to show what the system of the universe is.

CHAPTER XIV.
SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.

That part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the system
of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in English language,
the Sun, is the center) consists, besides the Sun, of six distinct orbs, or
planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies, called the satellites, or
moons, of which our earth has one that attends her in her annual revolution
round the Sun, in like manner as the other satellites or moons, attend the
planets or worlds to which they severally belong, as may be seen by the
assistance of the telescope.

The Sun is the center round which those six worlds or planets revolve at
different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each other. Each
world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract round the Sun, and continues at
the same time turning round itself, in nearly an upright position, as a top
turns round itself when it is spinning on the ground, and leans a little
sideways.

It is this leaning of the earth (23 1/2 degrees) that occasions summer and
winter, and the different length of days and nights. If the earth turned round
itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or level of the circle it moves
in round the Sun, as a top turns round when it stands erect on the ground, the
days and nights would be always of the same length, twelve hours day and twelve
hours night, and the season would be uniformly the same throughout the year.

Every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round itself, it makes
what we call day and night; and every time it goes entirely round the Sun, it
makes what we call a year, consequently our world turns three hundred and
sixty-five times round itself, in going once round the Sun.

The names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which are still
called by the same names, are Mercury, Venus, this world that we call ours,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They appear larger to the eye than the stars, being
many million miles nearer to our earth than any of the stars are. The planet
Venus is that which is called the evening star, and sometimes the morning star,
as she happens to set after, or rise before the Sun, which in either case is
never more than three hours.

The Sun as before said being the center, the planet or world nearest the Sun is
Mercury; his distance from the Sun is thirty-four million miles, and he moves
round in a circle always at that distance from the Sun, as a top may be
supposed to spin round in the tract in which a horse goes in a mill. The second
world is Venus; she is fifty-seven million miles distant from the Sun, and
consequently moves round in a circle much greater than that of Mercury. The
third world is this that we inhabit, and which is eighty-eight million miles
distant from the Sun, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than
that of Venus. The fourth world is Mars; he is distant from the sun one hundred
and thirty-four million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle greater
than that of our earth. The fifth is Jupiter; he is distant from the Sun five
hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle
greater than that of Mars. The sixth world is Saturn; he is distant from the
Sun seven hundred and sixty-three million miles, and consequently moves round
in a circle that surrounds the circles or orbits of all the other worlds or
planets.

The space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space, that our solar
system takes up for the several worlds to perform their revolutions in round
the Sun, is of the extent in a strait line of the whole diameter of the orbit
or circle in which Saturn moves round the Sun, which being double his distance
from the Sun, is fifteen hundred and twenty-six million miles; and its circular
extent is nearly five thousand million; and its globical content is almost
three thousand five hundred million times three thousand five hundred million
square miles. [NOTE by Paine: If it should be asked, how can man know these
things? I have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to
calculate an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the
planet Venus, in making her revolutions round the Sun, will come in a strait
line between our earth and the Sun, and will appear to us about the size of a
large pea passing across the face of the Sun. This happens but twice in about a
hundred years, at the distance of about eight years from each other, and has
happened twice in our time, both of which were foreknown by calculation. It can
also be known when they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to
any other portion of time. As therefore, man could not be able to do these
things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in which the
revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of
calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that the
knowledge exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million miles, more
or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such immense
distances.—Author.]

But this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. Beyond this, at a
vast distance into space, far beyond all power of calculation, are the stars
called the fixed stars. They are called fixed, because they have no
revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or planets have that I have been
describing. Those fixed stars continue always at the same distance from each
other, and always in the same place, as the Sun does in the center of our
system. The probability, therefore, is that each of those fixed stars is also a
Sun, round which another system of worlds or planets, though too remote for us
to discover, performs its revolutions, as our system of worlds does round our
central Sun. By this easy progression of ideas, the immensity of space will
appear to us to be filled with systems of worlds; and that no part of space
lies at waste, any more than any part of our globe of earth and water is left
unoccupied.

Having thus endeavoured to convey, in a familiar and easy manner, some idea of
the structure of the universe, I return to explain what I before alluded to,
namely, the great benefits arising to man in consequence of the Creator having
made a Plurality of worlds, such as our system is, consisting of a central Sun
and six worlds, besides satellites, in preference to that of creating one world
only of a vast extent.

CHAPTER XV.
ADVANTAGES OF THE EXISTENCE OF MANY WORLDS IN EACH SOLAR SYSTEM

It is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of science is
derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and from thence to our
understanding) which those several planets or worlds of which our system is
composed make in their circuit round the Sun.

Had then the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain been blended
into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would have been, that either no
revolutionary motion would have existed, or not a sufficiency of it to give us
the ideas and the knowledge of science we now have; and it is from the sciences
that all the mechanical arts that contribute so much to our earthly felicity
and comfort are derived.

As therefore the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it be believed that
he organized the structure of the universe in the most advantageous manner for
the benefit of man; and as we see, and from experience feel, the benefits we
derive from the structure of the universe, formed as it is, which benefits we
should not have had the opportunity of enjoying if the structure, so far as
relates to our system, had been a solitary globe, we can discover at least one
reason why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth the
devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration.

But it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the benefits
arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. The inhabitants of each of the
worlds of which our system is composed, enjoy the same opportunities of
knowledge as we do. They behold the revolutionary motions of our earth, as we
behold theirs. All the planets revolve in sight of each other; and, therefore,
the same universal school of science presents itself to all.

Neither does the knowledge stop here. The system of worlds next to us exhibits,
in its revolutions, the same principles and school of science, to the
inhabitants of their system, as our system does to us, and in like manner
throughout the immensity of space.

Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his wisdom and
his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we contemplate the extent and
the structure of the universe. The solitary idea of a solitary world, rolling
or at rest in the immense ocean of space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a
society of worlds, so happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion,
instruction to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget
to consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge the
vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.

CHAPTER XVI.
APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIANS

But, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the christian
system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one world, and that of
no greater extent, as is before shown, than twenty-five thousand miles. An
extent which a man, walking at the rate of three miles an hour for twelve hours
in the day, could he keep on in a circular direction, would walk entirely round
in less than two years. Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and
the almighty power of the Creator!

From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the
Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection,
should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because,
they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! And, on the other hand, are
we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple,
a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called
the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than
to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely
a momentary interval of life.

It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God in the
creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon that
evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of religion,
have been fabricated and set up. There may be many systems of religion that so
far from being morally bad are in many respects morally good: but there can be
but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all
things consistent with the ever existing word of God that we behold in his
works. But such is the strange construction of the christian system of faith,
that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it
or renders it absurd.

It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in encouraging myself to
believe it, that there have been men in the world who persuaded themselves that
what is called a pious fraud, might, at least under particular circumstances,
be productive of some good. But the fraud being once established, could not
afterwards be explained; for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it
begets a calamitous necessity of going on.

The persons who first preached the christian system of faith, and in some
measure combined with it the morality preached by Jesus Christ, might persuade
themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology that then prevailed.
From the first preachers the fraud went on to the second, and to the third,
till the idea of its being a pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being
true; and that belief became again encouraged by the interest of those who made
a livelihood by preaching it.

But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost general among
the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the continual persecution
carried on by the church, for several hundred years, against the sciences, and
against the professors of science, if the church had not some record or
tradition that it was originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not
foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure
of the universe afforded.

CHAPTER XVII.
OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST UNIVERSALLY, TO DECEIVE THE
PEOPLES

Having thus shown the irreconcileable inconsistencies between the real word of
God existing in the universe, and that which is called the word of God, as
shown to us in a printed book that any man might make, I proceed to speak of
the three principal means that have been employed in all ages, and perhaps in
all countries, to impose upon mankind.

Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, The first two are
incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected.

With respect to Mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a mystery to
us. Our own existence is a mystery: the whole vegetable world is a mystery. We
cannot account how it is that an acorn, when put into the ground, is made to
develop itself and become an oak. We know not how it is that the seed we sow
unfolds and multiplies itself, and returns to us such an abundant interest for
so small a capital.

The fact however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a mystery,
because we see it; and we know also the means we are to use, which is no other
than putting the seed in the ground. We know, therefore, as much as is
necessary for us to know; and that part of the operation that we do not know,
and which if we did, we could not perform, the Creator takes upon himself and
performs it for us. We are, therefore, better off than if we had been let into
the secret, and left to do it for ourselves.

But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word mystery
cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to
light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not a God of
mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human
invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never
envelops itself in mystery; and the mystery in which it is at any time
enveloped, is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of moral
truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God, so far from
having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it
arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity. And the practice of
moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of
God, is no other than our acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards
all. We cannot serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without
such service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God, is that
of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God has made. This
cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of the world, and
spending a recluse life in selfish devotion.

The very nature and design of religion, if I may so express it, prove even to
demonstration that it must be free from every thing of mystery, and
unincumbered with every thing that is mysterious. Religion, considered as a
duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and, therefore, must be on a
level to the understanding and comprehension of all. Man does not learn
religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries of a trade. He learns the
theory of religion by reflection. It arises out of the action of his own mind
upon the things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read,
and the practice joins itself thereto.

When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion
incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, and not only above
but repugnant to human comprehension, they were under the necessity of
inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar to all questions,
inquiries and speculations. The word mystery answered this purpose, and thus it
has happened that religion, which is in itself without mystery, has been
corrupted into a fog of mysteries.

As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional
auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the
senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.

But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to inquire what
is to be understood by a miracle.

In the same sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also may it
be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is a greater
miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a greater miracle
than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an atom. To an almighty
power it is no more difficult to make the one than the other, and no more
difficult to make a million of worlds than to make one. Every thing, therefore,
is a miracle, in one sense; whilst, in the other sense, there is no such thing
as a miracle. It is a miracle when compared to our power, and to our
comprehension. It is not a miracle compared to the power that performs it. But
as nothing in this description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word
miracle, it is necessary to carry the inquiry further.

Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they call
nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary to the
operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know the whole extent of
those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not
able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous,
be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting.

The ascension of a man several miles high into the air, would have everything
in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not known that a
species of air can be generated several times lighter than the common
atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough to prevent the balloon, in
which that light air is inclosed, from being compressed into as many times less
bulk, by the common air that surrounds it. In like manner, extracting flashes
or sparks of fire from the human body, as visibly as from a steel struck with a
flint, and causing iron or steel to move without any visible agent, would also
give the idea of a miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity and
magnetism; so also would many other experiments in natural philosophy, to those
who are not acquainted with the subject. The restoring persons to life who are
to appearance dead as is practised upon drowned persons, would also be a
miracle, if it were not known that animation is capable of being suspended
without being extinct.

Besides these, there are performances by slight of hand, and by persons acting
in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which, when known, are thought
nothing of. And, besides these, there are mechanical and optical deceptions.
There is now an exhibition in Paris of ghosts or spectres, which, though it is
not imposed upon the spectators as a fact, has an astonishing appearance. As,
therefore, we know not the extent to which either nature or art can go, there
is no criterion to determine what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit
to appearances, under the idea of their being miracles, are subject to be
continually imposed upon.

Since then appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things not real have a
strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be more inconsistent than to
suppose that the Almighty would make use of means, such as are called miracles,
that would subject the person who performed them to the suspicion of being an
impostor, and the person who related them to be suspected of lying, and the
doctrine intended to be supported thereby to be suspected as a fabulous
invention.

Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any
system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that of
miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most
inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for
the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle, under any idea of the
word, is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is
preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the
character of a show-man, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and
wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for
the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the
credit of the reporter, who says that he saw it; and, therefore, the thing,
were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a
lie.

Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a hand
presented itself in the air, took up the pen and wrote every word that is
herein written; would any body believe me? Certainly they would not. Would they
believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact? Certainly they would
not. Since then a real miracle, were it to happen, would be subject to the same
fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency becomes the greater of supposing the
Almighty would make use of means that would not answer the purpose for which
they were intended, even if they were real.

If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of
what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it,
and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it,
it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is,—Is it
more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should
tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but
we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same
time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a
miracle tells a lie.

The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do
it, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have approached nearer to
the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the whale. In this, which may
serve for all cases of miracles, the matter would decide itself as before
stated, namely, Is it more probable that a man should have, swallowed a whale,
or told a lie?

But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone with it in his
belly to Nineveh, and to convince the people that it was true have cast it up
in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale, would they not have
believed him to have been the devil instead of a prophet? or if the whale had
carried Jonah to Nineveh, and cast him up in the same public manner, would they
not have believed the whale to have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps?

The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the New
Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ, and carrying him
to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the
temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world. How
happened it that he did not discover America? or is it only with kingdoms that
his sooty highness has any interest.

I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to believe that he
told this whale of a miracle himself: neither is it easy to account for what
purpose it could have been fabricated, unless it were to impose upon the
connoisseurs of miracles, as is sometimes practised upon the connoisseurs of
Queen Anne’s farthings, and collectors of relics and antiquities; or to
render the belief of miracles ridiculous, by outdoing miracle, as Don Quixote
outdid chivalry; or to embarrass the belief of miracles, by making it doubtful
by what power, whether of God or of the devil, any thing called a miracle was
performed. It requires, however, a great deal of faith in the devil to believe
this miracle.

In every point of view in which those things called miracles can be placed and
considered, the reality of them is improbable, and their existence unnecessary.
They would not, as before observed, answer any useful purpose, even if they
were true; for it is more difficult to obtain belief to a miracle, than to a
principle evidently moral, without any miracle. Moral principle speaks
universally for itself. Miracle could be but a thing of the moment, and seen
but by a few; after this it requires a transfer of faith from God to man to
believe a miracle upon man’s report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the
recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true, they
ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to
the full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it is
consistent with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth rejects. Thus
much for Mystery and Miracle.

As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present, Prophecy took
charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. It was not sufficient to
know what had been done, but what would be done. The supposed prophet was the
supposed historian of times to come; and if he happened, in shooting with a
long bow of a thousand years, to strike within a thousand miles of a mark, the
ingenuity of posterity could make it point-blank; and if he happened to be
directly wrong, it was only to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh,
that God had repented himself and changed his mind. What a fool do fabulous
systems make of man!

It has been shewn, in a former part of this work, that the original meaning of
the words prophet and prophesying has been changed, and that a prophet, in the
sense of the word as now used, is a creature of modern invention; and it is
owing to this change in the meaning of the words, that the flights and
metaphors of the Jewish poets, and phrases and expressions now rendered obscure
by our not being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied
at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend
to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders,
and commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every thing
insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a prophecy; and a
dish-clout for a type.

If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty communicated some
event that would take place in future, either there were such men, or there
were not. If there were, it is consistent to believe that the event so
communicated would be told in terms that could be understood, and not related
in such a loose and obscure manner as to be out of the comprehension of those
that heard it, and so equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that might
happen afterwards. It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to
suppose he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the things
called prophecies in the book called the Bible come under this description.

But it is with Prophecy as it is with Miracle. It could not answer the purpose
even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be told could not tell
whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had been revealed to him, or
whether he conceited it; and if the thing that he prophesied, or pretended to
prophesy, should happen, or some thing like it, among the multitude of things
that are daily happening, nobody could again know whether he foreknew it, or
guessed at it, or whether it was accidental. A prophet, therefore, is a
character useless and unnecessary; and the safe side of the case is to guard
against being imposed upon, by not giving credit to such relations.

Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that belong to
fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which so many Lo
heres! and Lo theres! have been spread about the world, and religion been made
into a trade. The success of one impostor gave encouragement to another, and
the quieting salvo of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected
them from remorse.

RECAPITULATION

Having now extended the subject to a greater length than I first intended, I
shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the whole.

First, That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in print, or in
writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for the reasons already
assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of an universal
language; the mutability of language; the errors to which translations are
subject, the possibility of totally suppressing such a word; the probability of
altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and imposing it upon the world.

Secondly, That the Creation we behold is the real and ever existing word of
God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaimeth his power, it demonstrates
his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence.

Thirdly, That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness
and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures.
That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an example
calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other; and,
consequently, that every thing of persecution and revenge between man and man,
and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.

I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself
with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me
existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either
with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall
continue to exist hereafter than that I should have had existence, as I now
have, before that existence began.

It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions
agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they disgrace are the
redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if ever an universal
religion should prevail, it will not be believing any thing new, but in getting
rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed at first. [“In the
childhood of the world,” according to the first (French) version; and the
strict translation of the final sentence is: “Deism was the religion of
Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being; but none the less must it be left
to all men to follow, as is their right, the religion and worship they
prefer.”—Editor.] Adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a
Deist; but in the mean time, let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the
religion and worship he prefers.

THE AGE OF REASON – PART II

PREFACE

I have mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had long been
my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion; but that I had originally
reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to be the last work I
should undertake. The circumstances, however, which existed in France in the
latter end of the year 1793, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and
humane principles of the Revolution which Philosophy had first diffused, had
been departed from. The Idea, always dangerous to Society as it is derogatory
to the Almighty,—that priests could forgive sins,—though it seemed
to exist no longer, had blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously
prepared men for the commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church
persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, stiled
Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the
Stake. I saw many of my most intimate friends destroyed; others daily carried
to prison; and I had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that
the same danger was approaching myself.

Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age of Reason; I had,
besides, neither Bible nor Testament [It must be borne in mind that throughout
this work Paine generally means by “Bible” only the Old Testament,
and speaks of the New as the “Testament.”—Editor.] to refer
to, though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any; notwithstanding
which I have produced a work that no Bible Believer, though writing at his ease
and with a Library of Church Books about him, can refute. Towards the latter
end of December of that year, a motion was made and carried, to exclude
foreigners from the Convention. There were but two, Anacharsis Cloots and
myself; and I saw I was particularly pointed at by Bourdon de l’Oise, in
his speech on that motion.

Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat down and
brought the work to a close as speedily as possible; and I had not finished it
more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, [This is an allusion
to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part of 1793. See
Introduction.—Editor.] before a guard came there, about three in the
morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety
General, for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and conveying me to the
prison of the Luxembourg. I contrived, in my way there, to call on Joel Barlow,
and I put the Manuscript of the work into his hands, as more safe than in my
possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in France either
of the writer or the work, I addressed it to the protection of the citizens of
the United States.

It is justice that I say, that the guard who executed this order, and the
interpreter to the Committee of General Surety, who accompanied them to examine
my papers, treated me not only with civility, but with respect. The keeper of
the ‘Luxembourg, Benoit, a man of good heart, shewed to me every
friendship in his power, as did also all his family, while he continued in that
station. He was removed from it, put into arrestation, and carried before the
tribunal upon a malignant accusation, but acquitted.

After I had been in Luxembourg about three weeks, the Americans then in Paris
went in a body to the Convention to reclaim me as their countryman and friend;
but were answered by the President, Vadier, who was also President of the
Committee of Surety General, and had signed the order for my arrestation, that
I was born in England. [These excited Americans do not seem to have understood
or reported the most important item in Vadeer’s reply, namely that their
application was “unofficial,” i.e. not made through or sanctioned
by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister. For the detailed history of all this
see vol. iii.—Editor.] I heard no more, after this, from any person out
of the walls of the prison, till the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th of
Thermidor—July 27, 1794.

About two months before this event, I was seized with a fever that in its
progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I
am not recovered. It was then that I remembered with renewed satisfaction, and
congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of The
Age of Reason. I had then but little expectation of surviving, and those about
me had less. I know therefore by experience the conscientious trial of my own
principles.

I was then with three chamber comrades: Joseph Vanheule of Bruges, Charles
Bastfni, and Michael Robyns of Louvain. The unceasing and anxious attention of
these three friends to me, by night and day, I remember with gratitude and
mention with pleasure. It happened that a physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon,
(Mr. Bond,) part of the suite of General O’Hara, [The officer who at
Yorktown, Virginia, carried out the sword of Cornwallis for surrender, and
satirically offered it to Rochambeau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him
300 pounds when he (O’Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed
in the lock of his cell-door.—Editor.] were then in the Luxembourg: I ask
not myself whether it be convenient to them, as men under the English
Government, that I express to them my thanks; but I should reproach myself if I
did not; and also to the physician of the Luxembourg, Dr. Markoski.

I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any other, that this
illness preserved me in existence. Among the papers of Robespierre that were
examined and reported upon to the Convention by a Committee of Deputies, is a
note in the hand writing of Robespierre, in the following words:

“Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d’accusation, pour
l’interet de l’Amerique autant que de la France.”

[Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest of
America, as well as of France.] From what cause it was that the intention was
not put in execution, I know not, and cannot inform myself; and therefore I
ascribe it to impossibility, on account of that illness.

The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the injustice I had
sustained, invited me publickly and unanimously to return into the Convention,
and which I accepted, to shew I could bear an injury without permitting it to
injure my principles or my disposition. It is not because right principles have
been violated, that they are to be abandoned.

I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written, some
in America, and some in England, as answers to the former part of “The
Age of Reason.” If the authors of these can amuse themselves by so doing,
I shall not interrupt them, They may write against the work, and against me, as
much as they please; they do me more service than they intend, and I can have
no objection that they write on. They will find, however, by this Second Part,
without its being written as an answer to them, that they must return to their
work, and spin their cobweb over again. The first is brushed away by accident.

They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and Testament; and
I can say also that I have found them to be much worse books than I had
conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former part of the Age of
Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved.

I observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they call
Scripture Evidence and Bible authority, to help them out. They are so little
masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about authenticity with a
dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them right, that if they should
be disposed to write any more, they may know how to begin.

THOMAS PAINE. October, 1795.

CHAPTER I.
THE OLD TESTAMENT

It has often been said that any thing may be proved from the Bible; but before
any thing can be admitted as proved by Bible, the Bible itself must be proved
to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it
ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of any thing.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all
Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of
truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have
anathematized each other about the supposeable meaning of particular parts and
passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a
thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant
neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they
have called understanding the Bible.

It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of
‘The Age of Reason’ have been written by priests: and these pious
men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible;
each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have
agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it
not.

Now instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious
disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men ought to
know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that the first thing to
be understood is, whether there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible
to be the word of God, or whether there is not?

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God,
that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice,
as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by
the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern
times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they
(the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the
history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those
nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they
utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to
breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and
that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we
sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure
that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?

It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth; on the
contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any
history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable. The origin
of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as
much to be suspected as any other.

To charge the commission of things upon the Almighty, which in their own
nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all assassination
is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is matter of serious
concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express
command of God. To believe therefore the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve
all our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or smiling
infants offend? And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing
that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for
myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the
sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient
to determine my choice.

But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in the
progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot
deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not entitled to credit,
as being the word of God.

But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the Bible
differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of the
evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is the more proper
to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their answers to the former
part of ‘The Age of Reason,’ undertake to say, and they put some
stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as well established as
that of any other ancient book: as if our belief of the one could become any
rule for our belief of the other.

I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges
universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid’s Elements of Geometry;
[Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years before
Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the city of
Alexandria, in Egypt.—Author.] and the reason is, because it is a book of
self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of every
thing relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters contained in that
book would have the same authority they now have, had they been written by any
other person, or had the work been anonymous, or had the author never been
known; for the identical certainty of who was the author makes no part of our
belief of the matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with
respect to the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.: those are
books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible; and
therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those books,
rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were written by Moses,
Joshua, and Samuel; secondly, upon the credit we give to their testimony. We
may believe the first, that is, may believe the certainty of the authorship,
and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we may believe that a
certain person gave evidence upon a case, and yet not believe the evidence that
he gave. But if it should be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua,
and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the
authority and authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no
such thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous
testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible; such as that of
talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at
the command of a man.

The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of which kind
are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to Demosthenes, to Cicero,
etc. Here again the author is not an essential in the credit we give to any of
those works; for as works of genius they would have the same merit they have
now, were they anonymous. Nobody believes the Trojan story, as related by
Homer, to be true; for it is the poet only that is admired, and the merit of
the poet will remain, though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the
matters related by the Bible authors (Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the
things related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but
an imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit
them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if
we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by
Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner
as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also
believe the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to
let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These
miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do
not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish
our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere,
is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable
things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim to our belief
of the Bible because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings;
since that we believe the things stated in those writings no further than they
are probable and credible, or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or
admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they
are sedate, like Plato; or judicious, like Aristotle.

Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the authenticity of the
Bible; and I begin with what are called the five books of Moses, Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. My intention is to shew that those
books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of them; and still
further, that they were not written in the time of Moses nor till several
hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than an attempted history of
the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, and also
of the times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pretenders
to authorship, several hundred years after the death of Moses; as men now write
histories of things that happened, or are supposed to have happened, several
hundred or several thousand years ago.

The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books themselves;
and I will confine myself to this evidence only. Were I to refer for proofs to
any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of the Bible call prophane
authors, they would controvert that authority, as I controvert theirs: I will
therefore meet them on their own ground, and oppose them with their own weapon,
the Bible.

In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is the author
of those books; and that he is the author, is altogether an unfounded opinion,
got abroad nobody knows how. The style and manner in which those books are
written give no room to believe, or even to suppose, they were written by
Moses; for it is altogether the style and manner of another person speaking of
Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, (for every thing in Genesis is prior
to the times of Moses and not the least allusion is made to him therein,) the
whole, I say, of these books is in the third person; it is always, the Lord
said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord; or Moses said unto the people, or
the people said unto Moses; and this is the style and manner that historians
use in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they are writing. It may
be said, that a man may speak of himself in the third person, and, therefore,
it may be supposed that Moses did; but supposition proves nothing; and if the
advocates for the belief that Moses wrote those books himself have nothing
better to advance than supposition, they may as well be silent.

But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in the
third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner, it cannot
be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who speaks, without
rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd:—for example, Numbers xii. 3:
“Now the man Moses was very MEEK, above all the men which were on the
face of the earth.” If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the
meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant coxcombs; and the
advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for both sides
are against them: if Moses was not the author, the books are without authority;
and if he was the author, the author is without credit, because to boast of
meekness is the reverse of meekness, and is a lie in sentiment.

In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more evidently than in
the former books that Moses is not the writer. The manner here used is
dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a short introductory discourse, and
then introduces Moses as in the act of speaking, and when he has made Moses
finish his harrangue, he (the writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he
brings Moses forward again, and at last closes the scene with an account of the
death, funeral, and character of Moses.

This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book: from the first
verse of the first chapter, to the end of the fifth verse, it is the writer who
speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the act of making his harrangue, and
this continues to the end of the 40th verse of the fourth chapter; here the
writer drops Moses, and speaks historically of what was done in consequence of
what Moses, when living, is supposed to have said, and which the writer has
dramatically rehearsed.

The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth chapter,
though it is only by saying that Moses called the people of Israel together; he
then introduces Moses as before, and continues him as in the act of speaking,
to the end of the 26th chapter. He does the same thing at the beginning of the
27th chapter; and continues Moses as in the act of speaking, to the end of the
28th chapter. At the 29th chapter the writer speaks again through the whole of
the first verse, and the first line of the second verse, where he introduces
Moses for the last time, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the
end of the 33d chapter.

The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Moses, comes
forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter: he begins by telling
the reader, that Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, that he saw from thence
the land which (the writer says) had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob; that he, Moses, died there in the land of Moab, that he buried him in a
valley in the land of Moab, but that no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this
day, that is unto the time in which the writer lived who wrote the book of
Deuteronomy. The writer then tells us, that Moses was one hundred and ten years
of age when he died—that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force
abated; and he concludes by saying, that there arose not a prophet since in
Israel like unto Moses, whom, says this anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to
face.

Having thus shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implies, that Moses was not
the writer of those books, I will, after making a few observations on the
inconsistencies of the writer of the book of Deuteronomy, proceed to shew, from
the historical and chronological evidence contained in those books, that Moses
was not, because he could not be, the writer of them; and consequently, that
there is no authority for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of
men, women, and children, told of in those books, were done, as those books say
they were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent on every true deist,
that he vindicates the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the Bible.

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it is an anonymous
work, is obscure, and also contradictory with himself in the account he has
given of Moses.

After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does not appear from
any account that he ever came down again) he tells us, that Moses died there in
the land of Moab, and that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab; but
as there is no antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was,
that did bury him. If the writer meant that he (God) buried him, how should he
(the writer) know it? or why should we (the readers) believe him? since we know
not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not himself
tell where he was buried.

The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of Moses is
unto this day, meaning the time in which this writer lived; how then should he
know that Moses was buried in a valley in the land of Moab? for as the writer
lived long after the time of Moses, as is evident from his using the expression
of unto this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses, he
certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that
Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this
day. To make Moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of a child
that hides himself and cries nobody can find me; nobody can find Moses.

This writer has no where told us how he came by the speeches which he has put
into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we have a right to conclude
that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from oral tradition. One or
other of these is the more probable, since he has given, in the fifth chapter,
a table of commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is
different from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. In
that of Exodus, the reason given for keeping the seventh day is, because (says
the commandment) God made the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on
the seventh; but in that of Deuteronomy, the reason given is, that it was the
day on which the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says this
commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath-day This makes
no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out of Egypt. There are also
many things given as laws of Moses in this book, that are not to be found in
any of the other books; among which is that inhuman and brutal law, xxi. 18,
19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their
own children to have them stoned to death for what it pleased them to call
stubbornness.—But priests have always been fond of preaching up
Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, xxv.
4, they have taken the phrase, and applied it to tything, that “thou
shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth Out the corn:” and that this
might not escape observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at
the head of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two
lines. O priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake
of tythes. [An elegant pocket edition of Paine’s Theological Works
(London. R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a Moses in
evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his “Age of Reason” to a
farmer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work) has taken a
sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the summit of a well
stocked hill.—Editor.]—Though it is impossible for us to know
identically who the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover
him professionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I shall shew
in the course of this work, at least three hundred and fifty years after the
time of Moses.

I come now to speak of the historical and chronological evidence. The
chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology; for I mean not to go out
of the Bible for evidence of any thing, but to make the Bible itself prove
historically and chronologically that Moses is not the author of the books
ascribed to him. It is therefore proper that I inform the readers (such an one
at least as may not have the opportunity of knowing it) that in the larger
Bibles, and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of chronology printed
in the margin of every page for the purpose of showing how long the historical
matters stated in each page happened, or are supposed to have happened, before
Christ, and consequently the distance of time between one historical
circumstance and another.

I begin with the book of Genesis.—In Genesis xiv., the writer gives an
account of Lot being taken prisoner in a battle between the four kings against
five, and carried off; and that when the account of Lot being taken came to
Abraham, that he armed all his household and marched to rescue Lot from the
captors; and that he pursued them unto Dan. (ver. 14.)

To shew in what manner this expression of Pursuing them unto Dan applies to the
case in question, I will refer to two circumstances, the one in America, the
other in France. The city now called New York, in America, was originally New
Amsterdam; and the town in France, lately called Havre Marat, was before called
Havre-de-Grace. New Amsterdam was changed to New York in the year 1664;
Havre-de-Grace to Havre Marat in the year 1793. Should, therefore, any writing
be found, though without date, in which the name of New-York should be
mentioned, it would be certain evidence that such a writing could not have been
written before, and must have been written after New Amsterdam was changed to
New York, and consequently not till after the year 1664, or at least during the
course of that year. And in like manner, any dateless writing, with the name of
Havre Marat, would be certain evidence that such a writing must have been
written after Havre-de-Grace became Havre Marat, and consequently not till
after the year 1793, or at least during the course of that year.

I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that there was no
such place as Dan till many years after the death of Moses; and consequently,
that Moses could not be the writer of the book of Genesis, where this account
of pursuing them unto Dan is given.

The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town of the
Gentiles, called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon this town, they
changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan, who was the father of that
tribe, and the great grandson of Abraham.

To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis to chapter
xviii. of the book called the Book of judges. It is there said (ver. 27) that
“they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that were quiet and
secure, and they smote them with the edge of the sword [the Bible is filled
with murder] and burned the city with fire; and they built a city, (ver. 28,)
and dwelt therein, and [ver. 29,] they called the name of the city Dan, after
the name of Dan, their father; howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the
first.”

This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and changing it to Dan,
is placed in the book of Judges immediately after the death of Samson. The
death of Samson is said to have happened B.C. 1120 and that of Moses B.C. 1451;
and, therefore, according to the historical arrangement, the place was not
called Dan till 331 years after the death of Moses.

There is a striking confusion between the historical and the chronological
arrangement in the book of judges. The last five chapters, as they stand in the
book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologically before all the preceding
chapters; they are made to be 28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the
15th, 245 before the 13th, 195 before the 9th, 90 before the 4th, and 15 years
before the 1st chapter. This shews the uncertain and fabulous state of the
Bible. According to the chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish, and
giving it the name of Dan, is made to be twenty years after the death of
Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and by the historical order, as it
stands in the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death of Joshua, and
331 after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses from being the writer of
Genesis, because, according to either of the statements, no such a place as Dan
existed in the time of Moses; and therefore the writer of Genesis must have
been some person who lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan; and who
that person was nobody knows, and consequently the book of Genesis is
anonymous, and without authority.

I come now to state another point of historical and chronological evidence, and
to show therefrom, as in the preceding case, that Moses is not the author of
the book of Genesis.

In Genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and descendants of
Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a list by name of the kings of Edom; in
enumerating of which, it is said, verse 31, “And these are the kings that
reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of
Israel.”

Now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking of any past
events, the writer should say, these things happened before there was any
Congress in America, or before there was any Convention in France, it would be
evidence that such writing could not have been written before, and could only
be written after there was a Congress in America or a Convention in France, as
the case might be; and, consequently, that it could not be written by any
person who died before there was a Congress in the one country, or a Convention
in the other.

Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation, than to refer
to a fact in the room of a date: it is most natural so to do, because a fact
fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly, because the fact
includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at once; and this manner of
speaking by circumstances implies as positively that the fact alluded to is
past, as if it was so expressed. When a person in speaking upon any matter,
says, it was before I was married, or before my son was born, or before I went
to America, or before I went to France, it is absolutely understood, and
intended to be understood, that he has been married, that he has had a son,
that he has been in America, or been in France. Language does not admit of
using this mode of expression in any other sense; and whenever such an
expression is found anywhere, it can only be understood in the sense in which
only it could have been used.

The passage, therefore, that I have quoted—that “these are the
kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of
Israel,” could only have been written after the first king began to reign
over them; and consequently that the book of Genesis, so far from having been
written by Moses, could not have been written till the time of Saul at least.
This is the positive sense of the passage; but the expression, any king,
implies more kings than one, at least it implies two, and this will carry it to
the time of David; and, if taken in a general sense, it carries itself through
all times of the Jewish monarchy.

Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed to have been
written after kings began to reign in Israel, it would have been impossible not
to have seen the application of it. It happens then that this is the case; the
two books of Chronicles, which give a history of all the kings of Israel, are
professedly, as well as in fact, written after the Jewish monarchy began; and
this verse that I have quoted, and all the remaining verses of Genesis xxxvi.
are, word for word, In 1 Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.

It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could say as he has
said, 1 Chron. i. 43, “These are the kings that reigned in Edom, before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel,” because he was going
to give, and has given, a list of the kings that had reigned in Israel; but as
it is impossible that the same expression could have been used before that
period, it is as certain as any thing can be proved from historical language,
that this part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so
old as Chronicles, and probably not so old as the book of Homer, or as
Æsop’s Fables; admitting Homer to have been, as the tables of chronology
state, contemporary with David or Solomon, and Æsop to have lived about the end
of the Jewish monarchy.

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the
strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing
of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or
invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent,
and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the
merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine
hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the
Mythology.

Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid
that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first
began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and
under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities
that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only
one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering
excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): “And
Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went
forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of
the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which
came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, ‘Have ye saved all the
women alive?’ behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the
counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor,
and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore,
‘kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath
known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a
man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.’”

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced
the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account
be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and
debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child
murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an
executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters,
destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be
their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature
will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a
false religion.

After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken, and the
manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneings of priestly
hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, “And the
Lord’s tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen;
and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord’s tribute
was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which the
Lord’s tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen
thousand, of which the Lord’s tribute was thirty and two.” In
short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of
the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear; for it
appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number of women-children
consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand.

People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of
God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the
Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it,
and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the
book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good
heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and
blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of
man to the orders of the Almighty!

But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the author of
the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious. The two instances I
have already given would be sufficient, without any additional evidence, to
invalidate the authenticity of any book that pretended to be four or five
hundred years more ancient than the matters it speaks of, refers to, them as
facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned
over the children of Israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be
pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright
idiotism to say that a man could prophecy in the preter tense.

But there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that unite
in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus, (another of the books
ascribed to Moses,) xvi. 35: “And the children of Israel did eat manna
until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto
the borders of the land of Canaan.”

Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or whether
it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom, or other
vegetable substance common to that part of the country, makes no part of my
argument; all that I mean to show is, that it is not Moses that could write
this account, because the account extends itself beyond the life time of Moses.
Moses, according to the Bible, (but it is such a book of lies and
contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or whether any) died
in the wilderness, and never came upon the borders of ‘the land of
Canaan; and consequently, it could not be he that said what the children of
Israel did, or what they ate when they came there. This account of eating
manna, which they tell us was written by Moses, extends itself to the time of
Joshua, the successor of Moses, as appears by the account given in the book of
Joshua, after the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came into
the borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 12: “And the manna ceased
on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had
the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the fruit of the
land of Canaan that year.”

But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy; which, while it
shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book, shows also the fabulous
notions that prevailed at that time about giants’ In Deuteronomy iii. 11,
among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of
Og, king of Bashan: “For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the race of
giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of
the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the
breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.” A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000
inches; the length therefore of the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7
feet 4 inches: thus much for this giant’s bed. Now for the historical
part, which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former
cases, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating evidence, and is
better than the best evidence on the contrary side.

The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to his bed,
as an ancient relick, and says, is it not in Rabbath (or Rabbah) of the
children of Ammon? meaning that it is; for such is frequently the bible method
of affirming a thing. But it could not be Moses that said this, because Moses
could know nothing about Rabbah, nor of what was in it. Rabbah was not a city
belonging to this giant king, nor was it one of the cities that Moses took. The
knowledge therefore that this bed was at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its
dimensions, must be referred to the time when Rabbah was taken, and this was
not till four hundred years after the death of Moses; for which, see 2 Sam.
xii. 26: “And Joab [David’s general] fought against Rabbah of the
children of Ammon, and took the royal city,” etc.

As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time, place, and
circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and which prove to
demonstration that those books could not be written by Moses, nor in the time
of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and to shew that Joshua is not the
author of that book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The
evidence I shall produce is contained in the book itself: I will not go out of
the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False
testimony is always good against itself.

Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of Moses; he was,
moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and he continued as chief of the
people of Israel twenty-five years; that is, from the time that Moses died,
which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1451, until B.C. 1426, when,
according to the same chronology, Joshua died. If, therefore, we find in this
book, said to have been written by Joshua, references to facts done after the
death of Joshua, it is evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also
that the book could not have been written till after the time of the latest
fact which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is a
military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those recorded
of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the blasphemy
consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to the orders of the
Almighty.

In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding books,
is written in the third person; it is the historian of Joshua that speaks, for
it would have been absurd and vainglorious that Joshua should say of himself,
as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth chapter, that “his fame
was noised throughout all the country.”—I now come more immediately
to the proof.

In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said “And Israel served the Lord all the days
of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua.” Now,
in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people had done
after he was dead? This account must not only have been written by some
historian that lived after Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that
out-lived Joshua.

There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time, scattered
throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in which the book was
written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but without marking by exclusion
any particular time, as in the passage above quoted. In that passage, the time
that intervened between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders is
excluded descriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the
book could not have been written till after the death of the last.

But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to quote, do
not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a time far more
distant from the days of Joshua than is contained between the death of Joshua
and the death of the elders. Such is the passage, x. 14, where, after giving an
account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of
Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale only fit to amuse children) [NOTE:
This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the
valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a
circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world.
One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did
not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a
nation in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand
still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and that too
whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the whole is well enough; it is
akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, The stars in their courses
fought against Sisera; but it is inferior to the figurative declaration of
Mahomet to the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings on, Wert
thou, said he, to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy
left, it should not alter my career. For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet, he
should have put the sun and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them as Guy
Faux carried his dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as he might happen
to want them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that
it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the
ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again; the
account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shews the ignorance of
Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have stood
still.—Author.] the passage says: “And there was no day like that,
before it, nor after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man.”

The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day, being put
in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must, in order to give
any expressive signification to the passage, mean a great length of
time:—for example, it would have been ridiculous to have said so the next
day, or the next week, or the next month, or the next year; to give therefore
meaning to the passage, comparative with the wonder it relates, and the prior
time it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less however than one
would be trifling, and less than two would be barely admissible.

A distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where, after
giving an account of the taking the city of Ai, it is said, ver. 28th,
“And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation unto
this day;” and again, ver. 29, where speaking of the king of Ai, whom
Joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of the gate, it is said,
“And he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth unto this
day,” that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of the book of
Joshua lived. And again, in chapter x. where, after speaking of the five kings
whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave, it is said,
“And he laid great stones on the cave’s mouth, which remain unto
this very day.”

In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the tribes, and of the
places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, xv. 63, “As for the
Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive
them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah AT JERUSALEM unto
this day.” The question upon this passage is, At what time did the
Jebusites and the children of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem? As this matter
occurs again in judges i. I shall reserve my observations till I come to that
part.

Having thus shewn from the book of Joshua itself, without any auxiliary
evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is
anonymous, and consequently without authority, I proceed, as before-mentioned,
to the book of Judges.

The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore, even the
pretence is wanting to call it the word of God; it has not so much as a nominal
voucher; it is altogether fatherless.

This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua. That of Joshua
begins, chap i. 1, Now after the death of Moses, etc., and this of the Judges
begins, Now after the death of Joshua, etc. This, and the similarity of stile
between the two books, indicate that they are the work of the same author; but
who he was, is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves is that
the author lived long after the time of Joshua; for though it begins as if it
followed immediately after his death, the second chapter is an epitome or
abstract of the whole book, which, according to the Bible chronology, extends
its history through a space of 306 years; that is, from the death of Joshua,
B.C. 1426 to the death of Samson, B.C. 1120, and only 25 years before Saul went
to seek his father’s asses, and was made king. But there is good reason
to believe, that it was not written till the time of David, at least, and that
the book of Joshua was not written before the same time.

In Judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of Joshua, proceeds to
tell what happened between the children of Judah and the native inhabitants of
the land of Canaan. In this statement the writer, having abruptly mentioned
Jerusalem in the 7th verse, says immediately after, in the 8th verse, by way of
explanation, “Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and
taken it;” consequently this book could not have been written before
Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will recollect the quotation I have just
before made from Joshua xv. 63, where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the
children of Judah at Jerusalem at this day; meaning the time when the book of
Joshua was written.

The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I have hitherto
treated of were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed, nor till
many years after their death, if such persons ever lived, is already so
abundant, that I can afford to admit this passage with less weight than I am
entitled to draw from it. For the case is, that so far as the Bible can be
credited as an history, the city of Jerusalem was not taken till the time of
David; and consequently, that the book of Joshua, and of Judges, were not
written till after the commencement of the reign of David, which was 370 years
after the death of Joshua.

The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was originally Jebus,
or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The account of David’s
taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1 Chron. xiv. 4,
etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it was ever taken
before, nor any account that favours such an opinion. It is not said, either in
Samuel or in Chronicles, that they “utterly destroyed men, women and
children, that they left not a soul to breathe,” as is said of their
other conquests; and the silence here observed implies that it was taken by
capitulation; and that the Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live
in the place after it was taken. The account therefore, given in Joshua, that
“the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah” at Jerusalem at
this day, corresponds to no other time than after taking the city by David.

Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges, is
without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling story,
foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country-girl creeping
slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of Ruth does not imply the
unpleasant sense Paine’s words are likely to convey.—Editor.]
Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It is, however, one of the
best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine.

I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to shew that those books were not
written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after the death of Samuel;
and that they are, like all the former books, anonymous, and without authority.

To be convinced that these books have been written much later than the time of
Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only necessary to read the account
which the writer gives of Saul going to seek his father’s asses, and of
his interview with Samuel, of whom Saul went to enquire about those lost asses,
as foolish people now-a-days go to a conjuror to enquire after lost things.

The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, does not
tell it as a thing that had just then happened, but as an ancient story in the
time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or terms used at the
time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to explain the story in the
terms or language used in the time the writer lived.

Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap. ix. 13
called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after him, ver. 11,
“And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to the city, they
found young maidens going out to draw water; and they said unto them, Is the
seer here?” Saul then went according to the direction of these maidens,
and met Samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver. 18, “Tell me,
I pray thee, where the seer’s house is? and Samuel answered Saul, and
said, I am the seer.”

As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and answers, in the
language or manner of speaking used in the time they are said to have been
spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use when this author wrote,
he found it necessary, in order to make the story understood, to explain the
terms in which these questions and answers are spoken; and he does this in the
9th verse, where he says, “Before-time in Israel, when a man went to
enquire of God, thus he spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now
called a prophet, was before-time called a seer.” This proves, as I have
before said, that this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient
story at the time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that Samuel
did not write it, and that the book is without authenticity.

But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more positive that
Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things that did not happen
till several years after the death of Samuel. Samuel died before Saul; for i
Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up
after he was dead; yet the history of matters contained in those books is
extended through the remaining part of Saul’s life, and to the latter end
of the life of David, who succeeded Saul. The account of the death and burial
of Samuel (a thing which he could not write himself) is related in i Samuel
xxv.; and the chronology affixed to this chapter makes this to be B.C. 1060;
yet the history of this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to
the death of Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel.

The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not happen
till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins with the reign of David,
who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of David’s reign, which was
forty-three years after the death of Samuel; and, therefore, the books are in
themselves positive evidence that they were not written by Samuel.

I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible, to which
the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of those books, and
which the church, styling itself the Christian church, have imposed upon the
world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and I have detected and
proved the falsehood of this imposition.—And now ye priests, of every
description, who have preached and written against the former part of the
‘Age of Reason,’ what have ye to say? Will ye with all this mass of
evidence against you, and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to
march into your pulpits, and continue to impose these books on your
congregations, as the works of inspired penmen and the word of God? when it is
as evident as demonstration can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say
are the authors, are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are.
What shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous
fraud? What have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of
deism, in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended
revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders, with which the Bible is filled,
and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in
consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend, whose memory you
revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of
the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are
sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your
Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with
callous indifference. The evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in
the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will,
whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the
minds of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the
Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds, and
which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice
and benevolence.

I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of
Chronicles.—Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly
confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general were a
parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no more concern
than we have with the Roman emperors, or Homer’s account of the Trojan
war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we know nothing of the
writer, or of his character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of
credit to give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient
histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of probable and
of improbable things, but which distance of time and place, and change of
circumstances in the world, have rendered obsolete and uninteresting.

The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing them with
each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show the confusion,
contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God.

The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which, according to
the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the second book ends B.C. 588, being a
little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem
and conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books include a
space of 427 years.

The two books of Chronicles are an history of the same times, and in general of
the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd to suppose that the
same author wrote the history twice over. The first book of Chronicles (after
giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters)
begins with the reign of David; and the last book ends, as in the last book of
Kings, soon, after the reign of Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last two verses
of the last chapter bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536.
But these verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to
speak of the book of Ezra.

The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and Solomon, who
reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of seventeen kings,
and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and of nineteen, who are stiled
kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immediately on the death of Solomon,
split into two parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most
rancorous wars against each other.

These two books are little more than a history of assassinations, treachery,
and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed themselves to practise on
the Canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded, under a pretended gift
from God, they afterwards practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half
their kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families were
destroyed to secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and
sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In 2 Kings x., an
account is given of two baskets full of children’s heads, seventy in
number, being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the children of
Ahab, and were murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom Elisha, the pretended man
of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on purpose to commit this bloody
deed, and assassinate his predecessor. And in the account of the reign of
Menahem, one of the kings of Israel who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned
but one month, it is said, 2 Kings xv. 16, that Menahem smote the city of
Tiphsah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women therein
that were with child he ripped up.

Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish any
nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we must suppose that people
to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and
humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews
were,—a people who, corrupted by and copying after such monsters and
imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David, had distinguished
themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and
wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is
impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition
imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is
no other than a LIE which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to
cover the baseness of their own characters; and which Christian priests
sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe.

The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but the
history is broken in several places, by the author leaving out the reign of
some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of Kings, there is such a
frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel, and from kings of
Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative is obscure in the reading. In the
same book the history sometimes contradicts itself: for example, in 2 Kings, i.
17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of
Ahaziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab),
reigned in his stead in the second Year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same book, it is said,
“And in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel,
Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat king of
judah, began to reign.” That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began to
reign in the second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that
Joram of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.

Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as having
happened during the reign of such or such of their kings, are not to be found
in the other, in relating the reign of the same king: for example, the two
first rival kings, after the death of Solomon, were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and
in i Kings xii. and xiii. an account is given of Jeroboam making an offering of
burnt incense, and that a man, who is there called a man of God, cried out
against the altar (xiii. 2): “O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord:
Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon
thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee,
and men’s bones shall be burned upon thee.” Verse 4: “And it
came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had
cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar,
saying, Lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up so
that he could not pull it again to him.”

One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is spoken of as
a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the parties, and that at the
first moment of the separation of the Israelites into two nations, would, if
it,. had been true, have been recorded in both histories. But though men, in
later times, have believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does
appear that those prophets, or historians, disbelieved each other: they knew
each other too well.

A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through several
chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, “And it came to
pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked, that, behold,
there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and parted them both
asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” Hum! this the
author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of, though
he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the story related
in the second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of children
calling Elisha bald head; and that this man of God (ver. 24) “turned
back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and there
came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of
them.” He also passes over in silence the story told, 2 Kings xiii., that
when they were burying a man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it
happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21)
“touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood up
on his feet.” The story does not tell us whether they buried the man,
notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. Upon
all these stories the writer of the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of
the present day, who did not chose to be accused of lying, or at least of
romancing, would be about stories of the same kind.

But, however these two historians may differ from each other with respect to
the tales related by either, they are silent alike with respect to those men
styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter part of the Bible. Isaiah,
who lived in the time of Hezekiab, is mentioned in Kings, and again in
Chronicles, when these histories are speaking of that reign; but except in one
or two instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are so much
as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at; though, according to the Bible
chronology, they lived within the time those histories were written; and some
of them long before. If those prophets, as they are called, were men of such
importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and priests and
commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be accounted for
that not one of those histories should say anything about them?

The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought forward, as I
have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be proper to
examine which of these prophets lived before that period.

Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they lived
before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to the first chapter of each
of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of years they lived before
the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:

Haggai Zechariah all three after the year 588 Medachi [NOTE In 2 Kings xiv. 25,
the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land
by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to
the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter with
the whale.—Author.]

This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or not very
honourable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests and commentators, who
are very learned in little things, to settle the point of etiquette between the
two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of Kings and of Chronicles have
treated those prophets, whom, in the former part of the ‘Age of
Reason,’ I have considered as poets, with as much degrading silence as
any historian of the present day would treat Peter Pindar.

I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after which I
shall pass on to review the remaining books of the Bible.

In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage from xxxvi.
31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to reign over the
children of Israel; and I have shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as
in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands consistently with the order of history,
which in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of
the 36th chapter, have been taken from Chronicles; and that the book of
Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has
been manufactured by some unknown person, after the book of Chronicles was
written, which was not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the
time of Moses.

The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in it but
two stages. First, as I have already stated, that the passage in Genesis refers
itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book of Chronicles, to which
this passage refers itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight
hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses. To prove this, we have only to
look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15, where the writer, in giving the genealogy of
the descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah
that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than
860 years after Moses. Those who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity
of the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it
without examination, and without any other authority than that of one credulous
man telling it to another: for, so far as historical and chronological evidence
applies, the very first book in the Bible is not so ancient as the book of
Homer, by more than three hundred years, and is about the same age with
Æsop’s Fables.

I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think it a
book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous notions of
honour; and with respect to Æsop, though the moral is in general just, the
fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the
heart, especially in a child, than the moral does good to the judgment.

Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in course, the
book of Ezra.

As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the disorder in which this
pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together, and the uncertainty of
who the authors were, we have only to look at the first three verses in Ezra,
and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has
it been that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses in 2
Chronicles, or that the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the first three in
Ezra? Either the authors did not know their own works or the compilers did not
know the authors.

Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles.

Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word of the
Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished, the Lord stirred
up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout
all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying.

earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him
an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his
people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. ***

First Three Verses of Ezra.

Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the
Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the
spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his
kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying.

2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all
the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at
Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him
go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of
Israel (he is the God) which is in Jerusalem.

*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the middle of
the phrase with the word ‘up’ without signifying to what place.
This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in different books,
show as I have already said, the disorder and ignorance in which the Bible has
been put together, and that the compilers of it had no authority for what they
were doing, nor we any authority for believing what they have done. [NOTE I
observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the
Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body
of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1, where it is said, “Saul
reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him
three thousand men,” &c. The first part of the verse, that Saul
reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say
any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides,
mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he
had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to have
reigned one.

Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us a story of an
angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter calls him)
appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without any conclusion.
The story is as follows:—Ver. 13. “And it came to pass, when Joshua
was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a
man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him
and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” Verse 14,
“And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.
And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him,
What saith my Lord unto his servant?” Verse 15, “And the captain of
the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for
the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so.”—And
what then? nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too.

Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by some
Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua’s pretended mission from God, and
the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of the story, have told
it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and ridicule it has a great deal
of point; for it pompously introduces an angel in the figure of a man, with a
drawn sword in his hand, before whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth, and
worships (which is contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most
important embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It
might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.

It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit every thing their leaders
told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which they speak of Moses,
when he was gone into the mount. As for this Moses, say they, we wot not what
is become of him. Exod. xxxii. 1.—Author.

The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of Ezra is the
time in which it was written, which was immediately after the return of the
Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about B.C. 536. Ezra (who, according to the
Jewish commentators, is the same person as is called Esdras in the Apocrypha)
was one of the persons who returned, and who, it is probable, wrote the account
of that affair. Nebemiah, whose book follows next to Ezra, was another of the
returned persons; and who, it is also probable, wrote the account of the same
affair, in the book that bears his name. But those accounts are nothing to us,
nor to any other person, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the history of
their nation; and there is just as much of the word of God in those books as
there is in any of the histories of France, or Rapin’s history of
England, or the history of any other country.

But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers are to be
depended upon. In Ezra ii., the writer gives a list of the tribes and families,
and of the precise number of souls of each, that returned from Babylon to
Jerusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so returned appears to have been
one of the principal objects for writing the book; but in this there is an
error that destroys the intention of the undertaking.

The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii. 3): “The
children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four.” Ver. 4,
“The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two.” And in
this manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the 64th verse, he
makes a total, and says, the whole congregation together was forty and two
thousand three hundred and threescore.

But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several particulars, will
find that the total is but 29,818; so that the error is 12,542. What certainty
then can there be in the Bible for any thing?

[Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the Bible of all the
children listed and the total thereof. This can be had directly from the
Bible.]

Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families, and of the
number of each family. He begins as in Ezra, by saying (vii. 8): “The
children of Parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two;” and so
on through all the families. (The list differs in several of the particulars
from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66, Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had
said, “The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three
hundred and threescore.” But the particulars of this list make a total
but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These writers may do well
enough for Bible-makers, but not for any thing where truth and exactness is
necessary.

The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther thought it any
honour to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus, or as a rival to Queen
Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken king in the midst of a drunken
company, to be made a show of, (for the account says, they had been drinking
seven days, and were merry,) let Esther and Mordecai look to that, it is no
business of ours, at least it is none of mine; besides which, the story has a
great deal the appearance of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on
to the book of Job.

The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have hitherto passed
over. Treachery and murder make no part of this book; it is the meditations of
a mind strongly impressed with the vicissitudes of human life, and by turns
sinking under, and struggling against the pressure. It is a highly wrought
composition, between willing submission and involuntary discontent; and shows
man, as he sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of
being. Patience has but a small share in the character of the person of whom
the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he still
endeavours to keep a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of
accumulating ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment.

I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the former part of
the ‘Age of Reason,’ but without knowing at that time what I have
learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be collected, the
book of Job does not belong to the Bible.

I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and Spinoza, upon
this subject; they both say that the book of Job carries no internal evidence
of being an Hebrew book; that the genius of the composition, and the drama of
the piece, are not Hebrew; that it has been translated from another language
into Hebrew, and that the author of the book was a Gentile; that the character
represented under the name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name
is mentioned in the Bible) [In a later work Paine notes that in “the
Bible” (by which he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan
occurs also in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to
Satan is in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah (“Essay on
Dreams”). In these places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means
“adversary,” and is so translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22,
and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25. As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in
the Old Testament only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of
the passage in Zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the
proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some opinion met with in
one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his
paragraph.—Editor.] does not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and that the
two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made of those whom the
poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this supposed Satan is stated
to have with the Deity, are in the same case.

It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the production of a
mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far from being famous for, were
very ignorant of. The allusions to objects of natural philosophy are frequent
and strong, and are of a different cast to any thing in the books known to be
Hebrew. The astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and
not Hebrew names, and it does not appear from any thing that is to be found in
the Bible that the Jews knew any thing of astronomy, or that they studied it,
they had no translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the
names as they found them in the poem. [Paine’s Jewish critic, David Levi,
fastened on this slip (“Defence of the Old Testament,” 1797, p.
152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil’ (Orion),
Kimah’ (Pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in
the A.S.V. have been questioned.—Editor.]

That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gentile nations
into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own, is not a matter of
doubt; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there said, The word of
king Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him. This verse stands as a
preface to the proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of Solomon,
but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not one of the kings of Israel, nor of
Judah, but of some other country, and consequently a Gentile. The Jews however
have adopted his proverbs; and as they cannot give any account who the author
of the book of Job was, nor how they came by the book, and as it differs in
character from the Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every
other book and chapter in the Bible before it and after it, it has all the
circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the Gentiles. [The prayer
known by the name of Agur’s Prayer, in Proverbs xxx.,—immediately
preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,—and which is the only sensible,
well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance
of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other
occasion than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to
him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his
proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse says,
“The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:” here the
word prophecy is used with the same application it has in the following chapter
of Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is in
the 8th and 9th verses, “Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me
neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be
full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and
take the name of my God in vain.” This has not any of the marks of being
a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when they were in trouble, and
never for anything but victory, vengeance, or riches.—Author. (Prov. xxx.
1, and xxxi. 1) the word “prophecy” in these verses is translated
“oracle” or “burden” (marg.) in the revised
version.—The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the
officers of Excise, 1772.—Editor.]

The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible chronologists, appear
to have been at a loss where to place and how to dispose of the book of Job;
for it contains no one historical circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might
serve to determine its place in the Bible. But it would not have answered the
purpose of these men to have informed the world of their ignorance; and,
therefore, they have affixed it to the aera of B.C. 1520, which is during the
time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they have just as much
authority and no more than I should have for saying it was a thousand years
before that period. The probability however is, that it is older than any book
in the Bible; and it is the only one that can be read without indignation or
disgust.

We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called) was before
the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to calumniate and blacken the
character of all other nations; and it is from the Jewish accounts that we have
learned to call them heathens. But, as far as we know to the contrary, they
were a just and moral people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and
revenge, but of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to
have been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images,
as is done now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow
from this that they worshipped them any more than we do.—I pass on to the
book of,

Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation. Some of them are
moral, and others are very revengeful; and the greater part relates to certain
local circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time they were written, with
which we have nothing to do. It is, however, an error or an imposition to call
them the Psalms of David; they are a collection, as song-books are now-a-days,
from different song-writers, who lived at different times. The 137th Psalm
could not have been written till more than 400 years after the time of David,
because it is written in commemoration of an event, the captivity of the Jews
in Babylon, which did not happen till that distance of time. “By the
rivers of Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged
our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they that carried
us away captive required of us a song, saying, sing us one of the songs of
Zion.” As a man would say to an American, or to a Frenchman, or to an
Englishman, sing us one of your American songs, or your French songs, or your
English songs. This remark, with respect to the time this psalm was written, is
of no other use than to show (among others already mentioned) the general
imposition the world has been under with respect to the authors of the Bible.
No regard has been paid to time, place, and circumstance; and the names of
persons have been affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they
should write, as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.

The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection, and that from
authors belonging to other nations than those of the Jewish nation, as I have
shewn in the observations upon the book of Job; besides which, some of the
Proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not appear till two hundred and fifty years
after the death of Solomon; for it is said in xxv. i, “These are also
proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied
out.” It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of Solomon to the
time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name is abroad he is made the
putative father of things he never said or did; and this, most probably, has
been the case with Solomon. It appears to have been the fashion of that day to
make proverbs, as it is now to make jest-books, and father them upon those who
never saw them. [A “Tom Paine’s Jest Book” had appeared in
London with little or nothing of Paine in it.—Editor.]

The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon, and
that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as the solitary
reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who looking back on
scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity! A great deal of the
metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most probably by translation; but
enough is left to show they were strongly pointed in the original. [Those that
look out of the window shall be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation
for loss of sight.—Author.] From what is transmitted to us of the
character of Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last
melancholy. He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of
fifty-eight years.

Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none; and,
however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened enjoyment, it defeats
all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no point to fix upon; divided love
is never happy. This was the case with Solomon; and if he could not, with all
his pretensions to wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the
mortification he afterwards endured. In this point of view, his preaching is
unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to know
the cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have stood
in place of the whole book. It was needless after this to say that all was
vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from
the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.

To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects
that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest
as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the
mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy,
mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil
pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition,
the study of those things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to
know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the
creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young;
his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was always his
mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease to have an object
we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for death.

Solomon’s Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled
fanaticism has called divine.—The compilers of the Bible have placed
these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have affixed
to them the aera of B.C. 1014, at which time Solomon, according to the same
chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of
wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and the chronologists should have
managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about the
time, or chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those
songs; for Solomon was then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries.

It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did write, the
book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which he exclaims that all
is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included those songs in that
description. This is the more probable, because he says, or somebody for him,
Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me men-singers, and women-singers [most probably to
sing those songs], and musical instruments of all sorts; and behold (Ver. ii),
“all was vanity and vexation of spirit.” The compilers however have
done their work but by halves; for as they have given us the songs they should
have given us the tunes, that we might sing them.

The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining part of
the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and ending with
Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations upon Chronicles. Of
these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the last three lived within the time
the books of Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah,
are mentioned in the history of those books. I shall begin with those two,
reserving, what I have to say on the general character of the men called
prophets to another part of the work.

Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah, will find
it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has
neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a
few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued
incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without
application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been
excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of
composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad.

The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the end of
chapter xxxix. It relates some matters that are said to have passed during the
reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time Isaiah lived. This fragment of
history begins and ends abruptly; it has not the least connection with the
chapter that precedes it, nor with that which follows it, nor with any other in
the book. It is probable that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he
was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but except this part there are
scarcely two chapters that have any connection with each other. One is
entitled, at the beginning of the first verse, the burden of Babylon; another,
the burden of Moab; another, the burden of Damascus; another, the burden of
Egypt; another, the burden of the Desert of the Sea; another, the burden of the
Valley of Vision: as you would say the story of the Knight of the Burning
Mountain, the story of Cinderella, or the glassen slipper, the story of the
Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, etc., etc.

I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2 Chronicles,
and the first three in Ezra, that the compilers of the Bible mixed and
confounded the writings of different authors with each other; which alone, were
there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy the authenticity of an
compilation, because it is more than presumptive evidence that the compilers
are ignorant who the authors were. A very glaring instance of this occurs in
the book ascribed to Isaiah: the latter part of the 44th chapter, and the
beginning of the 45th, so far from having been written by Isaiah, could only
have been written by some person who lived at least an hundred and fifty years
after Isaiah was dead.

These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to return to
Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple,
as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of
the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following words: “That saith of Cyrus, he is
my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou
shalt be built; and to the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the
Lord to his enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue
nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the
two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before
thee,” etc.

What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book upon
the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their own
chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was B.C. 698; and the
decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according
to the same chronology, B.C. 536; which is a distance of time between the two
of 162 years. I do not suppose that the compilers of the Bible made these
books, but rather that they picked up some loose, anonymous essays, and put
them together under the names of such authors as best suited their purpose.
They have encouraged the imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was
impossible but they must have observed it.

When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making every part of
this romantic book of school-boy’s eloquence bend to the monstrous idea
of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin, there is no
imposition we are not justified in suspecting them of. Every phrase and
circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and
forced into meanings it was impossible they could have. The head of every
chapter, and the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and
the Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to
read.

Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has been
interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary, and
has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years; and such
has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot in it but has been
stained with blood and marked with desolation in consequence of it. Though it
is not my intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but to
confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious,—and thus, by taking
away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition
raised thereon,—I will however stop a moment to expose the fallacious
application of this passage.

Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom this
passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show the
misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to Christ and
his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story is simply this:

The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned that the
Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called Judah, the capital of
which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made war jointly against Ahaz, king
of Judah, and marched their armies towards Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people
became alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2), Their hearts were moved as
the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and assures him
in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these two
kings should not succeed against him; and to satisfy Ahaz that this should be
the case, tells him to ask a sign. This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing;
giving as a reason that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is
the speaker, says, ver. 14, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a
sign; behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;” and the 16th verse
says, “And before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose
the good, the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning Syria and the
kingdom of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings.” Here then was
the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise;
namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good.

Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him, in order
to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the consequences thereof,
to take measures to make this sign appear. It certainly was not a difficult
thing, in any time of the world, to find a girl with child, or to make her so;
and perhaps Isaiah knew of one beforehand; for I do not suppose that the
prophets of that day were any more to be trusted than the priests of this: be
that, however, as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, “And I
took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the
son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare
a son.”

Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin;
and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the book of Matthew,
and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in later times, have founded a
theory, which they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the
person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call
holy, on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom
they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a
theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as
fabulous and as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, it is said that the
child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to either of the
children, otherwise than as a character, which the word signifies. That of the
prophetess was called Maher-shalalhash-baz, and that of Mary was called
Jesus.—Author.]

But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to attend to
the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in silence in the
book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii; and which is, that instead
of these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as
Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz
was defeated and destroyed; an hundred and twenty thousand of his people were
slaughtered; Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons
and daughters carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and
imposter Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. I pass on to
the book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called, lived in the time that
Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah, the last king of
Judah; and the suspicion was strong against him that he was a traitor in the
interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating to Jeremiah shows him to have
been a man of an equivocal character: in his metaphor of the potter and the
clay, (ch. xviii.) he guards his prognostications in such a crafty manner as
always to leave himself a door to escape by, in case the event should be
contrary to what he had predicted. In the 7th and 8th verses he makes the
Almighty to say, “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and
concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it, if that
nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent me
of the evil that I thought to do unto them.” Here was a proviso against
one side of the case: now for the other side. Verses 9 and 10, “At what
instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build
and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I
will repent me of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Here
is a proviso against the other side; and, according to this plan of
prophesying, a prophet could never be wrong, however mistaken the Almighty
might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking of the
Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the
stupidity of the Bible.

As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it in order to
decide positively that, though some passages recorded therein may have been
spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the author of the book. The historical parts, if
they can be called by that name, are in the most confused condition; the same
events are several times repeated, and that in a manner different, and
sometimes in contradiction to each other; and this disorder runs even to the
last chapter, where the history, upon which the greater part of the book has
been employed, begins anew, and ends abruptly. The book has all the appearance
of being a medley of unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things of
that time, collected together in the same rude manner as if the various and
contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers,
respecting persons and things of the present day, were put together without
date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three examples of this kind.

It appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army of
Nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had besieged
Jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of Pharaoh of Egypt was
marching against them, they raised the siege and retreated for a time. It may
here be proper to mention, in order to understand this confused history, that
Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jerusalem during the reign of Jehoakim,
the redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had make
Zedekiah king, or rather viceroy; and that this second siege, of which the book
of Jeremiah treats, was in consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah against
Nebuchadnezzar. This will in some measure account for the suspicion that
affixes itself to Jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of
Nebuchadnezzar,—whom Jeremiah calls, xliii. 10, the servant of God.

Chapter xxxvii. 11-13, says, “And it came to pass, that, when the army of
the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh’s army,
that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem, to go (as this account states) into
the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the midst of the people;
and when he was in the gate of Benjamin a captain of the ward was there, whose
name was Irijah… and he took Jeremiah the prophet, saying, Thou fallest away
to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said, It is false; I fall not away to the
Chaldeans.” Jeremiah being thus stopt and accused, was, after being
examined, committed to prison, on suspicion of being a traitor, where he
remained, as is stated in the last verse of this chapter.

But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of Jeremiah, which
has no connection with this account, but ascribes his imprisonment to another
circumstance, and for which we must go back to chapter xxi. It is there stated,
ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of
Maaseiah the priest, to Jeremiah, to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar,
whose army was then before Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8,
“Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of life, and the
way of death; he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the
famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the
Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a
prey.”

This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the 10th verse
of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this book that we have to pass
over sixteen chapters upon various subjects, in order to come at the
continuation and event of this conference; and this brings us to the first
verse of chapter xxxviii., as I have just mentioned. The chapter opens with
saying, “Then Shaphatiah, the son of Mattan, Gedaliah the son of Pashur,
and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of Malchiah, (here are more
persons mentioned than in chapter xxi.) heard the words that Jeremiah spoke
unto all the people, saying, Thus saith the Lord, He that remaineth in this
city, shall die by the sword, by famine, and by the pestilence; but he that
goeth forth to the Chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey,
and shall live”; [which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say
they to Zedekiah,) “We beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for
thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the
hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them; for this man seeketh
not the welfare of the people, but the hurt:” and at the 6th verse it is
said, “Then they took Jeremiah, and put him into the dungeon of
Malchiah.”

These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one ascribes his
imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city; the other to his
preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his being seized by the guard
at the gate; the other to his being accused before Zedekiah by the conferees.
[I observed two chapters in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.) that contradict each
other with respect to David, and the manner he became acquainted with Saul; as
Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict each other with respect to the cause
of Jeremiah’s imprisonment.

In 1 Samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul, and
that his servants advised him (as a remedy) “to seek out a man who was a
cunning player upon the harp.” And Saul said, ver. 17, “Provide me
now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one of his
servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, that
is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of war, and prudent in
matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him; wherefore Saul sent
messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David, thy son. And (verse 21) David
came to Saul, and stood before him, and he loved him greatly, and he became his
armour-bearer; and when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23)
David took his harp, and played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was
well.”

But the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different to this, of the
manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is ascribed to
David’s encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his father to carry
provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse of this chapter it is
said, “And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine (Goliah)
he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And
Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I cannot tell. And the king said,
Enquire thou whose son the stripling is. And as David returned from the
slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with
the head of the Philistine in his hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art
thou, thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse,
the Betblehemite,” These two accounts belie each other, because each of
them supposes Saul and David not to have known each other before. This book,
the Bible, is too ridiculous for criticism.—Author.]

In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the disordered
state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar
has been the subject of several of the preceding chapters, particularly xxxvii.
and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as if not a word had been said upon the
subject, and as if the reader was still to be informed of every particular
respecting it; for it begins with saying, ver. 1, “In the ninth year of
Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon, and all his army, against Jerusalem, and besieged it,” etc.

But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for though
the story has been told over and over again, this chapter still supposes the
reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying, ver. i,
“Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and he
reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother’s name was Hamutal, the
daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.” (Ver. 4,) “And it came to pass in
the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it,
and built forts against it,” etc.

It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jeremiah, could have
been the writer of this book. The errors are such as could not have been
committed by any person sitting down to compose a work. Were I, or any other
man, to write in such a disordered manner, no body would read what was written,
and every body would suppose that the writer was in a state of insanity. The
only way, therefore, to account for the disorder is, that the book is a medley
of detached unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-maker,
under the name of Jeremiah; because many of them refer to him, and to the
circumstances of the times he lived in.

Of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of Jeremiah, I shall mention two
instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the Bible.

It appears from chapter xxxviii. that when Jeremiah was in prison, Zedekiah
sent for him, and at this interview, which was private, Jeremiah pressed it
strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself to the enemy. “If,” says
he, (ver. 17,) “thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of
Babylon’s princes, then thy soul shall live,” etc. Zedekiah was
apprehensive that what passed at this conference should be known; and he said
to Jeremiah, (ver. 25,) “If the princes [meaning those of Judah] hear
that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto thee,
Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and
we will not put thee to death; and also what the king said unto thee; then thou
shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication before the king that he would
not cause me to return to Jonathan’s house, to die there. Then came all
the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him, and “he told them according to
all the words the king had commanded.” Thus, this man of God, as he is
called, could tell a lie, or very strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it
would answer his purpose; for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make this
supplication, neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he
employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender himself to
Nebuchadnezzar.

In chapter xxxiv. 2-5, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah in these words:
“Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city into the hand of the
king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou shalt not escape out
of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken, and delivered into his hand; and
thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak
with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of
the Lord; O Zedekiah, king, of Judah, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die
by the sword, but thou shalt die in Peace; and with the burnings of thy
fathers, the former kings that were before thee, so shall they burn odours for
thee, and they will lament thee, saying, Ah, Lord! for I have pronounced the
word, saith the Lord.”

Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Babylon, and
speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the burning of
odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had declared the Lord
himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the
case; it is there said, that the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah
before his eyes: then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains,
and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.

What then can we say of these prophets, but that they are impostors and liars?

As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was taken into favour
by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the guard (xxxix,
12), “Take him (said he) and look well to him, and do him no harm; but do
unto him even as he shall say unto thee.” Jeremiah joined himself
afterwards to Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying for him against the
Egyptians, who had marched to the relief of Jerusalem while it was besieged.
Thus much for another of the lying prophets, and the book that bears his name.

I have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed to Isaiah and
Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in the books of Kings and Chronicles,
which the others are not. The remainder of the books ascribed to the men called
prophets I shall not trouble myself much about; but take them collectively into
the observations I shall offer on the character of the men styled prophets.

In the former part of the ‘Age of Reason,’ I have said that the
word prophet was the Bible-word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors of
Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are now called prophecies. I
am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not only because the books called
the prophecies are written in poetical language, but because there is no word
in the Bible, except it be the word prophet, that describes what we mean by a
poet. I have also said, that the word signified a performer upon musical
instruments, of which I have given some instances; such as that of a company of
prophets, prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps,
etc., and that Saul prophesied with them, 1 Sam. x., 5. It appears from this
passage, and from other parts in the book of Samuel, that the word prophet was
confined to signify poetry and music; for the person who was supposed to have a
visionary insight into concealed things, was not a prophet but a seer, [I know
not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds to the word seer in English; but I
observe it is translated into French by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see,
and which means the person who sees, or the seer.—Author.]

[The Hebrew word for Seer, in 1 Samuel ix., transliterated, is chozeh, the
gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13, “the
stargazers.”—Editor.] (i Sam, ix. 9;) and it was not till after the
word seer went out of use (which most probably was when Saul banished those he
called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of seeing, became
incorporated into the word prophet.

According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and prophesying, it
signifies foretelling events to a great distance of time; and it became
necessary to the inventors of the gospel to give it this latitude of meaning,
in order to apply or to stretch what they call the prophecies of the Old
Testament, to the times of the New. But according to the Old Testament, the
prophesying of the seer, and afterwards of the prophet, so far as the meaning
of the word “seer” was incorporated into that of prophet, had
reference only to things of the time then passing, or very closely connected
with it; such as the event of a battle they were going to engage in, or of a
journey, or of any enterprise they were going to undertake, or of any
circumstance then pending, or of any difficulty they were then in; all of which
had immediate reference to themselves (as in the case already mentioned of Ahaz
and Isaiah with respect to the expression, Behold a virgin shall conceive and
bear a son,) and not to any distant future time. It was that kind of
prophesying that corresponds to what we call fortune-telling; such as casting
nativities, predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring
for lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the Christian church, not that of
the Jews, and the ignorance and the superstition of modern, not that of ancient
times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring, dreaming, strolling
gentry, into the rank they have since had.

But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had also a
particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied for or against,
according to the party they were with; as the poetical and political writers of
the present day write in defence of the party they associate with against the
other.

After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and that of Israel,
each party had its prophets, who abused and accused each other of being false
prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc.

The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the prophets of the party
of Israel; and those of the party of Israel against those of Judah. This party
prophesying showed itself immediately on the separation under the first two
rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The prophet that cursed, or prophesied
against the altar that Jeroboam had built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah,
where Rehoboam was king; and he was way-laid on his return home by a prophet of
the party of Israel, who said unto him (i Kings xiii.) “Art thou the man
of God that came from Judah? and he said, I am.” Then the prophet of the
party of Israel said to him “I am a prophet also, as thou art,
[signifying of Judah,] and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord,
saying, Bring him back with thee unto thine house, that he may eat bread and
drink water; but (says the 18th verse) he lied unto him.” The event,
however, according to the story, is, that the prophet of Judah never got back
to Judah; for he was found dead on the road by the contrivance of the prophet
of Israel, who no doubt was called a true prophet by his own party, and the
prophet of Judah a lying prophet.

In 2 Kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that shews, in
several particulars, the character of a prophet. Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and
Joram king of Israel, had for a while ceased their party animosity, and entered
into an alliance; and these two, together with the king of Edom, engaged in a
war against the king of Moab. After uniting and marching their armies, the
story says, they were in great distress for water, upon which Jehoshaphat said,
“Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may enquire of the Lord
by him? and one of the servants of the king of Israel said here is Elisha.
[Elisha was of the party of Judah.] And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah said, The
word of the Lord is with him.” The story then says, that these three
kings went down to Elisha; and when Elisha [who, as I have said, was a
Judahmite prophet] saw the King of Israel, he said unto him, “What have I
to do with thee, get thee to the prophets of thy father and the prophets of thy
mother. Nay but, said the king of Israel, the Lord hath called these three
kings together, to deliver them into the hands of the king of Moab,”
(meaning because of the distress they were in for water;) upon which Elisha
said, “As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, surely, were it
not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not look
towards thee nor see thee.” Here is all the venom and vulgarity of a
party prophet. We are now to see the performance, or manner of prophesying.

Ver. 15. “‘Bring me,’ (said Elisha), ‘a
minstrel’; and it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand
of the Lord came upon him.” Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for
the prophecy: “And Elisha said, [singing most probably to the tune he was
playing], Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches;” which
was just telling them what every countryman could have told them without either
fiddle or farce, that the way to get water was to dig for it.

But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither were
those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I have spoken of, were
famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing. Elisha, whom I have just
mentioned, was a chief in this branch of prophesying; it was he that cursed the
forty-two children in the name of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and
devoured. We are to suppose that those children were of the party of Israel;
but as those who will curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given
to this story of Elisha’s two she-bears as there is to that of the Dragon
of Wantley, of whom it is said:

Poor children three devoured be,
That could not with him grapple;
And at one sup he eat them up,
As a man would eat an apple.

There was another description of men called prophets, that amused themselves
with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day we know not. These, if
they were not quite harmless, were but little mischievous. Of this class are,

EZEKIEL and DANIEL; and the first question upon these books, as upon all the
others, is, Are they genuine? that is, were they written by Ezekiel and Daniel?

Of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, I am more
inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My reasons for this
opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do not contain internal
evidence to prove they were not written by Ezekiel and Daniel, as the books
ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc., prove they were not written by Moses,
Joshua, Samuel, etc.

Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylonish captivity
began; and there is good reason to believe that not any book in the bible was
written before that period; at least it is proveable, from the books
themselves, as I have already shown, that they were not written till after the
commencement of the Jewish monarchy.

Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to Ezekiel and Daniel
are written, agrees with the condition these men were in at the time of writing
them.

Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed or
wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle those books, been
carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly have
improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode of writing,
and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention, as they have done
to no purpose; for they would have found that themselves would be obliged to
write whatever they had to write, respecting their own affairs, or those of
their friends, or of their country, in a concealed manner, as those men have
done.

These two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are filled
with accounts of dreams and visions: and this difference arose from the
situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners of state, in a
foreign country, which obliged them to convey even the most trifling
information to each other, and all their political projects or opinions, in
obscure and metaphorical terms. They pretend to have dreamed dreams, and seen
visions, because it was unsafe for them to speak facts or plain language. We
ought, however, to suppose, that the persons to whom they wrote understood what
they meant, and that it was not intended anybody else should. But these busy
commentators and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what it was
not intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do.

Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon, under the first
captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the second captivity in
the time of Zedekiah. The Jews were then still numerous, and had considerable
force at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose that men in the situation
of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the recovery of their country, and
their own deliverance, it is reasonable to suppose that the accounts of dreams
and visions with which these books are filled, are no other than a disguised
mode of correspondence to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher,
or secret alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and
nonsense; or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of
captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former.

Ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a wheel
within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river Chebar, in the land of his
captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by the cherubims he meant the
temple at Jerusalem, where they had figures of cherubims? and by a wheel within
a wheel (which as a figure has always been understood to signify political
contrivance) the project or means of recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part
of his book he supposes himself transported to Jerusalem, and into the temple;
and he refers back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says, (xliii- 3,)
that this last vision was like the vision on the river Chebar; which indicates
that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object the recovery of
Jerusalem, and nothing further.

As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams and
visions they undertake to explain, which commentators and priests have made of
those books, that of converting them into things which they call prophecies,
and making them bend to times and circumstances as far remote even as the
present day, it shows the fraud or the extreme folly to which credulity or
priestcraft can go.

Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men situated as
Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose country was over-run, and in the possession of
the enemy, all their friends and relations in captivity abroad, or in slavery
at home, or massacred, or in continual danger of it; scarcely any thing, I say,
can be more absurd than to suppose that such men should find nothing to do but
that of employing their time and their thoughts about what was to happen to
other nations a thousand or two thousand years after they were dead; at the
same time nothing more natural than that they should meditate the recovery of
Jerusalem, and their own deliverance; and that this was the sole object of all
the obscure and apparently frantic writing contained in those books.

In this sense the mode of writing used in those two books being forced by
necessity, and not adopted by choice, is not irrational; but, if we are to use
the books as prophecies, they are false. In Ezekiel xxix. 11., speaking of
Egypt, it is said, “No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of
beast pass through it; neither shall it be inhabited for forty years.”
This is what never came to pass, and consequently it is false, as all the books
I have already reviewed are.—I here close this part of the subject.

In the former part of ‘The Age of Reason’ I have spoken of Jonah,
and of the story of him and the whale.—A fit story for ridicule, if it
was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what
credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it could
swallow anything.

But, as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job and of
Proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the Bible are
originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of the Gentiles into
Hebrew; and, as the book of Jonah, so far from treating of the affairs of the
Jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats altogether of the Gentiles, it
is more probable that it is a book of the Gentiles than of the Jews, [I have
read in an ancient Persian poem (Saadi, I believe, but have mislaid the
reference) this phrase: “And now the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun
set.”—Editor.] and that it has been written as a fable to expose
the nonsense, and satyrize the vicious and malignant character, of a
Bible-prophet, or a predicting priest.

Jonah is represented, first as a disobedient prophet, running away from his
mission, and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the Gentiles, bound from Joppa
to Tarshish; as if he ignorantly supposed, by such a paltry contrivance, he
could hide himself where God could not find him. The vessel is overtaken by a
storm at sea; and the mariners, all of whom are Gentiles, believing it to be a
judgement on account of some one on board who had committed a crime, agreed to
cast lots to discover the offender; and the lot fell upon Jonah. But before
this they had cast all their wares and merchandise over-board to lighten the
vessel, while Jonah, like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the hold.

After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they questioned him to
know who and what he was? and he told them he was an Hebrew; and the story
implies that he confessed himself to be guilty. But these Gentiles, instead of
sacrificing him at once without pity or mercy, as a company of Bible-prophets
or priests would have done by a Gentile in the same case, and as it is related
Samuel had done by Agag, and Moses by the women and children, they endeavoured
to save him, though at the risk of their own lives: for the account says,
“Nevertheless [that is, though Jonah was a Jew and a foreigner, and the
cause of all their misfortunes, and the loss of their cargo] the men rowed hard
to bring the boat to land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was
tempestuous against them.” Still however they were unwilling to put the
fate of the lot into execution; and they cried, says the account, unto the
Lord, saying, “We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for this
man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, O Lord, hast
done as it pleased thee.” Meaning thereby, that they did not presume to
judge Jonah guilty, since that he might be innocent; but that they considered
the lot that had fallen upon him as a decree of God, or as it pleased God. The
address of this prayer shows that the Gentiles worshipped one Supreme Being,
and that they were not idolaters as the Jews represented them to be. But the
storm still continuing, and the danger encreasing, they put the fate of the lot
into execution, and cast Jonah in the sea; where, according to the story, a
great fish swallowed him up whole and alive!

We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm in the
fish’s belly. Here we are told that he prayed; but the prayer is a
made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without connection or
consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all to the condition that
Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gentile, who might know something of the
Psalms, could copy out for him. This circumstance alone, were there no other,
is sufficient to indicate that the whole is a made-up story. The prayer,
however, is supposed to have answered the purpose, and the story goes on,
(taking-off at the same time the cant language of a Bible-prophet,) saying,
“The Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon dry
land.”

Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he sets out; and we
have now to consider him as a preacher. The distress he is represented to have
suffered, the remembrance of his own disobedience as the cause of it, and the
miraculous escape he is supposed to have had, were sufficient, one would
conceive, to have impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution
of his mission; but, instead of this, he enters the city with denunciation and
malediction in his mouth, crying, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be
overthrown.”

We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his
mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a Bible-prophet, or of a
predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character that men ascribe
to the being they call the devil.

Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to the east side
of the city.—But for what? not to contemplate in retirement the mercy of
his Creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with malignant impatience,
the destruction of Nineveh. It came to pass, however, as the story relates,
that the Ninevites reformed, and that God, according to the Bible phrase,
repented him of the evil he had said he would do unto them, and did it not.
This, saith the first verse of the last chapter, displeased Jonah exceedingly
and he was very angry. His obdurate heart would rather that all Nineveh should
be destroyed, and every soul, young and old, perish in its ruins, than that his
prediction should not be fulfilled. To expose the character of a prophet still
more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promises him an agreeable
shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he is retired; and the
next morning it dies.

Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to destroy
himself. “It is better, said he, for me to die than to live.” This
brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and the prophet; in
which the former says, “Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And
Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou
hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it
to grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night; and should not I
spare Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than threescore thousand
persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?”

Here is both the winding up of the satire, and the moral of the fable. As a
satire, it strikes against the character of all the Bible-prophets, and against
all the indiscriminate judgements upon men, women and children, with which this
lying book, the bible, is crowded; such as Noah’s flood, the destruction
of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the extirpation of the Canaanites, even to
suckling infants, and women with child; because the same reflection ‘that
there are more than threescore thousand persons that cannot discern between
their right hand and their left,’ meaning young children, applies to all
their cases. It satirizes also the supposed partiality of the Creator for one
nation more than for another.

As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for as
certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The pride of
having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds with
satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of
his predictions.—This book ends with the same kind of strong and
well-directed point against prophets, prophecies and indiscriminate judgements,
as the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the Bible, about Abraham and the
stranger, ends against the intolerant spirit of religious
persecutions—Thus much for the book Jonah. [The story of Abraham and the
Fire-worshipper, ascribed to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my “Sacred
Anthology,” p. 61.) Paine has often been called a “mere
scoffer,” but he seems to have been among the first to treat with dignity
the book of Jonah, so especially liable to the ridicule of superficial readers,
and discern in it the highest conception of Deity known to the Old
Testament.—Editor.]

Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies, I have spoken
in the former part of ‘The Age of Reason,’ and already in this,
where I have said that the word for prophet is the Bible-word for Poet, and
that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of which have become
obscure by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, have been
ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and applied to purposes the
writers never thought of. When a priest quotes any of those passages, he
unriddles it agreeably to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his
congregation as the meaning of the writer. The whore of Babylon has been the
common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the
strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations.

There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser
prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would
be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in
the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.

I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe
on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can,
may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will
never make them grow.—I pass on to the books of the New Testament.

CHAPTER II.
THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if
so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was
married, and that the son she might bring forth should be executed, even
unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such a woman as Mary, and such
a man as Joseph, and Jesus, existed; their mere existence is a matter of
indifference, about which there is no ground either to believe or to
disbelieve, and which comes under the common head of, It may be so, and what
then? The probability however is that there were such persons, or at least such
as resembled them in part of the circumstances, because almost all romantic
stories have been suggested by some actual circumstance; as the adventures of
Robinson Crusoe, not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of
Alexander Selkirk.

It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I
trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New
Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I
contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives
an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this
engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the
impious pretence, (Luke i. 35,) that “the Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.”
Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with her as his
wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into
intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest but
must be ashamed to own it. [Mary, the supposed virgin, mother of Jesus, had
several other children, sons and daughters. See Matt. xiii. 55,
56.—Author.]

Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable
and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief in God, that we do not
connect it with stories that run, as this does, into ludicrous interpretations.
This story is, upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter
and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter;
and shews, as is already stated in the former part of ‘The Age of
Reason,’ that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen Mythology.

As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus Christ,
are confined to a very short space of time, less than two years, and all within
the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the discordance of time, place,
and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament,
and proves them to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the
same abundance. The New Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one
act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities.
There are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the
fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of Jesus
Christ to be false.

I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first, that the
agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story to be true,
because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false; secondly, that the
disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true. The
agreement does not prove truth, but the disagreement proves falsehood
positively.

The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John.—The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a
genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke there is also given
a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it would not prove the
genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless be a fabrication; but as
they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely.
If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth,
Matthew speaks falsehood: and as there is no authority for believing one more
than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot
be believed even in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they
are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is an
uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is
impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either then the men called
apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have been written by
other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in the Old Testament.

The book of Matthew gives (i. 6), a genealogy by name from David, up, through
Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be twent eight
generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by name from Christ,
through Joseph the husband of Mary, down to David, and makes there to be
forty-three generations; besides which, there is only the two names of David
and Joseph that are alike in the two lists.—I here insert both
genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicuity and comparison, have placed
them both in the same direction, that is, from Joseph down to David.

[NOTE: * From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of 1080
years; and as the life-time of Christ is not included, there are but 27 full
generations. To find therefore the average age of each person mentioned in the
list, at the time his first son was born, it is only necessary to divide 1080
by 27, which gives 40 years for each person. As the life-time of man was then
but of the same extent it is now, it is an absurdity to suppose, that 27
following generations should all be old bachelors, before they married; and the
more so, when we are told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a
house full of wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. So
far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie.
The list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and this is
too much.—Author.]

Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between them (as
these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of their history of
Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what authority (as I have before
asked) is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterwards?
If they cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are
we to believe them when they tell us he was the son of God, begotten by a
ghost; and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied
in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural
genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose
that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is
fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon
the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency,
and related by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it not more safe that
we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is
deism, than that we commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational,
indecent, and contradictory tales?

The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as upon those
of the Old, is, Are they genuine? were they written by the persons to whom they
are ascribed? For it is upon this ground only that the strange things related
therein have been credited. Upon this point, there is no direct proof for or
against; and all that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness; and
doubtfulness is the opposite of belief. The state, therefore, that the books
are in, proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go.

But, exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the
Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not written by
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and that they are impositions. The disordered
state of the history in these four books, the silence of one book upon matters
related in the other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them,
implies that they are the productions of some unconnected individuals, many
years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own
legend; and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men
called apostles are supposed to have done: in fine, that they have been
manufactured, as the books of the Old Testament have been, by other persons
than those whose names they bear.

The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate
conception, is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark, and
John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former says the
angel, appeared to Joseph; the latter says, it was to Mary; but either Joseph
or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been thought of; for it was
others that should have testified for them, and not they for themselves. Were
any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was
gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be
believed? Certainly she would not. Why then are we to believe the same thing of
another girl whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where?
How strange and inconsistent is it, that the same circumstance that would
weaken the belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for
believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute
impossibility and imposture.

The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years old, belongs
altogether to the book of Matthew; not one of the rest mentions anything about
it. Had such a circumstance been true, the universality of it must have made it
known to all the writers, and the thing would have been too striking to have
been omitted by any. This writer tell us, that Jesus escaped this slaughter,
because Joseph and Mary were warned by an angel to flee with him into Egypt;
but he forgot to make provision for John [the Baptist], who was then under two
years of age. John, however, who staid behind, fared as well as Jesus, who
fled; and therefore the story circumstantially belies itself.

Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the same words, the
written inscription, short as it is, which they tell us was put over Christ
when he was crucified; and besides this, Mark says, He was crucified at the
third hour, (nine in the morning;) and John says it was the sixth hour, (twelve
at noon.) [According to John, (xix. 14) the sentence was not passed till about
the sixth hour (noon,) and consequently the execution could not be till the
afternoon; but Mark (xv. 25) Says expressly that he was crucified at the third
hour, (nine in the morning,)—Author.]

The inscription is thus stated in those books:

Matthew—This is Jesus the king of the Jews. Mark—The king of the
Jews. Luke—This is the king of the Jews. John—Jesus of Nazareth the
king of the Jews.

We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that those writers,
whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were not present at the
scene. The only one of the men called apostles who appears to have been near to
the spot was Peter, and when he was accused of being one of Jesus’s
followers, it is said, (Matthew xxvi. 74,) “Then Peter began to curse and
to swear, saying, I know not the man:” yet we are now called to believe
the same Peter, convicted, by their own account, of perjury. For what reason,
or on what authority, should we do this?

The accounts that are given of the circumstances, that they tell us attended
the crucifixion, are differently related in those four books.

The book ascribed to Matthew says ‘there was darkness over all the land
from the sixth hour unto the ninth hour—that the veil of the temple was
rent in twain from the top to the bottom—that there was an
earthquake—that the rocks rent—that the graves opened, that the
bodies of many of the saints that slept arose and came out of their graves
after the resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto
many.’ Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of
Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other
books.

The writer of the book ascribed to Mark, in detailing the circumstances of the
crucifixion, makes no mention of any earthquake, nor of the rocks rending, nor
of the graves opening, nor of the dead men walking out. The writer of the book
of Luke is silent also upon the same points. And as to the writer of the book
of John, though he details all the circumstances of the crucifixion down to the
burial of Christ, he says nothing about either the darkness—the veil of
the temple—the earthquake—the rocks—the graves—nor the
dead men.

Now if it had been true that these things had happened, and if the writers of
these books had lived at the time they did happen, and had been the persons
they are said to be—namely, the four men called apostles, Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John,—it was not possible for them, as true historians, even
without the aid of inspiration, not to have recorded them. The things,
supposing them to have been facts, were of too much notoriety not to have been
known, and of too much importance not to have been told. All these supposed
apostles must have been witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any, for
it was not possible for them to have been absent from it: the opening of the
graves and resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the city, is
of still greater importance than the earthquake. An earthquake is always
possible, and natural, and proves nothing; but this opening of the graves is
supernatural, and directly in point to their doctrine, their cause, and their
apostleship. Had it been true, it would have filled up whole chapters of those
books, and been the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers; but
instead of this, little and trivial things, and mere prattling conversation of
‘he said this and she said that’ are often tediously detailed,
while this most important of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly
manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer only, and not so
much as hinted at by the rest.

It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie after
it is told. The writer of the book of Matthew should have told us who the
saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what became of
them afterwards, and who it was that saw them; for he is not hardy enough to
say that he saw them himself;—whether they came out naked, and all in
natural buff, he-saints and she-saints, or whether they came full dressed, and
where they got their dresses; whether they went to their former habitations,
and reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they
were received; whether they entered ejectments for the recovery of their
possessions, or brought actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers;
whether they remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of
preaching or working; or whether they died again, or went back to their graves
alive, and buried themselves.

Strange indeed, that an army of saints should retum to life, and nobody know
who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word more should be
said upon the subject, nor these saints have any thing to tell us! Had it been
the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly prophesied of these things, they
must have had a great deal to say. They could have told us everything, and we
should have had posthumous prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the
first, a little better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses, and Aaron,
and Joshua, and Samuel, and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all
Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the times then
present, everybody would have known them, and they would have out-preached and
out-famed all the other apostles. But, instead of this, these saints are made
to pop up, like Jonah’s gourd in the night, for no purpose at all but to
wither in the morning.—Thus much for this part of the story.

The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion; and in this as
well as in that, the writers, whoever they were, disagree so much as to make it
evident that none of them were there.

The book of Matthew states, that when Christ was put in the sepulchre the Jews
applied to Pilate for a watch or a guard to be placed over the septilchre, to
prevent the body being stolen by the disciples; and that in consequence of this
request the sepulchre was made sure, sealing the stone that covered the mouth,
and setting a watch. But the other books say nothing about this application,
nor about the sealing, nor the guard, nor the watch; and according to their
accounts, there were none. Matthew, however, follows up this part of the story
of the guard or the watch with a second part, that I shall notice in the
conclusion, as it serves to detect the fallacy of those books.

The book of Matthew continues its account, and says, (xxviii. 1,) that at the
end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of the week,
came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. Mark says it was
sun-rising, and John says it was dark. Luke says it was Mary Magdalene and
Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women, that came to the
sepulchre; and John states that Mary Magdalene came alone. So well do they
agree about their first evidence! They all, however, appear to have known most
about Mary Magdalene; she was a woman of large acquaintance, and it was not an
ill conjecture that she might be upon the stroll. [The Bishop of Llandaff, in
his famous “Apology,” censured Paine severely for this insinuation
against Mary Magdalene, but the censure really falls on our English version,
which, by a chapter-heading (Luke vii.), has unwarrantably identified her as
the sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and irrevocably branded
her.—Editor.]

The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2): “And behold there was a
great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and
rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it” But the other books
say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel rolling back the stone,
and sitting upon it and, according to their account, there was no angel sitting
there. Mark says the angel [Mark says “a young man,” and Luke
“two men.”—Editor.] was within the sepulchre, sitting on the
right side. Luke says there were two, and they were both standing up; and John
says they were both sitting down, one at the head and the other at the feet.

Matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the outside of
the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and that the women went
away quickly. Mark says, that the women, upon seeing the stone rolled away, and
wondering at it, went into the sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was
sitting within on the right side, that told them so. Luke says, it was the two
angels that were Standing up; and John says, it was Jesus Christ himself that
told it to Mary Magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only
stooped down and looked in.

Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to
prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to
be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had
they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given,
they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and
would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the
books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine
inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.

The writer of the book of Matthew, after giving this account, relates a story
that is not to be found in any of the other books, and which is the same I have
just before alluded to. “Now,” says he, [that is, after the
conversation the women had had with the angel sitting upon the stone,]
“behold some of the watch [meaning the watch that he had said had been
placed over the sepulchre] came into the city, and shewed unto the chief
priests all the things that were done; and when they were assembled with the
elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying,
Say ye, that his disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept;
and if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure
you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught; and this saying [that
his disciples stole him away] is commonly reported among the Jews until this
day.”

The expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book ascribed to
Matthew was not written by Matthew, and that it has been manufactured long
after the times and things of which it pretends to treat; for the expression
implies a great length of intervening time. It would be inconsistent in us to
speak in this manner of any thing happening in our own time. To give,
therefore, intelligible meaning to the expression, we must suppose a lapse of
some generations at least, for this manner of speaking carries the mind back to
ancient time.

The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows the writer of
the book of Matthew to have been an exceeding weak and foolish man. He tells a
story that contradicts itself in point of possibility; for though the guard, if
there were any, might be made to say that the body was taken away while they
were asleep, and to give that as a reason for their not having prevented it,
that same sleep must also have prevented their knowing how, and by whom, it was
done; and yet they are made to say that it was the disciples who did it. Were a
man to tender his evidence of something that he should say was done, and of the
manner of doing it, and of the person who did it, while he was asleep, and
could know nothing of the matter, such evidence could not be received: it will
do well enough for Testament evidence, but not for any thing where truth is
concerned.

I come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that respects the
pretended appearance of Christ after this pretended resurrection.

The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was sitting on
the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two Marys (xxviii. 7),
“Behold Christ is gone before you into Galilee, there ye shall see him;
lo, I have told you.” And the same writer at the next two verses (8, 9,)
makes Christ himself to speak to the same purpose to these women immediately
after the angel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to tell it to
the disciples; and it is said (ver. 16), “Then the eleven disciples went
away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them; and, when
they saw him, they worshipped him.”

But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different to this; for
he says (xx. 19) “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of
the week, [that is, the same day that Christ is said to have risen,] when the
doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, came
Jesus and stood in the midst of them.”

According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee, to meet Jesus in a
mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time when, according to John,
they were assembled in another place, and that not by appointment, but in
secret, for fear of the Jews.

The writer of the book of Luke xxiv. 13, 33-36, contradicts that of Matthew
more pointedly than John does; for he says expressly, that the meeting was in
Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he (Christ) rose, and that the
eleven were there.

Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples the right of
wilful lying, that the writers of these books could be any of the eleven
persons called disciples; for if, according to Matthew, the eleven went into
Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own appointment, on the same day
that he is said to have risen, Luke and John must have been two of that eleven;
yet the writer of Luke says expressly, and John implies as much, that the
meeting was that same day, in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if,
according to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem,
Matthew must have been one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the meeting was in
a mountain in Galilee, and consequently the evidence given in those books
destroy each other.

The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in Galilee; but
he says (xvi. 12) that Christ, after his resurrection, appeared in another form
to two of them, as they walked into the country, and that these two told it to
the residue, who would not believe them. [This belongs to the late addition to
Mark, which originally ended with xvi. 8.—Editor.] Luke also tells a
story, in which he keeps Christ employed the whole of the day of this pretended
resurrection, until the evening, and which totally invalidates the account of
going to the mountain in Galilee. He says, that two of them, without saying
which two, went that same day to a village called Emmaus, three score furlongs
(seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and that Christ in disguise went with
them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped with them, and then
vanished out of their sight, and reappeared that same evening, at the meeting
of the eleven in Jerusalem.

This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended
reappearance of Christ is stated: the only point in which the writers agree, is
the skulking privacy of that reappearance; for whether it was in the recess of
a mountain in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, it was still
skulking. To what cause then are we to assign this skulking? On the one hand,
it is directly repugnant to the supposed or pretended end, that of convincing
the world that Christ was risen; and, on the other hand, to have asserted the
publicity of it would have exposed the writers of those books to public
detection; and, therefore, they have been under the necessity of making it a
private affair.

As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred at once, it is
Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say it for themselves. It
is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and that too of a man, who did
not, according to the same account, believe a word of the matter himself at the
time it is said to have happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the
writer of Corinthians xv., where this account is given, is like that of a man
who comes into a court of justice to swear that what he had sworn before was
false. A man may often see reason, and he has too always the right of changing
his opinion; but this liberty does not extend to matters of fact.

I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.—Here all
fear of the Jews, and of every thing else, must necessarily have been out of
the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal the whole; and upon which
the reality of the future mission of the disciples was to rest for proof.
Words, whether declarations or promises, that passed in private, either in the
recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even
supposing them to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public; it was
therefore necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of
denial and dispute; and that it should be, as I have stated in the former part
of ‘The Age of Reason,’ as public and as visible as the sun at
noon-day; at least it ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is
reported to have been.—But to come to the point.

In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say a syllable
about it; neither does the writer of the book of John. This being the case, is
it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect to be even minute in
other matters, would have been silent upon this, had it been true? The writer
of the book of Mark passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single
dash of the pen, as if he was tired of romancing, or ashamed of the story. So
also does the writer of Luke. And even between these two, there is not an
apparent agreement, as to the place where this final parting is said to have
been. [The last nine verses of Mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension
rests exclusively on the words in Luke xxiv. 51, “was carried up into
heaven,”—words omitted by several ancient
authorities.—Editor.]

The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat,
alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem: he then states the
conversation that he says passed at that meeting; and immediately after says
(as a school-boy would finish a dull story,) “So then, after the Lord had
spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of
God.” But the writer of Luke says, that the ascension was from Bethany;
that he (Christ) led them out as far as Bethany, and was parted from them
there, and was carried up into heaven. So also was Mahomet: and, as to Moses,
the apostle Jude says, ver. 9. That ‘Michael and the devil disputed about
his body.’ While we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we
believe unworthily of the Almighty.

I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered that the whole space of time,
from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is but a few days,
apparently not more than three or four, and that all the circumstances are
reported to have happened nearly about the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I
believe, impossible to find in any story upon record so many and such glaring
absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as are in those books. They are
more numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding, when I began
this examination, and far more so than I had any idea of when I wrote the
former part of ‘The Age of Reason.’ I had then neither Bible nor
Testament to refer to, nor could I procure any. My own situation, even as to
existence, was becoming every day more precarious; and as I was willing to
leave something behind me upon the subject, I was obliged to be quick and
concise. The quotations I then made were from memory only, but they are
correct; and the opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the
most clear and long-established conviction,—that the Bible and the
Testament are impositions upon the world;—that the fall of man, the
account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the
wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous
inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;—that
the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean the belief
of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what
are called moral virtues;—and that it was upon this only (so far as
religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So
say I now—and so help me God.

But to retum to the subject.—Though it is impossible, at this distance of
time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those four books (and this
alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt we do not
believe) it is not difficult to ascertain negatively that they were not written
by the persons to whom they are ascribed. The contradictions in those books
demonstrate two things:

First, that the writers cannot have been eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of the
matters they relate, or they would have related them without those
contradictions; and, consequently that the books have not been written by the
persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been witnesses of this kind.

Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in concerted
imposition, but each writer separately and individually for himself, and
without the knowledge of the other.

The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally to prove both
cases; that is, that the books were not written by the men called apostles, and
also that they are not a concerted imposition. As to inspiration, it is
altogether out of the question; we may as well attempt to unite truth and
falsehood, as inspiration and contradiction.

If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they will without
any concert between them, agree as to time and place, when and where that scene
happened. Their individual knowledge of the thing, each one knowing it for
himself, renders concert totally unnecessary; the one will not say it was in a
mountain in the country, and the other at a house in town; the one will not say
it was at sunrise, and the other that it was dark. For in whatever place it was
and whatever time it was, they know it equally alike.

And on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will make their
separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with each other to
support the whole. That concert supplies the want of fact in the one case, as
the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the necessity of a
concert. The same contradictions, therefore, that prove there has been no
concert, prove also that the reporters had no knowledge of the fact, (or rather
of that which they relate as a fact,) and detect also the falsehood of their
reports. Those books, therefore, have neither been written by the men called
apostles, nor by imposters in concert.—How then have they been written?

I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that which is
called wilful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of men setting up
to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for prophesying is lying
professionally. In almost all other cases it is not difficult to discover the
progress by which even simple supposition, with the aid of credulity, will in
time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a fact; and whenever we can find a
charitable reason for a thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge a severe
one.

The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an
apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and
credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of
Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally have their origin in
violent deaths, or in execution of innocent persons. In cases of this kind,
compassion lends its aid, and benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a
little and a little farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a
ghost, and credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of
its appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there are as
many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as there
are about Jesus Christ in these four books.

The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture
of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He
is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the doors are shut, and
of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an
unsubstantial vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his
supper. But as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for all the
cases, so it is here: they have told us, that when he arose he left his
grave-clothes behind him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for
him to appear in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he
ascended; whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. In the case
of Elijah, they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle; how
it happened not to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have not told us;
but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may suppose if we
please that it was made of salamander’s wool.

Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may suppose that
the book called the New Testament has existed ever since the time of Jesus
Christ, as they suppose that the books ascribed to Moses have existed ever
since the time of Moses. But the fact is historically otherwise; there was no
such book as the New Testament till more than three hundred years after the
time that Christ is said to have lived.

At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, began to
appear, is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not the least shadow of
evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what time they were
written; and they might as well have been called by the names of any of the
other supposed apostles as by the names they are now called. The originals are
not in the possession of any Christian Church existing, any more than the two
tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount
Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they
were, there is no possibility of proving the hand-writing in either case. At
the time those four books were written there was no printing, and consequently
there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which any man
might make or alter at pleasure, and call them originals. Can we suppose it is
consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit himself and his will to
man upon such precarious means as these; or that it is consistent we should pin
our faith upon such uncertainties? We cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate,
so much as one blade of grass that he has made, and yet we can make or alter
words of God as easily as words of man. [The former part of the ‘Age of
Reason’ has not been published two years, and there is already an
expression in it that is not mine. The expression is: The book of Luke was
carried by a majority of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not I that
have said it. Some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in
a note at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in
England or in America; and the printers, after that, have erected it into the
body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has happened within
such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents
the alteration of copies individually, what may not have happened in a much
greater length of time, when there was no printing, and when any man who could
write could make a written copy and call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke,
or John?—Author.]

[The spurious addition to Paine’s work alluded to in his footnote drew on
him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley (“Letters to a Philosophical
Unbeliever,” p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in
his quotation, first incorporated into Paine’s text the footnote added by
the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added: “Vide
Moshiem’s (sic) Ecc. History,” which Priestley omits. In a modern
American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the above
footnote.—Editor.]

About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is said to have
lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were scattered in the
hands of divers individuals; and as the church had begun to form itself into an
hierarchy, or church government, with temporal powers, it set itself about
collecting them into a code, as we now see them, called ‘The New
Testament.’ They decided by vote, as I have before said in the former
part of the Age of Reason, which of those writings, out of the collection they
had made, should be the word of God, and which should not. The Robbins of the
Jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of the Bible before.

As the object of the church, as is the case in all national establishments of
churches, was power and revenue, and terror the means it used, it is consistent
to suppose that the most miraculous and wonderful of the writings they had
collected stood the best chance of being voted. And as to the authenticity of
the books, the vote stands in the place of it; for it can be traced no higher.

Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves
Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the authenticity of
the books. In the contest between the person called St. Augustine, and Fauste,
about the year 400, the latter says, “The books called the Evangelists
have been composed long after the times of the apostles, by some obscure men,
who, fearing that the world would not give credit to their relation of matters
of which they could not be informed, have published them under the names of the
apostles; and which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that
there is neither agreement nor connection between them.”

And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those books, as
being the word of God, he says, “It is thus that your predecessors have
inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things which, though they carry his
name, agree not with his doctrine.” This is not surprising, since that we
have often proved that these things have not been written by himself, nor by
his apostles, but that for the greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon
vague reports, and put together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little
agreement between them; and which they have nevertheless published under the
name of the apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their own
errors and their lies. [I have taken these two extracts from Boulanger’s
Life of Paul, written in French; Boulanger has quoted them from the writings of
Augustine against Fauste, to which he refers.—Author.]

This Bishop Faustus is usually styled “The Manichaeum,” Augustine
having entitled his book, Contra Frustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in which
nearly the whole of Faustus’ very able work is quoted.—Editor.]

The reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the books of the
New Testament was denied, and the books treated as tales, forgeries, and lies,
at the time they were voted to be the word of God. But the interest of the
church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore down the opposition, and at
last suppressed all investigation. Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will
believe them, and men were taught to say they believed whether they believed or
not. But (by way of throwing in a thought) the French Revolution has
excommunicated the church from the power of working miracles; she has not been
able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the
revolution began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may,
without the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are tricks
and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical
histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are called, several matters
which show the opinions that prevailed among the different sects of Christians,
at the time the Testament, as we now see it, was voted to be the word of God.
The following extracts are from the second chapter of that work:

[The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were filled
with falsities. The Manichaeans, who formed a very numerous sect at the
commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New Testament, and
showed other writings quite different that they gave for authentic. The
Corinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The
Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the Acts, nor the Epistles of
Paul. Chrysostom, in a homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says
that in his time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the
author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the
Valentinians, like several other sects of the Christians, accused the
scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The
Ebionites, or Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the
Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an impostor. They report, among other
things, that he was originally a Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he
lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high
priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to obtain her,
he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against the
observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal
ordinances.—Author.] [Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de St.
Paul, by N.A. Boulanger, 1770.—Editor.]

When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years intervening between
the time that Christ is said to have lived and the time the New Testament was
formed into a book, we must see, even without the assistance of historical
evidence, the exceeding uncertainty there is of its authenticity. The
authenticity of the book of Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much
better established than that of the New Testament, though Homer is a thousand
years the most ancient. It was only an exceeding good poet that could have
written the book of Homer, and, therefore, few men only could have attempted
it; and a man capable of doing it would not have thrown away his own fame by
giving it to another. In like manner, there were but few that could have
composed Euclid’s Elements, because none but an exceeding good
geometrician could have been the author of that work.

But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such parts as
tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any person who could tell
a story of an apparition, or of a man’s walking, could have made such
books; for the story is most wretchedly told. The chance, therefore, of forgery
in the Testament is millions to one greater than in the case of Homer or
Euclid. Of the numerous priests or parsons of the present day, bishops and all,
every one of them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of Latin, especially
if it has been translated a thousand times before; but is there any amongst
them that can write poetry like Homer, or science like Euclid? The sum total of
a parson’s learning, with very few exceptions, is a, b, ab, and hic,
haec, hoc; and their knowledge of science is, three times one is three; and
this is more than sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time,
to have written all the books of the New Testament.

As the opportunities of forgery were greater, so also was the inducement. A man
could gain no advantage by writing under the name of Homer or Euclid; if he
could write equal to them, it would be better that he wrote under his own name;
if inferior, he could not succeed. Pride would prevent the former, and
impossibility the latter. But with respect to such books as compose the New
Testament, all the inducements were on the side of forgery. The best imagined
history that could have been made, at the distance of two or three hundred
years after the time, could not have passed for an original under the name of
the real writer; the only chance of success lay in forgery; for the church
wanted pretence for its new doctrine, and truth and talents were out of the
question.

But as it is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of persons
walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of such as have
fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as the people of that day
were in the habit of believing such things, and of the appearance of angels,
and also of devils, and of their getting into people’s insides, and
shaking them like a fit of an ague, and of their being cast out again as if by
an emetic—(Mary Magdalene, the book of Mark tells us had brought up, or
been brought to bed of seven devils;) it was nothing extraordinary that some
story of this kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus Christ, and
become afterwards the foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. Each writer told a tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and
gave to his book the name of the saint or the apostle whom tradition had given
as the eye-witness. It is only upon this ground that the contradictions in
those books can be accounted for; and if this be not the case, they are
downright impositions, lies, and forgeries, without even the apology of
credulity.

That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the foregoing quotations
mention, is discernible enough. The frequent references made to that chief
assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called prophets, establishes this
point; and, on the other hand, the church has complimented the fraud, by
admitting the Bible and the Testament to reply to each other. Between the
Christian-Jew and the Christian-Gentile, the thing called a prophecy, and the
thing prophesied of, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing
signified, have been industriously rummaged up, and fitted together like old
locks and pick-lock keys. The story foolishly enough told of Eve and the
serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity between men and serpents (for
the serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach higher, and
the man always knocks the serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to
prevent its biting;) [“It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
his heel.” Gen. iii. 15.—Author.] this foolish story, I say, has
been made into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to begin with; and the lying
imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, ‘That a virgin shall conceive and bear a
son,’ as a sign that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that he was
defeated (as already noticed in the observations on the book of Isaiah), has
been perverted, and made to serve as a winder up.

Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and type. Jonah is Jesus, and the
whale is the grave; for it is said, (and they have made Christ to say it of
himself, Matt. xii. 40), “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in
the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth.” But it happens, awkwardly enough, that
Christ, according to their own account, was but one day and two nights in the
grave; about 36 hours instead of 72; that is, the Friday night, the Saturday,
and the Saturday night; for they say he was up on the Sunday morning by
sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite as well as the bite and the kick in
Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah, it will pass in the lump of
orthodox things.—Thus much for the historical part of the Testament and
its evidences.

Epistles of Paul—The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen in number,
almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament. Whether those epistles were
written by the person to whom they are ascribed is a matter of no great
importance, since that the writer, whoever he was, attempts to prove his
doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to have been witness to any of the
scenes told of the resurrection and the ascension; and he declares that he had
not believed them.

The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to Damascus,
has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he escaped with life, and that
is more than many others have done, who have been struck with lightning; and
that he should lose his sight for three days, and be unable to eat or drink
during that time, is nothing more than is common in such conditions. His
companions that were with him appear not to have suffered in the same manner,
for they were well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey; neither did
they pretend to have seen any vision.

The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts given of
him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he had persecuted with
as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke he had received had changed
his thinking, without altering his constitution; and either as a Jew or a
Christian he was the same zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of
any doctrine they preach. They are always in extremes, as well of action as of
belief.

The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of the same
body: and he advances this as an evidence of immortality. But so much will men
differ in their manner of thinking, and in the conclusions they draw from the
same premises, that this doctrine of the resurrection of the same body, so far
from being an evidence of immortality, appears to me to be an evidence against
it; for if I have already died in this body, and am raised again in the same
body in which I have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again.
That resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an
ague-fit, when past, secures me against another. To believe therefore in
immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the gloomy
doctrine of the resurrection.

Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather have a better
body and a more convenient form than the present. Every animal in the creation
excels us in something. The winged insects, without mentioning doves or eagles,
can pass over more space with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an
hour. The glide of the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in
motion almost beyond comparison, and without weariness. Even the sluggish snail
can ascend from the bottom of a dungeon, where man, by the want of that
ability, would perish; and a spider can launch itself from the top, as a
playful amusement. The personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy
frame so little constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is nothing to
induce us to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the
magnitude of the scene, too mean for the sublimity of the subject.

But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is the only
conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the continuance of that
consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence, or the knowing
that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form, nor to the same
matter, even in this life.

We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter, that
composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are conscious of
being the same persons. Even legs and arms, which make up almost half the human
frame, are not necessary to the consciousness of existence. These may be lost
or taken away and the full consciousness of existence remain; and were their
place supplied by wings, or other appendages, we cannot conceive that it could
alter our consciousness of existence. In short, we know not how much, or rather
how little, of our composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is,
that creates in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like
the pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the
kernel.

Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a thought
is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that thought when produced, as I
now produce the thought I am writing, is capable of becoming immortal, and is
the only production of man that has that capacity.

Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation of them
are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more than the copy of a
picture is the same picture. But print and reprint a thought a thousand times
over, and that with materials of any kind, carve it in wood, or engrave it on
stone, the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case.
It has a capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and
is essentially distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that
we know of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a
capacity of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that
produced it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be
immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected
with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in. The
one idea is not more difficult to believe than the other; and we can see that
one is true.

That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form or the
same matter, is demonstrated to our senses in the works of the creation, as far
as our senses are capable of receiving that demonstration. A very numerous part
of the animal creation preaches to us, far better than Paul, the belief of a
life hereafter. Their little life resembles an earth and a heaven, a present
and a future state; and comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in
miniature.

The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged insects, and
they are not so originally. They acquire that form and that inimitable
brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and creeping caterpillar worm of to
day, passes in a few days to a torpid figure, and a state resembling death; and
in the next change comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a
splendid butterfly. No resemblance of the former creature remains; every thing
is changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing. We cannot
conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of
the animal as before; why then must I believe that the resurrection of the same
body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence hereafter?

In the former part of ‘The Age of Reason.’ I have called the
creation the true and only real word of God; and this instance, or this text,
in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be so, but
that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a rational belief,
founded upon facts visible in the creation: for it is not more difficult to
believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and form than at
present, than that a worm should become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for
the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.

As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in 1 Corinthians xv., which makes
part of the burial service of some Christian sectaries, it is as destitute of
meaning as the tolling of a bell at the funeral; it explains nothing to the
understanding, it illustrates nothing to the imagination, but leaves the reader
to find any meaning if he can. “All flesh,” says he, “is not
the same flesh. There is one flesh of men, another of beasts, another of
fishes, and another of birds.” And what then? nothing. A cook could have
said as much. “There are also,” says he, “bodies celestial
and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the
terrestrial is the other.” And what then? nothing. And what is the
difference? nothing that he has told. “There is,” says he,
“one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory
of the stars.” And what then? nothing; except that he says that one star
differeth from another star in glory, instead of distance; and he might as well
have told us that the moon did not shine so bright as the sun. All this is
nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he does not
understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune
told. Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of
resurrection from the principles of vegetation. “Thou fool” says
he, “that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.” To
which one might reply in his own language, and say, Thou fool, Paul, that which
thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that dies in the
ground never does, nor can vegetate. It is only the living grains that produce
the next crop. But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile. It is
succession, and [not] resurrection.

The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a worm to
a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not, and shows Paul
to have been what he says of others, a fool.

Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not, is a
matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the
argument is defective, and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it
signifies not who wrote them. And the same may be said for the remaining parts
of the Testament. It is not upon the Epistles, but upon what is called the
Gospel, contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church, calling
itself the Christian Church, is founded. The Epistles are dependant upon those,
and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all
reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must fall with it.

We know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this church,
Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed; [Athanasius died,
according to the Church chronology, in the year 371—Author.] and we know
also, from the absurd jargon he has left us under the name of a creed, the
character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we know also from the
same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is composed was
denied at the time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius that the
Testament was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a
more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote. Those who
rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have no
true foundation for future happiness. Credulity, however, is not a crime, but
it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of
the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never force
belief upon ourselves in any thing.

I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New. The evidence I have
produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from the books themselves, and
acts, like a two-edge sword, either way. If the evidence be denied, the
authenticity of the Scriptures is denied with it, for it is Scripture evidence:
and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved.
The contradictory impossibilities, contained in the Old Testament and the New,
put them in the case of a man who swears for and against. Either evidence
convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation.

Should the Bible and the Testament hereafter fall, it is not that I have done
it. I have done no more than extracted the evidence from the confused mass of
matters with which it is mixed, and arranged that evidence in a point of light
to be clearly seen and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the
reader to judge for himself, as I have judged for myself.

CHAPTER III.
CONCLUSION

In the former part of ‘The Age of Reason’ I have spoken of the
three frauds, mystery, miracle, and Prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in any
of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have there said
upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part with additions that
are not necessary.

I have spoken also in the same work upon what is celled revelation, and have
shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of the Old Testament
and the New; for certainly revelation is out of the question in reciting any
thing of which man has been the actor or the witness. That which man has done
or seen, needs no revelation to tell him he has done it, or seen it—for
he knows it already—nor to enable him to tell it or to write it. It is
ignorance, or imposition, to apply the term revelation in such cases; yet the
Bible and Testament are classed under this fraudulent description of being all
revelation.

Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only
be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the
power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted,
because to that power all things are possible, yet, the thing so revealed (if
any thing ever was revealed, and which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove)
is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to
another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in
the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or
may have dreamed it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible
criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells; for even the morality
of it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases, the proper answer
should be, “When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be
revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be
revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as
the word of God, and put man in the place of God.” This is the manner in
which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of The Age of Reason; and
which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because,
as before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the
imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended
revelation.

But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of revelation, I
totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by
any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance,
or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by
the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that
repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to good ones.
[A fair parallel of the then unknown aphorism of Kant: “Two things fill
the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more
closely upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within
me.” (Kritik derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788). Kant’s religious
utterances at the beginning of the French Revolution brought on him a royal
mandate of silence, because he had worked out from “the moral law
within” a principle of human equality precisely similar to that which
Paine had derived from his Quaker doctrine of the “inner light” of
every man. About the same time Paine’s writings were suppressed in
England. Paine did not understand German, but Kant, though always independent
in the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the
literature of the Revolution, in America, England, and France.—Editor.]

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest
miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this
thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most
dishonourable belief against the character of the divinity, the most
destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was
propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we
admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to
preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we
permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible
prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit
among us.

Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and
infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and
tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe
in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called
revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The
lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament
[of] the other.

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but
of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could
begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors
of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and
the stake and faggot too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same
spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant (if the
story be true) he would cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he
been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the
[Hebrew] Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that
in the worst use of it—not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made no
converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New] Testament, and
both are called the word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers
preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both.
It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.

The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that
can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians. They do
not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a dead
letter. [This is an interesting and correct testimony as to the beliefs of the
earlier Quakers, one of whom was Paine’s father.—Editor.] Had they
called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth.

It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and
who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause
that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of a
revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an impious fraud. What is it that
we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing
that is useful to man, and every thing that is dishonourable to his Maker. What
is it the Bible teaches us?—repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the
Testament teaches us?—to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery
with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called
faith.

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in
those books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They
are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held
together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all
religions, and in all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this
subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. The
doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs,
which is a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than it is in the
Testament. It is there said, (Xxv. 2 I) “If thine enemy be hungry, give
him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:”
[According to what is called Christ’s sermon on the mount, in the book of
Matthew, where, among some other [and] good things, a great deal of this
feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine
of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the
doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in “Proverbs,”
it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the Gentiles, from
whom Christ had learned it. Those men whom Jewish and Christian idolators have
abusively called heathen, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and
morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or
in the New. The answer of Solon on the question, “Which is the most
perfect popular govemment,” has never been exceeded by any man since his
time, as containing a maxim of political morality, “That,” says he,
“where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as
an insult on the whole constitution.” Solon lived about 500 years before
Christ.—Author.] but when it is said, as in the Testament, “If a
man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” it is
assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.

Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no
meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an
injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to
retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in
proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for
a crime. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a
moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a
man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of
religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an
enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it
contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction
upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no
motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and
without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are
impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil;
or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be
done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man
expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the
greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine
is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of
what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a
feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have
persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American
Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned
evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a
good one, or to return good for evil; and wherever it is done, it is a
voluntary act, and not a duty. It is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine
can make any part of a revealed religion. We imitate the moral character of the
Creator by forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this
doctrine would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but
as he was bad.

If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is no
occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we want to know?
Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the existence of an
Almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole? And is not the evidence
that this creation holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than any thing
we can read in a book, that any imposter might make and call the word of God?
As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man’s conscience.

Here we are. The existence of an Almighty power is sufficiently demonstrated to
us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we should, the nature and
manner of its existence. We cannot conceive how we came here ourselves, and yet
we know for a fact that we are here. We must know also, that the power that
called us into being, can if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account
for the manner in which we have lived here; and therefore without seeking any
other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we
know beforehand that he can. The probability or even possibility of the thing
is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be the
mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best actions no
virtue.

Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is
necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the Bible of the deist. He
there reads, in the hand-writing of the Creator himself, the certainty of his
existence, and the immutability of his power; and all other Bibles and
Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability that we may be called to
account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds, have the influence of belief; for
it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this is
the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it
is the fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will
live as if there were no God.

But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of
the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in the Bible, and the
obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that the mind of man is
bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he
confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition
to reject all. But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other
things, and ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of
Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs acts as a
division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened.

Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of notion
instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing
called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is
preached instead of a God; an execution is an object for gratitude; the
preachers daub themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and
pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on
the merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and
condemn the Jews for doing it.

A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the
God of the Creation with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if
there were none.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more
derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason,
and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too
absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for
practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics.
As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of
wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in
general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence
of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It must have been the first
and will probably be the last that man believes. But pure and simple deism does
not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of
religion as an engine but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their
own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by
incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the
government, a party in the system. It is this that forms the otherwise
mysterious connection of church and state; the church human, and the state
tyrannic.

Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of
a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand
in awe of God, and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be
concealed from either. To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is
necessary that it acts alone. This is deism.

But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is
represented by a dying man, and another part, called the Holy Ghost, by a
flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild
conceits. [The book called the book of Matthew, says, (iii. 16,) that the Holy
Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well have said a goose; the
creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the
other. Acts, ii. 2, 3, says, that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the
shape of cloven tongues: perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff is fit
only for tales of witches and wizards.—Author.]

It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented
systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of
government to hold him in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are
as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. The
study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing;
it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no
authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no
conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in
possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the
case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.

Instead then of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and
Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted, and the
authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the Bible
of the creation. The principles we discover there are eternal, and of divine
origin: they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the world,
and must be the foundation of theology.

We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of any one
attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a
confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something
of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order
and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge;
for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium
that man can see God, as it were, face to face.

Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with power of vision to
behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure of the
universe, to mark the movements of the several planets, the cause of their
varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve, even to the
remotest comet, their connection and dependence on each other, and to know the
system of laws established by the Creator, that governs and regulates the
whole; he would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach
him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the Creator. He
would then see that all the knowledge man has of science, and that all the
mechanical arts by which he renders his situation comfortable here, are derived
from that source: his mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact,
would increase in gratitude as it increased in knowledge: his religion or his
worship would become united with his improvement as a man: any employment he
followed that had connection with the principles of the creation,—as
everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts,
has,—would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him,
than any theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects inspire great
thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the grovelling tales
and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite contempt.

Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I have
described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of the principles
upon which the creation is constructed. We know that the greatest works can be
represented in model, and that the universe can be represented by the same
means. The same principles by which we measure an inch or an acre of ground
will measure to millions in extent. A circle of an inch diameter has the same
geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the universe. The
same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a
ship, will do it on the ocean; and, when applied to what are called the
heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though
those bodies are millions of miles distant from us. This knowledge is of divine
origin; and it is from the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and
not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches man nothing. [The
Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of Genesis, an
account of the creation; and in doing this they have demonstrated nothing but
their ignorance. They make there to have been three days and three nights,
evenings and mornings, before there was any sun; when it is the presence or
absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night—and what is called
his rising and setting that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile
and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, “Let there be
light.” It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when
he says to his cups and balls, Presto, be gone—and most probably has been
taken from it, as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls
this expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime too;
for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the same. When
authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on
the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund
Burke’s sublime and beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog,
which imagination might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a
flock of wild geese.—Author.]

All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his
existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be
scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition from a common animal,
comes from the great machine and structure of the universe. The constant and
unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of
the heavenly bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the
world, have brought this knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the
prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The Almighty
is the great mechanic of the creation, the first philosopher, and original
teacher of all science. Let us then learn to reverence our master, and not
forget the labours of our ancestors.

Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible that man
could have a view, as I have before described, of the structure and machinery
of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of constructing some at least
of the mechanical works we now have; and the idea so conceived would
progressively advance in practice. Or could a model of the universe, such as is
called an orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would
arrive at the same idea. Such an object and such a subject would, whilst it
improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a member of society,
as well as entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a
knowledge of, and a belief in the Creator, and of the reverence and gratitude
that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and the Testament,
from which, be the talents of the preacher; what they may, only stupid sermons
can be preached. If man must preach, let him preach something that is edifying,
and from the texts that are known to be true.

The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of science,
whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal
and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as
well for devotion as for philosophy—for gratitude, as for human
improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system
of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most
certainly, and every house of devotion a school of science.

It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the light of
reason, and setting up an invented thing called “revealed
religion,” that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of
the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make
room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of
himself, and the founder of a new religion to supersede and expel the Jewish
religion. And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have
supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the
changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgement. The
philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed, with respect
either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter. Why then is
it to be supposed they have changed with respect to man?

I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work
that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the
evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can do it;
and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest
on the mind of the reader; certain as I am that when opinions are free, either
in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.

END OF PART II